io8 THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR L4.xxi.

A custom connected with circumcision which came to my notice on one occasion may be quoted here. The incident happened at a village

of KiMR near Kebkebia, but it was said to be common to all Darfur, Arabs and others. When a boy has been circumcised his parents trick him out in the gayest apparel possible, even with women's trinkets and a man's sword in the particular case under notice, and for a period

of fourteen days after the circumcision the boy demands from any

wealthy visitor to the village, and from his relatives, a customary

gratuity as by right. He is also for a period of forty days from the

circumcision sent to visit neighbouring villages and it is incumbent upon the person visited to sacrifice a fowl in his honour. The fowl may

be cock or hen, and no animal or bird but a fowl is acceptable.

XXII All the villages of the Fur that I have seen are as dirty and

badly built as those of the other inhabitants of Darfur. The present

generation when living at any distance from the gebels usually build

a conical tukl of straw or grass with a rakuba attached; but when

there is a supply of rocks handy they often place a layer or two of them at the base of the sides of the tukl as a protection against white

ants and prowling beasts of prey, and superimpose the straw, or else make all the wall of stone and only the roof of straw. In the past

the population must have been quite ten times what it is now : whole mountains that are now utterly deserted may be seen, as one travels,

to be ^'terrassed" for cultivation; their sides, that is, are banded

horizontally up to a considerable height with narrow ridges made by so arranging the stones that the side of the hill, instead of being

a continuous slope is a series of short steps. On these banked-up

steps, which would hold the rain-water, the corn was planted, and

the utilization of every available foot of ground for this purpose

testifies to the previous density of the population.

Similarly, remains of old stone villages litter the whole country-

side in the vicinity of Gebel Marra and its countless foot-hills. The

houses were round or square and the walls fairly well built of rough unshaped slabs and rocks, but in some cases there was a solid founda-

tion of stones built up above the ground-level, upon which, it is said

with probability, some sort of grass hut was erected.

In plan the villages were mere rabbit-warrens with the houses

built close together on high ground suitable for defence. The poorer man would apparently have no more than a single hut, but the better-

to-do would have an enclosure containing a number of rooms or else

a group of several huts built contiguously to one another. The chief's

enclosure—as one assumes it to be—generally occupies a central

position on the highest ground and is larger, better built, and more