ROAD TO ALLULEE. 131 



me, he placed a chevaux de frize of camel saddles 

 over the whole, so that the removal of them must 

 have made considerable noise. 



April 6th. — The camels were loaded, and we 

 were on the road a little before sunrise. Ohmed 

 Mahomed took me to see a cave, made of some 

 large boulders, three of which sustained a fourth 

 on their summit, as a roof. They were of exceed- 

 ingly large dimensions, the cave being at least 

 twenty feet high, which may give some idea of the 

 size of these rocks which had fallen from the sides 

 of the adjoining cliffs. 



We followed the course of the little river towards 

 its source between high steep cliffs of a porphyritic 

 rock, generally of a bright red colour. Here our 

 path was rugged in the extreme, winding around 

 huge detached rocks that lay in the bed of the 

 stream, and the tortuous course and irregular sur- 

 face of the road now rendered walking very 

 difficult. Sometimes, in more favoured spots, 

 we snatched a passing glimpse of small verdure- 

 covered spots, where a solitary clump of the doom 

 palm-tree, or a sweetly-smelling mimosa, connected 

 the traveller with the earth of beauty he otherwise 

 would have seemed to have been leaving, as he 

 traversed the deep, dark gully or cleft in the vol 

 canic plain of the country above and around him. 

 Underneath the shade of one of the doom palms, 

 a rude cairn of stones marked the grave of the 

 Portuguese belonging to the escort of the Mission, 



k 2 



