The banks of the Nile about Sennaar resemble the pleasantest parts of Holland in the summer season; but soon after, when the rains cease, and the sun exerts his utmost influence, the dora begins to ripen, the leaves to turn yellow and to rot, the lakes to putrify, smell, and be full of vermin, all this beauty suddenly disappears; bare, scorched Nubia returns, and all its terrors of poisonous winds and moving sands, glowing and ventilated with sultry blasts, which are followed by a troop of terrible attendants, epilepsies, apoplexies, violent fevers, obstinate agues, and lingering, painful dysenteries, still more obstinate and mortal. War and treason seem to be the only employment of this horrid people, whom Heaven has separated, by almost impassable deserts, from the rest of mankind, confining them to an accursed spot, seemingly to give them earnest in time of the only other worse which he has reserved to them for an eternal hereafter. The dress of Sennaar is very simple. It consists of a long shirt of blue Surat cloth called Marowty, which covers them from the lower part of the neck down to their feet, but does not conceal the neck itself; and this is the only difference between the men's and the women's dress; that of the women covers their neck altogether, being buttoned like ours. The men have sometimes a sash tied about their middle; and both men and women go bare-footed in the house, even those of the better sort of people. Their floors are covered with Persian carpets, especially the women's apartments. In fair weather, they wear sandals; and without doors they use a kind of wooden patten, very neatly ornamented with shells. In the greatest heat at noon, they order buckets of water to be thrown upon them instead of bathing. Both men and women anoint themselves, at least once a-day, with camels grease mixed with civet, which they imagine softens their skin, and preserves them from cutaneous eruptions, of which they are so fearful, that the smallest pimple in any visible part of their body keeps them in the house till it disappears. For the same reason, though they have a clean shirt every day, they use one dipt in grease to lie in all night, as they have no covering but this, and lie upon a bull's hide, tanned, and very much softened by this constant greasing, and at the same time very cool, though it occasions a smell that no washing can free them from.