136 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



salary in a youth ; and the latter serves and works for 

 the rest of the mess, who must patiently and passively 

 endure the insolence of the master for fear of losing the 

 offices of the man. After the fashion of a certain sort 

 of fools, he applies the whole of his modicum of wit to 

 mischief-making, and he succeeds admirably where 

 better men, whose thoughts attempt a wider range, 

 would fail. By his exertions the Baloch became, in 

 point of social intercourse, not unlike the passengers of 

 a ship bound on a long voyage : after the first month 

 the society divides itself into two separate and adverse 

 cliques ; after the second it breaks up into little knots ; 

 and after the third it is a chequer- work of pairs and 

 solitaires. Arrived at the " Pond of Ugogo," I was 

 compelled to address an official letter to Zanzibar, re- 

 questing the recal of Belok and his coadjutor in mischief, 

 Khudabakhsh. 



Abdullah is the type of the respectable, in fact, of 

 the good young man. It is really pathetic to hear him 

 recount, with accents broken by emotion, the u tale full 

 of waters of the eye," — the parting of an only son, who 

 was led away to an African grave, from the aged widow 

 his mamma ; to listen to her excellent advice, and to his 

 no less excellent resolves. He is capable of calling his 

 bride elect, were such article a subject ever to be men- 

 tioned amongst Moslems, " his choicest blessing." With 

 an edifying mingling of piety and discipline, he never 

 neglects the opportunity of standing in prayer behind 

 the Jemadar Mallok, whose elevation to a superior 

 grade — lionneur oblige ! — has compelled him to rub up 

 a superficial acquaintance with the forms of devotion. 

 Virtue in the abstract I revere ; in the concrete I some- 

 times suspect. The good young man soon justified this 

 suspicion by repeatedly applying to Said bin Salim for 



