At one time there was a colony of Armenians in Kabul, brought from Persia by Nadir Shah, and a Christian church was in existence, until it was accidentally blown to pieces in the last Afghan war. The Armenians, however, have drifted away to the large towns in India and Persia, and only one family remains, that of my Interpreter. I went one day to pay my respects to a Christian lady in Kabul, an aged Armenian some ninety years old. She wept bitterly as she told me of the church built by a Mahomedan King for their use and destroyed by Christians. Of other races in Kabul, there are Tajiks of Arab descent, Hindkis of Hindu descent, and Kohestani and Pashai tribes, who are considered to be the unconverted aborigines of the Kabul province. CHAPTER XIII. THE BIRTH OF PRINCE MAHOMED OMER. Hazara slaves, Kaffir slaves, and others. The slave boys at the Palace. Court Pages. High positions occupied by slaves. Treatment of slaves in Kabul. The slave boy and the Son. Price of slaves. Wife and children of Hazara Chief in slavery. Hazara slaves a glut in the market. Illness of the Hostage of an Afghan Chief. Abdur Rashid down with fever. Own illness and the aches thereof. The British Agent’s postal arrangements. Occasional fate of the letters. Postage in Afghanistan. Power of annoying possessed by Interpreters. The Chief Bugler. The Page boy and the Sirdar. Outrageous conduct: the punishment. The Page boy and the Amîr: the result. The uproar on September 15th: the cause. The bearer of good tidings. Congratulations to the Sultana. The crowd outside the Harem Serai. The Sultana’s reply. Matter of succession complicated. Display of fireworks: the accident. Surgical operations. The Priest with a blemish: his request. The Amîr’s reply. The operation. The Mirza’s comments. I was speaking of the slaves of Kabul when the subject of the peoples inhabiting the country presented itself. Just now the majority of slaves in Afghanistan are Hazaras, probably because they have lately been fighting against the Amîr. There are also children and women taken prisoners from other rebellious tribes, and Kaffir slaves kidnapped as children from Kaffristan. A batch of the former were brought to Mazar while I was there. His Highness took about a dozen. They were good-looking boys of the Persian type, and I was told they came from the direction of Maimana, to the north-west of Afghanistan towards Panjdeh. No one understood their language. It was not ordinary Pushtu, nor Turki, nor Persian. They, however, picked up Persian very quickly. [Sidenote: Slaves in High Positions.]