Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/291

 THE FUNJ RACE. 227 square, the forehead very broad, and the skull regular. Very careful of the purity of their race, they never allow their daughters to intermarry with the Arabs or Negroes. Having good reasons to fear strangers, they live on inaccessible rocks, natural fortresses which the women scale dully, so as to provision the village ; but the path is carefully forbidden to people of other tribes. The Sienetjos are the only weavers and smiths of the country, and it is due to this fact that they have hitherto managed to preserve their existence in the midst of so many enemies. They are also skilful jewellers, making extremely elegant copper ornaments, which they do not sell. These trinkets are reserved by them for their own women, who are very fond of finery, and who wear several rows of glass bead necklaces round their necks. East of the Gumus, the plains covered with low hills which stretch towards the offshoots of Damot and Agaumeder, are beginning to be peopled by Agau immigrants, who, arriving in the countrj' in isolated families, settle down in the clearings, at a few miles distance from each other. They do not fear the hostility of the natives, as they know they are protected by the prestige of the great military Empire of Abyssinia, by which any wrong done to them would soon be revenged by a war of extermination. Thus, the boundaries of Abyssinia are being yearly enlarged by the immigration of new colonies; from an independent nation, the Gumus have almost changed into a tributary people. The Ginjar, who occupy the region of the Abyssinian spurs farther north as far as the frontiers of Galabat, have to pay tribute, often even in slaves. They are blacks mixed with Arabs and Bejas, probably refugees in their territory. They call themselves Mohammedans, and speak a corrupt form of Arabic. All their pride is centered in their hair, which is plaited like that of the Abyssinians, and greased with butter. The Funj Race. The mountains of the region between the two Niles are peopled by mora or less mixed branches of the ancient Funj, or Fung, nation, which formerly ruled over all the country of Senaar. The Funj nearly all laid aside their national language on their conversion to Islam ; still some tribes have special dialects, greatly intermixed with Arabic words, and said to be connected with the group of Nuba languages. Mohammedanism has not yet completely supplanted the ancient religion. On the Jebel-Guleh, which the Funj consider as their sacred mountain, the explorer Pruyssenaere has seen them still celebrate phallic rites around a clay altar on which stands a wooden statue representing a god. According to Beltrame, their conversion to Islam is so very superficial that the majority of them have not even l)een circumcised. Ilartmaun, taking up the hypothesis of Bruce, believes that the Funj are allied to the Shilluks, and that all the region comprised between their territory and that of the Bertas is peopled by tribes of the same stock. The Ilammej, who are now greatly mixed with the Arabs ; the Burun, who are still cannibals, according to Mamo ; and the haughty Ingassana, who occupy the valleys of Mount Tabi, and have valiantly repulsed the assaults of the " Turks," are all