PALACE OF ANKOBAK. 4 1 3 



ment of this mark upon the forehead because it is 

 said to exert a very benign influence upon the 

 bearer. Besides the physical appearances which 

 led me to consider that the Christians of the 

 Malabar coast of India I have seen, were emigrants 

 from Southern Abyssinia, was the circumstance 

 of this very symbol being tattooed between the 

 eyebrows in exactly the same manner as it is borne 

 by the Shoan women. 



Before nine o'clock the next day a message came 

 down from the palace for me to attend upon the 

 Negoos, and although my shoes let in water and 

 even mud very freely, and the drizzling fog 

 threatened soon to wet me to my skin, I took the long 

 zank which was given me to assist in the ascent up 

 the steep hill, and I started with the desperation of 

 a man who had given up all hopes of ever being 

 permitted to dismount again from death's grey 

 steed, disease, which, at a hard trot, for nearly the last 

 two years, had been carrying me towards the grave. 



The palace of Ankobar lifts its thatched roofs 

 above the summit of a high pyramidal hill, the 

 abrupt termination of the narrow spur-like ridge 

 upon which Ankobar stands. Three sides are 

 singularly regular, and appear as if cut into an 

 angular pyramidal cone, that rises two or three 

 hundred feet above the level of the ridge to which 

 it is connected on the fourth side. A high stockade 

 of splintered ted winds spirally from midway, 

 to the last enclosure upon the top of the hill, 



