156 TRIBES BORDERING ON KORDOFAN, These Nuba reside in villages, which they build chiefly in the most inaccessible parts of the mountains, and put in the best possible state of defence.

Their dwellings are made of straw, hedged in with thorns, and some of the houses are built of stone. I must, however, observe, that those tribes which are under monarchic government live more peaceably than the republicans, who frequently go to war for trifles, when the stronger tribes make prisoners of the weaker, and sell them as slaves.

The climate of these districts is far more healthy than that of Kordofan. The dress of the natives is very simple. Only the grown-up people wear a piece of cotton stuff; the majority wear only a strip about as broad as the hand, passing a cord round their hips, with which they fasten it to the abdomen and back. In addition to this simple hip-cloth, they decorate themselves with ear-rings of brass or iron wire, and the women wear necklaces of Bohemian and Venetian glass beads. Some of the men wear a ribbon, about an ell in length, round their loins. * This ornament costs immense patience and no less trouble in its manufacture : it consists of a number of small buttons of about the size of a shirt-button, made of the shell of the ostrich's egg, with a perforation in the centre, through which a string is passed, connecting them together. I took the trouble of counting the single buttons of one of these ribbons in my * Hie cinctus pudenda tegit.