aul the effects of the weaker party, and see if they had
any toothsome eatables from the bazaars of Herat; and the latter, justly
apprehensive of these designs on their late purchases, consider
themselves fortunate in escaping without being ruthlessly looted.

Toward evening we pass a comparatively new cemetery on a knoll; no signs
of human habitation are about, and Kiftan Sahib, in response to my
inquiries, explains that it is the graveyard of a battle-field.

Several times during the afternoon we lose the trail; we seem to be going
across an almost trailless country, and more than once have to call a
halt while men are sent to the summit of some neighboring hill to survey
the surrounding country for landmarks.

At dark we pitch our camp in a grassy hollow, where the horses are made
happy with heaps of pulled bottom-grass. Neither trees nor houses are
anywhere in sight; but the chief of the sowars and another man ride away
over the hills, and late at night return with two men carrying bread and
mast and fresh goat-milk enough to feed the whole hungry party.

We make a leisurely start next morning, the reason of the dalliance being
that we are but a few farsakhs from Herat. The country develops into
undulating, grassy upland prairie, the greensward being thickly spangled
with yellow flowers. A two flours' ride brings us to a camp of probably
not less than one hundred tents. Large herds of camels are peacefully
browsing over the prairie, numbers of them being females rejoicing in the
possession of woolly youngsters, whose uncouth but tender proportions are
swathed in old quilts and nummuds to protect them from the fierce rays of
the sun.

Sheep are being sheared and goats milked by men and boys; some of the
women are baking bread, some are jerking skin churns, suspended on
tripods, vigorously back and forth, and others are preparing balls of
mast for drying in the sun. The whole camp presents a scene of
picturesque animation.

From the busy nomad camp, the trail seems to make a gradual ascent until,
on the morning of April 30th, we arrive at the bluff-like termination of
a rolling upland country, and behold! spread out below is the famous
valley of Herat. Like a panorama suddenly opened up before me is the
charmed stretch of country that has time and again created such a stir in
the political and military circles of England and Russia, the famous
"gate to India" about which the two greatest empires of the world have