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 anything 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 choose 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. 
