There are no measures in Kabul for grain, liquids, etc., and all things are sold by weight. The weights differ from those used in India, and are built up from the nukhut, a description of pulse about the size of a pea, the weight of each seed of which is fairly equal. Twenty-four of these nukhuts go to a miskal (six and one-sixth miskals nearly equal an ounce); ninety-six miskals equal one pau, which is slightly less than an English pound; sixteen pau equal one seer, and eighty seers equal one kharwar. Excepting in the Government stores there are no exact weights made and used; the people in the bazar taking stones of different sizes and using them as weights, the difference between the stone and the true weight being on the side of the shopkeeper of course. In lineal measure there are two different yards, or guz, as they are called. The one used by surveyors and builders is nearly twenty-eight inches, and the other guz for measuring cloth, etc., is nearly forty-two inches. The kro, or mile, is, as I have already mentioned, an indefinite quantity, but is usually taken to be about one and a half English miles. The Government offices are controlled and worked by the mirzas, or clerks. The mirza is looked upon as an educated man in the country, but his education is limited to Persian literature, a smattering of the old Arabic, and the first four rules of arithmetic; but even in these first four rules he is far from proficient, and when it comes to a fraction being included in the calculation, he is hopelessly lost. I was present once when some eight or ten of them together tried to solve a calculation which involved multiplication only, and all of them arrived at different results, while the man who was nearest the correct answer took a good deal of credit to himself for being so nearly right. The mirzas are a class of themselves, although drawn from all classes, and they differ from the rest of the population in their nervous and soft manner, at the back of which, however, is a nature as cruel and heartless as any in the country. It is not the cleverest mirza in his work who comes to the front and has charge of departments, but the one who is cleverest in deceit and intrigue, and it is to excellence in these respects that the young mirza gives attention, when he listens to his elders making up a case, with words and meaning purposely involved, to give them a loophole of escape should their scheme fall through. The mirzas are full of cunning, and difficult for the layman to trap, and they are ever scheming one against the other, or against other people who have money, that they may in one way or another get them in their coils and squeeze them (as they put it).