LOBO'S JOURNEY. 
53 
were enabled to proceed on their journey. The 
track lay, for a great distance, through an arid 
and desolate plain, where Lobo considers it as 
solely owing to a miraculous interposition that 
they did not perish, either by thirst or the bites 
of serpents. An opening in the mountains then 
brought them to a delightful and refreshing §pot, 
whence they found cooling breezes, clear streams, 
and forests blooming with perpetual verdure. 
This, however, proved only the approach to an- 
other dreary track through the great plain whence 
Abyssinia is supplied with salt. Our author gives 
a very unsatisfactory account of its formation, as 
derived from the water flowing down from the 
mountains, and congealing into that mineral. 
This route also was very desolate, but he became 
soon insensible to hardship, " fear having entirely 
engrossed his mind/' It was constantly beset, 
he understood, by the Galla, with the view of 
plundering the numerous caravans which carried 
salt from this plain into the interior of Abyssinia. 
Accordingly, they were soon frozen with horror, 
by seeing on the road the dead bodies of a cara- 
van recently massacred. Another troop, they had 
reason to believe, was in search of themselves, 
whom they missed by little more than an hour. 
Happily they escaped all these perils, and arrived 
safely at Fremona, the principal Catholic mon- 
astery in Abyssinia, where every thing was done 
