112 THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR 1. 4. xxii.

villages are ver}' much better and more strongly built than any others I have yet seen in Northern or Southern Darfur, and are in striking con-

trast to the miserable ill-built hovels of the Beni Helba Baggara Arabs who inhabit the plain to the south-west of the mountain....The Jebel Fur... are distinctly in advance of the other tribes of Darfur as builders and cultivators

The burial-places of the old inhabitants are frequently met with. They are oval circumferences of random stone slabs stuck up on end and, in Dar Abo Di'ma, were spoken of as the work of "Abu Um Gonan," a term which must be the same as the "Abu Gonaan"

(or Kona'an) who are fabled to have once lived in the northern "Nuba" hills of Kordofan, and whose name again may be connected with Kana'an, i.e. Canaan, son of Ham, the traditional progenitor of

pagan tribes^.

The system adopted in the Fur villages for storing grain is dis-

tinctive from that in Kordofan or the east to the best of my knowledge.

It is as follows: A number of poles with short forks are put in the ground so as to form a rough square. The fork is at the lower end and remains a foot or so above ground. In the forks other poles rest

horizontally, and brushwood and matting are laid from pole to pole

to form a bed. The heads of corn, when cut, are heaped on this bed and are contained by long, broad sheets of matting {sherkdnia,

pi. sheidkna) which are stretched all round the uprights and bound

to them, thus forming an enclosure. The matting is made of ndl

grass worked in a criss-cross pattern. The object of having the corn-

store thus raised above the ground is to avoid the ravages of the white ants.

For the storage of grain inside the house the Fur use the SuaybUy

a large cylindrical vessel formed of cow-dung and mud, some four

feet high and two and a half in diameter. For water or merissa

they employ the common circular burma of burnt clay, usually with two or three tiny ornamental false handles placed at the angle formed by the belly and the neck of the vessel. The burmas are made

locally and in the same manner as in northern Kordofan, namely, by placing a lump of clay on a mat and driving the fist downwards

into the middle of it and then working outwards.

The only art in which the Fur shew any particular proficiency

is that of basket-work. The neatly made baskets of coarse strong

plaited grass, dyed in various colours and resembling an ordinary

waste-paper basket in shape, with their large, flat, slightly convex

lids worked in every conceivable fantastic coloured design of line

* See MacMichael, Tribes..., pp. 88, 241. The jungle-fowl is also known in Kordofdn as "gidad Abu Kona'an."