In Kourma, the merchants who occupy almost the whole of the place, are called the _Jeiâra_, most of them born in the Upper Egypt. Exclusively of them and their dependents, the number of people in that town is inconsiderable. Twice in the week a market is held there for meat and other provisions, as at Cobbé. Cubcabîa is a considerable town, and its inhabitants various and numerous. It forms the key of the Western roads, as Sweini of the Northern; and is the depôt of all the merchandize that is brought from that quarter. A market is held there twice a week, in which the chief medium of exchange for articles of small value is salt, which the inhabitants make by collecting and boiling the earth of those places where horses, asses, or other animals have been long stationary. This market is celebrated for the quantity of _tokeas_, and for the manufacture, if so it may be called, of leather, which they are very dextrous in stripping of the hair, tanning, and then forming into large and durable sacks for corn, (_geraubs_,) water, (_ray_,) and other purposes. The tokeas are cotton cloths, of five, six, or eight yards long, and eighteen to twenty-two inches wide: they are strong but coarse, and form the covering of all the lower class of both sexes. The inhabitants are partly Fûrians, who speak their own language, in part Arabs, and partly from some of the Western countries, as Bergoo, &c. There are also some of the race called _Felatîa_, and other descriptions. In Cours are found some merchants from the river; the remainder are _fukkara_, who affect extraordinary sanctity, and are distinguished for their intolerance and brutality to strangers. Rîl is inhabited partly by Fûrians; but there are also some foreign merchants. During the reign of Sultan Teraub there appear to have been many more there; for he had built a house, and made the town his usual residence in time of peace. But Abd-el-rachmân has abandoned it, probably from the fear attendant on usurpation. Rîl[40] is the key of the South and East roads, as Cubcabîa of the West, and Sweini of the North; and therefore a Melek with a body of troops commonly resides there, as a guard to the frontier, and to keep the Arabs, who abound in that neighbourhood, in subjection. It is a place eminently fitted for the Imperial residence, being abundantly supplied with fresh water from a large pool, which is never completely dry, with bread from _Saïd_[41], with meat, milk, and butter from the Arabs, who breed cattle, and with vegetables from a soil well adapted to horticulture; nor are they without a kind of tenacious clay, which, with little preparation, becomes a durable material for building. In Shoba, another town of some note, was an house of Sultan Teraub. The place is said to be well supplied with water, and there are some chalk pits near it, from which that material was drawn at the time I was in the country. These pits were then almost exhausted,