In the first place, it clearly distinguished between the independent Turcoman desert to the north and the Afghan hilly country to the south; and in the second place it naturally, and as a matter of course, assigned to Afghanistan the “dependencies of Herat” to the west of the Murgháb, which dependencies again were divided, it was said, from Persian territory by the “well-known” boundary of the Heri-rúd. The terms of this agreement were in February 1873 formally accepted by Russia; and, faulty and irregular as the document is from a diplomatic point of view, it has quieted all frontier agitation between the Oxus and Heri-rúd for the last ten years, and would have served the same purpose for another ten years in advance but for the unfortunate intrusion of Russia into the controversy as a sequel to her conquest of Merv. Russia first reintroduced a discussion on the frontier early in 1882, suggesting, in the interests of peace and order, that the arrangement of 1872-3 should, in respect to the western portion of the line, be complemented by some formal demarcation, determined by actual survey of the country; but as the Tekkehs were then independent, and there seemed to be no advantage in encouraging Russia to absorb their territory up to the line of demarcation, the proposal for a joint commission of delimitation was received by us at the time with some coldness. Two years later, in February 1884, affairs having much advanced in the interim, negotiations were resumed, and in due course (July 1884) commission _ad hoc_ was appointed, General Lumsden being nominated by the British Government, and General Zelenoi by the Russian, with instructions to meet at Serakhs in the following October.