576 Hon. G. N. Curzon [May 10, 



and sometimes lies thickly at Ghuzni, the road is rarely, if ever, 

 blocked. When I rode along it in December last, no snow had yet 

 fallen, except upon the higher hills ; and the glory of these sparkled 

 like a white battlement built skywards on either flank of my line of 

 march. The journey of 320 miles is divided into thirty-one caravan 

 marches. Lord Eoberts' army covered it between August 8 and 31, 

 1880, i.e. in 24 days, including halts. I occupied 11 days on the 

 march, being well-mounted on relays of horses sent on for use by the 

 Amir. But this, which is child's-play for a cavalier decently pro- 

 vided, was a more severe task for my mounted escort of 50 men, who 

 rode the same animals, without change, from Kabul to Kandahar ; 

 and on to Chaman — a further distance of 65 miles — whence they 

 turned back again, and, I doubt not, returned to the capital in much 

 the same time. In the East, no one thinks these long and continuous 

 marches astonishing. But at home either our horseflesh is less robust 

 or we treat it more tenderly. 



The only places upon this march of which I need here speak are 

 Ghuzni, Kelat-i-Ghilzai and Kandahar, all of which are familiar 

 names in English ears, and are associated with many memories of 

 heroism or of suffering. Ghuzni has been three times captured or 

 occupied by British arms ; and 53 years ago a British force endured 

 within the walls of its citadel the horrors of a prolonged midwinter 

 siege. The town occupies a remarkable position, with a lofty 

 acropolis at its north end, and may be compared in more than one 

 particular with the external appearance of Athens. I was lodged in 

 the Bala Hissar, or citadel, from the summit of which is a wonder- 

 ful outlook over the flat roofs of the Afghan mud houses, on which 

 grain is outspread, or fuel is stacked to dry, over the crumbling 

 walls of the city to the irrigated plots outside, where the Ghuzni river 

 meanders in slow coils, and to the more distant belt of gravelly desert. 

 The defences, both of the city and of the citadel, which have been 

 more than once destroyed by the British, are in a state of irretrievable 

 decay, and would not stand a bombardment of ten minutes. Those 

 who were visiting the East for the first time might perhaps be 

 shocked at the slatternly ruin of places so famous in history as Kabul, 

 Ghuzni and Kandahar, and might read in their tottering parapets 

 and crumbling walls the evidence of a national decline. This would 

 not be a wholly fair inference. Life in the East is a perpetual 

 oscillation between the splendid and the squalid. Things, places 

 and buildings are sometimes repaired. They are never kept in 

 repair. Bepair in Asia is the offspring of a temporary emergency or 

 of a passing whim. It is never either a sustained effort or a perma- 

 nent condition. 



About 2^ miles from the Kabul gate of Ghuzni is the tomb of 

 the famous Mahmud of Ghuzni, one of those appalling human visita- 

 tions who in a single lifetime wrought more suffering to the world 

 than was ever compensated for by a century of peace and prosperity, 

 but who have fortunately been eliminated from the drama of human 



