Having rested a few minutes at Tabaret Wunze, a wretched village, composed of miserable huts, on the banks of a small brook, at a quarter after two we passed the Coy, a large river, which falls into the Mahaanah. From Mai Lumi to this place the country was but indifferent in appearance; the soil, indeed, exceedingly good, but a wildness and look of desolation covered the whole of it. The grass was growing high, the country extensive, and almost without habitation, whilst the few huts that were to be seen seemed more than ordinarily miserable, and were hid in recesses, or in the edge of valleys overgrown with wood. The inhabitants seemed to have come there by stealth, with a desire to live concealed and unknown.
On the 31st of December we left our station at the head of a difficult pass called Coy Gulgulet, or the Descent of Coy, at the foot of which runs the river Coy, one of the largest we had yet seen, but I did not discern any fish in it. Here we rested a little to refresh ourselves and our beasts, after the fatigues we had met with in descending through this pass.
At half after eight we came to the banks of the Germa, which winds along the valley, and falls into the Angrab. After having continued some time by the side of the Germa, and crossed it going N. W. we, at ten, passed the small river Idola; and half an hour after came to Deber, a house of Ayto Confu, on the top of a mountain, by the side of a small river of that name. The country here is partly in wood, and partly in plantations of dora. It is very well watered, and seems to produce abundant crops; but it is not beautiful; the soil is red earth, and the bottoms of all the rivers soft and earthy, the water heavy, and generally ill-tasted, even in the large rivers, such as the Coy and the Germa. I imagine there is some mineral in the red earth, with a proportion of which the water is impregnated.
At Deber, I observed the following bearings from the mountains; Ras el Feel was west, Tcherkin N. N. W. Debra Haria, north. We found nobody at Deber that could give us the least account of Ayto Confu. We left it, therefore, on the morning of the 1st of January 1772. At half past ten o'clock we passed a small village called Dembic, and about mid-day came to the large river Tchema, which falls into the larger river Dwang, below, to the westward. About an hour after, we came to the Mogetch, a river not so large as the Tchema, but which, like it, joins the Dwang. Here we have a view of the steep mountain Magwena, where there is a monastery of that name, possessed by a multitude of lazy, profligate, ignorant monks. Magwena, excepting one mountain, is a bare, even ridge of rocks, which seemingly bear nothing, but are black, as if calcined by the sun. In the rainy season it is said every species of verdure is here in the greatest luxuriancy; all the plantations of corn about Deber are much infested with a small, beautiful, green monkey, with a long tail, called Tota.
Between three and four in the afternoon we encamped at Eggir Dembic; and in the evening we passed along the side of a small river running west, which falls into the Mogetch.
I took advantage of the pleasantest and latest hour for shooting the waalia, or the yellow-breasted pigeon, as also Guinea-fowls, which are here in great abundance among the corn; in plumage nothing different from ours, and very excellent meat. The sun was just setting, and I was returning to my tent, not from weariness or satiety of sport, but from my attendant being incapable of carrying the load of game I had already killed, when I was met by a man with whom I was perfectly acquainted, and who by his address likewise seemed no stranger to me. I immediately recollected him to be a servant of Ozoro Esther, but this he denied, and said he was a servant of Ayto Confu; however, as Confu lived in the same house with his mother at Koscam, the mistake seemed not to be of any moment. He said he came to meet Ayto Confu, who was expected at Tcherkin that night, and was sent to search for us, as we seemed to have tarried on the road. He had brought two mules, in case any of ours had been tired, and proposed that the next morning I should set out with him alone for Tcherkin, where I should find Ayto Confu, and my baggage should follow me. I told him that it was my fixed resolution, made at the beginning of my journey, and which I should adhere to till the end, never to separate myself on the road from my servants and company, who were strangers, and without any other protection than that of being with me.
The man continued to press me all that evening very much, so that we were greatly surprised at what he could mean, and I still more and more resolved not to gratify him. Often I thought he wanted to communicate something to me, but he refrained, and I continued obstinate; and the rather so, as there was no certainty that Ayto Confu was yet arrived. I asked him, if Billetana Gueta Ammonios was not at Tcherkin? He answered, without the smallest alteration in his countenance, that he was not. No people on earth dissemble like the Abyssinians; this talent is born with them, and they improve it by continual practice. As we had therefore previously resolved, we passed the evening at Eggir Dembic, and the servant, finding he could not prevail, left our tent, and we all went to bed. He did not seem angry, but at going out of the tent, said, as half to himself, "I cannot blame you; in such a journey nothing is like firmness."
On the 2d of January, in the morning, by seven o'clock, having dressed my hair, and perfumed it according to the custom of the country, and put on clean clothes, with no other arms but my knife, and a pair of pistols at my girdle, I came out of the tent to mount my mule for Tcherkin. I now saw Confu's servant, whose name was Welleta Yasous, pulling the Guinea-fowls and pigeons out of the pannier, where my servants had put them, and scattering them upon the ground, and he was saying to those who interrupted him, "Throw away this carrion; you shall have a better breakfast and dinner, too, to-day;" and turning to me more than ordinarily pleased at seeing me dressed, and that I continued to use the Abyssinian habit, he jumped upon his mule, and appeared in great spirits, and we all set out at a brisker pace than usual, by the assistance of the two fresh mules.
We passed through the midst of several small villages. At half an hour past eight we came to the mountain of Tcherkin, which we rounded on the west, and then on the north, keeping the mountain always on our right. At twenty minutes past ten I pitched my tent in the market-place at Tcherkin, which seemed a beautiful lawn laid out for pleasure, shaded with fine old trees, of an enormous height and size, and watered by a small but very limpid brook, running over beds of pebbles as white as snow.