also were somewhat chary, and did not come nearer than a bowshot, but kept on tracking me.' By and by, he enters into a parley with some of his pursuers, who end by swearing fealty to him, and affect to conduct him to a place of safety and concealment. "It was about noon, when, as far off as the sight could reach, we perceived something that glittered on a horse. For some time we could not distinguish what it was. It was, in truth, Muhammed Bâkir Beg. He had been in Akhsi along with me; and in the dispersion that followed our leaving the place, when every one was scattered here and there, Muhammed Bâkir Beg had come in this direction, and was now wandering about and concealing himself. Bandeh Ali and Baba Seirâmi said, For two days past our horses have had neither grain nor fodder. Let us go down into the valley, and suffer them to graze.' We accordingly mounted, and, having descended into the valley, set them a-grazing. It was about the time of afternoon prayers, when we descried a horseman passing along over the very height on which we had been hiding. I recognised him to be Kâdir Berdi, the head-man of Ghiva. I said to them, Let us call Kâdir Berdi.' We called him, and he came and joined us. Having greeted him, asked him some questions, spoken obligingly and with kindness to him, made him promises, and disposed him favourably towards me by every means in my power, I sent him to bring a rope, a grass-hook, an axe, apparatus for crossing a river, provender for the horses, and food for ourselves, and, if possible, a horse likewise; and we made an appointment to meet him on this same spot at bedtime prayers. "Bandeh Ali said, There are many retired gardens among the suburbs of Karnân, where nobody will suspect us of lurking. Let us go thither, and send a person to conduct Kâdir Berdi to us.' With this intention, we mounted, and proceeded to the suburbs of Karnân. It was winter, and excessively cold. They brought me an old mantle of year-old lambskin, with the wool on the inside, and of coarse woven cloth without, which I put on. They also procured and brought me a dish of pottage of boiled millet-flour, which I eat, and found wonderfully comfortable. I asked Bandeh Ali, Have you sent anybody to Kâdir Berdi?' He answered, Yes, I have.' These unlucky perfidious clowns had in reality met Kâdir Berdi, and had dispatched him to Tambol at Akhsi. 66 Having gone into a house that had stone walls, and kindled a fire, I closed my eyes for a moment in sleep. These crafty fellows, pretending an extreme anxiety to serve me, We must not stir from this neighbourhood,' said they, till we have news of Kâdir Berdi. The house where we are, however, is in the very middle of the suburbs. There is a place in the outskirts of the suburbs where we might be quite unsuspected, could we but reach it.' We mounted our horses, therefore, about midnight, and proceeded to a garden on the outskirts of the suburbs. Baba Seirâmi watched on the terraceroof of the house, keeping a sharp look-out in every direction. was near noon when he came down from the terrace, and said to me, Here comes Yûsef, the Darogha.' I was seized with prodigious alarm, and said, Learn if he comes in consequence of knowing that I am here.' Baba went out, and, after some conversation, returned and said At this critical moment there is an unlucky hiatus in all the manuscripts of the Memoirs, so that it is to this day unknown by what means the heroic prince escaped from his treacherous associates, only that we find him, the year after, warring prosperously against a new set of enemies. Of his military exploits and adventures, however, we think we have now given a sufficient specimen. In these we have said he resembles the paladins of Europe, in her days of chivalric enterprise. But we doubt greatly whether any of her knightly adventurers could have given so exact an account of the qualities and productions of the countries they visited as the Asiatic Sovereign has here put on record. Of Kabûl, for example, after describing its boundaries, rivers, and mountains, he says "This country lies between Hindustân and Khorasân. It is an excellent and profitable market for commodities. Were the merchants to carry their goods as far as Khitâ or Rûm,* they would scarcely get the same profit on them. Every year, seven, eight, or. ten thousand horses arrive in Kâbul. From Hindustân, every year, fifteen or twenty thousand pieces of cloth are brought by caravans. The commodities of Hindustân are slaves, white cloths, sugar-candy, refined and common sugar, drugs, and spices. There are many mer- . chants that are not satisfied with getting thirty or forty for ten.