Although my fatigue by day made repose by night very essential to me, my rest was sadly disturbed by the habits of my people. Quite intolerable at times was the eternal babbling of their prayers, which, beginning in the evening hours, were wearily prolonged, and nothing could accustom me to the clamour which they made. They seemed at times to drive me in my impatience well-nigh to distraction. Some priests had arrived from Darfoor, who surpassed all else in the clamour they raised. With a lot of gibberish utterly incomprehensible, through their antiquated pronunciation, to any of the Nubians, they proceeded to recite the verses of the Koran with the grinding monotony of a mill. My own people, however, devoted Mohammedans as they were, on these occasions took my part, and warned off the disturbers of my rest from the proximity of the hut. I cannot tell whether they were not such enthusiastic believers, or whether their animosity was excited by the bombastic erudition of the Foorians, but they set to work in earnest, and made a clearance as effectual as I had once seen accomplished by the officers of the liberal-tyrannical government of Muntass Bey in Suakin. That ruler, when I had last been residing in his town, had had the unparalleled audacity to send his Khavasses into the neighbouring mosque, and to threaten to make a free use of the kurbatch if the prayers at night were not promptly stopped. He sent a message to the effect that if the priests wanted to pray they need not shriek, for Allah could hear just as well without the outcry. The daring of such an intrusion had never been matched from the day of creation onwards. Idrees, the superintendent of the Seriba, had eleven sons all nearly of the same age, a circumstance readily explained by his plurality of wives. For these youths, whom the children of other residents were allowed to join, he had instituted something like a regular Jewish school, and no one who has ever had the chance of witnessing the proceedings of such an institution can forget the sensation they left upon his ears. Four times in the course of the four-and-twenty hours, at intervals of four hours apart, does the chorus of voices in these Nubian schools break out in alternate humming, and buzzing, and shouting, occasionally varied by the didactic hammering of the master, by the switch of his rod, and the consequent screams of the youngsters, which were invariably followed by a louder and livelier articulation. There is one school time just before sunset and another very shortly after, so that every attempt at repose is certain to be thwarted. However, I could always endure this disturbance with much more equanimity than the humbug of the prayers; for, however erroneous, according to our ideas, might be the method of instruction in school, yet its object at least was laudable.