CHAP. III.
Journey from Arkeeko, over the mountain Taranta, to Dixan.
According to Achmet's desire, we left Arkeeko the 15th, taking our road southward, along the plain, which is not here above a mile broad, and covered with short grass nothing different from ours, only that the blade is broader. After an hour's journey I pitched my tent at Laberhey, near a pit of rain-water. The mountains of Abyssinia have a singular aspect from this, as they appear in three ridges. The first is of no considerable height, but full of gullies and broken ground, thinly covered with shrubs; the second, higher and steeper, still more rugged and bare; the third is a row of sharp, uneven-edged mountains, which would be counted high in any country in Europe. Far above the top of all, towers that stupendous mass, the mountain of Taranta, I suppose one of the highest in the world, the point of which is buried in the clouds, and very rarely seen but in the clearest weather; at other times abandoned to perpetual mist and darkness, the seat of lightning, thunder, and of storm.
Taranta
