The camel drivers and the traders are fierce-looking men and extremely dirty.  They have traveled a long way and over roads that are very dusty, and water is scarce the entire distance.  They look as if they had never washed their faces or cut their hair, and their shaggy, greasy, black locks hang down upon their shoulders beneath enormous turbans.  Each wears the costume of his own country, but they are so ragged, grimy and filthy that the romance of it is lost.  The Afghans are in the majority.  They are stalwart, big-bearded men, with large features, long noses and cunning eyes, and claim that their ancestors were one of the lost tribes of Israel.  Their traditions, customs, physiognomy and dialects support this theory.  Although they are Mohammedans, they practice several ancient Jewish rites.  The American missionaries who have schools and churches among them are continually running up against customs and traditions which remind them forcibly of the Mosaic teachings.  They have considerable literature, poetry, history, biography, philosophy and ecclesiastical works, and some of their priests have large libraries of native books, which, the missionaries say, are full of suggestions of the Old Testament.

One of the most successful missionaries in that part of the world was an apostate Polish Jew named Rev. Isidore Lowenthal, a remarkable linguist and a man of profound learning.  He translated the Bible and several other religious books into Pashto, the language of the Afghans, and was convinced that he shared with them the same ancestry.  A story that is invariably related to travelers up in that country refers to his untimely taking off, for he was accidentally shot by one of his household attendants, and his epitaph, after giving the usual statistical information, reads: 

  He was shot accidentally by his chookidar. 
  Well done, thou good and faithful servant. 
  I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Afghanistan question, is, so to speak, in statu quo.  The ameer is friendly to the British, but asserts his independence with a great deal of firmness and vigor, and is an ever-present source of anxiety.  He receives a subsidy of $600,000 from the British government, which is practically a bribe to induce him not to make friends with Russia, and yet there are continual reports concerning Russian intrigues in that direction.  He declines to receive an English envoy and will not permit any Englishmen to reside at his court.  The Indian government is represented at Kabul by a highly educated and able native Indian, who is called a diplomatic agent, and has diplomatic powers.  He reports to and receives instructions from Lord Curzon directly, and is the only medium of communication between the ameer and the British government.  The present ameer has been on the throne only since the death of his father, the ameer Abdur Rahman, in October, 1901, and for several months there was considerable anxiety as to