312 A SPORTING TRIP THROUGH ABYSSINIA chap. 



used as a kitchen, while others had been guard-rooms 

 and prisons ; all had cow-horns built into the walls, as 

 pegs on which to hang swords and utensils of all sorts. 

 The staircase to the roof is in the square tower ; 

 opposite this, upon the platform, and close to the 

 southern corner -tower, stands what appears to have 

 been a small chapel with a vaulted roof, the structure 

 of which distinctly reminded me of the domes of some 

 South Indian temples. An outside stair, springing 

 from the roof, reaches half-way up the large tower, the 

 top of which was gained by a wooden stair, of which 

 only fragments remain clinging to the wall. The roof 

 and fioors, as in the other buildings, are of concrete laid 

 on beams, which in places have given way. I could 

 not see the least grounds for supposing, as Bruce states, 

 that the building had ever been higher than it is at 

 present, nor could it have contained a room 120 feet 

 long, as the whole structure is only 90 feet in length. 

 These inaccuracies can only be accounted for by a lapse 

 of memory on the part of the writer, similar to that 

 which made him describe the round corner-towers as 

 square, or else he included in his estimate the two upper 

 stories of the "donjon," and by the audience-chamber 

 meant a separate building, which I describe below. 

 From the terrace on the roof of the castle I had a 

 splendid view. On the north-west lay the buildings 

 of the palace of Yasous, which I had just visited, 

 and beyond, but further north, the sloping heights 

 of Debra Tzai, while far in the north - east rose 

 the giant peaks of Simien. On the south lay in 

 the immediate ioreoround the crroves and tuculs 



