His labours for the day closed with this, and the sun being nearly on the point of setting, the cotton spinners laid aside their reels. The father of Wallata Gabriel, Goodaloo, and Walder-Yoannes, all came in from the market together, and fast or no fast, young and old, on my proposal that they should taste some of my home brewed ale, a large gambo was broached, and soon disappeared, whilst they certainly did confine themselves to a meal of bread and cayenne _wort_, in which, as usual, a fowl had been boiled to rags, although Wallata Gabriel, out of a tender regard for the conscience of her religious old father, had fished up the bones with a spoon, that he might suppose its rich consistence depended only upon a thickening of meal. CHAPTER XXII. Carpentering.--Fit up a study.--Worshippers of demons.--Saroitsh.-- English superstition.--Priestly benediction.--Tabeeb monasteries.-- Of their character and discipline.--Turning lathe.--Drinking hours.--Female ornaments.--Sumptuary edict. _August 13th._--Walderheros was occupied all day splitting and reducing to proper dimensions the ted tree that was brought yesterday, and of which I had determined to manufacture an English chair. Goodaloo was also busy, as he had undertaken to make me a table, and which he managed to do very well, after a long day’s labour. It consisted merely of a round basket open at both extremities, made by turning thin stripes of bamboo alternately, before and behind strong upright pieces of the same plant. This was completed by a top being constructed of the like material, dexterously interwoven upon a ray-like skeleton, which was afterwards lashed tight down upon the basket pedestal with thongs of raw hide, and in this manner an excellent round table was made, three feet and a-half in circumference, and more than a yard high. I managed to put up a parchment window during the day in the mud and stick wall, over where I intended the table should stand. Conveniently 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 jowharee 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 _medamager_ 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.