The Prince lit a cigarette, and just as he began smoking we heard a most curious noise. The lamps and vases rattled violently, and I saw the Prince’s face change. Pyne turned to me and said, “An earthquake!” The rattling and shaking increased, the doors swung open, and our chairs heaved. The Prince sat a moment while the noise and shaking grew more and more severe, then suddenly he rose and walked rapidly out into the gardens. The whole court, and we with them, followed hurriedly. All thought the Palace would fall. With one exception it was the most severe earthquake I ever experienced. The shock lasted four minutes, and travelled from east to west. We returned again to the pavilion for a short time, but presently were allowed to retire, so that the reception ended somewhat abruptly.

As we were coming out I found there were two other enclosures in the fort beside that containing the Amîr’s pavilion. Next to the Amîr’s garden was the large enclosure of the Harem serai. It is not etiquette to walk past the door of this if you can get to your destination any other way. I had to enter this enclosure once, but that I will speak of later.

Next to the Harem serai was a quadrangle containing the official quarters of the Princes. Each Prince has also an establishment in the city, where are his servants, and horses, and his harem. Besides these enclosures there is the Treasury, the Amîr’s private Stores containing valuables of all kinds, silks and diamonds, carpets, and wines: a row of cook houses or kitchens: quarters for the court officials and pages; and barracks for the garrison. The fort, though seemingly strong, and no doubt useful in case of a sudden riot, is completely under the control of the fort on the summit of the Asmai mountains.

CHAPTER IV.
Afghan Hospitals.

The next day Mr. Pyne set to work to get the pieces of machinery removed from their cases and put together. Followed by a sergeant and a couple of soldiers of the guard he bustled about vigorously, issuing rapid orders in a mixture of English and broken Hindustani, and Persian, which compound language his workmen soon learnt to understand.

I had received no orders as to attending patients, but hearing from Pyne that there was a City Hospital I rode off with my guard to see what it was like. I found the Hospital was situated in the row of Government buildings erected outside the Erg Palace on the wide poplar-fringed road running between the city and the Sherpur cantonment, which was made by the British and called by them “The Old Mall.” These buildings skirt the gardens outside the Erg Palace on the south and east. Like most of the buildings put up under the direction of the Amîr, they are better built than most of the other houses in Kabul. Though only of one story they are very lofty, with thick walls, and have glazed windows. The buildings do not open into the street but into the gardens, access to which is obtained by the big gateway on the east side, where we left our horses when we visited the Prince, and by a similar gateway on the south.

In the storeroom of the Dispensary I found on the shelves of glazed cupboards a great many cases of old-fashioned surgical instruments, some of which were marked “Hon. East India Co.,” and on other shelves a large collection of European drugs in their bottles, jars, and parcels. The name of each drug was written in Persian as well as in English characters. These had been ordered from time to time by certain Hindustani Hospital assistants who were in the service of the Amîr, and who had had charge of the Out-patient Hospital and the European drug stores. The Hospital assistants had not used any great amount of judgment in their orders, nor had they considered expense in the least. I found great quantities of patent medicines warranted to cure every disease under the sun; and of the newer and more expensive drugs of which so much is expected and so little is known. The old tried friends of the Medical Profession, whose cost is reasonable and whose action is known, such as quinine, ipecacuanha, carbonate of ammonia, Epsom salts, were conspicuous by their absence. I enquired what plan had been adopted by the Hindustanis when they were making out their orders, and learnt that they got hold of the price list of some enterprising vendor which had found its way to Kabul through India, and ticking off any drugs or patent mixtures that seemed to promise an easy road to success in treatment, they ordered great quantities of these, regardless of cost and before they had tested them.

The stores were in charge of a Hindustani, who had obtained a medical qualification in Lahore, and who had been in the British service. He showed me a medal, and was reported to be in receipt of a small pension from the Government, though how he received it while in Kabul I never heard.

I reached the Hospital about nine o’clock in the morning, and found myself confronted by some eighty sick Afghans who had heard of the arrival of a “Feringhi doctor,” and were all eager to be cured by him. In the time when Lord Roberts occupied Kabul the regimental surgeons had done good work among the Afghans.

A guard, with fixed bayonet, stood at the door to keep off the crush; he did not use the bayonet, but he used a stick that he had with some vigour.

