TRAVELS IN ABYSSINIA. 
65 
deserts. In four days they arrived at Helaoua, 
(Ellwah,) called commonly the Greater Oasis. The 
name signifies the country of sweets, and it seemed 
entirely to answer the appellation. Gardens watered 
with rivulets, and the perpetual verdure of palm 
trees, formed the most agreeable contrast with the 
country they had left. All the fields were over- 
spread with senna ; but that shrub, so highly prized 
in Europe, is never used in this country. They 
now entered on another desert, much more extent 
sive and complete than the one they had first 
traversed. Here they could not discover a single 
spring or rivulet ; neither birds, beasts, grass, nor 
even the smallest insect ; nothing but mountains, 
dead bodies and bones of camels, objects which 
struck our traveller with inexpressible horror. After 
passing Chabba, (Sheb,) a region abounding in alum, 
they came so Selyme, where they found excellent 
water, and supplied themselves with a stock of that 
necessary for five days* They did not, however, see 
a human habitation, till they arrived at Machoo, 
(Moscho,) a large town on the eastern shore of the 
Nile, where that river forms several fertile islands. 
Their route now lay along its shores, through a 
fertile and agreeable valley, which did not, how- 
ever, extend above a league in breadth, and bor- 
dered immediately on the most frightful deserts. 
Even this limited fertility is not the gift of nature, 
for, as the banks are high, no inundation takes 
VOL. II. E 
