Another quarrel arose from a debt of one shilling only, the debtor refusing to pay. The creditor came to complain to me when I was busy in my office and I put him off awhile. He came again and said something about somebody striking him. I said I would see about it directly. Five minutes later on going out I found four men sitting on the sand each in a little pool of blood, and a crowd waving sticks coming up from the village. The first thing was to meet the crowd and make my men take possession of all the sticks and knives and throw them into my store, but such was the excitement that some would part with their stick to no one but myself. This done I spent two hours bandaging the wounds of those four men. I suppose there would be sixteen cuts altogether. None made the smallest sign of pain. One, a boy of about eighteen, who had lost a good deal of blood through the severing of a vein, looked rather sleepy. We hope soon to be too civilised for these scenes and nowadays the carrying of knives in the village, except in the case of men actually coming in from or starting out upon a journey, is being punished by the confiscation of the knife, and fighting otherwise discouraged. Just as their system of Government is patriarchal, so also the junior members of their community treat each other with a consideration and good nature one would be glad to see more of, among blood-brothers in other lands. They work together with invariable good humour, an extra man never shirking his share of work, but often insisting that his turn at the oar, e.g., is due before his fellow is willing to give it up. Heavy labour is accompanied by song and invocations of God and the Prophet, and work in a big, noisy crowd, is one of the pleasures of life. I remember once when timber was being unloaded from a _sambûk_, work continued after hours, but a suitable song being started, and extra men being put on, turned the whole thing into a game; as each man threw down his load he dashed back along the pier at a dancing run, to receive another plank with the eagerness a child shews over sweets. There is nothing very inspiriting in the songs as a rule, mere vain repetitions such as: _Recit._ “Moses stood at the door.” _Chorus._ “At the door.” Who Moses was I have not discovered, except that it is _not_ the prophet but another of that name. _In Unison._ “The night comes, The night comes,” was sung at about six o’clock in the morning!