red from
somewhere else. The efforts of those about me to render my forced
detention as pleasant as possible is very gratifying, and all the time I
am buoyed up by the hope that the Boundary Commissioners will be able to
do something to help me get through to India.

The Boundary Commission camp is stationed over two hundred miles from
Herat; eight days roll wearily by and my movements are still carefully
confined to the little garden, and my person attended by guards day and
night. Every day I amuse myself with giving raisins to the robber ants,
for the sake of seeing the ever-watchful bul-buls pounce upon them and
rob them. Morning and evening the imprisoned pee-wit awakens the echoes
with his ratchetty call, and every sunset is commemorated by the
sincerely plaintive utterances of the muezzin mentioned above.

Thus the days of my detention pass away, until the ninth day after my
arrival here. On the evening of May 8th, the officer who first
interviewed me in the apricot orchard comes to my bungalow, and brings
salaams from Faramorz Khan. He and Mohammed Ahzim Khan, after a brief
discussion between themselves, commence telling me, in the same
roundabout manner as the blue-gowned Khan at Furrah, that the Ameer at
Cabool has no control over the fanatical nomads of Zemindavar. Mohammed
Ahzim Khan draws his finger across his throat, and the officer repeats
"Afghan badmash, badmash, b-a-d-m-a-s-h." (desperado).

This parrot-like repetition is uttered in accents so pleaful, and is,
withal, accompanied by such a searching stare into my face, that its
comicality for the minute overcomes any sense of disappointment at the
fall of my hopes. For my experience at Furrah teaches me that this is
really the object of their visit.

Another ingenious argument of these polite and, after a certain childish
fashion, astute Asiatics, is a direct appeal to my magnaminity. "We know
you are brave, and to accomplish your object would even allow the
Ghilzais to cut your throat; but the Wali begs you to sacrifice yourself
for the reputation of his country, by keeping out of danger," they plead.
"If you get killed, Afghanistan will get a bad name."

They are in dead earnest about converting me by argument and pleadings to
their view of the case. I point out that, so far as the reputation of
Afghanistan is concerned, there can be little difference between
forbidding travellers to go through for fear of their getting murdered,
and their actua