find it, block it up!" The women and children were clad in chocolate-
coloured hides, fringed at the tops: to gratify them I shot a few hawks,
and was rewarded with loud exclamations,--"Allah preserve thy hand!"--"May
thy skill never fail thee before the foe!" A crone seeing me smoke,
inquired if the fire did not burn: I handed my pipe, which nearly choked
her, and she ran away from a steaming kettle, thinking it a weapon. As my
companions observed, there was not a "Miskal of sense in a Maund of
heads:" yet the people looked upon my sun-burnt skin with a favour they
denied to the "lime-white face."

I was anxious to proceed in the afternoon, but Raghe had arrived at the
frontier of his tribe: he had blood to settle amongst the Gudabirsi, and
without a protector he could not enter their lands. At night we slept
armed on account of the lions that infest the hills, and our huts were
surrounded with a thorn fence--a precaution here first adopted, and never
afterwards neglected. Early on the morning of the 4th of December heavy
clouds rolled down from the mountains, and a Scotch mist deepened into a
shower: our new Abban had not arrived, and the hut-mats, saturated with
rain, had become too heavy for the camels to carry.

In the forenoon the Eesa kraal, loading their Asses [44], set out towards
the plain. This migration presented no new features, except that several
sick and decrepid were barbarously left behind, for lions and hyaenas to
devour. [45] To deceive "warhawks" who might be on the lookout, the
migrators set fire to logs of wood and masses of sheep's earth, which,
even in rain, will smoke and smoulder for weeks.

About midday arrived the two Gudabirsi who intended escorting us to the
village of our Abbans. The elder, Rirash, was a black-skinned, wild-
looking fellow, with a shock head of hair and a deep scowl which belied