+ The productions of Khorasan, Rûm, Irak, and Chin,t may all be found in Kâbul, which is the very emporium of Hindustân. Its warm and cold districts are close by each other. From Kâbul you may in a single day go to a place where snow never falls, and in the space of two astronomical hours, you may reach a spot where snow lies always, except now and then when the summer happens to be peculiarly hot. In the districts dependant on Kâbul, there is great abundance of the fruits both of hot and cold climates, and they are found in its immediate vicinity. The fruits of the cold districts in Kâbul are grapes, pomegranates, apricots, peaches, pears, apples, quinces, jujubes, damsons, almonds, and walnuts; all of which are found in great abundance. I caused the sour-cherry-tree § to be brought here and planted; it produced excellent fruit, and continues thriving. The * Khita is Northern China, and its dependent provinces. Rim is Turkey, particularly the provinces about Trebizond. + Three or four hundred per cent. f Chin is all China. .Alubala ؟ fruits it possesses peculiar to a warm climate, are the orange, citron,* the amluk, and sugar-cane, which are brought from the Lamghanât. I caused the sugar-cane to be brought, and planted it here. They bring the Jelghûzek + from Nijrow. They have numbers of bee-hives, but honey is brought only from the hill-country on the west. The rawâsh of Kâbul is of excellent quality; its quinces and damask plums are excellent, as well as its bàdrengs.§ There is a species of grape which they call the water-grape, that is very delicious; its wines are strong and intoxicating. That produced on the skirt of the mountain of Khwajeh Khan-Saaîd is celebrated for its potency, though I describe it only from what I have heard: The drinker knows the flavour of the wine; how should the sober know it? "Kâbul is not fertile in grain; a return of four or five to one is reckoned favourable. The melons too are not good, but those raised from seed brought from Khorasan are tolerable. The climate is extremely delightful, and in this respect there is no such place in the known world. In the nights of summer you cannot sleep without a postin (or lambskin-cloak.) Though the snow falls very deep in the winter, yet the cold is never excessively intense. Samarkand and Tabriz are celebrated for their fine climate, but the cold there is extreme beyond measure." "Opposite to the fort of Adinahpûr, to the south, on a rising ground, I formed a charbagh (or great garden), in the year nine hundred and fourteen (1508). It is called Baghe Vafâ (the Garden of Fidelity). It overlooks the river, which flows between the fort and the palace. In the year in which I defeated Behâr Khan and conquered Lahore and Dibâlpûr, I brought plantains and planted them here. They grew and thrived. The year before I had also planted the sugar-cane in it, which throve remarkably well. I sent some of them to Badakhshân and Bokhâra. It is on an elevated site, enjoys running water, and the climate in the winter season is temperate. In the garden there is a small hillock, from which a stream of water, sufficient to drive a mill, incessantly flows into the garden below. The four-fold field-plot of this garden is situated on this eminence. On the south-west part of this garden is a reservoir of water ten gez * A berry like the karinda. †The jelghûzek is the seed of a kind of pine, the cones of which are as big as a man's two fists. The rawâsh is described as a root something like beet-root, but much larger-white and red in colour, with large leaves, that rise little from the ground. It has a pleasant mixture of sweet and acid. It may be the rhubard, râweid. § The bâdreng is a large green fruit, in shape somewhat like a citron. The name is also applied to a large sort of cucumber. The fort of Adinahpûr is to the south of the Kâbul river. square, which is wholly planted round with orange trees; there are likewise pomegranates. All around the piece of water the ground is quite covered with clover. This spot is the very eye of the beauty of the garden. At the time when the orange becomes yellow, the prospect is delightful. Indeed the garden is charmingly laid out. To the south of this garden lies the Koh-e-Sefid (the White Mountain) of Nangenhâr, which separates Bangash from Nangenhår. There is no road by which one can pass it on horseback. Nine streams descend from this mountain. The snow on its summit never diminishes, whence probably comes the name of Koh-e-Sefid* (the White Mountain). No snow ever falls in the dales at its foot." "The wine of Dereh-Nûr is famous all over Lamghanât. It is of two kinds, which they term areh-táshi (the stone-saw), and suhântashi (the stone-file). The stone-saw is of a yellowish colour; the stone-file, of a fine red. The stone-saw, however, is the better wine of the two, though neither of them equals their reputation. Higher