SHILLUK, NUBA, TAKALE, ETC. 159 Besides the above-mentioned animals, game, which is met with in abundance on their hills, serves as an article of food, and they are very expert in catching young giraffes, ostriches, hares, and various kinds of antelopes, in snares, for their own consumption.

Bread forms one of their chief wants, they, therefore, pay great attention to agriculture. It frequently happens that a drought destroys the harvest, or that it is eaten up by the locusts, so common in these regions, or, what is more likely still, that it falls a prey to the predatory Turks, when a great dearth of bread, which is of the most frightful consequence, is generally the result; instances are then known of parents selling their children for a few handfulls of dockn. I myself saw a girl whom a Djelabi had bought for fifty handfulls of grain. A brother will, on these occasions, sell his sister to obtain a little flour, and thus to supply himself and his people with bread for a few days. One Djelabi received eight oxen for a camel-load of dockn, consisting of about three cantars ; and another merchant bought eight children at the same price. In these calamitous times, the price of a man, therefore, is equal to that of a beast. It is very astonishing that a famine should ever exist with the abundance of animal food they possess ; but it is nevertheless certain that, during scarcity of corn, these negroes will despise every other food, and rather suffer every species of misery.

Whenever this famine exists, the consequences are always very fearful ; for the Nuba negroes then sally