3-021-490 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Expedition to Abyssinia: castle between Mai Wahiz and Ad Abaga, 1868. Engraving from a sketch by Mr. G. A. Henty. 'The plateau dips gently to the camping-ground of Mai Weehiz, sixteen miles south of Adigerat...On the left, on some high sandstone cliffs, were perched several ambas, or Abyssinian fortresses, more formidable from their natural position than from their artificial defences. These consist usually of a wall built of stones and mud at the top of the precipitous cliff, which is always selected as a site. But one very carious castle we passed resembling the old baronial strongholds in southern Scotland and the north of England. This was situated upon the edge of a precipice, and the rocks went sheer down from three sides of its walls for fifty or sixty feet. It must be impregnable in a country like this, where cannon are all but unknown'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.