Every patient who had a weapon, and most Afghans wear one of some kind, was disarmed before he entered the room. I had no interpreter, and had been advised by Mr. Pyne not to learn Persian; so that when the first patient was admitted I was in somewhat of a difficulty. I had seen in a Persian grammar that the word “Dard” meant pain, so that when the first man came up I said, “Dard?” putting a note of interrogation after it. The patient looked blankly at me. I thought he must be intellectually very dull, and I repeated my word, but with no better result. Not knowing quite what to say next, I examined him with the stethoscope.

He was greatly astonished, and shrank back somewhat suspiciously when I placed it against his chest. However, when he found no evil resulted, he allowed me to proceed. I could not find anything the matter with him, and was again at a standstill.

This seemed very unsatisfactory; when to my great relief, a tall young man, in a turban and a brown frock-shaped coat, stepped forward and addressed me in imperfect English. I found he was an Armenian Christian who had been educated in a Missionary boarding school in India, but he had been so long in Kabul that he had nearly forgotten English. He afterwards became my interpreter, and grew very fluent, but at first I had to learn his English before I could understand him; it was quite different from anybody else’s. However—about the patient—I said, “Ask this man if he has any pain.” And then I found that my word “Dard” ought to have been pronounced more like “Dŭrrŭd.” I tried “Dŭrrŭd” on them afterwards, but either they didn’t expect me to know Persian, or else there ought to have been some context to my word, for they looked just as blankly at me as when I said “Dard.” The ordinary Afghan is a very slow-witted person. I found the patient had no pain, and I said,

“Tell him to put out his tongue.”

The patient appeared surprised, and looked somewhat doubtfully at me. I suppose he thought I was jesting in making such a request. However, he put out his tongue: it was quite healthy. I said,

“There is nothing the matter with him;” but the Armenian said,

“Sir, a little you stop—I find out.” He said something in Persian, and the man nodded. What words the Armenian used to enable me to understand what was wrong I do not remember, but I found out eventually that the patient wanted a tonic, for all he suffered from was an inability to manage his many wives. I said, “Tell the man his complaint does not exist in my country; I have no medicines for it.”

There were, I should think, a dozen who came the first day for the same reason. Of other diseases, malarial fevers, eye cases, venereal diseases, coughs and dyspepsia were the commonest. I was not able to finish attending to all the patients in the morning, and returned in the afternoon, finding them still waiting. As the days went by, the number of patients increased to such an extent, that it finally became no small matter to attend to them all, and do my own dispensing. There were Hindustani dispensers, but I was not quite prepared to trust them, till I knew them better.

One day a lad, one of the Court pages, was brought: he was suffering from jaundice. I put the suitable medicine in a bottle, placed it on the table, then turned to examine another patient, mixed his medicine, and put the bottle by the side of the first one. I went on till I had about a dozen bottles ready, then I ordered them to be filled with water, and gave them out. The patients took their medicine and progressed satisfactorily: the Page boy, in particular, rapidly improved. I was naturally pleased and said so to the Armenian. I thought he looked rather strangely at me, and he said—

“Truly God works for the Sir!”

I wondered rather that he should be so impressive; but not for some months after did I know why he was so. Then he told me. It seemed that after I had mixed the Page boy’s medicine and turned away to the second patient, one of the dispensers seeing the bottle on the table ready, as he thought, for use and not quite clean, washed it out and replaced it. It was then filled with water and the boy rapidly became well. The dispenser had not dared to say what he had done, lest I should be angry. There was great wonder and awe at the hospital over that case, and my reputation as a healer of the sick spread rapidly.

“If the Feringhi,” they said, “gives a pinch of dust (jalap powder) or only water, the sick became well!”

In the Palace gardens outside the moat, and about a hundred yards from the out-patient hospital, I saw a large white building with pillared verandah and corrugated iron roof. This was the “Salaam Khana” or Hall of Audience. It is a long high hall, with twelve lofty windows on each side draped with English curtains: two rows of white pillars support the ceiling, which is decorated in colours with stencilled and lacquered plates of thin brass. The floor is covered with English carpets, and when, as is frequently the case, a dinner is given by His Highness to the chief officers of his army, long tables occupy the aisles, and each guest is accommodated with a cane-seated wooden arm-chair. During a banquet or festival, the hall is lit in the evening by two big “arc” electric lamps, the dynamo of which is worked by a portable engine, which is brought from the workshop for the occasion. The building lies east and west, and is entered at the eastern extremity by a big doorway and portico. The western extremity is entered through a large vestibule with portico and steps. Here the building is carried up another story, and this part of the Salaam Khana constitutes the Amîr’s Guest house.

