The Kabul workshops comprise two large machine-shops, with about a hundred machines of sorts; two cartridge-making shops with machinery for turning out solid drawn Martini and Snider cartridges; metal fuze shop, blacksmiths’ shops, steam hammer shop, iron and brass foundries, mint, rolling-mill shop, and the boiler and engine houses. There are besides these, hand shops for making limbers and wheels of guns, gun cartridges, cartridge and shell filling, artillery harness, bandoliers, boots, etc., gun browning, black powder, percussion cap powder, leather tanning and currying, soap and candle, spirit distilling, acid making, electro-plating and polishing, sword and bayonet making and grinding, bullet moulding, tin and copper work, carpentry, pattern making, painting, household furniture making, etc. Between four and five thousand men are employed. The Afghan workman is intelligent, and can, if he will only give his mind to his work, or domestic or other affairs will allow him to do so, do work requiring considerable skill and intelligence in a manner which is highly creditable. This is the Afghan workman at his best. In the case of work requiring very exact fitting or finish, they generally fail, mostly because they have not thoroughly mastered the art of making gauges and working to them, and it is chiefly on this account that the field and machine guns are unreliable. In some cases a workman appears to have displayed a considerable amount of ingenuity in ascertaining the wrong way to do a thing and then so doing it; but there is, however, no doubt, that with education and training the Afghan would make a fine workman. I have often known a man ruin his work, otherwise well finished, through lack of technical knowledge of some process in one part of it, and I was generally applied to for help after the failure, for they all like to do things off their own bat, if they can, hoping, thereby, to get all the credit from the Amir. Much of the reason for their not applying to any one for help is the fault of the officials, who, when bringing a man with some special work he has done before the Amir, claim that the man was at a standstill in this or that way during its process, and that they assisted him in his difficulty, thus cheapening the work of the man’s hands to their own credit, and in some cases the official claims the entire credit, making out that the man worked to instructions. However, it is one of the results of the system of government that all men try to bring themselves to the Amir’s favourable notice, and the means are of little account for so desirable an end.