72 'PERSONAL NARRATIVE. 



spurs of the Lasta mountains. The road had been 

 much less carefully made south of Antalo, and in many- 

 places it had suffered from the traffic, and was but little 

 better than any ordinary Abyssinian mule-track. Leaving 

 Meshek, the route led for two or three miles through 

 the bottom of the little valley, now brilliantly green 

 with the young wheat, and then, after passing a large 

 round church, with a conical thatched roof, one of the 

 finest met with on our march, it commenced a steep 

 ascent over trap rocks, which form all the upper portion 

 of the valley. There is an appearance here of two dis- . 

 tinct series of traps, the lower slightly inclined and 

 resting immediately on the sedimentary beds, the upper, 

 which forms the crest of the pass, distinctly horizontal ; 

 but the presence of two series is not so manifest as in the 

 next valley. Above the crest of the pass, itself 9,800 

 feet above the sea, towers the amba or hill fort of Alaji, 

 the stronghold of Walda Yasous, nearly 1,000 feet above 

 the road. The whole of this amba is formed of hori- 

 zontal beds of trachyte and basalt. 



On this pass I had first occasion to notice the change 

 which takes place in the vegetation of the Abyssinian 

 mountains at altitudes above or about 9,000 feet. A gigan- 

 tic thistle, ten or twelve feet high, and a very fine species 

 of heath, often large enough to be called a tree, are two 

 of the most conspicuous plants above this elevation. A 

 corresponding alteration takes place in the fauna, but this 

 was less conspicuous in the Alaji pass than subsequently 

 on some ranges of greater height. 



From this point to Magdala the whole route is over 



