EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

of impending danger would warn the defenders of the
precious skins and furs that they must prepare for
sudden attack.

Then through the Khyber. The camels would amble
through the gap in the barbed wire, and straight as a
die through the valleys, while the new motor road curled
on the flanks of the hills. British soldiers would be
drilling a few hundred yards from their dignified path.
The skirl of the pipes from a Highland band would cause
them to flick a contemptuous eyelid.

Then to Peshawar, where the caravan attendants
would spend a night in high festival in the city which
is the " Paris of the East."

So down two thousand miles to Calcutta, down the
Grand Trunk Road of Kipling memory. At last, the
great markets of Calcutta, reached in midwinter. Strange
tales these caravans could tell. They conduct to this
day their business on the same principle as was the
custom in Biblical times. Their owners never took
money to Calcutta. They never paid for the valuable
Western-made goods they brought up to Kabul the
following year. All their transactions were on credit.

Sometimes finances were poor, and the merchants of
Calcutta, fat, grasping Hindus, would not give them
full prices for their precious skins and furs, trapped in
the mountains on the Russian border. They could not
pay for the loads they wished to take to Kabul. Never-
theless, they received their goods. For under the
strangest agreement in the world, these traders would
give their solemn undertaking to bring the price of the
goods the next year. If they died, their sons or relatives
would fulfil the duty. And it is said that even the
suspicious and grasping bannia of Calcutta has never
had cause to regret his trust in a Kabul caravan trader.

The camels rested the winter in the great serato of