Professor Paquier (Bul.  Soc.  Geog. 6’e Ser.  XII. pp. 121-125) remarks that the Moonshee, sent by Captain Trotter to survey the Oxus between Ishkashm and Kila Wamar, could not find at the spot marked by Yule on his map, the mouth of the Shakh-Dara, but northward 7 or 8 miles from the junction of the Murghab with the Oxus, he saw the opening of an important water-course, the Suchnan River, formed by the Shakh-Dara and the Ghund-Dara.  Marco arrived at a place between Northern Wakhan and Shihgnan; from the Central Pamir, Polo would have taken a route identical with that of the Mirza (1868-1869) by the Chichiklik Pass.  Professor Paquier adds:  “I have no hesitation in believing that Marco Polo was in the neighbourhood of that great commercial road, which by the Vallis Comedarum reached the foot of the Imaues.  He probably did not venture on a journey of fifty marches in an unknown country.  At the top of the Shihgnan Valley, he doubtless found a road marked out to Little Bukharia.  This was the road followed in ancient times from Bactrian to Serica; and Ptolemy has, so to speak, given us its landmarks after Marinus of Tyre, by the Vallis Comedarum (Valley of actual Shihgnan); the Turris Lapidea and the Statio Mercatorum, neighbourhood of Tash Kurgan, capital of the present province of Sar-i-kol.”

I must say that accepting, as I do, for Polo’s Itinerary, the route from Wakhan to Kashgar by the Taghdum-Bash Pamir, and Tash Kurgan, I do not agree with Professor Paquier’s theory.  But though I prefer Sir H. Yule’s route from Badakhshan, by the River Vardoj, the Pass of Ishkashm, the Panja, to Wakhan, I do not accept his views for the Itinerary from Wakhan to Kashgar; see p. 175.—­H.  C.]

The river along which Marco travels from Badakhshan is no doubt the upper stream of the Oxus, known locally as the Panja, along which Wood also travelled, followed of late by the Mirza and Faiz Bakhsh.  It is true that the river is reached from Badaskhshan Proper by ascending another river (the Vardoj) and crossing the Pass of Ishkashm, but in the brief style of our narrative we must expect such condensation.

WAKHAN was restored to geography by Macartney, in the able map which he compiled for Elphinstone’s Caubul, and was made known more accurately by Wood’s journey through it. [The district of Wakhan “comprises the valleys containing the two heads of the Panjah branch of the Oxus, and the valley of the Panjah itself, from the junction at Zung down to Ishkashim.  The northern branch of the Panjah has its principal source in the Lake Victoria in the Great Pamir, which as well as the Little Pamir, belongs to Wakhan, the Aktash River forming the well recognized boundary between Kashgaria and Wakhan.” (Captain Trotter, Forsyth’s Mission, p. 275.) The southern branch is the Sarhadd Valley.—­H.  C.] The lowest part is about 8000 feet above the sea, and the highest Kishlak, or village, about