When Masson entered Afghanistan from Peshawar there is certain indirect evidence that this was the first time that he crossed the Afghan border. He knew nothing of the Pashto language, which would be remarkable in the case of a man like Masson, who always lived with the people and not with the chiefs, and there is not the remotest reference to any previous visit to Herat in his subsequent history. We will at any rate follow the text of his own narrative, and surely no narrative of adventure that has ever appeared before or since in connection with Afghan exploration can rival it for interest. Peshawar was at that time held by four Pathan Sirdars, brothers, who were hardly independent, as they held their country (a small space extending to about 25 miles round Peshawar, and which included Kohat and Hangu) entirely at the pleasure of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Chief of the Punjab. Some show of making a strike for independence had been made in connection with the Yusufzai rising led by Saiad Ahmad Shah, but it had been suppressed, and during the temporary occupation of Peshawar by the Sikhs the city had been despoiled and devastated. Masson estimated that there were about fifty or sixty thousand inhabitants in Peshawar, where he was exceedingly well treated. "People of all classes were most civil and desirous to oblige." He was an honoured guest at all entertainments. How long Masson remained at Peshawar it is difficult to say, for there is a most lamentable absence of dates from his records, and Peshawar appears to have been the base from which he started on a good many excursions. Finally he made acquaintance with a Pathan who offered to accompany him to Kabul, and he left Peshawar for Afghanistan by the Khaibar route. He mentions two other routes as being popular in those days, _i.e._ those of Abkhana and Karapa, and he asserts that they were far more secure for traders than the Khaibar, but not so level nor so direct. Masson started with his companion, dressed as a Pathan, but taking nothing but a few pais (copper coins) and a book. His companion, however, possessed a knife tied up in a corner of his pyjamas. After cautiously crossing the plains and some intervening hills, they struck the high road of the Khaibar apparently not far from Ali Masjid, and here they fell in with the first people they had met _en route_--about twenty men sitting in the shade of a rock, "elderly, respectable, and venerable." They were hospitably received and entertained, and news of the arrival of a European quickly spread. Every European was expected to be a doctor in those days, and Masson had to assume the rôle and make the most of his limited medical knowledge. He either prescribed local remedies, or healed the sick on Christian Science principles with a certain amount of success--enough to ensure him a welcome wherever he went. It is a curious story for any one who has traversed the Khaibar in these later days to read. A