Two of the horses were very handsome, though small; and on remarking their extreme fatness, I was not a little surprised at learning that they were fed entirely on camels’ milk, corn being too scarce and valuable an article for the Tibboos to spare them: they drink it both sweet and sour; and animals in higher health and condition I scarcely ever saw. It is quite surprising with what terror these children of the desert view the Arabs, and the idea they have of their invincibility; while they are smart active fellows themselves, and both ride and move better and quicker: but the guns! the guns! are their dread; and five or six of them will go round and round a tree, where an Arab has laid down his gun for a minute, stepping on tiptoe, as if afraid of disturbing it, talking to each other in a whisper, as if the gun could understand their exclamations; and I dare say, praying to it not to do them an injury, as fervently as ever man Friday did to Robinson Crusoe’s musket. None of the Gunda Tibboos were above the middle size, slim, well made, with sharp, intelligent, copper-coloured faces, large prominent eyes, flat noses, large mouth and teeth, regular, but stained a deep red, from the immoderate use of tobacco; the forehead is high; and the turban, which is a deep indigo colour, is worn high on the head, and brought under the chin and across the face, so as to cover all the lower part from the nose downwards: they have sometimes fifteen or twenty charms, in red, green, and black leather cases, attached to the folds of their turbans. Most of them have scars on different parts of their faces: these generally denote their rank, and are considered as an ornament. Our sheikh had one under each eye, with one more on each side of his forehead, in shape resembling a half moon. Like the Arabs of the north, their chieftainships are hereditary, provided the heir is worthy; any act of cowardice disqualifies, and the command devolves upon the next in succession. Our Gunda sheikh, Mina Tahr-ben-Soogo-Lammo, was the seventh in regular succession. This tribe is called Nafra Gunda, and are always near Beere-Kashifery. My watch pleased him wonderfully at first; but after a little time, I found that looking at himself in the bright part of the inside of the case gave him the greatest satisfaction: they are vainer than the vainest. Mina Tahr had the finest clothes on that had ever been brought to Beere-Kashifery; and what to him could be so agreeable as contemplating the reflection of his own person so decked out? I could not help giving him a small looking-glass; and he took his station in one corner of my tent for hours, surveying himself with a satisfaction that burst from his lips in frequent exclamations of joy, and which he also occasionally testified by sundry high jumps and springs into the air.