is the style of the author, which will never let him tell his story in plain and direct words. In the preface, he tells us, that, "written in the heart of Abyssinia, amidst manifold interruptions and disadvantages, these pages will be found redolent of no midnight oil." Accordingly, we expected to find an artless, unlaboured, and rather rude and blunt narration, betokening an intelligent yet unrhetorical and practical soldier. To our surprise, and disappointment, we found one directly the reverse,artificial and rhetorical in an unusual degree, as if the author's chief thought had been how to be impressive-to place objects and incidents in the most picturesque positions, and clothe them in the most sonorous diction. Of a work of travels, the style is an inferior quality. Nor should we have made any complaint, if the fault had been on the side of poverty; but, in the opposite fault, there is conveyed one of those claims to literary merit, which we, as critics, are bound either to allow or reject. The style of these volumes is so turgid and meretricious, as most seriously to detract from their utility, drawing off the attention of the reader from the matters narrated, to fix it on the manner, and frequently obscuring them from his vision in a mist of glittering verbiage.

But we leave this topic, and rather proceed to the more pleasant task of giving our readers a general view of the contents of these volumes. In doing so, we must make a selection among an innumerable crowd of objects and incidents well worthy of notice.

The Embassy sailed from Bombay in April 1841. A fortnight carried them to Aden in Southern Arabia. Here they left the steamboat, to purchase horses and other necessaries for the land journey into the African interior, and also to engage a volunteer escort of European soldiers from the garrison.

The Embassy quitted Aden on the 15th of May, in the Euphrates brig of war, and stood across the Red Sea to the Gulf of Tadjura. They arrived in about two days; and on the morning of the 17th of May found themselves opposite the town or village of that name, beyond which towered above heaps of lava blocks, the lofty peak of Jebel Goodah. Tadjura consists of about two hundred houses, rudely constructed of frames of unhewn timber, arranged in a parabolic arch, and covered with date matting. In these were sheltered some twelve hundred inhabitants. It is a place of considerable traffic; slaves, ivory, gold dust, and spices, being brought in kafilahs or caravans from the African interior, and exported at this place; while it admits the Indian and Arabian manufactures, and other articles, for which these are exchanged at the inland marts. Here it behoved the Embassy to disembark, and begin the land

journey to the kingdom of Shoa, which is about 350 miles inland. The intermediate country, which is called Adel, is in possession of the Adaïel, a particular body or confederacy of the Danákil tribes. Tadjura is the seat of their government; and their present ruler, Sultan Mohammad ibn Mohammad, was then resident there. The first thing necessary was to obtain permission to land, and also liberty to proceed into the interior, along with proper guides, and the means of transport. From a very natural jealousy of this unwonted intrusion upon his territories of an armed body of Franks, the Sultan and his advisers scrupled to accord the desired permission. This occasioned various visits of ceremony and negotiation; and as our readers may desire to look on the chief ruler of a country through which they are to travel for some pages, we extract the author's description of his appearance at one of them.

"A more unprincely object can scarcely be conceived than was presented in the imbecile, attenuated, and ghastly form of this most meagre potentate, who, as he tottered into the marquée, supported by a long witchlike wand, tendered his hideous, bony claws to each of the party in succession, with all the repulsive coldness that characterises a Dankáli shake of the hand. An encourager of the staple manufactures of his own country, his decrepid frame was enveloped in a coarse cotton mantle, which, with a blue-checked wrapper about his loins, and an ample turban perched on the very apex of his shaven crown, was admirably in keeping with the harmony of dirt that pervaded the attire of his privy council and attendants. Projecting triangles of leathers graced the toes of his rude sandals; a huge quarto koran, slung over his bent shoulder, rested beneath the left arm, on the hilt of a brass-mounted creese which was girded to his right side; and his illustrious person was farther defended against evil influence by a zone and bandalier thickly studded with mystic amulets and most potent charms, extracted from the Sacred Book. Enfeebled by years, his deeply furrowed countenance, bearing an ebony polish, was fringed by a straggling white beard; and it needed not the science of Lavater to detect, in the indifference of his dull leaden eye, and the puckered corners of his toothless mouth, the lines of cunning, cruelty, and sordid avarice."-Vol. i., pp. 46, 47.

