'Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde; accompanied by a geographical and historical account of those countries, with a map.' [‎125] (167/476)

BALE RIVER.
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Toomun, who have ventured to bring their wives and children here,
although it is evident they stand in great awe of their protectors, for
such they style the Belooche inhabitants, who, generally speaking,
ai e idle, ignorant, unmannerly, and predatory j the latter quality they
inhei it in common with the whole race, and they are likewise much
addicted to gambling. Hospitality and an adherence to such promises
as relate to their personal bravery or fidelity, seem to be very justly
their great boasts. When the crops fail at Nooshky, which is the
case nine years out of ten, they depend on Gurmsyle and Kutch
Gundava lor grain, and in fact bring more or less every year from
those places.
26/A March. I moved this morning at six, though very unwell
from a fever that had come on the night before, and after marching
three miles over the plain, entered the hills by a stony path : we soon
got among lofty mountains, a branch of the great range, and winding
round the bases ol them, or through rocky vallies for seventeen miles,
came to a river bed nearly dry, called the Bale, in which, or along the
banks of it, we advanced six miles further, and then having selected a
spot where the camels might graze close to us, stopped for the
night. Our road was very bad to-day, and in some places not more
than two yards wide, the rocks rising like walls for many hundred feet
on each side. I observed several blocks of white marble in the nar
row water courses, and a prof usion of the asafoetida plant growing on
the precipices above us: the bed of the river Bale is very broad, and
the bare desert that limits it, is elevated to a great height above the
channel. The direction of my route to-day was south south-west,
and the distance twenty-nine miles: very good water was to be had in
two or three rivulets, beside that in the Bale, and logs of dried wood
lay strewed about.
c 21th March, I was so weak from the effects of my fever, which had
continued with great violence the whole of yesterday and throughout
the night, that I could scarcely sit on my camel this morning, how-
e\ er to think of resting (with the journey I had before me) was out
of the question, I therefore started about seven a. m., taking one of