Tulips of many colours cover these foot-hills; I once counted them up; it came out at 32 or 33 different sorts. We named one the Rose-scented, because its perfume was a little like that of the red rose; it grows by itself on Shaikh's-plain, here and nowhere else. The Hundred-leaved tulip is another; this grows, also by itself, at the outlet of the Ghūr-bund narrows, on the hill-skirt below Parwān. A low hill known as Khwāja Reg-i-rawān (Khwāja-of-the-running-sand), divides the afore-named two pieces of level land; it has, from top to foot, a strip of sand from which people say the sound of nagarets and tambours issues in the heats.[813] Again, there are the villages depending on Kābul itself. South-west from the town are great snow mountains[814] where snow falls on snow, and where few may be the years when, falling, it does not light on last year's snow. It is fetched, 12 miles may-be, from these mountains, to cool the drinking water when ice-houses in Kābul are empty. Like the Bāmiān mountains, these are fastnesses. Out of them issue the Harmand (Halmand), Sind, Dūghāba of Qūndūz, and Balkh-āb,[815] so that in a single day, a man might drink of the water of each of these four rivers. It is on the skirt of one of these ranges (Pamghān) that most of the villages dependent on Kābul lie.[816] Masses of grapes ripen in their vineyards and they grow every sort of fruit in abundance. No-one of them equals Istālīf or Astar-ghach; these must be the [Sidenote: Fol. 136b.] two which Aūlūgh Beg Mīrzā used to call his Khurāsān and Samarkand. Pamghān is another of the best, not ranking in fruit and grapes with those two others, but beyond comparison with them in climate. The Pamghān mountains are a snowy range. Few villages match Istālīf, with vineyards and fine orchards on both sides of its great torrent, with waters needing no ice, cold and, mostly, pure. Of its Great garden Aūlūgh Beg Mīrzā had taken forcible possession; I took it over, after paying its price to the owners. There is a pleasant halting-place outside it, under great planes, green, shady and beautiful. A one-mill stream, having trees on both banks, flows constantly through the middle of the garden; formerly its course was zig-zag and irregular; I had it made straight and orderly; so the place became very beautiful. Between the village and the valley-bottom, from 4 to 6 miles down the slope, is a spring, known as Khwāja Sih-yārān (Three-friends), round which three sorts of tree grow. A group of planes gives pleasant shade above it; holm-oak [Sidenote: Fol. 137.] (_quercus bīlūt_) grows in masses on the slope at its sides,—these two oaklands (_bīlūtistān_) excepted, no holm-oak grows in the mountains of western Kābul,—and the Judas-tree (_arghwān_)[817] is much cultivated in front of it, that is towards the level ground,—cultivated there and nowhere else. People say the three different sorts of tree were a gift made by three saints,[818] whence its name.