An unfortunate encounter
Alidad, after a heart-to-heart talk with an inferior servant
who marched on foot, they were going to fetch a bride and
all her trousseau for one of their chiefs. They were un-
attractive men, and wore the Palilevi hat with a European coat,
and rode on embroidered saddles with silver pommels. The
chief among them had murdered his father and was, Alidad
explained, " not a good man," even in a country where the
standard is not very high. He looked at me in a glowering
way, twisting himself round on his saddle to do so after he had
passed, and calling to Alidad to explain me: and as we rode on
I felt uncomfortably that my days of freedom would be
numbered as soon as these ill-omened ones reached the capital
with their story.
Shah Riza, too, looked flustered, his grey hair sticking out
in wild rebellion under the respectable superstructure of the
national headgear as he told me the unedifying details of the
great one's past. It took us half an hour's riding or so down
the easy, tree-filled defile before we could capture again the
morning's sense of peace.
A little narrow valley, coming down from north-west,
opened up into ours at the end of the defile, and showed at
its head behind us a bit of the cliff table-top of Barazard, to
which we had looked across all day yesterday as we came down
from our pass. This meeting and meeting again, from
different points and in other lights, of the same landmarks,
is the charm of hilly travel. The mountain shape, first seen
as a dream in the distance, alarming as you approach, lost
perhaps altogether as you become involved in its outworks
and ramifying valleys, appears again suddenly, unexpected
as some swift light upon a face beloved to which custom has
blunted our eyes. Like a human being, the mountain is a
composite creature, only to be known after many a view from
many a different point, and repaying this loving study,^if it
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