The National Game of Skill of Africa. 
67- 
taken, and the one who has most reckons the excess of his above his adver- 
sary's number as his gains. The winner is entitled to play first in the next 
contest, the adversary having first distributed the pieces. When either 
party has made his successive gains amount to sixty he has won the game. 
The Syrian Game of Maiicala, or Manqala. 
In Mancala as played in Syria * the board consists of fourteen holes 
arranged in two rows, and seven pieces are placed in each row. Otherwise 
the games — there are again two— are identical with the Egyptian games. 
Fig. 9.— Board for Gabatta (after Th. Bent). 
lie- — The Abyssinian Game of Gahatta. ' ' 
In this game, briefly referred to by Bent in The Sacred City of the 
Ethiopians, the board, as previously intimated, consists of three parallel 
rows of hoks. There are six holes in each row, and at the commencement 
of the game three pieces are placed in each hole. 
According to Bent it is played by a series of passing which seemed to 
us very intricate and which we could not learn ; the holes they call their 
toukouls or huts, and they get very excited over it. It closely resembles- 
the game we saw played by the negroes in Mashonaland." 
The writer's special thanks are due to Dr. L. Peringucy for the photo- 
graphs reproduced in Plate II and Plate III, fig. 1, and to the Acting- 
Curator of the Alexander McGregor Memorial Museum, Kimberley, for the 
photograph reproduced in Plate I ; also to Mr. E. H. Banks for having 
assisted him in the preparation of Figs. 1-8. 
* Cf. Culin_, loc. cit. 
