own stamp.

The King of Bokhara has several times endeavoured to coerce the
Shere Subz's chief, but the instant a hostile force appears on his
frontiers, the latter causes the whole of his country to be inundated,
so that the invader is obliged to retire, and is by this stratagem
kept at a respectful distance.

Another traveller came across us this day, who had resided for some
years at Kok[=a]n, and furnished us with some account of the nature of
the Chinese garrison of that fort. It is situated on an isolated rock,
and every five years relieved with men, provisions, and ammunition;
the flanks of the bastions are armed with ponderous wall pieces,
requiring three men to work them. Chambers are also bored in the live
rock, from whence enormous masses of stone might be discharged on an
assailing foe. The Kok[=a]nese have often attempted to dislodge the
intruders, but owing to the good state of defence in which the fort
is kept, and the strong escorts under which the reliefs are regularly
forwarded, they have been always repulsed with severe loss. My
informant had been in the service of the Kok[=a]nese, and was now on
his way to Hindoostan; in military notions he must have been of the
famous Captain Dugald Dalgetty's school, for I afterwards met him as a
non-commissioned officer in Shah Seujah's Goorkah battalion.




CHAPTER XIII.