Since the feast day of the Aid Kebir there had been on an evening an assembly of persons before the sheikh’s gate; when the most athletic and active of the slaves came out and wrestled in the presence of their masters, and the sheikh himself, who usually took his post at a little window over the principal gate of the palace. Barca Gana, Ali Gana, Wormah, Tirab, and all the chiefs, were usually seated on mats in the inner ring, and I generally took my place beside them. Quickness and main strength were the qualifications which ensured victory: they struggled with a bitterness which could scarcely have been exceeded in the armed contests of the Roman gladiators, and which was greatly augmented by the voices of their masters, urging them to the most strenuous exertion of their powers. A rude trumpet, of the buffalo’s horn, sounded to the attack; and the combatants entered the arena naked, with the exception of a leathern girdle about the loins; and those who had been victorious on former occasions were received with loud acclamations by the spectators. Slaves of all nations were first matched against each other; of these the natives of Soudan were the least powerful, and seldom victors. The most arduous struggles were between the Musgowy and the Begharmi negroes: some of these slaves, and particularly the latter, were beautifully formed, and of gigantic stature; but the feats of the day always closed by the matching of two Begharmis against each other—and dislocated limbs, or death, were often the consequence of these kindred encounters. They commence by placing their hands on each other’s shoulders; of their feet they make no use, but frequently stoop down, and practise a hundred deceptions to throw the adversary off his guard; when the other will seize his antagonist by the hips, and after holding him in the air, dash him against the ground with stunning violence, where he lies covered with blood, and unable to pursue the contest. A conqueror of this kind is greeted by loud shouts, and several vests will be thrown to him by the spectators; and, on kneeling at his master’s feet, which always concludes the triumph, he is often habited by the slaves near his lord in a tobe of the value of thirty or forty dollars; or, what is esteemed as a still higher mark of favour, one of the tobes worn by his chief is taken off, and thrown on the back of the conqueror. I have seen them foam and bleed at the mouth and nose from pure rage and exertion, their owners all the time vying with each other in using expressions most likely to excite their fury: one chief will draw a pistol, and swear by the Koran that his slave shall not survive an instant his defeat, and, with the same breath, offer him great rewards if he conquers. Both of these promises are sometimes too faithfully kept; and one poor wretch, who had withstood the attacks of a ponderous negro, much more than his match, from some country to the south of Mandara, for more than fifty minutes,