“The depression occupied by the lake is, generally speaking, saucer-shaped, the land rising from the edge of the water in gentle undulating plains, getting steeper and steeper and terminating in considerable hills or mountains of some importance. In several places, as at Gorgora on the north, Mitraha and Koratsa on the east, Zegi on the south, and Dengelber on the west, the hills come right down to the lake and descend more or less abruptly into the water, but more often they stand back at some distance from it. The geological formation is almost everywhere of the same primitive character that seems to be universal in the Eastern Soudan, granite, gneiss, and quartz, varied only by tracts of lava, basalt, and eruptive rocks. Sandstone is reported by some travellers, and lime-stone is said to be found near Gondar, but I saw neither myself. The large tracts of comparatively level land consist almost entirely of the cracked black cotton soil usually found associated with igneous rocks. At the mouths of all the larger rivers flowing into the lake are extensive alluvial plains generally composed wholly of this same cotton soil, and of the greatest fertility, though nine-tenths of their area now grows nothing more valuable than coarse grass.”
[106]“Modern Abyssinia,” pp. 40-43.
[107]“Modern Abyssinia,” p. 42.
[108]Adansonia digitata. These are tall trees, whose timber is of a spongy consistency. Sir S. Baker mentions one which was about forty feet in circumference. He wrote: “The Adansonia digitata, although a tree, always reminds me of a gigantic fungus; the stem is disproportioned in its immense thickness to its height, and its branches are few in number, and as massive in character as the stem. The wood is not much firmer in substance than cork, and is as succulent as a carrot.” (“The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia,” p. 356.)
[109]Governor.
[110]“If God is willing.”
[111]“The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia,” pp. 124, 125.
[112]“Life in Abyssinia,” pp. 385, 386.
[113]“The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia,” p. 240.
[114]This blight is known as “asal,” or “honey,” from the sticky deposit formed all over the plant and leaves. At the time of the expedition it prevailed more or less severely throughout the greater part of the Kassala Moudirieh. The stalks of the plants attacked become black.