the hour arrives for the
preparation of the evening meal, closely shrouded figures flit hastily
through the dusk from house to house, bearing camel-thorn torches. They
are women who have been to their neighbors to obtain a light for their
own fire. From the number of these it is plainly evident that the
housewives of the entire village light their fires from one original
kindling. The shrouds of the women are red and black plaid; the men wear
overshirts of coarse white; material that reach to their knees, pointed
shoes that turn up at the toes, white Turkish trousers, and the
regulation Afghan turban. The night is most lovely, and frogs innumerable
are in the lowlands round about us, croaking their appreciation of the
mellow moonlight, the balmy air, and the overflowing waters of the river.
For hours they favor us with a musical melange, embracing everything
between the hoarse bass croak of the full-blown bull-frog, to the tuneful
"p-r" of the little green tree-frogs ensconced in the clumps of
dwarf-willow hard by. Soothed by the music of the frogs I spend a restful
night beneath the blue, calm dome of the Afghan sky, though awakened once
or twice by the sowars' horses breaking loose and fighting.

There are no geldings to speak of in Central Asia, and unless eternal
vigilance is maintained and the horses picketed very carefully, a fight
or two is sure to occur among them during the night. As it seems
impossible for semi-civilized people to exercise forethought in small
matters of this kind, a night without being disturbed by a horse-fight is
a very rare occurrence, when several are travelling together.

The morning opens as lovely as the close of evening yesterday; a sturdy
villager carries me and the bicycle through a small tributary of the
Harood. He shakes his head when I offer him a present. How strange that
an imaginary boundary-line between two countries should make so much
difference in the people! One thinks of next to nothing but money, the
other refuses to take it when offered.

The sowars are in high glee at having escaped what seems to me the
imaginary terrors of the passage across the Dasht-i-na-oomid, and as we
ride along toward Ghalakua their exuberant animal spirits find expression
in song. Few things are more harrowing and depressing to the
unappreciative Ferenghi ear than Persian sowars singing, and three most
unmelodious specimens of their kind at it all at once are something
horrible.

The count