The desert is a wide smooth surface of hard dry clay, as level as a billiard-table, and bare as a board. Not a single pebble, nor even a blade of grass, was anywhere to be seen. The caravan track lying before us was the only distinguishable feature on the dull surface of bare clay. After travelling thus for about two and a half hours, we sighted two lofty mounds set together in the midst of the desert, with shrubby bushes fringing pools of water at their bases, all remarkably clear and distinct. “That,” said Pír Ján, “is the _Lúmpáni áb_, or ‘the lustre of the minstrel’s water,’ so named from the tradition of a travelling _Lúm_, or ‘minstrel,’ who, seeing such abundant signs of water, emptied the cruse under whose weight he was toiling, and perished in the desert from thirst.” As we approached nearer, the illusion disappeared, and the semblance dissolved to the reality—two heaps of clay on the sides of a dry well-shaft, a few scattered saltworts, and a patch of soda efflorescence. This was the most perfect _sihráb_ (magic water) or mirage I had ever seen. We rested here awhile, to allow the baggage to get on to our camp ground; but after half-an-hour, finding the midday sun too hot, we remounted our camels and resumed our track across the desert, and overtook the baggage a little way short of Barshori, where we arrived at sunset. Here we found a large káfila scattered over a considerable surface of land about the village. As we passed by towards some clear ground on the further side of the village, we were surrounded by a noisy crowd of Afghans, who, with the utmost volubility and excitement, poured out a confused jumble of complaints and laments, and begged an immediate inquiry and redress for their grievances. Everybody speaking at once, the confusion of sounds prevented our understanding what was said; so we dismounted from our camels, and General Pollock directing the crowd to disperse, retained a few as spokesmen for the rest. We presently learned that the káfila had been attacked in the Bolán above Dádar by Mulla Muhammad, Ráisání, chief of Sahárawán, who, with others, is in open revolt against the authority of the Khán of Calát, and that they had fought their way through, with the loss of six men killed, fourteen wounded, and a hundred and fifty camels with their loads captured by the enemy. Whilst listening to these accounts, eight wounded men were brought forward. I examined and did what I could for them at the time. They were all severely wounded, six by gunshot and two by sword-cut. I was turning away, when a blustering fellow, loudly cursing the barbarity of the robbers, set an old woman in my path, and removing her veil, exclaimed, “Look here! they have not even spared our women; they have cut off this poor woman’s nose with a sword.” The miserable creature’s face was shockingly eaten away by disease. I raised my eyes from it to the speakers’, and was about to speak, when I was forestalled by the