72 REACH AMBABBOO. 



I was rather astonished at finding our first day's 

 march so very short, and Cassim riding up, I 

 put the question to him if it were intended to 

 start again in the night, as is frequently the case 

 with Kafilahs to avoid the heat of the day. Cassim, 

 however, told me that we should not start again 

 until the next morning very early, a number of 

 camels and men not having joined who intended to 

 accompany us to Abasha. My new servant Zaido, 

 a slave of Ohmed Mahomed, was here introduced 

 to me. He had been engaged to attend me on the 

 road for twenty dollars, to be paid on our arrival in 

 Shoa. He was a tall good-natured sort of a 

 fellow, but the greatest coward I ever met among 

 these brave people, and the very reverse in this 

 respect to his much shorter fellow-slave, Allee 

 Ohmed, who also had been ordered by his master 

 to look after my mule, and who was ever ready to 

 perform other services for me in the expectation of 

 a few gilt buttons, and a boxeish, or present, at part- 

 ing. Neither of them was much more than twenty 

 years old, but Allee had proved himself a man of 

 some courage in a battle with the Issah Soumau- 

 lee, in which he had killed his opponent. 



Immediately on arriving at the halting place, 

 Allee took my mule, and Zaido brought me my 

 carpet, with my Scotch plaid and Arab cloak, which 

 were rolled up in it, and arranged my bed for the 

 night in an open part of the savannah, placing my 

 saddle under my head to serve for a pillow. 



