90 APPEARANCE OF MY NEW HOME. 



the one hand, they should commit violence, 

 although they were unarmed, except with their 

 heavy knives ; or, on the other, that the displeasure 

 of the Negoos should be excited against the towns- 

 people for having permitted them to come into 

 Aliu Amba at all. 



It was sometime before I became accustomed 

 to the new circumstances by which I was sur- 

 rounded. My house was merely a round shed, 

 having a diameter of about twelve feet, the wall of 

 dry sticks, five feet high, being surmounted by the 

 usual conical roof of thatch. Opposite to the 

 entrance was a slight deviation from the exact 

 periphery of a circle, occasioned by the recess 

 before mentioned, in which was contained my wide 

 couch. Here the wall bulged out something like 

 a bow window in form, and was covered by a little 

 elongation of the roof in that situation. Nearly in 

 the centre of the apartment was a dilapidated 

 raised ring of clay and pebbles, some five or six 

 inches high, and about three feet in diameter. 

 This formed the hearth, within which two large 

 stones, and the broken-off neck of an old jar, 

 formed a kind of tripod, that occasionally supported 

 a smoke-blacked earthenware " macero," or cooking 

 pot, in which was being boiled either some sort of 

 grain or other for the family, or else the meat for 

 mine and Walderheros' supper. 



On one side, ranged along the wall, stood several 

 large jars, two of which, covered by gourd shell 



