114 CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE.

staining their hands with the blood of these unfortunate beings. Thus, an Italian doctor bound a rope round the neck of his slave and strangled him with his own hands ; another medical man, a renegade, castrated his slave with his own razor, for some trifling offence he had been guilty of. The man died of the effects of the operation. Mohammed Bey also, the governor of Kordofan, whom Mehemed Ali deposed towards the close of the year 1838, and not without good cause, treated his slaves most barbarously, as the following fact will illustrate. A female slave belonging to his haarem was guilty of some slight offence, which, however, enraoed him to such an extent that he ordered her to be thrown into a distant well and drowned.

One of the servants, happening to pass the well on the following day, found the girl still living, reported the circumstance to the governor, and asked whether he should liberate her, as the water only reached her arms; the tyrant, however, felt no pity for the poor wretch, and ordered the well to be filled up with sand, thus burying his victim alive.

The Arabs, or free people, to which the Bakkara and other nomadic tribes belong, differ totally from the aborigines ; they breed camels and other cattle, and engage but little in agricultural pursuits. The largest tribes of Bakkara are, el Giomme Hababin under Sheikh Abdel Machmud, Elhawasma under Sheikh Moosa, el Messeria under Sheikh Labaeid,