of long abstinence during the day, followed by a surfeit of food begins to tell in the way of indigestion and dyspepsia, and tempers get short and quarrels become frequent. Many people get very ill, and not a few die, for more is eaten during the month of fast than any other month, and the people save up all they can against the time, when, after being deprived for hours of all they desire, they can at last eat, drink, and smoke to satiety, and a heavy meal on a stomach which has long been empty is not conducive to good digestion. Those who are heavy smokers, or in the habit of taking snuff, are those who feel the abstinence most, and to them the time seems to pass more slowly than it does to others. Many men have confessed to me how weary are the hours until the gun announces sunset, and I think all smokers will sympathize with them. The mirzas (clerks) are among those who miss their pipe and snuff most, for they are, almost without exception, inveterate smokers. The Mussulman year is reckoned according to the lunar months, and the month of fasting, therefore, comes at an earlier date each year; and when it comes in the summer-time, when the days are long and the weather hot, thirst has to be added to the other discomforts, and, as almost all people in Kabul are in the habit of drinking water frequently during the day, the desire to relieve their thirst becomes almost unbearable, and they say it is the worst suffering of all during the fast. Six weeks following the Eid of Ramazan, the day of festival which concludes the month of fast, is the great Eid-i-Kurban, or Feast of Sacrifices, and on this day all men, no matter how poor, see that they have new clothes to put on; and should a man be so poor that he cannot do so, he spends the day alone in his house, unable to face his friends, shamed and miserable. It is rare, however, that a man is so situated, for it is the custom to make provision against this day, and, at the worst, old clothes can be mended and cleaned, and made to look good enough to pass muster, for it is not all who can afford to buy clothes first-hand. On this festival, after the prayers in the great musjid which the Amir and princes, together with their officials and the officers of the army attend, a review of troops is held on the large plain facing the mosque. The arrival of the Amir with his suite on the review-ground is greeted with a salvo of forty guns, and the review proceeds; but as it simply consists of the Amir riding past all the regiments drawn up there, and making them a short speech, it is soon ended, and then the regiments are marched back to their barracks, while the roads en route are crowded with people to watch the tamasha, not the least of which is the passing by of the Amir with his retinue and bodyguard, and preceded by the State elephants decked with gaudy trappings. The people afterwards spend the day in visiting their friends and wishing the compliments of the season