3-021-491 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Expedition to Abyssinia: Goon-Goona, in the Valley of the Mai Muna river, 1868. View of '...the first halting-ground of our [ie British] troops in their march southward...Near the hamlet of Goon-Goona, the British camp was pitched, at the foot of a precipitous cliff..."It is impossible," says a correspondent, "to give any adequate notion of the infinite variety of contrasts in figure and outline which, throughout this part of Abyssinia, the mountains on all sides present - round or square, precipitous or sloping, flat or sharp-pointed, dome-shaped or pinnacled; now gradually ascending in terraces bright with verdure, now starting abruptly from the ground in one dark mass of naked rock; sometimes each mountain alone, holding itself aloof in grim, impregnable isolation, like a huge watch-tower keeping guard over the plain below; sometimes a number of mountains grouped together, and blending easily into a continuous undulating range, until perhaps they suddenly separate, as if rent asunder by some violent convulsion of nature, and the traveller, as he turns a winding projection on the mountain side, is astonished to find almost at his feet, though at a vast depth below him, a wooded ravine...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.