On the ground floor are the great hall, the vestibule or entrance hall which opens into the Palace gardens, and three smaller rooms. A stone staircase with wooden balustrades leads to the upper floor. Here there is in the centre a large pavilion, the Guest House, lighted by many large double windows, which open on to the covered balcony or terrace on the roof of the lower rooms. The Amîr and, sometimes, Prince Habibullah, are accustomed to spend a month or two in this house, living in the upper pavilion, or in one of the lower rooms.

A few days after my first appearance at the dispensary, I heard there was a military “In-patient” hospital situated in the Sherpur cantonment, which lies to the north of the town about a mile and a-half away.

I determined to visit it, and one afternoon, after finishing at the City dispensary, we started along the Old Mall which leads from the town, past the Erg Palace to the cantonment.

We passed first the Salaam Khana, and then, further on, at the extremity of the Palace gardens, I saw a small monument about twenty feet high. It was square at the base and carried upward like the spire of a church. On the square pediment was an inscription in Persian. This monument I learnt was erected by His Highness to the memory of those soldiers who fell in the last war against the British.

On the other side of the Old Mall, commencing opposite the Palace and extending as far as the monument, is a row of one storied buildings. These open not on to the road, but on the other side into vegetable gardens and fields at the back. This row of buildings which turns a corner opposite the monument and extends down a road running east to the Kabul river, the Amîr has built as a barrack for the soldiers of his body guard. About four feet from the doors of this row of buildings is a narrow stream of running water, artificially made and used, after the Afghan custom, both for ablutionary and for drinking purposes, as well as for the irrigation of the vegetable gardens.

Proceeding on our way we approached the lofty battlemented walls surrounding the Sherpur cantonment. This oblong enclosure which lies nearly east and west a mile and a-half due north of the city, is a mile and a-half along its front, nearly three-quarters of a mile along either end, and backs upon two low hills about three hundred feet high, the Bemaru heights, at the east base of which, within the enclosure, lies the Bemaru village. The hills protect the north side: the other three sides are protected by the high walls, which are complete except for half the length of the east extremity just by the Bemaru village.

It was this cantonment, it will be remembered, that was held by the British at the time when Lord Roberts occupied Kabul during the second Afghan war.

The Afghans had planned a sudden night attack in which their whole force was to move suddenly at a given signal upon the cantonment. As Lord Roberts’ force was exceedingly small, considering the great extent of the cantonment, it was thought by the Afghans that an easy victory would result. The signal was to be the sudden lighting of a beacon on the Asmai mountain. But there are never wanting those among the Afghans who, for a sufficient bribe, will reveal anything, and the British were ready when the attack came. The rush was met by a continuous and deadly fire, and after strenuous but vain efforts to gain an entry, the Afghans retired, leaving great numbers of their comrades dead on the field.

The gate we entered was protected outside by a semicircular curtain. Built along the inner side of the wall were buildings one story high, with a massive pillared colonnade or verandah and flat roof. There were wood-faced, clay-beaten steps at intervals leading to the roof, so that it was possible for troops defending the cantonment to take their stand on the roof and fire through the loopholes.

Just inside the gate was a bazaar of small shops, where fruit, vegetables, and bread were for sale; and soldiers in every style of dress, Turkoman, Kabuli, Hazara, were grouped about. Some were seated on the ground playing cards, some smoking the chillim or hubble-bubble, others digging in little vegetable or flower-gardens. These were created with great pains around irregularly arranged huts which formed the north side of the street leading along by the colonnade. These huts and the rooms under the colonnade were used as barracks. The soldiers seemed to stare with more curiosity than the townspeople had shown, and as we rode along towards the hospital one suddenly stepped forward and seized my bridle. I thought it was a piece of insolence, and raised my riding-whip to cut him across the face, when it occurred to me that perhaps it would be as well not to risk a close acquaintance with the ready knife of an incensed Afghan. My guard seized the man and hustled him out of the way with many loud words, to which he replied vigorously. Not understanding Persian, and an interpreter not being with me, I could not enquire what it was all about, so I rode on. All the centre of the cantonment was a huge open gravelled space, and here troops were drilling. The words of command were in Afghani or Pushtu, not Persian, but the titles of the officers were moulded upon English titles: Sergeant was pronounced Surgeon; Captain, Kiftan; General, Jinral; and there was Brigadier and Brigadier-Jinral.

