ic hall was complete. It may be presumed that nothing
like it was ever seen in Abyssinia before; for the mission not merely
built, but furnished it with couches, ottomans, chairs, tables, and
curtains; doubtless a very showy affair, though we camot exactly
comprehend the author's expression of its being furnished after the manner
of an English cottage ornee. The king, however, was delighted with it. "I
shall turn it into a chapel," said his majesty, patting his chief
ecclesiastic on the back. "What say you to that plan, my father?" As a
last finishing touch, were suspended in the centre hall a series of large
coloured engravings, representing the chase of the tiger in all its
various phases. The domestication of the elephant, and its employment in
war or in the pageant, had ever proved a stumbling block to the king; but
the appearance of the hugest of beasts in his hunting harness struck the
chord of a new idea. "I will have a nunber caught on the Roby," he
exclaimed, "that you may tame then, and that I too may ride on an elephant
before I die!"

Another of those fearful displays of barbarian plunder and havoc took
place at the end of September. Twenty thousand warriors, headed by the
king, made an inroad on the Galla. Those unfortunate people were so little
prepared, that they seem to have been slaughtered without resistance.
Between four and five thousand were butchered, and forty-three thousand
head of cattle were driven off. A thousand captives, chiefly women and
children, were marched in triumph to the capital; but they were soon
liberated, apparently on the remonstrance of the British mission.

But a terrible disaster was to befall the palace and the people. The
dweller amongst mountains must be always exposed to their dilapidation;
and a season of unusual rain, continuing to a much later period than usual,
produced an earth-avalanche.

"As the evening of an eventful night (Dec. 6th) closed in, not a
single breath of wind disturbed the thick fog which brooded over the
mountain. A sensible difference was perceptible in the atmosphere;
but the rain again began to descend, and for hours pelted like the
dischage of a waterspout. Towards morning, a violent thunder storm
careered along the crest of the range, and every rock and cranny
re-echoed from the crash of the thunder. Deep darkness again settled
on the mountains, and a heavy rumbling noise, like the passage of
artillery wheels, as followed by