In Kabul there is no amusement that one does not make for one’s self, and there is not much to make amusement out of, unless one cares to make a joke of tragedies. On Fridays and holidays the day may be spent in shooting, for most of the summer months quail and blue pigeon can be got in the fields outside the city, and in the winter there are plenty of duck and snipe to be found on the chamans. The chamans are flat stretches of ground in the valleys, which are partly covered with water, where grass and weed abound for water-fowl. The birds, though, are very much hunted, and are consequently very wild; but they afford the better sport on that account, as being much more difficult to shoot. The late Mr. Fleischer, who was in Kabul during the last three years I spent there (he was murdered by the officer of his Afghan escort on his way to India in November, 1904), used to join me on Fridays, and we made a practice of spending the day on the chamans. We used to take eight or ten sepoys with us, as a guard is always necessary, and the men were useful for putting up the game, and we also had lunch brought out to us with kettles and other things necessary to make tea, so that we could picnic on the shooting-ground comfortably, and although we seldom got a decent “bag,” the sport was a welcome variation to the daily routine of life. In the springtime, when the duck and snipe shooting was over, and the quail had not come in, we fixed up running targets for rifle practice. The target consisted of a life-sized representation of leopard or deer, roughly daubed on paper, which was nailed to an upright frame fixed on a light trolly. A man using a long rope dragged this trolly over a short length of narrow-gauge rail, while running at full speed, and in front of the trolly run we made a fence of young trees, so that the target could be seen at intervals only. This made very good practice at eighty to a hundred yards for snap shooting. When tired of rifle practice, we used to take the native circular net and go fishing up the river. The fish obtainable in the river near Kabul are few and small, and one must go up the river for some miles if decent sized ones are wanted, so that we seldom got fish more than three inches in length, but although those we netted were small, they were of a good flavour and resembled whitebait when cooked. The larger the fish were the less flavour they had.