Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/274

 *tain, the difficulties which presented themselves were appalling. The road, if it deserved the name, was of incredible steepness, and intersected almost at every step by large hollows and gullies formed by the torrents, and by vast fragments of rock, which, loosened from the cliffs above by the rains, had rolled down into the chasm through which their path lay. To carry Bruce's telescopes, timekeeper, and quadrant through such a path as this was by the majority of the party declared to be impossible; and the bearers of the quadrant now proposed to drag it along in a way which would have quickly shattered it to pieces. To prevent so undesirable a catastrophe Bruce himself, assisted by a Moor named Yasine, who, being on his way to Abyssinia, had attached himself to our traveller's party, undertook the task, and after extraordinary exertions, during which their clothes were torn to pieces, and their hands and knees cut in a shocking manner, they succeeded in placing the instrument in safety, far above the stony parts of the mountain. By this means their companions were shamed into exertion, and every one now striving to surpass the rest, all the instruments and other baggage were quickly got up the steep.

Having accomplished their laborious task, they found themselves too much fatigued to attempt the pitching of their tents; though, had it been otherwise, the scantiness of the soil, which was too shallow to hold a tent-pin, would have prevented them; they therefore betook themselves to the caves which they discovered in the rocks, and there passed the night. Next morning they proceeded to encounter the remaining half of the mountain, which, though steeper, was upon the whole less difficult than the part they had already passed; and in two days came in sight of Dixan, a city built on the summit of a hill, perfectly in the form of a sugar-loaf, surrounded on all sides by a deep valley like a trench, and ap