ORIGIN OF THE AMHARA. 29 



occupied prominent positions as furniture in my 

 residence. Three or four " maccroitsh," or earth- 

 enware pots for cooking, generally lay upset in the 

 white wood ashes contained in the large circular 

 hearth that occupied a portion of the floor opposite 

 to the mills; and some of the necessary but small 

 instruments for clearing or spinning cotton were 

 placed when not being used upon a skin bag, in which 

 a quantity of that useful material was contained. 



I was very much struck with the extreme con- 

 trasts that could be drawn between the inhabitants 

 of Farree and the Dankalli Bedouins. The large 

 and portly forms of the former, their apparent 

 love of quiet, the affection they evinced for their 

 children, and that of the children for their parents, 

 were all points characteristic of these great 

 differences. The physiognomy of the two people 

 exhibited equally varying features, and as the men 

 of Farree are a good type of the real Amhara 

 population, I shall endeavour to give an idea of 

 the form of the countenance and the head peculiar 

 to this family of man, by a description drawn from 

 my first observations in that town, where the people 

 have less admixture of Galla blood, than the inha- 

 bitants of the table land of Shoa above and beyond 

 them. 



This will be preceded, however, by some 

 necessary, and, I believe, novel information 

 respecting the origin of the Amhara, which I 

 became acquainted with during my residence in 



