The servants to be obtained in Kabul are unfit for anything but the commonest sort of housework, and know nothing of English cooking or waiting at table. I took a Hindustani cook and a khitmatgar (table-servant) up with me, and engaged Hazara coolies to carry water, sweep, and clean things, and to look after the horses. After several months’ service these men got to know their work, but by the time they had done so and were becoming useful, they had invariably saved enough money to return to their own country and start as farmers in a small way. Some of the Hazaras I had from time to time who worked as cook’s assistant, were soon able to cook several English dishes, and do it well, and, no doubt, if they could have been induced to stop long enough, they would have become good cooks. The Hazaras, however, are a truculent lot, and quarrels with the sepoys on guard were frequent. In consequence of this quarrelling there was a good deal of enmity generated, and several of my servants disappeared, and I found out afterwards that they had been put in prison by the Kotwali sepoys on a charge of being spies, and supplying me with information, and while in prison were put out of the way by one or other of the methods of murder in common use there. One Hindustani servant who was with me on the journey up to Kabul through Kandahar, some months later developed into a drunkard, drinking the raw spirit which is distilled in the Government shops and sold to Hindoos in the bazars, as well as being used in different manufactures. I put up with it for a long time, but when I found that matters got worse daily, and not only the work was not properly done in the house, but a good deal of swindling was going on, I wrote to some friends in India, and had another man sent up to replace him. I had kept back part of his pay for some time to prevent him wasting it in drink and women, as he was fond of doing, and had given orders to the sepoys on the gate to stop him going out at night to other Hindustanis’ houses where cards were played, drink supplied, and loose women were kept; but all this failed to stop the man’s misbehaviour, and when the other servant at last arrived I obtained a passport to enable him to return to India, and told him to arrange by which caravan he would travel, and to see me the day before he started, when I would give him the wages I had kept in hand. In the mean time he went to live with some friends, and two or three weeks passed before he came to me one evening to say good-bye, and tell me that he was starting for India the next morning. I said good-bye to him, gave him his money and his road permit, and he went away. A short time after I found that he had not gone back to India, but had used the money to get married to a widow—a rather notorious character—and had been paying daily visits to my old enemy, the Kotwal, who tried to compromise me before the Amir through this man. He had told the Kotwal many lies to revenge himself on