80 AFRICAN WANDERINGS.

hours' journey above Fazogl there is, among populous and large hills of the Tubi, (who can turn out 100,000 men able to bear arms, and have 500 villages, which the Turks have not, as yet, ventured to approach,) a hill of considerable size and many people, called Fungh; but it is not inhabited by the race of that name, but by the Hammeghs.

The chief country of these Hammeghs extends from the Blue Nile, above Sennaar, from Sero to Rosseres, but they also have settlements higher up. The head Sheik v/as the old famed Soliman, whose name was held in the utmost reverence all over the Gesira, and a single word from whom was sufficient to set it all in uproar. He numbered some eighty or ninety years, had been in his youth a man of wondrous strength, and even in his old age this mummy, for he is nothing but skin and bone, still displays remarkable power. Scars cover his body over and over, the remains of fifty battles, before each of which, knight-like, he measured himself in single combat with the leader of the adverse force. The ability and sly wisdom with which he managed his own people, and also the Turks, is the more remarkable, as he was thus ever fighting and totally uneducated. His honesty, openness, and bold bearing, called forth like qualities in others; and his meeting with Mehmet Ali, when that ruler travelled, in 1838, into Sennaar, and summoned Soliman, as head Sheik, before him, was characteristic of both. It is well known, that the former Mudir of the Berbers, Abbas Aga, who by all kinds of ruinous imposts had gathered up large sums of money, was, by orders received from the highest authority, poisoned by a Copt, his secretary, and all his wealth seized on by government. This Copt, now the renegade Challill Etfendi, was rewarded for the crime by being appointed Sheik of Metemma and Schendy ! Formerly, this Abbas Aga had caused the Kalif of the Wells of Atmur (the desert between Korusko and Abu Hamraet), who was very wealthy, to fall under the suspicion of the ruling powers, who witliout furtlier to do, at once sentenced him to be hung, and drew in his riches, at least all of them that Abbas Aga had left. The brother of the latter, Soliman Aga, set out for Cairo, but wa?, at Atmur, set on by tlie Bischari Scheik, Biirakan, brother of tlie murdered Kalif, and, along with nine of his companions, ft.'ll a sacrifice to the