Since 1871, when Sir Charles MacGregor drew up a very exhaustive _précis_ of information on Afghanistan for the use of the Government of India, no book dealing with our buffer state in a general manner has been issued. The thirty-five years which have intervened have not been without important contributions to our knowledge of Afghanistan, but those works which have appeared cannot altogether be described as presenting a single comprehensive study of contemporary conditions in the country. In 1886 Lieutenant A. C. Yate, and in 1888 Major C. E. Yate, C.S.I., C.M.G., described in two very interesting volumes the proceedings of the Afghan Boundary Commission. Ten years elapsed before anything of importance appeared, when, by a rare coincidence, two books dealing with Afghanistan saw the light in 1895: Mr. Stephen Wheeler’s admirable account of _The Amir Abdur Rahman_, and that most entertaining and graphic volume, _My Residence at the Court of the Amir_, by the late Amir’s private physician, Dr. A. J. Gray. In 1900 Sultan Mahomed Khan, Mir Munshi to Abdur Rahman, presented to the public his remarkable production, _The Life of Abdur Rahman_, as well as a treatise on _The Constitution and Laws of Afghanistan_. In the following year, 1901, Colonel Sir Thomas Holdich embodied in _The Indian Borderland_ many graceful descriptions of scenery and various centres in Afghanistan while, in 1905, in a series of articles in the _Wide World Magazine_, Mrs. Kate Daly, physician to Habib Ullah’s harem and the Government of Afghanistan, illustrated with many delightful touches a sojourn of _Eight Years Among the Afghans_. These few works practically exhaust contemporary literature on Afghanistan, and it is in an endeavour to provide a more complete record of the subject than has hitherto existed that the author of _Korea_ has compiled this little book. Mistakes are those of his own making; reflections and criticisms arise from his own opinions; but, in hoping that his critics may find something of value in the results of two years’ toil, the author wishes to say that if good qualities exist in it, they are attributable to the encouragement and gracious assistance which he has received and here wishes to acknowledge.