It was most interesting to watch the various flocks come in at sundown. Till then the village is perfectly quiet, but soon a low murmuring is heard some considerable distance away, which gradually swells as the flocks draw nearer, till it becomes at last a perfect babel of sound with the baaings and bleatings of sheep, and the beat of their countless little hoofs. They presently arrive in flocks numbering two or three thousand each, kicking and leaping, and raising a vast cloud of dust. The women of the village, who have been waiting, then come out with their milk-vessels, each with a kid or a lamb in her arms, which she holds on high at the edge of the flock. The little animals bleat loudly for their mothers. Those mothers, far away in the body of the flock, in some marvellous manner each recognize the cry of their own particular offspring among the multitude of other and similar cries, and dash towards it, leaping over the backs of the others in their eagerness to reach their little ones. The woman restores the youngster to its mother, and it immediately commences its evening meal, wagging its little tail with the utmost enjoyment. The woman then goes to the other side of the mother, and draws off into her milk-vessels as much of the milk as can be spared. The price of a good “soben” (ewe) was six makono of cloth, or about one and a half yards; but the market was not very brisk, as there was such a great amount of haggling to be gone through before the bargain could be considered satisfactorily completed. A man would bring round an old ram and demand a piece of cloth. When I gently intimated that I required a “soben,” he would scowl disgustedly and retire. In a few minutes he would be back again, dragging by the hind leg a _female goat_, and demand the piece of cloth once more. An animated discussion on the difference between a sheep and a goat would follow; my prospective customer maintaining that for all practical purposes a female goat and a female sheep were identical, while I contended that if that was the case he might as well bring me a sheep, as under those circumstances it would make no difference to him, and I myself had a, doubtless unreasonable, preference for sheep. Finally a very sick and weedy-looking ewe would be brought, and again the same discussion would go merrily on. I would not give the full price for a bad specimen, and my customer would persist that it was, beyond a doubt, the very best sheep that was ever bred—in fact, the flower of his flock. “Soben kitock” (a very large sheep) he would observe emphatically, with a semicircular wave of his arm round the horizon. I would point out that in my humble opinion it was by no means a “soben kitock” by shaking my head gravely, and observing that it was “mate soben kitock.” Finally he would bring a slightly better animal, and I would then hand over the full price, together with a pinch of tobacco or a few beads as a luck-penny.