II.

ON THE THRESHOLD OF INDIA.


From the Amu Daria and the Turcoman steppes to the deserts of
Beloochistan, from Persian Khorassan to the valley of the Indus,
stretches the country of the Afghans. Men of renown and events of
world-wide interest have been connected with its history. Its
records tell of the murder of Cavagnari in recent times; of the
tragedy of Elphinstone's command (1838-42); of Shah Nadir, the
butcher of Delhi (1738-39); of Baber Khan, the founder of Mongolian
rule in India (1520); of Timur, the assailer of the world (1398); of
Genghiz Khan, the annihilator of the civilization of ancient Asia
(1218-24); of the great ruler, Sultan Mahmoud (A. D. 1000); and yet
earlier, of Alexander, "the divinely favored Macedonian." Afghan
history dies away, in the hymns of the Indian Vedas, eighteen
hundred years before the birth of Christ.

The territory of Afghanistan--which is destined to be the arena of a
great international duel--covers an area of 12,000 square miles, or
a tract measuring from north to south 688 miles, and from east to
west 736 miles. It is a mountainous country; a high plateau, 6,000
feet above the sea, overlooked by lofty mountain ranges which open
out and sink toward the west and south. On the north it is bordered
by the western ranges of the Himalayas, which reach to the Amu
Daria; by the wall-like range of the Hindu Kush, some of whose peaks
are 19,000 feet high; and by several smaller ridges. Between the