Although we are only dealing with Masson as an explorer, it is impossible not to express sympathy with his whole-hearted admiration for the country of the Afghan. His description of the beauties of the land, especially in early spring with the awakening of the season of flowers, the irresistible charm of the mountain scenery of the Kohistan as the gradual burst of summer bloom crept upwards over the hills--all this finds an echo in the heart of every one who has ever seen this "God granted" land; where, after all, the seething scum of Afghan politics is very much confined to a class, although it undoubtedly sinks deeper and reaches the mass of the people with more of the force of self-interest than is the case in India, where the historical pageant of kings and dynasties has passed over the great mass of India's self-absorbed people and left them profoundly unconscious of its progress. In the year 1833 Masson resumed his researches in the neighbourhood of Kabul, commencing in the plains about 25 miles north-east from Kabul, and 8 or 10 from Charikar. These researches were continued for some years, until the failure of the mission to Kabul in 1838 obliged him to leave the country; and in his proposal to resume them again in 1840 he was opposed by "a miserable fraction of the Calcutta clique," who had recourse to "acts as unprecedented, base, and illegal as perhaps were ever perpetrated under the sanction of authority against a subject of the British Crown." So that apparently he claimed British nationality before he left Afghanistan. However that may be, it is certain that no subsequent explorer has added much that is of value to the extraordinary evidences of ancient occupation collected by Masson. Here, he maintains, once existed the city of Alexandria founded by Alexander on the Kabul plain; and a recent announcement from Kabul that the site of an ancient city has been discovered obviously refers to the same position at Begram near Charikar, and is a useful commentary on the rapidity with which the fame and name of an original explorer can disappear.