Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/221

 and children; cisterns and wells sunk in the soil supply it with water, whilst the fertile neighbouring valleys furnish provisions in abundance. It was at Magdala that Theodore kept for two years the English prisoners, for whose rescue an Anglo-Indian Army was dispatched in 1868. The fortress of Magdula, destroyed by the English, and afterwards conquered by the King of Shoa from an independent chief, and ceded by him to his sovereign, the King of Abyssinia, has since been restored, on account of its great strategic importance. It forms an advanced outpost in the Galla country, which is traversed by the shortest route to the kingdom of Shoa. At the eastern base of the rocks of Magdala, in a gorge commanded eastwards by

other basalt promontories, stands the village of Tanta, or Tenta, peopled by merchants who supply the citadel with provisions.

The Abyssinian towns standing on plateaux intersected by the gorges of the Takkazeh and its affluents are, like those of the banks of the Blue Nile, mostly of military or religious origin. Besides, they are few and far between, and some of them, after enjoying a long period of prosperity, have been abandoned and now contain more ruins than inhabited houses. The least populous region of this slope is that whose waters flow eastwards into the Takkazeh between the Beghemeder and Simen uplands. This province of Belessa has been traversed by few explorers on account of the lack of resources and the unhealthiness of the kwalla, which must be crossed amid the various sections of the plateau. But in Simen the chief towns of this mountainous province, Inshatkab the capital, Faras-Saber and Dobarik, near the Lamalmon Pass, have been frequently visited, thanks to their situation on