274 An account of Tipper and Lower Suwdt. [No. 3, 



families, in parties of fifteen or twenty at a time, consisting of young- 

 girls, young married, middle-aged, and old women, to come down 

 to Marclan in the Samah, some thirty or forty miles distant from 

 home, without a single male accompanying them, on pleasure or 

 visiting excursions. They stay at the house of the head man of the 

 village ; and return home after the third or fourth day. At the 

 very time I was proceeding into Suwat with the Khan Sahib, we 

 fell in with one of these pleasure parties of that very family, some 

 twenty in number. They staid the first night at Kasamaey, and 

 the next at Jamal Garraey, at the residence of Muhammad Afzal 

 Khan, Khattak, the chief of that place, and the next day started for 

 the place they were going to remain at for a few days. Although 

 there is no fear of evil consequences arising from these excursions ; 

 yet the Afghans, generally, never, for a moment, allow their females 

 to go out of their sight, for three or four days at a time, without a 

 single male relation to take care of them. It therefore seems almost 

 impossible, that men, who are so much subject to, and so obedient 

 to their wives, would venture to sell them, or even dare to make the 

 attempt. 



The Afghans of Suwat, like others of their countrymen, are very 

 hospitable. When strangers enter a village, and it be the residence 

 of a Khan or Chief, he entertains the whole party ; but if there be 

 no great man resident in the place, each stranger of the party 

 is taken by some villager to his house, and is entertained as his 

 guest. 



As respects the physical constitution of the people of Suwat, I 

 should say that the men, for Afghans, are weakly, thin, and ap- 

 parently feeble, whilst the women on the other hand are strong, 

 stout, and buxom. I know of no aboriginal people of Suwat still 

 existing in the valley under the simple name of Suwatis. The Af- 

 ghans of this part are dark in colour, short in stature, or rather of 

 middle size, generally thin, and if stout, they have, usually, large 

 puffy stomachs and buttocks like fat Hindus. 



The Gujars are graziers, and are to be found in the Peshawar 

 valley as well as in Suwat and other hill districts of this part of 

 Afghanistan. They speak Panjabi amongst themselves ; and they, 

 probably, are the remains of the aboriginal people of these districts, 

 who were conquered by the Afghans when they first made their 



