The country of the Berbers, after the best in formation I have been able to obtain, is small, not extending, from the upper end of the third cataract, more than eight days march in length on both sides of the Nile.  The Bahar el Uswood, or Black river, bounds it (i.e. on the eastern bank) on the south, and separates it from the territory of Shendi.  The cultivable land reaches generally to the distance of one or two miles from the river.  It is overflowed generally at the inundation, and its produce is very abundant, consisting in durra, wheat, barley, beans, cotton, a small grain called “duchan,” tobacco, and some garden vegetables similar to those of Egypt.  Berber also raises great numbers of horned cattle, sheep, goats, camels, asses, and very fine horses.  It is very populous, the succession of villages being almost continued along the road on both sides of the river.  The houses are built of clay, covered with a flat roof of beams overlaid generally with straw; but the houses of the Maleks have generally terraced roofs of beaten clay, This manner of building is sufficient in a country where no great quantity of rain falls throughout the year.  Some of the houses of the peasants are formed of trusses of cornstalks, and placed side by side in a perpendicular position, and lashed together, with roofs of the same materials.  All the people sleep upon bedsteads, as they do also in Dongola and Shageia:  these bedsteads are composed of an oblong frame of wood, standing on four short legs, the sides of the frame supporting a close network of leathern thongs, on which the person sleeps; it is elastic and comfortable.

Berber contains plenty of salt, which the natives find in some calcareous mountains between the desert and the fertile land.  In its natural state, it is found mingled with a brown earth, with which the stone of those mountains is intermixed.  This earth the natives dilute with water, which absorbs the salt and leaves the earth at the bottom; they then pour off the water into another vessel, and, by exposing it to the sun or fire, the water is evaporated and the salt remains.

The assemblage of villages which compose the capital of Nousreddin, contains houses enough for a population of five or six thousand souls, but I do not believe that the actual population of those villages is so great.

The language is Arabic, perfectly intelligible to the natives of Egypt, but containing some ancient words at present disused on the lower Nile; for instance, the Berber calls a sheep “Kebesh."[39’

As to the climate, the difference between the heat at two hours afternoon in the month of the vernal equinox, and at an hour before sunrise, has been as great as ten degrees of the thermometer of Reaumur, as I have been informed by one of the medical staff attached to the army, who was in possession of that instrument.  It is at present the commencement of spring, and the heat at two hours after mid-day, at least to the sense, is as great as in the month of the summer solstice, in Cairo.  I have seen no ferocious animals, either in Berber or the country below, and believe that they are rare.