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264 broad street leading in from the Edwards Gate in the city wall held its tableau, its Vereshchagin group already posed, every man of them six feet tall, fierce and stalwart. These "Pathan devils," "these Kabul-ly men," as our bearer called them, were as truculent, turbulent, and untamed a lot as one could wish to see, and our bearer fairly quaked when one of these swashbucklers brushed against him, or a hook-nosed, wolfish red-beard scowled at him and contemptuously discussed him with a brother of Kabul. The Jewish cast of features was unmistakable, and the turbans and garments were identical with those worn by Moses and the prophets—a biblical picture, truly. These hulking giants who strode about like conquerors, these picturesque cutthroats and splendid fighting animals, are supposed to be harmless, from having been relieved of their arms and weapons when they entered British territory, but no doubt every one of them had a yard-long, triangular Afghan knife concealed within his baggy garments. All wore peaked caps within the turban-cloth and some heavy, striped blankets thrown theatrically over one shoulder, but the crocheted Afghan of fancy-work fairs was nowhere to be seen—another disillusionment of travel. An unkempt old falconer with hooded bird on wrist, and just such a Scythian sort of barbarian next him as sculptors show in the train of Alexander the Great, were a pair that willingly posed for their portraits.

There was such richness, such conglomeration and embarrassment of picturesqueness on every hand,