These villages are called Dahera, which seems to me to be the same word as Dashrah, the name given to the Kabyles, or people in Barbary, who live in fixed huts on the mountains. But not having made myself master enough of the Kabyles language when in Barbary, and being totally ignorant of that of the Nuba we are now speaking of, I cannot pretend to pursue this resemblance farther. They are immoderately fond of swine's flesh, and maintain great herds of them in their possession. The hogs are of a small kind, generally marked with black and white, exceedingly prolific, and exactly resembling a species of that kind common in the north of Scotland. The Nuba are not circumcised. They very rarely turn Mahometans, but the generality of their children do. Few of them advance higher than to be soldiers and officers in their own corps. The Mek maintains about twelve thousand of these near Sennaar, to keep the Arabs in subjection. They are very quiet, and scarcely ever known to be guilty of any robberies or mutinous disorders, declaring always for the master, that is, the great one set over them. There is no running water in all that immense plain they inhabit, it is all procured from draw-wells. We saw them cleaning one, which I measured, and was nearly eight fathoms deep. In a climate so violently hot as this, there is very little need of fuel, neither have they any, there being no turf, or any thing resembling it, in the country, no wood, not even a tree, since we had passed the river Dender. However, they never eat their meat raw as in Abyssinia; but with the stalk of the dora, or millet, and the dung of camels, they make ovens under ground, in which they roast their hogs whole, in a very cleanly, and not disagreeable manner, keeping the skins on till they are perfectly baked. They had neither flint nor steel wherewith to light their fire at first, but do it in a manner still more expeditious, by taking a small piece of stick, and making a sharp point to it, which they hold perpendicular, and then make a small hole of nearly the same size in another piece of stick, which they lay horizontal; they put the one within the other, and, between their two hands, they turn the perpendicular stick, (in the same manner that we do a chocolate mill) when both these sticks take fire, and flame in a moment upon the friction; so perfectly dry and prepared is everything here upon the surface to take fire, notwithstanding they are every year subject to six months rain.