'Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde; accompanied by a geographical and historical account of those countries, with a map.' [‎179] (221/476)

BASMAN. 17g
fire, and rubbing it in a coarse cloth,) mixed with butter-milk. This
mess is far from palatable, but I found it was not their food from
choice, but absolute necessity and starvation; and during my sojourn
here, I was eye-witness to people boiling and eating mulberry leaves
and a kind of pulpy acid grass, to which camels are exceedingly
partial, whence it is called by the Belooches Ootch Khoor, or camel
food. My camel-drivers soon killed the sheep, and in despite of the
bad flavour of the hodge-podge, we had a most sumptuous repast.
In the evening, Moorad Khan came out, and chatted until dinner
time, when I had a second dish of the barley, and a similar bowl of
mutton-broth sent to me.
mil April. My guide not being fully prepared, I halted this day
at Basman, at the earnest request of the Sirdar Leader of a tribe or a polity; also refers to a military rank or title given to a commander of an army or division. , and about twelve
o dock, strolled out to a hot-well which had been mentioned to me
at Bunpoor, and here also, as a wonderful curiosity. I found the
well upwards ot twelve yards in circumference, and two or three
feet in depth; in the centre of it was a circular pipe built of red
burnt brick, about eight inches in diameter, and within as many of
being level with the water, which boiled out of it as thick as a man's
thigh, with considerable violence, and so heated that I could not
venture to put my hand into the ebullition. One side of the well
had been gradually worn away by the incessant gushing of water
over it, and thence a limpid brook flows past the village, and suffices
the husbandmen for the irrigation of their grounds. I bathed in this
stream about five yards from its source, and found the water plea
santly tepid, with a strong sulphureous smell and taste, which unfit
it for culinary purposes; but the Belooches regard it as aperient in
its eflects, and an excellent specific in cutaneous disorders.
On my return home to the village, Moorad Khan pointed out to
me a mountain about fifteen miles distant, where he said water oozed
from various clefts in the rocks, hot enough to boil meat in a few
minutes j and that he and many others were of opinion that the
fountain I had been to look at, was connected with that hill by a
subterraneous aqueduct; in support of which conjecture he avowed
a a 2