"ghastly, haggard, and exhausted, like men who had escaped from the jaws
of death, the whole had contrived to straggle into a camp, which, but for
the foresight and firmness of the son of Ali Abi,(who had sent the water,)
few individuals would have reached alive."

After traversing this terrible desert of fifty miles--a barrier to all
general and commercial intercourse, which we should think impassable,
however it might be overcome by a small party of bold and hardy men, well
led, furnished with every supply, water excepted, which could sustain them
through its horrors, (and which yet, through that single want, had nearly
perished)--they persued a long and dlifficult march through a dreary
country, scantily peopled, dotted with robber clans, and exhibiting
impediments of all kinds in the knavery and villany of the native
authorities; until they reached the borders of Abyssinia. We had by no
means been aware that volcanoes had made so large a share of this portion
of Africa. The whole border seems to be volcanic, and to retain in its
blasted and broken surface, evidence of its having been, in remote ages,
perhaps in the earliest, the scene of most intense and general volcanic
action.

In Major Harris's animated description--"singular and interesting indeed
is the wild scenery in the vicinity of the treacherous oasis of Sultelli.
A field of extinct volcanic cones, vomited out of the entrails of the
earth, and each encircled by a black belt of vitrified lava, environs it
on three sides; and of these Mount Abida, three thousand feet in height,
whose cup, enveloped in clouds, stretches some two and a half miles in
_diameter_, would seem to be the parent. Beyond, the still loftier crater
of Aiulloo, the ancient landmark of the now-decayed empire of Ethiopia, is
visible in dim perspective; and, looming hazily in the extreme distance,
is the great blue Abyssinian range."