IN SEARCH OF WATER. 287 



logical fable. Besides the hut, each camel bore 

 a considerable amount of household furniture. 

 Black earthenware pots, contained in a kind of 

 cage protectors made of some flexible shrub ; the 

 family store of palm-leaves for the industrious 

 housewife to weave into mats, or to make the 

 native rope ; a few handsome-looking baskets hung 

 round with shells suspended from thongs ; and 

 a child or two placed amidst the whole, or perched 

 upon the top; sometimes holding in its arms a 

 noisy bleating kid or lamb that was too young to 

 walk with its dam. Some older children, boys 

 and girls, quite naked, assisted their mothers in 

 driving before them the flocks of sheep and goats. 

 No men accompanied this party, but their absence 

 was accounted for, by their being engaged in 

 tending a herd of some thousands of oxen, whose 

 dusty track I observed like a low red cloud some 

 miles in extent, about a league to the west of us. 



We had ourselves three cows and several sheep 

 and goats, the returns of some little trading with 

 the people of Herhowlee, who having bought 

 from different persons in the Kafilah a small 

 quantity of tobacco, and a few cubits of blue sood, 

 had paid in kind for their purchases. 



When Ohmed Mahomed .engaged the Hy Sou- 

 maulee escort, he did not tell me that part of the 

 agreement w T as that they should have a bullock, 

 or its equivalent in sheep or goats, every second 

 day. This I learnt from the men themselves, 



