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bearing a green branch as a sign of peace, and by Sellier, an attached servant. His reception was not very favourable, and he had spoken only a few words, when the insurgents, hearing some shots, and fancying they were betrayed, opened fire upon the national guard, and the archbishop tell. He was removed to his palace, where he died on the 27th June 1848. Next day the National Assembly issued a decree expressing their great sorrow on account of his death; and the public funeral on the 7th July was one of the most striking spectacles of its kind. The archbishop wrote several treatises of considerable value, including one on Egyptian hieroglyphics.

This is the name applied, originally in Persian, to that mountainous region between N.W. India and Eastern Persia, of which the Afghâns are the most numerous and the predominant inhabitants. Afghans, under that and other names, have played no small part in Asiatic history. But the present extensive application of the name Afghânistân is scarcely older than the shortlived empire founded by Ahmed Khan in the middle of last century. The Afghans themselves are not in the habit of using the term.

In treating of this country we include a part of the Hazâra mountain region, but not that part of the Oxus basin which is now under Afghan rule, for which see Afghan Turkestan.

Afghanistan generally may be regarded as a great quadrilateral plateau,—using that term in the technical sense of a region whose lowest tracts even are considerably elevated above the sea-level,—extending from about 62° to 70° E. long., and from 30° to 35° N. lat. This territory corresponds fairly to the aggregate of the ancient provinces of Aria (Herât), Dragiana (Seistân), the region of the Paropamisadæ (Kâbul), and Arachosia (Kandahâr), with Gandaritis (Peshâwar and Yûzufzai). Though the last territory belongs ethnically to Afghanistan, an important part of it now forms the British district of Peshâwar, whilst the remainder acknowledges no master.

The boundaries of Afghanistan can be stated here only roughly; and, from the area thus broadly defined, many portions will have to be deducted as occupied by independent or semi-independent tribes. But, so understood, they may be this stated:—

On the north: beginning from east, the great range of Hindu Kush, a western offshoot of the Himâlya, parting the Oxus basin from the Afghan basins of the Kabul river and Helmand. From long. 68° this boundary continues westward in the prolongation of Hindu Kush called Koh-i-Bâbâ. This breaks into several almost parallel branches, enclosing the valleys of the river of Herat and the Murghâb or river of Merv. The half-independent Hazara tribes stretch across these branches and down into the Oxus basin, so that it is difficult here to assign a boundary. We assume it to continue along the range called Safed Koh or "White Mountain," which parts the Herat river valley from the Murghab.^[1]

On the east: the eastern base of the spurs of the Sulimâni and other mountains which limit the plains on the west bank of Indus, and the lower valleys opening into these, which plains (the "Derajât") and lower valleys belong to British India. North of Peshâwar district the boundary will be, for a space, the Indus, and then the limit, lying in unknown country, between the Afghan and Dard tribes.

On the south: the eastern part of the boundary, occupied by practically independent tribes, Afghan and Bilûch, is hard to define, having no marked natural indication. But from the Shâl territory (long. 67°), belonging to the Bilûch state of Kelat, westward, the southern limits of the valleys of the Lora river, and then of the Helmand, as far as the Lake of Seistan in lat. 30°, will complete the southern boundary. Thus the whole breadth of Bilûchistân, the ancient Gedrosia, a dry region occupying 5° of latitude, intervenes between Afghanistan and the sea.

The western boundary runs from the intersection of the Lake of Seistan with. lat. 30°, bending eastward, so as to exclude a part of the plain of Seistan on the eastern bank of the lake, and then crosses the lake to near the meridian of 61°. Thence it runs nearly due north, near this meridian, to a point on the Hari-Rûd, or river of Herat, about 70 miles below that city, where it encounters the spurs of the Safed Koh, which has been given as the northern boundary.

But if we take the limits of the entire Afghan dominions, as they present exist, the western boundary will continue north along the Hari-Rûd to lat. 36°, and the northern boundary will run from this point along the borders of the Turkman desert, so as to include Andkhoi, to Khoja Sâleh ferry on the Oxus. The Oxus, to its source in Great Pamîr, forms the rest of the northern boundary. These enlarged limits would embrace the remainder of the Hazara mountain tracts, and the whole of what is now called Afghan Turkestan, as well as Badakhshan with its dependencies, now tributary to the Afghan Amir.

The extreme dimensions of Afghanistan, as at first defined, will be about 600 miles from east to west, and 450 miles from north to south; and, if we take the whole Afghan dominion, the extent from north to south will be increased to 600 miles. Within both the areas so defined, however, we have included some territory over which the Afghan government has no control whatever, backed by a special exertion of force. Under the former head come the valleys of the Yusufzai clain north of Peshâwar, the Momands, Afrîdîs, Vazîrîs, &c., adjoining that district on the west and south-west, the high-lying valley of Chitrâl or Kâshkâr, and of the independent Pagans or Kâfirs, among the loftier spurs of Hindu Kush. Under the latter head come the eastern districts of Khost and (partially) of Kurram, the Kâkar country in the extreme south-east, much of the country of the tribes called Eimâk and Hazara in the north-west, and probably Badakhshân with its dependencies.

If we suppose the sea to rise 4000 feet above its existing level, no part of the quadrilateral plateau that we have defined would be covered, except portions of the lower valley of the Kabul river, small tracts towards the Indus, and a triangle, of which the apex should be at the Lake of Seistan in the extreme south-west, and the base should just include Herat and Kandahar, passing beyond those cities to intersect the western and southern boundaries respectively. Isolated points and ridges within this triangle would emerge.

Further, let us suppose the sea to rise 7000 feet above its existing level. We should still have a tract emerging so large that a straight line of 200 miles could be drawn, from the Kûshân Pass of Hindu Kush, passing about 35 miles west of Kabul, to Rangak on the road between Ghazni and Kandahar, which nowhere should touch the submerged portion. And we believe it is certain that a line under