The preceding paragraph embodies many more words than are contained in it.  It embodies a dialogue of an hour, an angry altercation of half-an-hour’s duration, a vow taken on the part of Soor Hadji Palloo, that if I did not take his cloths he should not touch my business, many tears, entreaties, woeful penitence, and much else, all of which were responded to with, “Do as I want you to do, or do nothing.  “Finally came relief, and a happy ending.  Soor Hadji Palloo went away with a bright face, taking with him the three soldiers’ posho (food), and honga (tribute) for the caravan.  Well for me that it ended so, and that subsequent quarrels of a similar nature terminated so peaceably, otherwise I doubt whether my departure from Bagamoyo would have happened so early as it did.  While I am on this theme, and as it really engrossed every moment of my time at Bagamoyo, I may as well be more explicit regarding Boor Hadji Palloo and his connection with my business.

Soor Hadji Palloo was a smart young man of business, energetic, quick at mental calculation, and seemed to be born for a successful salesman.  His eyes were never idle; they wandered over every part of my person, over the tent, the bed, the guns, the clothes, and having swung clear round, began the silent circle over again.  His fingers were never at rest, they had a fidgety, nervous action at their tips, constantly in the act of feeling something; while in the act of talking to me, he would lean over and feel the texture of the cloth of my trousers, my coat, or my shoes or socks:  then he would feel his own light jamdani shirt or dabwain loin-cloth, until his eyes casually resting upon a novelty, his body would lean forward, and his arm was stretched out with the willing fingers.  His jaws also were in perpetual motion, caused by vile habits he had acquired of chewing betel-nut and lime, and sometimes tobacco and lime.  They gave out a sound similar to that of a young shoat, in the act of sucking.  He was a pious Mohammedan, and observed the external courtesies and ceremonies of the true believers.  He would affably greet me, take off his shoes, enter my tent protesting he was not fit to sit in my presence, and after being seated, would begin his ever-crooked errand.  Of honesty, literal and practical honesty, this youth knew nothing; to the pure truth he was an utter stranger; the falsehoods he had uttered during his short life seemed already to have quenched the bold gaze of innocence from his eyes, to have banished the colour of truthfulness from his features, to have transformed him—­yet a stripling of twenty—­into a most accomplished rascal, and consummate expert in dishonesty.