28 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



swagger were allied to a nature no more advanced 

 than that of the simple savage of Asiatic wilds, 

 who looks on falsehood and truth as purely 

 matters of expediency. 



We had hardly got into the swing of the march 

 when a herd of wild sheep were spotted on the 

 hillside slowly moving off. It seemed they were 

 scarcely alarmed by the caravan to them perhaps 

 not usually associated with danger, for by run- 

 ning hard up a side ravine that offered conceal- 

 ment, I overtook them, and from a ridge got a 

 shot at the ram and knocked him over. It was 

 held to be a good augury for the success of the 

 trip. 



Arrived at the bitter wells of Lowari-Ab, I 

 found no Kahmat as I had hoped, but only a 

 little Baluch encampment of two tents, to which 

 I was immediately called. An old man, very 

 emaciated and evidently moribund, was lying on 

 a mat in a low tent half open to the weather, his 

 head on his wife's lap. He was far beyond the 

 aid of my small medicine case, and before I left 

 next morning he was dead. One could not help 

 being struck by the simplicity of this deathbed, 

 if the term may be used for a ragged mat on the 

 hard earth. No doctors, no " diet," no medicines, 

 no scientific appliances for keeping life in the poor 

 body a few more moments. But for the old weep- 



