"The most marvelous of all Abyssinian landscapes opened before us as we looked across a gorge that was like a clouded amethyst to the peaks of Simien. A thousand years ago, when the old gods reigned in Ethiopia, they must have played chess with those stupendous crags, for we saw bishops' miters cut in lapis lazuli, castles with the rubi of approaching sunset on their turrets, an emerald knight where the forst crept up on to the rock, and, far away, a king, crowned with sapphire, and guarded by a row of pawns. When the gods exchanged their games for shield and buckler to fight the new men clamouring at their gates, they changed the pieces of their chessboard into mountains. In Simien they stand enchanted, till once again the world is pagan, and the titans and the earth gods lean down from the monstrous cloud banks to wager a game or two on thier sport."

Rosita Forbes, "From Red Sea to Blue Nile: A Thousand Miles of Ethiopia" (1925).