a Fakeér would appear to be hereditary, for they descend generally from father to son, and are not so easily transferred from one family to another. They also make vows, for example, not to smoke for the remainder of their lives, to abstain from merissa and coffee, each man choosing the hardship he likes best; in short, they are the same as the Derweéshes among the Turks, but with this wide difference, that they are looked upon as saints. I found the greatest number of Fakeérs among the Dongolavi, who are also the most rigid observers of the Mahommedan religion, with one single exception, that they are very fond of brandy. They do not follow agricultural pursuits, but are merchants, brokers, &c. They are said, as a rule, to be all capable of reading and writing, and wear a long string of large wooden beads round their necks. The majority of them are hypocrites, and indeed it is better to avoid them altogether. The Mahommedan negroes all live in a state of the most abject ignorance. Not many Fakeérs are to be met with among them, and, with the exception of circumcision, they bear in fact very few signs of belonging to the Mahommedan religion. They have some peculiar ideas of their own on matters of faith, for example, on the creation of the world, and mix up a great deal of superstition with the Koran, with which they are altogether but very little acquainted. Thus an old negro explained to me why God Almighty allowed white men, dark-coloured, and black men, to live together in this world. When, namely, our first parents were driven out of Paradise after committing the original sin, the Lord came down from heaven every day to see his orders strictly obeyed, and to convince himself that they gained their daily bread with the sweat of their brow. Eve, or as the negroes call our first mother, _Hauve_, bore daily many hundred children, which she was obliged to shew to the _Abou_, (God the Father) who sent them into all parts of the world there to multiply. It happened once that _Hauve_ brought several hundred children into the world of a darker colour. When _Abou_ came and saw these, he reproached _Hauve_, and said he would not have any more of these dark babes, took them immediately away from her, and transplanted them into the present Abyssinia. Shortly after this, _Hauve_ brought forth another lot of similar children, which for fear of the _Abou_, she locked in an oven to secrete them; but _Abou_, on his arrival, had a suspicion of what had transpired, and as he did not receive a satisfactory answer from _Hauve_ respecting the last children, hunted for them everywhere, and found them eventually in the oven. When they crept out of their place of confinement, they were all quite black with the soot. _Abou_ in his wrath at this second offence on the part of _Hauve_, again took away her children, and swore that they should, in commemoration of their mother’s crime, remain for ever as black as when they emerged from the oven,