feet broad
and thirty feet deep.

A large road was made not long ago round three sides of the city by
Colonel Trench, then our Consul there, so that the Amir could drive to
his garden, a quarter of a mile outside the north city gate, the
residence of the Amir's son, the Sar-tip. On the west side of
Sher-i-Nasrya there is merely a sheep track.

[Illustration: The Main Street, Sher-i-Nasrya. (Showing centre of City.)]

In the north-west corner of the city is a higher wall enclosing a large
space and forming the citadel and Anderun, in which the Amir and part of
his family reside. There are three large towers to each side of the
quadrangle, the centre tower to the south being of much larger
proportions than the others. A lower outer wall surrounds the higher one,
and in the large tower is the entrance gate to the Governor's citadel.

The inside of the city of Sher-i-Nasrya is neither beautiful nor
interesting from a pictorial point of view. There is a main street with
some mud buildings standing up, others tumbled down. The full-page
illustration shows the most attractive and interesting point of the city,
the centre of the quadrangle where the two streets, one from south to
north, the other from east to west, intersect at right angles. A dome of
mud bricks has been erected over the street, and under its shade a number
of the Amir's soldiers were generally to be seen with their rifles
resting idle against the wall.

The type of Sistan residence can be seen in the two hovels to the right
of the observer in this photograph. The two hoods on the highest point of
the dome are two typical ventilators. To the left the large doorways are
mere shops, with a kind of narrow verandah on which the purchasers squat
when buying goods. The main street is very narrow and has a small
platform almost all along its sides, on which the natives sit smoking
their kalians or conversing.

I was really very much impressed, each time that I visited the city in
the Consul's company, by the intense respect shown by these people to our
representative. There was not a single man who did not rise and salaam
when we rode through the bazaar, while many also came forward to seize
the Consul's hand and pay him the customary compliments. Major Benn
modestly put down this civility of the natives to the popularity of his
predecessor, Major Trench, and the good manners which he had taught these
men; but Major Benn himself, with his most affable manner, h