point.  It is some twenty-eight miles long, while for twenty-two miles the average width is only 150 feet.  The Eastern end the English already hold, called the Peshawur Pass.

Afghanistan is a country in Asia.  It is about the size of England, 460 miles from North to South, and 430 from East to West.  On the North it is bounded by Turkestan, East by India, South by Beloochistan, and West by Persia.  The population numbers about 7,000,000.  They are as wild as the country is broken and irregular.  They are chiefly agriculturists.  The country is rich in minerals and timber.  In time past they have seldom been at peace, being very generally at war among themselves.  Afghan is a Persian word, and means that which is wrapped around—no doubt having reference to the mountain chain that hems in the whole land.  The people themselves, however, name their country Vilayet, which means the land of our ancestors.  They claim that in their country lived Adam and his children, also Noah and his.  They say they had in their possession once the ark of the covenant, but they have lost it.  While it was with them, if they took it into battle, victory was sure to be theirs.  At the present time they have Noah’s ark.  It is embedded in the ground, with a portion protruding out, which pilgrims to the top of Dera Ismael Khan—that is, the sacred mountain of Israel—are permitted to see and touch.  Many have supposed the Afghans to be the Ten Lost Tribes.  It has been the folly of many of the learned, in time past, to hunt for, and actually expect to find, the chosen of God in some out-of-the-way place; to find them few, poor, and deluded—the poorer, the fewer, and the more wretched, the better.  Hence, the wild Indians of the continent, the bushmen of Africa, the aborigines of Australia, the Laplanders of the North, and many such have been chosen of men—though not of God.

The Afghan country, no doubt, once had intercourse with Palestine.  During Solomon’s reign many Jews left the land as merchants.  Solomon built store cities in Hamath, Tadmor in the wilderness, and many others.  These store cities were on the great highway which he made through the desert, so as to

bring the trade of Dedan and Sheba to Jerusalem.  That Hebrew names are given to the mountains, places, rivers, and persons, no one can deny; but such does not prove them to be the Lost Tribes—it shows away back Jewish influence and intercourse.  They do not speak the Hebrew, but two languages called the Pukhtu and Pushtu.  In either language there are few, if any, traces of the Hebrew.  No doubt the Lost Tribes, after being scattered into Central Asia, when taken captive about 725 b.c., wandered, some of them into Afghan, and probably for a time settled there, and gave names to the country.  The Afghans themselves went into the country from India, and as the Tribes moved Westward they left the Afghans in possession.

The Afghan country comes now into great importance because it is on the highway of the march of Israelitish civilisation and progress.  England wants it; and I predict she shall get it.  Russia wants it, and at present seems to have the upper hand; but Russia or England, or the world, can avail nothing against the purposes of Jehovah.  The gates are promised to Israel, therefore she will get them.  The English have already an army of 35,000 men in the Peshawur Valley.  Russia is gathering a force, and ere long the two countries will be brought face to face.  The end of the whole muddle will be that England will take charge of Afghan.  Thirty-three years ago Disraeli wrote his novel called “Tancred.”  In this novel he makes the Queen of England the Empress of India, and one of her favourite officers is made Earl Beaconsfield; so far fancy has become fact.  But in that same novel the future of the present strife has been set forth.  It has been very finely put by the London Spectator:—

“There is a story going about, founded, we believe, on good authority, that when some one quoted ‘Tancred,’ two or three months ago, in Lord Beaconsfield’s presence, the Prime Minister remarked: ‘Ah!  I perceive you have been reading “Tancred.” 

That is a work to which I refer more and more every year—not for amusement, but for instruction.’  And if anyone will take the trouble just now to refresh his memory of ‘Tancred,’ he will see how much Lord Beaconsfield has borrowed from it in relation to his policy.  Turn, for instance, to this passage: ‘If I were an Arab in race as well as in religion,’ said Tancred, ‘I would not pass my life in schemes to govern mere mountain tribes.’  ‘I’ll tell you,’ said the Emir, springing from his divan, and flinging the tube of his nargileh to the other end of the tent, ‘the game is in our own hands if we have energy.  There is a combination which would entirely change the whole face of the world and bring back empire to the East.  Though you are not the brother to the Queen of the English, you are, nevertheless, a great English prince, and the Queen will listen to what you say, especially if you talk to her as you talk to me, and say such fine things in such a beautiful voice.  Nobody ever opened my mind like you.  You will magnetise the Queen as you have magnetised me.  Go back to England and arrange this.  You see, gloss over it as they may, one thing is clear, it is finished with England . . . Let the Queen of the English collect a great fleet, let her stow away all her treasure, bullion, plate, and precious arms; be accompanied by all her court and chief people, and transfer the seat of her empire from London to Delhi.  There she will find an immense empire ready-made, a first-rate army, and a large revenue.  In the meantime I will arrange with Mehemet Ali.  He shall have Bagdad and Mesopotamia, and pour the Bedouin cavalry into Persia.  I will take care of Syria and Asia Minor.  The only way to manage the Afghans is by Persia and by the Arabs.  We will acknowledge the Empress of India as our suzerain, and secure for her the Levantine coast.  If she like, she shall have Alexandria, as she now has Malta.  It could be arranged.  Your Queen is young.  She has an avenir.  Aberdeen and Sir Robert Peel will never give her this advice; their habits are formed.  They

are too old, two ruses.  But you see! the greatest empire that ever existed; besides which she gets rid of the embarrassment of her chambers! and quite practicable!  For the only difficult part, the conquest of India, which baffled Alexander, is all done.’  Who can avoid seeing that Lord Beaconsfield has been quite recently referring to this passage—‘not,’ as he said, ‘for amusement, but for instruction?’  These are all the ideas of his recent policy in germ—especially the treatment of the British Empire as having its centre of gravity in the far East—the use of the Indian Army for conquest to be made in Western Asia—the acquisition of the Levantine coast for Great Britain—the active alliance between the British power and the Mohammedan power—and last, not least, the getting rid, to a great extent at least, by the help of Indian leverage, of ‘the embarrassment of the chambers.’  For the last eight months, at least, English policy has evidently been borrowed from ‘Tancred.’  The monarch, for anything we know, has been ‘magnetised.’  The Cabinet assuredly have.  Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon have been treated much as the Emir in ‘Tancred’ would have treated ‘Aberdeen and Sir Robert Peel’—thrown aside as two ‘ruses.’”

England has indeed adopted an Oriental policy, and forward she must