Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/281

 they were surrounded by a thick wood in form of an amphitheatre, behind which arose a sweep of bare, rugged, and barren mountains. Midway in the cliff was a miserable village, which seemed rather to hang than to stand there, scarcely a yard of level ground being between it and the edge of the precipice. The wood was full of lemons and wild citrons, from which circumstance it derived its name. Before them, towards the west, the plain terminated in a tremendous precipice.

After a series of disputes with the chief of this village, a malignant, avaricious barbarian, who seems to have designed to cut them off, they proceeded towards Mount Lamalmon, one of the highest points of Abyssinia. On the way they discovered on their right the mountains of Waldubba, inhabited by monks and great men in disgrace. The monks are held in great veneration, being by many supposed to enjoy the gift of prophecy and the power of working miracles. To strengthen their virtue, and encourage them in their austere way of life, they are frequently visited by certain young women, who may be called nuns, and who live upon a very familiar footing with these prophets and workers of miracles. Nay, many of these, says Bruce, thinking that the living in community with this holy fraternity has not in it perfection enough to satisfy their devotion, retire, one of each sex, a hermit and a nun, sequestering themselves for months, to eat herbs together in private upon the top of the mountains.

On the 7th of February they began to ascend the mountains which skirt the base of Lamalmon; and on the next day commenced the climbing of that mountain itself. Their path was scarcely two feet wide in any part, and wound in a most tortuous direction up the mountain, perpetually on the brink of a precipice. Torrents of water, which in the rainy season roll huge stones and fragments of rock down the steep, had broken up the path in many