The hospital was in an enclosed garden within the cantonment, and was entered by low but heavy double gates. A series of rooms was built along the inner side of the walls of the garden in the usual Afghan style. There was no connection between the rooms except by a verandah, and there was no upper story. Each room was about eight feet by ten, and as none of them had windows, but were lighted simply by the door that opened on to the verandah, they were nearly dark.

In the garden were a few trees, and in the centre a square sunk tank for water: this, however, was empty. There was a cook house or kitchen, with its coppers and ovens heated by charcoal, where the cook baked the bread and prepared the diets for the patients: Pilau (rice and meat), kabob (small squares of meat skewered on a stick and grilled over charcoal), shôrbar, or broth, and shôla, which is rice boiled and moistened with broth. There were two dispensaries, one containing native drugs and one a few European drugs. There were, of course, no female nurses: each sick soldier was looked after by a comrade.

The Hakim on his daily round wrote on a slip of paper the date and the name, diet and medicine of the patient he prescribed for. This was handed to the attendant of each patient, whose duty it was to procure the medicine from the dispensary and the food from the cook-house. I never heard of an attendant eating the food intended for a patient. One hakim, the cook and dispenser lived in the hospital. The slips of paper were taken to the mirza, or clerk, who copied the daily diets on to one paper and the medicines on another. The papers were then put away in the stores. No daily totals were taken, so that if fraud were suspected on the part of a storekeeper, dispenser, or cook, and the Amîr ordered a rendering or auditing of accounts, the matter took a year, a year and a-half, or two years before it was completed. However, as I found later, the order in Afghanistan to “render an account” is usually synonymous with “fine, imprisonment, or death.”

The next morning at the out-patient hospital when the Armenian interpreter appeared, I told him of the soldier seizing my bridle in Sherpur, and asked him to enquire what the man wanted. He seemed rather startled when I told him, and at once turned to the sergeant of the guard to enquire about it. It was nothing after all, simply the man, guessing I was the Feringhi doctor, wanted me to see a sick comrade. They apologized for him, saying he was not a Kabuli but an uncouth “hillman” who knew no better. However, an order from Prince Habibullah arrived in the afternoon that I was not to attend at Sherpur till he had communicated with His Highness the Amîr.

CHAPTER V.
Afghan Dwellings.

The same day that I attended the Hospital, I received an order to visit a man of some importance, the brother of the Prince’s Chief Secretary or Mirza. Although it was but a very short distance, I went on horseback, for I found it was not usual for any man of position to walk about the town. The patient was suffering from Paralysis agitans, or Shaking palsy, and was of course incurable. I was not allowed to depart until I had eaten some sweets and drank tea.

To reach his house we rode through the streets in which are the living houses of Kabul. I think the most striking peculiarity of these Residential streets is their narrowness, and the height and irregular arrangement of the almost windowless walls. Generally, they are simply narrow passages necessary to obtain access to one, or a group, of the living houses. Few of the streets, except the bazaars, can be called in any sense thoroughfares. They wind and twist about most irregularly, sometimes open to the sky, sometimes covered in by rooms belonging to the adjoining houses, and they usually end abruptly at the closed door of a house or garden. When one or more rooms are built over the street the builder rarely trusts to the strength of the original wall: he fixes wooden uprights on each side to support the cross beams. Dirtiness and want of ventilation are conspicuous. Drainage and street scavenging are also conspicuous by their absence. At one time it was exceedingly unsafe to traverse the streets after nightfall—I mean for the Kabulis themselves. Robbery and murder were every night occurrences. It is now, however, less dangerous. There are sentries belonging to the military police posted at intervals, each having a small oil lamp at his station. After ten o’clock at night every passer-by must give the night word or be kept by the police till the morning, when he is brought before a magistrate to give a reason for his wanderings. And the Amîr now punishes the crimes of robbery and murder most severely. For robbery and theft the hand of the criminal is amputated in a rough and ready way. It is done in this manner. The local butcher is called in. He knots a rope tightly just above the wrist of the criminal, and with a short sharp knife he severs the hand at the joint, plunging the raw stump into boiling oil. Then the criminal becomes a patient and is sent to the hospital to be cured. No flap of skin has been made to cover the end of the bone, and the skin has been scalded for two inches or more by the oil, so that months go by before the stump heals by cicatrization. A priest one day—he may have been a humane Afghan—suggested to the Amîr that operations of this and other kinds on criminals should be done by the European doctor. The Amîr negatived the suggestion with a sharp reprimand.

