brass wire wound so tightly round the wrists, the arms above the elbows, and the fat ankles, that they seemed to have grown into the flesh, and,--hideous perversion of taste!--with ample bosoms tightly corded down, advanced and retired in a convulsion of wriggle and contortion, whose fit expression was a long discordant howl, which seemed to “Embowel with outrageous noise the air.” I threw them a few strings of green beads, which for a moment interrupted the dance. One of these falling to the ground, I was stooping to pick it up when Said whispered hurriedly in my ear, “Bend not; they will say ‘he will not bend even to take up beads!’” In the evening I walked down to the bed of the Kingani river, which bisects a plain all green with cultivation,--rice and holcus, sweet potato and tobacco,--and pleasantly studded with huts and hamlets. The width of the stream, which here runs over a broad bed of sand, is about fifty yards; it is nowhere fordable, as the ferry-boat belonging to each village proves, and thus far it is navigable, though rendered dangerous by the crocodiles and the hippopotami that house in its waters. The colour is tawny verging upon red, and the taste is soft and sweet, as if fed by rain. The Kingani, like all streams in this part of the continent, is full of fish, especially a dark-green and scaleless variety (a Silurus?) called Kambari, and other local names. This great “miller’s thumb” has fleshy cirri, appears to be omnivorous, and tastes like animal mud. The night was rendered uncomfortable to the Baloch by the sound of distant drums, which suggested fighting as well as feasting, and by the uproar of the wild men, who, when reconnoitred by the scouts, were found to be shouting away the hippopotami.