his advice and protection. I resolved to await the arrival of Abou Kalic, to whom I looked up as to the means Providence was to use to free me from the designs the king was apparently meditating against me. I resolved therefore to keep close at home, and to put into some form the observations that I had made upon this extraordinary government and monarchy that had started up, as it were, in our days, and of which no traveller has as yet given the smallest account.

Upon the death of a king of Sennaar, his eldest son succeeds by right; and immediately afterwards, as many of the brothers of the reigning prince as can be apprehended are put to death by the Sid el Coom.

As in Abyssinia, so neither in Sennaar do women succeed to sovereignty. No historical reason is given for this exclusion. With regard to their women, they are so brutal, not to say indelicate, as to sell their slaves after having lived with, and even had children by them. The king himself, it is said, is often guilty of this unnatural practice, utterly unknown in any other Mahometan country. Once in his reign the king is obliged, with his own hand, to plough and sow a piece of land. From this operation he is called Baady, the countryman, or peasant; it is a name common to the whole race of kings, as Cæsar was among the Roman emperors, though they have

generally another name peculiar to each person, and this, not attended to, has occasioned confusion in the narrative given by strangers, writing concerning them.

Sennaar is in lat. 13° 34′ 36′′ north, and in long. 33° 30′ 30′′ east from the meridian of Greenwich. It is on the west side of the Nile, and close upon the banks of it. The ground whereon it stands rises just enough to prevent the river from entering the town, even in the height of the inundation, when it comes to be even with the street. The town of Sennaar is very populous, there being in it many good houses after the fashion of the country. They have parapet roofs, which is a singular construction; for, in other places, within the rains, the roofs are all conical. The houses are all built of clay, with very little straw mixed with it, which sufficiently shows the rains here must be less violent than to the southward, probably from the distance of the mountains.

The soil of Sennaar, as I have already said, is very unfavourable both to man and beast, and particularly adverse to their propagation. But however unfavourable this soil may be for the propagation of animals, it contributes very abundantly both to the nourishment of man and beast. This remarkable quality ceases upon removing from the fertile country to the sands.

Nothing is more pleasant th

the country around Sennaar in the end of August and beginning of September, I mean so far as the eye is concerned. | Instead of that barren, bare waste, which it appeared on our arrival in May, the corn now sprung up, and, covering the ground, made the whole of this immense plain appear a level, green land, interspersed with great lakes of water, and ornamented at certain intervals with groups of villages, the conical tops of the houses presenting, at a distance, the appearance of small encampments. Through this immense, extensive plain, winds the Nile, a delightful river there, above a mile broad, full to the very brim, but never overflowing. Everywhere on these banks are seen numerous herds of the most beautiful cattle of various kinds, the tribute recently extorted from the Arabs, who, freed from all their vexations, return home with the remainder of their flocks in peace, at as great a distance from the town, country, and their oppressors, as they possibly can.

The banks of the Nile about Sennaar resemble the pleasantest parts of Holland in the summer season; but soon after, when the rains cease, and the sun exerts his utmost influence, the dora begins to ripen, the leaves to turn yellow and to rot, the lakes to putrify, smell, and be full of vermin, all this beauty suddenly disappears; bare scorched Nubia returns,

and all its terrors of poisonous winds and moving sands, glowing and ventilated with sultry blasts, which are followed by a troop of terrible attendants, epilepsies, apoplexies, violent fevers, obstinate agues, and lingering, painful dysenteries, still more obstinate and mortal.

War and treason seem to be the only employment of this horrid people, whom Heaven has separated, by almost impassable deserts, from the rest of mankind, confining them to an accursed spot, seemingly to give them earnest, in time, of the only other worse, which he has reserved to them for an eternal hereafter.

The dress of Sennaar is very simple. It consists of a long shirt of blue Surat cloth, called Marowty, which covers them from the lower part of the neck down to their feet, but does not conceal the neck itself; and this is the only difference between the men's and the women's dress; that of the women covers their neck altogether, being buttoned like ours. Both men and women anoint themselves, at least once a day, with camel's grease mixed with civet, which, they imagine, softens their skin, and preserves them from cutaneous eruptions.

The principal diet of the poorer sort is millet made into bread or flour. The rich make a pudding of this, toasting the flour before the fire, and pouring milk and butter into it; besides which, they eat beef, partly

roasted and partly raw. Their horned cattle are the largest and fattest in the world, and are exceedingly fine; but the common meat sold in the market is camel's flesh. The liver of the animal, and the spare rib, are always eaten raw through the whole country.

