In places where my incognito had to stand the test with people who, on their journeys through India and Turkey, had come into contact with Europeans, I had the hardest battle to fight, and was often in great danger. There I was not treated with the humble reverence and admiration which is due to a foreign Hadji and divine. On the contrary, they questioned me about my nationality, the aim and object of my journey, and even the fittest and readiest answers could not banish their suspicion and doubt. In this respect my adventure with the Afghan on the journey to Khiva will ever remain vivid in my mind. He was a Kandahari who, during the British occupation of 1840, had escaped the English criminal law; he had spent some time in the Afghan colony on the Caspian Sea, and afterwards had wandered about for many years in Khiva. He would insist that, in spite of my knowledge of the languages of Islam, I was a disguised European, and therefore a dangerous spy. At first I treated him with every possible mark of respect and politeness; I flattered his vanity, but all in vain. The scoundrel would not be taken off his guard, and one evening I overheard him say to the Kervanbashi (head of the caravan): "I bet you he is a Frenghi or a Russian spy, and with his pencil he makes a note of all the mountains and valleys, all the streams and springs, so that the Russians can later on come into the land without a guide to rob you of your flocks and children. In Khiva, thanks to the precautions of the Khan, the rack will do its part, and the red-hot iron will soon show what sort of metal he is made of." Never to move a muscle under such amiable discourses, or to betray one's feelings by any uneasy expression in one's eye, that mighty mirror of the soul, is, in truth, no easy task. I managed, however, to preserve my cold indifference on this and similar occasions; but one evening, during our passage through the Steppe, the Afghan was quietly smoking his opium pipe in the night camp. By the glimmer of the coals on his water-pipe I met his dull, intoxicated gaze, and a diabolical idea took possession of me. "This man is planning my destruction, and he can effect it; shall I throw one of my strychnine pills into his dish of tea, which he is even now holding in his shaky hand? I could thus save myself, and accomplish my purpose." A horrible thought which reminds one of Eugene Aram in Bulwer's novel. I took the pill from the wadding of my cloak, and held it for some time between my fingers close to the edge of the dish. The deadly silence of the night and the opium fumes which held this man under their spell seemed to favour my devilish scheme, but when in my distraction I gazed upwards and saw the brilliantly shining canopy of heaven, the magic beauty of the stars overmastered me; the first rays of the rising moon fell upon me--I stayed my hand, ashamed of meditating a deed unworthy of a civilised man, and quickly hid the fateful pill again in the lining of my Dervish cloak.