This race differs widely from the Arabs, and all adjoining nations. They dwell on the banks of the Nile, and, wherever the soil is found favourable, plant date trees, sink wells for irrigation, and sow various kinds of leguminous plants.
Blumenbach was forcibly struck with the resemblance of the Barabras to the figures and paintings to be met with on the different monuments of ancient Egypt. This people, like the Egyptians, have a reddish black skin, but of a much darker tint. The characteristic features of the pure Barabras are oval and somewhat long faces, with aquiline noses, very well formed and slightly rounded towards the point, lips thick without being protruding, a receding chin, thin beard, animated eyes, very curly but never frizzled hair, a body perfectly in proportion and usually of the middle height, and lastly a bronze-coloured skin.
The Barabras are classed in three groups, each of which has a dialect of its own, namely, the Noubas or Nubians, the Kenous, and the Dongoulahs; all of whom inhabit the Nile valley.
According to Burckhardt the Noubas differ in many respects from the Negroes, especially in the softness of their skin, which is very smooth and flexible, while the palm of a genuine Negro’s hand is rough and as hard as wood. Their noses, too, are less flat, their lips less thick, and their cheek-bones less prominent than those of a Negro. Pritchard’s opinion is that the Barabras probably migrated from Kordofan.
A description of this race is also to be found in the “Voyage en Egypte,” by MM. Henri Cammas and André Lefèvre, by whom the country was explored in 1860, and from its pages we take the following extract:—
“We are in Nubia, and Arabic is no longer spoken. The inhabitants, though usually inoffensive, have nevertheless a warlike gait; the dagger hanging by a strap to their arm, their ironwood bow and their buckler of crocodile hide are the tokens and protectors of their liberty. Their rulers obtain nothing from them except by force.
“The moment the river recedes, these vigorous husbandmen dispute with it for the fertilizing slime which suffices for a fourfold harvest.
“Do not imagine that they labour: it is enough for them when they have sown pinches of corn in shallow holes, for nature does all the rest.
“So favoured a climate, as may well be imagined, does not impose on the Nubian the inconvenience of having to wear clothing. The majority carry nothing more upon them than a few weapons and their dusky skins. The women’s costumes are oddly fashioned. They stain their lips and twist their hair into numberless tiny plaits, which are not re-made every day. Egyptian females would look on them as indecent, for allowing the lower part of the face to be seen; and more than that even, the girls, up to the time of their marriage, wear no covering beyond a narrow girdle. The villages are rather near each other, and seldom consist of more than fifteen or twenty earthen huts, having flat roofs thatched with palm branches. In front of the cabins are ranged, as at Dolce for instance, large jars, in which the corn is kept stored.