He replied that the hole had once been only half its present size, but twice as deep, and that his grandfather remembered how and when the hole was made. The old man had told him that, one night when he was a youth, something had exploded in the sky and fallen to the earth, punching a hole one hundred feet deep in the plain. Owing to weather and climatic conditions, the sides of this hole had gradually fallen in, hence its present width and shallowness. There can, therefore, be little doubt that an enormous meteorite fell here, and that it lies buried at the bottom of this hole. Its locality is about seven hundred yards from a hill called Gwarko, and could easily be found by anyone interested in such phenomena. This is not the only natural feature which would repay a visit from those interested in natural science, for, though I am no geologist or scientist myself, I was greatly interested in the numerous gorges in the vicinity of Kacha, a post in the hills near Robat, where, at certain seasons of the year, violent spates occur, and the rushing water has so burnished the sides of the rocks that they glisten in the sun like polished, variegated marble. The sections so made show a close mass of fossils, which, apparently, were once oysters, centipedes, crabs, etc. CHAPTER VI A FULL BAG OF PRISONERS The march to Kacha--The food supply--Flowers in the Wilderness--Galugan--Repeated strategy--Juma Khan comes in--The bag is full--The throne of the dancing-maidens--Landon declines--Idu's doubts--Suspicions aroused--Halil Khan closes up--Kacha, oaths, and thumb-marks--The Chiefs depart--Bad news. The march from Khwash to Kacha was over constantly ascending ground, and the higher the altitude reached the more abundant did the vegetation become. On the third day I noticed that a great many of the Raiders were carrying bunches of green stuff under their arms, plucked along the line of march, and I asked Idu what they were going to do with it. He replied that they would eat it raw, and supplemented this information with the further news that, beyond a few dried dates, the surrendered Raiders had brought hardly any rations with them. Consequently, and very shortly, I should be called upon to feed them. This was an alarming prospect. We had left a generous supply of food behind for the garrison of Khwash, thus reducing our own rations to a bare sufficiency for the considerable distance to be covered. I instructed Idu to ward off the evil day as long as possible, but told him that, in the last extremity, our food supplies would, of course, be fairly and evenly shared with the Sarhadis.