Note 322 — Chapter II

As at Herat, the four principal streets meet in the centre of the city, and at their junction are covered over with a great dome. The picturesque accessories of Candahar are by no one so well described as by Lieutenant Rattray, in his letter-press accompaniments to his admirable series of “Views in Afghanistan.” With true artistic feeling, he writes; “Viewing Candahar from without, or at a distance, there is no peculiarity in its structure to strike the eye, as nothing appears above the long, high walls, but the top of Ahmed Shah’s tomb, the summits of a few minarets, and the upper parapets of the citadel. But the interior, as seen from the battlements, cannot fail to delight. Its irregular mud-houses, partly in ruins, varied with trees and minarets; the square red-brick dwellings, with doors and windows of Turkish arches; the lofty habitations of the Hindoo; the tents pitched here and there on the flat house-tops; the long terraces crowded with people, busied in their various callings in the open air; the dung and mud-plastered hut of the Khaukur, with his heavy, wild-looking buffaloes tethered round it; the high enclosures of the different tribes; the warlike castles of the chieftains; the gaily-decorated palace of some great Douranee Lord, with its fountains, squares, and court-yards; and the domed houses of the other inhabitants, the bazaars, mosques, turrets, and cupolas, rising up in the midst of stupendous and inaccessible mountains,—from the whole rise a panorama pleasing to look upon.”