AUTHOR JOINS KARAVAN FOR MESHED KUHSUN, LAST AFGHAN TOWN FALSE ALARM FROM WILD ASSES DEBATABLE GROUND BETWEEN AFGHAN AND PERSIAN TERRITORY BIFURCATION OF ROUTE YUSUF KHAN HEZAREH FERIMON COLONEL DOLMAGE PRINCE SULTAN MURAD MIRZA AUTHOR AVOWS WHO HE IS TO THE SERDAR OF HERAT SHAHRUD TEHERAN, AND WELCOME THERE BY THE TURKISH CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, ISMAEL EFENDI KIND RECEPTION BY MR. ALISON AND THE ENGLISH EMBASSY INTERVIEW WITH THE SHAH THE KAVVAN UD DOWLET AND THE DEFEAT AT MERV RETURN BY TREBISOND AND CONSTANTINOPLE TO PESTH AUTHOR LEAVES THE KHIVA MOLLAH BEHIND HIM AT PESTH AND PROCEEDS TO LONDON HIS WELCOME IN THE LAST-NAMED CITY. _'Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark Bay deep-mouth'd welcome as we draw nigh home_.--Byron. [Author joins Karavan for Meshed; Kuhsun, last Afghan Town] On the 15th November 1863, I quitted Herat, the gate of Central Asia or of India, as it is usually called, in order to complete my journey with the great karavan bound for Meshed. It consisted of 2,000 persons; half of whom were Hezare from Kabul, who in the greatest poverty and the most abject state of misery were undertaking with wives and children a pilgrimage to the tombs of Shiite saints. Although all formed one body, it had nevertheless many subdivisions. I was attached to a division consisting {287} of a troop of Afghans from Kandahar, who were trading with Persia in indigo or skins from Kabul, owing to my having made my agreement with the same Djilodar. I had been able to persuade him to allow me to take my seat on a lightly-loaded mule, under the engagement that I would pay him in Meshed as if I had had the sole use of it. By the pretension, now avowed by me, that in Meshed I should no longer be in a state of destitution, I began for the first time myself to throw a doubt upon the genuineness of the character I had hitherto assumed of a Hadji, but I did not dare completely to lay aside the mask, because the Afghans, more fanatical than the Bokhariots, would have probably avenged their insulted tenets upon the spot. The dubious light in which I stood afforded, however, a fund of interesting surmises to those by whom I was surrounded, for whilst some of them took me for a genuine Turk, others were disposed to think me an Englishman; the different parties even quarrelled on the subject, and it was very droll to observe how the latter began to triumph over the former, when it was observed that, in proportion as we drew nearer to Meshed, the bent posture of humility of the Dervish began more and more to give way to the upright and independent deportment of the European. Some Afghans, agents of wholesale indigo-houses in Moultan and Shikarpur, seemed quite to accommodate themselves to my metamorphosis; for although, whilst still in the district of Herat, they vaunted their characters of Gazi (men who have taken part in the war against the