“You should reach Kelat in twenty-five days,” was the answer to my question, “provided the camels keep well and you have no difficulty with the people at Gwarjak; they are not used to Europeans, and may give you some trouble.”

One of the men here whispered to his chief.

“Malak is the name of the head-man at Gwarjak,” went on Chengiz—­“a treacherous, dangerous fellow.  Do not have much to do with Malak; he detests Europeans.”

Malak was, judging from my experiences that night, not the only Baluchi possessed of this failing.  Chengiz having left, I retired to rest, to be suddenly aroused at midnight by a piercing yell, and to find a tall, half-naked fellow, with wild eyes and a face plastered with yellow mud, standing over me, brandishing a heavy club.  Though a revolver was at hand, it was useless; for I saw at a glance that I had to deal with a madman.  After a severe tussle, Gerome and I managed to throw out the unwelcome visitor and bar the door, though we saw him for an hour or more prowling backwards and forwards in the moonlight in front of the bungalow, muttering to himself, waving his arms about, and breaking every now and then into peals of loud laughter.  The incident now seems trifling enough, though it left a powerful impression upon my mind that night, on the eve of setting out through an unknown country, where the life of a European more or less is of little moment to the wild tribes of the interior.  The madman was a dervish, the head-man said, and perfectly harmless as a rule, but liable to fits of rage at sight of a European and unbeliever.  I was, therefore, not sorry to hear next morning that this ardent follower of the Prophet had been securely locked up, and would not be released till the morrow, when we were well on the road to Beila.

There are, I imagine, few countries practically so little known to Europeans as the one we were about to traverse.  I had, up to the time of my visit, often wondered that, with India so near, Baluchistan should have been so long allowed to remain the terra incognita it is.  My surprise ceased on arrival at Kelat.  It is impossible to conceive a more monotonous or uninteresting journey, from a traveller’s point of view, than that from the sea to Quetta—­a distance (by my route) of nearly five hundred miles, during which I passed (with the exception of Kelat and Beila) but half a dozen villages worthy of the name, and met, outside the villages in question, a dozen human beings at the most.  This is, perhaps, scarcely to be wondered at.  The entire population of the country does not exceed 450,000, while its area is estimated at something like 140,000 square miles, of which 60,000 are under Persian rule, and the remaining 80,000 (nominally) under the suzerainty of the Khan of Kelat.