For murder—hanging and other forms of putting to death were found inadequate. So that now in addition to the murderer being given into the hands of the deceased’s friends for them to kill as they please, such a fine is put upon his whole family—father, brothers, uncles, and cousins—that they are all ruined. Mere life is of no great value to an Afghan, and at one time if a man found it inconvenient to kill his enemy himself, he could easily get someone who for six thousand rupees would do it for him and take the risk of being hung, so long as the money was paid to his family.

Supposing you have to visit a person in the town, you are conducted on horseback along the narrow winding streets. You dismount at a door and stumble into a dark winding passage with your head bent to avoid a bang against an irregular beam, and you go slowly for fear of puddles and holes which you cannot see. You come into the open, and find yourself in a garden with flowers and trees, and a tank or pond in the middle, or in a small courtyard with simply a well. The house is built round the garden or yard, and consists of a series of rooms opening by doors into one another and with the windows all looking into the garden.

The richer men, especially those whose houses have been built within the present reign, have large and beautiful gardens full of fruit-trees and flowers, and through them ripples a stream or channel to supply the tank with fresh water. A house so placed that a stream can be brought through the garden from some irrigation canal is of greater value than one where water can be obtained only from a well. These modern houses are better built and much more elaborate than the older ones. The windows, large and often filled with coloured glass, are made to open and shut on hinges. The floors, though rarely boarded, are of beaten earth carefully levelled. The rooms are decorated all round in the Oriental way with “takchas,” or small niches having the Saracenic arch. There is a frieze just below the ceiling, and below this is a dado, with mouldings which are arranged also around the takchas and the fireplace, if one exists. The mouldings are of a hard and fine cement with which the whole wall is faced. The best cement is brown in colour, very like Portland cement, and is found at Herat. Generally the wall is whitewashed, and sometimes before the cement is dry it is sprinkled with sparkling particles of talc. The ceiling may be boarded, but more often the beams are hidden by crimson drapery stretched tightly across. In the winter a crimson curtain is hung over the door. The windows, except in the Amîr’s palace, are rarely curtained.

The takchas or recesses are filled with vases, lamps, or candlesticks, and the floor is covered with beautiful Turkestan rugs or carpets. These, with the addition of a velvet-covered mattress, properly constitute the furniture of a room, for Orientals habitually sit cross-legged on the ground. Now-a-days, however, no rich Afghan townsman considers his room furnished without a chair or two; not that he uses them much except when a distinguished foreigner calls, but it is a sign that he knows what is correct. Sometimes you even see a small table, but this is not usual. The houses of the richer men are in the suburbs. They cover large spaces of ground and are rarely more than one story high. They are not built level with the garden, but are raised some three or four steps. The roof is flat, and a staircase leads to the top. In the summer, on account of the heat, it is usual for a tent to be erected on the top of the house, and for the owner to sleep there. There are apartments which are devoted solely to the ladies of the harem, and also kitchens and quarters for the servants and slaves. The stables are, as a rule, in another enclosure. The whole house and garden, surrounded by its high wall and entered by only one gate, is absolutely private and screened entirely from any curious eye.

Generally there is a room arranged apart from the rest with its window opening outside and not into the garden. This is often a story above the others, and has a staircase of its own. It is for the reception of male visitors who are not relatives or intimate friends of the host.

