PILGRIM TOWN. 7 ing and doing this before the coffee-houses where these girls principally resort ; and no one looks on it as improper, or any breach of decorum. In Cairo and Alexandria these dancing girls are forbidden even to practise their public trade, and all procuresses and brothels strictly forbidden ; and most roughly, indeed, are any young Arab girls there handled, who may be caught in any such practices, or in houses of ill-fame—floggings, imprisonments, banishment—nay, even being drowned in a sack with a cat—are the punishments for such doings.

To-day the Schukurie and Haddenda Arabs have had a slight quarrel, during the fetching in of the durra-stalks, much to the Pascha's annoyance ; but some well-administered bastinadoing brought aU again into political equipoise. These two tribes dwell next to each other, and are at continual feud, on account of mutual robberies. The Schukurie and Habbabee Arabs, on the left bank of the Nile, and on the White River, are held to be the most numerous, powerful, as well as the most rich in herds, of all the tribes of Bellad-Sudan, and are only equalled in these points by the Beni-Amer tribe, that extends up to the Abyssinian frontiers. The small country, also on those frontiers, and called Kulabat, with its little town (Helle), is curious from being solely inhabited by black or negro pilgrims (the Tokruri) from Darfur and the neighbouring lands, who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. A number of these settled down in Kalabat, who had eitlier fled out of their own country, or, from its being very distant, did not desire to revisit it, and their numbers were increased more and more by other pilgrims, who here meeting with friends and relations, settled down among them. But notwithstanding their holy journey, their prayers in the Chubba at Mecca, and on the prophet's grave at Medina ; in spite of their washings in the well Semsem, which was called into existence by Allah, when Ilagar and Ishmael, driven away by Abraham, were nearly perishing for want of water in the desert ; in spite of all these high merits, the Tokruri are looked on as the worst and most faithless of men, a race that no one will or can trust. Under their latelydeceased Sheik Myri, who possessed more than ninety suits of chain armour (Labbis), and other equipments for man and horse, as also an equal number of strong Dongola steeds to mount his