margin of Pamir.
And a passage in the _Tarikh Rashidi_, written at Kashgar in the 16th
century by a cousin of the great Baber, affords us a definition of the
tract to which, in its larger sense, the name was thus applied: "_Malaur_
(i.e. Balaur or Bolor) ... is a country with few level spots. It has a
circuit of four months' march. The eastern frontier borders on Kashgar and
Yarkand; it has Badakhshan to the north, Kabul to the west, and Kashmir to
the south." The writer was thoroughly acquainted with his subject, and the
region which he so defines must have embraced Sirikol and all the wild
country south of Yarkand, Balti, Gilghit, Yasin, Chitral, and perhaps
Kafiristan. This enables us to understand Polo's use of the term.

The name of Bolor in later days has been in a manner a symbol of
controversy. It is prominent in the apocryphal travels of George Ludwig
von ----, preserved in the Military Archives at St. Petersburg. That work
represents a town of Bolor as existing to the north of Badakhshan, with
Wakhan still further to the north. This geography we now know to be
entirely erroneous, but it is in full accordance with the maps and tables
of the Jesuit missionaries and their pupils, who accompanied the Chinese
troops to Kashgar in 1758-1759. The paper in the _Geographical Society's
Journal_, which has been referred to, demonstrates how these erroneous
data must have originated. It shows that the Jesuit geography was founded
on downright accidental error, and, as a consequence, that the narratives
which profess _de visu_ to corroborate that geography must be downright
forgeries. When the first edition was printed, I retained the belief in a
_Bolor_ where the Jesuits placed it.

[The Chinese traveller, translated by M. Gueluy (_Desc. de la Chine
occid._ p. 53), speaks of Bolor, to the west of Yarkand, inhabited by
Mahomedans who live in huts; the country is sandy and rather poor.
Severtsof says, (_Bul. Soc. Geog._ XI. 1890, p. 591) that he believes that
the name of _Bolor_ should be expunged from geographical nomenclature as a
source of confusion and error. Humboldt, with his great authority, has too
definitely attached this name to an erroneous orographical system.
Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon says that he "made repeated enquiries from
Kirghiz and Wakhis, and from the Mir [of Wakhan], Fatteh Ali Shah,
regarding 'Bolor,' as a name for any mountain, country, or place, but all
professed perfect ignorance of it." (_Forsyth'