of the boat's crew, before they went away, offered me a quantity of mis-shapen pearls for sale, but the sum demanded for them was very exorbitant, a circumstance arising from the price which the Muscat dealers can afford to give, owing to pearls of all shapes and descriptions bearing a high value in the Indian market.
On the 13th, I had a meeting with Alli Govéta and the Dola, who made an urgent demand for the hundred dollars agreed upon for my passage. As I wished to keep them in good humour I advanced forty, but refused to come to a final settlement until I should hear from the supercargo. Many arguments were adduced by the Dola to make me alter this determination, but I remained inflexible, and, finding that they persisted in the demand, left them, on pretence of shooting an antelope which I had lost some time before on the island, and this necessarily ended the debate. At the same meeting Wursum asked permission to leave us a few days, for the purpose "of reading the Koran, and giving a feast in memory of his deceased father." These feasts always end in a general drinking bout, and the relations are honoured in proportion to the number of days during which they can provide liquor to keep up the debauch.
On the 17th, I sent a messenger to the village of Duroro to gain intelligence respecting the supercargo, and learned in the evening that he had passed the salt-plain. I was also informed that Wursum, in consequence of having been guilty of great excess, was seriously ill. That Alli Govéta was dissatisfied, and wanted a fresh supply of provisions, and that many of the other chiefs had gone away, in consequence of the arrival of information that the Nayib had come down to the neighbourhood of Aréna with his troops. I attributed the desponding tone of this intelligence in a great degree to the effects produced on the minds of the natives by the heavy rains which had fallen in the three preceding days, as it is a circumstance that always occasions serious inconvenience in a place where the huts are so slightly constructed as to be unable to resist the torrents which usually pour down at this season; and on going on shore the following day, I discovered that my conjectures were well-founded; the whole village being in a deplorable
