More, a good deal, was known about Kandahar and Kabul than of our present frontier opposite Dera Ismail, or of the passes leading from Bannu across the border only a few miles distant.

From Kohat to Dera Ismail he was incessantly engaged in quiet little unobtrusive excursions (with full political sanction bien entendu) which resulted in a very complete map of the border, a map which it will be hard to supersede.

He had been twenty-two years in the Survey Department, and had done good service, particularly during the Afghan war of 1878-79, when his work lay along the valley of the Kabul river, and during the last two years, in which he has been extending a series of triangles from the British frontier at Dera, Ghazi Khan, by the direct route across the Suliman Mountains to Quetta and the Khojak Amran.

It was whilst he was thus occupied between Peshawur and Dera Ismail Khan that he made the acquaintance of certain influential men of the Kaken Khel, who offered to see him safely through the dangerous districts outlying Kaffirstan, and give him the opportunity of being the first European to set his foot in that land of romance.

Bare or Bere or Verah or Dera or Dhera was a very famous person, perhaps the mother of the Gods herself.