he discovered that rashness is not always a mark of valour; for, advancing before the kafilah with about thirty horsemen, who all appeared by their whiskers to be men of desperate courage, they were met and plundered by a small body of Afghans, who seemed no way disturbed when the larger body of the kafilah appeared in sight, but slowly retreated with their booty.
During this part of the journey it was for many reasons judged expedient by the leaders of the kafilah to travel by night. But if they by this means diminished the danger of falling a prey to the plundering Afghans, they found in return that they had other perils to encounter; for, boisterous weather having come on, and the rain descending in torrents, every hollow of the mountains became the bed of a torrent, which, rushing down impetuously through its steep channel, rolled along stones of a vast size with a noise which, in the stillness of night, resembled thunder. The sky, meanwhile, was overcast with black clouds; and the roaring of the torrents heard on all sides created in the mind of the traveller a certain horror mingled with awe, and disposed him involuntarily to consider this grand scene of nature with sentiments of profound reverence.
On approaching one of these mountain streams, which had been greatly swelled by the recent rains, the commander of the kafilah escort, who was accompanied by one of his favourite women, placed her on a powerful horse, and, that she might not be incommoded by the crowd, attempted to convey her over first; but she had no sooner entered the water than she was carried off among the black whirling eddies of the current, and drowned. The Mohammedan, thus suddenly deprived of his mistress, at once forgot all thoughts of resignation to the decrees of fate, and, throwing himself upon the ground in the bitterness of his affliction, lamented his loss like a giaour. This melancholy event occasioned the
