my left, beyond the stream, Twenty yards or so through rises the nasal caterwauling this archway, flanked by a of the neophytes who inhabit the graveyard of Saint Mikail's Church. The old church is a simple building of the common octagonal form, and faced with blue plaster. Being low and unassuming, its roof of corrugated iron does not look out of place; and its old-fashioned eight-pointed cross, each point orowned with an ostrich's egg, gives it a distinctive character. Not far above it stands the new church, a far more pretentious structure in grey stone, now being raised by the Prince Regent to the memory of his father. It once promised to be an ornament to the landscape, standing out finely on a little bluff looking over the valley; but, alas! it seems that money won't run to a dome, so, as usual in Abyssinia, it will be a case of finis deformat opus, and a tin roof and dummy clock, whose painted hands will register perpetual noon, will crown an otherwise imposing edifice-not an in appropriate monument to a strong ruler whose premature death left his life's work in the hands of a weakling son. Round the church are grouped small square huts of mud or stone. These are built over the graves of departed notables, and in them live the students whose chants now destroy the peace of the Sunday afternoon. A few more twists in my little lane and I come to an archway in the hedge, framed in convolvulus and wild-rose, The outer wall stops short six feet on either side of the door. The sheltered space thus left, under the overhanging eaves to right and left of the entrance, has been built up with solid earth to the height of a couple of feet or so, and provides a kind of "stoep." On one side of this stoep are some gorgeous scarlet chillies, drying, while on the other a couple of small slaves are enjoying the afternoon sun, and awaiting the pleasure of their master. On the far side of the hut sits the Alaqa Desta, on a slightly raised part of the floor, reading the Psalms of David to himself in a whispered monotone. The Alaqa is a dignitary of the Church. He is not an ordained priest or monk, but controls the finances of one of the local churches. the local churohes. He is, for an Abyssinian, a well-read man, and is at present engaged in writing a History of the World. He can talk quite glibly about sectarian differences in the European Churches, and makes occasional mention terrace, and a closer view of of Plato. I doubt if he knows the oity and its approaches much of Plato beyond his greets me. name, but no more do I, so I am not in a position to throw stones at the Alaqa on this point. He talks very interestingly on a good many subjects, especially on Abyssinian history of the last century, so we often visit each other. I also happen to own a book in the Geez language, entitled 'The Contendings of the Apostles,' which the Alaqa hopes to acquire by fair means or foul before I leave Harar, and this fact cements our friendship. He comes to the door to greet me, leads me to a low, round, wooden stool, aud orders the inevitable coffee. I learn that since our last meeting his wife has presented him with a son, who is brought, naked and wriggling, by a slave woman for my inspection. The lady is in bed in one of the recesses in the wall, behind a ourtain. While I am drinking my coffee, her father confessor enters. He is a tall blackbearded priest, in exceedingly dirty clothes, with the usual priestly beefsteak puddingnapkin round his head. After salutations, he passes behind the curtain, and a monotonous singsong begins, which sounds like the Psalms being read. The Alaqa, I am afraid, looks rather bored by the father confessor, and pays him no attention. One of the peculiar features of the town is the false impression of size and distance which it gives. Everything in it is really on a miniature scale. The small houses are so very small that the bigger ones look quite big, and the eye of an observer standing six hundred yards from its walls refuses oredence to its dwarfishness, and accepts the impression of a full-sized city at four times its true distance. Thus the mean little Palace with its erenelated towers poses successfully as a fullgrown medieval castle, and the stunted minarets of the mosque lose their stuntedness in the general illusion. Below the point where I stand, the streamlet of my garden gate runs through a now imposing gorge between me and the walls of the town, while one of the main approaches to the gates lies at my feet. This road has been worn deeper and deeper by the passage of generations of wayfarers and pack-animals, till it resembles a wide communication trench, only coming to the surface where a belt of harder rock is crossed. Away beyond the road the country descends in a series of undulations to the river Errer, and on the far side rise the mountain masses which sepaAs I am out for exercise, I rate the Harar Valley from do not stay here long, but once Somaliland. The stark outmore follow the windings of lines of these ranges, thrown my little lane. A turning into relief by the afternoon brings me on to an open sun, form a wonderful back ground to the peaceful beauty of the fertile valley. Soorning the road, I plunge steeply down one side of the ravine and up the other, to the walls of the town. A path runs round the walls, and this under a European régime would make an ideal Sunday promenade for the local Edwin and Angelina with their olivebranches. Unfortunately it now passes over the garbage flang from the walls by generations of Hararis. Dogs, carrionbirds, and the purifying heat of the sun have done their best to mitigate the offensiveness of the latest additions of filth, but in spite of their efforts there is no need for the warning, so familiar at French crossreads, "Do not loiter here." So I hurry on my way to my next objective, the Leper Asylum. As I go, I pass strings of women, filing down to the stream, with their water-pots on their heads, or caught up in a shawl on their baoks: Negroidlooking slave girls, owned by Abyssinians, and wearing the usual filthy white gown held by a cord round the waist, or Hararis of a rather gipsy type, their characteristic blackand-red robe falling like an exaggeratedly floppy blouse outside the wide sash which catches up the skirt high enough to show their gaudily striped trousers. Most of these ladies are cackling away merrily to each other: some are attractive enough as to face and figure. All are profoundly dirty. Next, I come to the gate way, with its lounging Abyssinian guard. There is nothing in the low flat archway to call for comment. The cultivation, which elsewhere comes almost up to the walls, here recedes and leaves an