The princes held their own durbars, which many officials and officers attended, either in connection with their duties or to “salaam” the princes. They all had separate houses situated in the new part of the city, and the two elder ones had country houses also, in which they used to spend part of the summer. Sirdar Nasrullah, after his return from London, had his salary increased, and shortly afterwards built a new house for himself on the lines of the house he had stopped in during his stay in London (Dorchester House in Park Lane). In arrangement and upholstery, the house was the best in Kabul, and on its completion, the Amir stopped there for a few days as the prince’s guest, and was delighted with it all, for the Amir greatly admired good architecture, and his own buildings were the only innovations on the old mud and brick dwellings common to the country, which had sufficed for former rulers. All the members of the royal family, that is, the whole of the Mahomedzai family, received an allowance from the Government. Four hundred rupees a year (about £12 10_s._) was allowed to each boy, and three hundred to each girl, and food from the royal kitchen was also supplied to the greater number of them; but this was stopped under the _régime_ of the present Amir, and a further allowance in money granted instead. The greater scarcity of food, and its consequent dearness, was the chief reason for doing so. The officials of the Government and others attached to the Amir received salaries of from two hundred to six thousand a year, and although many have incomes derived from their own lands, they all live beyond their apparent income, the surplus being obtained in ways best known to themselves; usually, the greater the rascal the greater the income. Formerly the salaries of the officials were paid by barats (orders) on the revenue due from different lands in the country, and the officials had to collect this themselves, whereby the expenses of revenue officers were spared the Government. But eventually one of the highest officials used to buy up all these barats, charging so much per cent. discount, and collect the whole, a proceeding profitable to himself, but detrimental to the interests of the country, as his agents left the ryots (cultivators) nothing to live on, more often than not, and caused many of them to leave their bit of land and seek employment elsewhere. This wholesale robbery by the collectors of revenue is one of the chief causes of the present low state of the exchequer.