1 218 SINDE.
2 in mercantile concerns are especially avaricious and overreaching.
3 Their warriors are swaggering and boastful; individually brave,
4 but deeming it no disgrace to take to flight if their first onset
5 *Macmurdo, 43. fail.4 This class consists almost exclusively either of men of
6 ‘Leech, onthe Beloochee descent,+ or of Belooches by birth, who have been
7 Sind. Army, 68. driven by want to leave their native mountains, and whose war-
8 like and predatory character became well known to our troops,
9 during the late military operations. So frequently have this class
10 recourse to arms, that it is rare to see one of them without several
11 5 Pott. $77. sword wounds.!
12 The country, though remarkable for fertility, being, from
13 social and political causes, so ill cultivated, that it with difficulty
14 maintains its very limited population, swarms with a vagrant and
15 ®Macmurdo, 245. * idle® race of men, alternately soldiers, beggars, and thieves.”
16 These, in great numbers, seek service with foreign powers, and,
17 in Western India, hold the next place to the Arabs as mercenary
18 7 Pott. 377; Mac- troops. The Mussulmans are generally Sunnis,’ or of the more
19 murdo, 252. : :
20 numerous class of Mahometans, who recognize the succession of
21 the three first Khalifs ; but the Ameers, and others of the great,
22 were Shias, or votaries of Ali. There is a great number of
23 Saiyids, or those who claim descent from Mahomet, and who,
24 upon the strength of their claims, have succeeded in obtaining
25 considerable grants of lands from successive rulers, and are
26 ioe Bokh. among the most prosperous® persons in the country. The
27 ® Wood, Oxue,60; country is also overrun with a prodigious number of Fakeers,9—
28 Pott, 464, lazy, worthless mendicants, who, under the guise of religion,
29 . subsist on afms or contributions extorted by importunity or
30 threats. The Beloochian Sindians differ from other Mahometans
31 in wearing the hair of the head long, as well as that of the beard.
32 The dress of the mer consists of a loose shirt, a pair of trowsers
33 gathered at the ancles, a kummerbund or scarf round the waist,
34 and a quilted woollen or cotton cap, shaped like a hat without a
35 Id. 878. brim,! and often ornamented with embroidery of silk or gold round
36 the bottom. The great wear turbans of enormous size, Pot-
37 2308 ; Macmurdo, tinger* having seen some two feet or two feet and a half in
38 ae diameter, and containing seventy or eighty yards of gauze from
39 eight to twelve inches in breadth. ‘The women dress like the
40 men, except that they do not wear the cap, and that, when out
41 of doors, they wrap themselves in a long, loose cloth, having one
42 end fastened on the crown of the head, so that it can be drawn