From Kasr-i-Shirin onwards there was a gradual descent to the bottom of the Pai Tak Pass. It is three miles to the top of the Pass, and there is a difference in altitude of about fifteen hundred feet. Whatever else they may be, Persians are not roadmakers. Formerly the only way to scale Pai Tak was by following a mule track which wound round the sparsely wooded slopes of the hill. But now British military engineers had done some useful spade work there; an excellent road had been built with easy gradients, and Pai Tak was negotiable for Ford cars, and even for heavily laden Peerless lorries. The view from the top was superb. On either side of the plateau towered snow-capped mountains. We found in possession, under Colonel Mathews, a British force consisting of the 14th Hants. The Colonel himself was absent; but the officers of the battalion gave us a hearty welcome, and fixed us up with quarters for the night. The Senjabi tribesmen round about were troublesome, {79} and their leader, Ali Akhbar Khan, incited by German propagandists, seemed bent upon coming into collision with the British. It was bitterly cold at Surkhidizeh on the top of the Pai Tak Pass, and we enjoyed the warmth and comfort of the Hants' mess quarters. This was an underground circular apartment, cut out of the earth, into which you descended by a flight of wooden steps. The top was roofed with canvas, tent fashion. Rifle thieves were active in the camp at Surkhidizeh. Wandering Kurdish tribesmen showed special daring in this form of enterprise. Scarcely a night passed without the Hants' Camp being raided for arms. British rifles brought enormous prices when sold to the Senjabi and other of the lawless nomads whose happy hunting-ground is the "No Man's Land" in the neighbourhood of the Turko-Persian frontier. Here a man was socially valued solely by the arms he carried. He might be in rags as far as raiment was concerned, but the possession of a .303 Lee Enfield, or a German Mauser, marked him as a man of some distinction and importance in the country, one who might be expected to do big things, and with whom it was well to be on friendly terms.