650 Report on Shoa [No. 140. 



barred and closed, and a fire is invariably lighted before the peasant, 

 who will on no account appease his hunger, labouring under the strange 

 superstition, that otherwise the devils would enter during the dark, and 

 that there would be no blessing upon the meat. 



85. It has been conjectured by Pliny, that the orientals received their 

 first hints of building from the swallow, and that in imitation of their 

 feathered instructor, their first attempts were made in clay. Where the 

 Abyssinians obtained their ideas on this subject it were hard to tell, but 

 certainly they have made little progress in architectural design, and 

 their houses, constructed as in the earliest day, are still mere frame- 

 works, sparingly daubed over with a thin coat of mud. Here thieves can 

 easily break through and steal, and the materials are of such a flimsy 

 nature, that the morning sun oftentime rises a witness to the truth of 

 the scriptural metaphor : " He built his house upon the sand, and it 

 was swept away by the rising flood." 



86. Of the rudest description, these hovels are composed of mud and 

 rotten twigs, and perfectly pervious to the inclemencies of the season, 

 they subject the occupants, from the cold damp air, to all the pains of 

 rheumatism and catarrh. There are no conveniences in the shape of 

 glass or other transparent substances, and if the door be closed on the 

 dense unhealthy fog and the cold bleak wind, all possibility is denied of 

 admitting light ; the thermometer rarely rises above 65 degrees, indica- 

 ting the necessity for artificial heat, whilst there exists no vent for 

 the smoke, excepting through the door and the cracked apertures in the 

 walls. 



87. In the town, from the want of sewers and drains, the inhabi- 

 tants are obliged to live like swine in the filth of their own styes, 

 inhaling all the effluvia of decomposing matter and putrifying water ; 

 the comfort of space is never consulted, passages and out-houses 

 are far beyond the intention of the proprietor, and with doors allowing 

 full ingress to injurious currents of air, with roofs admitting the rain, 

 and floors covered with unwholesome damp, it is surprising that many 

 more of the inhabitants are not made martyrs to disease. Some few years 

 ago, epidemic dysentry made its appearance at Ankobar, and as might 

 have been expected, rioted to excess in the foul location. One-half of the 

 population was swept away, and the remnant fled for a time from the 

 hill* which they declared to be blasted by a curse from heaven. 



