In the silk and cotton bazaar there is equally the press and bustle of an active trade, a continuous passing of gaily-decked customers and busy traders--from India with caravans of silk, from Turkestan with bales of printed cottons, plain calicoes and other articles of Russian manufacture, merchants and itinerant traders from the most distant parts of Afghanistan, from Persia and from Kashgar. There is, too, a wonderful blaze of colour in the silk stalls, while the display of goods in the cotton shops reveals a various assortment of English clothing--cotton and merino vests, men’s shirts, drawers and socks--and a variety of coloured waistbands, a weird collection of ties and some really startling handkerchiefs from India. These stalls, whether their effects are imported from India or from Turkestan, are mostly in the keeping of Hindus, who transact a very profitable business with their Afghan masters. Nevertheless, long intercourse with Afghanistan has quite crushed the Hindu, obliterating all trace of his original individuality, and emphasising his inborn humility and lack of spirit. In Kabul the Hindus pay a poll tax and wear turbans, which may be only red or yellow--a similar rule prevailing in Kandahar. Formerly they affected the red, the blue lungi, which is prohibited to them, being favoured by the Afghans. Similar indications of prosperity may be found in the skin bazaar, where the furriers are engaged in making the fur coats for which Kabul has become famous. Here there are several kinds of expensive furs such as marten, a variety of red fox, squirrel, wild cat and astrakhan. Over the latter fur the Amir exercises a monopoly. The cheaper kinds are put to numerous purposes, figuring as lining for cloaks, hats and high boots of the Russian and Turcoman pattern. Many of the fur caps are costly in production and elaborate in design. Cut from a piece of velvet, trimmed with fur and heavily embroidered with gold thread from Benares, they are sold in the Kabul bazaars only to the richest classes, becoming, as a rule, a finishing touch to a costume which, on the score of colour effect, will leave little to be desired.