- ment with the director for a conveyance, but with a
confidential stipulation that he was to be received in a Mohammedan character, as an Arab. The kafilah departed from Herat on the 22d of November; and as it had been agreed that he was to form one of the family of the leader, he joined the party at the appointed place, and took his station on a camel, with a bag of rice on the opposite pannier. The advantages of his new character were soon visible. Having represented himself as a pilgrim going to the shrine of Meshed, he was treated with the greatest possible consideration by every passenger in the kafilah, all of whom courted his society, as if holiness, like the plague, were infectious. Our hajjî now rejoiced and stroked his beard, to the ample dimensions of which he owed a large portion of the veneration which was shown him; and as he moved along, caressed and admired by all who beheld him, he must have felt no small gratitude towards Mohammed for the sanctity which his religion had thrown round the person of a pilgrim. This extraordinary degree of respect exciting the kafilah conductor, who considered that at this rate he might possibly dwindle into nobody, even in the eyes of his own camels and mules, he whispered about that Forster in reality was no hajjî, nay, not so much as a member of the church at all. His information, however, was received with utter incredulity, and attributed to his envious disposition; so that no evil arose to the Meshed pilgrim.
It was now December, and the north wind, sweeping with irresistible violence over the plains of Khorasan from the frozen mountains of Tartary, brought along with it a deluge of snow, which in a few hours clothed the whole country in white. On arriving at the village of Ashkara, the snow fell in such great quantities that the roads were blocked up, while the winds, hurling it along in tremendous drifts, seemed to threaten the village itself with destruction. The
