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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gates of India, by Thomas Holdich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Gates of India
+       Being an Historical Narrative
+
+Author: Thomas Holdich
+
+Release Date: June 17, 2013 [EBook #42970]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GATES OF INDIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
+
+  "crank" on page 147 is a possible typo
+  "Bamain" on page 213 is a possible typo
+  "Semetic" on page 225 is a possible typo
+  "Zoroastian" on page 270 is a possible typo
+  "Aegospotami" (in index) not found in text
+  "Kardos" (in index) not found in text
+
+  Spelling differences between the index and the text were resolved
+  in favor of the text.
+
+
+
+
+     MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+     LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
+     MELBOURNE
+
+     THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+     NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
+     ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
+
+     THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+     TORONTO
+
+
+
+
+     THE
+     GATES OF INDIA
+     BEING
+     AN HISTORICAL NARRATIVE
+
+     BY
+     COLONEL SIR THOMAS HOLDICH
+     K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B., D.Sc.
+
+     AUTHOR OF
+     'THE INDIAN BORDERLAND,' 'INDIA,' 'THE COUNTRIES OF
+     THE KING'S AWARD'
+
+     _WITH MAPS_
+
+
+     MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+     ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
+     1910
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+As the world grows older and its composition both physical and human
+becomes subject to ever-increasing scientific investigation, the close
+interdependence of its history and its geography becomes more and more
+definite. It is hardly too much to say that geography has so far
+shaped history that in unravelling some of the more obscure
+entanglements of historical record, we may safely appeal to our modern
+knowledge of the physical environment of the scene of action to decide
+on the actual course of events. Oriental scholars for many years past
+have been deeply interested in reshaping the map of Asia to suit their
+theories of the sequence of historical action in India and on its
+frontiers. They have identified the position of ancient cities in
+India, sometimes with marvellous precision, and have been able to
+assign definite niches in history to historical personages with whose
+story it would have been most difficult to deal were it not
+intertwined with marked features of geographical environment. But on
+the far frontiers of India, beyond the Indus, these geographical
+conditions have only been imperfectly known until recently. It is
+only within the last thirty years that the geography of the hinterland
+of India--Tibet, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan--have been in any sense
+brought under scientific examination, and at the best such examination
+has been partial and incomplete. It is unfortunate that recent years
+have added nothing to our knowledge of Afghanistan, and it seems
+hopeless to wait for detailed information as to some of the more
+remote (and most interesting) districts of that historic country. As,
+therefore, in the course of twenty years of official wanderings I have
+amassed certain notes which may help to throw some light on the
+ancient highways and cities of those trans-frontier regions which
+contain the landward gates of India, I have thought it better to make
+some use of these notes now, and to put together the various theories
+that I may have formed from time to time bearing on the past history
+of that country, whilst the opportunity lasts. I have endeavoured to
+present my own impressions at first hand as far as possible, unbiased
+by the views already expressed by far more eminent writers than
+myself, believing that there is a certain value in originality. I have
+also endeavoured to keep the descriptive geography of such districts
+as form the theatre of historical incidents on a level with the story
+itself, so that the one may illustrate the other.
+
+Whilst investigating the methods of early explorers into the
+hinterland of India it has, of course, been necessary to appeal to
+the original narratives of the explorers themselves so far as
+possible. Consequently I am indebted to the assistance afforded by
+quite a host of authors for the basis of this compilation. And I may
+briefly recount the names of those to whom I am under special
+obligation. First and foremost are Mr. M'Crindle's admirable series of
+handy little volumes dealing with the Greek period of Indian history,
+the perusal of which first prompted an attempt to reconcile some of
+the apparent discrepancies between classical story and practical
+geography, with which may be included Sir A. Cunningham's _Coins of
+Alexander's Successors in Kabul_. For the Arab phase of commercial
+exploration I am indebted to Sir William Ouseley's translation,
+_Oriental Geography of Ibn Haukel_, and the _Géographie d'Edrisi;
+traduite par P. Aimedée Joubert_. For more modern records the official
+reports of Burnes, Lord, and Leech on Afghanistan; Burnes' _Travels
+into Bokhara, etc.; Cabul_, by the same author; _Ferrier's Caravan
+Journeys_; Wood's _Journey to the Sources of the Oxus_; Moorcroft's
+_Travels in the Himalayan Provinces_; Vigne's _Ghazni, Kabul, and
+Afghanistan_; Henry Pottinger's _Travels in Baloochistan and Sinde_;
+and last, but by no means least, Masson's _Travels in Afghanistan,
+Beluchistan, the Panjab, and Kalat_, all of which have been largely
+indented on. To this must be added Mr. Forrest's valuable compilation
+of Bombay records. It has been indeed one of the objects of this book
+to revive the records of past generations of explorers whose stories
+have a deep significance even in this day, but which are apt to be
+overlooked and forgotten as belonging to an ancient and superseded era
+of research. Because these investigators belong to a past generation
+it by no means follows that their work, their opinions, or their
+deductions from original observations are as dead as they are
+themselves. It is far too readily assumed that the work of the latest
+explorer must necessarily supersede that of his predecessors. In the
+difficult art of map compilation perhaps the most difficult problem
+with which the compiler has to deal is the relative value of evidence
+dating from different periods. Here, then, we have introduced a
+variety of opinions and views expressed by men of many minds (but all
+of one type as explorer), which may be balanced one against another
+with a fair prospect of eliminating what mathematicians call the
+"personal equation" and arriving at a sound "mean" value from combined
+evidence. I have said they are all of one type, regarded as explorers.
+There is only one word which fitly describes that type--magnificent.
+We may well ask have we any explorers like them in these days? We know
+well enough that we have the raw material in plenty for fashioning
+them, but alas! opportunity is wanting. Exploration in these days is
+becoming so professional and so scientific that modern methods hardly
+admit of the dare-devil, face-to-face intermixing with savage breeds
+and races that was such a distinctive feature in the work of these
+heroes of an older age. We get geographical results with a rapidity
+and a precision that were undreamt of in the early years (or even in
+the middle) of the last century. Our instruments are incomparably
+better, and our equipment is such that we can deal with the hostility
+of nature in her more savage moods with comparative facility. But we
+no longer live with the people about whom we set out to write
+books--we don't wear their clothes, eat their food, fraternize with
+them in their homes and in the field, learn their language and discuss
+with them their religion and politics. And the result is that we don't
+_know_ them half as well, and the ratio of our knowledge (in India at
+least) is inverse to the official position towards them that we may
+happen to occupy. The missionary and the police officer may know
+something of the people; the high-placed political administrator knows
+less (he cannot help himself), and the parliamentary demagogue knows
+nothing at all. My excuse for giving so large a place to the American
+explorer Masson, for instance, is that he was first in the field at a
+critical period of Indian history. Apart from his extraordinary gifts
+and power of absorbing and collating information, history has proved
+that on the whole his judgment both as regards Afghan character and
+Indian political ineptitude was essentially sound. Of course he was
+not popular. He is as bitter and sarcastic in his unsparing
+criticisms of local political methods in Afghanistan as he is of the
+methods of the Indian Government behind them; and doubtless his
+bitterness and undisguised hostility to some extent discounts the
+value of his opinion. But he knew the Afghan, which we did not: and it
+is most instructive to note the extraordinary divergence of opinion
+that existed between him and Sir Alexander Burnes as regards some of
+the most marked idiosyncrasies of Afghan character. Burnes was as
+great an explorer as Masson, but whilst in Afghanistan he was the
+emissary of the Indian Government, and thus it immediately became
+worth while for the Afghan Sirdar to study his temper and his
+weaknesses and to make the best use of both. Thus arose Burnes'
+whole-hearted belief in the simplicity of Afghan methods, whilst
+Masson, who was more or less behind the scenes, was in no position to
+act as prompter to him. It was just preceding and during the momentous
+period of the first Afghan war (1839-41) that European explorers in
+Afghanistan and Baluchistan were most active. Long before then both
+countries had been an open book to the Ancients, and both may be said
+geographically to be an open book to us now. There are, however,
+certain pages which have not yet been properly read, and something
+will be said later on as to where these pages occur.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+     INTRODUCTION                                                    1
+
+
+     CHAPTER I
+
+     EARLY RELATIONS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST--GREECE AND
+     PERSIA AND EARLY TRIBAL DISTRIBUTIONS ON THE INDIAN
+     FRONTIER                                                       11
+
+
+     CHAPTER II
+
+     ASSYRIA AND AFGHANISTAN--ANCIENT LAND ROUTES--POSSIBLE
+     SEA ROUTES                                                     39
+
+
+     CHAPTER III
+
+     GREEK EXPLORATION--ALEXANDER--MODERN BALKH--THE BALKH
+     PLAIN AND BAKTRIA                                              58
+
+
+     CHAPTER IV
+
+     GREEK EXPLORATION--ALEXANDER--THE KABUL VALLEY GATES           94
+
+
+     CHAPTER V
+
+     GREEK EXPLORATION--THE WESTERN GATES                          135
+
+
+     CHAPTER VI
+
+     CHINESE EXPLORATIONS--THE GATES OF THE NORTH                  169
+
+
+     CHAPTER VII
+
+     MEDIÆVAL GEOGRAPHY--SEISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN                   190
+
+
+     CHAPTER VIII
+
+     ARAB EXPLORATION--THE GATES OF MAKRAN                         284
+
+
+     CHAPTER IX
+
+     EARLIEST ENGLISH EXPLORATION--CHRISTIE AND POTTINGER          325
+
+
+     CHAPTER X
+
+     AMERICAN EXPLORATION--MASSON--THE NEARER GATES,
+     BALUCHISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN                                   344
+
+
+     CHAPTER XI
+
+     AMERICAN EXPLORATION--MASSON (_CONTINUED_)--THE NEARER
+     GATES, BALUCHISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN                            390
+
+
+     CHAPTER XII
+
+     LORD AND WOOD--THE FARTHER GATES, BADAKSHAN AND THE
+     OXUS                                                          411
+
+
+     CHAPTER XIII
+
+     ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA--MOORCROFT                      442
+
+
+     CHAPTER XIV
+
+     ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA--BURNES                         451
+
+
+     CHAPTER XV
+
+     THE GATES OF GHAZNI--VIGNE                                    462
+
+
+     CHAPTER XVI
+
+     THE GATES OF GHAZNI--BROADFOOT                                470
+
+
+     CHAPTER XVII
+
+     FRENCH EXPLORATION--FERRIER                                   476
+
+
+     CHAPTER XVIII
+
+     SUMMARY                                                       500
+
+
+     INDEX                                                         531
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF MAPS
+
+
+                                                             FACE PAGE
+
+     1. General Orographic Map of Afghanistan and Baluchistan,
+     showing Arab trade routes (see page 190 _et seq._)
+                                                   _With Introduction_
+
+     2. Sketch of Alexander's Route through the Kabul Valley to
+     India                                                          94
+
+     3. Greek Retreat from India (_Journal of the Society of Arts_,
+     April 1901)                                                   135
+
+     4. The Gates of Makran (_Journal of the Royal Geographical
+     Society_, April 1906)                                         284
+
+     5. Sketch of the Hindu Kush Passes                            500
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: OROGRAPHICAL MAP OF AFGHANISTAN & BALUCHISTAN
+    COMPILED BY SIR THOMAS H. HOLDICH, K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B.]
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Since the gates of India have become water gates and the way to India
+has been the way of the sea, very little has been known of those other
+landward gates which lie to the north and west of the peninsula,
+through which have poured immigrants from Asia and conquerors from the
+West from time immemorial. It has taken England a long time to
+rediscover them, and she is even now doubtful about their strategic
+value and the possibility of keeping them closed and barred. It is
+only by an examination of the historical records which concern them,
+and the geographical conditions which surround them, that any clear
+appreciation of their value can be attained; and it is only within the
+last century that such examinations have been rendered possible by the
+enterprise and activity of a race of explorers (official and
+otherwise) who have risked their lives in the dangerous field of the
+Indian trans-frontier. In ancient days the very first (and sometimes
+the last) thing that was learned about India was the way thither from
+the North. In our times the process has been reversed, and we seek
+for information with our backs to the South. We have worked our way
+northward, having entered India by the southern water gates, and as we
+have from time to time struggled rather to remain content within
+narrow borders than to push outward and forward, the drift to the
+north has been very slow, and there has never been, right from the
+very beginning, any strenuous haste in the expansion of commercial
+interests, or any spirit of crusade in the advance of Conquest.
+
+So late as the early years of the sixteenth century England was but a
+poor country, with less inhabitants than are now crowded within the
+London area. There was not much to spare, either of money or men, for
+ventures which could only be regarded in those days as sheer gambling
+speculations. The splendid records of a successful voyage must have
+been greatly discounted by the many dismal tales of failure, and
+nothing but an indomitable impulse, bred of international rivalry,
+could have led the royal personages and the few wealthy citizens who
+backed our earliest enterprises to open their purse-strings
+sufficiently wide to find the necessary means for the equipment of a
+modest little fleet of square-sailed merchant ships. National tenacity
+prevailed, however, in the end. The hard-headed Islander finally
+succeeded where the more impetuous Southerner failed, and England came
+out finally with most of the honours of a long commercial contest. It
+was in this way that we reached India, and by degrees we painted
+India our own conventional colour in patches large enough to give us
+the preponderating voice in her general administration. But as we
+progressed northward and north-westward we realized the important fact
+that India--the peninsula India--was insulated and protected by
+geographical conformations which formed a natural barrier against
+outside influences, almost as impassable as the sea barriers of
+England. On the north-east a vast wilderness of forest-covered
+mountain ranges and deep lateral valleys barred the way most
+effectually against irruption from the yellow races of Asia. On the
+north where the curving serrated ramparts of the north-east gave place
+to the Himalayan barrier, the huge uplifted highlands of Tibet were
+equally impassable to the busy pushing hordes of the Mongol; and it
+was only on the extreme north-west about the hinterland of Kashmir,
+and beyond the Himalayan system, that any weakness could be found in
+the chain of defensive works which Nature had sent to the north of
+India. Here, indeed, in the trans-Indus regions of Kashmir, sterile,
+rugged, cold, and crowned with gigantic ice-clad peaks, there is a
+slippery track reaching northward into the depression of Chinese
+Turkestan, which for all time has been a recognised route connecting
+India with High Asia. It is called the Karakoram route. Mile upon mile
+a white thread of a road stretches across the stone-strewn plains,
+bordered by the bones of the innumerable victims to the long fatigue
+of a burdensome and ill-fed existence--the ghastly debris of former
+caravans. It is perhaps the ugliest track to call a trade route in the
+whole wide world. Not a tree, not a shrub, exists, not even the cold
+dead beauty which a snow-sheet imparts to highland scenery, for there
+is no great snowfall in the elevated spaces which back the Himalayas
+and their offshoots. It is marked, too, by many a sordid tragedy of
+murder and robbery, but it is nevertheless one of the northern gates
+of India which we have spent much to preserve, and it does actually
+serve a very important purpose in the commercial economy of India. At
+least one army has traversed this route from the north with the
+prospect before it of conquering Tibet; but it was a Mongol army, and
+it was worsted in a most unequal contest with Nature.
+
+India (if we include Kashmir) runs to a northern apex about the point
+where, from the western extension of the giant Muztagh, the Hindu Kush
+system takes off in continuation of the great Asiatic divide. Here the
+Pamirs border Kashmir, and here there are also mountain ways which
+have aforetime let in the irrepressible Chinaman, probably as far as
+Hunza, but still a very long way from the Indian peninsula. Then the
+Hindu Kush slopes off to the south-westward and becomes the divide
+between Afghanistan and Kashmir for a space, till, from north of
+Chitral, it continues with a sweep right into Central Afghanistan and
+merges into the mountain chain which reaches to Herat. From this
+point, north of Chitral, commences the true north-west barrier of
+India, a barrier which includes nearly the whole width of Afghanistan
+beyond the formidable wall of the trans-Indus mountains. It is here
+that the gates of India are to be found, and it is with this outermost
+region of India, and what lies beyond it, that this book is chiefly
+concerned.
+
+As the history of India under British occupation grew and expanded and
+the painting red process gradually developed, whilst men were ever
+reaching north-westward with their eyes set on these frontier hills,
+the countries which lay beyond came to be regarded as the "ultima
+thule" of Indian exploration, and Afghanistan and Baluchistan were
+reckoned in English as the hinterland of India, only to be reached by
+the efforts of English adventurers from the plains of the peninsula.
