1837.] Wad Medinah Senncir. 169 adjoining to which may be traced the foundations of the palace (now no longer existing) of the last sultan, and near it is a coSeehouse, the favourite resort of the military officers and fashionables of this capital.

The banks of the river at Sennar are between 40 and 50 feet high. The Nile rises about 20 feet. The country around is dull, uninteresting, and flat, with the e2<:ception of Jebel Mowil, a hill about 800 feet high, six miles S.W. by S. of the town. Scarcely a tree is to be seen except in the distance towards the S. To the N., S., and E., are villages about 20 miles oR.

The'inhabitants of Sennar are of a dark-brown colour. The women are lighter than the men, and both are llandsome. The latter wear drawers and a cotton shirt reaching to their ankles, or a fold of cotton round the waist, an(l afterwards thrown loosely over the shoulder. Most of them wear rosaries of black seeds, of ebony, or other wooden bea(ls, round their necks. They almost all have a purse suspended from the neck, hegabart, or amulets, on the right arm above the elbow, and a knife on the left in the same situation. Some wear leather ornaments round the ankles. They generally allow their hair to grow, and do not wear the Takiyeh, or white skull-cap.

The women wear a fold of cotton round their bo(lies, thrown afterwards over the shoulders, and sometimes covering the hea(l also. The unmarried gir]s and slaves usually wear only a rahat, or leather fringe, round the waist. Their hair is plaited into tresses about the thickness of rats' tails; and this operation of plaiting is preceded by the destruction of the parasites which abound in these localities; a massacre which they carry on against those insects every fortnight or three weeks. The head is then dressed, and loaded with three or four pounds of mutton-suet or camels' fat. Some of the women wear silver ear-rings; all, necklaces of glass bea(ls; and most of them an immense bunxh of hegabart suspended from the neck. They also ornarnent themselves with bracelets of silver, of rings of horn or ivory, plain or slightly a(lorned with black spots; leather ornaments on the wrists and ankles; and I noticed a ifew who ha(l a ring or beads passe(l through a perforation in the right nostril; but this was by no means common. Both men an(l women have goo(l teeth. In many the gums are black or l)rown, deriving this peculiarity from their admixture with the negroes. Many of the women allow the nails on the fingers of the left hand to grow to an extraordinary length, an inch or more beyon(l the tip of the finger, similar to the women and grandees in China. They, however, pare the nails of the right hand, as the not doing so would interfere, they said, with their custom of eating with their fingers. Most of tlle lower orders possess one or two slaves.