e bobolink in America.

The second day in the garden is remembered as the anniversary of my start
from Liverpool, and I have plenty of time for retrospection. It is
unnecessary to say that the year has been crowded with strange
experiences. Not the least strange of all, perhaps, is my present
predicament as a prisoner in the Herat Valley.

In the afternoon there arrives from Herat a Peshawari gentleman named
Mirza Gholam Ahmed, who is stationed here in the capacity of native agent
for the Indian government. He is an individual possessed of considerable
Asiatic astuteness, and his particular mission is very plainly to
discover for the governor of Herat whether I am English or Russian. He is
a somewhat fleshy, well-favored person, and withal of prepossessing
manners. He introduces himself by shaking hands and telling me his name,
and forthwith indulges in a pinch of snuff preparatory to his task of
interrogation. Accompanying him is the officer who received me from
Kiftan Sahib in the apricot garden, and whose suspicions of my being a
Russian spy are anything but allayed.

During the interview he squats down on the threshold of the little
bungalow, and concentrates his curiosity and suspicion into a protracted
penetrating stare, focused steadily at my devoted countenance. Mohammed
Ahzim Khan imitates him to perfection, except that his stare contains
more curiosity and less suspicion.

Mirza Gholam Ahmed proceeds upon his mission of fathoming the secret of
my nationality with extreme wariness, as becomes an Oriental official
engaged in a task of significant import, and at first confines himself to
the use of Persian and Hindostani. It does not take me long, however, to
satisfy the trustworthy old Peshawari that I am not a Muscov, and fifteen
minutes after his preliminary pinch of snuff, he is unbosoming himself to
me to the extent of letting me know that he served with General Pollock
on the Seistan Boundary Commission, that he went with General Pollock to
London, and moreover rejoices in the titular distinction of C. I. E.
(Companion Indian Empire), bestowed upon him for long and faithful civil
and political services. The C. I. E. he designates, with a pardonable
smile of self-approval, as "backsheesh" given him, without solicitation,
by the government of India; a circumstance that probably appeals to his
Oriental conception as a most extraordinary feature in his favor.
Bribery, favoritism, and personal influence enter