xviii 



NOTICE OF WILLIAM GRIFFITH. 



we escaped bag and baggage, the rascals making off when the red 

 coats appeared. I was sick at heart at the loss of poor Abdool 

 Rozak's fingers : he is an Arab with an English heart, bearing his 

 loss most manfully, and when his fingers were removed expressed 

 anxiety alone about me and my Sundoogs (collections). Well then, 

 where should I have been had I been assailed as Abdool Rozak was, 

 I should have been unprepared, and if riding, my mare would cer- 

 tainly have jumped into the river beneath. Thomson* said when he 

 left me, G — . you are rash and Abdool Rozak is rash, take care or 

 you will get into trouble. My moving about without a guard was 

 imprudent, and I now return to Jallalabad to get one, or if not 

 successful to wait there until the spring and its floral excitements 

 call me out : what I dislike is danger without any recompense, not 

 a flower is to be had ; with excitement it is nothing. I have now 

 had two escapes, one from the buffalo in Assam, and this, which is 

 a greater one, because had not the army been delayed by accident 

 at the ford, it would have been eight or ten miles in advance, and 

 consequently there would have been no rear-guard at hand. 



" The country is disturbed, and one can only stir out in the valley 

 itself close to camp, which is the more tantalizing as the mountains 

 are accessible, and covered with forest. Our halt here should put us 

 in possession of much information respecting these forests. As it is, I 

 shall leave probably as wise as I came, except in having ascertained 

 that the change from the well- wooded Himalaya mountains to those of 

 the Hindoo-koosh, without even a shrub five feet high, takes place to 

 the east of this. My employment is surveying and collecting data for 

 ascertaining the heights of the hills around. But wherever I turn, 

 the question suggests itself, what business have I here collecting 

 plants, with so many in Calcutta demanding attention ? How 

 I am living! alone, without a table, chair, wine, or spirits, with 

 a miserable beard, and in native clothes ! but one thus saves much 

 time ; how unfortunate that mine now is not worth saving ! 



" I have been reading Swainson's volumes in Lardner's Cyclopaedia, 

 in which there is a little to which severe critics may object, but a 

 vast deal more that is beautifully sound. I am quite certain I never 

 appreciated them before. How wonderful that no one before Macleay 

 and Swainson thought that living beings were created on one plan. 



* Major Thomson, C. B., Engineers, from whom as well as all the officers of the 

 same corps, Mr. Griffith experienced much kindness in Afghanistan. 



