TAKES HIS DEPARTURE. 191 



his proportion of the sum, I had agreed to give my 

 escort to accompany me to Shoa. As he received 

 them with many thanks, nor even attempted to 

 make a claim beyond them, as I expected he 

 would, I could not let him go, without bestowing 

 upon him the remaining three dollars, exacting a 

 promise that he would not say a word about the 

 extraordinary gift to any one, for I could not expect 

 to meet another moderate man among the generally 

 greedy and rapacious Bedouins, and who, had they 

 known it, would never have rested until they had 

 received the same amount. His present of the 

 dates, was worth the three additional dollars I gave 

 him, for although their real value was not, perhaps, 

 the third of the sum, the feeling that prompted 

 him, to make a long day's journey, to procure them 

 for me, was so gratifying, and so unexpectedly met 

 with in an Adal savage, that I should not have felt 

 satisfied with myself, if I had not returned his 

 kindness in some way or other. 



We marched for five hours, sometimes west- 

 south-west, but more frequently south-west, over 

 the extensive undulating plain of Abiheosoph, con- 

 tinuous with the plain of Hamudalee, and of the 

 same geological character, a shingly kind of 

 gravel, formed of small angular fragments of every 

 kind of volcanic rock. As we approached the 

 bank of a stream, covered with mimosa and other 

 trees, I noticed, that this gravelly formation had 

 been denuded, into numerous small hills of uniform 



