'Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde; accompanied by a geographical and historical account of those countries, with a map.' [‎89] (131/476)

HOONDEES OR NATIVE BILLS.
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the group, and were highly gratified by the Moollah's performance ;
he read extremely well, and seemed quite enraptured with his subject.
2Sd February. It was noised throughout the city this morning,
that our baggage had at length reached us, and by breakfast time we
were overwhelmed with applications for medicine, which continued
without intermission till the evening: the askers would take no ex
cuse, and to a by-stander it would have afforded a most ludicrous
spectacle, to have seen Captain Christie and myself encircled by
crowds, who fancied themselves afflicted with every disease that
issued from Pandora's box, all of which, and their diagnostics they
were describing at the same moment, and that too in a jargon which
neither of us could clearly understand : we presently reduced them to
some order, and being not only willing to oblige, but anxious to
acquire friends by doing so, we dispensed the medicines with a
liberal hand according to the best of our judgments, trusting, in no
small degree, to the effect of our nostrums on the imagination.
Some of our patients committed the most absurd mistakes, the conse
quence of not comprehending our directions, or not choosing to con
form to them: one man began to drink a bottle of eye water, and re
turned to tell us that it had operated as an emetic, others swallowed
what we had given them as external applications, fortunately without
any bad effect; but the most serious blunder was that of a miller who
lived close to us, and who took at one dose a very large quantity of
aperient medicine, which nearly killed him ; he had been told to
divide it into seven or eight parts, but hoping to derive the same
benefit by adopting a less tedious mode, he confessed he had, knowing
our injunctions, mixed and drunk it off.
24^ February. We ordered our Hindoo this day to have Hoon-
dees, or native bills of exchange, prepared in our favour on Soon-
durjee's correspondent at Heerat in Khorasan, and likewise the cities
of Kirman and Yezd, in Persia; but he found it impossible to get
them on either of the latter places. His inquiries, however, led to
a discovery, that ultimately proved of the highest importance to us
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