+And that is the way in which those countries are still regarded. It is
+Afghanistan in its relations to India, political, commercial, or
+strategic, as the case may be, that fills the minds of our soldiers
+and statesmen of to-day; and the way to Afghanistan is still by the
+way of ships--across the ocean first, and then by climbing upward from
+the plains of India to the continental plateau land of Asia. It was
+not so twenty-five centuries ago. One can imagine the laughter that
+would echo through the courts and palaces of Nineveh at the idea of
+reaching Afghanistan by a sea route! Think of Tiglath Pilesur, the
+founder of the Second Assyrian Empire, seated, curled, and anointed,
+surrounded by his Court and flanked by the sculptured art of his
+period (already losing some of the freshness and vigour of First
+Empire design) in the pillared halls of Nineveh, and counting the
+value of his Eastern satrapies in Sagartia, Ariana, and Arachosia,
+with outlying provinces in Northern India, whilst meditating yet
+further conquests to add to his almost illimitable Empire! No shadow
+of Babylon had stretched northward then. No premonition of a yet
+larger and later Empire overshadowed him or his successors,
+Shalmaneser and Sargon. Northern Afghanistan was to these Assyrian
+kings the dumping ground of unconsidered companies of conquered
+slaves, a bourne from whence no captive was ever likely to return. No
+record is left of the passing of those bands of colonists from West to
+East. We can only gather from the writings of subsequent historians in
+classical times that for centuries they must have drifted eastward
+from Syria, Armenia, and Greece, carrying with them the rudiments of
+the arts and industries of the land they had left for ever, and
+providing India with the germs of an art system entirely imitative in
+design, colour, and relief. The Aryan was before them in India.
+Already the foundations were laid for historic dynasties, and Rajput
+families were dating their origin from the sun and moon, whilst
+somewhere from beneath the shadow of the Himalayas in the foothills of
+Nipal was soon to arise the daystar of a new faith, a "light of Asia"
+for all centuries to come.
+
+It is impossible to set a limit to the number and variety of the
+people who, in these early centuries, either migrated, or were
+deported, from West to East through Persia to Northern Afghanistan, or
+who drifted southwards into Baluchistan. Not until the ethnography of
+these frontier lands of India is exhaustively studied shall we be able
+to unravel the influence of Assyrian, Median, Persian, Arab, or Greek
+migrations in the strange conglomeration of humanity which peoples
+those countries. Baktra (Balkh), in Northern Afghanistan, must have
+been a city of consequence in days when Nineveh was young. Farah, a
+city of Arachosia in Western Afghanistan on the borders of Seistan,
+must have been a centre from whence Assyrian arts and industries were
+passed on to India for ages; for Farah lies directly on the route
+which connects Seistan with the southern passes into the Indus valley.
+The Indus itself seems to have been the boundary which limited the
+efforts of migration and exploration. Beyond the Indus were deserts in
+the south and wide unproductive plains of the Punjab in the north, and
+it is the deserts of the world's geography which, far more than any
+other feature, have always determined the extent of the human tidal
+waves and influenced their direction. They are as the promontories and
+capes of the world's land perimeter to the tides of the ocean. Beyond
+these parched and waterless tracts, where now the maximum temperatures
+of sun-heat in India are registered, were vague uncertainties and
+mythical wonders, the tales of which in ancient literature are in
+strange contrast to the exact information which was obtained of
+geographical conditions and tribal distributions in the basins of the
+Kabul or Swat rivers, or within the narrow valleys of Makran.
+
+A recent writer (Mr. Ellsworth Huntington) has expressed in
+picturesque and convincing language the nature of the relationship
+which has ever existed between man and his physical environments in
+Asia, and has illustrated the effect of certain pulsations of climate
+in the movement of Asiatic history. The changing conditions of the
+climate of High Asia, periods of desiccation and deprivation of
+natural water-supply alternating with periods of cold and rainfall,
+acting in slow progression through centuries and never ceasing in
+their operation, have set "men in nations" moving over the face of
+that continent since the beginning of time, and left a legacy of
+buried history, to be unearthed by explorers of the type of Stein,
+such as will eventually give us the key to many important problems in
+race distribution. But more important even than climatic influence is
+the direct influence of physical geography, the actual shaping of
+mountain and valley, as a factor in directing the footsteps of early
+migration. Nowadays men cross the seas in thousands from continent to
+continent, but in the days of Egyptian and Assyrian empire it was that
+straight high-road which crossed the fewest passes and tapped the best
+natural resources of wood and water which was absolutely the
+determining factor in the direction of the great human processions;
+and although change of climate may have set the nomadic peoples of
+High Asia moving with a purpose more extensive than an annual search
+for pasturage, and have led to the peopling of India with successive
+nations of Central Asiatic origin, it was the knowledge that by
+certain routes between Mesopotamia and Northern Afghanistan lay no
+inhospitable desert, and no impassable mountain barrier, that
+determined the intermittent flow from the west, which received fresh
+impulse with every conquest achieved, with every band of captives
+available for colonizing distant satrapies. To put it shortly, there
+was an easy high-road from Mesopotamia through Persia to Northern
+Afghanistan, or even to Seistan, and not a very difficult one to
+Makran; and so it came about that migratory movements, either
+compulsory or voluntary, continued through centuries, ever extending
+their scope till checked by the deserts of the Indian frontier or the
+highlands of the Pamirs and Tibet, or the cold wild wastes of
+Siberia.
+
+Thus Afghanistan and Baluchistan, the countries with which we are more
+immediately concerned, were probably far better known to Assyrian and
+Persian kings than they were to the British Intelligence Office (or
+its equivalent) of a century ago. The first landward explorations of
+these countries are lost in pre-historic mists, but we find that the
+first scientific mission of which we have any record (that which was
+led by Alexander the Great) was well supplied with fairly accurate
+geographical information regarding the main route to be followed and
+the main objectives to be gained.
+
+In tracing out, therefore, or rather in sketching, the gradual
+progress of exploration in Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and the
+gradual evolution of those countries into a proper appanage of British
+India, we will begin (as history began) from the north and west rather
+than from the south and the plains of Hindustan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EARLY RELATIONS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST. GREECE AND PERSIA AND EARLY
+TRIBAL DISTRIBUTIONS ON THE INDIAN FRONTIER.
+
+
+It is unfortunately most difficult to trace the conditions under which
+Europe was first introduced to Asia, or the gradual ripening of early
+acquaintance into inter-commercial relationship. Although the eastern
+world was possessed of a sound literature in the time of Moses, and
+although long before the days of Solomon there was "no end" to the
+"making of books," it is remarkable how little has been left of these
+archaic records, and it is only by inference gathered from tags and
+ends of oriental script that we gradually realize how unimportant to
+old-world thinkers was the daily course of their own national history.
+India is full of ancient literature, but there is no ancient history.
+To the Brahmans there was no need for it. To them the world and all
+that it contains was "illusion," and it was worse than idle--it was
+impious--to perpetuate the record of its varied phases as they
+appeared to pass in unreal pageantry before their eyes. We know that
+from under the veil of extravagant epic a certain amount of historical
+truth has been dragged into daylight. The "Mahabharata" and the
+"Ramayana" contain in allegorical outline the story of early conflicts
+which ended in the foundation of mighty Rajput houses, or which
+established the distribution of various races of the Indian peninsula.
+Without an intimate knowledge of the language in which these great
+epics are written it is impossible to estimate fully the nature of the
+allegory which overlies an interesting historical record, but it has
+always appeared to be sufficiently vague to warrant some uncertainty
+as to the accuracy of the deductions which have hitherto been evolved
+therefrom. Nevertheless it is from these early poems of the East that
+we derive all that there is to be known about ancient India, and when
+we turn from the East to the West strangely enough we find much the
+same early literary conditions confronting us.
+
+About 950 years before Christ, two of the most perfect epic poems were
+written that ever delighted the world, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ of
+Homer. The first begins with Achilles and ends with the funeral of
+Hector. The second recounts the voyages and adventures of Ulysses
+after the destruction of Troy. With our modern intimate knowledge of
+the coasts of the Mediterranean it is not difficult to detect, amidst
+the fabulous accounts of heroic adventures, many references to
+geographical facts which must have been known generally to the Greeks
+of the Homeric period, dealing chiefly with the coasts and islands of
+the Western sea. There is but little reference to the East, although
+many centuries before Homer's day there was a sea-going trade between
+India and the West which brought ivory, apes, and peacocks to the
+ports of Syria. The obvious inference to be derived from the general
+absence of reference to the mysteries of Eastern geography is that
+there was no through traffic. Ships from the East traded only along
+the coast-lines that they knew, and ventured no farther than the point
+where an interchange of commodities could be established with the slow
+crawling craft of the West, the navigation of the period being
+confined to hugging the coast-line and making for the nearest
+shelter when times were bad. The interchange of commodities between
+the rough sailor people of those days did not tend to an interchange
+of geographical information. Probably the language difficulty stood in
+the way. If there was no end to the making of books it was not the
+illiterate and rough sailor men who made them. Nor do sailors, as a
+rule, make them now. It is left to the intelligent traveller
+uninterested in trade, and the journalistic seeker after sensation, to
+make modern geographical records; and there were no such travellers in
+the days of Homer, even if the art of writing had been a general
+accomplishment. In days much later than Homer we can detect sailors'
+yarns embodied in what purport to be authentic geographical records,
+but none so early. We have a reference to certain Skythic nomads who
+lived on mare's milk, and who had wandered from the Asiatic highlands
+into the regions north of the Euxine, which is in itself deeply
+interesting as it indicates that as early as the ninth century B.C.
+Milesian Greek colonies had started settlements on the shores of the
+Black Sea. As the centuries rolled on these settlements expanded into
+powerful colonies, and with enterprising people such as the early
+Greeks there can be little doubt that there was an intermittent
+interchange of commerce with the tribes beyond the Euxine, and that
+gradually a considerable, if inaccurate, knowledge of Asia, even
+beyond the Taurus, was acquired. The world, for them, was still a flat
+circular disc with a broad tidal ocean flowing around its edge,
+encompassing the habitable portions about the centre.
+
+Africa extended southward to the land of Ethiop and no farther, but
+Asia was a recognised geographical entity, less vague and nebulous
+even than the western isles from whence the Ph[oe]nicians brought
+their tin. There were certain fables current among the Greeks touching
+the one-eyed Arimaspians, the gold-guarding griffins, and the
+Hyperboreans, which in the middle of the sixth century were still
+credited, and almost indicate an indefinite geographical conception of
+northern Asiatic regions. But it is probable that much more was known
+of Asiatic geography in these early years than can be gathered from
+the poems and fables of Greek writers before the days of Herodotus and
+of professional geography. There were no means of recording knowledge
+ready to the hand of the colonist and commercial traveller then; even
+the few literary men who later travelled for the sake of gaining
+knowledge were dependent largely on information obtained scantily and
+with difficulty from others, and the expression of their knowledge is
+crude and imperfect. But what should we expect even in present times
+if we proceeded to compile a geographical treatise from the works of
+Milton and Shakespere? What indeed would be the result of a careful
+analysis of parliamentary utterances on geographical subjects within,
+say, the last half century? Would they present to future generations
+anything approaching to an accurate epitome of the knowledge really
+possessed (though possibly not expressed) by those who have within
+that period almost exhausted the world's store of geographical record?
+The analogy is a perfectly fair one. Geographers and explorers are not
+always writers even in these days, and as we work backwards into the
+archives of history nothing is more astonishing than the indications
+which may be found of vast stores of accurate information of the
+earth's physiography lost to the world for want of expression.
+
+It was between the sixth century B.C. and the days of Herodotus that
+Miletus was destroyed, and captive Greeks were transported by Darius
+Hystaspes from the Lybian Barké to Baktria, where we find traces of
+them again under their original Greek name in the northern regions of
+Afghanistan. It was long ere the days of Darius that the hosts of
+Assyria beat down the walls of Samaria and scattered the remnants of
+Israel through the highlands of Western Asia. Where did they drift to,
+these ten despairing tribes? Possibly we may find something to remind
+us of them also in the northern Afghan hills.
+
+It was probably about the same era that some pre-Hellenic race, led
+(so it is written) by the mythical hero Dionysos, trod the weary route
+from the Euxine to the Caspian, and from the southern shores of the
+Caspian to the borderland of modern Indian frontier, where their
+descendants welcomed Alexander on his arrival as men of his own faith
+and kin, and were recognised as such by the great conqueror. Now all
+this points to an acquaintance with the geographical links between
+East and West which appears nowhere in any written record. Nowhere can
+we find any clear statement of the actual routes by which these
+pilgrims were supposed to have made their long and toilsome journeys.
+Just the bare facts are recorded, and we are left to guess the means
+by which they were accomplished. But it is clear that the old-world
+overland connection between India and the Black Sea is a very old
+connection indeed, and further, it is clear that what the Greeks may
+not have known the Persians certainly did know. When Herodotus first
+set solidly to work on a geographical treatise which was to embrace
+the existing knowledge of the whole world, he undoubtedly derived a
+great deal of that knowledge from official Persian sources; and it may
+be added that the early Persian department for geographical
+intelligence has been proved by this last century's scientific
+investigations to have collected information of which the accuracy is
+certainly astonishing. It is only quite recently, during the process
+of surveys carried on by the Government of India through the highlands
+and coast regions of Baluchistan and Eastern Persia, that anything
+like a modern gazetteer of the tribes occupying those districts has
+been rendered possible. Twenty-five years ago our military information
+concerning ethnographic distributions in districts lying immediately
+beyond the north-western frontier was no better than that which is
+contained in the lists of the Persian satrapies, given to the world by
+Herodotus nearly 500 years before the Christian era. Twenty-five years
+ago we did not know of the existence of some of the tribes and peoples
+mentioned by him, and we were unable to identify others. Now, however,
+we are at last aware that through twenty-four centuries most of them
+have clung to their old habitat in a part of the Eastern world where
+material wealth and climatic attractions have never been sufficient to
+lead to annihilation by conquest. Oppressed and harried by successive
+Persian dynasties, overrun by the floatsam and jetsam of hosts of
+migratory Asiatic peoples from the North, those tribes have mostly
+survived to bear a much more valuable testimony to the knowledge of
+the East entertained by the West in the days of Herodotus than any
+which can be gathered from written documents.
+
+The Milesian colonies founded on the southern and western shores of
+the Euxine in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C., whilst retaining
+their trade connection with the parent city of Miletus (where sprang
+that carpet-making industry for which this corner of Asia has been
+famous ever since), found no open road to the further eastern trade
+through the mountain regions that lie south of the Black Sea. Half a
+century after Herodotus we find Xenophon struggling in almost helpless
+entanglement amongst these wild mountains comparatively close to the
+Greek colonies; and it was there that he encountered the fiercest
+opposition from the native tribes-people that he met with during his
+famous retreat from Persia. It is always so. Our most active opponents
+on the Indian frontier are the mountaineers of the immediate
+borderland--the people who _know_ us best, and therefore fear us most.
+It was chiefly through Miletus and the Cilician gates that Greek
+trade with Persia and Babylon was maintained. There were no Greek
+colonies on the rugged eastern coasts of the Black Sea--sufficient
+indication that no open trade route existed direct to the Caspian by
+any line analogous to that of the modern railway that connects Batum
+with Baku. On the north of the Euxine, however, there were great and
+flourishing colonies (of which Olbia at the mouth of the Borysthenes,
+or Dnieper, was the most famous) which undoubtedly traded with the
+Skythic peoples north and west of the Caspian. From these sources came
+the legends of Hyperboreans and Griffins and other similar tales, all
+flavoured with the glamour of northern mystery, but none of them
+pointing to an eastern origin. Recent investigations into the
+ethnography of certain tribes in Afghanistan, however, seem to prove
+conclusively that even if there was no recognised trade between Greece
+and India before Miletus was destroyed by Darius Hystaspes, and Greek
+settlers were transported by the Persian conqueror to the borders of
+the modern Badakshan, yet there must have been Greek pioneers in
+colonial enterprise who had made their way to the Far East and stayed
+there. For instance, we have that strange record of settlements under
+Dionysos amongst the spurs and foothills of the Hindu Kush, which were
+clearly of Greek origin, although Arrian in his history of Alexander's
+progress through Asia is unable to explain the meaning of them.
