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This day's stage of our journey was through fertile, irrigated valley-lands, whose brilliant vegetation contrasted vividly with the monotonous bare gray-brown cliffs on either side. The corn was in the tassel, the stubble of the recently harvested grainfields was golden, the paddy patches were emerald green. Rows of bushes marked the courses of countless brooks and ditches; herds of cattle and flocks of sheep dotted the pastures, and the dark-red blossoms of the oleander trees added a touch of brilliant color to the landscape.

Toward noon, when the heat of the sun began to be uncomfortable, we halted to rest in a shady mulberry grove, ate a luncheon of watermelons, and then crossed a bridge over the Alishang River, which at this point was a swift stream of ice-cold mountain water more than three hundred yards wide. We had now reached the southern frontier of Kafiristan, but were in the territory of the Laghmans, an invading Afghan race which has driven the natives back into the remoter valleys.

The Laghmans are a swarthy, blackhaired people, who wear turbans of many colors and black smocks and trousers embroidered with beautiful flower-patterns, and oftentimes an overvest, likewise richly embroidered with flowers and vines. In cold weather they add to this outfit a colored wrap or a sheepskin jacket. Women's costumes resemble those of the men, but are more elaborately embroidered, and include a long black, violet, or blue veil of silk or cotton, with two narrow eyeholes.

In order to escape the oppressive heat we left the main-traveled highway and followed irrigation embankments and narrow crossroads through the fields till we came again to the banks of the Alishang River, whose cold

glacier waters brought with them a refreshing breeze. These bottom-lands, which are overflowed every spring, were exceedingly fertile. We skirted rice-fields and cornfields interspersed with occasional patches of cotton. Close to the river, groves of mulberry, fig, and plane trees produced a parklike effect. Every few hundred paces we came to a small stream, usually connected by irrigation ditches with its neighbors. At places we had to push our way through dense thickets of oleanders, willows, and other shrubbery where the tangled creepers and white convolvuluses made the way almost impassable. The air was filled with the twittering of reed thrushes and the cooing of turtledoves.

In this manner we followed the banks of the Alishang for about four hours, scarcely aware of the passing of the time, and came in sight of Tirgashi, the capital of the Laghman district, sooner than we expected. This is the farthest point reached by Europeans for instance by the American engineer Heldey in 1913; beyond lies unexplored country never yet trodden by the white man. Tirgashi itself appears to me to be wrongly located on our existing maps; it actually lies five or six miles south of the point they show. The Alishang throws off a side channel just below the town, which we waded, the water coming up to the saddlegirths of our horses. A little northeast of the city the river receives its principal tributary, the Alingar, to whose snow-fed waters from the Kafiri ranges it owes its constant volume during the summer months. On the left bank of the stream an old robber's castle lies ensconced among blooming oleander thickets and clumps of palms. Its massive, quadrilateral wall and lofty watchtowers were still intact, and red calla lilies shone like bloodspots in the slime of its moat. This

seems to be the northern limit, however, of both lilies and palms, for I saw none above Tirgashi.

About 2 P.M. we rode down the walled town's narrow streets, bordered with gray, windowless houses, through a clean little bazaar, which was simply a business street roofed over, with open booths on either side, to the principal square. Here we tethered our horses and camped down beneath the inevitable giant plane trees, on a flat artificial terrace with a low retaining wall. The townspeople soon gathered in a circle around us to stare for the first time in their lives at a European. Soon the town elders appeared and, after reading our credentials from our last host, welcomed us cordially.

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At Tirgashi we bought our last supplies of rice, sugar, tea, and candles, and of barley for the horses. As soon as we had dined on the inevitable pilauwe began to doctor the sick people who came to us for treatment. The night was spent, with a few of the local notables for company, on a little artificial plateau overlooking the town, which normally served as watchtower and outlook against bandit raids.

One little incident here amused me greatly. I had just drunk a glass of water, and, as one of the local chiefs also wished to drink, I handed the glass to his servant to be filled again. The latter, who had just finished spreading out camel-dung to dry for fuel, was apparently too good a Moslem to relish the idea of his master's drinking out of the glass a dog of a Christian had just used. So, without washing his hands, he energetically polished off the glass with his dung-daubed fingers before refilling it. I noticed everywhere in Afghanistan that servants never touched the remnants of food left by their European masters or used the spoons or cups they had used.

