[795] Kāfir wine is mostly poor, thin and, even so, usually diluted with water. When kept two or three years, however, it becomes clear and sometimes strong. Sir G. S. Robertson never saw a Kāfir drunk (Kāfirs of the Hindū-kush, p. 591).
[796] Kāma might have classed better under Nīngnahār of which it was a dependency.
[797] i.e. water-of-Nijr; so too, Badr-aū and Tag-aū. Nijr-aū has seven-valleys (JASB 1838 p. 329 and Burnes’ Report X). Sayyid Ghulām-i-muḥammad mentions that Bābur established a frontier-post between Nijr-aū and Kāfiristān which in his own day was still maintained. He was an envoy of Warren Hastings to Tīmūr Shāh Sadozī (R.’s Notes p. 36 and p. 142).
[798] Kāfirwash; they were Kāfirs converted to Muḥammadanism.
[799] Archa, if not inclusive, meaning conifer, may represent juniperus excelsa, this being the common local conifer. The other trees of the list are pinus Gerardiana (Brandis, p. 690), quercus bīlūt, the holm-oak, and pistacia mutica or khanjak, a tree yielding mastic.
[800] rūba-i-parwān, pteromys inornatus, the large, red flying-squirrel (Blandford’s Fauna of British India, Mammalia, p. 363).
[801] The giz is a short-flight arrow used for shooting small birds etc. Descending flights of squirrels have been ascertained as 60 yards, one, a record, of 80 (Blandford).
[802] Apparently tetrogallus himalayensis, the Himalayan snow-cock (Blandford, iv, 143).Burnes (Cabool p. 163) describes the kabg-i-darī as the rara avis of the Kābul Kohistān, somewhat less than a turkey, and of the chikor (partridge) species. It was procured for him first in Ghūr-bund, but, when snow has fallen, it could be had nearer Kābul. Bābur’s bū-qalamūn may have come into his vocabulary, either as a survival direct from Greek occupation of Kābul and Panj-āb, or through Arabic writings. PRGS 1879 p. 251, Kaye’s art. and JASB 1838 p. 863, Hodgson’s art.
[803] Bartavelle’s Greek-partridge, tetrao- or perdrix-rufus [f. 279 and Mems. p. 320 n.].
[804] A similar story is told of some fields near Whitby:—“These wild geese, which in winter fly in great flocks to the lakes and rivers unfrozen in the southern parts, to the great amazement of every-one, fall suddenly down upon the ground when they are in flight over certain neighbouring fields thereabouts; a relation I should not have made, if I had not received it from several credible men.” See Notes to Marmion p. xlvi (Erskine); Scott’s Poems, Black’s ed. 1880, vii, 104.