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 connecting-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 curious feature of the buildings 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.