TO THE NEGOOS. 205 



the gifted monarch of Shoa, and that the usefulness 

 of such an article, introduced as a manufactured 

 product of his own country, would strike him as 

 being of more importance than many richer pre- 

 sents, the use and value of which he could not, from 

 the circumstances of his situation, have any idea of. 



On my arrival in Shoa, I found that the Wallas- 

 mah Mahomed cultivated sugar-cane in a valley, 

 at the foot of the prison hill of Guancho, and 

 that he supplied the table of the Xegoos with it as 

 a sweetmeat, small pieces being cut off with a knife, 

 and masticated as I have seen the inhabitants of 

 Ceylon enjoying it. Whilst staying at Miriam's 

 house, I conceived the project of boiling down some 

 sugar as a mode of employing myself when confined 

 indoors by the fever, or the wet weather. For this 

 purpose I sent Walclerheros to the Wallasmah with 

 a canister of gunpowder as a memolagee for some 

 sugar-cane, and got in return as much as my 

 zealous servant could stand under, considering that 

 he had to carry the bundle upon his head and 

 shoulders for nearly six miles, along roads of no 

 ordinary kind in the wet season, for that rich, 

 greasy, slipperiness of surface, where toes well 

 stuck into the mud, alone admits of any chance of 

 the barefooted wayfarer, pulling himself up the 

 steep " banks and braes" he has to surmount. 



Possessing no means of crushing the cane pro- 

 perly,! was obliged to have resort to simply pounding 

 it in a large wooden mortar, two or three of which, 



