Here, however, we must take leave of the routes to India, which are sufficiently dealt with elsewhere, and returning to Badakshan see if we can unravel some of the mediæval geography of the region which stretches eastward to the Oxus affluents and the Pamirs. We know that between Khotan and Balkh there was a very well-trodden pilgrim route in the earlier days of our era (from the first century to the tenth), when both these places were full of the high-priests of Buddhism. Was it also a commercial route? The shortest way to determine its position is to examine the map and see which way it must have run at a time when (if we are to believe Mr. Ellsworthy Huntington's theories of periodic fluctuations of climate in High Asia) all that vastly elevated region was colder, less desiccated, and possibly more fertile than now, whilst its glaciers and lakes were larger and more extensive. Before turning eastward into the highlands and plateau of Asia it is interesting to note that north of the Oxus the districts of Jil (which was the region of mountains) and Waksh were both well known, and boasted many important commercial centres. The two districts (under one government) lay between the Wakshab which joins the Oxus from the north to the north-east of Khulm, and the Khariab, which is clearly another river than the Khariab (now the Kokcha) of Badakshan, and which is probably the Oxus itself (see preceding note). These trans-Oxus regions take us afield into the Khanates of Central Asia beyond Afghanistan, and we can only note in passing that 1000 years ago Termez was the most important town on the Oxus, commanding as it did the main river crossing from Bokhara to Khulm and Balkh; Kabadian also being very ancient. Termez may yet again become significant in history.