which leads straight on to Panjgur, Kalat, and Quetta. Early Arab commercial explorers did not usually make this detour to Quetta in order to reach the Indus delta country, nor should we, if we wished to take the shortest line and the easiest through Persia to Karachi or Bombay. Much depends on the objective in India. Calcutta may be reached from the Indus valley by the north-western lines on the normal Indian gauge, or it may be reached through the Rajputana system on the metre gauge. But for the latter system and for Bombay, Karachi becomes our objective. To reach Karachi _via_ Seistan and Quetta would add at least 500 unnecessary miles to our route from Central Persia, an amount which equals the total distance between the present Russian terminus of the Transcaspian line at Kushk and our own Indian terminus at New Chaman. A direct through line from Panjgur to Karachi by the old Arab caravan route, within striking distance from the sea, would apparently outflank not only all political objections, but would satisfy those military objectors who can only see in a railway the opportunity for invasion of India. CHAPTER IX EARLIEST ENGLISH EXPLORATION--CHRISTIE AND POTTINGER The Arabs of the Mediæval period, whose footsteps we have been endeavouring to trace, were after their fashion true geographers and explorers. True that with them the process of empire-making was usually a savage process in the first instance, followed by the peaceable extension of commercial interests. Trade with them (as with us) followed the flag, and the Semitic instinct for making the most of a newly-acquired property was ever the motive for wider exploration. With the Chinese, during the Buddhist period, the ecstatic bliss of pilgrimage, and the acquirement of special sanctity, were the motive power of extraordinary energies; but with this difference of impulse the result was much the same. Arab trader and Chinese pilgrim alike gave to the world a new record, a record of geographical fact which, simple and unscientific as it might be, was yet a true revelation for the time being. But when Buddhism had become a memory, and Arab domination had ceased to regulate the affairs of the Indus valley; when the devastating hordes of the Mongol swept through Afghanistan to the plains of India, geographical record no longer formed part of the programme, and exploration found no place in the scheme of conquest. The Mongol and the Turk were not geographers, such as were the Chinese pilgrim and the Arab, and one gets little or nothing from either of geographical record, in spite of the abundance of their historical literature and the really high standard of literary attainment enjoyed by many of the Turk leaders. That truly delightful historical personage Babar, for instance, "the adventurer," the founder of the Turk dynasty in India, good-looking, intellectual, possessed of great ability as a soldier, endowed with true artistic temperament as