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AMANULLAH

loose flowing clothes and a great loose turban with one
end falling on to his shoulder. The coolie class wore
little hats, and the Turks, those few who came with the
gait of conquerors into the commercial centre, wore
prominently the crescent on a field of red fez.

One end of the Pathan's turban stuck up like a cock-
ade, and the other hung down his shoulder, ready to be
taken in his teeth if he saw an officer of police, ready
to screen his eyes in a dust-storm. The Mongolian
beggar wore a round dark brown hat, and his rags
trailed in the mud of that desolate street of strange
men.

All around were the noisy dramas of Eastern buying
and selling. In the actual thoroughfare, donkeys and
mules and skeletoned ponies struggled and bumped their
way through. " Kabadar ! Kabadar 1 " yelled the men
who tended them. u Make way, make way ! " And
with a continued shouting for room, obeyed by none,
the merchandise of all the East would pass.

Here was the base of the camel caravans. They would
start in the spring from Kabul, as soon as the snows
had melted on the lowlands. Slowly they would make
their way down to the Khyber Pass, the leading camel
ambling down a route remembered from the year before.

The route would not follow the road. That was for
modern transport, and encircled the hills with many a
detour to save a rocky defile or a sharp ascent. But
the route the camels took was two thousand years old,
and crept down the middle of the valleys, defined by
an age-old track that had been marked as plainly when
Alexander used it for his beasts and his men-at-arms.

As far as the Khyber, the caravan would be accom-
panied by outriders, sturdy scouts who kept watch and
ward for possible attacks by brigands. Their long rifles
would ,be always ready. Their keen eyes, or their sense

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