On the 17th of September the King returned to Herat. Moved by one common impulse of curiosity, the people went forth to meet him. The streets were lined with eager thousands, and the house-tops were alive with gazers. A procession of the true Oriental type, it presented, in vivid contrasts, strange alternations of the shabby and the superb. First came a few strong baggage-mules, and a few straggling horsemen, mounted on fine well-built animals, but lean, and often lame and wounded. Then, in their high red-cloth caps, appeared the criers and the executioners, bearing aloft the instruments of their calling; and, in spite of the grim suggestiveness of the large knives and tiger-headed brazen maces, presenting an appearance less solemn than grotesque. Next came a string of horses led by armed grooms, their fine stag-like heads telling the purity of their blood, and their handsome equipments the royal ownership they boasted. Then followed, close behind, in a covered litter of red cloth, carried by Hindostanee bearers, Shah Kamran himself. Very plainly, but tastefully attired, the golden bosses on his sword-belt, and the jewels on his dagger-hilt, being the only ornaments about the royal person, he returned, through the open curtains of his litter, with a kingly and a graceful courtesy, the salutations of the people. Next came the Royal Princes, with the eunuchs, and other personal attendants of the Shah;[147] and then, but at a long interval, a motley crowd of armed foot-men, the regular infantry of Herat, in all sorts of irregular costumes. These preceded the cavalcade of the Wuzeer, Yar Mahomed, who, with all the chiefs of note around him, headed the main body of the Afghan cavalry, whose low sheepskin caps and uniform attire made up a very soldierly appearance. Another body of infantry closed the procession. The guns had been left behind.