may have been a humane Afghan--suggested to the Amîr that operations of this and other kinds on criminals should be done by the European doctor. The Amîr negatived the suggestion with a sharp reprimand. For murder--hanging and other forms of putting to death were found inadequate. So that now in addition to the murderer being given into the hands of the deceased’s friends for them to kill as they please, such a fine is put upon his whole family--father, brothers, uncles, and cousins--that they are all ruined. Mere life is of no great value to an Afghan, and at one time if a man found it inconvenient to kill his enemy himself, he could easily get someone who for six thousand rupees would do it for him and take the risk of being hung, so long as the money was paid to his family. [Sidenote: The Approach to the Kabul Dwelling-house.] Supposing you have to visit a person in the town, you are conducted on horseback along the narrow winding streets. You dismount at a door and stumble into a dark winding passage with your head bent to avoid a bang against an irregular beam, and you go slowly for fear of puddles and holes which you cannot see. You come into the open, and find yourself in a garden with flowers and trees, and a tank or pond in the middle, or in a small courtyard with simply a well. The house is built round the garden or yard, and consists of a series of rooms opening by doors into one another and with the windows all looking into the garden. [Sidenote: Internal Arrangement of the House.] The richer men, especially those whose houses have been built within the present reign, have large and beautiful gardens full of fruit-trees and flowers, and through them ripples a stream or channel to supply the tank with fresh water. A house so placed that a stream can be brought through the garden from some irrigation canal is of greater value than one where water can be obtained only from a well. These modern houses are better built and much more elaborate than the older ones. The windows, large and often filled with coloured glass, are made to open and shut on hinges. The floors, though rarely boarded, are of beaten earth carefully levelled. The rooms are decorated all round in the Oriental way with “takchas,” or small niches having the Saracenic arch. There is a frieze just below the ceiling, and below this is a dado, with mouldings which are arranged also around the takchas and the fireplace, if one exists. The mouldings are of a hard and fine cement with which the whole wall is faced. The best cement is brown in colour, very like Portland cement, and is found at Herat. Generally the wall is whitewashed, and sometimes before the cement is dry it is sprinkled with sparkling particles of talc. The ceiling may be boarded, but more often the beams are hidden by crimson drapery stretched tightly across. In the winter a crimson curtain is hung over the door. The windows, except in the Amîr’s palace, are rarely curtained.