Wood is not enthusiastic about Kunduz. He calls it one of the most wretched towns in Murad Beg's dominions. "The appearance of Kunduz accords with the habits of an Uzbek; and by its manner, poverty and filth, may be estimated the moral worth of its inhabitants." He thought a good deal of Murad Beg all the same, and could not deny his great abilities. "But with all his high qualifications Murad Beg is but the head of an organised banditti, a nation of plunderers, whom, however, none of the neighbouring states can exterminate." Murad Beg has joined his fathers long ago, but no recent account of Kunduz much alters Wood's opinion of it. The wretched Badakshanis whom Murad Beg conquered, and whom he set to live or die in the dank pestilential marshes which fill up the space between the Badakshan highlands and the Oxus, have since then been restored to their own country; and of Badakshan we heard enough from the Amir's officials connected with the Pamir Boundary Commission to lead us to believe in it as a veritable land of promise, a land whose natural beauty and fertility may be compared to that of Kashmir--but this was told of the mountain regions, not of the Oxus flats. When Wood got away from Kunduz and travelled eastwards to Faizabad and Jirm he does rise to enthusiasm, and tells us of scenes of natural beauty which no European eye has seen since he passed that way. On December 11, in mid-winter, Wood started from Kunduz with the permission of Murad Beg to trace the "Jihun" to its source, and the story of this historical exploration will always be most excellent reading.