The battle of Candahar brought to a close the latest of our Afghan wars. Sir Frederick Roberts quitted Candahar on the 9th September, and marched to Quetta with part of his division. On the 15th October, at Sibi, he resigned his command, and taking sick leave to England sailed from Bombay on the 30th October. His year of hard and successful service in Afghanistan greatly enhanced his reputation as a prompt, skilful, and enterprising soldier. * * * * * The Pisheen and Sibi valleys are the sole tangible results remaining to us of the two campaigns in Afghanistan sketched in the second part of this volume--campaigns which cost the lives of many gallant men slain in action or dead of disease, and involved the expenditure of about twenty millions sterling. Lord Beaconsfield's vaunted 'scientific frontier,' condemned by a consensus of the best military opinions, was rejected by the Liberal Government which had recently acceded to power, whose decision was that both the Khyber Pass and the Kuram valley should be abandoned. On this subject Sir Frederick Roberts wrote with great shrewdness: 'We have nothing to fear from Afghanistan, and the best thing to do is to leave it as much as possible to itself. It may not be very flattering to our _amour propre_, but I feel sure I am right when I say that the less the Afghans see of us the less they will dislike us. Should Russia in future years attempt to conquer Afghanistan, or invade India through it, we should have a better chance of attaching the Afghans to our interest if we avoid all interference with them in the meantime.' During the winter of 1880-1 the Khyber and the Kuram were evacuated by the British troops, the charge of keeping open and quiet the former being entrusted to tribal levies paid by the Indian Government.