As the sun sank behind the western mountains our Mohammedan hosts and our servants turned their faces toward Mekka, prostrated themselves, and, touching the ground repeatedly with their foreheads, recited their evening prayer. Meanwhile we gazed at a sunset such as one sees only in the limpid air of this Iranian landscape. Every tint, from deep red to dark blue and all the shades of violet, streamed in rapid succession across the evening sky and tinged the higher peaks with a luminous afterglow. The last pink fragments of cirrus clouds turned pale and imperceptibly vanished in the darkening sky; and the mountain-slopes were bathed in a deep violet, through which every line and contour stood out in clear-cut relief. At such moments the charm of this arid, barren, but stern and heroic landscape irresistibly seizes the imagination. Immediately ahead of us the low evening mists gathered over the broad Alingar valley through which we were to proceed to-morrow to our unknown destination. One solitary star shone in the firmament.

Next morning the flutelike note of mina birds calling in a blooming pomegranate tree summoned me back to consciousness. The sun rose abruptly above the eastern heights, tinging the summits of the western mountains with gold while the lower valleys and canyons still lay in the shadow of the night. We quickly made ready for departure, and soon the melodious but melancholy sound of the leading pack horse's bell told us that the caravan was under way.

We followed the valley of the Alingar River, at first through country much like that which we had seen the previous day. At places the ground was marshy. Meadows bordered the stream, where sheep and cattle grazed. We kept close to the bank, crossing innumerable brooks, and camped soon after midday in a little grove of walnut, mul

berry, and plane trees, close by the and the apartments where male guests waterside.

About a third of a mile away another typical old robber stronghold with four tall watchtowers was visible above a girdle of blooming oleanders. Its occupant, the most influential khan of the district, was our host, to whom we carried letters of introduction. As soon as our approach was reported from his outlook he hastened down to meet us, accompanied by his sons and servants. Hammocks and mattresses were speedily slung for us, as they had been at all the other points where we had stopped. In this instance, however, the mattresses were covered with dark-blue satin. A meal was served, and we spent the afternoon in the shady grove listening to the murmur of the river and enjoying the cool breeze that blew over the valley. As I lay in my hammock and gazed at the old robbers' stronghold in the midst of its flowery girdle, I pondered that I was looking out upon a true scene from the Middle Ages. We were traveling in the fourteenth century of the Mohammedan era, which in this country corresponds closely with the fourteenth century of the Christian era in Western lands. I was actually living in an age that sank below the horizon of the nations of Europe more than a score of generations ago. What a wonderful globe this is, I reflected, where epochs many centuries apart, as measured by social progress, thus coexist within a few weeks' journey from each other!

Toward evening we took a refreshing swim and proceeded to the castle, for this district is too unsafe for camping out. In the centre of the great square enclosure stood a smaller structure of the same general form, which was the private residence of the khan, and contained his harem. Naturally this was forbidden to the stranger. In the outer yard were stables, servants' quarters,

of the master were received. The latter were very simply furnished according to European standards. Rugs covered the clay floors; several long cushions used as arm-supports lay against the walls, and above them hung various weapons such as swords and rifles, and in one room a graceful lyre inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The windows opened on the inner courtyard and were unglazed, for glass is unknown this far in the interior. Around the inside of the outer wall ran an elevated platform, and at the height of the shoulder above it was a line of portholes. The ascents to the watchtowers were in a dilapidated condition, and only one of them still served as an outlook. I was told that the others had been used by the father and grandfather of the present khan as prisons for wives who developed 'incompatibility of temperament,' and that several of these unhappy ladies had been shut up in them for years.

We climbed up to the platform on a somewhat primitive ladder, where we dined in company with the khan. It was a unique occasion, for we were served chicken instead of mutton. As a rule the Afghanistan menu is deadly monotonous rice and mutton, rice and mutton, rice and mutton, every day. I recalled with longing the good meals I used to have when living with the Persian nomads, who prepare a great variety of the most delightful dishes with almost the same ingredients - mutton, rice, chicken, milk, and eggs. Their higher culinary art, as compared with that of the primitive Afghans, still bears witness to Persia's ancient culture.

We slept on the platform and left early the next morning, accompanied by some of the khan's men, who were to guide us to the Kafir villages in a neighboring valley, at the farthest limits of the country inhabited by the Afghans.

We should have liked to have the khan's personal company, and he wanted to go with us, but he was under the ban of a neighboring tribe and of the Government on account of a murder, and did not dare to venture so far away from home. Probably it was lucky for us that he remained behind, for otherwise we might have become innocently involved in a blood feud.

We crossed the Alishang a short distance up the river on a raft of inflated skins, in order to reach the side where the Kafirs dwelt, and then proceeded directly up the stream. We are apt to assume that a white spot on the map indicating unexplored country also represents a wilderness. That certainly did not apply here, for I have seldom seen more fertile country. Rice, corn, cotton, and sugar cane grew everywhere. Villages were SO close together as to be practically continuous. Sparkling springs, crystalclear brooks, and groves of horse chestnuts, walnuts, plane trees, fig trees, and mulberry trees were on all sides of us. The mulberries were the white variety, and were raised for feeding silkworms. We rode through regular avenues of them, and also of fruit trees, from one village to another. The people seemed friendly and kindly wherever we appeared.

