[Footnote 54: The river Nile lost its transparency four days before the army reached Sennaar. The day that presents the river troubled, marks the commencement of its augmentation. The day before we observed this change in the Nile, its waters were very clear and transparent. The day after, they were brown with mud.] [Footnote 55: Sennaar has three market-places. On our arrival we found them deserted, but on assurances from the Pasha that all sellers should receive a fair price for their commodities, the principal one in a few days began to be filled. The articles I saw there during my stay in Sennaar, were as follows: Meat of camels, kine, sheep, and goats; a few cat-fish from the river, plenty of a vegetable called meholakea; some limes, a few melons, cucumbers, dried barmea, a vegetable common in Egypt; beans, durra, duchan, tobacco of the country, plenty of gum arable, with which, by the way, Sennaar abounds, (the natives use it in their cookery;) drugs and spices brought from Gidda, among which I observed ginger, pepper, and cloves; and great quantities of dried odoriferous herbs found in Sennaar, with which the natives season their dishes; to which must be added, aplenty of the long cotton cloths used for dress in Sennaar. Such were the articles offered for sale by the people of the country. In addition to which, the suttlers of our army offered for sale, tobacco, coffee, rice, sugar, shirts, drawers, shoes, gun flints, &c. &c. all at a price three or four times greater than they could be bought for at Cairo. In some parts of the market-place the Turks established coffee-houses, and the Greeks who accompanied the army, cook-shops. These places became the resort of every body who wanted to buy something to eat, or to hear the news of the day. There might be seen soldiers in their shirts and drawers, hawking about their breeches for sale in order to be able to buy a joint of meat to relish their rations of durra withal, and cursing bitterly their luck in that they had not received any pay for eight months; while the solemn Turk of rank perambulated the area, involved, like pious Eneas at Carthage, in a veil of clouds exhaling from a long amber headed pipe. All around you you might hear much hard swearing in favor of the most palpable lies; the seller in favor of his goods, and the buyer in favor of his Egyptian piasters. In one place a crowd collects around somebody or other lying on the ground without his head on, on account of some misdemeanor; a little farther on, thirty or forty soldiers are engaged in driving, with repeated strokes of heavy mallets, sharp pointed pieces of timber, six or eight inches square, up the posteriors of some luckless insurgents who had had the audacity to endeavor to defend their country and their liberty; the women of the country meantime standing at a distance, and exclaiming, "that it was scandalous to make men die in so indecent a manner, and protesting that such a death was only fit for a Christian,"