_Sungar.—Feb._ 14. We have been eleven hours in the district of El Elayat. We left the small village at the commencement of the Wady this morning at seven, and encamped here at sunset. This is the last village of the Wady. We have suffered more from fatigue than before; the road, or rather path, having led for a long time over the hills. Immediately after starting, we left the valley of the Nile for an hour and a half. That part of the road was not very fatiguing. We passed Seboua at eleven, and at two P.M. left the Nile, and were obliged to alight from our camels and climb the mountain, for three hours, over the most difficult paths we have yet met with. A notion prevails in Europe, that camels are incapable of crossing rough mountainous and stony roads; I can only say that, upon this rocky, and sometimes steep path, none of our camels fell; had we used horses, the difficulty would certainly have been as great, particularly when heavy loads were upon their backs. I would not have ventured to ride over, even on a mule. The mountains are of sandstone, some also of hornblende. I sketched, this evening, a native of this district, my dragoman in the mean time keeping him in conversation till I finished my sketch, without his having any suspicion what I was doing. All the Nubians have a superstitious prejudice against having their portraits drawn. I made some enquiries about the village, its name, the number of houses, and of inhabitants, &c. The poor peasants imagined I was employed by the Pasha to take an account of the country. Apprehensive that I should cause their taxes to be raised, they gave me a lamentable description of their poverty, saying that there were indeed eleven houses, but they were all tumbling to pieces; that they were miserably poor; had scarcely a rag to cover them; that their land did produce some little cotton and barley, but if I caused their taxes to be increased, they could not subsist, but must absolutely die of starvation. Man here may be said only to vegetate. He drags on, from day to day, a miserable existence, living on the coarsest food, and ignorant of any comfort. In examining, however, more closely, we find the peasants of Nubia possessing some great advantages over those of Lower and Upper Egypt. Their domestic comfort is decidedly greater. Their women, unlike those of Egypt, have always their faces uncovered, and enjoy in other respects much freedom; while that depravity as regards both sexes, which pervades the whole land of Egypt, is almost utterly unknown in these Nubian villages. They are also less oppressed; and, thanks to the poverty of their country, less annoyed by the presence of their rulers. Their predominant vice is drinking immoderately of bouza and arracki. There being only three mosques from the first to the second cataract, a distance of more than 220 miles, and their almost total deficiency of religious instruction, are perhaps some excuse for