278 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

was a water-skin, a few pots and jars, a basket or two, and sometimes an angareh, or coarse wooden frame covered with, a netting of ropes, and serving as seat and bed. Nearly half the population of the place are slaves, brought from the mountains above Fazogl, or from the land of the Dinkas, on the White Nile. One's commiseration of these degraded races is almost overcome by his disgust with their appearance and habits, and I found even the waste plain that stretches towards Sennaar a relief after threading the lanes of the quarters where they live.

Notwithstanding the nature of its population, Khartoum is kept commendably neat and clean. It will bo a lucky day for Home and Florence when their streets exhibit no more filth than those of this African city. The bazaars only, are swept every morning, but the wind performs this office for the remainder of the streets. The soog, or market, is held in a free space, opening upon the inland plain, where the country people bring their sheep, fowls, camels, dourra, vegetables and other common products. The slaughtering of animals takes place every morning on the banks of the Blue Nile, east of the city, which is thus entirely free from the effluvia arising therefrom. Here the sheep, cows, goats and camels are killed, skinned and quartered in the open air, and it is no unusual thing to see thirty or forty butchers at work on as many different animals, each surrounded by an attendant group of vultures, hawks, cranes, crows and other carnivorous birds. They are never molested by the people, and we sometimes rode through thousands of them, which had so gorged themselves that they scarcely took the trouble to move out of our way.

The place labors under the disadvantage of being the most unhealthy part of one of the most unhealthy regions in the