The forces at Sennaar, immediately around the capital, consist of about 14,000 Nuba, who fight naked, having no other armour but a short javelin and a round shield-very bad troops, as I suppose ; about 1800 horse, all black, mounted by black slaves, armed with coats of mail, and without any other weapon but a broad Sclavonian sword.

After what I have said of the latitude of Sennaar, it will scarcely be necessary to repeat, that the heats are excessive. The thermometer rises in the shade to 119°, but as I have observed of the heats of Arabia, so now I do in respect to those of Sennaar; the degrees of the thermometer do not convey any idea of the effect the sun has upon the sensations of the body or the colour of the skin. Cold and hot are terms merely relative, not determined by the latitude, but elevation of the place; when, therefore, we say hot, some other explanation is necessary concerning the place where we are, in order to give an adequate idea of the sensations of that heat upon the body, and the effects of it upon the lungs. The degree of the

thermometer conveys this very imperfectly; 90° is excessively hot at Loheir in Arabia Felix, and yet the latitude of Loheia is but 15°, whereas 90° at Sennaar is, as to sense, only warm, although Sennaar, as we have said, is in lat. 13o.

At Sennaar, then, I call it cold, when one, fully clothed and at rest, feels himself in want of fire. I call it cool, when one, fully clothed and at rest, feels he could bear more covering all over, or in part, more than he has then on. I call it temperate, when a man, so clothed and at rest, feels no such want, and can take moderate exercise, such as walking about a room without sweating. I call it warm, when a man so clothed, does not sweat when at rest, but, upon moderate motion, sweats, and again cools. I call it hot, when a man sweats at rest, and excessively on moderate motion. I call it very hot, when a man, with thin or little clothing, sweats much, though at rest. I call it excessively hot, when a man, in his shirt, at rest sweats excessively, when all motion is painful, and the knees feel feeble as if after a fever. I call it extremely hot, when the strength fails, a disposition to faint comes on, a straitness is found in the temples, as if a small cord was drawn tight around the head, the voice impaired, the skin dry, and the head seems more than ordinarily large and light. This, I apprehend, denotes death at hand,

as we have seen in the instance of Imhanzara, in our journey to Teawa; but this is rarely or never effected by the sun alone, without the addition of that poisonous wind which pursued us through Atbara; and will be more particularly described in our journey down the desert, to which Heaven, in pity to mankind, has confined it, and where it has, no doubt, contributed to the total extinction of everything that hath the breath of life. A thermometer graduated upon this scale would exhibit a figure very different from the common one; for I am convinced, by experiment, that a web of the finest muslin, wrapt round the body at Sennaar, will occasion at mid-day a greater sensation of heat in the body than the rise of 5° in the thermometer of Fahrenheit. At Sennaar, from 70° to 78° in Fahrenheit's thermometer is cool; from 79° to 92° temperate; at 92° begins warm. Although the degree of the thermometer marks a greater heat than is felt by the body of us strangers, it seems to me that the sensations of the natives bear still a less proportion to that degree than ours. On the 2d of August, while I was lying perfectly enervated on a carpet, in a room deluged with water, at twelve o'clock, the thermometer at 116°, I saw several black labourers pulling down a house, working with great vigour, without any symptoms of being at all incommoded.

After many delays previous to my leaving Sennaar I was determined to leave my instruments and papers with Kittou, Adelan's brother, or with the Sid el Coom, while I went to Shaddly to see Adelan. But first I thought it necessary to apply to Hagi Belal to try what funds we could raise to provide the necessaries for our journey. I showed him the letter of Ibrahim, the English broker of Jidda, of which before he had received a copy and repeated advices, and told him I should want 200 sequins at least, for my camels and provisions, as well as for some presents that I should have occasion for, to make my way to the great men in Atbara. Never was surprise better counterfeited than by this man. He held up his hands in the utmost astonishment, repeating, 200 sequins! over twenty times, and asked me if I thought money grew upon trees at Sennaar; that it was with the utmost difficulty he could spare me 20 dollars, part of which he must borrow from a friend. This was a stroke that seemed to insure our destruction, no other resource being now left. We were already indebted to Hagi Belal twenty dollars for provision; we had seven mouths to feed daily; and as we had neither meat, money, nor credit, to continue at Sennaar was impossible. My servants began to murmur; some of them had known of my gold chain from the beginning,