than to gratify the demand of the hour, and the most noteworthy of these have not been made available for English readers. Grodekoff's account of General Stolietoff's imprudent mission to Ameer Shere Ali is a reliable and intelligent survey of the routes followed by the Russian envoy and his officers, though his views of the feelings of the Afghan and Turkoman clans towards Cabul rule and the British alliance must be taken with all due reservations. Even the best review of the late wars that we have met with comes from a foreign critic, M. G. le Marchand, whose Campagne' and 'Deuxième Campagne des Anglais dans l'Afghanistan' do not seem to have attracted sufficient attention among military circles in this country to invite a translator.

6

The last contribution to our acquaintance with Afghanistan and the Afghans is in every respect the most important that has appeared since the works of Vigne and Ferrier, and opens up to the light of western day some of the hitherto most obscure corners of the Ameer's territory. Important as was the immediate object of the Afghan Frontier Commissionthe most important step that has yet been taken in the Central Asian question-the indirect results of its march through the heart of Afghanistan were not less serviceable. In addition to the officers who were charged with military and political functions, it was accompanied by others who were specially detailed for the work of exploration and survey, and for archælogical and scientific examination, and by a few "specials" whose task was to see everything that could be seen, and to note every fact that might be of present or future interest. Lieutenant Yate belonged to this

last section; and it is on his letters sent to the Pioneer,' a leading Anglo-Indian journal, and to the Daily Telegraph,' that the book now before us has been based. Mr Yate's first duty was accordingly to make use of his eyes-although we not unfrequently find him pressed into the service when there was work to be done and too few officers to accomplish it; and his narrative of the travels of the Commission bears excellent testimony to his competence as an observer as well as to his indefatigability as an investigator. He has given us minute as well as full descriptions of the country through which the Commission passed; he has made us acquainted with the character and habits of tribes, regarding whom we previously knew little more than the name; and he has discussed the military and political contingencies connected with the future of Afghanistan so frankly that there can no longer be any excuse for the bewilderment and uncertainty with which we have hitherto been wont to regard the progress of events on the Ameer's north-western frontier.

The Commission had indeed facilities for acquiring information which no individual or body of Europeans ever previously enjoyed. They carried with them the goodwill of the Ameer; they received assistance from his representatives

not always, however, to the extent they had a right to expect; and as they were paying their way in the princely fashion which is characteristic of the "Sirkar Angrezi" when dealing with all except its own officials, they were welcomed by all classes of the Afghans with whom they came in contact. Along the line of march officers were constantly scouting out, exploring, surveying, map

and his brother "specials" were sedulously interviewing all the chiefs and men of intelligence upon whom they could lay hands. Thus one great result of the Boundary Commission-in fact, we believe, the greatest practical result that it has achieved-has been, that we have now obtained a thorough knowledge of the country between the Helmund and Herat; that we have acquainted ourselves with its roads, its passes, its tactical advantages and disadvantages for defence against an invading force; that we have corrected our previous maps to a degree which must approximate more or less to strict accuracy; and that our Intelligence Department in India is now on equal footing with the Russians, who have so long made a close study of the topography of these regions.

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We do not propose to follow the Commission step by step in the march so fully detailed in Lieutenant Yate's interesting narrative. We must content ourselves with noting some of the points of immediate or future interest which his volume presents. The first section of the journey from Quetta to the Helmund extended over a country with which most of our readers, it may be presumed, have been made or less familiar by recent events. As Mr Yate observes, "every one knows South Afghanistan and its valleys, mountains, torrent-beds, and flies." From Quetta the route ran west by south, changing when Nushki was reached to a generally western course as far as the Helmund. The surrounding country is bare, wormwood scrub affording almost the only fuel. Round the villages, willows, apricots, and mulberries are grown. Meadows, like little oases, are met with

ful plains; but even of these meadows the agricultural value. does not appear to be great, for we read that the grass that grows on one of them, Singbur-Chaman, is of such a tough spiny character that "a dog runs over it like a bear on hot irons." Yet horses eat it readily. Another march within the same section, from SingburChaman to Khaisar, is "over hill and dale and stone-strewn torrent beds, shut in by bleak hills dotted here and there with a stunted tree that tends only to bring out the general barrenness in stronger relief."

Nor from Nushki to the Helmund was the route rendered more inviting than the natural features of the country. The southern bank of the Helmund is skirted by a belt of desert some fifty miles in breadth, with but few villages, and fewer wells.

"To the right and left," says Lieutenant Yate, "the road is bounded by the Registan-i. e., sandy desertdirection the Registan stretches away more especially to the right, in which to Shorawak, Kandahar, and Girishk. Year by year this vast mass of loose sand is moved steadily, presumably by the action of wind alone, to the north-east; and some persons of a scientific bent have even gone so far as to gauge the rate of annual progress, and calculate how many thousands of years the now smiling valley of the Arghandab will be a howling wilderness-a hell,' as it has been graphically termed. Ordinary mortals, however, I have noticed, do not evince any strong interest in the eocene period of future of the earth's crust to itself, the future; let us, then, leave the and to those who make it their special study. The last 50 or 60 miles of the desert to the Helmund is in local parlance known as the 'Lut,' and consists in the main of black gravel, whence no drop of water is known to issue."

