314 An account of the early Ghilj dees. [No. 160. 



struggle, accompanied with Pushtoo abuse ; the handmaids setting his 

 mind at ease in Persian, of which he did not understand a word, and by 

 signs. He was finally taken to the bath, and never had the attendant 

 barbers operated on such a subject before, the cracks in his huge feet 

 and hands being like ravines of his native hills. After cleansing him as 

 much as possible, and shaving his hedge hog-looking head of hair, he 

 was attired in trousers and shirt of red twilled cotton, the richest under 

 garments a man must wear, and other suitable parts of dress ; and con- 

 ducted back into the saloon, where a rich entertainment was laid out, 

 at which the lady of the mansion presided. 



The Afghan finding himself more at home, determined to make 

 the most of his good fortune, and act the part of the master of the 

 house. 



Observing that the trousers of the lady were of gold stuff, while his 

 were of common red, he insisted on an exchange ; and in them went he 

 next morning, proud of his appearance, to Mahmood's darbar, where his 

 appearance putting his illustrious tribesmen to shame, he got nothing 

 but a sound beating. 



The second anecdote was told me on the scene of its occurrence, 

 the Achakzai hills, on the 23rd May 1838, while ascending the Kojak 

 Pass. An Achakzai who had accompanied Shah Mahmood on his 

 expedition to Persia, had married a rich lady of Ispahan. In the midst 

 of the rich repasts she provided for him, and the beautiful garden of a 

 hundred fountains and thousand parterres that he found himself master 

 of, he would sigh (between a grunt, a groan and a growl,) " Oh ! 

 for my country of the thousand- holed cakes, and alas ! for its Makhai 

 gardens." 



The lady, fancying rightly that the country that could surpass the 

 capital of Persia in its luxuries, must be heaven itself, determined to 

 return with her new husband to Afghanistan. Whatever might have 

 been her misgivings on the road, seeing that as they advanced the 

 fertility of the country decreased, her despair was at its height on 

 arriving at home — a khel or encampment of ghijdee, (black hair tent) 

 in one of the wildest parts of the Achakzai hills. But her heart broke 

 when she found that the thousand-holed bread was made of the vetch 

 called gal, which becomes honey-combed in baking (food that her slaves 

 would reject in Persia,) and that the Makhai gardens were nothing 



