PRODUCED BY EARTHQUAKES. 357 



Rain, however, aids considerably in removing 

 vast portions of the table-land ; for during the wet 

 season, generally some few days after the com- 

 mencement of the rains, and again, near its close, 

 severe thunder storms, with slight earthquakes, 

 occur ; and the devastation which results, is not so 

 much to be attributed to the latter, as it is to the 

 previously fallen rain ; which, having penetrated to 

 a certain depth of the easily disintegrated rock, 

 the least agitation brings down immense quantities, 

 from the nearly perpendicular cliffs. An earth- 

 quake scarcely perceptible, and which, perhaps, is 

 only consequent upon meteoric explosion, by the 

 reverberating vibrations being communicated to the 

 loose, yet prominent surfaces of the hilly scarp ; there 

 always precipitates ruinous masses of earth and rock, 

 whilst not a trace of its effects can be perceived upon 

 the table-land. This is the real character of all 

 earthquakes in Abyssinia I have witnessed ; and 

 although the death of twelve or fifteen people, have 

 been consequent, it has only been in different 

 situations of peril, the proper precaution could 

 have easily obviated, as it was where denu- 

 dation had been long undermining the foundation 

 of their houses, or of those on the terraces above ; 

 and which, when a moment of extraordinary atmos- 

 pheric commotion occurred, were shaken from the 

 sides of the valleys into the stream below. No 

 leaping of the earth, or those violent commotions, 

 which mark these convulsions in other countries, 



