Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/183

 rocks and pumice, although their snowy peaks contain no craters. Till recently the Rus Dajun, probably over 15,000 feet, was considered the highest point in this district, but this distinction belongs probably to that of Buahit, or Abba-Yared. The highest peaks of these two mountains, rivalling Mont Rosa or Mont Blanc of the European Alps, are streaked with snow, and according to the natives, snow rests on them throughout the year. The aspect of the Simen highlands is scarcely 80 imposing as that of the Alps. They rise little more than from 1,500 to 2,500 feet above the base of the plateau ; but at the escarpments of the terrace lands, from which they are separated by deep gorges, these mountains, with their fantastic towers, peaks, and successive vegetations of every climate clothing their flanks, stand out in all their sublimity. From the pass of Lamalmon on the Gondar route, the traveller on turning a rock comes suddenly on this amazing prospect, and utters an involuntary cry of admiration at the sight of the snowy peaks piercing the clouds.

East of Tigre, the chain forming the eastern escarpment of Abyssinia is continued regularly north and south, interrupted by breaches some 8,000 or 10,000 feet high, which would facilitate communication with the plains on the Red Sea coast were the country not occupied by the dreaded Afar tribes. This border chain maintains its normal elevation for a distance of about 180 miles, but at certain points it merges in a rugged upland plain whose depressions are flooded by lakes such as Ashangi, Ilaik, and Ardibbo. P^astwards the mountainous tableland of Zebul, some 3,000 feet high, and dominated by peaks rising from 1,000 to 2,000 feet higher, advances far into the country of the Somali. Although their escarpments are so precipitous, and so densely clothed with matted vegetation, as to render them almost inaccessible, the Zebul heights are not to be compared with the majestic Abyssinian mountains. The Bekenna, or Berkona, an aflluent of the Awash, rising in the watershed near the sources of the Takkazeh and Beshilo, separates the border chain from the Argobba, a lateral ridge which projects far into the lowlands, forming in the south-west the last spur of the Abyssinian highlands.

The line of transverse depressions, indicated on the coast by the Gulf of Tajurah, and in the interior by the bed of Lake Tana, is well defined on the border terrace by a nucleus of diverging valleys constituting the main point of radiation of all the Abyssinian rivers. Near the hot spring forming its source rise other tributary rivers of the Takkazeh; the chief aflluents of the Beshilo or Beshlo, which with the Abai forms one of the main headstreams of the Blue Nile, also originate in these mountains, while their eastern slopes give birth to many tributaries of the Awash and of the Gwalima, or Golima, which latter finally runs dry in the plains of the Afars.

In the vicinity of Lake Haik, east of the fortress of Magtlala, the range is crossed by a pass said to be considerably less than 7,000 feet high, thus forming the