thing in my power to insure their welfare, and feeling confident that their stay might prove beneficial both to Abyssinia and to themselves, I could not in any degree regret the resolution they had adopted, nor the consent which I had given to their plans. We intended to have stopped for the evening at the house of Ayto Ischias, who resides at Gundufta: but finding him absent, we proceeded on to the vale of Yeeha, and soon arrived at a house belonging to the son of Konquass Aylo, where we halted for the night.
In the course of the afternoon we went about half a mile, along the banks of the river Mareb, to visit an old ruin, seen from a considerable distance, called the monastery of Abba Asfé. The chief part of the remains consists of an ancient stone building, of an oblong square shape, about sixty feet long, and forty-five wide, standing on the centre of an eminence, partly surrounded by trees, and commanding a beautiful prospect, in which the river Mareb makes a conspicuous object, winding its circuitous course through the valley. The square building bears the appearance of having been very substantially constructed. The remains of the walls, now standing, occasionally rise to the height of forty feet; measure full five feet in thickness; and are formed of large masses of stone, each about seven feet long by twenty inches broad, exactly fitted one to the other, so as scarcely to leave a visible interstice between them; no mortar or other fastening having been, as I conceive, ever made use of throughout the building. The stone composing this structure consists of a sand-stone of a light yellowish cast, covered over with a hard incrustation, which has materially served to protect the surface of the walls from the effects of the weather; so that the portion still remaining affords as perfect a specimen of plain architecture, as can be produced, perhaps, in any other part of the world.
The founder of this monastery, Abba Asfé, whose name it still retains, was one of the nine priests who went into Ethiopia from Egypt, during the early part of the sixth century, in the reign of the Emperor Ameda, one of the predecessors of Caleb, as recorded in the Abyssinian chronicles; though some later authors have attributed this event to a different period, an opinion which I
