villages, curds and bread are served up in the dish at meals. The poorer class have not always assida, but the woika alone, and bread and milk. When the contents of a dish are coming to an end, one man rises after the other. The master of the house receives no thanks, nor does he, indeed, expect them; for it is regarded as an understood thing, that every one must be satisfied who happens to be present at the time of the meals. They wash their hands before, and after eating, and the same ablution is performed in the evening at sun-set. During the dinner, water is only handed round in gourds to drink; when the meal is over the merissa is served up. This description of beer is met with in all the villages of Kordofan with but few exceptions; and even among the nomadic tribes, it is seldom missing, except, indeed, when the harvest has been particularly unsuccessful. Merissa is brewed in the following manner:—the dokn forms the chief basis: it is allowed to germinate first, as the barley in Germany, dried in the sun, and then bruised between stones. Cakes of bread are now made, placed in a pot and covered with water, and when this liquor has sufficiently fermented,—a process requiring two days,—it is filtered through a sieve formed of rushes. This merissa must be drunk immediately, for with the third day it begins to turn acid, a result which is not to be wondered at considering the intense heat of the climate, for they have no cellars in which they could preserve it for any length of time. The same merissa repeatedly filtered until it has become clearer is called _bill-bill_; but _bill-bill_ prepared with sugar, nutmeg, cloves, and other optional drugs forms _sansugot_. The latter beverage is made in various ways. It is an agreeable drink and very cooling. As a rule it is far more conducive to health to drink a larger quantity of merissa than of water in this climate, and I advise travellers in particular to observe this prescription, the more so as I found by experience that, as soon as I discontinued water, and commenced drinking merissa and brandy, the fever and dysentery, of which I could not get rid before, left me. I have also known natives, who, confining themselves to merissa, never drank one drop of water throughout the year, and these men were, without exception, the healthiest; whereas the water-drinkers were always attacked with fever during the rainy season.