other hand, the Duranis received large royal demesnes, and held them and their ancestral lands from the crown, upon the service of a horseman for every plough, a doubtful benefit to a nation who had been proprietors. Moreover, their khans having the offices of the court and the sirdarships of the provinces in their hands, dispensed no small amount of salaries, power, and plunder amongst their families and friends; but this, it is clear, would corrupt the great families of the Duranis, and could never do substantial service to the tribe. Lastly, they had the honour of being the royal and ruling tribe, certainly a stimulus to exertion, but also a motive to arrogance, and a fruitful source of envy and civil war. On the whole, we must regard this notable connexion of the court with the Duranis as mischievous to the court, the tribe, and the nation. Since the late civil wars, the Durani clans have fortunately fallen into isolation, and their organization now resembles very closely that which we have explained as characteristic of the Afghans generally, They are more united and more attached to their khan than the Ghiljis; but on a late occasion have shown themselves inferior to them in energy and zeal for freedom.

For the rest, the Duranis are endowed with many virtues. Their hospitality is both a recognised public duty and a private enjoyment. They are generous and gentle in their attentions to the new comer. Your wearied feet are washed; no pains, no expense are spared to make you comfortable, happy, and at home; for successful hospitality is the pride of the Durani. The Uchukzyes are alone habitual robbers, (and indeed they seem only a degree better than the Kybers) but most of the Duranis, though ready for a chapow (foray) across the borders, do not plunder within their own territories.

In winter, the pastoral Duranis, (who are five-sixths of the entire) pitch their long black tents in a cluster round the castle of their immediate khan; this station is called kishlak. The eilak, or summer station, is among the hills. These shepherds seem fully to realize the idea of "a simplicity not rude but poetic."* They speak with rapture of these summer wanderings, and even round their winter fires sing the beauties of their highlands, almost as often as the achievements of the khan and the forays on their borders.

All the shepherd tribes till a little land, and yet the smallest agricul

This happy phrase is applied by Mr. Taylor to the Arabs of the seventh and eighth centuries. The whole passage is noble, and as anything relating to the Arabs cannot be amiss in an article on a people so closely resembling them as the Afghans, the reader will excuse our quoting the entire of it :

"When the princely men of the Arabian desert, great as they were in steady physical courage-great in a condensed and sententious energy of understanding-and great in simplicity of manners,-a simplicity not rude but poetic; when those heroes-born broke their limits and trod the open world, their feeling must have been like that of a veteran garrison, which having believed itself hemmed in by superior forces, at last descends from its citadel, and in scouring the woods and plains around, meets only with frightened flocks and herds."-Taylor-Fanaticism, p. 239.

tural tribe contrives to have an eilak to the hills every summer, with its scanty flock, saying life would not be worth having without the sum

mer rove.

There remain a couple of small districts to be noticed. The first of these is Pishin, a rough but fertile valley, sixty miles long and thirty broad, which separates the Duranis of the Khogeh-amran from Shal. It is inhabited by the Tor Terins, a tribe related to the Duranis in blood, but in way of life resembling rather the Lohanis, being partly agriculturists, partly carriers. The passes through mount Tukatu into Pishin from Shal are strong, and it was in attempting to break through them into Pishin that General England was so thoroughly drubbed by the Terins and their Durani neighbours. The Spin Terins, another branch, occupy the plains of Tull and Chuteali, stretching across the Caker country. The Baraichis, a shepherd tribe, inhabit the valley of the Lora, sixty miles long; a tolerably fertile tract west of Pishin, and containing a large lake; but of this secluded district little is known. On the south-west of Afghanistan is Seistan, the hereditary kingdom of Rustam,* and once the seat of literature, arts, and civilization; but war has broken down its fenced cities, and swept off its inhabitants; and to complete the change, the sands of the Persian desert have swept over most of it, and left its scanty inhabitants poor and ignorant. The banks of lake Zurrah are alone fertile now; and though their chief, who is believed to represent their old kings, (that famous race whose Persian branch produced Cyrus and his successors,) still holds a sceptre in Dushak; yet, alas for fortune, the descendant of the mighty kings is but a chief in name, for an intruding Beluchi has the real government of Seistan.

