live what is called camp fashion, that is, all the mess provides is tables and food, and each person's servant brings his plates, knives, forks, and spoons, and chairs, and when dinner or breakfast is over removes them. We shall, I daresay, in time get a few luxuries such as chairs, dishes, and perhaps a few table-cloths (I have 2 of my own for great occasions), and we have already made our dining-room look fairly comfortable (I am writing on 4th May), by putting down some carpets, and I have no doubt between Colonel Beville and me that we will get rid of as much unnecessary [Sidenote: Annoyances from flies and sand-flies.] roughness as we can. The great drawback of the whole place is the flies, which are most exasperating and pertinaceous. I am preparing a complete set of fortifications against them for my own room, by having net (which I have been fortunate to get in the city), such as musquito curtains are made of, nailed over the windows, and a door covered with net for the one entrance, so that I hope in time to be fairly free from them. They retire for the night, I am glad to say, about 7 o'clock, but as soon as they leave the sand-flies begin, and I think they are almost as bad, as they buzz and bite just like musquitos. They are a kind of very small gnat, and their bite is most irritating to some people, but they don't hurt me. The regiments are necessarily scattered over a large extent of ground, and the work is consequently very heavy on the men, as we have to post sentries very closely together to prevent the Afghans coming within our lines. The great proportion of the force is outside the city where I am living, but we hold the citadel, which is inside the city, where also we keep our arsenal and commissariat stores. A native infantry regiment and a detachment of a British infantry regiment hold the citadel, and the quarters occupied by both the officers and men there are much preferable to ours in the cantonments, as they are all regular native houses, many of which have gardens, and all some trees near and about them, and in this desert land a bit of green or a little shade have a value which no one who has not seen the country can understand. There is nothing striking about the actual city of Kandahar to anyone who has visited or seen an ordinary Indian town of the 5th or 6th rank. There are the usual bazaars with the occupants of the shops at work at their various trades in the front of their shops, and in many shops coarse English earthenware and cheap Birmingham and Manchester goods are exposed for sale, as is the case in even small villages in India. Raisins of all sorts and description, from the little sultanas up to dark purple ones, are sold in quantities, and seem to be a regular portion of the food of the poorest people. So far I have seen nothing curious or unusual which I would be tempted to buy, but then we cannot here wander about and go into the shops and ransack them for curiosities, as the people