Asiatic negroes abound in Makran: some of them fresh importations from Africa, others bred in the slave villages of the Arabian Sea coast, as they have been for centuries. They are a fine, brawny, well-developed race of people, and some of the best of them are to be found as stokers in the P. & O. service; but they do not represent the Asiatic Ethiopian of Herodotus, who could hardly compile a gazetteer for the Greeks which should include all the ethnographical information known to the Persians, any more than our Intelligence Department could compile a complete gazetteer of the whole Russian Empire. To the maritime Greek nation the overwhelming preponderance of the huge Empire which overshadowed them must have created the same feeling of anxious suspicion that the unwieldy size of Russia presents to us, and it is not very likely that military intelligence of a really practical nature was offered gratis to the Greeks by the Persian geographers and military leaders. It is not surprising, therefore, that Herodotus did not know all that existed on the far Persian frontier. There are tribes and peoples about Southern Baluchistan who are as ancient as Herodotus but who are not mentioned. For instance, the ruling tribe in Makran until quite recently (when they were ousted by certain Sikh or Rajput interlopers called Gichki) were the Boledi, and their country was once certainly called Boledistan. The Boledi valley is one of the loveliest in a country which is apt to enhance the loveliness of its narrow bands of luxuriance by their rarety and their narrowness. It is a sweet oasis in the midst of a barren rocky sea, and must always have been an object of envy to dwellers outside, even in days when a fuller water-supply, more widely spread, turned many a valley green which is now deep drifted with sand. Ptolemy mentions the Boledis, so that they can well boast the traditional respectability of age-long ancestry. The Boledis are said to have dispossessed the Persian Kaiani Maliks, who ruled Makran in the seventeenth century, when they headed what is known as the Baluch Confederation. This may be veritable history, but their pride of race and origin, on whatever record it is based, has come to an end now; it has been left to the present generation to see the last of them. A few years ago there was living but one representative of the ruling family of the Boledis, an old lady named Miriam, who was exceedingly cunning in the art of embroidery, and made the most bewitching caps. She was, I believe, dependent on the bounty of the Sultan of Muscat, who possesses a small tract of territory on the Makran coast. Herodotus apparently knew nothing about the Boledis, nor can it be doubted that the Greek knowledge of Makran was exceedingly scanty. Thus, whilst Alexander marched to the Indian frontier, well supplied with information as to the ways thither when once he could make Persia his base, he was almost totally ignorant of the one route out of India which he eventually followed, and which so nearly enveloped his whole force in disaster.