NEGEO ADOPTION OE MAHOMMEDANISM. 
9 
was awarded to all^ witli the exception of a feeble old man. But 
now, to the astonishment of his followers, Moosa Pasha waived the 
sentence, and, to their disgnst, insisted on their witnessing the in- 
fliction of the most abhorrent and inhuman punishment that one 
man can inflict upon another, and then turned the poor victims 
adrift as emblems of his revenge. 
I could follow up this subject with accounts of wholesale robbery, 
treachery, and villany of the darkest dye, which are inflicted upon 
the negro race by these supposed civilizers ; but, rather than 
shock the reader, I will return to my subject of the habits and 
customs of the Nuba and Dinkas. 
In the districts of the White Nile bordering on the Egyptian 
territory, from the frequent razzias committed on them by that 
Government and its subjects, considerable portions of the inha- 
bitants are periodically carried ofi* into slavery and entire herds of 
cattle are lifted. The miseries thus entailed upon whole communities 
are beyond description ; and it may easily be imagined with what 
feelings of hatred and revenge the Shillook and Dinka negroes look 
upon their despoilers. 
In common with a great portion of the aborigines that border on 
Mahommedanism, beyond the influence of the Egyptian Govern- 
ment, as far west as the Atlantic, many communities of the Nuba, 
without the expenditure of a piastre or the eflbrts of missionaries, 
have adopted the faith of Mahomet solely from the force of con- 
tact and example. Although young converts to that faith, the 
negro Mussulmans are, perhaps, its most bigoted supporters, and 
devote half a lifetime to crossing and re-crossing a great portion 
of the African continent in the seven-times-repeated homage to 
their prophet^ s shrine at Mecca. 
The whole of the Nuba population that have not become con- 