Candahar is situated in the valley of the Urghundab. The immediate neighbourhood of the city is rich and well cultivated. It is on a great elevation, 3,500 feet above the level of the sea; but this is the height of the whole district, and is only half that of Cabul. Candahar contains 25,000 people, mostly of Durani blood, and is the only city whose chief population are genuine Afghans. It consists of a number of well and regularly built streets, containing about six or seven thousand of those flatroofed houses in court-yards, usual throughout Asia. Its fortifications are contemptible, being a thin mud wall, thirty-three feet high, and ditch twenty-four feet wide by ten deep. This line of defence forms an irregular oblong, whose longest face is 1,900 feet, and its shortest 1,100. There is also a castle on the northern face, but Candahar could not stand a week's siege by a regular army. It is distant by the usual routes from Ghuzni 156 miles, from Cabul 210, from Peshawur 380; 260 miles in a direct line from Herat, but double that distance by the great roads, and 290 miles by the Bolan pass to Dadur.

As the countries of Beluchistan, Scinde, and the Punjab are so nearly

The Oriental Hercules.

connected with the subject of this article, we will try to compress some account of them into a few paragraphs.

Beluchistan, the ancient Gedrosia, is bounded on the north by Afghanistan, on the south by the Indian ocean, on the west by the Persian province of Kermain, and on the east by Scinde. Its length is 700 miles, and its width varies from 190 to 350 miles. Sandy deserts occupy the coast line; then comes a scraggy and barren chain of hills. These two districts form the province of Mukran. North of this is a long range of mere desert, and then come the mountains of Muc, which divide Central Beluchistan from the Afghan desert. On the north-west is the huge table-land of Kohistan, and on the east are the great table-lands of Jhalwan and Kelat, the latter having an elevation of seven thousand feet. Both are formed between the Brahoick mountains and the Hala range. These ranges begin at Cape, from whence the Halas run due north to the Ghilji mountains at the Bolan Pass, while the Brahoick hills run north west to the Muc mountains. The population is mostly pastoral, and consists of two races. The Beluchis, from whom the country is named by the English, are either of Arab or Seljuk descent, but of which is uncertain. They occupy the west, north, east, and have spread into the neighbouring countries of Scinde and Afghanistan. They have three tribes, the Harues near the great desert, and the Rinds and Mugsis in Cutch, Gundava, and Kelat. They live in little confederacies of half a dozen families in tents, and all raise some corn and vegetables. Tending their flocks and military exercises occupy their time. So skilful are they in the use of arms, that Pottinger describes them as hitting a six-inch shield with a matchlock from horseback at full speed, and lifting a deep driven stake out of the ground in their career with the lance. They are all plunderers, but hospitable, hardy, and brave. Their language is a Persian dialect.

The second tribe, the Brahuis, are supposed to be the aborigines, as they speak a Hindu dialect; but in habits they resemble the Beluchis, are even more wild, and better skilled in arms. If united, these men would be more formidable than any Tartar horde that ever conquered; but though nominally subject to the Khan of Kelat and his sirdars, yet a light annual tribute is the only sign of submission to the khan. They are the most ignorant people in Asia.

Many descendants of the Persian Guebres are scattered through the country, and though they have conformed to the Moslem creed, they retain their national language and habits. The entire population does not exceed a million. Kelat is the principal town; the khan of it acknowledged the shah of Cabul as his feudal lord till the break up of the Cabul empire. When the English invaded Afghanistan, in 1839, Mihrab, the then khan, warned them that they were engaged in a desperate attempt; that they might put Sujah on the throne, but that to keep him there was impossible. This candid advice, and, as is turned out, true prophecy, disgusted the English leaders. To complete their dislike to him, he re

fused to extort corn from his subjects, to supply the wants of the English army, when trying to exist on quarter rations at Kwettah. Accordingly they paid him off as soon as they had leisure. They stormed Kelat, imposed contributions on it, and have kept a garrison there ever since. How this may tell on the supplies sent to General Nott, through the Bolan pass, remains however to be seen.

Gundava, a triangular country, east of the Hula mountains and bounded by them, by northern Scinde and by the Caker Afghans, is overrun by the Beluchis. Each of its three sides is about one hundred and twenty miles long. Its surface is a dead flat, and wherever water for irrigation can be got, most fertile, but the east of it is a salt steppe, desolated by burning heat in summer and by hurricanes in winter, and forming an arduous preparation for a march through the Bolan pass which begins at its northern apex. The people are Juts, but the rulers alias plunderers, were Beluchis till the English assumed their place in 1838.

