The mills for grinding flour are fixed at convenient points on the irrigation streams, and are worked by water-wheels, which, however, have a very low efficiency, less than a quarter of the power available being transmitted to the mill. The mills are of a very old type; one stone revolves on a fixed lower one, and the grain is fed in at a hole pierced near the centre of the upper stone. The flour from the first grinding is very coarse, and it is reground two or more times, according to the degree of fineness required. There is a great want in Afghanistan of some cheap and speedy means of carrying freight. At present the cumbersome method of carrying all things by pack-animals is the only means at disposal, and the time occupied in getting over a short distance necessarily makes the system a costly one, for it takes a week for them to travel a hundred miles, and the cost of doing so works out at about eighteen shillings a hundred-weight for that distance, and this in a country where all things are cheap. The weight and size of any article carried is also limited to the carrying capacity of the horse or camel employed. The Koochee people do most of the carrying of goods from place to place, and they are a hardy race, similar to gipsies in having no fixed home. They move about in caravans of fifty to a hundred animals, which include camels, horses, donkeys, and sheep, for sheep have to carry small packs too. The women and children travel with the caravan wherever it goes, and the household pots and pans, with a few fowl, are carried on the top of a donkey, the fowl, with their feet tied to prevent escape, sitting on the top of the pack, and the baby, if there is one, wrapped in a shawl, and carried in a bundle beside them. They often have a large number of sheep with them, and when the lambs are too young to stand the journey the boys and girls carry them in their arms. When they stop for a while at any place they rig up rough huts, composed of sticks covered with mats or grass, but at other times the shelter of a tree or rock suffices. They are a finely built people, with free, graceful movements, due, no doubt, to the open-air life they lead and the constant exercise, and as no sickly child could live such a life, it is a case of the survival of the fittest.