1863. | On the Antiquities of the Peshawur District. 5 
the cave cannot be measured, but that the opening at the other end 
of itisin Kashmir. The last portion of the ascent to the mouth of 
the cave itself is extremely difficult. The cave consists of several 
chambers of unequal size; the outer one, which is very lofty, is dis- 
tinguished only by a very few stalactites. The interior contains 
flights of almost uncountable steps, and buildings, whose nature can- 
not, however, be fully ascertained without some excavation. But 
such a work presents here unusual difficulty, not only on account of 
the comparative inaccessibility of the place, and its distance from the 
nearest village at which labourers could be obtained, but also because 
pigeons’ and bats’ excrements have accumulated in the cave for cen- 
turies. ‘Two inscriptions were spoken of by the natives as existing 
somewhere in the cave, but I did not see them. Indeed, the only 
inseription which I have seen anywhere during this tour, is on an 
unshapen piece of rock lying at the entrance of the village of Zeda, 
in the south-eastern corner of the Yusufzai plain. The character is 
Bactrian, as well as I was able to see, the stone lying under a great 
heap of manure, upside down, and with the inseribed surface to- 
wards a wall. I was not able, during the day that I was at Zeda, to 
obtain a facsimile or even a copy of it. On various terraces and 
natural plateaus below the Kashmiri Smuss there are numerous re- 
mains of buildings very much like those at Bahai as well as like 
those on a hill near Waogram, between the British frontier and the 
Indus. 
One of the most marked features among the remains on this latter 
hill Gt is about 1000 feet high) are very large rocks and boulders 
scattered about, which have been carefully excavated for cells; many 
of these are quite plain inside, whilst others have the simple orna- 
ment of a niche or two. The summit of the hill offers a flat plateau 
of some size, which had been very strongly fortified by buildings all 
round the brow. ‘These buildings are constructed of large blocks of 
stone (conglomerate, found on the spot) neatly hewn and carefully 
fitted, disposed with very great.regularity and laid in a cement of 
extraordinary excellence ; unavoidable interstices between the large 
blocks are filled up by layers of thin small stone tablets; this latter 
practice being an invariable feature in all the so-called Kafir build- 
ings which I have seen in the Trans-Indus country. To judge from 
the smooth turf and the vegetation in the middle of the plateau, it 
