ting their throats, looking on them as cold-blooded
animals, created in the same manner as fish.
The following day, 10 th August, we made a halt to
try our fortune again in purchasing cows, but failed
as usual ; so the following morning we decamped at
dawn, and marched thirteen miles to our original
station in Southern Néra. Here I purchased four goats
for one dhoti merikani, the best bargain I ever made.
Thunder had rumbled, and clouds overcast the skies
for two days ; and this day a delicious cooling shower
fell. The people said it was the little rains—chota
barsdt, as we call it in India—expected yearly at this
time, as the precursor of the later great falls.
As Seedi Bombay was very inquisitive to-day about
the origin of Seedis, his caste, and as he wished to
know by what law of nature I accounted for their
cruel destiny in being the slaves of all men, I related
the history of Noah, and the dispersion of his sons on
the face of the globe ; and showed him that he was of
the black or Hametic stock, and by the common order
of nature, they, being the weakest, had to succumb to
their superiors, the Japhetic and Semitic branches of
the family ; and, moreover, they were likely to remain
so subject until such time as the state of man, soaring
far above the beast, would be imbued by a better
sense of sympathy and good feeling, and would then
leave all such ungenerous appliances of superior force
to the brute. Bombay, on being made a Mussulman
by his Arab master, had received a very different
explanation of the degradation of his race, and narrated
his story as follows:—“ The Arabs say that
Mahomet, whilst on the road from Medina to Mecca,
one day happened to see a widow woman sitting before
her house, and asked her how she and her three
sons were; upon which the, troubled woman (for she
had concealed one of her sons on seeing Mahomet’s
approach, lest he, as is customary when there are three
males of a family present, should seize one and make
him do porterage), said, ‘ Very well; but I’ve only two
sons. Mahomet, hearing this, said to the woman,
reprovingly, f Woman, thou liest; thou hast three sons:
and for trying to conceal this matter from me, henceforth
remember that this is my decree—that the two
boys which thou hast not concealed shall multiply and
prosper, have fair faces, become wealthy, and reign
lords over all the earth; but the progeny of your
third son shall, in consequence of your having concealed
him, produce Seedis as black as darkness, who
will be sold in the market like cattle, and remain in
perpetual servitude to the descendants of the other
two.”
12 th. We returned to our former quarters, the village
of Salawe; but I did not enjoy such repose as on
the former visit, for the people were in their cups, and,
nolens volens, persisted in entering my hut. Sometimes
I rose and drove them out, at other times I
turned round and feigned to sleep; but these manoeuvres
were of no avail; still they poured in, and one
old man, more impudent than the rest, understanding
the trick, seized my pillow by the end, and, tugging