The Danakil Tribes, to which this personage belongs, are the descendants of the Arabs, who many centuries ago, after the Abyssinians were expelled from Arabia, overran and colonized the low tract forming a zone between the Red Sea and the Abyssinian Alps. The precise extent of their territory, and their relation to the Abyssinian Emperor for some centuries, seem to be somewhat doubtful. In the 16th century, however, it is known, that under a famous leader called Graan, they overran Abyssinia itself. Graan was slain by a Portuguese, in the service of the Emperor; the progress of the Mahommedans arrested,

and their dominion restricted to the plains over which it now extends. Since then, frequent wars have been waged between them and what remains of the once powerful Ayssinian empire. Commanding as they do the direct passage between the Shoan kingdom and the East, the Negoos of Shoa has found it necessary to maintain some influence over them; and this being denied to his arms, he has of late sought to obtain it by management and con

cessions.

Of the character and condition of these tribes, Major Harris gives a portrait which is far from pleasing, even when allowance is made for the foolish exaggeration of his style. We cannot give particulars, but may say briefly, that they are a migratory, pastoral, and slave-dealing people-go always armed-are virulent Mahommedans, and exhibit in their government a rude democracy. There are several confederacies; and of these, the one called Adaïel or Debenik-Woema occupies the country between Tadjura and Shoa. This district is, in general, low and level, very barren, quite uncultivated, hot, and scant of water. The Hawash is the chief river; its course is north-east, but the stream is drunk in by the arid soil, and does not reach the sea.

After some days of annoying delay in negotiating with the Sultan, a liberal use of gifts, and quiet submission to various impositions and exactions, permission to advance was conceded, and mules, camels, and camel-drivers obtained for conveying the baggage of the Embassy. Of the kafilah or caravan, Izhak, brother of the Sultan, was named Ras, or commander, and it was accompanied by various persons of consideration among the tribes. The journey to Farri, the frontier town of the province of Efat, in Abyssinia, occupied several weeks. The progress was slow, at least according to European notions; the Mahommedan cameldrivers not caring to quicken their motions, to suit the impatient and imperious humour of the infidels. Frequent pauses, too, were occasioned by the anxiety of the Ras to protect the caravan from wandering robbers, and to conciliate the chiefs of the tribes which they successively met, each of whom expected from the caravan the usual testimony to his power and dignity, and price of its safety, in some substantial gift.

Shortly after setting out, they came to the Bahr Assál, or Great Salt Lake. Its distance from Tadjura by the route, is 42 miles, and is reached through a yawning defile, called Rah Eesah, or, "Road of the Eesahs," a hostile tribe. Lake Assál is situated in latitude 11° 37′ 30′′ N., longitude 42° 33′ 6′′ E., and is 570 feet below the level of the sea. The approach to it is through mountains rugged and very high, the immediately preceding station being 1700 feet above the sea level. No fresh water was to be found within a space of sixteen miles on either side, and

from this cause, joined to the intolerable heat of the close valleys of a tropical country, the party, in their advance through Rah Eesah, and in the day and night passed beside the lake, suffered terribly, and barely escaped with life. The first sight of the lake from the heights above it, disclosed" an elliptical basin, seven miles in its transverse axis, half filled with smooth water of the deepest cerulean hue, and half with a solid sheet of glittering snow-white salt, the offspring of evaporation-girded on three sides by huge hot-looking mountains, which dip their bases into the very bowl, and on the fourth by crude half-formed rocks of lava, broken and divided by the most unintelligible chasms." As they descended under a fiery sun, through glaring rocks, a close "mephitic stench, impeding respiration, arose from the saline exhalations of the stagnant lake." The water was so salt as to smart the lips when tasted. Only one solitary bush grew in "this unventilated and diabolical hollow," for the shade of which the camels and mules disputed with the men, and many were obliged to take refuge in "noisome caves," formed by fallen masses of the volcanic rock, and hot as a furnace. Under the shade of cloaks and umbrellas, the mercury stood at 126° during the entire day-a paralysing heat, which prevented minute examination of the phenomenon beside them. But Major Harris is of opinion, that it formed at some remote period a continuation of the gulf of Tadjura, and was separated from Goobut el Kheráb, (a curious cove on the sea-shore, with which Bahr Assál is supposed to have a subterranean connexion,) by a stream of lava six miles broad. This now forms the high barrier between them, having on its summits many traces of craters. The lake is evidently undergoing a process of evaporation, and it will probably be in time converted into a dry deposit of salt.

