50 RESIDENCE OF THE MISSION AT BUSHIRE. 
of whom two are pre-eminent. They have indeed still some little com¬ 
mercial connexion with Persia, and occasionally a Balouche is to be 
seen in Bushire selling his scanty wares, mostly the mats of their own 
manufacture. One of their Sheiks lives at Guadel on the coast of 
Mekran; but in the interior, according to the account given by a 
Balouche to Captain Salter, there is a very potent king, though I 
cannot add from the same authority, whether he is of their own extrac¬ 
tion. They live in continual wars with each other; or let themselves 
out to the different small powers in the gulph as soldiers. Many of the 
guards of the Sheik of Bushire are Balouches ; and the Seapoys also on 
board the Arab ships are of the same tribes. 
In religion they are Mahomedans; and like all those of India, are 
Sunnis: but they have few means of preserving the genuineness of any 
profession of faith; and their ignorance has already confounded their 
tenets with those of a very different original. The same common bar¬ 
barism has indeed blended the Affghan , the Seik, and the Balouche into 
one class : there may be among them some beard or whisker more or less, 
some animal or food which they hold unclean above all others, some in¬ 
describable difference of opinion which severs them from their neighbours, 
but in savageness they are all identified. Those on the coast still live 
almost exclusively on fish, as in the days of Neaechus; though I am 
told they no longer build their houses with the bones. The grampus 
(possibly, the whale of Arrian ) is still numerous on the shores. The 
Envoy remembered to have seen at Bushire on a former occasion, a dog 
of an immense size, which a Balouche had given to Mr. Galley, the 
Resident at that time: the man added, that the mountains towards his 
country were all very high. His dog seemed to confirm the assertion, 
for he was defended against the cold of his native region, by a coat of 
thick and tufted hair. 
Though the Balouches scarcely advance within the gulph, yet the 
native Persians do not fully occupy their own shores. The coast still 
retains a great proportion of Arab families. The Dashtistan , which 
extends from Cape Bang to the plain of Bushire , was till lately governed 
