It continues to Port Said, where he and two other passengers "spent two or three evenings investigating the night-town.... We set out... rather apprehensively, with a carefully calculated minimum of money, and life-preservers...." At Cairo he stays at the Mena House Hotel, and at Sakkara he visits the ancient tombs.

Continuing the tour, other places briefly described are Constantinople, Athens, Algiers, Gibraltar, Seville and Lisbon.

Waugh writes: "It is to Alice in Wonderland that my thoughts recur in seeking some historical parallel for life in Addis Ababa.... the peculiar flavour of galvanised and translated reality...." He attends the ceremony.

At the suggestion of an American academic who is attending the events (named "Professor W" in the book: this was Thomas Whittemore[2]), he and Waugh visit Debra Lebanos, where there is a monastery.

He drives through the Rift Valley, admiring the scenery: "all around for immense distances successive crests of highland"; at Lake Naivasha he stays with a farmer at Njoro.

He accompanies Mr Bain, the District Commissioner, for part of the way, by train to New Amsterdam, up the Berbice River by paddle-steamer for three days, and on horseback through grassland and bush for six days to Bain's office in the only house at Kurupukari, a clearing by the Essequibo River.

He is disappointed: "The Boa Vista of my imagination had come to grief.... All that extravagant and highly improbable expectation had been obliterated like a sand castle beneath the encroaching tide."

"It seemed to me a poor gamble to risk becoming semi-invalid for life for the dubious interest of a voyage down the Rio Branco."

There is nothing to report, so he travels with Balfour to Dirre-Dowa and Jijiga; there he finds minor stories which are ignored by his newspaper in London, who tells him he has missed something important in Addis Ababa.