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294 and all the while the shaggy men afoot and the strings of camels went noiselessly on, their rocking, wavering, swaying motion, the slow, deliberate, methodical lifting and placing of the soft feet, exercising a sort of hypnotic charm.

"Why do these Kabul-ly men have such white faces and blue eyes like Englishmen?" we asked our servant, who quailed when any of them glared curiously at him.

"Oh, it is very cold at Kabul, and they eat so much white grapes and fruit. That makes them white men. Kabul-ly grapes are very dear, and poor Hindu cannot buy."

Then, nearly all the long way back to Jamrud, we were meeting and overtaking strings of camels—camels to right of us and camels to left of us, camels ahead and camels behind, that thrust their unpleasant heads, with their foaming lips and yellow teeth, altogether too near. Once when the sowar fended away a too-friendly camel with his rifle-barrel, there came such screams, groans, and shrieks from the insulted beast that we felt that all the vaunted dangers of the pass were understated, and that the camels were as dangerous as the Khyberis. The diamond hitch is not known in Afghanistan evidently, for the loads were balanced rather than girded on, and cinching seems never to have been applied to the camel's waist-line. The drivers were continually rearranging loads that had tilted over or worked loose, and bending their triple-jointed legs, gaunt beasts with elongated necks sat down and protested to the echoing cañon walls while