But it would be a great mistake to imagine that the dwellers in this earthly paradise are blessed. The barren mountains on either hand harbor hordes of robbers, and he who at night does not seek protection for himself and his property in a fortified village is lost. We were constantly hearing of recent night attacks even on some of the largest places we passed. Nor should we think of these Afghan peasants as innocent and inoffensive victims of the savage mountaineers. They take their guns with them to their fields, primarily for self-defense

to be sure, but they are not averse to adding a little spice to life by a foray of their own. My own men were constantly on their guard against their fellow lowlanders, and I sometimes overheard them grumbling to themselves because they had imprudently enlisted for my expedition.

We remained that night with a local khan, and followed the river next morning for about two hours; after which we detoured toward the east to a Kafir village. Immediately after leaving the river the landscape changed, and we were in the midst of the arid, gray, gravelly and boulder-strewn desert that covers most of Afghanistan. The sun burned unbearably, and the stream beds, which carry water for a short time in the spring when the snow is melting in the neighboring mountains, were as dry as the plain itself. Except for one jackal, which slunk quickly out of sight, not a living thing was visible. No insects hummed, no birds chirped.

We traveled through this desert for several hours, eventually reaching more broken country with precipitous bare cliffs. Here we were able to water our horses at a muddy pool in a deep depression in an otherwise dry riverbottom. More hours passed, and evening was already approaching before we came to a slight widening of a canyon we had been following, and sparse vegetation indicated water in the vicinity. Soon afterward we sighted the miserable huts of a little village lying in a bend ahead, and as gray as the cliffs behind them.

As the khan's men were acquainted here, we were assured a friendly reception. The village elders, among whom was a dignified, silver-haired old man, greeted us and conducted us to the village square, where we were invited to seat ourselves. We had an excellent opportunity to make ethno

logical studies, since practically every resident of the village gathered around us. Even the women came, which would never have occurred in an Afghan community. They were unveiled, but kept timidly in the background. Their features were harsh and ill-favored, and showed the evidences of the heavy labor they were forced to perform from childhood. None of them could by any stretch of courtesy be described as beautiful. The men were mostly large, well-built fellows, but not at all like the blondehaired, blue-eyed primitive Aryans that some accounts led us to expect. Most of them were as swarthy, blackhaired, and dark-eyed as their Afghan neighbors, and showed evidence of a large admixture of Indian or aboriginal blood. Nevertheless, several had lighter hair and eyes, and one or two might be classed as blondes. I was particularly struck by a man about forty years old with red hair and beard and bright blue eyes. If I had met him in a European crowd I should have taken him offhand for a Mecklenburg or Pomeranian fisherman; in fact, he would have passed for a perfect example of the German coastal type. But he was an exception. The women, so far as I could observe, seemed darker than the men. Since this village had been in close contact with the Afghans for thirty years and had gone over to Islam, most of the men wore turbans and Afghan clothing. Nevertheless, a few had on the long white-felt mantles and felt caps of the true Kafirs, so that they looked like Germans clad in toques and sweaters for winter sports.

One of the most obvious differences between the Kafirs and the Afghans was in the construction of their houses. Those in this village were built of stone instead of mud, though clay was used as a mortar and to cover the timbers of the flat roofs; but farther in the moun

tains, where the people have less contact with the Afghans and where there is abundant timber, the Kafirs live in log cabins, often two stories high, with a sort of Swiss gallery around the upper story. The houses in the villages we visited were separated by a clay partition into two rooms, one for the cattle, the other for the family. Loopholes served as windows, and there was no chimney, the smoke escaping through a hole in the roof. The household utensils consisted of a few mats and woven carpets, clay cooking-utensils and dishes, and little folding camp-stools with seats woven from hempen rope. It interested me to discover that these people sit on stools, while the Afghans, like all Mohammedans, squat on the ground.

Most of the villagers were armed with guns, mostly of ancient make with tremendously long barrels and huge locks. I was told, however, that farther in the interior, and in fact in the very next village, which was still 'heathen,' the people had only bows and arrows. In fact, firearms had been introduced into this village within the past twenty years. I procured a few specimens of the bows, which were made of mulberry wood wound with rawhide. The arrows were not feathered, but had threecornered barbed-iron points.

We spent a day in this village, as I wished to observe the people more closely and to learn what I could of their language and their old beliefs. It was very difficult to get them to talk about their former religion, because, like all new converts, they were ashamed of it. The younger people professed to know nothing of the 'superstitions' of their ancestors. Finally I discovered a very old man, whom I imagined was formerly a pagan priest, although he would not admit it, who told me something of the ancient beliefs as they were preserved here

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