Finally, we neared the suburbs of the town of Haibuk. The crush became greater and the dust awful. Everyone’s hair, beard, eyebrows, and eyelashes were white. Those who had started as youths in the morning looked grey-haired men, and were hardly recognizable. The people of the town turned out, and regardless of the dust and the heat of the sun--they were used to it, I suppose--sat on their garden walls to look at us. I had another scare: it was in the town. As we were going along we saw an elephant in front of us. Horses are generally frightened at elephants, but mine went quietly enough, so long as the elephant was going away from him, and he could see him; but just before we reached the river we passed him. The river is not very wide, perhaps fifteen feet, but it has very steep rocky banks. There was a narrow bridge across, and the Armenian being ahead of me, leading the way, got across at once. Before I reached the bank, a man sitting between the packs of a baggage-horse, got on the bridge and went slowly. My horse having the elephant behind him plunged furiously, and as the elephant advanced, kept shying round, sidling nearer and nearer to the edge of the bank. I could not get on to the bridge, because the fool on his pack-horse blocked it. The Armenian and others, seeing the danger I was in, shouted at the man; he did not hurry: I doubt if he understood. When we had got to the very edge of the bank--only just in time, the bridge was clear, and my horse darted across. The bridge was a narrow affair, about four feet wide, made of trunks of trees and cross-bars, with earth levelled on the top. I could not take my horse on till it was clear, for I knew he would charge the pack-horse, and the _best_ I could hope for then would be a leg broken against one of the mule trunks. I am a mild man, as I said before, but if I had happened to have had a hunting crop in my hand, I would have woke up that somnolent Afghan. The whole business did not occupy a minute, not half a minute; but when a horse is frightened, I need scarcely say he does not look where he is going. Riding through the town we came to an embankment covered with grass, an aqueduct, along the top of which ran a stream of very clear water. I dismounted, and sat under the shade of the trees by the stream and washed the dust off my head and hands. It was delightfully cool and breezy, and there was an excellent view of the fort, a part of the town, the mountains, and the river down below. [Sidenote: Camp in an Orchard.]