The Hickman courier., 1877-11-02
Black, but COmely.

Black, but COmeIy.
The Nubians are the finest race in
Egypt, and are in every respect a pecu-
liar people. They are black, but it is a
iustrous sable not unpleasant to the eye.
They have handsome, expressive counte-
nances, bright eyes, well-shaped heads
and high foreheads. The hair naturally
curls in ringlets. They are the best look
ing specimens of the negro branch of the
human family l have ever met. They
are naturally intelligent, are g0od-hu-
mored and very agreeable in their man
ners. They have the appearance of apeople
relapsed from a state of civilization to
their present semi-barbarous condition.
Their favorite dress is nudity in the
female sex a string of bead-embroidered-
cloth about the loins. They live on or
near the banks of the Nile, and from its
waters they draw their chief substance.
Th swimmer, women and children
like ducks; have no fear of crocodiles,
and often seek fight with them, being
very dexterous in the use of the knife,
and rarely fail to plunge it into the throat
of the monster. In this part of the
Nile the crocodile yet abOunds. Steam
boats and the rude treatment they have
received from the hands of strangers
have driven them from below the first
cataract into the less frequented waters
of Nubia. The Nubians have and in
genious way of catching the crocodile on
land. 1t is custom of the animal to
crawl out of the water on to the sand
banks in the middle of the river, there
with their family to take their siesta.
The Nubians in these places digs a pit,
covers it with bushes and sprinkling OF
sand, as if the wind had drifted it there.
The crocodiles are no sooner gathered
on this fragile covering than it gives way
and they fall into the pit beneath. As
they cannot extricate themselves they
are easily killed. Their skin is used fer
shields, and sometimes are stuffed in
order to be sold to travellers. The Nu-
bian's favorite arms are a javelin and a
shield of hippOpotamus or crocodile hide.
Further south, in Kordofsn, Senaar
and Darfour, appears the full-blooded
African, with his coal-Black skin, woolly
hair, thick lips and gross features. He
has but little taste for civilization. He
is naturally barbarian with savage in
stincts, with few wants to supply, and
living off . whatever nature places
within his reach. His gods are the works
of his own hands, rude idols OF wood and
stone, to whom he offers in sacrifice the
captives he has taken in battle. He Is
perpetually in war, for he loves the smell
of blood, and he has little sense of hui
manity. He haunts his fellow black men
in their jungles, or he overpowers them
in their stockaded, mud-built villages at
night links them together in droves, and
sells them to the slave traders. Col. Ba-
ker, whom the khedive has appointed
governor of Soudan, has full power TO
break up the cruel traffic. Not long
since he wrote to him 20 Use all the
means at his disposal, in any way he
chose, to put an end to it. This will be
difficult to do; for beyond the confines
of Darfour are the great slave hunting
fields, where internicine war eternally
reigns, and where, notwithstanding wars,
massacres, >ld disease, the human race
seems to multiply, as it were, from the
fertilization of the earth with its own
blood.
Unhealthy as the climate is in the
denser parts of Africa, where land and
water contend for the mastery, where the
people live an amphibious existence
among the morasses or in the forest wilds,
it is strange hatepidemics are rare. The
contagious maladies that sweep off whole
elsewhere are comparatively
unknown where it might be reasonably
supposed they would most prevail.
Egypt may now be considered to extend
to the equator. The whole country has
not been explored or opened to inter
course to that point but it acknowledges
the supremacy of the khedive, and in /
course of time we shall be made &C
quainted with all of its productions
Darfour, which is said to have a popu-
lation of 100000, has been in state of
Colonel Gordon, by the
adoption of polite measures, put down
the movement, and peace now reigns.-
PhiLndeIDhin Press.