Before establishing themselves in the kraal at Kiranga-Ranga, the two rival parties of Baloch,--the Prince’s permanent escort and the temporary guard sent by Ladha Damha from Kaole--being in a chronic state of irritability, naturally quarrelled. With the noise of choughs gathering to roost they vented their bile, till thirteen men belonging to a certain Jemadar Mohammed suddenly started up, and without a word of explanation set out on their way home. According to Said bin Salim, the temporary guard had determined not to proceed beyond Kiranga-Ranga, and this desertion was intended as a preliminary to others by which the party would have lost two-thirds of its strength. I at once summoned the Jemadars, and wrote in their presence a letter reporting the conduct of their men to the dreaded Balyuz, the consul, who was supposed to be still anchored off Kaole. Seeing the bastinado in prospect, the Jemadar Yaruk shouldered his sabre, slung his shield over his arm, set out in pursuit of the fugitives, and soon succeeded in bringing them back. He was a good specimen of the true Baloch mountaineer--a tall, gaunt, and large-boned figure, with dark complexion deeply pitted by small-pox, hard, high, and sun-burnt features of exceeding harshness; an armoury in epitome was stuck in his belt, and his hand seemed never to rest but upon a weapon. The 4th of July was a halt at Kiranga-Ranga. Two asses had been lost, the back-sinews of a third had been strained, and all the others had been so wearied by their inordinate burdens, to which on the last march the meat of a koodoo, equal in weight to a young bullock, had been superadded, that a rest was deemed indispensable. I took the opportunity of wandering over and of prospecting the country. The scene was one of admirable fertility; rice, maize, and manioc grew in the rankest and richest crops, and the uncultivated lands bore the Corindah bush (Carissa Carandas), the salsaparilla vine, the small whitish-green mulberry (the Morus alba of India), and the crimson flowers of the Rosel. In the lower levels near the river rose the giants of the forest. The Mparamusi shot up its tall head, whose bunchy tresses rustled in the breeze when all below was still. The stately Msufi, a Bombax or silk-cotton tree, showed as many as four or five trunks, each two to three feet in diameter, rising from the same roots; the long tapering branches stood out stiffly at right angles from the bole; and the leaves, instead of forming masses of foliage, were sparsely scattered in small dense growth. The Msukulio, unknown to the people of Zanzibar, was a pile of dark verdure, which dwarfed the finest oaks and elms of an English park. No traces of game appeared in the likeliest of places; perhaps it preferred lurking in the tall gross grass, which was not yet in a fit state to burn.