The houses of the less rich, particularly those in the heart of the town where space is limited, are two, three, or even four stories high. They are built on very much the same plan, though the garden is replaced by a small cramped yard. Many of these are very old houses, and their window sashes do not hang on hinges, but consist of three shutters one above the other, sometimes beautifully carved. If the owner can afford glass the top shutter has one small pane, the second, two, and the third, three; generally, however, there is no glass. The shutters all push up out of the way, and the window is generally wide open, for in the spring, summer, and autumn, the heat is considerable. It is only in the newest houses that you see fireplaces, and these are rarely used, not because the winter is not cold, but because wood is too expensive to burn in such an extravagant way. There is coal in the country, but it is not in use. Even if mines were worked it would be far too costly a proceeding in the absence of railways to bring the coal to town. Quite lately a little inferior coal has been brought for use in the Amîr’s workshops, but there is none for sale.

In the winter people keep themselves warm by means of a charcoal brazier or sandali, which I will describe presently. In the city, the houses being crowded so close to one another, it was to me a source of wonder how the owners could prevent themselves being overlooked. I was informed that if a man standing on the top of his house could see into his neighbour’s enclosure, even into the garden, he was compelled by law to build a wall or screen to cut off his view: a violation of the privacy of a man’s dwelling by looking over the wall is a great offence in Afghanistan.

When a house is to be built, a trench two feet deep is dug and large stones or pieces of rock, unshaped, are packed in with a mixture of clay and chopped straw. This is the foundation. The thickness of the wall depends on the class of house and the height it is to be built. Two feet is about the thickness of the wall of a house one story high. In the poorer houses the wall is built of lumps of clay or mud mixed with chopped straw: in the better houses, of sun-dried bricks six inches square, an inch thick, and laid on the flat: in the best, of similar bricks properly baked. The roof is supported on beams of unshaped poplar. The wood being of poor quality the beams are arranged close together, with a space of not more than two or three inches between each. The beams are covered with rush matting, or, in some houses, little pieces of wood, about four inches long and an inch wide, are placed from beam to beam close together. Over this or the matting is placed clay and chopped straw to the thickness of eight or nine inches. Upper floors are made in precisely the same way. As there is very little rain in the country, a house built in this manner will stand for years, but it is necessary to repair the roof every autumn. When a poor-class house is carried more than one story high, the upper stories, often projecting beyond the lower, are framed with wooden beams—poplar—and the interspaces filled in with sun-dried bricks, making a wall one brick thick. The builder never trusts to the lower wall alone to support a second or third story, but invariably fixes uprights of wood in the ground against the wall to support the first floor. This may be because the extra stories have been added on as the need for more space became urgent. In the older houses the walls are rarely perpendicular, but bulge and lean in all sorts of dreadful ways. If a house seems inclined to tumble over on one side, several extra props of wood are fixed under it. Sometimes an unusual amount of rain in the autumn will wash a house down, and not infrequently an earthquake will shake one to pieces. But considering how they are built, and what they look like, it is astonishing how long they stand.

In the better class houses, built of brick, there is not so much need of the wooden uprights, though even in these you generally see them. The walls of these better houses are some of them very thick: this is the case when they are from the commencement intended to be more than one story high. The house that I lived in in Kabul, after I returned from Turkestan, was one of the better class. It was arranged in two wings at right angles to one another, and was two stories high. It was built of brick coated with mud and chopped straw. The lower walls were about four feet thick and the upper about two feet. Nevertheless, wooden uprights supported the upper floor where I lived. Below were the stables, the kitchen, and the servants’ quarters. I noticed in the stable that one of the walls bulged alarmingly, so that I did not feel any too comfortable when an earthquake—a common phenomenon in Kabul—shook the house. The sensation produced by a slight earthquake is somewhat similar to that produced when you are standing on the platform of a small station and an express comes rushing through. There is not so much noise, but the shaking is very similar. A severe earthquake is very different. It commences mildly, and you think it will stop soon—but it does not: it becomes worse and worse, the beams creak, the windows and doors rattle, the house rocks, and you wonder what is coming next. If it is daytime you escape from the house; if it is night, and in the winter, with three feet of snow outside, you wait for further developments, hoping your house will not fall on top of you.

