BUSHIRE TO SHIRAZ. 
75 
their chins close to the dishes, and commodiously scooped the rice or 
other victuals into their mouths, with three fingers and the thumb of 
their right hand; but in vain did we attempt to approach the dish: 
our tight-kneed breeches, and all the ligaments and buttons of our 
dress, forbade us; and we were forced to manage as well as we could, 
fragments of meat and rice falling through our fingers all around us. 
When we were all satisfied, dinner was carried away with the same 
state in which it was brought: the servant who officiated, dropping 
himself gracefully on one knee, as he carried away the trays, and pas¬ 
sing them expertly over his head with both his hands, extended to the 
lacquey, who was ready behind to carry them off. We were treated 
with more kaleoons after dinner, and then departed to our beds. 
On the morning of the 19th, the camp broke up at sunrise. We took 
a hasty breakfast in the Envoy's tent, but a visit from Mahomed 
Neb ee Khan (which was preceded by a present of two horses and his 
own sword) kept us on the ground till nine o'clock. The Khan, with 
all his attendants, accompanied us about two miles. He was preparing 
to enter Bushire, his new government, with all splendour. From the 
town to the swamps were erected stages on which bullocks were to be 
sacrificed, and from which their heads were to be thrown under his 
horse's feet, as he advanced; a ceremony indeed appropriated to Princes 
alone, and to them, only on particular occasions. Yet, however 
anxious originally for his station, and however splendid in his present 
appearances, he felt the full dangers of his pre-eminence, and betrayed 
an absence and uneasiness in his words and actions, which to us 
evinced all his apprehensions. He was so conscious indeed of the diffi¬ 
culties of his situation, that he had transmitted to the King a present of 
two thousand tomauns, with a memorial, beseeching to be excused from 
his government. 
We marched at first north-westerly, till we came to the bed of a river, 
or Eather of a mountain-torrent, in which the actual stream of water 
when we passed, was not above ten feet in breadth, though the channel 
l 2 
