THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN own hand, that she was attended by a large number of followers, who spread terror all over Nubia, and that her name was Sehma. The next halting places were Lagia, Bir al-Malh, i.e., the Salt Well, Madwa, and Sweni, where all caravans stopped and awaited the permission of the king of Dar Fur to enter his territory. The remainder of Mr. Browne's narrative, though of very great interest, does not concern us here, for it deals with the events of the period of nearly three years which he was forced to passinDr Fur. During this time Mr. Browne collected a number of important facts about the government, population, and commerce of Dar Fur, and about the manners and customs of its inhabitants at the close of the eighteenth century. All praise is certainly due to this intrepid traveller, for his work is one of the most careful contributions to the ethnography of Dar Fur and Kordofan which have ever been made. The narrative of Mr. Browne came as a revelation to European geographers, for until it appeared neither the exact position nor the extent of the country was known. Though in some few small details his work has been proved to be incorrect, the main facts of the mass of information which he collected have been substantiated by the investigations of such travellers and experts as Seetzen, Linant, Ruppell, Russegger, Kotschy, and Pallme.

It may be noted in passing that the most interesting work on Dar Fur produced in the nineteenth century is the narrative of the travels of Muhammad ibn 'Omar of Tunis, published in Arabic at Paris in 1850. A French translation by Dr. Perron was edited by Jomard and published in Paris in 1845, and an abridgment of the French rendering by Bayle St. John was issued in London in 1854.

Muhammad of Tunis was born in 1789, and was taken to the Sudan in 1803, and he stayed at Dar Fur eight years ; in 1820 he ' " On doit h ce hardi voyageur d'avoir, le premier, assigne la situition geo-" grapliique de la principale ville du Diirfour, en ineme temps qu'il en faisait " connaitre des particularites neuves, curieuses, surtout sur le climat, les moeurs " et les usages. Malheureusement, cet intelligent voyageur fut malade et " prisonnier dans le pays psndant la plus grande partie de la duree de son *' sejour. S'il eut pu mettre h. profit, pendant ses trois annees de residenc-i au " Darfour, le talent d'observation dont il etait doue il aurait laissd moins k '* faire k ses successeurs, et il aurait vitc quelqueimeprises oil I'a fiiit tomber "sa facheuse position." See Jomard, Odservatiorts, Paris, 1845, p. 6.

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