Amongst modern explorers of Afghanistan who have earned distinction by their capacity for single-handed geographical research and ability in recording their experiences, the French officer M. Ferrier is one of the most interesting and one of the most disappointing. He is interesting in all that relates to the historical and political aspects of Afghanistan at a date when England was specially concerned with that country, and so far and so long as his footsteps can now be traced with certainty on our recent maps, he is clearly to be credited with powers of accurate observation and a fairly retentive memory. It is just where, as a geographer, he leaves the known for the unknown, and makes a plunge into a part of the country which no European has actually traversed before or since, that he becomes disappointing. He is the only known wanderer from the west who has traversed the uplands of the Firozkohi plateau from north to south; and it is just that region of the Upper Murghab basin which our surveyors were unable to reach during the progress of the Russo-Afghan Boundary mapping. The rapidity of the movements of the Commission when once it got to work precluded the possibility, with only a weak staff of topographers, of detailing native assistants to map every corner of that most interesting district, and naturally the more important section of the country received the first attention. But they closed round it so nearly as to leave but little room for pure conjecture, and it is quite possible to verify by local evidence the facts stated by Ferrier, if not actually to trace out his route and map it. M. Ferrier's career was a sufficiently remarkable one. He served with the French army in Africa, and was delegated with other officers to organise the Persian army. Here he was regarded by the Russian Ambassador as hostile to Russian interests, and the result was his return to France in 1843, where he obtained no satisfaction for his grievances. Deciding to take service with the Punjab Government under the Regency which succeeded Ranjit Singh, he left France for Bagdad and set out from that city in 1845 for a journey through Persia and Afghanistan to India.