Blacks.In the northern hills the inhabitants called Nuba Arabs speak Arabic and have copied the habits of the village Arabs. They are black and have woolly hair but their features are more prominent than is the case with the southern tribes: they are not negroes. They live chiefly in straw tukls at the foot of their hills, though at Jebel Haraza some still live on the hillside. At Jebel Um Durrug the ruins of a very large village can be seen on the north side of Jebel Kershungal (the highest peak), near the largest well (a crack in the rock). At Jebel Abu Hadid there is also a large ruined village on the side of Jebel El Hella. At Jebel Atshan and Jebel Maganus, now entirely deserted by the Nubas, the ruins of small circular stone huts can be traced.
In the southern hills, as at Jebel Tagale, Jebel Daier, Jebel El Joghub, etc., the natives are pure, or nearly pure, Nubas, and speak Nuba, though most hills have different dialects. But there are also several hills occupied by escaped slaves. These consist of negroes of mixed origin, and call themselves after the tribe they escaped from. Thus at Jebel Eliri there are Hawazmas and Kawahlas; at Jebel Krondi, Hawazmas; and at Jebel Talodi, Homrs. They speak Arabic, and have little intercourse with the Nubas.
The Nubas are split up into innumerable tribes, each under a mek, who is generally on bad terms with his neighbours. Mek Geili, of Tagale, is one of the most powerful. He is a Jaalin by extraction; it is not uncommon for the mek to be of Arab descent. Each mek is assisted by a “kugur.” who acts as chief rain-maker and adviser to the tribe, his power being dependent chiefly on his astuteness. He is often the only man who can speak any Arabic.
Living in the zone of good rains they raise large crops of dura round the base of their hills. They make, in good years, large quantities of merissa (native beer), and drunkenness is very common. They own a good many cattle. The men, as a rule, wear no clothing, and the young women are usually contented with an elaborately plaited head of hair and a girdle of beads, from which a strip of cotton 3 or 4 inches wide depends, both in front and behind. But in places the latter garment is replaced by a strip of dom palm an inch wide. The married women generally wear either a cotton robe or a goat or sheep-skin. In many places the whole body is covered with a mixture of red clay and oil; and each tuft of hair, which is generally very short, is covered with a lump of red clay to make it stand out at right angles to the head. Cotton clothes, are, however, gradually coming into fashion in the less remote hills.
NUBA WOMAN, DAUGHTER AND BABY.
In most of the hills there are a good many rifles, but ammunition is scarce. The Remington rifle is the most common, but old Italian ones, magazine and single-loaders, are seen. Ammunition is manufactured locally, match-heads being often used as a substitute for caps.
A man who owns a rifle, even if his bandolier be empty, always carries it for appearance sake. In January, 1900, it was estimated that Mek Geili alone had 1,500 rifles. The other arms carried are knob-kerries and spears, but no shields. The blacks chiefly fear being raided by horsemen when they are cutting their crops on the plains at the foot of their hills. To disconcert the Arab horsemen they leave the trunks of the trees about 2 or 3 feet high when they clear the ground, and also make pit-falls with spikes at the bottom. A horse running against one of these stumps hidden in the dura gives his rider a bad fall and enables the fleeing black to turn on his pursuer or escape to the hills. Their houses used to be always built high up on the hill, and any gullies or valleys closed by stone walls high enough and strong enough to be easily defended, but now they are beginning to build in the plains. They also take care, as a rule, to have water inside their defences; they were thus able to hold out successfully against the Dervish expeditions which were sent against them from time to time. It is also probable that having been constantly raided for slaves by the Government troops they had discovered the best means of escape and of defence even before the Mahdia.
It is difficult to say how they will develop now that they no longer live in fear of the Arab. They are lazy, but have had no inducements to work. Easily angered, their quarrels do not seem to last long; in fact, they are primitive children who require constant watching lest they become unmanageable, and constant protection lest other races abuse their ignorance, improvidence, or credulity.
Habitations.In a few places, such as El Dueim and El Obeid, there are mud houses with flat roofs. But the natives mostly live in conical-shaped straw huts (tukls) or in box-shaped shelters called “rakubas.” The house is generally surrounded by a thorn fence, inside which the sheep and goats are kept at night.