hunting through the jungle with greyhounds, Mohammed Ahzim Khan informs
me that both baabs, and palangs (panthers) are to be found along the
Heri Rood.

Luxuriant beds of the green stuff known in the United States as
lamb's-quarter, abound, and I put one of the sowars to gathering some
with the idea of cooking it for supper. None of our party know anything
about its being good to eat, and Mohammed Ahzim Khan shakes his head
vigorously in token of disapproval. A nomad visitor, however,
corroborates my statement about its edibleness, and fills our chief with
wonderment that I should know something in common with an Afghan nomad,
that he, a resident of the country, knows nothing about. By way of
stimulating his wonderment still further, I proceed to call off the names
of the various nomad tribes inhabiting Afghanistan, together with their
locations.

"Where did you learn all this." he queries, evidently suspicious that I
have been picking up altogether too much information.

"London," I reply.

"London!" he says; "Mashallah! they know everything at London."

The horseman who intercepted us rode away when we camped for the night.
Nothing more was seen of him, and at a late hour I turn in for the night
--if one can be said to turn in, when the process takes the form of
stretching one's self out on the open ground. No explanation of our
detention here has been given me during the evening, and as I lay down to
sleep all sorts of speculations are indulged in, varying from having my
throat cut before morning, to a reconsideration by the authorities of the
orders sending me back to Persia.

Some time in the night I am awakened. A strange horseman has arrived in
camp with a letter for me. He wears the uniform of a military courier.
The sowars make a blaze of brushwood for me to read by. It is a letter
from Mr. Merk, the political agent of the Boundary Commission. It is a
long letter, full of considerate language, but no instructions affecting
the orders of my escort. Mr. Merk explains why Mahmoud Yusuph Khan could
not take the responsibility of allowing me to proceed to Kandahar. The
population of Zemindavar, he points out, are particularly fanatical and
turbulent, and I should very probably have been murdered; etc.

The march toward Karize is resumed in good season in the morning. "What
was that? a cuckoo?" At first I can scarcely believe my own senses, the
idea of cuckoos calling in the jungles of Afghanistan being about