A good deal of silk is also produced, and the country offers great facilities for an extensive cultivation of the silkworm. The silk is at present produced in three districts—Bokhara, Herat, and Kohistan, and there only in comparatively small quantities. Carpets are also made: those similar to Persian carpets in Herat and Turkestan, and felt carpets in Kandahar and Hazara. Cloth of various descriptions is also manufactured by means of hand-looms in different parts of the country, and in Ghazni numbers of posteens (overcoats) are made from sheep skins. Most of the latter articles are not exported, for only enough is produced to meet the demands of the country. Numbers of camels, horses, cattle, and sheep are bred in different districts, but few are exported, and for the past few years horses are not allowed to be taken out of the country for sale, something having been said about them being bought up for the use of the Indian army. Turkestan is the best cattle and horse-raising country in Afghanistan, as it possesses large tracts of fertile country for grazing; and to hear Turkestanis talk of the agricultural and mineral richness of their country, one would imagine it the Eldorado. A small quantity of timber is floated down the river from the Jelalabad district for sale in India, but the quantity is very small, for the hills and mountains in Afghanistan are for the most part quite barren, and there are very few trees except in one or two isolated places, and not many there. [Illustration: SOLDIERS ON GUARD IN GARDEN OUTSIDE THE KABUL WORKSHOPS EATING FOOD. (_From a drawing by the Author._) [_To face p. 240._] There is little or no rainfall in the country, but in the winter snowstorms are frequent, and the melting of the snow on the mountains gives the water required for the crops during spring and summer, the water being led over the land by means of channels for the necessary irrigation. These irrigation channels are cleaned out every spring, and on the day appointed for clearing the stream, all the men who use the water are called together by drum and fife (or an instrument similar to it), and they work up stream each day in a body, clearing away weeds, and deepening the channel where it has silted up until the whole is finished. There are frequent fights among cultivators about the first use of the water from the subsidiary channels, for it frequently happens that the smaller ones do not carry enough water to irrigate the land on both sides at once, and naturally quarrels ensue as to who shall have the water first. Long handled spades are generally in the hands of those who are quarrelling, and these are used, and men are killed at times, for the spade inflicts a heavy blow and cuts deeply. The quarrels also frequently lead to one man firing the other’s crops in revenge, and then lawsuits, with numbers of paid witnesses on both sides, result.