By the side of some of these tombs a small shrine, “ziyârat,” is built. If the tomb is that of a known holy man, the passer by, in addition to adding a stone and saying his prayer, calls upon the name of the saint, and tears a small piece of rag off his garment which he hangs on the nearest bush or tree. The shred is to remind the holy man that the wearer has prayed him to intercede on his behalf with the prophet Mahomed. On the grave, too, is generally planted a pole with an open hand, cut out of zinc or tin, fixed on the top. If the deceased has fallen in battle a red rag is fixed on the pole as well. What the open hand pointing to the sky represents I never heard. When we arrived at Sei Baba we found that a party of peasants on the tramp had halted there--one of their number died just as we arrived. Seeing that we had a cavalcade of horsemen and much baggage, and there being no village nearer than seven or eight miles, they came to us to beg a little calico for a winding sheet. It struck me that ten yards, the amount they asked for, was rather much for that purpose. Possibly they thought the living men required it quite as much as the dead man. [Sidenote: The Iron Cage.] Next day we had a high and stony range of mountains to climb--the Lataband Pass, nearly eight thousand feet above the sea. This part of the journey between Lataband and Chinár, with the winding rocky road curving high up round the spurs or plunging into narrow ravines, always seems to me the wildest and most weird of all. The mountains are so huge and rocky, the ravines so precipitous, and the silence so appalling. A few years ago the Pass was dangerous not only in itself--the road in one place runs on a ledge of rock overhanging a seemingly bottomless precipice--but it was infested with Afghan highway robbers. Being comparatively near the capital this was particularly exasperating to the Amîr. Finding ordinary punishments of no avail he determined to make an example of the next man apprehended. As we were riding along we could see fixed on one of the highest peaks something that looked in the distance like a flagstaff. The road winding on we drew nearer, and saw it was not a flag, it was too globular, and it did not move in the wind. When we got right under the peak we saw it was a great iron cage fixed on the top of a mast. The robber had been made an example of. There was nothing left in the cage but his bones. I never heard of there being any more highway robbery or murder near here.