+
+There is more to be said about these settlements later. The first
+actual record of settlement of Greeks in Baktria is that of Herodotus,
+to which we have referred as being affected by Darius Hystaspes in the
+sixth century before Christ, and the descendants of these settlers are
+undoubtedly the people referred to by Arrian as "Kyreneans", who could
+be no other than the Greek captives from the Lybian Barke. Their
+existence two centuries later than Herodotus is attested by Arrian,
+and they were apparently in possession of the Kaoshan pass over the
+Hindu Kush at the time of Alexander's expedition. Another body of
+Greeks is recorded by Arrian to have been settled in the Baktrian
+country by Xerxes after his flight from Greece. These were the
+Brankhidai of Milesia, whose posterity are said to have been
+exterminated by Alexander in punishment for the crimes of their
+grandfather Didymus. The name Barang, or Farang, is frequently
+repeated in the mountain districts of Northern Afghanistan and
+Badakshan, and careful inquiry would no doubt reveal the fact that
+surviving Greek affinities are still far more widely spread through
+that part of Asia than is generally known. All these settlements were
+antecedent to Alexander, but beyond these recorded instances of Greek
+occupation there can be little doubt that (as pointed out by Bellew in
+his _Ethnography of Afghanistan_ and supported by later observations)
+the Greek element had been diffused through the wide extent of the
+Persian sovereignty for centuries before the birth of Alexander the
+Great. It is probable that each of the four great divisions of the
+ancient Greeks had contributed for a thousand years before to the
+establishment of colonies in Asia Minor, and from these colonies bands
+of emigrants had penetrated to the far east of the Persian dominions,
+either as free men or captives. Amongst the clans and tribal sections
+of Afghans and Pathans are to be found to this day names that are
+clearly indicative of this pre-historic Greek connection.
+
+Persia at her greatest maintained a considerable overland trade with
+India, and Indian tribute formed a large part of her revenues. All
+Afghanistan was Persian; all Baluchistan, and the Indian frontier to
+the Indus. The underlying Persian element is strong in all these
+regions still, the dominant language of the country, the speech of the
+people, whether Baluch or Pathan, is of Persian stock, whilst the
+polite tongue of Court officials, if not the Persian of Tehran or
+Shiraz, is at least an imitation of it. It is hardly strange that the
+Greek language should have absolutely disappeared. We have the
+statement of Seneca (referred to by Bellew in his _Inquiry_) that the
+Greek language was spoken in the Indus valley as late as the middle of
+the first century after Christ; "if indeed it did not continue to be
+the colloquial in some parts of the valley to a considerably later
+period." As this is nearly two centuries after the overthrow of Greek
+dominion in Afghanistan, it at least indicates that the Greek
+settlements established four centuries earlier must have continued to
+exist, and to be reinforced by Greek women (for children speak their
+mother's tongue) to a comparatively late period; and that the triumph
+of the Jat over the Greek did not by any means efface the influence of
+the Greek in India for centuries after it occurred. It is probable
+that when the importation of Greek women (who were often employed in
+the households of Indian chiefs and nobles at a time when Greek ladies
+married Indian Princes) ceased, then the Greek language ceased to
+exist also. The retinue and followers of Alexander's expedition took
+the women of the country to wife, and it is not, as is so often
+supposed, to the results of that expedition so much as to the long
+existence of Greek colonies and settlements that we must attribute the
+undoubted influence of Greek art on the early art of India.
+
+Thus we have a wide field before us for inquiry into the early history
+of ethnographical movement in Asia, as it affected the relation
+between Europe and Afghanistan. Afghanistan (which is a modern
+political development) has ever held the landward gates of India. We
+cannot understand India without a study of that wide hinterland
+(Afghan, Persian, and Baluch) through which the great restless human
+tide has ever been on the move: now a weeping nation of captives led
+by tear-sodden routes to a land of exile; now a band of merchants
+reaching forward to the land of golden promise; or perchance an army
+of pilgrims marching with their feet treading deep into narrow
+footways to the shrines of forgotten saints; or perchance an armed
+host seeking an uncertain fate; a ceaseless, waveless tide, as
+persistent, as enterprising, and infinitely more complicated in its
+developments than the process of modern emigration, albeit modern
+emigration may spread more widely.
+
+Living as we do in fixed habitations and hedged in not merely by
+narrow seas but by the conventionalities of civilized existence, we
+fail to realize the conditions of nomadic life which were so familiar
+to our Asiatic ancestors. Something of its nature may be gathered
+to-day from the Kalmuk and Kirghiz nomads of Central Asia. A day's
+march is not a day's march to them--it is a day's normal occupation.
+The yearly shift in search of fresh pasture is not a flitting on a
+holiday tour; it is as much a part of the year's life as the change of
+raiment between summer to winter. Everything moves; the home is not
+left behind; every man, woman, and child of the family has a
+recognised share in the general shift. Perhaps that of the Kirghiz man
+is the easiest. He smokes a lazy pipe in the bright sunshine and
+watches his boys strip off the felt covering of his wicker-built
+"kibitka," whilst his wife with floating bands of her white headdress
+fluttering in the breeze, and her quilted coat turned up to give more
+freedom to her booted legs, gets together the household traps in
+compact bundles for the great hairy camel to carry. Her efforts are
+not inartistic; long experience has taught her exactly where every
+household god can be stowed to the best advantage. Meanwhile the
+happy, good-looking Kirghiz girls are racing over the grass country
+after sheep, and ere long the little party is making its slow but sure
+way over the breezy steppes to the passes of the blue mountains, which
+look down from afar on to the warmer plains. And who has the best of
+it? The free-roving, untrammelled child of the plain, quite godless,
+and taking no thought for the morrow, or the carefully cultured and
+tight-fitted product of civilization to whom the motor and the railway
+represent the only thinkable method of progression? That, however, is
+not the point. What we wish to emphasize is the apparent inability on
+the part of many writers on the subject of ancient history and
+geography to realize the essential difference between then and now as
+regards human migratory movement.
+
+There is often an apparent misconception that there is more movement
+in these days of railways and steamers and motors than existed ten
+centuries before Christ. The difference lies not in the comparative
+amount of movement but in the method of it. In one sense only is there
+more movement--there are more people to travel; but in a broader sense
+there is much less movement. Whole nations are no longer shifted at
+the will of the conqueror across a continent, trade seekers no longer
+devote their lives to the personal conduct of caravans; armies swelled
+to prodigious size by a tagrag following no longer (except in China)
+move slowly over the face of the land, devouring, like a swarm of
+locusts, all that comes in their way. Colonial emigration perhaps
+alone works on a larger scale now than in those early times; but
+taking it "bye and large," the circulation of the human race,
+unrestricted by political boundaries, was certainly more constant in
+the unsettled days of nomadic existence than in these later days of
+overgrown cities and electric traffic. If little or nothing is
+recorded of many of the most important migrations which have changed
+the ethnographic conditions of Asia, whilst at the same time we have
+volumes of ancient philosophy and mythology, it is because such
+changes were regarded as normal, and the current of contemporary
+history as an ephemeral phenomenon not worth the labour of close
+inquiry or a manuscript record.
+
+Such a gazetteer as that presented to us by Herodotus would not have
+been possible had there not been free and frequent access to the
+countries and the people with whom it deals. It is impossible to
+conceive that so much accuracy of detail could have been acquired
+without the assistance of personal inquiry on the spot. If this is so,
+then the Persians at any rate knew their way well about Asia as far
+east as Tibet and India, and the Greeks undoubtedly derived their
+knowledge from Persia. When Alexander of Macedon first planned his
+expedition to Central Asia he had probably more certain knowledge of
+the way thither than Lord Napier of Magdala possessed when he set out
+to find the capital of Theodore's kingdom in Abyssinia, and it is most
+interesting to note the information which was possessed by the Greek
+authorities a century and a half before Alexander's time.
+
+One notable occurrence pointing to a fairly comprehensive knowledge of
+geography of the Indian border by the Persians, was the voyage of the
+Greek Scylax of Caryanda down the Indus, and from its mouth to the
+Arabian Gulf, which was regarded by Herodotus as establishing the fact
+of a continuous sea. This voyage, or mission, which was undertaken by
+order of Darius who wished to know where the Indus had its outlet and
+"sent some ships" on a voyage of discovery, is most instructive. It is
+true that the accounts of it are most meagre, but such details as are
+given establish beyond a doubt that the expedition was practical and
+real. The Persian dominions then extended to the Indus, but there is
+no evidence that they ever extended beyond that river into the
+peninsula of India. The Indus of the Persian age was not the Indus of
+to-day, and its outlet to the sea presumably did not differ materially
+from that of the subsequent days of Alexander and Nearkos. Thanks to
+the careful investigations of the Bombay Survey Department, and the
+close attention which has been given to ancient landmarks by General
+Haig during the progress of his surveys, we know pretty certainly
+where the course of the Lower Indus must have been, and where both
+Scylax and Nearkos emerged into the Arabian Sea. The Indus delta of
+to-day covers an area of 10,000 square miles with 125 miles of
+coast-line, and it presents to us a huge alluvial tract which is
+everywhere furrowed by ancient river channels. Some of these are
+continuous through the delta, and can be traced far above it; others
+are traceable for only short distances. Without entering into details
+of the rate of progression in the formation of Delta (which can be
+gathered not only from the abandoned sites of towns once known as
+coast ports, but from actual observation from year to year), it may be
+safely assumed that the Indus of Alexander and Scylax emptied itself
+into the Ran of Kach, far to the south of its present debouchment. The
+volume of its waters was then augmented by at least one important
+river (the Saraswati), which, flowing from the Himalayas through what
+is now known as the Rajputana desert, was the source of widespread
+wealth and fertility to thousands of square miles where now there is
+nothing to be met with but sandy waste. As far as the Indus the
+Persian Empire is known to have extended, but no farther; and it was
+important to the military advisers of Darius that something should be
+known of the character of this boundary river.
+
+Wherever the ships sent by Darius may have gone it is quite clear that
+they did not sail _up_ the Indus, or there would have been no
+objective for an expedition which was organised to determine where the
+Indus met the sea by the process of sailing down that river. Moreover,
+the voyage up the Indus would have been tedious and slow, and could
+only have been undertaken in the cold weather with the assistance of
+native pilots acquainted with the ever-shifting bed of the river,
+which, so far as its liability to change of channel is concerned, must
+have been much the same in the days of Darius as it is at present. The
+possibility, therefore, is that Scylax made his way to the Upper Indus
+overland, for we are told that the expedition _started_ from the city
+of Carpatyra in the Pactyan country. This in itself is exceedingly
+instructive, indicating that the Pactyans, or Pathans, or Pukhtu
+speaking peoples have occupied the districts of the Upper Indus for
+four-and-twenty centuries at least; and coincident with them we learn
+that the Aprytæ or Afridi shared the honour of being resident
+landowners. Nor need we suppose that the beginning of this history was
+the beginning of their existence. The Afridi may have rejoiced in his
+native hills ten or twenty centuries before he was written about by
+Herodotus. We need not stay to identify the site of Carpatyra. The
+Upper Indus valley is full of ancient sites. A century and a half
+later Taxilla was the recognized capital of the Upper Punjab, and
+Carpatyra meanwhile may have disappeared. Anyhow we hear of Carpatyra
+no more, nor has the ingenuity of modern research thrown any certain
+light on its position. It is, however, probably near Attok that we
+must look for it. Scylax made his way down the Indus in native craft
+that from long before his day to the present have retained their
+primitive form, a form which was not unlike that of the coast crawling
+"ships" of Darius. He proved the existence of an open water-way from
+the Upper Punjab to the Persian Gulf, and incidentally his expedition
+shows us that the chief lines of communication through the width of
+the Persian Empire were well known, and that the road from Susa to the
+Upper Indus was open. The outlying satrapies of the Persian Empire
+could never have been added one by one to that mighty power without
+definite knowledge of the way to reach them. It was not merely a
+spasmodic expedition, such as that of Scylax, which pointed the way to
+the conquests of the Far East; it was the gathered information of
+years of experience, and it was on the basis of this experience
+(unwritten and unrecorded so far as we know) that Alexander founded
+his plans of campaign.
+
+The detailed list of peoples included in the satrapies of the Persian
+Empire, whilst it is more ethnographical than geographical in its
+character, is sufficient proof in itself of the existence of constant
+movement between Persia and the borderland of Afghanistan, which
+assuredly included commercial traffic. This enumeration has been
+compared with a catalogue of tribal contingents which swelled the
+great army of Xerxes, an independent statement, and therefore a
+valuable test to the general accuracy of Herodotus; and it is still
+further confirmed by the list of nations subject to the Persian king
+found in the inscriptions of Darius at Behistan and Persepolis. We are
+not immediately concerned with the satrapies included in Western Asia
+and Egypt, but when Herodotus makes a sudden departure from his rule
+of geographical sequence and introduces a satrapy on the remotest east
+of the Persian Empire, we immediately recognize that he touches the
+Indian frontier.
+
+The second satrapy most probably corresponds with that part of Central
+Afghanistan south of the Kabul River, which lies west of the Suliman
+Hills and north of the Kwaja Amran or Khojak. Every name mentioned by
+Herodotus certainly has its counterpart in one or other of the tribes
+to be found there to this day, excepting the Lydoi (whose history as
+Ludi is fairly well known) and the Lasonoi, who have emigrated, the
+former into India and the latter to Baluchistan.
+
+The seventh satrapy, again, comprised the Sattagydai, the Gandarioi,
+the Dadikai, and the Aparytai ("joined together"), an association of
+names too remarkable to be mistaken. The Sattag or Khattak, the
+Gandhari, the Dadi, and the Afridi are all trans-Indus people, and
+without insisting too strongly on the exact habitat of each,
+originally there can be little doubt that the seventh satrapy included
+a great part of the Indus valley.
+
+The eleventh satrapy is also probably a district of the Indian
+trans-frontier, although Bunbury associates the name Kaspioi with the
+Caspian Sea. It is far more likely that the Kaspioi of Herodotus are
+to be recognized as the people of the ancient Kaspira or Kasmira, and
+the Daritæ as the Daraddesa (Dards) of the contiguous mountains. All
+Kashmir, even to the borders of Tibet (whence came the story of the
+gold-digging ants), was well enough known to the Persians and through
+them to Herodotus.
+
+The twelfth satrapy comprised Balkh and Badakshan--what is now known
+as Afghan Turkistan. It was here that, generations before Alexander's
+campaign, those Greek settlements were founded by Darius and Xerxes
+which have left to this day living traces of their existence in the
+places originally allotted to them. In Afghan Turkistan also was
+founded the centre of Greek dominion in this part of Asia after the
+conquest of Persia, and it is impossible to avoid the conviction that
+there was a connection between these two events. The Greeks took the
+country from the Bakhi; but there are no people of this name left in
+these provinces now. They may (as Bellew suggests) be recognized
+again in the Bakhtyari of Southern Persia, but it seems unlikely; and
+it is far more probable that they were obliterated by Alexander as his
+most active opponents after he passed Aria (Herat) and Drangia
+(Seistan).
+
+The sixteenth satrapy was north of the Oxus, and included Sogdia and
+Aria (Herat). South of Aria was the fourteenth satrapy, represented by
+Seistan and Western Makran, with "the islands of the sea in which the
+King settles transported convicts"; and east of this again was the
+seventeenth satrapy covering Southern Baluchistan and Eastern Makran.
+It is only during the last twenty-five years that an accurate
+geographical knowledge of these uninviting regions has been attained.
+The gradual extension of the red line of the Indian border, with the
+necessity for preserving peace and security, has gradually enveloped
+Makran and Persian Baluchistan, the Gadrosia and Karmania of the
+Greeks, and has brought to light many strange secrets which have been
+dormant (for they were no secrets to the traveller of the Middle Ages)
+for a few centuries prior to the arrival of the British flag in
+Western India. It is an inhospitable country which is thus included.
+"Mostly desert," as one ancient writer says; marvellously furrowed and
+partitioned by bands of sun-scorched rocky hills, all narrow and sharp
+where they follow each other in parallel waves facing the Arabian Sea,
+or massed into enormous square-faced blocks of impassable mountain
+barrier whenever the uniform regularity of structure is lost. And yet
+it is a country full not only of interest historical and
+ethnographical, such as might be expected of the environment of a
+series of narrow passages leading to the western gates of India, but
+of incident also. There are amongst these strange knife-backed
+volcanic ridges and scarped clay hills valleys of great beauty, where
+the date-palms mass their feathery heads into a forest of green, and
+below them the fertile soil is moist and lush with cultured
+vegetation. But we have described elsewhere this strangely mixed land,
+and we have now only to deal with the aspect of it as known to the
+Greeks before the days of Alexander. That knowledge was ethnographical
+in its quality and exceedingly slight in quantity. Herodotus mentions
+the Sagartoi, Zarangai, Thamanai, Uxoi, and Mykoi. These are Seistan
+tribes. The Sagartoi were nomads of Seistan, mentioned both amongst
+tribes paying tribute and those who were exempt. The Zarangai were the
+inhabitants of Drangia (Seistan), where their ancient capital fills
+one of the most remarkable of all historic sites. The Zarangai are
+said to be recognizable in the Afghan Durani. No Afghan Durani would
+admit this. He claims a very different origin (as will be explained),
+and in the absence of authoritative history it is never wise to set
+aside the traditions of a people about themselves, especially of a
+people so advanced as the Duranis. More probable is it that the
+ancient geographical appellation Zarangai covers the historic Kaiani
+of Seistan supposed to be the same as the Kakaya of Sanscrit.
