148 The British Campaign in the Soudan.

their ancestors having crossed over the Red Sea from Arabia long before the Christian era, and they have mingled but little with other races. They are true Ishmaelites, and exhibit the characteristics of the Arab race, being slender, of medium size, well formed, with small hands and feet and arched instep, varying in color from olive to dark bronze, and with straight aquiline features. They are proud, indomitable, and prefer independence to life itself. Having but few wants, their deserts supply them with nearly all that they need. ‘They are nomads whose wealth consists of flocks and camels, living where agriculture is impossible, and scorning the inhabitants of towns as “dwellers among bricks.” Even Mehemet-Ali’s iron hand could extort from them only the most limited allegiance. ‘Though born-warriors, they never submitted to conscription, and they paid tribute to the Khedive because they found it to their interest. to do so, being granted in return the monopoly of the carrying trade across their country, and allowed to retain their patriarchal form of government under their great sheikhs, who can trace their origin even beyond the days of the Prophet.* On these the Khedive bestowed high rank, privileges, and revenues on the condition of their insuring the peace and safety of trade and travel through their territories, and this they did so effectually that, as I stated before, no caravan needed an armed escort. The principal Bedouin tribes are the Ababdehs, Bishareens, and Hadendowas, on the east of the Nile; the Has-* In my first lecture, published by the American Geographical Society in 1880, ‘* Life in the Egyptian Deserts,” I gave a very complete description of the manner and customs of the Bedouin tribes. We are compelled to write Arab names as they sound, hence the diversity in spelling them by English, French, Italian and German writers.