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barmia, and beet-root. The priests had a grand bed of onions upon a terrace, which was usually occupied by the pigs, goats, and donkeys, as they had been too lazy to arrange a fence. The docks in the monastery gardens were at least six feet high ; I had these cut and collected to thatch the sides of a peculiar shed (in which I am writing at this moment), which was a. great comfort and formed a very original retreat, combining a seat in an amphitheatre with a modern summer-house. This was an oblong, of fifteen feet by twelve, erected within three feet of the tent beneath the walnut-tree upon the extreme verge of the abrupt incline. I laid a foundation of stones, which I covered with pounded earth and water, to produce a level with the tent. I then placed •horizontally a beam of wood, secured from slipping with stakes driven to the heads into the bank upon ithe edge of the incline. Upon this a row of large stones was cemented together with mud to form a margin level with the floor, from which the abrupt inclination at once leapt to the lower terraces and the deep gorge, continuing for upwards of 4000 feet to the sea ; this was visible beyond the inferior mountain tops. There was nothing pretty in the arrangement of this " rachkooba, " as it would be called in Africa ; it was a simple square of upright poles, connected with canes secured across, thatched inside with ferns, and upon the outside with docks, fastened down with the peeled willow-like shoots- of mulberry-trees. The mulberry-trees for silkworms are always pollarded annually, and they throw out shoots about seven or nine feet in length every season ; the wood is exceedingly tough, and the bark of these wands when

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