Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/201

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THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.
179

The 5th, at seven o'clock in the morning, we left Debra Toon, and came to the edge of a deep valley bordered with wood, the descent of which is very steep. The Anzo, larger and more rapid than the Angueah, runs through the middle of this valley; its bed is full of large, smooth stones, and the sides composed of hard rock, and difficult to descend; the stream is equally clear and rapid with the other. We ascended the valley on the other side, through the most difficult road we had met with since that of the valley of Sirè. At ten o'clock we found ourselves in the middle of three villages, two to the right, and one on the left; they are called Adamara, from Adama a mountain, on the east side of which is Tchober. At eleven o'clock we encamped at the foot of the mountain Adama, in a small piece of level ground, after passing a pleasant wood of no considerable extent. Adama, in Amharic, signifies pleasant; and nothing can be more wildly so than the view from this station.

Tchober is close at the foot of the mountain, surrounded on every side, except the north, by a deep valley covered with wood. On the other side of this valley are the broken hills which constitute the rugged banks of the Anzo. On the point of one of these, most extravagantly shaped, is the village Shahagaanah, projecting as it were over the river; and, behind these, the irregular and broken mountains of Salent appear, especially those around Hauza, in forms which European mountains never wear; and still higher, above these, is the long ridge of Samen, which run along in an even stretch till they are interrupted by the high conical top of Lamalmon, reaching above the clouds, and reckoned to be the highest hill in Abyssinia, over the steepest part orwhich