The better-class houses are usually built of sun-dried brick and mud; there is a good deal of wood-work about them, and sometimes the whole front of a house is built up of wood. There are two parts to each house. The inner part is the harem serai, where the women are quartered, and here the rooms are built in such form as to surround and look out upon an inner courtyard; and an outer small house, which is built over the gate of the harem and overlooks the street, for the use of the man, and where male visitors are received and entertained by him. The largest houses have also a garden attached to them, which is surrounded by a high wall to insure privacy when the women walk in it, for no woman must allow her face to be seen by any man excepting only her nearest relations. The door leading to the women’s quarters in all houses has a kopchee or door-keeper, and no one is allowed to enter any house until its master has given permission, and no woman is allowed to leave the house unless the kopchee has been told by the master to permit it. The palaces of the Amir and princes are the only well-built houses in Kabul. The Amir’s principal palace is Arak. Arak signifies “fort” in Turki, and “palace” in Persian. It is a large fortified place, some five hundred yards square, and is surrounded by a deep and wide moat. The surrounding walls are double and very thick. The outer walls are loop-holed for cannon and Maxims, while an earthen embankment, carried on arches connecting the two walls, is sloped up from above the embrasures to the inner wall, the top of which is slotted for riflemen. Under this embankment are the rooms where the guns are worked. Inside the fort offices and storerooms are built up against the inner walls, together with rooms for the men of the garrison who form the Amir’s bodyguard, and are specially selected and highly paid. In the Arak fort are also the public and private treasuries, and all the modern rifles and cartridges, of which there are many thousands, are kept in the storerooms there. The Amir’s palace inside Arak, and the harem serai for his women, are both surrounded by a high wall, which forms an inner defence when so required, and besides these are other rooms for the Amir’s use, which have lately been built alongside the north tower, and at other places inside the fort. The inner area of the fort is laid out as a garden, and at one end of the garden is a large glass-covered hothouse where the Amir sits very often in winter, surrounded by shrubs and flowers, and with bulbuls and other singing birds in cages suspended from the roof.