earnest conversation, cowering near them. Other dealers have dried dates in leathern bags, while under the shade of a few palm-leaves will be seen one or two old black women selling sour milk in dark porous jars, fluid butter, and common oil in bottles. Running messengers, itinerant dealers, officers, quietly watching the trading, busy merchants, and common soldiers, saunter about. Now and then a camel or a mule will push through the crowd, and not unfrequently a fight takes place, when the two parties abuse each other vehemently; but they do not use their sticks or lances. Young and old beggars are plentiful, but pickpocketing is not in vogue among this thieving people, although robbing from the stalls is a common occurrence.

During the time of market, and in the evening, the three coffee-houses of Kassala are in great activity. They are the places of assembly for every grade of society, as, from the Moslem law, every one who can pay may enter a custom very disagreeable to the European. Some of the guests sit cross-legged on the ground, others recline on the couches, filling the shady but dirty verandah with many curious groups. One will be composed of several turbaned officers playing at dominoes, while police, with swords and long pistols in their belts, a smartly dressed Armenian pedlar, and a dissolute, greasy native, exacting, in his character of saint, respectful salutation from the rest, will form another. Beggars drive a flourishing business here, and as soon as they have accumulated five paras, they will sit down, without hesitation, next to a man clothed in a bright silk or snow-white robe, from whom they have probably solicited alms, and complacently drink their coffee. One or two women of doubtful reputation, with loose, voluminous dresses, and many gold and silver rings and buckles, smoke their water-pipes (shish) with uncovered faces.

An ordinary room is ten yards long, and about the same broad, while the height may be estimated at about seven yards. A door that will hardly close, two large openings for windows, coarse, yellow mud walls, the ceiling of the unhewn trunks of palm-trees, and along the walls a bank of earth two feet high, complete the sketch. The inmates of such a room are lizards seven inches in length, large black ants, some hairy tarantulas, and perhaps a scorpion. The fireplace is in the court before the house, and there all the cooking is performed.

It is most difficult to carry back the present race of people to their proper origin from the language alone, the mixture of speech and borrowed words rendering the sifting of foreign property a hard task. All certain historical reminiscences are lost among these wandering predatory people, and from the language, manners, and customs only can we ascertain in what degree of relationship are the different tribes. The manners, traditions, and laws all point to the predominance of Arabian blood in Eastern Sudan, and the idea is supported by the peculiarities in the structure of the body. Of course much of the Nuba or negro element is disseminated by slaves and prisoners captured in war, but they always hold an inferior position. The inhabitants of Kassala and of Al-gadan are of a pale-brown complexion. The men are more powerful than the Hadandawas, but have the same immense bend in the back, wellformed hands and feet, thick lips, high cheek-bones, and eyes placed aslant in the head. Many wear a massive silver ring in their prominent

ears, and their clothing is nothing beyond a piece of woollen stuff, and sandals to protect their feet. The Tūkrūri, or natives of Bornu and Kurdufan, are of moderate height and slender form, but with great muscular power. The large protruding mouth, broad lips, wide flat nose, woolly hair, and strong hands and feet, complete the type of a genuine African people. The head, closely shaved by the men, is inclined to a point at the top, and weighty at the back, which, with the low forehead, shows the important difference between the light-coloured and the black people. The women have the same powerful frame, and wear their hair, strongly impregnated with grease, in small curls round the head, sometimes divided twice down the middle. They also insert a red button or a silver ring in the right nostril. Their large feet, thick arms, and stout figures are far from graceful, and inquisitiveness, frivolity, and dissipation may be read in the faces of many. The three last characteristics are particularly striking, as they are not allowed to be apparent to strangers in the Arab, Turkish, and Coptic women. On the other hand, the upright, elastic carriage of the barefooted women is a pleasing contrast to the slow, languid walk of the Arab women, or to the difficult movement of the Turkish women, in their thick veils and black brequas, or masks.

