Immediately below this mighty mountain eminence lie lesser hills that diminish in height as they slope down into a vast plain in the richest state of cultivation, dotted by numberless villages, all of the most picturesque aspect.
At Shutargardan the embassy found themselves in the land of the powerful and most warlike Ghilzie tribe, whose fighting force was estimated at nearly two hundred thousand men; but there they were received with every outward honour by an escort of the Ameer's regular troops, whose equipment caused some surprise and even merriment among the Europeans of the escort.
'By Jove, Colville, here are some countrymen of yours!' cried a staff officer, choking with laughter, as some of the Ameer's 'Highlanders' presented arms.
The Ameer had actually dressed a body of his troops in tartan kilts, in imitation of the Gordon Highlanders, whose costume had greatly impressed him, and these they wore over baggy cotton breeches; while the cavalry who accompanied them wore the same nether garments (minus the kilt) with red tunics, white belts, and helmets of soft grey felt, and in addition to tulwar and pistols, every man rode with a whip, the wooden handle of which, when not required, was stuck into his right boot.
They had smooth-bore carbines slung over the right thigh, muzzle downwards.
'A precious set of dark-looking duffers they are,' was Robert Wodrow's off-hand comment, as he surveyed them.
Escorted by these troops, Sir Louis Cavagnari and his companions continued the remaining forty-five miles of the journey to Cabul, passing Kushi and other fortified villages, and it was not without emotions of interest and anxiety too, that they found themselves on the 24th of June, entering the gates and traversing the streets of that hitherto openly—perhaps yet secretly—hostile capital, which is surrounded by low, barren, and rocky hills, but amid a plain which time and human industry have made wondrously fertile and beautiful.
The dark-visaged and motley crowds in the streets—Afghans, Kuzzilbashes, Persians, Tajiks, and Jews—scowled very unmistakably at the Feringhees, whose presence they did not want, whose prowess in recent wars they feared, and whose race and religion they loathed.
The streets through which the visitors rode were all built of sun-dried bricks and wood, about two storeys high, with flat roofs, and low, square doorways, now and then a larger one, with a mulberry-tree overhanging a mud wall, indicating the residence of a great man.
The city is three miles in circuit, and is dominated by the Bala Hissar, in which the embassy took up their quarters, a place incapable of being defended, though the citadel, in consequence of the ruinous condition of its walls and ramparts. It has, however, a wide ditch, and stabling for a thousand horses.