In Cabul the better class of houses all present the same appearance outside: that of high brown mud walls, with one or two small doorways. Nothing can be more uninviting than these sun-baked walls, which, from the Mediterranean eastwards, always mark the residence of a Mussulman population. But within them there is much to atone for their forbidding exterior. Entering one of these large houses in the Bala Hissar some days ago, I found myself in an inner courtyard full 20 yards square. At either end were sets of rooms with open verandahs in front, built of a framework of wood fitted in with bricks, and then carefully plastered over. The lower rooms were four or five feet above the level of the courtyard, and broad flights of steps led up to them. Every bit of wood used as supports or for partition walls had been carved and fretted with great skill, while the inner rooms were cut off from the glare outside by carved wooden screens, some of the patterns being extremely pretty. But the greatest wealth of ornamentation had been lavished above, in what were the quarters of the women. A handsome wooden staircase, broad enough for four persons to walk abreast, led up to these; and once on the higher level the change from the dull brown below was quite refreshing. There was the same repetition of carved woodwork and open screens; but the inner walls were gay with frescoes in every colour, the plaster being covered with native designs of scroll-work, filled in with birds of startling plumage and flowers of hues to shame the rainbow. The ceilings and cornices were similarly adorned, the latter being set with mirrors in long narrow strips of various sizes. The recesses for lamps and the lintels of the doors had all shared in the general ornamentation, and to its inmates the _zenana_ must have seemed a triumph of artistic skill. All was deserted now, not even a door remaining on its hinges. The carved work was smashed as if some reckless soldier had thrust his rifle stock through it; the bits of mirror were starred with stray blows, and the plaster had been broken from the walls as the woodwork had been torn away. The wood from the staircases leading to the roof, the favourite evening gossiping place of the sirdars, ladies, and attendants, had all been carried away, and the gaping holes through which the sunlight poured were eloquent of desolation. And it is a desolation well deserved, for it was in just such a house, with courtyard and pleasant upper rooms (perhaps not so elaborately decorated, the whitewash covering the beauties of the frescoes) that Cavagnari was lodged. The Bala Hissar may at last meet with the fate which it deserved, and narrowly escaped, when Pollock was master of Cabul in 1842: and soon not one mud wall may remain to stare its neighbour out of countenance. The large godowns in the Upper Fortress are still full of powder—nearly a million pounds; but, with this exception, the place has been cleared of all its warlike stores. The