"The Kurram Valley would involve the addition of about one hundred and fifty miles of hill frontage to our border, and would bring us into contact with the independent Orakzais, Zaimukhts, Toris, Cabul-Khel, Waziris, and others, against whose hostility and inroads here, as in other parts of the border, we should have to protect our territory. By its possession, as we are now situated, we should be committed to the defence of a long narrow strip of land, a perfect _cul-de-sac_ in the hills, hemmed in by a number of turbulent robber-tribes, who are under no control, and acknowledge no authority. In ordinary times its acquisition would add to the serious difficulties of our position. In times of trouble or disturbance on the border, its possession would prove a positive source of weakness, a dead weight upon our free action. In it we should run the risk of being hemmed in by our foes in the overhanging hills around, of being cut off from our communications with the garrison of Kohat, by the Orakzais on the one side, by the Waziris on the other. These are the disadvantages of the step. In return what advantages should we derive? Not one. With Kurram in our possession we certainly could not flank either the Khyber or the Goleri Pass, because between it and the one, intervenes the impassable snowy range of Sufed Koh; and between it and the other, intervenes the vast routeless hilly tract of the Waziris. From Kurram we could neither command Kabul nor Ghazni, because the route to either is by a several days' march, over stupendous hills and tortuous defiles, in comparison with which the historical Khyber and Bolan Passes, or even the less widely-known Goleri Pass, are as king's highways."