up, at the head of the glens, in this mountain, there are some apes to be met with. Apes are found lower down towards Hindustân, but none higher up than this hill. The inhabitants used formerly to keep hogs, but in my time they have renounced the practice." His account of the productions of his paternal kingdom of Ferghana is still more minute-telling us even the number of apple-trees in a particular district, and making mention of an excellent way of drying apricots, with almonds put in instead of the stones, and of a wood with a fine red bark, of admirable use for making whip-handles and birds' cages! The most remarkable piece of statistics, however, with which he has furnished us, is in his account of Hindustân, which he first entered as a conqueror in 1525. It occupies twenty-five closelyprinted quarto pages; and contains, not only an exact account of its boundaries, population, resources, revenues, and divisions, but a full enumeration of all its useful fruits, trees, birds, beasts, and fishes, with such a minute description of their several habitudes and peculiarities as would make no contemptible figure in a modern work of natural history-carefully distinguishing the facts which rest on his own observation from those which he gives only on the testimony of others, and making many suggestions as to the means of improving, or transferring them from one region to another. From the detailed botanical and zoological descriptions, we can afford of course to make no extracts. What follows is more general: The Koh-e-Sefid is a remarkable position in the geography of Afghanistan. It is seen from Peshâwer. This practice Baber viewed with disgust, the hog being an impure animal in the Muhammedan law, "Hindustan is situated in the first, second, and third climates. No part of it is in the fourth. It is a remarkably fine country. It is quite a different world, compared with our countries. Its hills and rivers, its forests and plains, its animals and plants, its inhabitants and their languages, its winds and rains, are all of a different nature. Although the Germsils (or hot districts), in the territory of Kabul, bear, in many respects, some resemblance to Hindustân, while in other particulars they differ, yet you have no sooner passed the river Sind than the country, the trees, the stones, the wandering tribes,* the manners and customs of the people, are all entirely those of Hindustân. The northern range of hills has been mentioned. Immediately on crossing the river Sind, we come upon several countries in this range of mountains, connected with Kashmîr, such as Pekheli and Shemeng. Most of them, though now independent of Kashmir, were formerly included in its territories. After leaving Kashmîr, these hills contain innumerable tribes and states, pergannahs and countries, and extend all the way to Bengal and the shores of the Great Ocean. these hills are other tribes of men.” About All "The country and towns of Hindustân are extremely ugly. its towns and lands have an uniform look; its gardens have no walls; the greater part of it is a level plain. The banks of its rivers and streams, in consequence of the rushing of the torrents that descend during the rainy season, are worn deep into the channel, which makes it generally difficult and troublesome to cross them. In many places, the plain is covered by a thorny brush-wood, to such a degree that the people of the Pergannas, relying on these forests, take shelter in them, and, trusting to their inaccessible situation, often continue in a state of revolt, refusing to pay their taxes. In Hindustân, if you except the rivers, there is little running water.+ Now and then some standing water is to be met with. All these cities and countries derive their water from wells or tanks, in which it is collected during the rainy season. In Hindustân, the populousness and decay, or total destruction of villages, nay of cities, is almost instantaneous. Large cities that have been inhabited for a series of years (if, on an alarm, the inhabitants take to flight), in a single day, or a day and a half, are so completely abandoned, that you can scarcely discover a trace or mark of population."+ "The Ils and Ulûses." In Persia there are few rivers, but numbers of artificial canals or water-runs for irrigation, and for the supply of water to towns and villages. The same is the case in the valley of Soghd, and the richer parts of Maweralnaher. "This is the wulsa or walsa, so well described by Colonel Wilks in his Historical Sketches, vol. I. p. 309, note: On the approach of an hostile army, the unfortunate inhabitants of India bury under ground their most cumbrous effects, and each individual, man, woman, and child above six years of age, (the infant children being car |