Of the Kunar River and Valley Holdich has a good deal to say, both in _The Gates of India_ and in _The Indian Borderland_. In the former book he writes that it was in the Kunar Valley that Alexander the Great “found and defeated the chief of the Aspasians. The Kunar River is by far the most important of the northern tributaries of the Kabul. It rises under the Pamirs, and is otherwise known as the Chitral River. The Kunar Valley is amongst the most lovely of the many lovely valleys of Afghanistan. Flanked by the snowy-capped mountains of Kashmund on the west, and the long level water-parting which divides it from Bajaur and the Panjkora drainage on the east, it appears, as one enters it from Jalalabad, to be hemmed in and constricted. The gates of it are indeed somewhat narrow, but it widens out northward, where the ridges of the lofty Kashmund tail off into low altitudes of sweeping foothills a few miles above the entrance, and here offer opportunity for an easy pass across the divide from the west into the valley. This is a link in the oldest and probably the best-trodden route from Kabul to the Punjab, and it has no part with the Khyber. It links together these northern valleys of Laghman, Kundar and Lundai (_i.e._ the Panjkora and Swat united) by a road north of the Kabul, finally passing southwards into the plains chequered by the river network above Peshawar. The lower Kunar Valley in the early autumn is passing beautiful. Down the tawny plain and backed by purple hills the river winds its way, reflecting the azure sky with pure turquoise colour—the opaque blue of silted water—blinking and winking with tiny sun shafts, and running emerald green at the edges.... The clustering villages are thick in some parts—so thick that they jostle each other continuously.... Higher up the river the valley closes until, long before Chitral is reached, it narrows exceedingly. Here, in the north, the northern winds rage down the funnel with bitter fury and make life burdensome. The villages take to the hill slopes or cluster in patches on the terraces at their feet.”