+
+The Uxoi may be the modern Hots of Makran--a people who are
+traditionally reckoned amongst the most ancient of the mixed
+population which has drifted into the Makran ethnographic cul-de-sac,
+and who were certainly there in Alexander's time. In eastern Makran,
+Herodotus mentions only the Parikanoi and the Asiatic Ethiopian.
+Parikan is the Persian plural form of the Sanscrit Parva-ka, which
+means "mountaineer." This bears exactly the same meaning as the word
+Kohistani, or Barohi, and is not a tribal appellation at all, although
+the latter may possibly have developed into the Brahui, the well-known
+name of a very important Dravidian people of Southern Baluchistan
+(highlanders all of them) who are akin to the Dravidian races of
+Southern India. The Asiatic Ethiopian presents a more difficult
+problem. During the winter of 1905 careful inquiries were made in
+Makran for any evidence to support the suggestion that a tribe of
+Kushite origin still existed in that country. It is of interest in
+connection with the question whether the earliest immigrants into
+Mesopotamia (these people who, according to Accadian tradition,
+brought with them from the South the science of civilization) were a
+Semitic race or Kushites. It is impossible to ignore the existence of
+Kushite races in the east as well as the south. We have not only the
+authority of the earliest Greek writings, but Biblical records also
+are in support of the fact, and modern interest only centres in the
+question what has become of them. Bellew suggests that it was after
+the various Kush or Kach, or Kaj tribes that certain districts in
+Baluchistan are called Kach Gandava or Kach (Kaj) Makran, and that the
+chief of these tribes were the Gadara, after whom the country was
+called Gadrosia. This seems mere conjecture. At any rate the term
+Kach, sometimes Kachchi, sometimes Katz, is invariably applied to a
+flat open space, even if it is only the flat terrace above a river
+intervening between the river and a hill, and is purely geographical
+in its significance. But it was a matter of interest to discover
+whether the Gadurs of Las Bela could be the Gadrosii, or whether they
+exhibited any Ethiopian traits. The Gadurs, however, proved to be a
+section of the Rajput clan of Lumris, a proud race holding themselves
+aloof from other clans and never intermarrying with them. There could
+be no mistake about the Rajput origin of the red-skinned Gadur. He was
+a Kshatrya of the lunar race, but he might very possibly represent the
+ancient Gadrosii, even though he is no descendant of Kush. The other
+Rajput tribes with whom the Gadurs coalesce have apparently held their
+own in Las from a period quite remote, and must have been there when
+Alexander passed that way.
+
+Asiatic negroes abound in Makran: some of them fresh importations from
+Africa, others bred in the slave villages of the Arabian Sea coast, as
+they have been for centuries. They are a fine, brawny, well-developed
+race of people, and some of the best of them are to be found as
+stokers in the P. & O. service; but they do not represent the Asiatic
+Ethiopian of Herodotus, who could hardly compile a gazetteer for the
+Greeks which should include all the ethnographical information known
+to the Persians, any more than our Intelligence Department could
+compile a complete gazetteer of the whole Russian Empire. To the
+maritime Greek nation the overwhelming preponderance of the huge
+Empire which overshadowed them must have created the same feeling of
+anxious suspicion that the unwieldy size of Russia presents to us, and
+it is not very likely that military intelligence of a really practical
+nature was offered gratis to the Greeks by the Persian geographers and
+military leaders. It is not surprising, therefore, that Herodotus did
+not know all that existed on the far Persian frontier. There are
+tribes and peoples about Southern Baluchistan who are as ancient as
+Herodotus but who are not mentioned. For instance, the ruling tribe in
+Makran until quite recently (when they were ousted by certain Sikh or
+Rajput interlopers called Gichki) were the Boledi, and their country
+was once certainly called Boledistan. The Boledi valley is one of the
+loveliest in a country which is apt to enhance the loveliness of its
+narrow bands of luxuriance by their rarety and their narrowness. It is
+a sweet oasis in the midst of a barren rocky sea, and must always have
+been an object of envy to dwellers outside, even in days when a fuller
+water-supply, more widely spread, turned many a valley green which is
+now deep drifted with sand. Ptolemy mentions the Boledis, so that they
+can well boast the traditional respectability of age-long ancestry.
+The Boledis are said to have dispossessed the Persian Kaiani Maliks,
+who ruled Makran in the seventeenth century, when they headed what is
+known as the Baluch Confederation. This may be veritable history, but
+their pride of race and origin, on whatever record it is based, has
+come to an end now; it has been left to the present generation to see
+the last of them. A few years ago there was living but one
+representative of the ruling family of the Boledis, an old lady named
+Miriam, who was exceedingly cunning in the art of embroidery, and made
+the most bewitching caps. She was, I believe, dependent on the bounty
+of the Sultan of Muscat, who possesses a small tract of territory on
+the Makran coast. Herodotus apparently knew nothing about the Boledis,
+nor can it be doubted that the Greek knowledge of Makran was
+exceedingly scanty. Thus, whilst Alexander marched to the Indian
+frontier, well supplied with information as to the ways thither when
+once he could make Persia his base, he was almost totally ignorant of
+the one route out of India which he eventually followed, and which so
+nearly enveloped his whole force in disaster.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ASSYRIA AND AFGHANISTAN--ANCIENT LAND ROUTES--POSSIBLE SEA ROUTES
+
+
+With the building up of the vast Persian Empire, and the gradual
+fostering of eastern colonies, and the consequent introduction of the
+manners and methods of Western Asia into the highlands of Samarkand
+and Badakshan, other nationalities were concerned besides Persians and
+Greeks. Captive peoples from Syria had been deported to Assyria seven
+centuries before Christ. The House of Israel had been broken up (for
+Samaria had fallen in 721 B.C. before the victorious hosts of Sargon),
+and some of the Israelitish families had been deported eastwards and
+northwards to Northern Mesopotamia and Armenia. With the vitality of
+their indestructible race it is at least possible that a remnant
+survived as serfs in Assyria, preserving their own customs and
+institutions--secretly if not openly--intermarrying, trading, and
+money-making, yet still looking for the final restoration of Israel
+until the final break-up of the Assyrian Kingdom. They were never
+absolutely absorbed, and never forgot to recount their historic
+pedigree to their children.
+
+With the final overthrow of the Assyrian Kingdom we lose sight of the
+tribes of Israel, who for more than a century had been mingled with
+the peoples of Northern Mesopotamia and Armenia. At least history
+holds no record of their further national existence. From time
+immemorial in Asia it had been customary for the captives taken in war
+to be transported bodily to another field for purposes of colonization
+and public labour. When the world was more scantily peopled such
+methods were natural and effectual; the increase of working power
+gained thereby being of the utmost importance in days when enormous
+irrigation canals were excavated, and bricks had to be fashioned for
+the construction of walled cities.
+
+The extent and magnificence of Assyrian building must have demanded an
+immense supply of such manual labour for the purpose of brickmaking.
+All the mighty works of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon were
+literally "the work of men's hands." In Mesopotamia was captured
+labour especially necessary. Stone was indeed available at Nineveh,
+but the barrenness of the soil which stretches flatly from the rugged
+hills of Kurdistan across Mesopotamia rendered the country
+unproductive unless enormous works of irrigation were undertaken for
+the distribution of water. Mesopotamia is a country of immense
+possibilities, but the wealth of it is only for those who can
+distribute the waters of its great rivers over the productive soil.
+The yearly inundations of the Euphrates and Tigris are but sufficient
+for the needs of a narrow strip of land on either side the rivers, and
+the crops of the country undeveloped by canals can only support a
+scattered and scanty population. Towards the south there is another
+difficulty. The flat soil becomes water-logged and marshy and runs to
+waste for want of drainage. There is no stone for building purposes
+near Babylon. Approaching Babylon over the windy wastes of
+scrub-powdered plain there is nothing to be seen in the shape of a
+hill. Long, low, flat-topped mounds stretch athwart the horizon and
+resolve themselves on nearer approach into deeply scarred and
+weather-worn accretions of debris, or else they are banks of ancient
+waterways winding through the steppe, the last remnants of a
+stupendous system of irrigation. Then there breaks into view the
+solitary erection which stands in the open plain overlooking a wide
+vista of marsh and swamp to the west, which represents the ruins
+called Birs Nimrud, the Ziggurat or temple which, in successive tiers
+devoted to the powers of heaven, supported the shrine of Mercury. It
+is by far the most conspicuous object in the Babylonian landscape;
+huge, dilapidated, and unshapely, it mounts guard over a silent,
+stagnant, swampy plain.
+
+Now the remarkable feature in all these gigantic remains of antiquity
+is that they are built of brick. In the wide expanse of Mesopotamia
+plain around there is not a stone quarry to be found. Of Nineveh, we
+learn from the masterly records of Xenophon that as he was leading the
+surviving 10,000 Greeks in their retreat from the disastrous field of
+Babylon back to the sunny Hellespont, some 200 years after the
+destruction of Nineveh, he came upon a vast desert city on the Tigris.
+The wall of it was 25 feet wide, 100 feet high, with a 20-foot
+basement of stone. This was all that was left of Kalah, one of the
+Assyrian capitals. A day's march farther north he came on another
+deserted city with similar walls. These were the dry bones of Nineveh,
+already forgotten and forsaken. Two centuries had in these early ages
+been sufficient to blot out the memory of Assyrian greatness so
+completely that Xenophon knew not of it, nor recognized the place
+where his foot was treading. Barely seventy years ago was the memory
+of them restored to man, and tokens of the richness and magnificence
+of the art which embellished them first given to the world. The mounds
+representing Nineveh and Babylon are some of them of enormous size.
+The mound of Mugheir (the ancient Ur) is the ancient platform of an
+Assyrian palace, which is faced with a wall 10 feet thick of red
+kiln-dried bricks cemented with bitumen. Some of these platforms were
+raised from 50 to 60 feet above the plain and protected by massive
+stone masonry carried to a height exceeding that of the platform. But
+the Babylonian mound of Birs Nimrud, which rises from the plain level
+to the blue glazed masonry of the upper tier of the Ziggurat, is
+altogether a brick construction. The debris of the many-coloured
+bricks now forms a smooth slope for many feet from its base; but
+above, where the square blocks of brickwork still hold together in
+scattered disarray, you may still dig out a foot-square brick with the
+title and designations of Nebuchadnezzar imprinted on its face. These
+artificial mounds could only have been built at an enormous cost of
+labour. The great mound of Koyunjik (the palace of Nineveh) covers an
+area of 100 acres and reaches up 95 feet at its highest point. It has
+been calculated that to heap up such a pile would "require the united
+efforts of 10,000 men for twelve years, or 20,000 men for six years"
+(Rawlinson, _Five Monarchies_), and then only the base of the palace
+is reached; and there are many such mounds, for "it seems to have been
+a point of honour with the Assyrian Kings that each should build a new
+palace for himself" (Ragozin, _Chaldaea_).
+
+Only conquering monarchs with whole nations as prisoners could have
+compassed such results. This, indeed, was one of the great objectives
+of war in these early times. It was the amassing of a great population
+for manual labour and the creation of new centres of civilization and
+trade. Thus it was that the peoples of Western Asia--Egyptians,
+Israelites, Jews, Ph[oe]nicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and even
+Greeks--were transported over vast distances by land, and a movement
+given to the human race in that part of the world which has infinitely
+complicated the science of ethnology. The peopling of Canada by the
+French, of North America by the English, of Brazil by the Portuguese,
+of Argentina and Chile by Spaniards and Italians, is perhaps a more
+comprehensive process in the distribution of humanity and more
+permanent in its character. But ancient compulsory movement, if not as
+extensive as modern voluntary emigration, was at least wholesale, and
+it led to the distribution of people in districts which would not
+naturally have invited them. The first process in the consolidation of
+a district, or satrapy, was the settlement of inhabitants, sometimes
+in supercession of a displaced or annihilated people, sometimes as an
+ethnic variety to the possessors of the soil. Tiglath Pileser was the
+first Assyrian monarch to consolidate the Empire by its division into
+satrapies. Henceforward the outlying provinces of the dominions were
+convenient dumping places for such bodies of captives as were not
+required for public works at home.
+
+Nothing would be more natural than that Sargon should deport a portion
+of the Israelitish nation to colonize his eastern possessions towards
+India, just as Darius Hystaspes later employed the same process to
+the same ends when he deported Greeks from the Lybian Barke to
+Baktria. There is nothing more astonishing in the fact that we should
+find a powerful people claiming descent from Israel in Northern
+Afghanistan than that we should find another people claiming a Greek
+origin in the Hindu Kush.
+
+Nor was the importance of peopling waste lands and raising up new
+nations out of well-planted colonies overlooked ten centuries before
+Christ any more than it is now. Then it was a matter of transporting
+them overland and on foot to the farthest eastern limits of these
+great Asiatic empires. Always east or south they tramped, for nothing
+was known of the geography of the North and West. Eastwards lay the
+land of the sun, whence came the Indians who fought in the armies of
+Darius, and where gold and ivory, apes and peacocks were found to fill
+Ph[oe]nician ships. To-day it is different. The peopling of the world
+with whites is chiefly a Western process. Emigrants go out in ships,
+not as captives, but almost equally in compact bodies--the best of our
+working men to Canada, and many of the best of our much-wanted
+domestic servants to South Africa. It is a perpetual process in the
+world's economy, and perhaps the chief factor in the world's history;
+but in the old, old centuries before the Christian era it was
+necessarily a land process, and the geographical distribution of the
+land features determined the direction of the human tide. Some twenty
+years before the fall of Samaria and the deportation of the ten tribes
+of Israel, Tiglath Pileser had effected conquests in Asia which
+carried him so far east that he probably touched the Indus. Why he
+went no farther, or why Alexander subsequently left the greater part
+of the Indian peninsula unexplored, is fully explicable on natural
+grounds, even if other explanations were wanting.
+
+The Indus valley would offer to the military explorers from the West
+the first taste of the quality of the climate of the India of the
+plains which they would encounter. The Indus valley in the hot weather
+would possess little climatic attraction for the Western highlander.
+Alexander's troops mutinied when they got far beyond the Indus. Any
+other troops would mutiny under such conditions as governed their
+outfit and their march. It is more than possible that the great
+Assyrian conqueror before him encountered much the same difficulty. It
+is clear, however, historically, that the Assyrian knew and trod the
+way to Northern Afghanistan (or Baktria), and if we examine the map of
+Asia with any care we shall see that there is no formidable barrier to
+the passing of large bodies of people from Nineveh to Herat (Aria), or
+from Herat to the Indus valley, until we reach the very gates of India
+on the north-west frontier. Four centuries later than Tiglath Pileser
+the battle of Arbela was fought to a finish between Alexander and
+Darius (who possessed both Greek and Indian troops in his army) on a
+field which is not so very far to the east of Nineveh, and which is
+probably represented more or less accurately by the modern Persian
+town of Erbil. The modern town may not be on the exact site of the
+action, and we know that the ancient town was some sixty miles away
+from the battlefield. However that may be, we learn that in the
+general retreat of the Persians which followed the battle, Darius made
+his way to Ecbatana, the ancient capital of the Medes. There he
+remained for about a year, but hearing of Alexander's advance from
+Persepolis in the spring of 330 B.C. he fled to the north-east, with a
+view to taking refuge with his kinsman Bessos, who was then satrap of
+Baktria. This gives us the clue to the general line of communication
+between Northern Mesopotamia and Baktria (or Afghanistan) in ancient
+days; and the twenty-five centuries which have rolled by since that
+early period have done little to modify that line.
+
+Until the beginning of the nineteenth century A.D. from the earliest
+times with which we can come into contact through any human record,
+this high-road (not the only one, but the chief one) must have been
+trodden by the feet of thousands of weary pilgrims, captives,
+emigrants, merchants, or fighting men--an intermittent tide of
+humanity exceeding in volume any host known to modern days--bringing
+East into touch with the West to an extent which we can hardly
+appreciate. It may be said that the straightest road to Baktria did
+not lie through Ecbatana. It did not; but independently of the fact
+that Ecbatana was a city of great defensive capacity, and of reasons
+both political and military which would have impelled Darius to take
+that route, we shall find if we examine the latest Survey of India map
+of Western Persia that the geographical distribution of hill and
+valley make it the easiest, if not the shortest, route. The
+configuration of Western Persia, like that of Makran and Southern
+Baluchistan extending to our own north-west frontier, mainly consists
+of long lines of narrow ridges curving in lines parallel to the coast,
+rocky and mostly impassable to travellers crossing their difficult
+ridge and furrow formation transversely, but presenting curiously easy
+and open roads along the narrow lateral valleys. Ecbatana once stood
+where the modern Hamadan now stands. The road from Arbil (or Erbil)
+that carries most traffic follows this trough formation to Kermanshah
+and then bends north-eastward to Hamadan. From Hamadan to Rhagai and
+the Caspian gates, which was the route followed by Darius in his
+flight from Ecbatana, the road was clearly coincident with the present
+telegraph line to Tehran from Hamadan, which strikes into the great
+post route eastward to Mashad and Herat, one of the straightest and
+most uniformly level roads in all Asia. It must always have been so.
