The Hidden Treasure
and also a pomegranate tree, though I cannot say that I saw it.
And the water is neither sweet nor bitter, nor cold nor warm,
and all the year the same.   But it did not look very attractive.
A half-witted retainer of the Musi chieftain had added him-
self to our party to look after the horses, and was supposed to
lead my animal by a halter over the rough ground.   The real
necessity for such assistance lay in the fact that I did not under-
stand the Lurish manner of talking to horses.   To make the
creature go, one was supposed to give it a violent jerk in the
mouth, and to flick its back perpetually .with a long, plaited
thong which formed the prolongation of the rein.   Three or
four energetic pulls were supposed to make it break into a
canter: my efforts in this direction—being possibly rather half-
hearted—merely induced the tired grey mare to stop altogether.
An unwilling horse and a dragging child and a woman who
insists on explaining her motives are the three most wearying
objects in creation.   I soon saw the advantage of someone in
front who would automatically give the jerk as he walked
along whenever my steed became meditative, while I could
write things about the landscape in my notebook.   The half-
wit was asked to do so.   He smiled with gentle foolishness,
slouching along in the dislocated manner of his kind.
Such people are treated with tenderness by the tribesmen,
and life must be pleasanter for them than it is for many an
asylum inmate. This specimen had just had a wife found
for him, the young men told me with a delighted amusement
which might have made the founder of the Eugenic League
turn in his grave. With the halter held loosely in one hand,
and my sunshade, open and incongruous in the other, and
crooning his little songs, the half-wit went mooning on,
" through brake, through brier," regardless of die obstacles
presented to the surprised and outraged horse behind him.
We went more slowly than ever, considering each bush as
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