With the exception of the Kunama, or Baza (also called Shangalla), who live as far south as the Setit, near the frontier of Abyssinia, all the tribes recognise the Islam, and according to Carl von Wickenrode, all observations tend to prove this a religion especially adapted to them, the spiritual Christianity finding entrance most difficult. The Sudanese will not reflect. Morality, duty, and love are hardly understood; and other obligations, such as respect for the property of others, or neighbourly love, are troublesome compulsions. The free son of the desert finds it very comfortable to murmur a prayer, mechanically, at sunset and sunrise, his face turned to the east; for the rest, he does as he likes, so long as no visible power forces him to do otherwise. In all the Arabian races it is the outward form, and not the inner meaning, of the Islam that has penetrated to the people, and the enforced annual pilgrimage to Mekka, with all its fanaticism, increases the votaries of Muhammad more and more, without any help of missionaries. The teachings of Muhammad are pleasant, easily mastered, and in every way suitable for the warm country and its inhabitants. The climate develops the body more rapidly, makes the blood pulsate quicker through the veins, and renders the people passionate and sensual; therefore they will adhere to the outer forms of a religion which, notwithstanding its requirements, places no bridle on their acts. Eastern hospitality makes inns superfluous; but it is not considered by all as a duty, but merely exercised because it is a custom, and sometimes in a very niggardly manner. This praiseworthy custom is much abused, and the multitude of vagabonds who make the country unsafe, live by this

means.

SCENERY AND SOCIETY IN MAURITIUS.*

PEOPLE who have "done" their Rhine and their Alps, their Italy and Spain, and are in want of the excitement of novelty, such as is to be obtained by tropical scenery in its highest perfection, yet without being deprived of the luxuries of civilisation, should embark at Suez and land at the Grand Hôtel de l'Europe, at Port Louis, on the classic shores of "Paul and Virginia." It is not that the said Grand Hôtel is a precise counterpart of its namesake on the boulevards; the rooms are, or were, not overclean, the attendance is slovenly, the cuisine is barbarian, but every one is on hospitality bent in Mauritius; and then there is, as a compensation, the bustle of life contrasted with the most exquisitely beautiful scenery. In the town itself there are heat, dust, dirt, smells intolerable, clamour indescribable, screeching mules by the hundreds, all biting one another, all kicking everything they can kick, with sweating, bellowing Malabars incessantly belabouring them. "Oh, what a hubbub! what discordant sounds from men and brutes-perhaps the latter term would do as well for both here-what unceasing turmoil and confusion! Every hue of skin, and shade of every hue. Black men, brown men, whity-brown men,-all of them streaming with perspiration; some loading, some unloading; each gang performing its work, as it were, mechanically, to the accompaniment of a shrill, low, monotonous chant, which the one half of these all but stark-naked labourers caught up in admirable time as the other half let it drop-four or five notes four or five times repeated over and over again." The amount of life and bustle at St. Louis is surprising to a stranger. There are few towns in proportion to its size (it had a population of about seventy-eight thousand previous to the late epidemic) with a greater number of carriages of one sort or another in daily circulation. Most people live in the country, and only come to town for business, so, between that and the heat, conveyance on wheels is not more a luxury than a necessity. The next most startling sight is the dress-always excepting the undress of the Malabars. Nine groups you see out of ten are composed of these picturesque people. They have a marvellous eye for colour, and somehow there is harmony in any two or three they choose to put together. Probably the swarthy polished skin so freely exposed to view has something to do with this. But a good effect is produced by mixtures we Europeans should never venture on. Two or three of these men and women, with their plump little children, squatting and chattering under a tamarind or mango tree, form groups of a highly picturesque character.

The town of Port Louis rises prettily in the form of an amphitheatre, at the base of a low range of mountains green to their very tips. A more fantastic collection of peaks, and ridges, and slopes it would be dif

* Far Away; or, Sketches of Scenery and Society in Mauritius. By Charles John Boyle. Chapman and Hall.

ficult to imagine. The houses are shut out from the street by walls of iron railings, and over these some bright-coloured creeper is sure to be clustering unrebuked, and running up and along the roofs high or low. These roofs have, at the first glance, the appearance of being tiled, but are covered with a kind of shingle of a dark reddish-coloured wood. A broad verandah almost invariably runs round one or two sides of the house, if not on all four; and here, during the great heat of the day, large blinds of various sorts of grass-matting, or canvas, or a diminutive bamboo, are let down, and effectually keep out the glare of the flaming sun. In the evening they are raised in front, and generally display a family group languidly sunk down in deep cane arm-chairs, some of which have disproportionate long arms upon which to rest the feetYankee fashion.

The houses are, for the most part, wooden, but now stone is rendered indispensable in the town by wise regulations. The kitchen is, however, invariably detached, as are also the rooms for strangers and household servants. This last arrangement is necessitated by the dirty, untidy habits of the negroes and coloured population. According to the number of these separate "pavilions" a house is reckoned a large or a small one. Palms of many kinds, and other trees, grow in the "cour" or court, or about among the pavilions, or hang over into the street.

