THE MOUNTAIN. 



209 



not a Mamba. His ' ministers ' and councillors 

 would, unless well-paid, avert from us their 

 countenances. We must enter with discharge of 

 musketry to salute the lieges, and by all means 

 we must be good boys and do as we were bid. 

 The Baloch smiled contempt, and pulling up the 

 porters from the ground, loaded them deaf to all 

 remonstrance. 



Hesuming our march with hearts beating 

 aloud under the unusual exercise, we climbed, 

 rather than walked, up the deep bed of a torrent, 

 — everywhere the primitive zigzag. Villages then 

 began to appear perched like eyries upon the hill- 

 tops, and villagers gathered to watch our ap- 

 proach. The Baloch asked us to taste the water 

 of a spring that rose hard by : sparkling in the 

 cup it was icy cold, with a perceptible chalybeate 

 flavour, and the fouu tain-head was stained with 

 a coat of rust. Eastern, and we may say South- 

 ern, Africa from the Equator to the Cape, is a land 

 whose stones are iron, and the people declare 

 that they have dug hrass. Copper has been long 

 known, gold even longer, and the diamond, in the 

 South at least, is the discovery of this our day.^ 



^ Heeren believes, with Pliny, that the ancients discovered 

 diamonds mingled with gold in certain N . African localities, 

 especially Meroe. 



VOL. II. 14 



