50 PROCEED ON OUIt JOURNEY. 



succession, until we arrived at Aliu Amba ; a 

 village perched upon a flat-topped isolated rock that, 

 nearly at right angles with the road, juts across 

 the upper end of a pretty little valley, along which 

 we had been coming for the last half hour. 



When we had managed to scramble over a 

 series of irregular and quite naturally disposed 

 stone steps, and had gained the level summit 

 of this ridge, I turned to look in the direction from 

 whence we had come, and contemplated it with 

 great satisfaction; congratulating myself at having 

 got two-thirds of the heavy business over of ascend- 

 ing the long flight of hill steps which, gradually 

 increasing in elevation, form a kind of giant stair- 

 case from our starting place at Farree to the table 

 land of Shoa. 



At Aliu Amba we met numbers of Christian 

 Abyssinians, and were taken to the house of the 

 Governor, also a Christian, but who was absent in 

 attendance upon the King. Every civility was 

 paid to us, and numerous were the inquiries made 

 after Lieut. Barker, who, it appears, had taken up 

 his residence in this town some months previous to 

 his return journey. I was glad to be able to say 

 that I had had a personal interview with him, for 

 I could see, that to be the " Wooclage Kapitan," 

 friend of the Captain, as he was called in Shoa, 

 was a great recommendation ; and although a 

 lengthened levee, with a crowd of people whose 

 language you cannot understand, is a terrible bore, 



