of all kinds. At this village we came on the Argandab River, from which the water, which turns the country along its banks and round Kandahar into a garden, is brought by a wonderful system of canals which carry it in all directions. These canals leave the river just below Mansurabad, and the way they are planned and engineered show great cleverness on the part of the people who made them many hundred years ago. Leaving Mansurabad behind, we struck down the valley of the Argandab, and set to work to find a good place for our halt for breakfast. This was not quite so easy to do, as we wanted such a lot of things. First and foremost, remembering the Prince Imperial's fate (though I don't _think_ we had a Captain Carey in our party), we wanted a place which could not be approached suddenly by the wiley Afghan, and a place that if attacked we could have defended ourselves in. Then we wanted shade for ourselves and horses, and water at hand for the horses and for drinking and cooking. Eventually we got rather a good spot though we had to sacrifice shade somewhat to the other more material points. Having set our horses to work at their corn, we turned out the contents of our wallets (my campaigning saddle carries 2 side bags and a pair of holster wallets) and found we had the makings of a capital breakfast. My contribution was first and most important, a small kettle to boil water in, a tin of chocolate and milk, 2 tins of potted beef and ham, a loaf of bread, 6 hard-boiled eggs, salt, pepper, &c. Among the others there were more eggs and more bread, a Bologna sausage, and a heap of sandwiches. We soon collected some sticks and had a fire burning (I had brought matches and some old newspapers), and quickly had hot water ready and chocolate made, and made an excellent breakfast, finished off by a heap of apricots brought to us by a friendly Afghan. His idea of our powers of disposing of apricots was magnificent, as, after we and our two soldiers had eaten all we possibly could (and we did our best), we fed our horses on them, and still left a good pile behind us. In this part of the world apricots are in millions, and our friend brought us a _few for breakfast_ in a sack thrown over his shoulder. The reason why apricots are cultivated up here is that there is great demand for them in India in a dried state, and tons of them are dried in the sun and sent down to India, and can be purchased in the smallest and most remote village in that country, and you (the children) used to eat them stewed very often when you were in India, and, if I don't mistake, liked them very much. They are often called in India _Alubokaras_, which, however, is not their proper name. We lounged about for a couple of hours, and then continued our ride down the Argandab Valley, and for ten miles rode along a charming rapidly flowing stream of clear water, well [Sidenote: Various fruits of Kandahar.]