very beautiful creatures." The narrator smokes "while the men pored over Raverty, Wood, the maps, and the Encyclopædia." Henry George Raverty's "Notes on Káfiristan" appeared in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1859, and it is presumably this work, based on Raverty's contact with some Siah-Posh Kafirs, that is being referenced. Possible models In addition to Kipling's acknowledged sources, a number of individuals have been proposed as possible models for the story's main characters. Alexander Gardner (1785–1877), American adventurer captured in Afghanistan in 1823. Gardner "stated that he visited Kafiristan twice between 1826 and 1828, and his veracity was vouched for by … reliable authorities" "Only Gardner provides the three essential ingredients of the Kipling novel," according to John Keay. Josiah Harlan (1799–1871), American adventurer enlisted as a surgeon with the British East India Company's army in 1824. Frederick "Pahari" Wilson (1817–1883), an English officer who deserted during the First Afghan War and later became "Raja of Harsil." James Brooke, an Englishman who in 1841 was made the first White Rajah of Sarawak in Borneo, in gratitude for military assistance to the Sultan of Brunei. Kipling alludes to Brooke twice in the story: when Dravot refers to Kafiristan as the "only one place now in the world that two strong men can Sar-a-whack" and when Dravot says "Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us." Adolf Schlagintweit (1829–1857) German botanist and explorer of Central Asia. Suspected of being a Chinese spy, he was beheaded in Kashgar by the amir, Wali Khan. A Persian traveler subsequently delivered his supposed head to colonial administrators. William Watts McNair (1849–1889), a surveyor in the Indian Survey Department who, in 1883, visited Kafiristan while on furlough disguised as a hakim or native doctor, disregarding Government regulations. His report to the Royal Geographical Society earned him the Murchison Award. Reception As a young man, the would-be poet T. S. Eliot, already an ardent admirer of Kipling, wrote a short story called "The Man Who Was King". Published in 1905 in the Smith Academy Record, a school magazine of the school he was attending as a day-boy, the story explicitly shows how the prospective poet was concerned with his own unique version of the "King". J. M. Barrie described the story as "the most audacious thing in fiction". Kingsley Amis called the story a "grossly overrated long tale" in which a "silly prank ends