The houses, being built in this way with thick non-conducting walls and roof, are wonderfully cool in spite of the intense heat of the sun in summer. They should be equally warm in the winter, but, unfortunately, the windows and doors never fit properly. There is no paint on the woodwork, for paint is far too expensive to be used in such a wholesale way, and the heat and dryness of the summer make great cracks appear. Except in the Amîr’s palaces there are no latches to the doors such as we have. The doors and windows are fastened by a chain which hooks on to a staple. The windows of a room occupy nearly the whole of the wall on the garden side of the room; and as passages are rare—one room opening into another—there are two or more doors to each room. The number and variety of draughts, therefore, can be imagined; so that with the thermometer at zero, or below, it is utterly impossible to keep a room warm with a wood fire in the fireplace—even if you have a fireplace, which is unusual.

The Afghans do not attempt to keep the room warm. They keep themselves warm, however, by means of the “sandali.” An iron pot or brazier is placed in the middle of the room and filled with glowing charcoal. Among poorer people simply a shallow hole is scraped in the earth of the floor, and in this the charcoal is put. A large wooden stool is placed over the charcoal and covered by a very large cotton-wool quilt, or rezai. The people sit on the ground round the sandali, pulling the quilt up to their chin. A big postîn over the shoulders keeps the back warm, and the turban is always kept on the head. In the winter there is not much work done, and the people sit by the sandali most of the day. Supposing you make a call, you find them, masters and servants (all men, of course), sitting round the sandali chatting together or playing cards or chess. The ladies have their own sandali in the harem—you don’t see them. Everyone rises as you enter, and room is politely made for you at the sandali. One of the servants goes off to prepare tea, making the water hot in the samovar. Another makes ready the chillim, or hubble-bubble. The tray is brought in with an embroidered teacloth over it, covering teapot, cups and saucers, and sugar-basin. The servant places the tray on the floor and kneels down by the side of it, folding up the cloth for a tea cosy. It is not etiquette for a servant to sit crossed-legged in the presence of a visitor or a superior. In the privacy of their own homes etiquette is, however, considerably remitted. He puts two or three big lumps of sugar into the cup and pours out the tea, breaking up the sugar with a spoon. He gets up and hands you the cup and saucer with both hands. To use one hand would be a rudeness. No milk or cream is drank with the tea, except in the occasional cup of “kaimagh-chai.”

You must drink two cups of this sweet tea—it is flavoured with cardamoms—and half a cup of tea without any sugar—“chai-i-talkh”—this is to correct the sweetness. If you make two or three calls in an afternoon, you feel it is as much as you can bear. In Afghanistan you may call upon a man whenever you like, but you must not leave his house without asking permission. I told them that in my country it was different: people were not allowed to call upon us without invitation, and they could go away as soon as they pleased. The Afghans seemed to think this was very discourteous, for they are nothing if not hospitable.

All the larger houses have rooms for the Afghan bath; there is the bath-room proper, and a small dressing-room. It is not a hot dry-air bath like the Turkish bath, but a hot moist air, so that the heat is never so great as in the Turkish bath. The walls are cemented, and the floor either cemented or paved with an inferior marble that is plentiful near Kabul. The cement is made of equal parts of wood-ashes and lime moistened and beaten together for some days. In a recess in one wall is a cistern or tank of stone or cement, with a fireplace beneath it, which is fed from the stokehole outside the bath-room. Public bath-rooms are quite an institution in Afghanistan. They are rented by a bath-man or barber, who makes what he can out of them. Some of the bath-houses belong to the Amîr. The bath is by no means an expensive luxury: the poorer people pay about a halfpenny. Richer people who engage the services of the bath-man or barber to shampoo them, pay about eighteenpence. The plan I adopted was to engage the bath-room and the shampooer for the day. It cost but a few shillings.

Having sent word a day or two beforehand, I used to start about ten o’clock in the morning, accompanied by all my Afghan servants, bringing bath-towel, soap and comb. It is the custom in Afghanistan when the master has engaged the bath-room, for the Afghan servant to seize the opportunity of having a free bath. Hindustani servants in Kabul do not presume to accompany the Sahib on such an occasion. The outside appearance of the bath-house is not very inviting. As a rule, there is a large pool of stagnant water near by—the waste water of the bath—and you dismount in a hesitating way. When you get into the small dark unpaved entry, and slip about on the mud, the inclination is to turn round and go out again. However, having got so far, you think you may as well face it out. You find the dressing-room clean and dry, and the bath proprietor (or tenant rather) comes out to receive you. He is dressed—or undressed—ready to shampoo you, his only garment being a waist-cloth. The servants pull off your boots, and help you to get ready, and then fix a waist-cloth, which reaches the knees, very tightly round the waist, fastening it with a particular twist. The bath-man taking your hand, raises the curtain over the arched door of the bath-room, and leads you carefully in. The reason is that the floor being very smooth and wet, you are exceedingly likely, without great care, to have a dangerous fall. When you enter, the air being damp as well as hot, you feel almost suffocated.

