DESCEND TCHAKK All. 73 



though no trees or bushes intercept the sight, the 

 whole surface was well cultivated with wheat and 

 barley, or preserved as grazing meadows for the 

 feeding of cattle. Excepting one considerably 

 excavated valley, two or three miles from Tchakkah, 

 the original level of the table land is only altered 

 in the places where it is traversed by shallow water- 

 denuded channels, along which very frequently the 

 road runs, and the traveller proceeds in a broad 

 hollow way, the flat ridges on each side of him 

 rising some ten or twenty feet above his head. 



I was not sorry at seeing again the already 

 familiar land-mark, Koom Dingi, although it 

 reminded me of the steep descent beyond. On 

 arriving at the edge of the table land, I followed 

 the advice of Walderheros, and dismounted; for 

 however sure-footed in such perilous descents mules 

 may be, they sometimes slip, as was evidenced by 

 the dead body of one that lay burst among the 

 rocks below, from a slip over one of the precipices. 

 I sat down a few minutes whilst my servant ran to 

 a house in sight, and procured for me the loan of a 

 long slender staff, of some tough wood, like a spear- 

 shaft, which the Shoans generally carry with them 

 when travelling on foot. By the aid of this, I was 

 enabled to get along pretty well, dropping carefully 

 from one huge stone to another, and in this manner, 

 by rough unequal steps, succeeded at length in 

 reaching the stream of the Airahra, I now 

 mounted again, and forded the stony bed of the 



