Syrians: two, my assistant and a carpenter.
Italian: one, engineer—we communicate in Arabic.
Egyptians: about six.
Arabians: also about six, including natives of Sinai in the north and the Yemen and Hadramaut in the south.
Hamites: the natives of the country.
Negroes: these include several distinct nationalities, e.g. Nubas and Nilotic tribes.
Swahili: one, from Zanzibar.
Elsewhere Greeks abound, as in so many countries.
We all speak Arabic, which was however the mother tongue of only a dozen individuals, and even these speak three or four different dialects!
[9]I am at a loss for a name for this particular Hamitic nation. The names Hadendoa, Bisharia and so on, are those of large tribal subdivisions of one nationality, which again is but one out of several distinct Hamitic peoples. The name “Beja” is not known to any native I have met.