54 A NATURAL VIADUCT. 



down from the high land to be exchanged in Efat 

 for cotton and salt. The men who accompanied 

 them were, to my surprise, much darker coloured 

 than the people of the lower country, tall, well 

 made, and armed with spear and shield. With 

 loud cries they encouraged the patient animals 

 before them, to quicken their slow and cautious 

 pace down the stony descent. The friendly saluta- 

 tion as we passed was never forgotten, nor did the 

 laughing fast-talking girls who accompanied them 

 spare their smiles, which was quite a merciful dis- 

 pensation, that made our difficult and fatiguing 

 ascent, much pleasanter than would have been a 

 macadamized road through a desert. 



We at length reached a narrow tortuous ridge 

 of at least a mile in length, across which, a walk of 

 but a few yards presented to the view on either 

 side, a deep and extensive valley. That on the left 

 hand is by far the narrower and more precipitous, 

 being bounded by the steep, almost perpendicular 

 face of the opposite ridge of Tchakkah, at the 

 distance of about four miles ; whilst that on the 

 right, is of a character exactly the reverse, a widely 

 extending amphitheatrical formed valley spreading 

 from below the feet, far towards the east. 



From the summit of an inclined plane, eight 

 thousand feet above the level of the sea, the eye 

 travels for sixty miles over hundreds of little hills, 

 embosomed in the widely diverging arc that defines 

 the bay-like valley, in which is contained the whole 



