having received warning that a large body of robbers was threatening the road, and then after two months they arrived at another city called PASSAVR :1 and there they halted twenty days for needful repose. Further on, whilst on their way to another small town, they fell in with a certain pilgrim and devotee, from whom they learned that at a distance of thirty days' journey there was a city called CAPPERSTAM, into which no Mahomedan was allowed to enter, and if one did get in he was punished with death. There was no hindrance offered to the entrance of heathen merchants into the cities of those people, only they were not allowed to enter the temples. He related also that the inhabitants of that country never visited their_temples except in black dresses ; and that their country was extremely productive, abounding especially in grapes. He offered our brother Benedict a cup of the produce, and he found it to be wine like our own ; and as such a thing is quite unusual among the Mahomedans of those regions, a suspicion arose that perhaps the country was inhabited by Christians.° In the place where they met
1 Peshawur. For two months read two marches, see p. 538 supra. These halts of twenty days, thirty days, all look suspicious. Some mistaken interpretation is probably at the bottom of the difficulty.
2 The " city called Capperstam" represents KAPIRISTAN, the hill country occupied by the fair race called by the Mahomedans Kafirs, or infidels, of whom we still know extremely little. Some of them, at least, are called Siyaposh, or black-clothed (like the Scythian Melanchiceni of Herodotus, iv, 107), from their wearing black goat-skins. The abundance of grapes and wine among them is noticed by Elphinstone (ii, 375) and Wood. Sultan Baber also says : " So prevalent is the use of wine among them, that every Kafir has a Khig, or leathern bottle of wine, about his neck; they drink wine instead of water" (p. 144). Timur, before entering Afghanistan, on his march towards India, sent an expedition against the Siyaposh ; and himself led one against another section of the Kafirs, the members of which, according to his historian, went quite naked. To reach these he crossed the snowy mountain Kataur. This is the name of one of the Kafir tribes in Elphinstone, and Shah Kataur is a title still affected by the Chief of Chitral, according to Burnes. Chinghiz also after his campaign in the region of the Hindu Kush, is stated to have wintered in the mountains of Buya Kataur. Thence he
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