THE BALOCH. 



139 



Mohammed is considered a fool ; Greybeard Musa, an 

 old woman. Yet he troubles himself little about the 

 opinions of his fellows, he looks well after his morning 

 and evening meals, his ghee, his pipe, and his sleeping 

 mat; and knowing that he will last out all the novices, 

 with enviable philosophy he casts ambition to the 

 winds. 



Gul Mohammed is the most civilised man of the 

 party. He has straight and handsome features, of the 

 old Grecian type, a reddish-brown skin — the skin by 

 excellence — and a Central- Asian beard of largest dimen- 

 sions. His mind is as civilised as his body ; he is an 

 adept after the fashion of his tribe, in divinity espe- 

 cially, in medicine and natural history; and when land- 

 ing at Marka, he actually took the trouble to visit, for 

 curiosity, the Juba River. Unfortunately, " Gul Mo- 

 hammed" is a mixture of Baloch mountaineer-blood with 

 the Sindhian of the plain, and the cross is, throughout 

 the East, renowned for representing the worst points of 

 both progenitors. Gul Mohammed is brave and treache- 

 rous, fair-spoken and detractive, honourable and dis- 

 honest, good-tempered and bad-hearted. 



Of the Baloch remain Riza, and Hudul, the tailor- 

 boy : the former is a kind of Darwaysh, utterly insigni- 

 ficant, but by no means so disagreeable as his fellows : 

 the only marking corporeal peculiarity of the latter is 

 a deficiency of skin ; his mouth appears ever open, and 

 his teeth resemble those of an old rabbit. His mental 

 organisation has its petite pointe, its little twist ; he is 

 under the constant delusion that those who speak in 

 unknown tongues are employed specially in abusing 

 him. His first complaint was against the Goanese : as 

 he could not understand a word of their language, it 

 was dismissed with some derision ; he then charged me 



