y by its
tail; he then looks back at his comrades and favors them with a brief but
highly exaggerated account of his sensations.

The mirza and the mudbake deliver themselves of particularly deep-chested
acclamations of "Allah, Allah!" at the prospect of undergoing similar
sensations to those described by the khan, whereupon that unsympathetic
individual vents his hilarity in a gleeful, heartless peal of laughter,
and tells them, with a diabolical chuckle of delight, that they will most
likely fare ten times worse than himself on account of the inferiority of
their horses compared with the gray. Much threatening, bantering, and
persuasion is necessary to induce them to follow the leadership of the
khan; but, trusting to kismet, they finally venture, and both come
through without noteworthy misadventure. The khan's wild hilarity and
ribaldish jeers at the expense of his two subordinates, as he stands on
the solid foundation of a feat happily already accomplished and surveys
their trepidation, and hears their prayers as they are pulled like human
dinghies through the water, is in such ludicrous contrast to his own
prayerful utterances under the same circumstances a minute before that my
own risibilities are not to be wholly controlled.

This little episode makes a profound impression upon the minds of my
escort; they now regard me as a very dare-devil and determined
individual, a person entirely without fear, and their deference during
the remainder of the afternoon is in marked contrast to their previous
attempts to work upon my presumed apprehensions of the dangers of
Afghanistan.

Following the guidance of a few rude landmarks of piled brush, we
discover, a few miles off to the left, and on the eastern environ of the
slough-veined basin, a considerable body of tents and a herd of grazing
camels. The sowars pronounce them to be a certain camp of Einiucks that
they have been expecting to find somewhere in this vicinity, and with
whose chief the khan says he is acquainted.

Wending our way thither we find a large camp of about fifty tents
occupying a level stretch of clean gravelly ground, slightly elevated
above the mud-flats. The tents are of brownish-black goat-hair, similar
in material to the tents of Koords and Eliautes; in size and structure
they are larger and finer than those of the Eliautes, but inferior to the
splendid tent-palaces of Koordistan. A couple of hundred yards from the
tents is a small spring of