Equally striking and varied a feature with the houses and streets is the motley population of Port Louis-motley both in dress and complexion. There are Parsees, Arabs, Cingalese, Chinamen, Lascars, Malays, Mosambiques, and Malgaches. Add to these the negro, the mulatto, French Creoles and English Creoles, not to mention the various Europeans. All hues and shades, and the utmost confusion of tongues and diversity of languages, are to be met with in the bazaar. Here weedy and athletic men, imperial-looking, are to be seen by the side of miserable, insignificant women. The Creole ladies are both bedizened and dowdy, and are followed by black maids, barefooted or slipshod, or by Indian boys dressed in snowy white, with crimson sashes round their waists, and turbans or fezes on their heads, whilst the damsels are all in black, save a white or coloured kerchief worn on the head, after the fashion of the French peasantry.

The bazaar is a large square, shut in at each end by iron railings, and with broad gates opening into parallel streets. On each side are spacious pavements for the display of the various marketable productions. Little parties of handsomely dressed Indian women are squatted by their respective heaps of vegetables, fruits, and flowers, whilst numberless plump, small, stark-naked urchins of both sexes are running and frisking about, or sprawling and playing at their mothers' sides. They look like so many pieces of polished marble, or still more like the little chocolate figures in the bonbon-shops of Paris. Unfortunately, the ears and noses of these fair Indians are loaded with ornaments, the forehead and hair are daubed with paint, and the teeth are coloured with the juice of the betelnut. The arms are tattooed and loaded with broad circles of gold or silver, knobs of one or the other metal dangle from thongs of leather, and the throat is encircled by a plain collar, not unlike an English dog's. These women, indeed, often look as if they were half in armour.

The

girls are pretty when young, but they are sold in marriage early in life, and become prematurely old and haggard drudges.

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The and ends at

Arab shopkeepers used to drive a brisk trade in the bazaar, but they have been ousted by the more active Chinamen, who are now the chief shopkeepers in the island, some clearing as much as 1300l. a year. They dress in cotton jackets and immensely broad loose trousers, affect European shoes and very big umbrellas, marry Creoles, and become Roman Catholics, adding to the mongrel population and religion of the island. Neither marriage nor conversion can, however, eradicate the national habit of opium-smoking, and they are great gamblers. Mr. Boyle mentions an instance of a Chinaman staking his whole shop on a single throw, himself included, to serve in it without wages! Many of the European shops in Port Louis are very good; and Mr. Boyle tells us, that while in the French shops the people are not only civil but extremely obliging, those in the English shops are quite the reverse; nay, a Mrs. serves you as one might imagine a she-bear would keeping a stall at the North Pole." A passion for dashes detracts sadly from the merits of this otherwise delightful tome. Instead of saying a medical practitioner or gentleman told us so and so, it is Dr. ; or the proprietor or landlord was very hospitable, it is Mr. and Mrs. system, which begins at the first page with Captain the last, "again and again is even applied to the names of places. "We met the carriage unexpectedly at and drove home." Reticence cannot go further. The small shops in which fortunes are so rapidly made were, a few years ago, exclusively kept by Creoles. The Indians came and turned these native traders out, and they, in turn, are now giving way to the Chinamen. The enriched Indians go back to their country, but the Creoles become landed proprietors, and give their children a European education. It is rather difficult for a stranger to master the names over a shop at first. Sooloogaar-goo-sinni-vaassagon would be as great a stumbler to many as the Queen of Madagascar's title of honour, O Rabodonandianampoinimerina, which almost requires to come out in parts, like the picture of the sea-serpent in Punch, one half of which came out one week with the head, the other with the tail the next. With a more simple and correct system of rendering the Oriental languages into Roman letters, the name Šūlūgār-gū-sini-vāsāgon would be by no means so repulsive, and there would not be such a hankering after vowels" as is common to most Anglo-Indians, despite Sir William Jones's teachings.

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No colony, Mr. Boyle assures us, can boast of better ingredients for pleasant intercourse than Mauritius. But for this, again, it is greatly indebted to the French element. Society is decidedly on an easy footing. It is not particularly intellectual. How should it be? The men scarcely allow themselves time to study aught save £ s. d.-precisely what intellectual men are not allowed time to study-while the women marry at fifteen, are plunged during their best years in the absorbing and intricate mysteries of baby ology, and flounder in the quicksands of housekeeping to the latest hour of life. But most of them are good humoured, cordial, hospitably inclined, and accessible. What would you have more? Dress is, however, the great passion of life, and toilettes are rated not as to