The manner of life of the Arabs is very simple. Most of the men have only a single cotton wrap about their middle, though some wear the ordinary galabia and cotton drawers. Their camps are rude tents of matting about two metres in diameter, but the men commonly sleep in the open, sheltering themselves from winds by their camel saddles, covered only with their cotton wrap, which they spread over their entire bodies, including their heads. They wear no head covering, having heavy “mops” of curled black hair plentifully supplied with mutton fat. Their food consists almost entirely of milk and meat, of which their flocks and herds give them a plentiful supply; they eat but little bread, but they are fond of a kind of gruel of flour and water, and of dates, which are imported from Arabia _via_ Suakin. Only a few of them smoke tobacco, and that generally in soapstone pipes which they carve out for themselves. Intoxicants are unknown amongst true desert Arabs. For arms, they carry swords and knives, seldom fire-arms. Of their tribal customs, I saw but little; Linant de Bellefonds gives an interesting account of them in his “L’Etbaye.” On festive occasions, camel-racing and dancing are favourite amusements. Slavery appears to be non-existent at present, for in the course of my twenty months’ wanderings I received no complaint under this head, as I should almost certainly have done had any oppressive servitude existed. =Languages.= My own study of the Ababda and Bishari tongues has been mainly confined to their geographical terms. The Ababda nowadays almost all speak Arabic, and most of their place-names are either Arabic or closely akin to it. A marked feature of their tongue is a fondness for diminutives. Thus we have _Sellim_ and _Seleim_, _Hafafit_ and _Hefeifit_, _Faraid_, and _Fereyid_, _Wadi_ and _Wadai_, in each of which the second of the pair is a diminutive formed by vowel-change, generally accompanied by a change in the placing of the stress. The commonest special geographical terms in Ababda country are: _erf_, a ridge; _rod_, a tributary wadi; _talet_, a small tributary wadi; _kab_, a watershed or pass; _hamrat_, a (red) granite mountain; _zergat_, a black mountain; _galt_, a rock basin containing rain water; and _megal_, a small water hole. Thus we have such names as _Hamrat Selma_, _Zergat Naam_, and so on, the name often giving a clue to the nature of the rock.