328 Journal kept while travelling in Seistan. [No. 1 1 2. 



reputation for bravery ; but it is said that on the day of the storm he 

 was actually running away, when a young Furrahi seized him by the 

 arm, and unconsciously making use of a famous expression, said, " The 

 enemy are not there." 



Futteh Khan is, however, a very pleasant companion ; any timidity of 

 manner soon wears off, and he has all the polish and address of a 

 Persian. His kindness and polite attentions to myself, (not to mention 

 the profuse hospitality, for which however the vuzeer of Herat, and not 

 Futteh Khan, is to be thanked,) I must confess somewhat blinded me 

 as to his real character, which I only discovered at Joroaine, when I 

 was thrown among the exiled Furrahees. They perhaps exaggerated his 

 demerits ; but it would appear that on his assuming the government of 

 Furrah, he persecuted the few inhabitants that still remained in the 

 district, on the plea of their having joined the enemy, and thus con- 

 tributed as much as the Candaharees themselves, to the desolation of 

 the province. 



26th. — We were hardly outside the walls of Furrah, when a letter was 



brought from Shah Pussund Khan to say, that on 

 Letter from Futteh account of the danger of the road he had sent out 

 Khan. 



some twenty or thirty horse and foot to meet me at 



his frontier, and that he had prepared a room for me in his house. We 

 were catching fish with coculus indicus in the river at Barunduk, 

 where as the name implies, there is a water-fall, and a deep pool famous 

 for its fish, when we were disturbed by a mounted party. This was the 

 escort sent by Shah Pussund Khan, headed, by a person called the 

 Shaughoussee, (because he had formerly served in that capacity to some 

 prince at Turrah, Thenazis, and other respectable people.) The Shau- 

 ghoussee apologized for the absence of the Khan's grandson and for 

 the paucity of the horsemen ; the young Khan and all the horse they 

 could muster, having gone only a few days before to take possession of 

 Killah Rab. As we approached Toojk, we could have counted its very 

 inhabitants, for I suppose there was hardly a male who had not come 

 out to see the first real Feringee who had ever visited them. Vi- 

 kovitch they consider, what he called himself, a Cossack. We marched 

 into the town in a ludicrous sort of procession ; nu- 

 merous old women kept throwing water at me, as 

 a symbol of welcome; and to keep off the evil eye, beggars burnt in- 



