“London,” I reply.

“London!” he says; “Mashallah! they know everything at London.”

The horseman who intercepted us rode away when we camped for the night.  Nothing more was seen of him, and at a late hour I turn in for the night —­if one can be said to turn in, when the process takes the form of stretching one’s self out on the open ground.  No explanation of our detention here has been given me during the evening, and as I lay down to sleep all sorts of speculations are indulged in, varying from having my throat cut before morning, to a reconsideration by the authorities of the orders sending me back to Persia.

Some time in the night I am awakened.  A strange horseman has arrived in camp with a letter for me.  He wears the uniform of a military courier.  The sowars make a blaze of brushwood for me to read by.  It is a letter from Mr. Merk, the political agent of the Boundary Commission.  It is a long letter, full of considerate language, but no instructions affecting the orders of my escort.  Mr. Merk explains why Mahmoud Yusuph Khan could not take the responsibility of allowing me to proceed to Kandahar.  The population of Zemindavar, he points out, are particularly fanatical and turbulent, and I should very probably have been murdered; etc.

The march toward Karize is resumed in good season in the morning.  “What was that? a cuckoo?” At first I can scarcely believe my own senses, the idea of cuckoos calling in the jungles of Afghanistan being about the last thing I should have expected to hear, never having read of travellers hearing them anywhere in Central Asia, nor yet having heard them myself before.  But there is no mistake; for ere we pass Kafir Kaleh, I hear the familiar notes again and again.

The road is a decided improvement over anything we have struck since leaving Herat, and by noon we arrive at Karize.  For some inexplicable reason the Sooltan of Karize receives our party with very ill grace.  He looks sick, and is probably suffering from fever, which may account for the evident sourness of his disposition.

Mohammed Ahzim Khan is anything but pleased at our reception, and as soon as he receives the receipt for my delivery makes his preparations to return.  I don’t think the Sooltan even tendered my escort a feed of grain for their horses, a piece of inhospitality wholly out of place in this wild country.

As for myself, he simply orders a villager to supply me with food and quarters, and charge me for it.  Mohammed Ahzim Khan comes to my quarters to bid me good-by, and he takes the opportunity to explain “this is Iran, not Afghanistan.  Iran, pool; Afghanistan, pool neis.”  There is no need of explanation, however; the people rubbing their fingers eagerly together and crying, “pool, pool,” when I ask for something to eat, tells me plainer than any explanations that I am back again among our pool-loving friends, the subjects of the Shah.  As I bid Mohammed Ahzim Khan farewell, I feel almost like parting—­from a friend; he is a good fellow, and with nine-tenths of his inquisitiveness suppressed, would make a very agreeable companion.