+Remarkable physical changes have occurred in Asia during these
+twenty-five centuries, but nothing to alter the relative disposition
+of mountain and plain in this part of Persia, or to change the general
+character of its ancient highway. All this part of Persia was under
+the dominion of the Assyrian king when the tribes of Israel left Syria
+for Armenia. He had but recently traversed the road to India, and he
+knew the richness of Baktria (of Afghan Turkistan and Badakshan) and
+could estimate what a colony might become in these eastern fields.
+
+What more natural than that he should draft some of his captives
+eastward to the land of promise? There is not an important tribe of
+people in all that hinterland of India that has not been drafted in
+from somewhere. There is not a people left in India, for that matter,
+that can safely call themselves indigenous. From Persia and Media,
+from Aria and Skythia, from Greece and Arabia, from Syria and
+Mesopotamia they have come, and their coming can generally be traced
+historically, and their traditions of origin proved to be true. But
+there is one important people (of whom there is much more to be said)
+who call themselves Ben-i-Israel, who claim a descent from Kish, who
+have adopted a strange mixture of Mosaic law and Hindu ordinance in
+their moral code, who (some sections at least) keep a feast which
+strangely accords with the Passover, who hate the Yahudi (Jew) with a
+traditional hatred, and for whom no one has yet been able to suggest
+any other origin than the one they claim, and claim with determined
+force; and these people rule Afghanistan. It may be that they have
+justification for their traditions, even as others have; they may yet
+be proved to stand in the same relationship to the scattered remnants
+of Israel as some of the Kafir inhabitants of Northern Afghanistan can
+be shown to hold to the Greeks of pre-Alexandrian days. It is
+difficult to account for the name Afghan: it has been said that it is
+but the Armenian word Aghvan (Mountaineer). If this is so, it at once
+indicates a connection between the modern Afghan and the Syrian
+captives of Armenia.
+
+But whilst "men in nations" were thus traversing the highlands of
+Persia from Mesopotamia to Northern Afghanistan by highways so ancient
+that they may be regarded almost as geographical fixtures as
+everlasting as the hills, we do not find much evidence of traffic with
+the Central Asian States north of the Oxus.
+
+Early military excursions into the land of the Skyths were more for
+the purpose of dealing with the predatory habits of these warlike
+tribes, who afterwards peopled half of Europe as well as India, than
+of promoting either trade or geographical inquiry; and it was the
+route which led to Northern Afghanistan and Baktria through Northern
+Persia which was most attractive from its general accessibility and
+promise of profit. It was this way that Northern Kashmir and the
+gold-fields of Tibet were touched. The Indian gold which formed so
+large a part of the Persian revenues in the time of Darius undoubtedly
+came from Northern India and Tibet. Old as are the workings of the
+Wynaad gold-fields in the west, and Kolar in the east, of the
+peninsula, it is unlikely that either of these sources was known to
+Persia.
+
+The more direct routes to India from Ecbatana, passing through Central
+Persia _via_ Kashan, Yezd, and Kirman, terminated on the Helmund or in
+Makran, and there is no evidence that the mountain system which faces
+the Indus was ever crossed by invading Persian hosts. There was,
+indeed, a tradition in Alexander's time that an attempt had been made
+to traverse Makran and that it had failed. This, says Arrian, was one
+of the reasons why Alexander obstinately chose that route on his
+retirement from India. In spite, however, of the geographical
+difficulties which render it improbable that the hosts of Tiglath
+Pileser (who could have dealt with the Skythians of the north readily
+enough) ever broke across the north-western gateways of India's
+mountain borderland, there was undoubtedly a close connection between
+Assyria and India of which the evidence is still with us.
+
+Throughout the golden age of the Second Empire of Assyria, after the
+subjugation of Babylon and the consolidation of the Empire by Tiglath
+Pileser, during the reigns of Sargon and Senacherib (who fought the
+first Assyrian naval fight), Esar Haddon (who destroyed Sidon and
+removed the inhabitants) and Assur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), to the
+final overthrow of Assyria by Babylon in 625 B.C., when the star of
+Nebuchadnezzar arose on the southern horizon, Assyria held the supreme
+command of Eastern commerce, and Nineveh dictated the cannons of art
+to the world. No event more profoundly affected the commerce of Asia
+than the destruction of Sidon and the bodily transfer of its
+commercial inhabitants to Assyria. This was the age of Assyrian art,
+of literature, and of architecture; Assyrian culture realized its
+culminating point in the reign of Assur-bani-pal, when the library at
+Nineveh far surpassed any library that the world had ever seen. It was
+then that intercourse between Assyria and India became unbroken and
+intimate. Then public works of the largest dimensions were undertaken,
+and colonies formed for the purpose of developing the riches of the
+newly acquired lands in the East. Assyrian art found its way to India,
+and the affinity between Assyrian and Indian art is directly traceable
+still in spite of the impress subsequently effected by Greece and
+Rome.
+
+The carpets that are spread on the floors of every Anglo-Indian home
+and which, as Turkish, Persian, Central Asian, or Indian, are to be
+found in every carpet shop in London, usually possess in the
+intricacies of their pattern some trace of ancient Assyrian art. As
+Sir George Birdwood has long ago pointed out, general similarities
+between Assyrian and Indian design in carpet patterns may possibly be
+due to a common Turanian origin, pre-Semitic and pre-Aryan; but there
+are details of architectural plan in the Southern Indian temples
+which, quite as much as the reproduction of the ancient Assyrian "knop
+and flower" in its infinite variety of form (all expressing more or
+less conventionally the cone and the lotus of the original idea),
+testify to an infinitely old art affinity, and at the same time
+witness to the wonderful vitality of intelligent design.
+
+The tree of life so largely interwoven into Eastern fabrics was the
+"Asherah" or "grove" sacred to Asshur the supreme god of the
+Assyrians, the Lord and Giver of life; and it appears to have been the
+development of the "Hom" or lotus, which, although it is a Kashmir
+valley plant, is always admirably rendered in Assyrian sculpture.
+Eventually the date palm took the place of the Hom in the Euphrates
+valley, just as the vine replaced it in Asia Minor and Greece. In
+Central Asian rugs we find the cone replaced by the pomegranate, and
+the tree of life becomes a pomegranate tree. There is too much
+intricacy in such similarity of ornamental detail between Assyrian and
+Indian art for the result to have been merely developments from a
+common pre-historic stock along separate lines. They are clearly
+imitations one of the other, and the similarity is but another link in
+the chain of evidence which proves that the highways of Asia
+connecting Assyria with India through Persia were well-trodden ways
+seven centuries at least before Christ, even if the sea route from the
+Red Sea and Euphrates had not then reached the Indus and western coast
+of India.
+
+Whilst all historical evidence points to the Tehran-Mashad route as
+the great highway which linked Mesopotamia with Baktria in past ages,
+there are certain curious little indications that the southern road
+through Persia, viz. Yezd and Kirman, was also well known, for it is a
+remarkable fact (which may be taken for what it is worth) that it is
+in the villages and bazaars of Sind that the potters may be found
+whose conservative souls delight in the reproduction of a class of
+ornamental decoration which most clearly indicates an Assyrian origin.
+The direct route to Sind from Mesopotamia is not by way of Herat. It
+is (as will be subsequently explained) _via_ Kirman and Makran, but
+there is absolutely no historical evidence to support the suggestion
+that this was a route utilized by the Assyrians; and there is, on the
+other hand, Arrian's statement that roads through Makran were unknown
+or but legendary.
+
+It is impossible, however, to ignore the fact that the sea route to
+North-western India was utilized in very ancient times; and although
+its connection with the northern landward gates of India may appear to
+be rather obscure, that connection is a matter which actually concerns
+us rather nearly in the present day. For it is by this ancient sea
+route that Persia and Baluchistan, Seistan and Afghanistan derive
+those supplies of small arms and ammunition which are abundant in
+those countries, but which never pass through India. Muskat is the
+chief depot for distribution, and the Persian ports of Bandar Abbas,
+Jask, or Pasni on the Makran coast are utilized as ports for the
+interior, leading by routes which are quite sufficiently good for
+caravan traffic towards the point where Afghan territory meets that of
+Persia and Baluchistan just south of Seistan. Once in Seistan they are
+well behind the passes which split our nearer line of defence in the
+trans-Indus hills. Even our command of the sea fails to suppress this
+traffic, which has led to such a general distribution of arms of
+precision (chiefly of German manufacture), that these countries may
+fairly claim to be able to arm their whole population. No recent
+researches in the Persian Gulf or on the Persian coast have added much
+to the sum of our knowledge respecting the early navigation of these
+Eastern seas, but there can be no question as to its immense
+antiquity. The Ph[oe]nician settler in Syria and Mesopotamia has been
+traced back to his primeval home in the Bahrein Islands, which, if
+Herodotus is correct in his estimated date for the founding of Tyre
+(2756 years B.C.), takes us back to very early times indeed for the
+coast navigation of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Seas. Hiram, King
+of Tyre, could look back through long ages to the days when his
+Ph[oe]nician forefathers started their well-packed vessels (the
+Ph[oe]nicians were famous for their skill in stowing cargo) to crawl
+along the coasts of Makran and Western India for the purpose of
+acquiring those stores of spices and gold which first made commerce
+profitable, or else to make their way westward, guided by the
+headlands and shore outlines of Southern Arabia, to gather the riches
+from African fields. Makran is full of strange relics of immense age
+for which none can account. Since Egyptology has become a recognized
+science, who will lay the foundations of such a science for Southern
+Arabia and Makran? When will some one arise with the wisdom and the
+leisure to write of the power of ancient Arabia, and to trace the
+impressions left on the whole world of commerce, of art, of
+architecture, and literature by the ancient races who hailed from the
+South?
+
+We cannot tell when the first sea-borne trade passed to and fro
+between India and the Erythrean Sea, a creeping, slow-moving trade
+making the best shift possible of wind and tide, and knowing no guide
+but the pole star of that period, and the rocky headlands and islands
+of the Makran coast. Many of the ancient islands exist no more, but
+the coast is a peculiarly well-marked one for the mariner still.
+Probably the coast trade was earlier than the overland caravan
+traffic; but the latter was certainly co-existent with the Assyrian
+monarchy when Persia and Central Asia lay at the feet of the conqueror
+Tiglath Pileser.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+GREEK EXPLORATION--ALEXANDER--MODERN BALKH--THE BALKH PLAIN AND
+BAKTRIA
+
+
+Twenty-two centuries have rolled away since the first military
+expedition from Europe was organized and led into the wilds of an Asia
+which was probably as civilized then as it is now. Two thousand two
+hundred years, and yet along the wild stretches of the Indian
+frontier, where a mound here and there testifies to the former
+existence of some forgotten camp, or where in the slant rays of the
+evening sun faint indications may be traced on the level Punjab flats
+of the foundation of a city long since dead, the name of the great
+Macedonian is uttered with reverence and awe as might be the name of a
+god who can still influence the lives of men, yet qualified by an
+affix which indicates a curious survival of the mythological
+conception of gods as human beings. You may wander through some of the
+valleys cleft through the western frontier hills, where an
+intermittent rivulet of water spreads a network of streamlets on the
+boulder-covered bed of the nullah, and where the stony hills rise in
+barren slopes on either side, and find, perchance half hidden by
+weather-worn debris and tufts of stringy verdure, the remains of what
+was once an artificial water-channel, stone built and admirably
+graded, and you may ask who was responsible for this construction. Not
+a man can say. There is no history, no tradition even, connected with
+it. It passes their understanding. Doubtless it was the work of
+"Sekunder" (Alexander)--that prehistoric, mythological,
+incomprehensible, and yet beneficent being who lives in the minds of
+the frontier people as the apotheosis of the Deputy Commissioner. Yet
+the impression left on India by the Greeks is marvellously small. It
+is chiefly to be found in the architecture and the sculpture of the
+Punjab. The Greek language disappeared from the Indus valley about the
+end of the tenth century A.D., and there is hardly a Greek place-name
+now to be recognized anywhere on the Indus banks. But any unusual
+relic of the past, the story of which has passed beyond the memory of
+the present tribes-people (even though it may be obviously of mediæval
+Arabic origin), is invariably attributed to Alexander. It is, however,
+chiefly in the sculpture and decorations of Buddhist buildings (which
+never existed in Alexander's day) that clear evidence exists of Greek
+art conception. The classical features and folded raiment of the
+sculptured saints and buddhas, which are found so freely in certain
+parts of the Punjab, are obviously derived from original Greek ideals
+which may very possibly have been transmitted through Rome.
+
+With Alexander in India we have nothing to do in these pages. It is as
+the first explorer in the regions beyond India, the Afghan and
+Baluchistan hinterlands, that he at present concerns us; and it may
+fairly be stated that no later expedition combining scientific
+research with military conquest ever added more to the sum of the
+world's knowledge of those regions than that led by Alexander. For
+centuries after it no light arises on the geographical horizon of the
+Indian border. Indeed, not until political exigencies caused by
+Russia's steady advance towards India compelled a revision of
+political boundaries in Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and India,
+was any very accurate idea obtained of the geographical conditions of
+Northern and Western Afghanistan, or of Baluchistan, or of Southern
+Persia. The mapping of these countries has been recent, and the
+progress of it, as year by year the network of Indian triangulation
+and topography spread westward and northward, has reopened many
+sources of light which, if not altogether new, have lain hidden ever
+since the Macedonian conqueror passed over them. Long before the Greek
+army mustered on the banks of the Hellespont we have seen that the
+highways to the East were well trodden and well known. It was not
+likely that Alexander's intelligence department was lacking in
+information. For many centuries subsequent to that expedition the rise
+of the Parthian power absolutely cut off these old-world trade
+communications and set the restless tides of human emigration into new
+channels. But in Alexander's time there was nothing in Persia to
+interrupt the interchange of courtesies between East and West.
+
+The great Aryan tide had already flowed from the Central Asian
+highlands into India, but Jutes and Skyths had yet to make that great
+drift westward which peopled half of Europe with nomadic tribes
+speaking kindred tongues--a drift which never rested in its westward
+advance till, as Anglians and Saxons, it had enveloped England and
+faced its final destiny in an American continent. Assyria had passed
+by with arts and commerce rather than with arms, and Persia had
+followed in Assyrian tracks. Both had established colonies half-way to
+India in the Afghan highlands, Persia with the aid of captive Greeks,
+and Assyria with people taken from the Syrian land. The list of
+Assyrian and Persian satrapies included all those lands which we now
+call the hinterland of India, and which in Alexander's time must have
+been absolutely Persianized. But beyond the historical evidence which
+can be collected to prove the early, the constant, traffic which
+ensued between Mesopotamia, or Asia Minor, and India, after the
+consolidation of those two great empires, there is the tradition which
+certain Greek writers (notably Arrian) treat rather scornfully, of the
+conquest of Upper India by the mythical hero Bacchus. It is never wise
+to treat any tradition scornfully, and Arrian is himself obliged to
+admit the difficulty of explaining certain records connected with
+Alexander's history, without assuming that the tradition was not
+groundless.
+
+Writing of the city of Nysa, Arrian says that "it was built by
+Dionysos or Bacchus, when he conquered the Indians; but who this
+Bacchus was, or at what time or from whence he conquered the Indians
+is hard to determine, whether he was that Theban who from Thebes, or
+he who from Timolus, a mountain of Lydia, undertook that famous
+expedition into India is very uncertain." There is a Greek epic poem
+in hexameter verse, called the "Dionysiaka," or "Bassarika," which
+tells of the conquest of India by Bacchus, the greatest of all his
+achievements. The author is Nonnus of Panopolis in Egypt, who wrote
+about the beginning of the fifth century of our era. Bacchus is said
+to have received a command from Zeus to turn back the Indians, who had
+extended their conquests to the Mediterranean, and in the execution of
+this command he marched through Syria and Assyria. In Assyria he was
+entertained with magnificent hospitality. Nothing further is said of
+the route he took to reach India. The first battle which took place
+in India was on the banks of the Hydaspes, where the Indians were
+routed. Then followed as an incident in the war the destruction of the
+Indian fleet in a naval battle, which is instructive. It took the
+assistance of the goddess of war, Pallas Athene, to bring the campaign
+to a conclusion, which terminated with the death of the Indian leader
+Deriades. Here, then, is crystallized in verse the tradition to which
+Arrian refers, and remembering that we are indebted to two great epics
+of India, the "Ramayana" and the "Mahabharata," for such glimmering of
+the ancient history of the Aryan occupation of India as we possess, we
+may very well conceive that the germs of real historical fact lie
+half-concealed in this poem of Nonnus. However that may be, it is
+tolerably certain that Alexander found a people in Northern India who
+claimed a Greek origin when he arrived there, quite apart from the
+colonists of Baktria who had been transported there by Darius
+Hydaspes, and that he recognized their claim to distant relationship.