Scinde is situated about the mouths and lower course of the Indus, as Egypt about the Nile. Its shape is triangular. It contains 100,000 square miles, and about a million of people. They are a mixture of pure Hindus, of a native race resembling the Brahuis, and lastly of Beluchis, who are the supreme or governing race. Along the banks of the Indus, and so far as their numerous canals of irrigation reach, the people are agriculturists, raising noble crops of rice and every other grain; but to the east, where the country approaches the Indian desert, irrigation is impossible, and the people are pastoral. Their cities are many and large, containing in about twenty of them, 200,000 people, an immense city population in proportion to a people of a million. The country is governed by three branches of the Beluchi tribe of Talpur. The members of each family have generally a quarrel for the throne, on the death of the previous occupant. The most important of these amirs or princes have their court at Hydrabad, a city of 20,000 inhabitants, seated on the Indus a little above where it divides.

At a distance of fifty miles, or, by the river, sixty-five miles, below Hydrabad, is Tatta, (the Pattala of Arrian) once a great city; it now shelters 15,000 impoverished people. At Tatta begins the regular Delta of the Indus, a rich alluvial country, but of whose richness little use is made.

The Amirs of Hydrabad had a revenue of fifteen lacks* of rupees, and possessed ('twas said) twenty millions sterling in treasure before the English invasion, but the English, as we shall shew by and bye, lightened their purses with an alacrity and an audacity that would have done

credit to Jonathan Wild.

Mirpore, some twenty-five miles east of Tatta, is the seat of another ruler, governing the arid country of Eastern Scinde, receiving only five lacks a year, and a good deal kept under by the Hydrabad chief.

At Kyrpur, one hundred and sixty-five miles, by the river, above

The lack is 100,000 rupees, and the rupee varies from 2s. 2d. to 2s. 6d. sterling.

Hydrabad, is the third of the Amir courts. The ruler of Kyrpur possessed all Northern Scinde, and by dint of ten lacks of revenue, and great attention to military matters, he was able to defeat the Afghan attempts to enforce the annual tribute, which used to be paid by Scinde to Cabul when it was a province of the latter, and he even made head against the armies of Runjit Singh. But the English plundered him of his treasure, and his principal forts, destroying his own independence and the security of his country. The amirs of Scinde appear in the English books as oppressive conquerors of the country, ruining trade and agriculture by their extortions and regal privileges. Yet when we find the English entering the country, under the lying pretence of the divine right of Shah Sujah, violating a formal and express treaty, (as it is confessed they did) plundering and destroying the courts, and attempting to impose on the people that self-same government which has impoverished and depopulated India more than all her civil wars; when we set off these things against the evils borne by the Scindians before the English invasion, we must sympathize with the Syud, who, gazing from the bank on Burnes and his party pulling up the Indus, exclaimed, "Alas, Scinde is gone, since the English have seen the river, the road to its conquest," a prediction soon realized. Strange to say, till Burnes' expedition there was no information to be had by the English concerning most of the Indus, save what was found in Arrian.

The Scindian soldiers are infantry, and use spears and matchlocks, but prefer the sword; the chiefs on emergencies used to take large bodies of the wandering Beluchi horsemen into their pay.

On the east banks of the Indus and Garra, and between those rivers and the Indian desert, is the state of Bahalpore, called so from its capital, a town on the banks of the Garra, containing 7,700 houses, and 25,000 people. The country derives some importance from being almost of necessity the line of advance for an army from Upper India towards Scinde or Southern Afghanistan. The mere banks of the rivers are fertilized by the annual inundations, the rest of the country is the sandy skirt of the great desert. The population consists of 200,000 native Hindus, and 50,000 Dadputras, a tribe of Moslem Afghans, who conquered these Hindus one hundred and fifty years ago. The Dadputra chief, Buhal Khan, resides at Ahmedpore near Uch, (the Oxydracæ of Arrian). Ifis revenues are ten lacks, of which he pays three to the Lahore chief; for no sooner had the Afghans of Cabul grown too weak to hold this distant province, than Runjit Singh fell upon it, and made it tributary. Yet the Khan musters 2000 regulars and 20,000 feudal troops. He is an ally of the English, both because his superior of Lahore was so, and also because he is a weak man, given to clock-making and such childish amusements, tastes which the English took care to flatter. Lastly comes the Punjab and its rulers the Sikhs. The Sikhs are a religious denomination, founded by one Nannuk, a Hindu priest, who was born at Lahore in 1469. Nannuk deserves much respect; he,