- dise; but by the time he had reached the encampment,
the black horse had been converted into a brown one, which, if he wanted an eye, had the recommendation of great age and experience. This ancient charger was returned, and, after considerable shuffling and equivocation, the genuine black horse, sixteen and a half-hands high, and of the Dongola breed, was obtained. The noble animal, which had been half-starved by the Baharnagash, was named Mirza, and intrusted to the care of an Arab from the neighbourhood of Medina, a man well versed in all equestrian affairs. "Indeed," observes Bruce, "I might say I acquired that day a companion that contributed always to my pleasure, and more than once to my safety; and was no slender means of acquiring me the first attention of the king."
Their road now lying through a country into which the Shangalla, whom Bruce terms the ancient Cushites, were in the habit of making incursions, the whole party carefully examined the state of their firearms, and cleaned and charged them anew. In this day's journey they passed through a wood of acacia-trees in flower, with which was intermingled another species of tree with large white flowers, yielding a scent like that of the honeysuckle; and afterward another wood, so overgrown with wild oats that, like the jungle grass of Bengal, it covered the men and their horses. This plain was perhaps the most fertile in Abyssinia, but, owing to the inveterate feuds of the villages, had long been suffered to lie waste, or, if a small portion were cultivated, the labours of sowing-time and harvest were performed by the peasantry in arms, who rarely completed their task without bloodshed.
Having crossed this plain, they entered a close country covered with brushwood, wild oats, and high grass, rough with rocks, and traversed by narrow difficult passes. At one of these, called the pass of Kella, they were detained three days by the farm-