+
+When Alexander, then, mustered his army in the sunny fields of Macedon
+he was preparing for an expedition over no uncertain ways between
+Greece and Baktria or Arachosia (Northern and Western Afghanistan). He
+knew what lay before him if he could once break through the Persian
+barrier; and the strength of that barrier he must have been well aware
+lay as much in the stern fighting qualities of the mercenary Greek
+legions in the pay of Persia as in the hosts of Persian and Indian
+troops which the Persian monarch could array against him. We have
+lists of the component forces on both sides. The Macedonian legions
+were homogeneous and patriotic. The Persian army was partly European,
+but chiefly Asiatic, with a mixed company of Asiatic troops such as
+has probably never taken the field since. The opposing forces, indeed,
+partook of the nature of the two armies which fought out the issue of
+the Russo-Japanese campaign, and the result was much the same. There
+was no tie of national sentiment to bind together the unwieldy cohorts
+of Persia. They fought for their pay, and they fought well; but when
+big battalions are divided in religious sentiment and unswayed by
+patriotism, they are no match for Macedonian cohesion, Mahomedan
+Jehad, or Japanese Bushido.
+
+It is quite interesting to examine the details of Alexander's army.
+The main body consisted of six brigades of 3000 men, each united to
+form an irresistible phalanx. Heavily armoured, with a long shield, a
+long sword, and a four-and-twenty foot spear (sarina), the infantryman
+of the phalanx must have possessed a powerful physique to enable him
+to carry himself and his weapons in the field. The depth of the
+phalanx was sixteen ranks, and the first six ranks were so placed that
+they could all bring their spears into action at once. The bulk of
+the phalanx consisted of Macedonians only. The light infantry, bowmen,
+and dartsmen numbered about 6000. A third corps of 6000 men more
+lightly armed, but with longer swords than the phalangists (called
+Hypaspists), were intermediate. The cavalry consisted of three
+classes, light, heavy, and medium, 3000 Macedonian and Thessalian
+horsemen, heavily armoured, forming its main strength. The light
+cavalry were Thracian lancers. The Royal Horse Guard included eight
+Macedonian squadrons of horsemen picked from the best families in
+Greece. It is useful to note that there were mounted infantry and
+artillery (_i.e._ balistai and katapeltai) with the force. More useful
+still to note that none of Alexander's victories were won by the solid
+strength of his phalanx; it was the sweeping and resistless force of
+his cavalry charges (often led by himself) that gained them.
+
+Perhaps the most notable feature about this Greek expedition to India
+was the fact that it was the first military expedition of which there
+is any record which included scientific inquiry as one of its objects.
+Alexander had on his personal staff men of literary if not of
+scientific acquirements, and it is to them doubtless that we owe a
+comparatively clear account of the expedition, although unfortunately
+their records have only been transmitted to us by later authors. If we
+could but recover originals what a host of doubtful points might be
+cleared up! It is true that previous to the date of Alexander one man
+of genius, Xenophon, had kept a record of a magnificent military
+achievement, and had proved himself to be master of literature as he
+was of the science of leading; but Xenophon stands alone, and it may
+be doubted whether, during the many centuries which have passed away
+since the era of Greek supremacy, any practical leader of men has ever
+attained such a splendid position in the ranks of writers of military
+history. Alexander appears, at any rate, to have been no historian,
+but his staff of cultivated literary assistants and men of letters
+included many notable Greek names.
+
+Alexander crossed the Hellespont in the spring of the year 334 B.C.,
+and first encountered the Persians near the Granikos River. The battle
+was decisive although the losses on either side do not appear to have
+been heavy. It was but the augury of what was to follow. The
+subsequent advance of the Macedonian troops southward through the
+lovely land of Iona, and the reduction of Miletus and Helikarnassos,
+brought the first year's campaign to a close. The second year opened
+with the conquest of Pamphyllia and Phrygia, the passage of the Tauros
+ranges being made in winter. On the return of spring he recrossed the
+Tauros and reduced the western hill-tribes of Kilikia. Part of his
+force, meanwhile, had occupied the passes into Syria known as the
+Syrian gates. Within two days march of the Syrian gates the Persian
+hosts again were massed in an open plain under Darius, who had
+advanced from the east, waiting to fall upon the Macedonian troops and
+crush them as they debouched from the defile. Tired of waiting,
+however, Darius moved forward into Kilikia by the Amanian passes to
+look for Alexander, and thus it happened that when Alexander finally
+emerged from the Syrian gates into the plains of Syria he found his
+enemy behind him. He partially retraced his steps and regained the
+pass by midnight, and there from one of the adjoining summits he
+"beheld the Persian watch-fires gleaming far and wide over the plain
+of Issos." The rapidity of Alexander's movements was only equalled by
+the fierce energy of his onslaught when he led his cavalry against the
+unwieldy formations of his Persian enemy. It was his own hand that
+gained the victory both then and afterwards.
+
+There is no more stirring story in all history than this progress of
+the Macedonian force. Step by step it has been traced out from
+Granikos to Issos and from Issos to Arbela; but this is not the place
+to recapitulate that part of the story which applies only to Western
+Asia. It is not until after the final decisive battle at Arbela, when
+Darius fled in hot haste along the south-eastern road to Ecbatana, the
+former capital of Media, and thence in the spring of 330 B.C.
+retreated with a disorganized force and an intriguing court towards
+Baktria, where he hoped to find a refuge with his kinsman Bessos the
+satrap of that province, that we really touch on the subject with
+which we wish to deal in this book, viz. the high-roads to Afghanistan
+in those long past days. Alexander, meanwhile, had received the
+submission of Babylon and restored the temple of Belus, and made
+himself master of a more spacious empire than the world had yet seen.
+It was then that the amazing results of his military success began to
+turn his head. From this point the severe simplicity of the Macedonian
+soldier is exchanged for the luxury, arrogance, and intolerance of the
+despot and conqueror. As Alexander advanced in material strength so
+did he slide down the easy descent of moral retrogression, and whilst
+we can still admire his magnificence as a military leader we find
+little else left to admire about him. From Babylon to the lovely
+valley wherein lies Susa, and from Susa to Persepolis, was more or
+less of a triumphal march in spite of the fierce opposition of the
+satrap Artobaizanes. Of Persepolis we are taught to believe that
+Alexander left nothing behind him but blackened ruins--the result of a
+drunken orgy. During the winter, amidst snow and ice, he subdued the
+Mardians in their mountain fastnesses (for he never left an active foe
+on the flank or rear), and with the return of the sweet Persian spring
+he renewed his hunt after Darius, turning his face to the north and
+east.
+
+There are two high-roads through Persia to the East--one leading to
+Northern Afghanistan and the Oxus regions over Mashad, the other to
+Kirman, Seistan, and Kandahar. Along both of them there now runs a
+telegraph line connecting with the Russian system _via_ Mashad, and
+the Indian system _via_ Kirman. They must always have been
+high-roads--the great trade routes to Central Asia and India. Where
+the orderly line of telegraph poles now stretches in unending
+regularity to mark the dusty highway, there, through more ages than we
+can count, the padded foot of the camel must have worn the road into
+ridges and ruts as he plodded his weary way with loads of merchandise
+and fodder. No geological evolution can have disturbed those tracks
+since the Assyrian kings first drew riches from the East and started
+colonies on the Baktrian highlands; they are now as they were 1000
+years before Christ, and it is only natural that in the ordinary
+course of the same unresting spirit of enterprise the telegraph posts
+will sooner or later cast long shadows over a passing railway. The
+desert regions of Persia separate these two roads: the wide flat
+spaces of sand or "Kavir"; an unending procession of sand-hills on the
+glittering fields of salt-bound swamp. The desert is crossable--it has
+been fairly well exploited--but nothing so far has been found in it to
+justify the expectation of great discoveries of dead and buried
+cities, or traces of a former civilization such as once occupied the
+deserts of Chinese Turkistan.
+
+We may well believe that the central deserts of Persia were the same
+in Alexander's time as they are in ours. Consequently any large
+company of people would have been more or less forced into one or
+other of the well-known routes which the geographical configuration of
+the country presented to them. In his pursuit of Darius Alexander
+followed the northern route to Baktria which strikes a little north of
+east from Ecbatana (Hamadan), and in these days leads direct to Tehran
+the modern capital of Persia. The tragical fate of Darius, and
+Alexander's crocodile grief thereat, belongs to another story. It is
+only when he touches the regions beyond Mashad that he figures as one
+of the earliest explorers of Afghanistan, and certainly the earliest
+of whom we have any certain record. Unfortunately these records say
+very little of the nature of those cities and centres of human life
+which he found on the Afghan border; nor is there any definite
+allusion to be found in the writings of Alexander's historians to the
+colonial occupation of Afghanistan which must have preceded the
+Persian conquests. We have seen that Assyrian influence was strongly
+and continuously felt in India for many centuries after the
+consolidation of the Second Assyrian Empire, and the probability that
+between the Tigris and the Oxus there must have been intercommunication
+from the earliest days of the rise of Assyrian power.
+
+There is one ragged and time-worn city in Afghan Turkistan which
+certainly belongs to the centuries preceding the era of Alexander--it
+was the capital of Baktria, the city of Bessos, and it has been a
+great centre of commerce, a city of pilgrimage, Buddhist and
+Mahomedan, for many a century since. This is Balkh, traditionally
+known as the "Mother of cities," whose foundation is variously
+ascribed to Nimrud, or to "Karomurs the Persian Romulus," Assyrian or
+Persian as the fancy strikes the narrator. Of its extreme antiquity
+there can be no doubt. It is certain that at a very early date it was
+the rival of Ecbatana, of Nineveh, and of Babylon. Bricks with
+inscriptions are said to have been found there some seventy years ago,
+and similar bricks should certainly be there still. Officers of the
+Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission passed through modern Balkh in 1884,
+but no such bricks were found during the very cursory and entirely
+superficial examination which was all that could be made of the place;
+square bricks, without inscription, of the size and quality of those
+which may any day be dug out of the Birs Nimrud at Babylon were
+certainly found, and point to a similarity of construction in a part
+of the ancient walls, which is surely not accidental. Modern Balkh
+consists of about 500 houses of Afghan settlers, a colony of Jews, and
+a small bazaar set in the midst of a waste of ruins and many acres of
+debris. The walls of the city are 6½ or 7 miles in perimeter; in some
+places they are supported by a rampart like the walls of Herat. These,
+of course, are modern, as is the fort and citadel, or Bala Hissar,
+which stands on a mound to the north-east. The green cupola of the
+Masjid Sabz and the arched entrance to the ruined Madrasa testify to
+modern Mahomedan occupation, as do the Top-i-Rustam and the
+Takht-i-Rustam (two ancient topes) to the fervour of religious zeal
+with which its Buddhist inhabitants invested it in the early centuries
+of our era. Balkh awaits its Layard, and not only Balkh, for there are
+mounds and ruins innumerable scattered through the breadth of the
+Balkh plain.
+
+As one approaches Balkh by the Akcha road from the west, one looks
+anxiously around for some outward signs of its extreme antiquity. They
+are not altogether wanting, but time and the mellowing hand of Nature
+have rounded off the edges of the mounds of debris which lie scattered
+over miles of the surrounding country, brushing them over with the
+fresh green of vegetation, and leaving no sign by which to judge of
+the age of them. It is difficult in this part of Asia to get back
+farther than the age of the great destroyer Chenghiz Khan. His time
+has passed by long enough to leave but little evidence that the hand
+of the destroyer was his hand; but probably nothing visible on the
+surface dates back further than the six centuries which have come and
+gone since his Mongol hordes were set loose. Beyond these surface
+ruins and below them there must be cities arranged, as it were, in
+underground flats, one piled on another, strata below strata, till we
+reach the debris of the pre-Semitic days of Western and Central Asia,
+when the Turanian races who supplied Arcadian civilization to
+Mesopotamia peopled the land. Just as we cannot tell exactly when
+Babylon first became a city, so are we confounded by the age of Balkh.
+Babylon belongs to the time when myths were grouped around the
+adventures of a solar hero. Ultimately, however, the Ca-dimissa of the
+Accad became the Bab-ili (the "gate of God") of the Semite. It was
+always the "gate of God," but whether the presiding deity was always
+the Accadian Merodach seems doubtful. Fourteen or fifteen centuries
+before Christ there was probably a Balkh as there was a Babylon; and
+from time immemorial and a date unreckoned Balkh and Babylon must have
+been the two great commercial centres of Asia. What a history to dig
+out when its time shall come!
+
+As the Akcha road leads into the city it passes the outer wall, which
+is about 30 feet high, by a gateway which is frankly nothing more than
+a gap in the partially destroyed wall. It then skirts along, past a
+ziarat gay with red flags, to a gateway in the second wall under the
+citadel leading to an avenue of poplars ending with a garden. Here is
+a pretentious and fairly comfortable caravanserai, facing a court
+which is shaded by magnificent plane trees. At first sight Balkh
+appears to consist of nothing but ruins, but ascending the mound,
+which is surrounded by the dilapidated fort walls, one can see from
+this vantage of about 70 feet how many new buildings are grouped round
+the remnants of the old Mahomedan mosque, of which the dome and one
+great gateway are all that is left.
+
+The plain of the ancient Baktria, of which Balkh represents the
+capital, lies south of the Oxus River, extending east and west for
+some 200 miles parallel to the river after its debouchment from the
+mountains of Badakshan. It is flat, with a scattering of prominences
+and mounds at intervals denoting the site of some village or fortress
+of sufficient antiquity to account for its gradual rise on the
+accumulations of its own debris, probably assisted in the first
+instance by some topographical feature. Looking south it appears to be
+flanked by a flat blue wall of hills, presenting no opportunity for
+escalade or passage through them, a blue level line of counterscarp,
+which is locally known as the Elburz. This great flanking wall is in
+reality very nearly what it appears to be--an unassailable rampart;
+but there are narrow ways intersecting it not easily discernible, and
+through these ways the rivers of the highlands make a rough passage to
+the plains. Wherever they tumble through the mountain gateways and
+make placid tracks in the flats below, they are utilized for
+irrigation purposes, and so there exists a narrow fringe of
+cultivation under the hills, which extends here and there along the
+banks of the rivers out into the open Balkh plain. But these rivers
+never reach the Oxus. This is not merely because the waters of them
+are absorbed in irrigation, but because there is a well-ascertained
+tectonic action at work which is slowly raising the level of the
+plain. Thus it happens that whilst big affluents from the north bring
+rushing streams of much silt-stained water to the great river, no such
+affluents exist on the south. The waters of the Elburz streams are all
+lost in the Oxus plain ere they reach the river. Nevertheless there
+are abundant evidences of the former existence of a vast irrigation
+system drawn from the Oxus. The same lines of level mounds which break
+the horizon of the plains of Babylon are to be seen here, and they
+denote the same thing. They are the containing walls of canals which
+carried the Oxus waters through hundreds of square miles of flat
+plain, where they never can be carried again because of the alteration
+in the respective levels of plain and river. Ten centuries before
+Christ, at least, were the plains of Babylon thus irrigated, and just
+as the arts of Greece and India rose on the ashes of the arts of
+Nineveh, so doubtless was the science of irrigation carried into the
+colonial field of Baktria from Assyria, and thus was the city of
+"Nimrud" surrounded with a wealth of cultivation which rendered it
+famous through Asia for more centuries than we can tell. Whether or no
+the science of irrigation drifted eastwards from the west it seems
+more than probable that the ruined and decayed water-ways which
+intersect the Balkh plain were primarily due to the introduction of
+Syrian labour, and account for the presence in that historic region of
+a people amongst others who claim descent from captive Israelites.
+There are no practical irrigation engineers in the world (excepting
+perhaps the Chinese) who can rival the Afghans in their knowledge of
+how to make water flow where water never flowed before. It is of
+course impossible, on such evidence as we possess as yet, to claim
+more than the appearance of a probability based on such an undeniable
+possibility as this.
+
+After the death of Darius his kinsman Bessos escaped into his own
+satrapy (probably to Balkh), and there assumed the upright tiara, the
+emblem of Persian royalty, taking at the same time the name of
+Artaxerxes.
