The sun grows uncomfortably warm, and myriads of flies buzz hungrily about our morning repast.  Before we resume our journey a little damsel, in flaming red skirt and big silver nose-ring, enters the garden and plucks several roses, which she brings to me on a pewter salver.  These people are Eliautes, and the women are less fearful of showing themselves than at the village where we passed the night.  Several of them apply to me for medical assistance.  The chief trouble is chronic ophthalmia; nearly all the children are afflicted with this disease, and at the eyes of each poor helpless babe are a mass of hungry flies.  The wonder is, not that ophthalmia runs amuck among these people, but rather, that any of the children escape total blindness.

Several villages are passed through en route to Ghalakua; the people turn out en masse and indulge in uproarious demonstrations at the advent of the Ferenghi and the bicycle.  These people seem as incapable of controlling their emotions and their voices as so many wild animals; they shout and gesticulate excitedly, and run about like people bereft of their senses.  The uncivilization crops out of these obscure Harood villagers far plainer than it does in the tents of the wandering tribes.  They are noisier and more boisterous than the nomads, who, as a matter of fact, are sober-sided and sedate in their deportment.

No women appear among the crowd on the street, but a carefully covered head is occasionally caught peeping furtively from behind a chimney on the roof of a house, or around some corner.  A glance from me, and the head is withdrawn as rapidly as if one were taking hostile aim at it with a rifle.

Fine large irrigating ditches traverse this partially cultivable area, and in them are an abundance of fish.  In one ditch I catch sight of a splendid specimen of the speckled trout, that must have been three feet long.  Travelling leisurely next morning, we arrive at Ghalakua in the middle of the forenoon; quarters are assigned us by Aminulah Khan, the Chief of the Ghalakua villages and tributary territory.  In appearance he is a typical Oriental official, his fluffy, sensuous countenance bearing traces of such excesses as voluptuous Easterns are wont to indulge in, and this morning he is suffering with an attack of “tab” (fever).  Wrapped in a heavy fur-lined over-coat, he is found seated on the front platform of a inenzil beneath the arched village gateway, smoking cigarettes; in his hand is a bouquet of roses, and numerous others are scattered about his feet.  Dancing attendance upon him is a smart-looking little fellow in a sheepskin busby almost as bulky in proportion as his whole body, and which renders his appearance grotesque in the extreme.  His keen black eyes sparkle brightly through the long wool of his remarkable headgear, the ends of which dangle over his eyes like an overgrown and wayward bang.  The bravery of his attire is measurably enhanced by a cavalry sword,