76 HABITS AND CUSTOMS.

The assida and woika are the common dishes of the natives of Kordofan. The former consists of flour, boiled after the fashion of the Italian polenta*; but there is a considerable difference in the mode of preparing this mess ; for the poorer class use the flour in its natural state, whereas the wealthy natives have it several times washed in water, a process rendering it much whiter and purer. Woika is prepared in the following manner :—The natives take pieces of beef, dried in the sun, cut for the purpose into long slips, of the thickness of a finger, which form in every family a part of the household stores. This is reduced with dried bamif to a coarse powder in a wooden mortar. Some onions are now burnt with butter in an earthen-pot, over which water is poured. When the stock boils, one person stirs it up, whilst anotlier gradually adds the pounded meat and bamie, until it forms a thick mass. This ragout, or currie, is then poured into the assida before described, and served up ; it has a pleasant flavour, is very nutritious, and far more wholesome than any other kind of animal food. A great deal of meat is consumed ; for it is very cheap, and nearly every one keeps goats and sheep. The Turks, indeed, do not eat the beef, nor is it to be recommended to Europeans, for it is very indi-* Chesnut or maize flour, boiled in water, a species of flummery, —Tb.

t Bamie, or bamiyeh, the esculent hibiscus : the part eaten is a polygonal pod full of seeds and nutritive mucilage. Lanes Modern Egyptians, note) p. 1 99. Tr.