to remount him, and passing among the hills got back to Ush safely[1].'
The behaviour of his two uncles now began to make him uneasy. Mahmúd Khán very coolly made over to his brother all the places which Bábar had reconquered of his patrimony, on the ground that Ahmad Khán required a good position close at hand in order to withstand Shaibáni. They would presently conquer Samarkand, and Bábar should have that in exchange for Farghána. He was not deceived; it was not the first time that his uncle had coveted the little kingdom. 'Probably,' he wrote, 'all this talk was merely to overreach me, and had they succeeded, they would have forgotten their promise. But there was no help for it: willing or not, I had to seem content.' He went to visit his younger uncle, who seeing him walking painfully with a stick, by reason of his wound, ran out beyond the tent-ropes and embraced him heartily, saying, 'Brother, you have quitted yourself like a hero.' The visitor noticed that the tent was small and untidy: melons, grapes, and stable furniture were lying about in a muddle. The Khán, however, was kind, and at once sent his own surgeon to dress the wound.
'He was wonderfully skilful in his art,' says Bábar, in all good faith. If a man's brains had come out he could cure him, and he could even easily heal severed arteries. To some wounds he applied plasters; for others he prescribed
- ↑ A few words have been added from Bábar's second account of this adventure (pp. 265-6 of Erskine's translation).
