We are not invited into the tents, but bread and mast is provided, and, while we eat, four men hold the corners of an ample blue turban sheet over us to shelter us from the sun.  Spread out on sheets and on the roofs of the tents are bushels of curds drying in the sun; the curds are compressed into round balls the size of an apple, and when dried into hard balls are excellent things to put in the pocket and nibble along the road.  Here we learn that the Harood is only one farsakh distant, and a couple of stalwart young nomads accompany us to assist us across.  At Beerjand the Harood was “deep as a house;” at our last night’s camp we were told that it was fordable with camels; here we learn, that, though very swift, it is really fordable for men and horses.  First we come to a branch less than waist-deep.  My nether garments are handed to the khan; in the pocket of my pantaloons is a purse containing a few kerans.  While engaged in fording this branch the khan ferrets out the purse and extracts something from it, which he deftly slips into the folds of his kammerbund.  All this I silently observe from the corners of my eyes, but say nothing.

Emerging from the stream, the wily khan points across the intervening three hundred yards or thereabout to the main stream, and motions for me to go ahead.  The discovery of the purse and the purloined kerans has aroused all the latent cupidity of his soul, and he wants me to ride ahead, so that he can straggle along in the rear and investigate the contents of the purse at his leisure.  While winking at the amusing little act of petty larceny already detected, I do not propose to give his kleptomaniac tendencies full swing, and so I meet his proposal to sowar and go ahead by peremptorily ordering him to take the lead.

Arriving at the bank of the Harood, I retire behind a clump of reeds, and fold my money-belt, full of gold, up in the middle of my clothes, making a compact bundle, with my gossamer rubber wrapped around the outside.  The river is about a hundred and fifty yards wide at the ford, with a sand-bar about mid-stream, and is not above shoulder-deep along the ridge that renders it fordable; the current, however, is frightfully strong.  Like the Indians of the West, the Afghan nomads are accustomed from infancy to battling with the elements, and are comparatively fearless in regard to rivers and deserts and storms, etc.

Such, at least, is the impression created by the conduct of the two young men who have come to assist us across.  The bicycle, my clothes, and all the effects of the sowars are carried across on their heads, the rushing waters threatening to sweep them off their feet at every step; but nothing is allowed to get wet.  When they are carrying across the last bundle, the khan, solicitous for my safety, wants me to hang on to a short rope tied around the waist of the strongest of the nomads.  Naturally disdaining any such arrangement as this, however, I declare my intention