The Khyber has been well named The Gate of India, for the road through it and over the Bamian Pass is the only route which is practicable for artillery across that vast wall of mountains between Burmah and Beloochistan, a distance of three thousand five hundred miles. The great Napoleon's dearest desire was to lead an army through Persia, by way of Herat, into India. It was not to be; but as we drive along visions rise before us of other conquerors and their armies, whom from the furthermost ages these mountain heights have seen, countless hosts, streaming along the selfsame road our tats are trotting down now.

There was Nádir Sháh, the Persian monarch, who swooped down on India with his destroying legions in 1739, and returned through the Khyber, after sacking Delhi, with a booty estimated at thirty-two millions sterling, and the great Koh-i-Noor diamond. Having observed the magnificent jewel glittering in the puggaree of the fallen Mogul monarch-himself the son of a sheepskin cap-maker-he suggested to his royal captive that they should exchange turbans.

Long before Nádir Sháh's day, in 327 B.C. another army wound down the Khyber, fair Greeks and Macedonians, led by Alexander the Great. Earlier still, before Mohammedanism or Christianity were thought of, Tartars, Persians, and Afghans trooped down to their conquests and plunder in India, intermingled with caravans of traders, and religious pilgrims from Thibet, Tartary, China, and Siberia, on their way to worship at the holy places of

Buddhism. Further back still, there is a misty outline of an invasion by an army of Darius, King of

Persia.

There has never been any tide of conquest and emigration out of India; what has gone out, and particularly by this pass, was wealth immeasurable and inconceivable, and one great religion: a wealth over which nations have squabbled from time immemorial; a religion which once influenced millions, and which is now in

that last drear mood

Of envious sloth and proud decrepitude,
While... whining for dead gods that cannot save,
The toothless systems shiver to their grave.

As we drove along we soon began to meet whole families of Kabulees coming down the pass, with their shaggy Bokhara camels and heavily laden saddle-bags full of carpets, spice, and various Eastern merchandise. Little Afghan children were tied in poshteens to the saddle-bags, their heads jerking and bobbing backwards and forwards at every stride.

The Afghans themselves claim their descent from the Israelites, and hold that they are the representatives of part of the lost Ten Tribes, who never returned from the Assyrian Captivity into which they were carried by Tiglath Pileser, 721 B.C. The Kashmiris also claim the same; the competitors, in fact, are many and various, and a cataract of nineteenth-century ink has flowed in vain in the cause

of a subject which never has been and never will be satisfactorily proved.

These Afghans with the khaileefa-as a company of camels and merchandise is called-were armed some of them with Persian hilted swords and with matchlocks called jesails, the stocks of which are strange-looking hooks, shaped like a sickle, and intended to fit under the arms. Low sheepskin caps they all wore, and rather gay-coloured clothes, contrasting with the dark, keen, ruffian-like faces.

Now horses hate camels; as we drove up and met the long train, with the great, slow, swinging bodies of the camels and their broad, cumbersome loads reaching half-way across the road, their long, inquisitive necks stretching over the remaining half, the ponies hesitated, and required much coaxing and gentle persuasion to be made to go at all. I ought by rights to have pulled up and made the khaileefa take the outside of the road, instead of taking it ourselves; for there was no protection whatever at the edge, which dropped straight down, a steep bank ending in a precipice. The camels, one after another, hugged the high cliff on the opposite side; we got on very well till we were somewhere in the middle of the never-ending stream, and then one camel, particularly "nasty nasty" and supercilious-looking, taller than the rest, and taking up still more room as regarded his load, suddenly swung right across the road in a menacing manner. Before I could do any

thing the ponies dashed to the

opposite side, wild with