SEXAFE—EXCUESIOX TO HALAI. 47 



Life at Senafe was on the whole very enjoyable. A 

 perfect climate, fine scenery, a novel fauna, agreeable 

 companions, and a good commissariat, combined to make 

 the time pass pleasantly. The whole country around 

 appeared perfectly safe, and the people thoroughly 

 friendly, so far as I could see, and they were certainly 

 an improvement on Shohos both in manners and personal 

 appearance. Still they are a poor race, often half starved, 

 and very inferior to the dwellers in the rich valleys of 

 Central Abyssinia. 



After I had been a few clays in Senafe, Sir Robert 

 Napier's well-known order was issued, that aU servants 

 except grass-cutters for the horses should be dismissed, 

 and only seventy-five pounds of private baggage be carried 

 forward by each officer. Personally, of course, I cordd 

 travel as lightly as anybody else, and if I renounced all 

 attempts at collecting any specimens, either geological or 

 zoological, I might have still gone on and examined the 

 geolog}-. But I thought that after I had succeeded, with 

 great difficulty, in bringing collectors and aU the neces- 

 sary apparatus to the highlands, it would be a pity to 

 take them no further than Senafe, and I accordingly 

 wrote to head-quarters, then near Antalo, and applied 

 for additional carriage. Meantime Captain Carter, the 

 energetic head of the Trigonometiical Survey, had 

 reached Senafe, and intended going to Takonda and 

 HalaL He asked me to accompany him, and I was very 

 glad of the opportunit}- of seeing so classical a region as 

 the head of the Taranta pass, traversed by aU the earlier 

 explorers of Abyssinia. 



