CALCAREOUS HILLS. 
73 
attentive in the morning than on the preceding evening, bread 
and hot milk being prepared for us at a very early hour; and he 
himself insisting on accompanying us to some distance from his 
house. Our road lay over a plain, skirting along the side of a lofty 
conical mountain, at the top of which is the church or convent of 
Abou Sama. On our right we saw a house formerly belonging to 
the Ras, and presented by him to Barrambarras Tokiu. After 
travelling about three miles and a half, we arrived at the mansion 
ofBashawGuebra Eyat, a man of much consequence in the country, 
who is able to bring into the field a large body of soldiers armed 
with matchlocks, a circumstance on which the importance of the 
Chiefs much depends. He was a middle-aged man of pleasing 
manners, and treated us with much hospitality. We proceeded, 
in about an hour, on our journey, winding round rugged hills 
covered with brushwood, and along the ledges of sleep precipices, 
a fall from which, into the plain below, would have been certain 
death. The kol quail abounds in this part of the country, which, 
though cultivated wherever circumstances would admit, is not very 
productive, on account of its dry and sandy nature. We met a poor 
woman, on the hill, who accosted me in a supplicatory tone, and 
begged that I would give her some physic for a child which she 
carried at her back, and who, according to her report, was afflicted 
with an evil spirit. I could only recommend her to the protection 
of God, assuring her that the nature of such dreadful maladies was 
far beyond my skill. 
" The hills that we had been passing over consist almost entirely 
of a brown calcareous stone, being for the most part in perpendicu- 
lar strata ; hence, instead of flat tabular elevations, as is the case 
