midday
Sometimes the ascent was more natural , more often it was a zig-zag roadway cut , no doubt , in the first instance by the old inhabitants of Kôr . The Amahagger say they drive their spare cattle over it once a year to pasture outside ; all I know is that those cattle must be uncommonly active on their feet . Of course the litters were useless here , so we had to walk . By midday , however , we reached the great flat top of that mighty wall of rock , and grand enough the view was from it , with the plain of Kôr , in the centre of which we could clearly make out the pillared ruins of the Temple of Truth to the one side , and the boundless and melancholy marsh on the other . This wall of rock , which had no doubt once formed the lip of the crater , was about a mile and a half thick , and still covered with clinker . Nothing grew there , and the only thing to relieve our eyes were occasional pools of rain-water -LRB- for rain had lately fallen -RRB- wherever there was a little hollow . Over the flat crest of this mighty rampart we went , and then came the descent , which , if not so difficult a matter as the getting up , was still sufficiently break-neck , and took us till sunset .