After broiling all day in this "suffocating Pandemonium," the party, whose misery was now augmented by a total want of water, set off by moonlight for the next station, sixteen miles distant. The sufferings of the march were dreadful; there was an incessant cry for water; dogs expired on the road; mules and horses lay down and were abandoned to their fate, and the courage and almost the reason of the men were about to desert them, when a Bedouin, whom Mohammad Ali had sent forward, returned with a large skinful of water. This being poured over the faces and down the throats of the sufferers, revived every one sufficiently to enable them to "struggle into the camp" at the well of Hanlefanta, where they were more thoroughly recruited. Shortly after, they had sad experience of the barbarism of the country, in a savage murder of three of the escort, by some rovers from distant and hostile tribes, who, stealing into the encampment during darkness, killed their victims as they lay asleep.

The twentieth station of the Embassy was at the pool, in the rugged basaltic valley of Killulloo. Vast numbers of the Adel people were here collected, to water their flocks and herds, and replenish their water-skins, and the long trains incessantly ascending and descending the neighbouring slopes, with the wild air and dresses of the people, gave the highest animation to the landscape. The crowd was augmented and the interest deepened, by the arrival of a slave caravan from Shoa, on its road to Tadjura. It consisted of several hundred children of all ages.

"Although the majority of the slaves imported with the caravan from Abyssinia were of tender years, and many of them extremely pretty, they did not excite that interest which might have been anticipated. Children accustomed to sorry fare, and to harsh treatment in their own country, they had very readily adapted themselves to the will of their new masters, whose obvious interest it was to keep them fat and in good spirits. With few exceptions, all were merry and light hearted; recovered from the fatigues of the long march, there was nothing but dancing, singing, and romping; and although many wore an air of melancholy which forms a national characteristic, the little victims to a traffic so opposed to every principle of humanity, might rather have been conjectured to be proceeding on a party of pleasure, than bending their steps for ever from their native land.-A very limited number of Shankelas, and a few natives of Zingero excepted, the whole consisted of Christians and heathens from Guraguê, whence are obtained the 'red Æthiopians' so much prized in Arabia. Kidnapping has consequently been there carried to an extent so frightful, as to impart the name of the unhappy province as a designation for slaves generally. Nearly all of both sexes, however, had already become passive converts to the Mahommedan faith, and under the encouraging eye of the bigotted drivers, oaths by the false prophet resounded through the camp. Nine-tenths were females varying in age from six to thirteen years. Each slave was provided with a cruise of water, and had walked the entire distance accomplished from the heart of Africa, with an endurance that in children, especially of such tender years, was truly surprising. A very few only, who had become weary or foot sore, had been mounted on mules or camels, or provided with ox-hide sandals, which in some measure protected their tender feet against the sharp lava boulders. The males, chiefly boys, had been intrusted with the charge of camels, and required no compulsion to render themselves useful; and of the females, some, who boasted personal charms, occupied the position of temporary mistresses. Four large handfulls of parched grain, comprising a mixture of wheat, maize, millet, and grain, formed the daily food of each; and under the charge of the most intelligent, the respective droves slept huddled together on mats spread upon the ground. Some surly old drivers or wanton youths there were, who appeared to prefer the application of the whip to the more gentle persuasion of words; but in the trifling punishment inflicted, there was nothing to remind the spectator of the horrors of slavery as witnessed in the western world."-Pp. 233, 236, vol. i.