HABITS AND CUSTOMS. 81 four cniitzers (equal to about two shillings and gixpence). The wealthy inhabitants, therefore, and the Turkish officers only drink brandy. Festivals like those kept in Egypt are not known in Kordofan, for the natives in general are not sufficiently wealthy to spend large sums on the like amusements, and it is not, moreover, customary to give feasts at marriages, circumcisions, and other occasions of this kind. If a man be about to marry, he goes straightways to the father of the bride he has selected, and before exchanging a word with her concludes the contract, determining the allowance he proposes to make to his future wife.

The marriage portion consists either in money, oxen, sheep, goats, or other articles of domestic economy, and is at the same time the proi>erty of the woman, although she may be shortly divorced from her husband. Marriages are contracted with very little ceremony, for as soon as the bridegroom has agreed with the father of the bride on the bargain, he takes the woman of his choice home, hews the rahat, or fringed virginal girdle with a knife in innumerable pieces, covers her with a melayeh as a sign that she is now his wife, and the ceremony thus terminates. The nearest neighbours are at the most invited to a dinner ; merissa is served up, and the whole affair is concluded with the customary dances. If the bride belong to one of the tribes who practise circumcision, she is certainly forced to subject herself to a fresh operation twenty o