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A couple of hours' rest in the Eliaute camp, and we bid adieu to this queer little oasis of human life within the barbarous boundary-line of the Dasht-i-na-oomid, and proceed on our way. One of the Eliautes accompanies us some little distance to guide us through a belt of badly broken country immediately surrounding their camp.
As regards interference from the Legation of Teheran, thank goodness I am now three hundred miles from the nearest telegraph-pole, and shall enter Afghanistan at a point so much nearer to Quetta than to the Boundary Commission Camp that the chances seem all in favor of reaching the former place if I only succeed in reaching the Dasht-i-na-oomid and the Harood.
A strange and novel experience, surely, this latest triumph of high Western civilization, invading the isolated nomad camp on the Dasht-i-na-oomid and disporting for the amusement of the women and children.
An ancient retainer, without any teeth to speak of, and an annoying habit of shouting "h-o-i!" at a person, regardless of the fact that one is within hearing of the merest whisper, is detailed to guide me to a few hovels perched among the mountains, four farsakhs to the southeast, from which point the journey across the Dasht-i-na-oomid is to begin, with an escort of three sowars, who are to join us there later in the evening.
"Inshallah, Ghalakua, Gh-al-a-kua!" exclaims the khan, as he swings himself into the saddle. "Inshallah, Al-lah," is the response of the mirza and the mudbake, as they carelessly follow his example, and the march across the Dasht-i-na-oomid begins.
He is greatly astonished to hear of the route by which I entered the country, as no traveller ever entered Afghanistan across the Dasht-i-na-oomid before. I tell him that I am going to Kandahar and Quetta, and suggest that he send a sowar with me to guide the way.
The Afghan, the Indian, and the Chinaman adopt the former method; the Turk, the Persian, and the Arab the latter. Yet another interesting habit, evidently borrowed from their uncultivated neighbors beyond the Dasht-i-na-oomid, is the execrable practice of chewing snuff.
Consequently, the khan repeatedly appeals to me as "bur-raa-ther," lays his forefingers together, and enlarges upon the fact that we have passed through the dangers and difficulties of the Dasht-i-na-oomid together. The dread spectre of possible mutilation and disgrace as the consequence of their misdeeds pursues these guileful, grown-up children even in their dreams.
The sowars are in high glee at having escaped what seems to me the imaginary terrors of the passage across the Dasht-i-na-oomid, and as we ride along toward Ghalakua their exuberant animal spirits find expression in song.
It is the central plain of the Dasht-i-na-oomid, the heart of the desert, of which the wild, heterogeneous territory traversed since morning forms the setting. So far as the utility of the bicycle and the horses is concerned, the change is decidedly for the better, even more so for the former than for the latter.
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