us enough for our immediate wants. He afterwards came himself,
and informed us that we had acted very unwisely in mentioning at
Ghoree the route we proposed to follow, as one of the Sheikkallee
Huzareh chiefs, who was in a state of rebellion, had passed through
Keune the day before, and had stated that a party of Feringhis were
about to pass through his country with a quantity of odd looking boxes
filled with money, (alluding, I suppose, to the theodolite, &c.)
and that he would with his whole tribe waylay and rob us. This was
pleasant news, but we took the hint and determined to be on our guard.
In return for this piece of information, the inhabitants of Keune
expressed a desire to see the _Feringhis feed_; rather a novel
request, but one which we easily gratified by striking the walls of
the tent while we eat our dinner. The natives squatted down in a
circle outside the tent pins, and watched every morsel we put into our
mouths with the utmost interest and with many exclamations of surprise
and astonishment; and when before retiring for the night we as usual
had a skinful of water poured over us, their wonder knew no bounds;
they were evidently but slightly acquainted with the use of water as
applied for the purposes of cleanliness.

We left Keune at daybreak on the 30th, hoping to be able to make our
way to Badjgh[=a]r, distant about forty-five miles, by surmounting the
Keune pass and proceeding down the Surruk Kulla valley. The ascent
was long and steep, the distance we had to travel before reaching the
summit being above thirteen miles; and though we had been on the move
nearly all day, such were the difficulties of the pass that night
overtook us shortly after we had reached its crest.

Not a sign of habitations or trace of cultivation was visible; we had
no corn for our cattle, but fortunately the more sheltered spots in
the vicinity of water were clothed with luxuriant grass, which the
horses greedily eat. Our followers had, with the improvidence of
Asiatics, brought but a scanty supply of food, and indeed we were
all to blame for having trusted too much to the wild mountains
for supplies. There were plenty of chikore, however, and as I had
succeeded in shooting two or three in the morning we were not entirely
without food; and having pitched our tent, we retired to rest in the
hope that the next day we should come upon some fort where we might
recruit.

As we were preparing to start early on the morning of