as at the time in the Gundapoor
country, of which Kulachi is the trade-centre between the Afghan pass
of Ghwalari and Dera Ismail Kan, where the dust of Sir Henry Durand now
lies:--

"A highly interesting circumstance connected with the Indian trade came
under my notice. Ali Khan, Gundapoor, the uncle of the present chief,
Gooldad Khan, told me he could remember well, as a youth, being sent by
his father and elder brother with a string of Cabul horses to the fair
of Hurdwar, on the Ganges. He also showed me a Pushtoo version of the
Bible, printed at Serampore in 1818, which he said had been given him
thirty years before at Hurdwar by an English gentleman, who told him to
'take care of it, and neither fling it into the fire nor the river; but
hoard it up against the day when the British should be rulers of his
country!' Ali Khan said little to anybody of his possessing this book,
but put it carefully by in a linen cover, and produced it with great
mystery when I came to settle the revenue of his nephew's country,
'thinking that the time predicted by the Englishman had arrived!' The
only person, I believe, to whom he had shown the volume was a Moolluh,
who read several passages in the Old Testament, and told Ali Khan 'it
was a true story, and was all about their own Muhommudan prophets,
Father Moses and Father Noah.'

"I examined the book with great interest. It was not printed in the
Persian character, but the common Pushtoo language of Afghanistan; and
was the only specimen I had ever seen of Pushtoo reduced to writing.
The accomplishment of such a translation was a highly honourable proof
of the zeal and industry of the Serampore mission; and should these
pages ever meet the eye of Mr. John Marshman, of Serampore,[21] whose
own pen is consistently guided by a love of civil order and religious
truth, he may probably be able to identify 'the English gentleman' who,
thirty-two years ago on the banks of the Ganges, at the then frontier
of British India, gave to a young Afghan chief, from beyond the distant
Indus, a Bible in his own barbarous tongue, and foresaw the day when
the followers of the 'Son of David' should extend their dominion to the
'Throne of Solomon.'"

Hurdwar, as the spot at which the Ganges debouches into the plains, is
the scene of the greatest pilgrim gathering in India, especially every
twelfth year. Then three millions of people used to assemble, and too
often carried, all over Asia, cholera w