In getting up cases, the mirzas do as others do, and pay false witnesses, and this leads at times to the Amir being at a loss to know which side is right, and ordering them all to be tortured with the fanah in order to find out the truth. I saw two mirzas, who were accused of falsifying accounts, being publicly fanah’d in the bazar one day as I rode through; but they were making statements very rapidly with the minimum of pressure on the fanah. Their endurance is less than that of the other men of the country, and this is no doubt due to a sedentary life and incessant smoking, for wherever you see a mirza, there, too, you will see a chillum. [Illustration: GROUP OF KABUL MIRZAS (WRITERS, OR CLERKS). [_To face p. 248._] The mirzas have various ways of making money, and one is in the collection of customs duties and various taxes, when they make all they can out of the people who have to pay. If they have to give a receipt to any man for money paid, or goods delivered, they will keep the man waiting all day for it, or even for a few days, if he gives them nothing. The equivalent of a penny is accepted if the man is poor and they see he can give no more. Men coming into Kabul and having to travel two or three days to get there to pay some duty or tax of less than a rupee, have been kept waiting for days because they refused to give the mirza a few annas; so the people see that it saves money to give to the mirzas, and if they complain to a higher authority the mirza and all in his office will swear that the man never came near them. Again, if money has to be paid to a man from the Government treasury he must give some of it to the mirza who pays it out, and this is taken so much for granted that the mirza usually hands it over one or more rupees short, according to the amount of money that has to be paid. The late Amir used to give salaries to very few of the mirzas employed on Government work. He said they made money from the people whether they got a salary or not, and as the people would not complain to him, they might pay for the mirzas—an economical way of looking at the matter. The Government storekeepers are all mirzas, and apparently make a good thing out of it, for they wear good clothes, ride good horses, and have many wives and women in their houses, though their pay is seldom more than the equivalent of ten pounds a year. However, as there is no system of stock-taking, and no ones knows what is, or is not, in the stores, it is an easy matter for them to make money out of such a job, but their tenure of office is usually a short one, some one or other of those under them reporting their shortcomings, probably because they were given too small a share of the plunder.