The Potteries Examiner : — 1879-08-23 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

THE KHYBER PASS AND TIIE AFREEDEE AFGHANS.  The Khyber Pass is part of the Afreedoc country. The Atreedees are a powerful Afghan tribe, numbering at Last 23,000 fighting men. They are at present friendly to the British, and are subsidised to the extent of about a lac of rupees a year. The Afreedees are a tine athletic race of highlanders, lean but muscular, and with a springy step which marks their mountain origin. They generally wear a course hotne-manufactured cotton shirt of blue, loose, trouiers, closing in tight at the ankles, neat sandles of straw, and a scanty turban placed jauntily on the head. 'they are generally armed to the teeth. A huge Khybery knife, a brave of pistols with old flint locks, a powder-horn, a cartridge case, a flint and steel, a long matchlock, a bottle of water, and a muff-box:form the ordinary kit of the Khyber warrior. They are, like all Afghans, of the Mahomedan religion of the Salmi sect, with the exception of the small section who are Shia Muslims, but the moral status comes far below that of the religion they profess. Ruthless robbery and treacherous murder are to the Afreedee the very salt of life. Ile is trained in crime from his very iafancy, and expertness in : thieving is the sole characteristic which leads to distinction among them, and is a virtue which maidens seek in their future husbands, and which mothers fondly look for in their new-horn babes. It has been truly said that every Afghan boy, at his very birth, is consecrated, as it were, to crime. As soon wrthe youngster learns to walk, a hole is dug in the well similar to then, nixie by burglars, and the lad is encouraged to walk backwards and forwards, whilst the iblighted spectators shout out, "(that shah ! Med shah ! Ghat shah" tue,, "Be a thief ! Be a thief ! Be a thief") Broaght up from his earliest childhood amid scenes of treachery and revenge, the Afrcedee resists all attempts to civilise him, and it is remarkable that even years of service in an Indian regiment work little or no change in his moral being. Most probably he closes his military career by as disappearing with his Enfield rifle, and when the deserter is safely lodge I in his native village, he j will have the impertinence to send his compliments Ito his commanding officer. The cruel assassin of the lamented Earl Mayo was an Afreedee of the Khyber NYC His name was Share Ali. He killed a man named nyder outside the walls of the city of j Peshawar, to avenge a blood feud, and was transI ported to the Andainans, where he cruelly assassinated the Viceroy of India to satisfy his private revenge, le was a handsome man, as fair ass European, with ! light blue eyes and brown heard ; he was a greet favourite with Europeans, but he had the heart of an Afreedee, a heart which knew how to avenge but never to forgive.—S:oday at Yaw.  cua woot,:t 5.,,t1 to think th tt the autumn of life should be dedied in gay colours, because the autumn of the year is. Sin is neeer at a stay ; if we do not retreat from it we shall advance in it; and the further on we go, the more wa haws to comeback. . ..  'rho proper element of men is constant activity. The waters of life ere like those of the Bathes:le pool--it is only when they eryagitate..l thAt they are healthful.  Lord Randolph Chore kilt, it is BMW, km bast. stricken with paralysis. Sir Theophiliss Shepstone is to resume the ad. ministration of the Transvaal shortly. A boy has been struck by lightning at Ruthirkind, and was killed.  dailtthiiotacirna ploVsr,:h:L 4i,eo,4l:raido jog Ai &Maur WA MAIL