This chapter cannot be closed without a tribute of respect to those most able and enterprising geographers who (chiefly as assistants to Burnes) were the means of first giving to the world a reasonable knowledge of the geography of Afghanistan. The names of Leech, Lord, and Wood will always remain great in geographical story, and although none of them individually (nor, indeed, all of them collectively) covered anything like as wide an area as the American Masson, they effected a far greater change in the maps of the period--for Masson was no map-maker. As regards Sir Alexander Burnes, his initiative in all that pertained to geographical exploration was great and valuable, but he was individually more connected with the exploitation of Central Asian and Persian geography than with that of Afghanistan. Previous to the year 1836, when he undertook his political mission to Kabul (and when he was travelling over comparatively old ground), he had already extended his journeys across the Hindu Kush to the Oxus, Bokhara, and Persia; and the book which he published in 1834 was a revelation in Central Asian physiography and policy. But as an explorer in Afghanistan he owed his information chiefly to his assistants, and undoubtedly he was splendidly well served. The ridiculous and costly impedimenta which seemed to be recognised as a necessary accompaniment to a campaign or "an occupation" in those days--the magnificent tents, the elephants, wives and nurseries and retinue of military officers--found no place whatever in the explorers' camps. Men were content to make their way from point to point and take their chance of native hospitality. They lived with the people amongst whom they moved, and they gradually became almost as much of them as with them. Perhaps their views, political and social, became somewhat too warmly tinted with local colour by these methods, but undoubtedly they learned more and they saw more, and they acquired a wider, deeper sympathy with native aspirations and native character than is possible to travellers who move _en prince_ amongst a people who only interest them as races dominating a certain section of the mountains and plains of a strange world. All honour to the names of Leech, Lord, and Wood--especially Wood. FOOTNOTE: [12] The latest reports indicate that there is now a road fit for motor traffic between Kabul and Afghan Turkistan, as well as between Kabul and Badakshan. CHAPTER XIII ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA--MOORCROFT