The province of Badakshan to the east (the ancient Baktria) is still but indifferently explored. It is true that certain native explorers of the Indian Survey have made tracks through the country, passing from the Pamir region to the Oxus plains; but no English traveller has recently done more than touch the fringe of that section of the Hindu Kush system which includes Kafiristan and its extension northwards, encircled by the great bend of the Oxus River. Kafiristan has ever been an unexplored region--a mountain wilderness into which no call of Buddhism ever lured the pilgrim, no Moslem conqueror (excepting perhaps Timur) ever set his foot, until the late Amir Abdurrahmon essayed to reduce that region and make it part of civilized Afghanistan. Even he was content to leave it alone after a year or two of vain hammering at its southern gates. Kafiristan formed part of the mediæval province, or kingdom, of Bolor; but it is always written of as the home of an uncouth and savage race of people, with whom it was difficult to establish intercourse. Kafiristan is, however, in these modern days very much curtailed as the home of the Kafir. Undoubtedly many of the border tribes fringing the country (Dehgans, Nimchas, etc.), who are now to be numbered amongst the most fanatical of Moslem clans, are comparatively new recruits to the faith, and therefore handle the new broom with traditional ardour; but they were not so long ago members of the great mixed community of Kafirs who, driven from many directions into the most inaccessible fastnesses of the hills by the advance of stronger races north and south, have occupied remote valleys, preserving their own dialects, mixing up in strange confusion Brahman, Zoroastian, and Buddhist tenets with classical mythology, each valley with apparently a law and a language of its own, until it is impossible to unravel the threads of their complicated relationship. Here we should expect to find (and we do find) the last relics of the Greek occupation of Baktria, and here are certainly remnants of a yet more ancient Persian stock, with all the flotsam and jetsam of High Asia intermingled. They are, from the point of view of the Kabul Court, all lumped together as Kafirs under two denominations, Siahposh and Lalposh; and not till scientific investigation, such as has not yet reached Afghanistan, can touch them shall we know more than we do now. No commercial road ever ran through the heart of Kafiristan, but there were two routes touching its eastern and western limits, viz. that on the east passing by Jirm, and that on the west by Anjuman, both joining the Kokcha River, which are vaguely referred to by our Arab authorities. That by Jirm is certainly impracticable for any but travellers on foot.