Musa, a tall, gaunt, and dark-brown old man, is the assistant Rish Safid, or greybeard; in fact, the complement of “Greybeard Mohammed.” After a residence of twenty years at Mombasah, he has clean forgotten Persian; he speaks only a debased Mekrani dialect, and the Kisawahili, which, as usual with his tribe, he prefers. An old soldier, he compensates for want of youth and vigour by artfulness; an old traveller--nothing better distinguishes in these lands the veteran of the road from the griffin or greenhorn, than the careful and systematic consideration of his comforts--he carries the lightest matchlock, he starts in the cool of the morning, he presses forward to secure the best quarters, and throughout he thinks only of himself. His character has a want of wrath, which, despite his white hairs, causes him to be little regarded. Greybeard Mohammed is considered a fool; Greybeard Musa, an old woman. Yet he troubles himself little about the opinions of his fellows, he looks well after his morning and evening meals, his ghee, his pipe, and his sleeping mat; and knowing that he will last out all the novices, with enviable philosophy he casts ambition to the winds. Gul Mohammed is the most civilised man of the party. He has straight and handsome features, of the old Grecian type, a reddish-brown skin--the skin by excellence--and a Central-Asian beard of largest dimensions. His mind is as civilised as his body; he is an adept after the fashion of his tribe, in divinity especially, in medicine and natural history; and when landing at Marka, he actually took the trouble to visit, for curiosity, the Juba River. Unfortunately, “Gul Mohammed” is a mixture of Baloch mountaineer-blood with the Sindhian of the plain, and the cross is, throughout the East, renowned for representing the worst points of both progenitors. Gul Mohammed is brave and treacherous, fair-spoken and detractive, honourable and dishonest, good-tempered and bad-hearted. Of the Baloch remain Riza, and Hudul, the tailor-boy: the former is a kind of Darwaysh, utterly insignificant, but by no means so disagreeable as his fellows: the only marking corporeal peculiarity of the latter is a deficiency of skin; his mouth appears ever open, and his teeth resemble those of an old rabbit. His mental organisation has its _petite pointe_, its little twist; he is under the constant delusion that those who speak in unknown tongues are employed specially in abusing him. His first complaint was against the Goanese: as he could not understand a word of their language, it was dismissed with some derision; he then charged me to his comrades with his normal grievance, and in due time he felt aggrieved by my companion.