seized his stick and struck the old man down with it, and then ordered others there to go on beating him; and in the Amir’s presence the old man was thrashed until he was dead, and his body was afterwards exhibited on a charpai (bedstead) in the bazar for two days, as a warning to others. The Amir invariably punished the nearest relatives of those who ran away to escape punishment, and knowing this, many a man returned and gave himself up in order that his relatives might go free. Beating with sticks is a common punishment, so many blows being given on the man’s back as he lies spreadeagled on the ground, two soldiers, one on either side, administering the blows, while others hold the man down, and sometimes the Amir orders the blows of such a number that the man shall die under the punishment. A master carpenter, who did not get on with the work ordered in a new part of the palace, was given a hundred and fifty blows with sticks, and died the day after, but the sticks used are at times so heavy that the bones of the back are broken and the flesh mortifies, so that a less number of blows will sometimes cause death. The present Amir had fifteen Kotwali sepoys beaten for neglect of duty, in not reporting the transgressions of their superior officer, until eight of them died under the blows, and the others were unable to move for weeks after, and being kept in prison received no medical treatment to alleviate their sufferings. On a later occasion, when one of his attendants had committed some mischief, with the object of getting the blame put on another fellow-servant, and was detected, the Amir, who was at the time on the temporary roof covering the new palace in the Arak garden, had the man brought before him, and there beaten with sticks until partly insensible, then the man was hauled to the edge of the roof and thence thrown to the ground, after which he was dragged by a rope fastened to his legs from where he lay to the Kotwali, but life was extinct on arrival, though he was still living after being thrown from the roof. The present Amir is very scrupulous about all things surrounding him being kept clean and tidy, not only in the house and garden, but the roads leading to the palace must be kept swept and clean too. He was one day passing out of one of the smaller gates in the wall of the Arak garden, and noticed that the ground round the gateway was unswept; so, stopping there, he sent for the man whose duty it was to sweep the place. A woman came in reply, and said that she was the man’s wife, and her husband was too ill with fever to get up, and she had been so busy attending him that she had found no time to sweep the place herself, and also she was, as he could see, heavy with child. The Amir replied that he would relieve her of her burden, and ordered the woman fifty strokes with sticks on the abdomen. The woman was accordingly laid on her back, on the ground, and beaten, and died almost immediately afterwards.