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For it must be disgraceful on the day of reckoning to find the slave at liberty and the master in bondage." One year I was on a journey with some Syrians from Balkh, and the road was infested with robbers.

Allah-u-dín Lodí, to whom the district of Dipálpúr had been consigned, fled in despair to Kábul, hoping that Bábar would himself undertake the invasion of India. At the moment Bábar could not comply, for the Uzbeks were laying siege to Balkh. However he supplied Allah-u-dín with troops and ordered his generals in the Punjab to support him.

At least no living man could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Badakshan, Chitral, Beluchistan, or Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian Government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he was to be civilly treated and shown everything that was to be seen.

Some time after we hear of him at Samarcand, a religious town which greatly pleased the learned traveller, and then at Balkh which he could not reach without crossing the desert of Khorassan. This town was all in ruins and desolate, for the armies of the barbarians had been there, and Ibn Batuta could not remain in it, but wished to go westward to the frontier of Afghanistan.

We shook hands, and by way of getting on familiar footing, I opened my cigar case. Dr. Schmidt translated our conversation, the Persian speaking Russian very fairly. His story was curious and interesting. He was captured in 1858 near Herat, by a party of predatory Turcomans. His captors sold him to a merchant at Balkh where he remained sometime.

In the meantime the news of the confinement of Isfendiyár, and the absence of Gushtásp at Sístán, and the unprotected state of Balkh, stimulated Arjásp to a further effort, and he despatched his son Kahram with a large army towards the capital of the enemy, to carry into effect his purpose of revenge. Lohurásp was still in religious retirement at Balkh.

Leaving Herat on the 11th of the month Zi'lkaa-deh , the ambassadors arrived at Balkh on the 8th of Zi'lhejjeh, where they were detained by the rains till the first of Moharram, in the year 823 of the Hejira , or Thursday, 16th January 1420; on which day they departed from Balkh, and arrived in twenty-two days journey at Samarkand.

The veiled horseman who rescued the first and second Darweshes from self-destruction. A Persian proverb. Badakhshan is a part of the grand province of Khurasan, and the city of Balkh is its metropolis, to the eastward of which is a chain of mountains celebrated for producing fine rubies.

The next route of importance is that which leads from Balkh, via Bamian, to the Irak Pass on the Hindoo Kush, and into the upper watercourse of the Helmund River, and thence by the Unai over the Paghman range to Kabul. This is the great trade route from the markets of Turkestan and Central Asia generally to Kabul and India.

On the other side Gersíwaz, the ruler of Balghar, joined the Tartar legions at Balkh, commanded by Bármán, who both sallied forth to oppose the Persian host, and after a conflict of three days were defeated, and obliged to abandon the fort. When the accounts of this calamity reached Afrásiyáb, he was seized with the utmost terror, which was increased by a dreadful dream.