s at a great speed over rapids,
where the boatmen warily guide their heavy river boats, lest they be
drawn into some whirlpool, or dashed against the precipitous sides;
at others there are deep, silent reaches where the bottom is two
hundred feet from the surface. During the hot weather, when the river
is in flood, it is an exciting experience to be ferried across its
dark grey surging stream. At Kalabagh there are extensive quarries
of salt of a beautiful pink and white colour and great purity; these
bring in a considerable revenue to the Government. The town itself
is built on the side of a hill of red salt marl, some of the houses
being quarried out of the salt itself, so that the owner has only to
chip off a bit of his own wall in order to season his cooking-pot. It
is a standing grievance with the inhabitants that their own walls are
Government contraband, and they are subject to a fine if they sell
a brick from their wall without paying duty on it. The streets are
narrow and winding, and being, many of them, roofed and even built
over, are very dark, and in the hot summer nights insufferably close
and hot, and at all times distinctly insanitary and malodorous.

The people are pale and anaemic, and nearly all suffer from goitre in
a greater or less degree. They form a great contrast to the hardy
mountaineers of the Bangi Khel Khattak tribe on the hills behind
them. These form one of the great recruiting grounds of the Pathan
regiments of the frontier, while from Kalabagh itself it would be hard
to find a score of men who could pass the recruiting officer. In the
sultry summer weather the inhabitants spend the day under a number of
large banyan-trees (Ficus Indica) which are scattered along the edge
of the river. Here, too, the civil officers of the district hold their
courts, and I was encamped under a spacious banyan. Its spreading
branches not only sheltered me and all the sick and visitors who
thronged around me, but also the Deputy Commissioner of the district
and his court, together with the crowd of suitors and applicants that
always followed in his train; and the District Judge, with his court,
and a crowd of litigants, pleaders and witnesses--and this all without
incommoding one another.

The land away from the river is pulsating with the fervid heat of
the summer sun, and the town itself is like an oven; but there is
nearly always a cool breeze blowing on the bank of the river, and,
when heated and dusty