CHAPTER XXX 



Carpets of flowers — Ill-luck A plucky boar and a near shave — A long 

 fast — More bad luck — An awful storm — Starvation Camp — The evil 

 eye — My last day after buffalo and how it resulted in failure — 

 Return to Gondar — Spoilt trophies — Relics from the churches — My 

 Abyssinians strike — A change of governors no improvement — I set 

 out for Simien — A fine waterfall. 



The rains were now beginning to alter the whole aspect 

 of the country : instead of the universal khaki colour of 

 the ground and all that grew on it, the light verdure of 

 young grass was visible everywhere ; thorns were 

 flowering and trees bursting into leaf, while beds of 

 different coloured lilies formed bright carpets in the 

 valleys. Of the four most common species of the latter, 

 one (Crinuin scabi-utn) was a large plant, which stood 

 some 1 8 inches high, carrying from six to eight hand- 

 some white blossoms striped with mauve ; another 

 {Crimun abyssiniuni) had a single pure white star-like 

 flower, with a sweet scent ; a third presented a little 

 cluster of white blooms, and a fourth kind had a single 

 mauve-coloured blossom, which grew close to the ground 

 and only just showed above the new grass. Another 

 result of the rain, which I did not so much appreciate, 

 was the appearance of numbers of snakes, of which my 

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