use unfortunately he could not
believe in it. Such an explanation would be coldly received among the
Afghans.

Under the exhortations of these Mullahs their students often became
Ghazis.

'The Ghazi is a man who has taken an oath to kill some
non-Mohammedan, preferably a European, as representing the ruling
race, but, failing this, a Hindu or a Sikh is a lawful object of
his fanaticism.... When the disciple has been worked up to the
requisite degree of religious excitement, he is usually further
fortified by copious draughts of intoxicating drugs.... Not a year
passes on the frontier but some young officer falls a victim to one
of these Ghazis.'

It is manifest that this sporadic Muridism might become epidemic under
serious and widespreading excitement, but the provocation that leads
to petty frontier wars comes entirely from the tribes, who make
predatory incursions upon the Indian villages and refuse all
reparation. In every tribe, as Dr. Pennell tells us, the outlaws who
live by raiding and robbery, and the Mullahs who detest the infidel
and fear his rule, are the fomenters of crime and outrage.

The vendetta, or blood-feud, our author tells us, has eaten into the
very core of Afghan life. At present some of the best and noblest
families in Afghanistan are on the verge of extermination through this
wretched system. Even the women are not exempt. In a village which
the missionary visited he noticed that the houses communicated
laterally by little doors all down one long street; and on inquiry he
was told that some time before a great faction fight had been carried
on between the two rows of houses. The villagers 'were always in
ambush to fire at each other across the street. The only way to get to
the supply of water was to go from house to house to the bottom, and
in order to do this without exposure the doors had been made, while by
common consent they had agreed not to shoot while getting their
supplies from the stream.' Another anecdote relates how a British
officer visited a petty chief in his tower, and would have opened a
window to look at the country round. 'He was hurriedly and
unceremoniously pulled back by the Afghan, who told him that his
cousin had been watching that window for months in the hope of an
opportunity of shooting him there.' In fact the chief was actually
shot at this window a short time after the visit. From the universal
enmity existing between