e hospitality, and
chatting with them on the various subjects which come most naturally
to travellers and to missionaries, we tightened our saddle-girths,
which had been loosened to give the horses a feed, mounted, and rode
on. The road lay through a wide and picturesque valley. A small river
was dashing into silver spray over the boulders on some steep descent,
and elsewhere deepening into some pool overshadowed by acacias and
oleanders, where the fish could be seen disporting themselves on
the shingly bottom. The sides of the valley rose up to right and
left in rough escarpments, where the olive and the gurguri-berry
gave a clothing of green to the bare rocks, while here and there
the hills receded sufficiently to enable the thrifty husbandman to
clear a little piece of land from stones and to plant it with millet,
which in good seasons would supply his household with bread through
the winter months.

After a couple of hours of such riding, we approached the watershed
of the valley, northward of which the streams flowed in the opposite
direction towards the Miranzai and the Kurram. It was one of those
wide stony plains called in Afghanistan raghzas, covered for the
most part with stones stained black by oxides of iron and manganese,
and called by the people dozakhi kanrai, or "hell-stones," from their
tradition that they were thrown there in some ancient conflict between
the devils and the angels. The coarse grass springs up in tufts between
the stones, and affords a pasturage to the flocks of hardy goats and
sheep. Shepherds may be seen here and there guarding and attending
them, while in parts there may be sufficient soil to give in a rainy
season a fair crop of millet or of barley. Before long we descried
four tall minarets rising up beyond an undulation of the plain. This
was our first view of the famed cathedral of this Canterbury of the
frontier where the Mullah Karbogha held his court and issued his
decrees and excommunications, which carried dismay into any hapless
chief's home or village against whom they had been fulminated. As we
drew near we met various other travellers, who had come, it may be,
to bear the Mullah their respects and some votive offerings, or it
may be to bring some long-standing dispute for settlement. We wondered
within ourselves what the result of our pilgrimage would be.

As we drew near we got a fine view of the really beautiful and artistic
mosque which the offerings of the faithful