+
+True to his invariable principle of leaving no unbeaten enemy on the
+flank of his advance, Alexander proceeded to subjugate Hyrkania, from
+which country he was separated by the Elburz (Persian) mountains. He
+crossed those mountains in three divisions by separate passes, and
+effected his purpose with his usual thoroughness and without much
+difficulty. Having crushed the Mardians he shaped a straight course
+eastward to Herat on his way to Baktria, marching by the great highway
+which connects Tehran with Mashad. The country around Mashad (part of
+Khorasan) was a satrapy of Persia under Satibarzanes, who submitted
+without apparent opposition and was confirmed in his government. The
+capital of this province was Artakoana, described as a city situated
+in a plain of exceptional fertility where the main roads from north to
+south and from west to east crossed each other. To no place does such
+a description apply so closely as Herat, and it has consequently been
+assumed that Herat indicates more or less closely the site of the
+ancient city Artakoana, which, indeed, is most probable. But Alexander
+had not long passed that city in his march towards Baktria when the
+news of the revolt of Satibarzanes reached him with the story of the
+loss of the Macedonian escort which had been left with that satrap and
+had been massacred to a man. He immediately turned on his tracks,
+captured Artakoana, routed the satrap, and by way of leaving a
+permanent monument of his victory founded a new city in the
+neighbourhood which he called Alexandreia. This is probably the actual
+origin of the modern Herat, and it is a tribute to the sagacity of the
+Macedonian King that from that time to this it has abundantly proved
+its importance as a strategical and commercial centre.
+
+The forward march to Baktria would have taken the Greek army via
+Kushk, Maruchak, and Maimana along the route which is practically the
+easiest and safest for a large body of troops. It is the route
+followed by the Afghan Boundary Commission in 1885. Alexander,
+however, instead of resuming his march on Baktria, elected to crush
+another of the Persian satraps who was concerned in the murder of
+Darius and who ruled a province to the south of Herat. Crossing the
+Hari Rud he therefore marched straight on Farah (Prophthasia), then
+the capital of Seistan (Drangiana). Farah is considerably to the north
+of any part of the Afghan province of Seistan at present, but it was
+undoubtedly Alexander's objective, and the Drangiana of those times
+was considerably more extensive than the Seistan of to-day--a fact
+which will go some way to account for the exaggerated reports of the
+ancient wealth and fertility of that province. Farah is a great
+agricultural centre still, and would add enormously to the restricted
+cultivable area of Seistan, even if one allows for the effects of sand
+encroachment in that unpleasant region. Then occurred the plot against
+Alexander's life which was detected at Prophthasia, and the consequent
+torture and death of Philotas, who probably had no part in it. It is
+one of the many actions of Alexander's life which reveals the ferocity
+of the barbarian beneath the genius of the soldier. It was but the
+barbarity of his age--a barbarity for the matter of that which lasted
+in England till the time of the Georges, and which still survives in
+Afghanistan. After a halt in Seistan, probably whilst waiting for
+reinforcements, he struck north-eastwards again for Baktria. As it is
+generally assumed that the Macedonian force now followed the Helmund
+valley route to the Paropamisos, _i.e._ the Hindu Kush and its
+extension westwards, it is as well to consider what sort of a country
+it is that forms the basin of Helmund.
+
+It is worth remarking in the first place that the Ariaspian
+inhabitants of the Helmund valley had received from Cyrus the name of
+Euergetai, or benefactors, because they had assisted him at a time
+when he had been in great difficulties. This is enough to satisfy us
+that the district was known and had been traversed by a military force
+long before Alexander entered it, and that he was making no
+venturesome advance in ignorance of what lay before him. The valley of
+the Helmund (or Etymander) could not have differed greatly in its
+geographical features 300 years before Christ from its present
+characteristics. The Helmund of the Seistan basin then occupied a
+different channel to its present outlets into the Seistan swamps. How
+different it is difficult to tell, for it has frequently changed its
+course within historic times, silting up its bed and striking out a
+new channel for itself, splitting into a number of streams and
+wandering uncontrolled in loops or curves over the face of the flat
+alluvial plains to which it brought fertility and wealth. It has been
+a perpetual source of political discussion as a boundary between
+Afghanistan and Persia, and it has altered the face of the land so
+extensively and so often that there is nothing in ancient history
+referring to the vast extent of agricultural wealth and the immensity
+of its population which can be proved to be impossible, although it
+seems likely enough that false inferences have been drawn from the
+widespread area of ruined and deserted towns and villages which are
+still to be seen and may almost be counted. It is not only that the
+water-supply and facilities for irrigation, by shifting their
+geographical position, have carried with them the potentialities for
+cultivation. Other forces of Nature which seem to be set loose on
+Seistan with peculiar virulence and activity have also been at work.
+The sweeping blasts of the north-west wind, which rage through this
+part of Asia with a strength and persistence unknown in regions more
+protected by topographical features, carrying with them vast volumes
+of sand and surface detritus, piling up smooth slopes to the windward
+side of every obstruction, smoothing off the rough angles of the gaunt
+bones of departed buildings, and sometimes positively wearing them
+away by the force of attrition, play an important part in the
+kaleidoscopic changes of Seistan landscape. Villages that are
+flourishing one year may be sand-buried the next. Channels that now
+run free with crop-raising water may be choked in a month, and all
+the while the great Helmund, curving northward in its course, pours
+down its steady volume of silt from the highlands, carrying tons of
+detritus into open plains where it is spread out, sun-baked, dried,
+wind-blown, and swirled back again to the southward in everlasting
+movement. Thus it is that the evidence of hundreds of square miles of
+ruins is no direct evidence of an immense population at any one
+period. Nor can we say of this great alluvial basin, which is by turns
+a smiling oasis, a pestilential swamp, a huge spread of populous
+villages, or a howling desert smitten with a wind which becomes a
+curse and afflicted with many of the pests and plagues of ancient
+Egypt, that at any one period of its history more than another it
+deserved the appellation of the "granary of Asia." The Helmund of
+Seistan, however, is quite a different Helmund from the same river
+nearer its source. Its character changes from the point where it makes
+its great bend northward towards its final exit into the lagoons and
+swamps of the Hamún. At Chaharburjak, where the high-road to Seistan
+from the south crosses the river into Afghan territory, the Helmund is
+a wide rippling stream (when not in flood), distinguished, if
+anything, for the clearness of its waters. From this point eastwards
+it parts two deserts. To the north the great, flat, windswept
+Dasht-i-Margo, about as desolate and arid a region as fancy could
+depict. To the south the desert of Baluchistan, by no means so
+absolutely devoid of interest, with its marshalled sand-dunes
+answering to the processes of the winds, its isolated but picturesque
+peaks like islands in a sand sea, a few green spots here and there
+showing where water oozes out from the buried feet of the rocky hills,
+decorated with bunches of flowering tamarisk and perchance a palm or
+two--a modified desert, but still a desert. Between the two deserts is
+the Helmund, running in a cliff-sided trough which is never more than
+a mile or two wide, intensely green and bright in the grass and crop
+season, with flourishing villages at reasonable intervals and a
+high-road connecting them from which can be counted that strange
+multitude of departed cities of the old Kaiani Kingdom, which are
+marked by a ragged crop of ruins still upstanding in a weird sort of
+procession. Sometimes the high-road sweeps right into the midst of a
+roofless palace, through the very walls of the ancient building, and
+outside may be found spaces brushed clean by the wind leaving masses
+of pottery, glass, and other common debris exposed.
+
+One constant surprise to modern explorers is the extraordinary
+quantity of domestic crockery the remains of which surround old
+eastern cities; and almost yet more of a surprise it is how far and
+how widespread are certain easily recognized specialities, such, for
+instance, as the so-called "celadon." Chips and fragments of celadon
+are to be found from Babylon to Seistan, from Seistan to India, in
+Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Siam. In Siam are all that remains of
+what were probably the original furnaces. Every shower of rain that
+falls in this extended cemetery of crumbling monuments reveals small
+treasures in the way of rings, coins, seals, etc. Much of the
+cultivation and of the extent of population indicated by the ruins in
+this narrow valley must have existed in the times of Alexander of
+Macedon and the Ariaspians, and we find no difficulty in accepting the
+Helmund (or Etymander) as the line of route which he followed for a
+certain distance. Indeed, there is much more than a passing
+probability that he followed the line which gave him water and
+supplies as far as the junction of the Argandab and Helmund, for the
+problem of crossing the desert from the Helmund valley to Nushki and
+the cultivated districts of Kalat is a serious one--one, indeed, which
+gave the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commissioners much anxious thought. But
+beyond the Argandab junction it is extremely improbable that Alexander
+followed the Helmund. The Helmund and its surroundings have been
+carefully surveyed from this point through the turbulent districts of
+Zamindawar for 100 miles or more, and again from its source near Kabul
+for some fifty miles of its downward flow. The Zamindawar section of
+the river affords an open road, although the river, as we follow it
+upward, gradually becomes enclosed in comparatively narrow (yet still
+fertile) valleys, and rapidly assumes the character of a mountain
+stream. North of Zamindawar and south of its exit from the Koh-i-Baba
+mountain system to the west of Kabul, no modern explorer has ever seen
+the Helmund. It there passes through the Hazara highlands, and
+although we have not penetrated that rugged plateau we know very well
+its character by repute, and we have seen similar country to the west
+where dwell cognate tribes--the Taimani and the Firozkohi. This upland
+basin of the Helmund to the west of Kabul and Ghazni, this cradle of a
+hundred affluents pouring down ice-cold water to the river, is but a
+huge extension southwards of the Hindu Kush, and from it emerge many
+of the great rivers of Afghanistan. To the north the rivers of Balkh
+and Khulm take a hurried start for the Oxus plains. Westward the Hari
+Rud streams off to Herat. South-westward extends the long curving line
+of the Helmund, and eastward flow the young branches of the Kabul. A
+rugged mountain mass called the Koh-i-Baba, the lineal continuation of
+the Hindu Kush, dominates the rolling plateau from the north and
+continues westward in an almost unbroken wall to the Band-i-Baian
+looking down into the narrow Hari Rud valley. It is a part of the
+continental divide of Asia, high, rugged, desolate, and almost
+pathless.
+
+No matter from which side the toiler of the mountains approaches this
+elevated and desolate region, whether emerging from the Herat
+drainage he essays to reach Kabul, or from the small affluents of the
+Helmund he strikes for the one gap which exists between the Hindu Kush
+and the Koh-i-Baba which will lead him to Balkh and Afghan Turkistan,
+he will have enormous difficulties to encounter. It can be done,
+truly, but only with the pains and penalties of high mountaineering
+attached. Taken as a whole, the highest uplands above the sources of
+the minor rivers which water the bright and fertile valleys of Ghur,
+Zamindawar, and Farah may be described much as one would describe
+Tibet--a rolling, heaving, desolate tableland, wrinkled and
+intersected by narrow mountain ranges, whose peaks run to 13,000 and
+14,000 feet in altitude, enclosing between them restricted spaces of
+pasture land. The Mongol population, who claim to have been introduced
+as military settlers by Chenghiz Khan, live a life of hard privation.
+They leave their barren wastes which the wind wipes clear of any tree
+growth, for the lower valleys in the winter months, merely resorting
+to them in the time of summer pasturage. The winter is long and
+severe. It is not the altitude alone which is accountable for its
+severity; it is the geographical position of this Central Afghan
+upheaval which exposes it to the full blast of the ice-borne northern
+winds which, sweeping across Turkistan with destructive energy, reduce
+the atmosphere of Seistan to a sand-laden fog, and penetrate even to
+the valley of the Indus where for days together they wrap the whole
+landscape in a dusty haze. For many months the Hazara highlands are
+buried under successive sheets of snowdrift. In summer, like the
+Pamirs, they emerge from their winter's sleep and become a succession
+of grass-covered downs. There are then open ways across them, and
+travellers may pass by many recognizable tracks. But in winter they
+are impassable to man and beast. Yet we are asked to believe that
+Alexander, who had the best of guides in his pay, and who knew the
+highways and byways of Asia as well, if not better, than they are
+known now to any military authorities, took his army _in winter_ up
+the Helmund valley till it struck its sources somewhere under the
+Koh-i-Baba!
+
+There was no madness in Alexander's methods. His withdrawal from India
+through the defiles and deserts of Makran was most venturesome and
+most disastrous, but he had a distinct object to gain by the attempt
+to pass into Persia that way. Here there was no object. The Helmund
+route does not, and did not, lead directly to his objective, Baktria,
+and there was another high-road always open, which must have been as
+well known then as, indeed, it is well known to-day. There can be very
+little doubt that he followed the Argandab to the neighbourhood of the
+modern Kandahar (in Arachosia), and from Kandahar to Kabul he took the
+same historic straight high-road which was followed by a later
+General (Lord Roberts) when he marched from Kabul to Kandahar. This
+would give him quite difficulties enough in winter to account for
+Arrian's story of cold and privations. It would lead him direct to the
+plains of the Kohistan north of Kabul, where there must have ever been
+the opportunity of collecting supplies for his force, and where,
+separated from him by the ridges of the Hindu Kush, were planted those
+Greek colonies of Darius Hystaspes whose assistance might prove
+invaluable to his onward movement. It was here, at any rate, not far
+from the picturesque village of Charikar, that he founded that city of
+Alexandreia, the remains of which appear to have been recently
+disturbed by the Amir, and to which we shall make further reference.
+Military text-books still speak of the Unai, or Bamian, as a pass
+which was traversed by the Greeks. It is most improbable that they
+ever crossed the Hindu Kush that way, and the question obviously
+arises in connection with this theory of his march--How was it
+possible for Alexander to spend the rest of the winter near the
+sources of the Helmund? It was not possible. His next step was to
+cross the Hindu Kush. This he attempted with difficulty in the spring,
+and reached a fertile country in fifteen days. He might have crossed
+by the Kaoshan Pass (which local tradition assigns as the pass which
+he really selected), or by the Panjshir, which is longer, but in some
+respects easier. The Panjshir is the pass usually adopted for the
+passage of large bodies of troops by the Afghans themselves, and there
+is reported to be, in these days, a well-engineered Khafila road,
+which is kept open by forced labour in snow-time, connecting Kabul
+with Andarab by this route. The pass of the Panjshir is about 11,600
+feet high, whereas the Kaoshan, though straighter, is 14,300.
+Considering the slow rate of movement (fifteen days) it is more
+probable that he took the easier route _via_ Panjshir. In either case
+he would reach the beautiful and fertile valley of Andarab, and from
+that base he could move freely into Baktria. The country had been
+ravaged and wasted by Bessos, but that did not delay Alexander. The
+chief cities of Baktria surrendered without opposition, and he pushed
+forward to the Oxus in his pursuit of Bessos.
+
+All this would be more interesting if we could trace the route more
+closely which was followed to the Oxus. We know, however, that for
+previous centuries Balkh had been the capital city, the great trade
+emporium of all that region. There is therefore no difficulty in
+accepting Balkh as the Greek Baktria. Between Balkh and the Oxus the
+plains are strewn with ruins, some of them of vast extent, whilst
+other evidences of former townships are to be found about Khulm and
+Tashkurghan farther to the east, and on the direct route from Andarab
+to the Oxus. Bessos had retreated to Sogdiana of which Marakanda was
+capital, and the straight road to Marakanda (Samarkand) crosses the
+Oxus at Kilif. The description of the river Oxus at that point tallies
+fairly well with Arrian's account of it. It is deep and rapid, and the
+hill fortress of Kilif on the right bank, and of Dev Kala and other
+isolated rocky hills on the left, hedges in the river to a channel
+which cannot have changed through long ages. Elsewhere the Oxus is
+peculiarly liable to shift its channel, and has done so from time to
+time, forming new islands, taking fresh curves, and actually changing
+its destination from the Caspian to the Aral Sea; but at Kilif it must
+have ever been deep and rapid, covering a breadth of about
+three-quarters of a mile. Across the breadth nowadays is about as
+peculiar a ferry as was ever devised. Long, shallow, flat-bottomed
+boats, square as to bow and stern, are towed from side to side of the
+river by swimming horses. This would not be a matter of so much
+surprise if the horses employed for the purpose were powerful animals
+from fourteen to fifteen hands in height, but the remarkable feature
+about the Kilif stud is the diminutive and ragged crew of underfed
+ponies which it produces. And yet two, or even one, of these
+inefficient-looking little animals will tow across a barge of twenty
+feet or so in length, crowded with weighty bales of Bokhara
+merchandise, and filled as to interstices with its owners and their
+servants. The ponies are attached to outriggers with a strap from a
+surcingle or belly-band buckled to their backs, thus supporting their
+weight in the water at the same time that it takes the haulage. With
+their heads just above stream, snorting and blowing, they swim with
+measured strokes and tow the boat (advancing diagonally in crab-like
+fashion to meet the current) straight across the river. The inadequacy
+of the means to the end is the first thing which strikes the beholder,
+but he is, however, rapidly convinced of the extraordinary hauling
+capacity of a swimming horse when properly trained. Alexander crossed
+on rafts supported on skins stuffed with straw, and it took him five
+days to cross his force in this primitive fashion.
