As a means of putting a stop to the constant robbing of Government money in the different factories, the late Amir had some men who were in charge of the soap shops and were convicted of swindling, thrown alive into the soap boiler (which is one of a large capacity) when in full blast, to make up the deficit by boiling them down into soap. The Amir also had men thrown into boiling oil on occasions; but this was as a punishment, and had nothing to do with the manner of the crime. To punish stealing, one of the usual penalties ordered by the Amir, besides hanging, was to have the hand cut off. On the occasion of my first visit to Kabul in 1889, I was given tents in the garden adjoining the workshops to live in, it being summer time; and one day one of the workmen, who are always searched before being allowed to pass through the gate when work is over, was found to have a piece of leather the size of a man’s hand concealed under his coat. The Amir ordered the man to be hanged in the factory as a warning to the others, but on representations being made to him by the Englishmen who were working in the shops, the Amir commuted the sentence to the man’s hand being cut off. Hands are cut off by a butcher, and usually the stumps, when the hands are off, are plunged into boiling oil to stop the hemorrhage. This workman died a couple of days afterwards. Another common punishment is that of blinding people. This is the usual punishment of those who try to escape from prison or from the country—synonymous terms almost. The manner of doing this is to lance the pupils of the eyes, and then put in a drop of nitric acid, and, to guarantee no sight being left, quicklime is afterwards added. The agony endured must be frightful, and in one case when fifteen men were blinded together in Sherpur cantonment, where these punishments are usually carried out, the men were seen on the third day after being blinded all chained one to the other, and sitting in a row on the ground; they were unable to go elsewhere to obey the calls of nature, and consequently were filthy beyond description. Three of them were lying dead still chained to the living, and some of the living, too, were lying unconscious, while the others were moaning and rocking themselves backwards and forwards. Running away was not always punished with blinding, as was exemplified in the case of five Kafri boys. These boys, who were part of the regiment formed of the prisoners brought from Kafristan after that country was taken by the Amir, tried to get away to India, for Kabul and enforced Mohammedanism were little liked by them; but they were caught while doing so and brought back. As a punishment the Amir ordered the Kafri regiment to be paraded and the boys bayoneted in front of their fellows. There had been a good deal of dissatisfaction among the Kafris, and the Amir probably deemed a severe example necessary.