88 HABITS AND CUSTOMS.

sun-set, and repeated on the following day. The corpse is then washed, wrapped in a white cotton cloth, if his means were adequate to the expense, and is carried on a stretcher to the place of sepulture, and there interred. His widows mourn always in company with their female friends, until their grief is allayed,—a result which requires a few days only, especially if they be young, and pretty, and wish to marry again. This mode of mourning is not only customary where the deceased was a grown-up person ; but if a child, a few days old, die, it is honoured with the same ceremony during a few days.

The negro women are very susceptible, both to pain and pleasure ; and I have frequently, on these occasions, seen them writhing, as if beside themselves, in the sand, biting their arms, until the blood flowed in sincere grief, and not for outward show.

There are certain districts in Kordofan, the agricultural population of which inhabit two different villages in the year ; for even in several of the most fertile tracts of land, water is at times entirely wanting, more especially during the dry season. Whole villages, therefore, are frequently necessitated to reinstate themselves in localities a few miles distant from their former place of residence, where they find wells. The whole of their domestic utensils will not overload an ox, hence an emigration of this nature is quickly effected, and without much difficulty. Those tribes who occupy themselves with the tillage of land, possess but few horses or camels,