[14] The Plateau In Front Of Us Was A Wide Extent Of Rolling Ground, Rising Slightly Towards The West; Its Colour Was Brown With A Threadbare Coat Of Verdure, And At The Bottom Of Each Rugged Slope Ran A Stony Water-Course Trending From South-West To North-East.

The mass of tangled aloes, ragged thorn, and prim-looking poison trees, [15] must once have been populous; tombs and houses of the early Moslems covered with ruins the hills and ridges.

About noon, we arrived at a spot called the Kafir's Grave. It is a square enceinte of rude stones about one hundred yards each side; and legends say that one Misr, a Galla chief, when dying, ordered the place to be filled seven times with she-camels destined for his Ahan or funeral feast. This is the fourth stage upon the direct road from Zayla to Harar: we had wasted ten days, and the want of grass and water made us anxious about our animals. The camels could scarcely walk, and my mule's spine rose high beneath the Arab pad:--such are the effects of Jilal [16], the worst of travelling seasons in Eastern Africa.

At 1 P.M. we unloaded under a sycamore tree, called, after a Galla chieftain [17], "Halimalah," and giving its name to the surrounding valley. This ancient of the forest is more than half decayed, several huge limbs lie stretched upon the ground, whence, for reverence, no one removes them: upon the trunk, or rather trunks, for its bifurcates, are marks deeply cut by a former race, and Time has hollowed in the larger stem an arbour capable of containing half-a-dozen men.

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