The diversified throngs I encountered in Herat produced a pleasing effect upon me. The Afghan soldiery in the English uniform, with shako--a covering for the head contrary to the prescriptions of the Koran, and the introduction of which into the Turkish army is regarded as impracticable [Footnote 82]--seemed {274} to lead to the conclusion that I had fallen upon a land where Islamite fanaticism had lost its formidable character, and where I might gradually discontinue my disguise. And when I saw many soldiers moving about with moustaches shaved off, and wearing whiskers--an appendage regarded as a deadly sin in Islam, and even in Constantinople as a renunciation of their religion--the hope seized me that perhaps I might meet here English officers; and how happy I should have considered myself to have found some son of Britain, whose influence, without doubt, from political circumstances, would have been here very great. I had, for the moment, forgotten that the Oriental is never what he seems, and my disappointment was, indeed, bitter. [Footnote 82: The Osmanli insist that according to the Sunnet (tradition), Siper (a head-covering with a peak), and Zunnar (the cord round the loins of monks), are most rigorously forbidden as signs of Christianity. Sultan Mahmoud II., on introducing into Turkey for the first time a militia formed on the model of the European, was very desirous of substituting the shako for the highly inappropriate Fez, but the destroyer of the Janissaries did not venture to carry his wish into execution, for he would have been declared an _apostate_ even by his best friends.] [Author's Destitute Condition]