sacred ground down the middle of this shoe bazaar, which held some venerated Moslem tombs, and scores of devout ones, ranging themselves before them, saluted the glowing west beyond which lay Mecca. They prostrated themselves on their bits of carpets, and prayed fervently, deaf to the hum of cobblers and idlers around them.
There were sweetmeat sellers and sugar-cane peddlers hawking their wares through all the bazaars; letter-writers plying their craft in the open; schools of small turbans rocking in studious circles around some pious teacher; and barbers, lawyers, peddlers, touts, and jugglers. And there were beggars, too! Such beggars! Such tattered and picturesque figures as never before diverted one,—Afghan and Bokhara beggars, shaggy and ragged beyond all the religious mendicants of India. Coats of a hundred patches hung in a hundred shreds from the frowzy, turbanless ones, and but half protected them from the keen mountain winds that blew through the bazaars at sunset. Many of these were Pathan "saints," who live in caves in the hills, lead revolts, and urge the murder of unbelievers. The more holy of these beggars cast glances of scorn and hatred at us Kafirs or unbelievers; "white pagans," they called us, to the perturbation of our bearer, who seemed to fear that some one of these Islam saints might brain him with his long pipe-stem, but with six annas and a yard of sugar-cane the maddest molla of them all was bought over to stand tamely before the kodak. A few of the holy men coaxed annas from the crowds with songs and story-telling,—even an
