Lobeid counts five mosques, only one of which is a brick building. This is situated in the quarter of Wady-Naghele; it is quite a plain edifice, without that decoration so generally observed about the places of worship in Egypt. All the other public buildings, as also the houses belonging to the chief Turks, are simple huts of clay, differing from the others merely in their internal arrangements, which consist, however, only in the construction of a few divans. There are three barracks at Lobeid, constituted by a series of straw-huts, likewise about fifty in number, which are enclosed by a fence, furnished with an entrance, the gate of which is represented by a large branch of a tree. The hospital, that terror of all the soldiery, is also erected of clay. One of the largest buildings in Lobeid is the governor’s residence. It is distinguished from the other houses only by its magnitude, and a rather more comfortable arrangement of its interior, for in construction it resembles all the other buildings. There is, in fact, no choice of material; thus the palaces of the great, and the hovels of the lower orders, are raised of clay, and their outer walls covered with a coating of cow-dung. Besides a large saloon and court, the government-house has an orangery. In the court, at the back of the house, the divan, or chamber of audience, is situated, where public business is transacted, and the visits are received of foreigners and natives, as also of all subordinates, who, according to Eastern custom, are obliged to do honour to the governor periodically. To the left of this saloon is the lesser divan, as it is called, in which a captain disposes of the less important matters, or arranges disputes, and other trifling affairs, that the governor may not be unnecessarily troubled. The scriptoria of the Coptic secretaries, met with in all Mehemed Ali’s divans are situate on the left of the court. During my residence in Kordofan, Mahommed Bey, colonel of the first regiment of the line, was at the same time civil and military governor of the province. This man, a Circassian by birth, who was brought as a slave to Egypt, became a mameluke of Mehemed Ali’s, and in a short time rose to his present high station. He is a man of very limited capacity, without the slightest education, and is entirely governed by his dependants and flatterers. Besides his ignorance, he possessed a very large share of pride, and knew how to keep up the appearance of great importance and dignity; he passed, however, the greater part of his time in conversation with a fakeér, to whom he paid far more attention than to his other subordinates, and whose visits were far more agreeable to him than those of his officers. He could not write at all, could read but little, and only understood how to make the impression of his kashef[68] (seal). If instructions, or other orders, arrived from Cairo, his secretary, a copt, was obliged to read them aloud, and when he came to a passage which