Once Or Twice A Week The Chiefs Would Meet In Consultation In A Small House Erected For That Purpose In The Magazine Inclosure To Discuss Public Affairs, But, Above All, To Assure Themselves By Personal Inspection That The "Treasures" Entrusted To Their Care Were In Perfect Order And In Safe Keeping.

The Magdala church, consecrated to the Saviour of the World (Medani Alum), was not in any respect worthy of

Such an important place. It was of recent date, small, unadorned with the customary representations of saints, of the life of the Apostles, of the Trinity, of God the Father, and the devil. No St. George was seen on his white charger, piercing the dragon with his Amhara lance; no martyr smiled benignly at his fiend-like tormentors. The mud walls had not even been whitewashed; and every pious soul longed for the accomplishment of Theodore's promise - the building of a church worthy of his great name. The inclosure was as bare as the holy place itself; no graceful juniper, tall sycamore, or dark green guicho solemnized its precincts, or offered cool shade where the hundred priests, defteras, and deacons who daily performed service, could repose after the fatiguing ceremony - the howling and the dancing to David's psalms. On the same line, but below the hillock on which stood the church, the Abouna possessed a few houses and a garden; but, alas for him, his pied-a-terre had for several years become his prison.

The prison-house, a common gaol for the political offenders, thieves, and murderers, consisted of five or six huts inclosed by a strong fence, and surrounded by the private dwellings of the more wealthy prisoners and guards, extending from the eastern slope of the hillock to the edge of the precipice and to the open space towards the south.

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