[6] The two great centres of Jewish population are, first, the northern part of Africa between Morocco and Egypt, especially the Barbary States, where they form the chief element of the town population, and where a census is at present mere guesswork; they spread gradually southwards, and since 1858 a trading colony has occupied Timbuctoo on the Niger. The other families in Africa are the Falashas, or Black Jews of Abyssinia, mere proselytes like those of Malabar, and a few Europeans at the Cape of Good Hope. The second great centre is that region of Europe which extends from the Lower Danube to the Baltic; and here there are about four millions who occupy the middle class among the Sclavonic nationalities, while in the whole of Western Europe there are not a hundred and twenty thousand. Their descendants have followed the path of European migrations to America, North and South, and to Australia, where the large commercial towns enable them to multiply as in the Old World, and much more rapidly than the Christian population. The other outlying colonies are in Turkey, European as well as Asiatic, although the Holy Land now contains but a small proportion of their former numbers; in Yemen, especially at Sanaá and Aden, in Nejerán, and other parts of Arabia; along the whole course of the Euphrates, in Kurdistan, Persia, and India, especially in Malabar, where there are white and black Jews; in China and in Cochin China, both colonies being also found; and in the Turkoman countries. Here they inhabit the four fortresses of Shahr-i-sabz, Kulab, Shamatan, and Urta Kurgan, with about thirty small villages; they live in their own quarters, and, except having to pay higher taxes, they are treated on an equal footing with the other inhabitants. [7] This terrible fast is called Ha-fraká. Old men have been known in Syria and Palestine to endure it twice a year, in summer and in winter. They sup on Saturday evening, and till the sunset of the next Saturday they do not allow themselves to swallow even a drop of water or to touch a pinch of snuff. The state of prostration towards the end of the term is extreme, and the first thing done, when the time has passed, is to place the patient in a warm bath. This is probably the severest fast known to the world, unless it be rivalled by certain Hindu ascetics: the Greek and Coptic Christians and the Muhammadans have nothing to compare with it.