to eat herbs together in private upon the top of the mountains. These, on their return, are shewn as miracles of holiness,—lean, enervated, and exhausted. Whether this is wholly to be laid to the charge of the herbs, is more than I will take upon me to decide, never having been at these retirements of Waldubba.
Violent fevers perpetually reign there. The inhabitants are all of the colour of a corpse; and their neighbours, the Shangalla, by constant inroads, destroy many of them, though lately they have been stopped, as they say, by the prayers of the monks. I suppose their partners, the nuns, had their share in it, as both of them are said to be equally superior in holiness and purity of living to what their predecessors formerly were. But, not to derogate from the efficaciousness of their prayers, the natural cause why the Shangalla molest them no more, is the small-pox, which has greatly reduced their strength and number, and extinguished, to a man, whole tribes of them.
The water is both scarce and bad at Debra Toon, there being but one spring, or fountain, and it was exceedingly ill-tasted. We did not intend to make this a station; but, having lent a servant to Hauza to buy a mule in room of that which the hyæna had eaten, we were afraid to leave our man, who was not yet come forward, lest he should fall in with the Shum of Addergey, who might stop the mule for our arrears of customs.
The pointed mountain of Dagashaha continued still viable; I set it this day by the compass, and it bore due N.E. We had not seen any cultivated ground since we passed the Tacazzè.
The