open space devoted to many unsavoury purposes among others, to the slaughter of oattle, whose inedible portions strew the ground and poison the air. Here also is a Moslem burial-ground. Tradition has it that in time past the Hararis were so hard pressed by the surrounding hostile tribes that they were forced to bury their dead immediately outside their gates. This reason no longer holds good, but force of habit perpetuates the custom. A little farther on, a few hundred yards from the walls, lies the Leper Asylum, its chapel and native huts neatly arranged, and planted with eucalyptus and pepper trees. This asylum is run by the French missionaries, and is under the charge of my friend Père Charles, who is helped by three or four devoted sisters. Père Charles is a truly jovial monk. He is a living testimony to the truth that a contented mind is a purse well lined," though not many a "capon fine comes his way. He is of middle height and pleasing rotundity, and his rubicund face and understanding eyes diffuse an atmosphere of energetic kindness from above his venerable beard. In addition to his labours of mercy, Père Charles spends his spare time in farming. At one his season's hay crop, while at the other are the inevitable ohillies drying. Chillies are the most profitable of the easily-grown orops, and Père Charles adds considerably to the revenues of his asylum by his energies. end of a long shed is stacked the deed is done with an ordinary pair of Boissors. Though the Sisters have a house apart, almost all their time is spent teaching or working with their patients. Even the Mother Superior quite simply admits that their work demands un dévouement spécial. But there is a look of wonderful serenity on their pale tired faces, such a serenity as can only be found by the exchange of all that the ordinary person holds as worth having, not for the unprofitable peace of a cell, but for a laborious existence devoted to suffering humanity. As is usually the case, he has been taking violent exeroise, and is in a transpiration. The sun is getting low, and the air is fresh, so we pace rapidly up and down his verandah to avoid a ohill. Père Charles is no politician, but he fellows current events olosely by means of the Havas wires and month-old newspapers. His comments on happenings at home are remarkably broad-minded yet vigorous, as becomes one who, though no longer of the world, is yet very much in the world. He holds forth this afternoon on the Sabbath-keeping habits of the British, as exemplified by my being on foot and not on horseback, and to this habit he attributes Britain's greatness. Evening is closing in, and it is time I turned homeward. This time my way lies through the town, and I join the stream of water-carriers and firewood-laden donkeys which pours through the gate. From each donkey-load the Abyssinian guard snatches three or four pieces of wood as an arbitrary customs duty. Just inside the gate is a small market where the wood and grass is being disposed of with a great deal of noisy haggling. Should the purchaser be an Abyssinian, the bargain is usually closed by his snatching three or four sticks from another bundle and unceremoniously making off with his augmented purchase, leaving the poor old Galla vendor clucking with rage like a hen robbed of her chicks, and with about as much chance of redress. When the transpiration has abated, we pass through a little dividing-gate to pay our respects to the Mother Superior and the Sisters. If saints to-day walk the earth, these women are such. Their waking hours are passed in a world of horrors. They have none of the appliances and elaborate arrangements which mitigate the repulsiveness of big modern leper asylums. Their only medicine is oorro- Very different are the sive sublimate, and when a manners when Greek meets finger or a toe is ready to fall, Greek. A bearded Abyssinian squireen is riding his mule up the street in front of me, a small half-naked slave boy trotting behind him with his rifle. Towards him comes a friend, similarly mounted and attended. In a moment both are off their mules, bowing low to each other with drawn-back foot. As they go through their ritual of courtesy, black felt-hat clasped to the waist, and long burnous rakishly cooked up behind by the curved sabre which keeps time to their bows like a pheasant's tail, they strongly recall pictures of the old English Cavaliers. The greeting, culminating in a kiss on both cheeks, is followed by an equally courteous farewell, and both leap on to their mules and ride on their respective ways. The street I follow is narrow and rooky. It climbs steeply between the tiny flat-topped shops of the Arab traders, with a fair sprinkling of coffee-shops. Many of the occupants are British subjects, and are parties in some interminable lawsuit, in which both sides are invariably lying. I therefore get a good number of salaams from gentlemen who hope that politeness will patoh over the weaker parts of their cases. At the top of the hill, the street opens into the Feress Magalla, or main square of the town. At the entrance to the square sit the hordes of professional beggars. Most of them are afflicted with disgusting sores or deformities, or are in the state of genial idiooy produced by the undue consumption of the leaves of the "kath" plant, without which the local Galla seems unable to exist. On the opposite side of the square stands the "Café de l'Europe," a single-storied building combining the funotions of liquor-shop and general store. On a railed-off part of the verandah sit the élite of Harar's white population, sipping Pernot. There is the French postmaster, an employé of the Italian Consulate, the Greek bank manager, and one or two Greek or Levantine merchants. Thus does the Continental café habit rise superior to the most discouraging circumstances. On another side of the square stands the main church of the town, and one or two dirty and brutalised-looking priests lell by its gateway, marked contrasts to the robust energy of Père Charles or the seemingly ascetie dignity of the Alaqa. Facing the church is the entrance entrance to the courtyard where Abyssinian justice is dispensed on week-days. The archway of this courtyard is adorned by two dilapidated plaster lions. They would be more imposing if time and weather had not removed the front half of one of them, leaving only his hind-quarters and tail to face his more complete brother across the way. From the medley of buildings which flank the yard come the roars of real live lions, four of which help to maintain the state of the Dedjazmatoh, or local governor. They live in tiny oages where there is hardly room for them to turn |