Although the period may be past in which a great English Journal could ask, “_what_ is Gilgit?” the contradictory telegrams and newspaper accounts which we receive regarding the countries adjoining Gilgit show that the Press has still much to learn. Names of places, as far apart as Edinburgh and London, are put within a day’s march on foot. Names of men figure on maps as places and the relationships of the Chiefs of the region in question are invented or confounded as may suit the politics of the moment, if not the capacity of the printer. The injunctions of the Decalogue are applied or misapplied, extended or curtailed, to suit immediate convenience, and a different standard of morality is constantly being found for our friends of to-day or our foes of to-morrow. The youth Afzul-ul-Mulk was credited with all human virtues and with even more than British manliness, as he was supposed to be friendly to us. He had given his country into our hands in order to receive our support against his elder brother, the acknowledged heir of the late Aman-ul-Mulk of Chitrál, but that elder brother, Nizám-ul-Mulk, was no less friendly to English interests, although he has the advantage of being a man of capacity and independence. The sudden death of Aman-ul-Mulk coincided with the presence of our protégé at Chitrál, and the first thing that the virtuous Afzul-ul-Mulk did, was to invite as many brothers as were within reach to a banquet when he murdered them. No doubt, as a single-minded potentate, he did not wish to be diverted from the task of governing his country by the performance of social duties to the large circle of acquaintances in brothers and their families which Providence bestows on a native ruler or claimant in Chitrál and Yasin. A member of the Khush-waqtia dynasty of Yasin, which is a branch of the Chitrál dynasty, told me when I expressed my astonishment at the constant murders in his family: “A real relative in a high family is a person whom God points out to one to kill as an obstacle in one’s way, whereas a foster-relative (generally of a lower class) is a true friend who rises and falls with one’s own fortune” (it being the custom for a scion of a noble house to be given out to a nurse.)