The path itself was formidable, winding along the crest of the ridge over sheets of broken lava, with scarcely more than sufficient width to admit of the progress in single file.  “The horrors of this dismal night set all description at defiance.”  The hope of water, though at the distance of sixteen miles, excited them for a while; but at length even this excitement failed.  And “owing to the heat, fasting, and privation, the limbs of the weaker refused the task, and after the first two miles they dropped fast into the rear.  Under the fiery blast of the midnight sirocco the cry for water, uttered feebly and with difficulty by numbers of parched throats, now became incessant; and the supply for the whole party falling short of a gallon and a half, it was not long to be answered.  A tiny sip of diluted vinegar for a moment assuaged the burning thirst which raged in the vitals; but its effects were transient, and, after struggling a few steps, they sank again, declaring their days to be numbered, and their resolution to rise up no more.  Dogs incontinently expired upon the road, horses and mules that once lay down were abandoned to their fate; while the lion-hearted soldier, who had braved death at the cannon’s mouth, subdued and unmanned by thirst, lay gasping by the wayside, hailing approaching dissolution with delight, as the termination of tortures which were no longer to be endured.  As another day dawned, and the “round red sun” again rose over the lake of salt, the courage even of those who had borne up against this fiery trial began to flag:  “a dimness came before the drowsy eyes, giddiness seized the brain, and the hope held out by the guides, of water in advance, seemed like the delusion of a dream.”

In this crisis, at which our chief wonder is, that Major Harris and his explorers were ever heard of again, or had left any memorials of themselves but their bones, a wild Bedouin was seen, “like a delivering angel,” hurrying forward with a large skin, filled with muddy water.  This well-timed supply was divided among the fainting people:  a quantity was poured over the face and down the throat of each; and at a late hour, “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.