BAY OF AMPHILA. 
179 
leaves of the doom-tree. Each hut is generally divided into two or 
three compartments, and their only furniture consists of a few rude 
couches, some cooking utensils, and a large jar for holding water. 
When a marriage takes place, at which time great rejoicings 
are made, an intoxicating kind of liquor called booza is supplied 
by the friends, and the foot of a kid is cut off, and hung up in 
the house of the chief, to serve as a rude kind of calendar to 
mark the event. 
It is a singular fact, worthy of particular notice, that the Dana- 
kil, as well as the Adaiel and Somauli, entertain a peculiar 
prejudice against common fowls, the flesh of which is held among 
them in a kind of abhorrence : this may perhaps lead to the idea 
of these tribes being sprung from an Egyptian origin. I remarked 
also another circumstance strongly in favour of this conjecture, 
which is that of their tombs being covered with monuments of a 
pyramidal structure. We had remained a considerable time on 
the coast before I could get a sight of their burying grounds ; but 
at length I accidentally discovered one in a secluded spot between 
the two hills, termed in our chart the Sister Hills. The tombs 
were rudely constructed in the exact shape of pyramids, with 
stones cemented together with chunam, and some of these piles 
were entirely covered with the latter material : the base of one of 
them occupying a space of full ten feet square. A vocabulary of 
the Dankali language will be found in the Appendix. (Vide 
No. 1.) 
The thermometer daring our stay at Amphila generally stood 
at noon as high as at 77-8 and 9° in the shade, with the wind from 
about E. to E. S. E. ; but in the latter part of December, with a 
A a 
