286 Procedings of the Asiatic Society [Dec. 



even in Europe. There are probably few tribes, however, who present 

 more remarkable peculiarities. 



Mr. Munzinger joined our party after we had been three or four 

 days at Bedjuk, and remained with us for some days, finally returning 

 with us to Massowa. From his great knowledge of the people, and 

 the respect in which he is held by them, he has considerable influence, 

 and during our stay he succeeded in postponing if not preventing an 

 attack upon some of the Bogos people by the chief of Hamazen. With 

 Mr. Munzinger I spent a day at Keren, the largest village in this 

 part of the country, and in which some French Missionaries are resi- 

 dent. There were other Europeans also in the neighbourhood, 

 amongst them the Count de Seve, one of the French Commissioners, 

 who had accompanied the army in Abyssinia, and who was staying 

 with an Italian, who has lived for some years near the Barka. Except 

 the houses of the Mission and one or two others, all the huts at Keren 

 are the usual mat domes, sometimes covered over with a grass roof. 

 Keren lies about 16 miles S. W. of Bedjuk in an open plain at the 

 base of a mass of hills composed of highly granitoid gneiss. 



During our stay in the Anseba valley, we did not remain at Bedjuk, 

 but marched down the valley as far as Maregas, halting at inter- 

 mediate places. The weather was very pleasant, always fine in the 

 morning, though it generally rained for an hour or two, sometimes 

 longer, in the afternoon. 



About the time we left, the rain was increasing, and we were unable 

 to return down the Lebka. We had to make a detour to the north 

 from Kelamet through Rairo, near Af Abed, where we found very 

 large encampments of the Habab tribes, who had brought their flocks 

 and herds from the north, where no rain had fallen, and pasturage was 

 consequently deficient. Lions were numerous, having as usual follow- 

 ed the cattle. At our next camp on the Lebka, near Ain, 4 of them 

 came within a quarter of a mile of our camp and one of them seized a 

 camel. We succeeding in shooting this one which was a lioness, and the 

 others ran off. The lions had only very short manes, as appears to be 

 universally the case in Abyssinia. 



At Rairo the whole country consists of highly granitoid gneiss 

 weathering into the peculiar rounded masses so characteristic of the 

 rock in India, as in parts of the Sonthal pergunnahs, in Mysore and 



