GROUP OF NUBIANS AT WADY KARDASSY.

 

THIS group stood to be sketched at the request of Mr. Roberts whilst he was at Kardassy. Their dress generally consists of a loose cotton sheet wrapped round them, each to his fancy disposing of it as he feels it to be most convenient, or thinks it most elegant. They are seldom unarmed, and their weapons are a spear and a small knife, or dagger, which they wear attached to their left arms immediately above the elbow. The target and the long swords, which some of them bore, are not so generally used in Nubia as in Dongola and Abyssinia, where they are made; they were brought expressly to tempt our Artist to buy them. The sword is of very rude workmanship, and the target, which is ball proof, is made of the hide of the rhinoceros. The Nubians all wear charmed bands around their arms or necks, which they readily dispose of, or any thing else that they possess, to a purchaser.

    There is a peculiar head-dress often worn by the men, which has no prototype, like that of the women, among the ancient Egyptians. This remarkable tie and trim of their hair, has the appearance of a cap, for it is tied in a large tuft on the top of the head, but left thick and matted below the tie, and trimmed round with the precision of an inverted wooden bowl. The turban, worn only by a few, was probably adopted from their conquerors, the Arabs.

    In all Mr. Roberts’s intercourse with these wild people, he found them brave, generous, and confiding; and those among them, who chose to go to Cairo and there act as servants, are relied upon as the most faithful that can be obtained in the valley of the Nile.

 

Roberts’s Journal.