were kept in cages like wild beasts, and treated with equal inhumanity.
Here he was received in the most hospitable manner by Janni, the Greek officer of the customs, to whom he had been recommended by the patriarch of Cairo. In this town there was a valuable manufacture of coarse cotton cloth, which circulated instead of silver money throughout Abyssinia. The houses were built with rough stone, cemented with mud instead of mortar—which was used only at Gondar,—and had high conical roofs, thatched with a reedy sort of grass, rather thicker than wheat straw.
From this place he proceeded on the 10th of January, 1770, to visit the ruins of the Jesuits' convent at Fremona, two miles to the north-east of the town. It resembled a vast fortress, being at least a mile in circumference, and surrounded by a wall, the remains of which were twenty-five feet high, with towers in the flanks and angles, and pierced on all sides with holes for muskets.
Leaving Adowa on the 17th, they arrived next morning at the ruins of Axum, which, extensive as they were, consisted entirely of public buildings. Huge granite obelisks, rudely carved, strewed the ground, having been overthrown by earthquakes or by barbarians, one only remaining erect. Colossal statues of the latrator anubis, or dog-star, were discovered among the ruins, evidently of Egyptian workmanship; together with magnificent flights of granite steps, and numerous pedestals whereon the figures of sphinxes were formerly placed. Axum was watered by a small stream, which flowed all the year, and was received into a magnificent basin of one hundred and fifty feet square, whence it was artificially conveyed into the neighbouring gardens.
Continuing their journey through a beautiful country, diversified with hill and dale, and covered so thickly with flowering shrubs that the odours exhaling from their blossoms strongly perfumed the
