The banks of the Nile about Sennaar resemble the pleasantest parts of Holland in the summer season; but soon after, when the rains cease, and the sun exerts his utmost influence, the dora begins to ripen, the leaves to turn yellow and to rot, the lakes to putrify, smell, and be full of vermin, all this beauty suddenly disappears; bare, scorched Nubia returns, and all its terrors of poisonous winds and moving sands, glowing and ventilated with sultry blasts, which are followed by a troop of terrible attendants, epilepsies, apoplexies, violent fevers, obstinate agues, and lingering, painful dysenteries, still more obstinate and mortal.
War and treason seem to be the only employment of this horrid people, whom Heaven has separated, by almost impassable deserts, from the rest of mankind, confining them to an accursed spot, seemingly to give them earnest in time of the only other worse which he has reserved to them for an eternal hereafter.
The dress of Sennaar is very simple. It consists of a long shirt of blue Surat cloth called Marowty, which covers them from the lower part of the neck down to their feet, but does not conceal the neck itself; and this is the only difference between the men's and the women's dress; that of the women covers their neck altogether, being buttoned like ours. The men have sometimes a sash tied about their middle; and both men and women go bare-footed in the house, even those of the better sort of people. Their floors are covered with Persian carpets, especially the women's apartments. In fair weather, they wear sandals; and without doors they use a kind of wooden patten, very neatly ornamented with shells. In the greatest heat at noon, they order buckets of water to be thrown upon them instead of bathing. Both men and women anoint themselves, at least once a-day, with camels grease mixed with civet, which they imagine softens their skin, and preserves them from cutaneous eruptions, of which they are so fearful, that the smallest pimple in any visible part of their body keeps them in the house till it disappears. For the same reason, though they have a clean shirt every day, they use one dipt in grease to lie in all night, as they have no covering but this, and lie upon a bull's hide, tanned, and very much softened by this constant greasing, and at the same time very cool, though it occasions a smell that no washing can free them from.
The principal diet of the poorer sort is millet, made into bread or flour. The rich make a pudding of this, toasting the flour before the fire, and pouring milk and butter into it; besides which, they eat beef, partly roasted and partly raw. Their horned cattle are the largest and fattest in the world, and are exceedingly fine; but the common meat sold in the market is camels flesh. The liver of the animal, and the spare rib, are always eaten raw through the whole country. I never saw one instance where it was dressed with fire: it is not then true that eating raw flesh is peculiar to Abyssinia; it is practised in this instance of camels flesh in all the black countries to the westward.
Hogs flesh is not sold in the market; but all the people of Sennaar eat it publicly: men in office, who pretend to be Mahometans, eat theirs in secret. The Mahometan religion made a very remarkable progress among the Jews and Christians on the Arabian, or eastern side of the Red Sea, and soon after also in Egypt; but it was either received coolly, or not at all, by the Pagans on the west side, unless when, after a signal victory, it was strongly enforced by the sword of the conqueror.
The Saracens, who over-ran this country, were bigots in their religion, as their posterity continue to be at this day. They have preserved the language of the Koran in its ancient purity, and adhere rigidly to the letter of its precepts. They either extirpated the Pagans, or converted them; but this power and tyranny of the Saracens received a check, both in Egypt and Arabia, about the 16th century, by Selim, who established Turkish garrisons in all their principal places on the frontiers of Beja, or Barbaria, and in the Ber el Ajam, or ancient Azamia, along the west coast of the Red Sea.
These Turks were all truly atheists in their hearts, who despised the zeal of the Arabs, and oppressed them so, that Paganism again ventured to shew its head. The Shillook, as I have said before, made an eruption into Beja, and conquered the whole of that country. They became masters of the Arabs, and embraced their religion as a form, but never anxiously followed the law of Mahomet, which did not hold out to them that liberty and relaxation by which it had tempted the Jews and Christians. These the law of Mahomet had freed from many restraints upon pleasures and pursuits forbidden by the gospel, and thus made their yoke easier. But it was not so with the Pagan nations. The Mahometan religion diminished their natural liberty, by imposing prayers, ablutions, alms, circumcision, and suchlike, to which before they were under no obligation. The Pagans therefore of Sennaar, and all the little states to the westward, Dar-Fowr, Dar-Sele, Bagirma, Bornou, and Tombucto, and all that country upon the Niger, called Sudan, trouble themselves very little with the detail of the Mahometan religion, which they embraced merely for the sake of personal freedom and advantages in trade; but they are Pagans in their hearts and in their practices, Mahometans in their conversation only. As for the sons of these, they are Pagans like their fathers, unless some Fakir, or Arab saint, takes pains to instruct and teach them to read, otherwise the whole of their religion consists in the confession of faith, "La Illah el Ullah, Mahomet Rasoul Ullah,"—"There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet."
There are three principal governments in the kingdom of Sennaar. The first is at El-aice, the capital of that country, from which the Shillook come. The Bahar el Abiad spreads itself all over the territory, and, divided into a quantity of small channels, (whether by art or nature I know not) surrounds a number of little islands, upon each of which is a village, and this collection of villages is called the town of El-aice. The inhabitants are all fishermen, and have a number of boats, like canoes, in which they sail up and down to the cataracts. With incredible fleets of these their invasion was made when they undertook the conquest of the Arabs, who had not the smallest warning of the attempt. They had, at that time, no weapons of iron: their swords and lances were of a hard wood called Dengui-Sibber. It must be a relation of the Mek of Sennaar that commands at El-aice; and he is never suffered to leave that post, or come to Sennaar.
The second government, next to this in importance, is Kordofan. The revenue consists chiefly in slaves procured from Dyre and Tegla. It seems this situation is the most convenient for invading those mountains, either from its having water in the way, or from some other circumstance that is not known. Mahomet Abou Kalec had this government, and with him about 1000 black horse, armed with coats of mail, with whom he maintained himself at this time independent of the king. It is a frontier nearest to Dar-Fowr, a black state still more barbarous, if possible, than Sennaar, and by them it often has been taken from Sennaar, and again retaken.