326 CONSTRUCTING FURNITURE. 



where I intended the table should stand. Con- 

 veniently to hand, when seated upon my intended 

 chair, I also placed against the wall, upon stick pegs 

 thrust through, a shelf of seven or eight short jow- 

 haree stalks, so secured as to form a flat surface for 

 a few books to stand upon. 



It was two days before I could manage the chair, 

 for I had neither hammer nor nails to work with, 

 only a small saw and a matrabier, or axe of 

 Abyssinia, and which is identically the same in 

 form as those used by the Dankalli. With these, 

 however, and a medemager heated red hot, with 

 which I burnt the holes in the frame, after some 

 little trouble, I built up by degrees a very respectable- 

 looking piece of furniture. Walderheros admired 

 it greatly, and soon interwove a very convenient 

 seat, with thongs of hide and a rope made of a long- 

 kind of very tough grass, called gwassia, which 

 grows in the daggan, or high country, and is 

 largely used by the Abyssinians in making mats, 

 fining sieves for flour, and baskets. 



When my new chair was placed in its situation 

 by the side of the table, a good light falling 

 through the parchment window, which I took care 

 to emblazon with sundry hieroglyphical and 

 heraldic devices, and my little library itself laden 

 with my books, I considered that I had a study 

 complete. On the partition behind the chair, 

 which separated my recess in the narrow corridor 

 between the two walls of my circular house, from 



