painter, poet, and author, the man who has left to all subsequent ages an autobiography which is almost unique in its power of presenting to the mind of its reader the impression of a "whole, real, live, human being," with all his faults and his fancies, his affections and aspirations, was apparently unimpressed with the value of dull details of geography. He can say much about the human interests of the scenes of his wanderings; he can describe landscape and climate, flowers and fruits (especially melons); but though he doubtless possessed the true bandit's instinct for local topography (which must, indeed, have been very necessary in many of the episodes of his remarkable career) he makes no systematic attempt to place before us a clear notion of the geographical conditions of Afghanistan as they existed in his time. His literary cousin Haidar is far more useful as a geographer. To him we owe something more than a vague outline of the elusive kingdom of Bolar and the limits of Kafiristan, but he merely touches on Afghanistan in its connection with Tibet, and says little of the country with which we are now immediately concerned. The one pre-eminent European traveller of the thirteenth century (1272-73), the immortal Marco Polo, hardly touched Afghanistan. He and his kinsmen passed by the high valleys of Vardos and Wakhan on their way to Kashgar and Cathay, but his geographical information is so vague as to render it difficult (until the surveys of these regions were completed) to trace his footsteps. The raid of Taimur into Kafiristan early in the fifteenth century, when it is said that he reached Najil from the Khawak Pass over the Hindu Kush, will be referred to again in dealing with Masson's narrative; but even to this day it is doubtful how far he succeeded in penetrating into Kafiristan, although the geographical inference of a practicable military line of communication between Andarab and the head of the Alingar River is certain. Three hundred and thirty years after Polo's journey another European traveller passed through Badakshan and across the Pamirs. This was the lay Jesuit, Benedict Goës, a true geographer, bent on the exploration of Cathay and the reconnaissance of its capabilities as a mission field. He crossed the Parwan Pass of the Hindu Kush from Kabul to Badakshan and journeyed thence to Yarkand; but he did not survive to tell his story in sufficient detail to leave intelligible geography. We find practically no useful geographical records of Afghanistan during many centuries of its turbulent history, so that from the time of Arab commercial enterprise to the days of our forefathers in India, when Afghanistan began to loom large on the political horizon as a factor in our relations with Russia and it became all important to know of what Afghanistan consisted, there is little to collect from the pages of its turbid history which can fairly rank as a record of geographical exploration.