A good class bath-room is generally octagonal, with a vaulted and groined roof, not much decorated, but displaying a certain amount of taste in the building. The windows are arched and glazed, and very small, so that the room is rather dark. The Afghan servants quickly follow you in, attired in the same way as yourself, and though they treat you with due respect, all seem for the time, more or less, on an equality, and as they dash the water over each other, they chat and laugh quite unrestrainedly. The process of massage, or shampooing, which the bath-men thoroughly understand, is rather a long one; and it is not at all uncommon when bathing to spend a great part of the day—four or five hours—in the bath-room. For myself, I found two hours quite as much as I wanted. A cloth is folded up for a pillow, and you lie on a warm part of the marble, or cement floor. You generally see, at first with some disgust, a few large long-legged ants, running quickly about near the walls: afterwards you become indifferent, for, as the bath-man says, they are harmless, they don’t sting. There are such swarms of insects of all kinds in the East, that you divide them roughly into those that sting and those that don’t. The latter you take no notice of, the former you treat with more respect. The shampooer, having dashed on a little warm water, begins by stretching and kneading the skin of one arm, the rubbing being done in the direction of the blood current; the knuckles of the fingers he cracks with a sudden jerk. Then he goes to the other arm. Having treated all the limbs the same way, he places his two hands on the sides of the chest, and suddenly throws his whole weight on to them, which stretches the skin, and compressing the ribs, drives out the air from the chest with a grunt and gasp. Then he kneads and rubs the muscles of the chest, shoulders, and body. After that he brings you into sitting posture, and fixing you with his knee, he seizes one shoulder and twists you round as far as you can go, and with a sudden jerk in the same direction he makes the back-bone crack. A similar twisting is done the other way round. He then takes a coarse flesh glove and proceeds to rasp your skin off. The more he can get off, the better pleased he is. They left me the first time with a “fox bite” on the chest, which lasted for days. On subsequent occasions I called attention to the fact that I was an Englishman and not a cast-iron Afghan. After the flesh glove, come two courses of “soaping”—how it smarts! hot water being dashed on at frequent intervals. The Afghan shoe leaving a part of the instep exposed, the skin becomes thick and coarse, and a piece of pumice stone is used to scrub the feet with. This, after all the rest, was too much for me, and I rebelled, excusing myself by explaining that my life was of value to the Amîr on account of the number of sick poor in the city.

Finally you stand up, and two or three bucketfuls of hot water are thrown over your head. Your servant then comes up, wraps you in a bath-towel, and you go off to the dressing-room. There are no velvet couches to lie on, so you proceed to rub down and dress: then tea is brought, you have a cigarette, and ride languidly home. The Afghan bath is an excellent institution for cleanliness in a hot climate, but it certainly is neither exhilarating nor stimulating. There is little or no arrangement made for ventilating the bath-room, and it is customary, in the bitter cold of a Kabul winter, for poor people to obtain permission to sleep there at night. It is a not uncommon occurrence for one or two to be found suffocated in the morning.

CHAPTER VI.
The Kabul Bazaars.

One day soon after I arrived in Kabul the Governor of the city—the notorious Naib Mir Sultan—of whom I shall have more to say later, sent to say he was very ill. He had been suffering for days from an agonizing toothache. I was advised not to visit the Naib because he was not in favour with the Prince. I therefore sent him some medicine and directed the Armenian interpreter to go, and if he found a decayed tooth to introduce a small pellet of cotton wool soaked in creosote. A day or two after, as I was returning from the hospital, I met the Naib in one of the bazaars. He was surrounded by a guard of the military police, whose Chief he was, and by a great crowd of servants. At that time he was execrated in Kabul. He did not, however, look very evil. He had a dark skin but not a disagreeable face. I enquired how he was, and he said the pain had entirely left him. He dismounted, and I examined the tooth in the street. It was decayed and the socket inflamed. I wanted to pull it out there and then with my fingers, but he would not let me touch it.