THE AFGHAN BORDERLAND 



887 



ie added: "Have the most honorable 

 ravelers had a comfortable journey? 

 vfost gladlv would I receive them, but I 

 jun a "mere captain, If I let them so 

 riuch as set foot on this side of the river, 

 ny king, the great Amir at Kabul, 

 would cut my head off." 



Persuasion was useless; the captain 

 would neither permit us to cross nor ac- 

 ;ept our invitation to come over into 

 Persia and dine with us. He seemed to 

 stand in thorough terror of the Amir's 

 linger. 



We might have crossed without per- 

 mission, but that would probably have 

 necessitated fighting; for during the 

 'next two days, as we marched south- 

 ward, armed soldiers appeared whenever 

 the windings of the road brought us 

 within sight of the river which forms 

 Ithe boundary for some fifty miles. 



A few days later we made another at- 

 tempt to enter Afghanistan, not with the 

 ] intention of actually going far into the 

 .'country, but because my Russian com- 

 Ipanion was extremely eager to learn 

 ] something as to the defenses of Kafir 

 I Kala, a famous fort supposed to be the 

 '; strongest on the western frontier of 

 ' Afghanistan. Sending the camels safely 

 j into Persian territory, we started for 

 I Kafir Kala one glorious December day — 

 J the Russian official and his Turkoman 

 ' soldier, the writer and his Russian ser- 

 vant, and our Turkoman interpreter — 

 five men, well armed and mounted on 

 good horses. Till noon we rode at a 

 steady jog-trot through an uninhabited 

 desert studded with low, dry bushes. 

 Only twice did travelers appear in the 

 narrow path, and they seemed sadly 

 frightened. We began to think we had 

 lost the road. Then a village came into 

 view across the plain among the tama- 

 risk bushes. Could that treeless group 

 of low, gray walls and flat-roofed mud 

 houses be Kafir Kala? Perhaps _ those 

 turbaned men running together in the 

 distance were soldiers. Something like 

 gun barrels glistened over their shoul- 

 ders. Riding nearer we saw that the 

 village was evidently not a fort ; but the 

 wav in which the villagers gathered in 



the road to intercept us looked ominous, 

 even though the weapons over their 

 shoulders were only spades for irri- 

 gating. As we turned away from their 

 almost violent questions, a handsomely 

 dressed young chief and two soldiers 

 galloped up with a great show of guns, 

 and we stopped perforce to parley in the 

 middle of the village. 



"This is Afghan territory. You are 

 foreigners, and you must go back where 

 you came from," began the chief. 



"We understand all that," was the 

 answer, "but we are going to call on the 

 commandant at Kafir Kala. Where's 

 the road?" 



"There," pointing in the right direc- 

 tion, "but I won't let you go." 



"Thank you. Who is this young 

 man ?" we asked, ignoring him and turn- 

 ing to the bystanders. 



"Hakim Khan, Hakim Khan, the 

 chief of Kuzzil Islam," came from a 

 dozen voices. We understood now how 

 he had happened to arrive. The old men 

 whom we had met by the river an hour 

 or two before had said that they came 

 from Kuzzil Islam. Evidently they had 

 turned back and given the alarm. 



A hot discussion began at once be- 

 tween our men and the Afghans as to 

 whether we should go back or keep on. 

 We cut it short by turning our horses' 

 heads toward the fort. That angered 

 Hakim Khan. He said something sharp 

 and short; the crowd surged forward, 

 and half a dozen hands seized our bri- 

 dles. Involuntarily we pulled out our 

 pistols, and the crowd fell back in such 

 haste that we could not help laughing to 

 see them stumble over one another. 

 That cleared the air, for the Afghans 

 laughed, too, and we all grew friendly. 

 We flattered the Khan by asking about 

 the many villages which he owned and 

 by expressing wonder at the extent of 

 his travels to Cabul and Kandahar, and 

 at his intimacy with the Amir. 



"How much you have seen for so 

 young a man," I said, and added the 

 common Oriental question, "How old 

 are you?" 



