A few miles along a stony and gradually descending trail, and we are making our way across the usual chequered area of desert, patches, abandoned fields, and old irrigating ditches that so often tell the tale of decay and retrogression in the East.  These outlying evidences of decay, however, soon merge into green fields of wheat and barley, poppy gardens, and orchards, and flowing ditches; and two hours after obtaining the first view of Herat finds us camped in a walled apricot garden in the important village of Rosebagh (?).

Overtopping our camping ground are a pair of dilapidated brick minarets, attached to what Kiftan Sahib calls the Jami Mesjid, and which he furthermore volunteers was erected by Ghengis Khan.  The minarets are of circular form, and one is broken off fifteen feet shorter than its neighbor.  In the days of their glory they were mosaicked with blue, green and yellow glazed tiles; but nothing now remains but a few mournful-looking patches of blue, surviving the ravages of time and decay.  Pigeons have from time to time deposited grains of barley on the dome, and finding sustenance from the gathered dirt and the falling rains, they have sprouted and grown, and dotted the grand old mosque with patches of green vegetation.

One corner of the orchard is occupied by a stable, to the flat roof of which I betake myself shortly after our arrival to try and ascertain my bearings, and see something of the village.  High walls rise up between the roofs of the houses and divide one garden from another, so that precious little opportunity exists for observation immediately around, and from here not even the tall minarets of Herat are visible.

The adjacent houses are mostly bee-hive roofed, and within the little gardens attached the soil is evidently rich and productive.  Pomegranate, almond, and apricot trees abound, and produce a charming contrast to the prevailing crenellated mud walls.  A very conspicuous feature of the village is a cluster of some half-dozen venerable cedars.

The stable roof provides sleeping accommodation for the chief of the sowars, Kiftan Sahib, and myself, the remainder of the party curl themselves up beneath the apricot-trees below.  During the night one of the sowars, an old fellow whose morose and sulky disposition has had the effect of rendering him socially objectionable to his comrades on the march from Furrah, comes scrambling on the roof, and in loud tones of complaint addresses himself to Kiftan Sahib’s peacefully snoozing proportions.  His midnight eruption consists of some grievance against his fellows; perhaps some such wanton act of injustice as appropriating his blanket or stealing his “timbakoo” (tobacco).

The only satisfaction he obtains from his superior takes the form of angry upbraidings for daring to disturb our slumbers; and, continuing his complaints, Kiftan.  Sahib springs up from beneath his red blanket and administers several resounding cuffs.