'burnt-out

But sterile as this part of the country is, there is nothing monotonous in Lieutenant Yate's account of the march of the Commission, which abounds in incident, and affords us an interesting picture of the Beluch clans and their villages. Azad Khan of Kharan is the most powerful chief in the region a venerable Sirdar, close upon a hundred years of age, who in his day according to the boast of his people, could bend and unbend with his hands "four horse-shoes clamped the one above the other, with the ease with which most men could bend a pliant cane"-a feat surpassing even the wonderful stories which have been related of the manual strength of Count Orloff. Living between the Ameer and the Khan of Khelat, Azad Khan is practically an independent chief, though at one time a pensioner of Cabul. At present he is at feud with the Khan of Khelat, and denies all jurisdiction to the Ameer south of the Helmund. He now professes an allegiance to the Indian Government, which, however, from his situation and circumstances, is of little political value. Indeed it is not until the Helmund has been crossed that Lieutenant Yate's narrative begins to be pregnant with political interest.

The Helmund was reached at Khwaja Ali, and from that point the record of the Commission acquires fresh novelty and importance. Lieutenant Yate states that no European except Khanikoff had ever before set foot on the route which now lay before the Commission, and that the rapid movements of the Russian had precluded accurate observation. Ferrier, however, had explored the regions through which. the expedition had to pass; and though the two routes sometimes

intersect, yet Lieutenant Yate's narrative has in its fulness of detail and its wide range of facts completely superseded the information of the elder traveller.

The

Starting from Khwaja Ali, the Commission followed the course of the Helmuud, which is shut in by sandy banks and fringed by jungle of tamarisk, interspersed with poplar and willow clumps. There were no signs of cultivation and no villages, the nearest hamlet to Khwaja Ali being eight miles off; and an occasional ruined fort was the only break in the monotony of the waste track. At Kalah-i-fath the archaeologists of the Commission would have found congenial work had they only had more time to prosecute their researches. country round this townlet is a very labyrinth of ruins of various. stages of antiquity. No reliable date can be fixed for the building or the decay of the ruined forts, towns, and mosques which are met with in this locality in marvellous profusion, and which point to a past prosperity surely again realisable under a civilised and stable Government. That Western Afghanistan was much more prosperous and populated than it has been within the era of our own acquaintance with the country, is as unquestionable as that its present desolation was brought about by the invading hordes which, one after another, swept across country on their way to Hindustan; but the sources of that prosperity have baffled historical research. The land, Lieutenant Yate tells us, could not have supported a population large enough to leave such traces behind it; and their food must to a great extent have been imported.

the

" Besides the resources of the Helmund valley from Girishk to the Seistan Hamun, the food-supplies of

the valleys of the Arghandab, Tarnak, and Arghasan, and of the whole of Seistan, would be available, irrespective of more distant sources of supply;

and in addition to the local manufactures which must have given employ to the non-agricultural portion of this vast population, the manufacturing towns of Yezd, Kirman, and Birjand, not to mention Ispahan and Shiraz, were easily accessible. Did the people of former times utilise

the Helmund as a trade-route?"

There is, however, no navigation on the Helmund, though there is apparently sufficient depth of water for boats of a limited draught which might be towed against stream. On the first impulse one is tempted to exclaim against the short sightedness of the Cabul Government, for not making an effort to restore this tract to something approaching to its ancient well-being. But reflection suggests the doubt whether it would be to our own interest that a probable line of invasion should be furnished with those supplies and means of assistance which had probably aided Tamerlane in his march through the same country, and which he probably repaid by leaving behind him the desert which now presents itself to the eye of the traveller. Not that the banks of the Helmund are a desert in the strict sense of the term. Wheat, barley, pulses, and cotton are produced; but there are extensive areas bearing nothing but tamarisk and camel-thorn, which only require cultivation to be made arable. It may be noted that as the Helmund is descended the fruit-trees grow fewer in number, thus showing that other food is not so scarce as in the desert villages on its upper waters.

North of Kalah-i-fath, and as far as Deh-i-Kamran, some distance north of the Seistan Bund, the route presented nothing remark

able to the observers of the Commission. Near Deh-i-Kamran is Kalah-i-kang, a circular fort of some local importance, which was being strengthened, and is garrisoned by a considerable force of Afghans. Chakansur, eight miles to the north, is the military headquarters of the district; and Burji-asp, where the road from Nasirabad in Persian territory crosses the Helmund, is also held by an Afghan detachment. "This route," says Mr Yate, is one of strategical importance, as from Chakansur it continues via Khash to Girishk." Should water, as appears possible, be found on this road, its security would certainly be a matter of the first importance both to the Ameer and to the Government of India, as it offers a more direct route from Herat to Kandahar than by the Helmund valley, of which the water supply is its principal recommendation.

From Kalah-i-kahg the march was over a plateau of gravel and sandstone until the basin of the Farah Rud was reached, where the twin forts of Lash Juwain occupy positions of much military import ance. Juwain is a rectangle, each wall being from 300 to 400 yards long, with bastions at each angle, and at intervals of about 100 yards on each face. It is built on a slight natural eminence, and its walls are of unusual height and solidity. It has never been captured, although the garrison which held it for Ayub Khan surrendered to the present Ameer to avoid starvation. Lash, two or three miles from Juwain, stands on a high bluff overhanging the right bank of the Farah Rud. The importance of the position may be inferred from the fact that five highroads-two from the Afghan and three from the Persian sidepass by Lash Juwain. As a defence.