THE FUNJ EACE. 227 



square, the forehead very broad, and the skull regular. Very careful of the purity 

 of their race, they never allow their daughters to intermarry with the Arabs or 

 Negroes. Having good reasons to fear strangers, they live on inaccessible rocks 

 natural fortresses which the women scale daily, so as to provision the villao-e • but 

 the path is carefully forbidden to people of other tribes. The Sienetjos are the 

 only weavers and smiths of the country, and it is due to this fact that they have 

 hitherto managed to preserve their existence in the midst of so many enemies. 

 They are also skilful jewellers, making extremely elegant copper ornaments, which 

 they do not sell. These trinkets are reserved by them for their own women who 

 are very fond of finery, and who wear several rows of glass bead necklaces round 

 their necks. 



East of the Gumus, the plains covered with low hills which stretch towards 

 the offshoots of Damot and Agaumeder, are beginning to be peopled by Ao-au 

 immigrants, who, arriving in the country in isolated families, settle down in the 

 clearings, at a few miles distance from each other. They do not fear the hostility 

 of the natives, as they know they are protected by the prestige of the great militarv 

 Empire of Abyssinia, by which any wrong done to them would soon be revenged 

 by a war of extermination. Thus, the boundaries of Abyssinia are being yearly 

 enlarged by the immigration of new colonies; from an independent nation, the 

 Gumus have almost changed into a tributary people. The Ginjar, who occupy the 

 region of the Abyssinian spurs farther north as far as the frontiers of Galabat, 

 have to pay tribute, often even in slaves. They are blacks mixed with Arabs and 

 Bejas, probably refugees in their territory. They call themselves Mohammedans, 

 and speak a corrupt form of Arabic. All their pride is centered in their hair, which 

 is plaited like that of the Abyssinians, and greased with butter. 



The Funj Race. 



The mountains of the region between the two Niles are peopled by more or less 

 mixed branches of the ancient Funj, or Fung, nation, which formerly ruled over all 

 the country of Senaar. The Funj nearly all laid aside their national language on 

 their conversion to Islam ; still some tribes have special dialects, greatly intermixed 

 with Arabic words, and said to be connected with the group of Nuba languages. 

 Mohammedanism has not yet completely supplanted the ancient religion. On the 

 Jebel-Guleh, which the Funj consider as their sacred mountain, the explorer 

 Pruyssenaere has seen them still celebrate phallic rites around a clay altar on 

 which stands a wooden statue representing a god. According to Beltrame, their 

 conversion to Islam is so very superficial that the majority of them have not even 

 been circumcised. Hartmann, taking up the hypothesis of Bruce, believes that the 

 Funj are allied to the Shilluks, and that all the region comprised between their 

 territory and that of the Bertas is peopled by tribes of the same stock. The 

 Hammej, who are now greatly mixed with the Arabs ; the Burun, who are still 

 cannibals, according to Marno ; and the haughty Ingassana, who occupy the valleys 

 of Mount Tabi, and have valiantly repulsed the assaults of the " Turks," are all 



