of Shalozan—the last a village from which ladies have always been supplied for the Royal zenana in Kabul. The grandmother of the late Amir, Abdur Rahman Khan, was a daughter of the Turi Malik of Shalozan in Kurram. [Sidenote: Value of the Kurram] The Miranzai and Kurram Valleys are of importance as providing an alternative route, practically wholly through friendly territory, from our frontiers to the borders of Afghanistan. A narrow-gauge railway runs from Kohat to Thal, and is eventually, it is stated, to be extended to Parachinar—fifty-six miles further up the Kurram Valley. The Peiwar Kotal is only fifteen miles further west from Parachinar, and is of an elevation of 9200 feet, the onward road then crossing the Shutargardan, or Camel’s Neck Pass, at a height of 11,900 feet, into the Logar Valley leading to Kabul. The route affords a subsidiary line for part of the year, but its closing by snow, and the great altitudes at which the several passes have to be crossed, forbid its being classed as a principal line of communication. During the second Afghan war it was used as a line of advance mainly because Lord Lytton firmly believed in the value of Kurram, being influenced in this, as in many other matters, by his Military Secretary, Colonel, afterwards Sir George, Colley, who wrote: “Personally my hobby is the Kurram—I had long ago come to the conclusion that the possession of the Peiwar held the most commanding military position, short of Kabul, in Afghanistan.... The Kurram Valley is mainly fairly open and inhabited by a peaceful agricultural population, so that our communications there will never be troublesome or uncertain.” Lord Roberts, however, has on the other hand described the Kurram route as no more than a “byroad”; and on its final evacuation at the close of the last phase of the second Afghan war, Sir Frederick Haines, who was then Commander-in-Chief in India, wrote that: “As a line of military communication experience has condemned it, and I abandon it as such without the slightest regret.”