MR. SEYMOURasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether the India Office contemplate publishing a correct map of Central Asia, to enable the public to appreciate the new line of the Afghan Frontier; and, whether the map published by Stanford is prepared from information furnished by any official of the India Office?
MR. GRANT DUFFIn reply to my hon. Friend's second Question, I have to say that I have no means of knowing from what information the map alluded to was prepared; but it is in no way sanctioned, directly or indirectly, by the India Office. In reply to my hon. Friend's first Question, I have to say that an improved map of Central Asia will be published in a very few days, not by the India Office, but by the War Office. As, however, some interest has been excited on this subject, and as the Indian authorities here and in India are primarily responsible for all that has been done, I will explain exactly how the case stands. No part of Badakshan is on the right bank of the Oxus; but, as to Wakhan, no geographer is able positively to answer the question whether some fraction of the at this moment inhabited portion of that district—which is, by the way, 9,000 feet high—is or is not on the right bank of the Oxus. The fact is that only one European is certainly known to have been there in modern times, and that European—the distinguished traveller Lieutenant Wood— 787 is unhappily dead. The line, however, laid down under the advice of Sir Henry Rawlinson, who is one of the very few people who has access to all the information which exists about these little known districts—information consisting chiefly of the data collected at various times by six Natives of India and communicated to the Indian Government—was laid down with the most full knowledge of the geographical uncertainties prevailing with respect to the Upper Valley of the Oxus—geographical uncertainties which have been curiously complicated by one of the most remarkable literary forgeries of modern times, as to which I would beg to refer any hon. Members who care to pursue the subject to the collected writings of the last Lord Strangford, and to an article on Marco Polo in a recent number of The Edinburgh Review. What we have done is this:—We have recognized Shore Ali's rights up to the Oxus and to the Northern Oxus—the Oxus flowing out of Wood's Lake. We have not recognized in him any right to territory beyond the Oxus, because even if it could be proved that he has a title to certain hut villages, if such hut villages exist, it would have been a very cruel kindness to him to have encouraged him to stand on them. The Oxus, from Wood's Lake down to Khojah Saleh presented a clear, definite boundary, the same being the boundary of the land inherited from Dost Mahomed by Shere Ali. All the northern side of the Oxus basin till you get to the Bokhariot territory belongs to a number of independent potentates—chiefs of Shagnan, Roshan, Darwaz, and what not, some smaller and some larger, of all of whom Europeans know absolutely nothing.