Baluch Music Is, Though
Wild And Mournful, Pleasing.
Some of the escort had fine voices,
and sang to the accompaniment of a low, soft pipe, their favourite
instrument.
Gerome was in great request on these occasions, and,
under the influence of some fiery raki, of which he seemed to have an
unlimited stock, would have trolled out "Matoushka Volga" and weird
Cossack ditties till the stars were paling, if not suppressed. As
it was, one got little enough rest, what with the heat and flies at
midday, and, at the halt about 8 a.m., the shouting, hammering of
tent-pegs, and braying of camels that went on till the sun was high in
the heavens.
There is a so-called town or village, Jhow (situated about twenty
miles east of Noundra), in a sparsely cultivated plain of the same
name. Barley and wheat are grown by means of irrigation from the Jhow
river, which in the wet season is of considerable size. I had expected
to find, at Jhow, some semblance of a town or village, as the Wazir
of Beila had told me that the place contained a population of four or
five hundred, and it is plainly marked on all Government maps. But I
had yet to learn that a Baluch "town," or even village, of forty or
fifty inhabitants often extends over a tract of country many miles
in extent. The "town" of Jhow, for instance, is spread over a plain
thirty-five miles long by fourteen broad, in little clusters of from
two to six houses.
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