The principal diet of the poorer sort is millet, made into bread or flour. The rich make a pudding of this, toasting the flour before the fire, and pouring milk and butter into it; besides which, they eat beef, partly roasted and partly raw. Their horned cattle are the largest and fattest in the world, and are exceedingly fine; but the common meat sold in the market is camels flesh. The liver of the animal, and the spare rib, are always eaten raw through the whole country. I never saw one instance where it was dressed with fire: it is not then true that eating raw flesh is peculiar to Abyssinia; it is practised in this instance of camels flesh in all the black countries to the westward. Hogs flesh is not sold in the market; but all the people of Sennaar eat it publicly: men in office, who pretend to be Mahometans, eat theirs in secret. The Mahometan religion made a very remarkable progress among the Jews and Christians on the Arabian, or eastern side of the Red Sea, and soon after also in Egypt; but it was either received coolly, or not at all, by the Pagans on the west side, unless when, after a signal victory, it was strongly enforced by the sword of the conqueror. The Saracens, who over-ran this country, were bigots in their religion, as their posterity continue to be at this day. They have preserved the language of the Koran in its ancient purity, and adhere rigidly to the letter of its precepts. They either extirpated the Pagans, or converted them; but this power and tyranny of the Saracens received a check, both in Egypt and Arabia, about the 16th century, by Selim, who established Turkish garrisons in all their principal places on the frontiers of Beja, or Barbaria, and in the Ber el Ajam, or ancient Azamia, along the west coast of the Red Sea.