122 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



ness of the ubiquitous poppies, here grown in rect- 

 angular beds, to make opium hereafter, but looking 

 aesthetic and saintly at present with their spotless 

 white heads bowing to the breeze. White poppies 

 make the best opium, but for what reason I cannot 

 telL Anyhow, the effect of an Afghan village in 

 the Herat valley in the month of May is not unlike 

 what some of my friends may remember of the 

 effects of an Afghan village in the month of May 

 in the Logar and "Wendak valleys, near Kabul. 

 There are the same clean white mud walls, overlooked 

 by a square mud fort with towers at the corners, 

 set in the midst of the same brilliant green culti- 

 vation, in which blue-coated villagers with identical 

 triangular spades are digging little water- courses to 

 irrigate their fields. Also, there is the same absence 

 of women about the place as is to be noticed about 

 Kabul. The mountains east and south of Herat 

 are high enough to be snow-capped. In May, 

 Dawanda and the Safed Koh were still white and 

 glittering as we rode up the valley. 



Although the valley of Herat is famous for its 

 resources in cultivation, there is not much of it till 

 the neighbourhood of the city is reached. It is true 

 that all along the river there is a strip of well-culti- 

 vated ground, here and there widening out to almost 

 the whole breadth of the valley ; but it is only east 

 of Ghorian that the wide stony dasht which forms 

 a glacis at the foot of the flanking hills all along 



