I. 4. XXII. THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR 109

intricate in design. Figs, i, 2, 3 will serve to give a rough impression of the curious designs of some of these enclosures so far as I could reconstruct their ruins. The first represents a chief's house some seventy feet up on a

ledge of Gebel Kowra.

(This gebel forms a con-

necting-link between Gebel Si, to which it

belongs, and Gebel Marra. The road from

el Fasher to Kebkebia

passes through it.) The

other two figures are of

large houses at the old

village of Deriblayn on

the western edge of Gebel Si, to the north

of Kowra.

The date of none of

these villages is known

for certain, but so far as ^'^- ' (from Gebel Kowra). a = small closets. B = cir-

, • 1 1 cular upper chamber standing on platform built can be ascertamed they ^^ ^^^ height as walls. Other similar but were inhabited until smaller houses stand back to back with that Zubeir Pasha devastated pictured. Wall, cc, about 2 feet thick.

Darfur late in the last

century. The most curi-

ous feature of the build-

ings is certainly the little

closet-like recesses built

into the walls. In some

cases (as in the figures

portrayed) these closets were single, generally

about two and a half or

three feet high, with a

concave roof, and an

entry barely big enough

to admit a small human

being. In other cases they were double, the smaller closet leading

by a tiny doorway into a rather larger closet of similar design.

Whether these rocky holes were built forwarmth in the cold weather

or as female apartments, or for some other purpose, one cannot say.

Fig. 2 (from Gebel Si). Diameter of rooms about

3 yards. Walls about 3 feet high. A, door

with stone slab as lintel.