+
+On the right bank of the river, Bessos was given up by traitors in his
+camp and was sent south to "Zariaspa" to await his doom. Zariaspa is
+identified with Balkh by some authorities, but the name is probably a
+variant on Adraspa which almost certainly was Andarab. Andarab was the
+fertile and promising district into which Alexander descended from the
+slopes of the Hindu Kush, by whichever route (Kaoshan or Panjshir) he
+crossed those mountains. Directly on the route between Andarab and
+Balkh is a minor province called Baglan, and a little less than
+half-way (after crossing a local pass of no great significance called
+Kotal Murgh) is a village or township, nowadays called Zardaspan,
+which is sufficiently like Zariaspa to suggest an identity which is at
+least plausible though it may be deceptive. But it is the fact that
+the town of Baraki which lies farther on the same route is on the
+outskirts of Baglan; and in this connection a reference to the theory
+put forward by Dr. Bellew in his _Ethnography of Afghanistan_
+(_Asiatic Quarterly_, October 1891) is at least interesting. He points
+out that the captive Greeks who were transported in the sixth century
+B.C. by Darius Hystaspes from the Lybian Barké to Baktrian territory
+were still occupying a village called Barké in the time of Herodotus.
+A century later again during the Macedonian campaign, Kyrenes, or
+Kyreneans, existed in that region according to Arrian, and it is
+difficult to account for them in that part of Asia unless they were
+the descendants of those same exiles from Barké, a colony of Kyrene
+whom Darius originally transported to Baktria. They were in possession
+of the Kaoshan Pass too, and might have rendered very effective aid to
+Alexander during his passage across the mountains. Another body of
+Greek colonists are recorded to have been settled in this same part of
+Baktria by Xerxes after his flight from Greece, namely, the
+Brankhidai, whose original settlement appears to have been in Andarab.
+As we shall see later, people from Greece or from Grecian colonies
+undoubtedly drifted across Asia to Northern Afghanistan in even
+earlier times than those of the Persian Empire. There can, indeed, be
+very little doubt that Ariaspa, or Andarab, was an important position
+for the Greeks to occupy from its strategic value as commanding the
+most practicable of the Hindu Kush passes.
+
+When Bessos, therefore, was deported across the Oxus to Zariaspa it is
+probable that he was sent to Andarab; and here too Alexander returned
+to winter towards the close of the year 329 B.C. after his
+extraordinary success in Sogdia (Bokhara). With his trans-Oxus
+campaign we have nothing to do; it is another history, and deeply
+interesting as it would be to follow it in detail we must return to
+Afghanistan. Nothing in all his Eastern campaign is more remarkable
+than the facility with which Alexander recruited his army from Greece
+during its progress. Gaps in the ranks were constantly filled up, and
+the fighting strength of his force maintained at a high level. His
+army was reorganized during the winter, and with the returning spring
+he again started expeditions across the Oxus, in the course of which
+he captured Roxana, the most beautiful woman in Asia (after the wife
+of Darius) and married her. The particular fortress which held this
+charming lady was perched on the top of an isolated craggy hill, and
+the story of its capture is as thrilling as that of Aornos
+subsequently. But, like Aornos, it is difficult to locate it. It might
+have been Dev Kala, or Kilif, or any of a dozen such rock-crowned
+hills which border the Oxus River. It is about this period that we
+read first of his encounters with the Skythic races of Central Asia,
+who gave him great trouble at the time and who subsequently subverted
+the Greek power in Baktria altogether. In the spring of 327 B.C. he
+moved out to invade a mountain district to the "East of Baktria"
+(probably modern Badakshan), and subdued the hill-tribes under
+Khorienes whom he confirmed in the government of his own country. It
+was summer ere he set out finally from Baktria on his Indian
+expedition. He recrossed the Paropamisos in ten days and halted at
+Alexandreia near Charikar. Then commences the first recorded
+expedition of the Kabul River basin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+GREEK EXPLORATION--ALEXANDER--THE KABUL VALLEY TO THE INDUS
+
+
+Alexander passed the next winter at the city of his own founding,
+Alexandreia, in the Koh Daman to the north of Kabul. And from thence
+in two divisions he started for the Indus, sending the main body of
+his troops by the most direct route, with Taxila (the capital of the
+Upper Punjab) for its objective, and himself with lighter brigades
+specially organized to subdue certain tribes on the northern flank of
+the route who certainly would imperil the security of his line of
+communication if left alone. This was his invariable custom, and it
+was greatly owing to the completeness with which these flanking
+expeditions were carried out that he was able to keep open his
+connection with Greece. There have been discussions as to the route
+which he followed. Hyphæstion, in command of the main body,
+undoubtedly followed the main route which would take him most directly
+to the plains of the Punjab, which route is sufficiently well
+indicated in these days as the "Khaibar." We hear very little
+about his march eastwards.
+
+  [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF ALEXANDER'S ROUTE]
+
+In the days preceding the use of fire-arms the march of a body of
+troops through defiles such as the Khurd Kabul or the Jagdallak was
+comparatively simple. So far from such defiles serving as traps
+wherein to catch an enemy unawares and destroy him from the cliffs and
+hills on either side, these same cliffs and hills served rather as a
+protection. The mere rolling down of stones would not do much
+mischief, even if they could be rolled down effectively, which is not
+usually the case; and in hand-to-hand encounters the tribespeople were
+no match for the armoured Greeks. Alexander's operations would
+preserve his force from molestation on its northern flank, and the
+rugged ridges and spread of desolate hill-slopes presented by the
+Safed Koh and other ranges on the south has never afforded suitable
+ground for the collection of fighting bodies of men in any great
+strength. General Stewart marched his force from Kabul to Peshawur in
+1880 with his southern flank similarly unprotected with the same
+successful result, his movements being so timed as to give no
+opportunity for a gathering of the Ghilzai clans. On the northern
+flank of the Khaibar route, however, there had been large tribal
+settlements from the very beginning of things, and it was most
+important that these outliers should feel the weight of Alexander's
+mailed fist if the road between Kabul and the Indus were ever to be
+made secure. He accordingly directed his attention to a more northerly
+route to India which would bring him into contact with the Aspasians,
+Gauraians, and Assakenians.
+
+We need not follow the ethnologists who identify these people with
+certain tribes now existing with analogous names. There may very
+possibly be remnants of them still, but they are not to be identified.
+They obviously occupied the open cultivable valleys and alluvial
+spaces which are interspersed amongst the mountains of the Kabul River
+basin, the Kohistan and Kafiristan of modern maps. The Gauraians
+certainly were the people of the Panjkora valley, and there is no
+difficulty in assigning to the Aspasians the first great fertile tract
+of open valley which would be encountered on the way eastwards. This
+is Laghman (or Lamghan) with its noble reach of the Kabul River
+meeting a snow-fed affluent, the Alingar, from the Kafir hills. There
+is, indeed, no geographical alternative. Similarly with even a cursory
+knowledge of the actual geographical conformation of the country, it
+is impossible to imagine that Alexander would choose any other route
+from Alexandreia towards Laghman than that which carries him past
+Kabul. The Koh Daman (the skirts of the hills) which intervene between
+Alexandreia (or Bagram) and Kabul is one of the gardens of
+Afghanistan. There one may wander in the sweet springtide amidst the
+curves and folds of an undulating land, neither hill nor plain, with
+the scent of the flowering willow in the air, and the rankness of a
+spring growth of flower and grass bordering narrow runlets and
+irrigation channels; an unwinking blue above and a varied carpet
+beneath, whilst the song of the labourer rises from fields and
+orchards. Westward are the craggy outlines of Paghman (a noble
+offshoot of the Hindu Kush hiding the loveliness of the Ghorband
+valley behind it), down whose scarred and wrinkled ribs slide
+waterfalls and streams to gladden the plain. Piled up on steep and
+broken banks from the very foot of the mountains are scattered
+white-walled villages, and it is here that you may find later in the
+year the best fruit in Afghanistan.
+
+In November a gentle haze rests in soft indecision upon the
+dust-coloured landscape--heavier and bluer over the low-lying fields
+from which all vegetation has been lifted, lighter and edged with
+filmy skirts where it rises from the sun-warmed brow of the hills. It
+is a different world from the world of spring--all utterly
+sad-coloured and dust-laden; but it is then that the troops and
+strings of fruit-laden donkeys take their leisurely way towards the
+city, where are open shops facing the narrow shadowed streets with
+golden bulwarks of fruit piled from floor to roof. A narrow band of
+rugged hills shuts off this lovely plain on the east from the only
+valley route which could possibly present itself to an inexperienced
+eye as an outlet from the Charikar region to the Kabul River bed, ere
+it is lost in the dark defiles leading to the Laghman valley. The
+hills are red in the waning light, and when the snow first lays its
+lacework shroud over them in network patches they are inexpressibly
+beautiful. But they are also inexpressibly rough and impracticable,
+and the valley beyond is but a walled-in boulder-strewn trough, which
+no general in his senses would select for a military high-road.
+Alexander certainly did not march that way; he went to where Kabul is,
+and there, at the city of Nikaia, he made sacrifice to the goddess
+Athena. If Nikaia was not the modern Kabul it must have been very near
+it. Does not Nonnus tell us that it was a stone city near a lake?
+There is but one lake in the Kabul valley, and it is that at Wazirabad
+close to the city. It is usual to regard Nonnus as a most
+untrustworthy authority, but here for once he seems to have wandered
+into the straight and narrow path of truth. So far there can be no
+reasonable doubt about the direction of this great Pioneer's
+explorations in Afghanistan. Beyond this, once again, we prefer to
+trust to the known geographical distribution of hill and valley, and
+the opportunities presented by physical features of the country,
+rather than to any doubtful resemblance between ancient and modern
+place, or tribal, names, for determining the successive actions of the
+expedition. After the summons to Taxiles, chief of Taxila (itself the
+chief city of the Upper Punjab), and the satisfactory reply thereto,
+there was nothing to disturb the even course of Alexander's onward
+movements but the activity of the mountain tribespeople who flanked
+the line of route.
+
+The valley of Laghman must always have been a populous valley. From
+the north the snow-capped peaks of Kafiristan look down upon it, and
+from among the forest-clad valleys at the foot of these peaks two
+important river systems take their rise, the Alingar and the Alishang,
+which, uniting, join the Kabul River in the flat plain, where villages
+now crowd in and dispute each acre of productive soil. It is difficult
+to reach the Laghman valley from the west. The defiles of the Kabul
+River are here impassable, but they can be turned by mountain routes,
+and Alexander's force, which included the Hyspaspists, who were
+comparatively lightly armed, with the archers, the "companion" cavalry
+and the lancers, was evidently picked for mountain warfare. The
+heavier brigades were with Hyphæstion who struck out by the
+straightest route for Peukelaotis, which has been identified with an
+ancient site about 17 miles to the north-east of Peshawur on the
+eastern bank of the Swat River, and was then the capital of the
+ancient Gandhara. We are told that Alexander's route was rugged and
+hilly, and lay along the course of the river called Khoes. Rugged and
+hilly it certainly was, but the Khoes presents a difficulty. He could
+not actually follow the course of the Kabul River (Kophen) from the
+Kabul plain because of the defiles, but he could have followed that
+river below Butkak to the western entrance of the Laghman valley where
+it unites with the Alingar, or Kao, River. It is impossible to admit
+that he reached the Kao River after crossing the Kohistan and
+Kafiristan, and then descended that river to its junction with the
+Kabul. No cavalry could have performed such a feat. Geographical
+conditions compel us to assume that he followed the Kabul River, which
+is sometimes called Kao above the junction of the Kao River.
+
+It is far more impossible to identify the actual sites of Alexander's
+first military engagements than it is to say, for instance, at this
+period of history, where Cæsar landed in Great Britain, as we have no
+means of making exhaustive local inquiries; but subsequent history
+clearly indicates that his next step after settling the Laghman tribes
+was to push on to the valley of the Choaspes, or Kunar. It was in the
+Kunar valley that he found and defeated the chief of the Aspasians.
+The Kunar River is by far the most important of the northern
+tributaries of the Kabul. It rises under the Pamirs and is otherwise
+known as the Chitral River. The Kunar valley is amongst the most
+lovely of the many lovely valleys of Afghanistan. Flanked by the
+snowy-capped mountains of Kashmund on the west, and the long level
+water parting which divides it from Bajaor and the Panjkora drainage
+on the east, it appears, as one enters it from Jalalabad, to be hemmed
+in and constricted. The gates of it are indeed somewhat narrow, but it
+widens out northward, where the ridges of the lofty Kashmund tail off
+into low altitudes of sweeping foothills a few miles above the
+entrance, and here offer opportunity for an easy pass across the
+divide from the west into the valley. This is a link in the oldest and
+probably the best trodden route from Kabul to the Punjab, and it has
+no part with the Khaibar. It links together these northern valleys of
+Laghman, Kunar, and Lundai (_i.e._ the Panjkora and Swat united) by a
+road north of the Kabul, finally passing southwards into the plains
+chequered by the river network above Peshawur.
+
+The lower Kunar valley in the early autumn is passing beautiful. Down
+the tawny plain and backed by purple hills the river winds its way,
+reflecting the azure sky with pure turquoise colour--the opaque blue
+of silted water--blinking and winking with tiny sun shafts, and
+running emerald green at the edges. Sharp perpendicular columns of
+black break the landscape in ordered groups. These are the cypresses
+which still adorn in stately rows the archaic gardens of townlets
+which once were townships. The clustering villages are thick in some
+parts--so thick that they jostle each other continuously. There is
+nothing of the drab Punjab about these villages. They are
+white-walled and outwardly clean, and in at least one ancient garden
+there is a fair imitation of a Kashmir pavilion set at the end of a
+white eye-blinding pathway, leading straight and stiff between rows of
+cypress, and blotched in spring with inky splashes of fallen
+mulberries. The scent of orange blossoms was around when we were
+there, luscious and overpowering. It was the oppressive atmosphere of
+the typical, sensuous East, and the free, fresh air from the river
+outside the mud walls of that jealously-guarded estate was greatly
+refreshing when we climbed out of the gardens. All this part of the
+river must have been attractive to settlers even in Alexander's time,
+and it requires no effort of imagination to suppose that it was here
+that his second series of actions took place. Higher up the river the
+valley closes, until, long before Chitral is reached, it narrows
+exceedingly. Here, in the north, the northern winds rage down the
+funnel with bitter fury and make life burdensome. The villages take to
+the hill-slopes or cluster in patches on the flat terraces at their
+foot. The revetted wall of small hillside fields outline the spurs in
+continuous bands of pasture, and at intervals quaint colonies of huts
+cling to the hills and seem ready to slither down into the wild rush
+of the river below. Such as a whole is the Kunar valley, which,
+centuries after Alexander had passed across it, was occupied by Kafir
+tribes who may have succeeded the Aspasian peoples, or who may indeed
+represent them. All the wild mountain districts west of the Kunar are
+held by Kafirs still, and there is nothing remarkable in the fact
+(which we shall see later on) that just to the east of the Kunar
+valley Alexander found a people claiming the same origin there that
+the Kafirs of Kashmund and Bashgol claim now.
+
+It was during the fighting in the Kunar valley that we hear so much of
+that brilliant young leader Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, who was then
+shaping his career for a Royal destiny in Egypt. With all the
+thrilling incidents of the actual combat we have no space to deal, and
+much as they would serve to lighten the prosaic tale of the progress
+of Alexander's explorations, we must reluctantly leave them to Arrian
+and the Greek historians. We are told that after the Kunar valley
+action Alexander crossed the mountains and came to a city at their
+base called Arigaion. Assuming that he crossed the Kunar watershed by
+the Spinasuka Pass, which leads direct from Pashat (the present
+capital of Kunar) into Bajaor, he would be close to Nawagai, the
+present chief town of Bajaor. Arigaion would therefore be not far from
+Nawagai. The place was burnt down; but recognizing the strategic
+importance of the position, he left Krateros to fortify it and make it
+the residence not only of such tribespeople as chose to return to
+their houses, but also of such of his own soldiers as were unfit for
+further service. This seems to have been his invariable custom, and
+accounts for the traditions of Greek origin which we still find so
+common in the north-western borderland of India. The story of this
+part of his expedition reads almost as if it were journalistic. Then,
+as now, the tribesmen took to the hills. Then, as now, their position
+and approximate numbers could be ascertained by their camp-fires at
+night. Ptolemy was intelligence officer and conducted the
+reconnaissance, and on his report the plan of attack was arranged.
+This was probably the most considerable action fought by Alexander in
+the hills north of India. The conflict was sharp but decisive, and the
+Aspasians, who had taken up their position on a hill, were utterly
+routed. According to Ptolemy 40,000 prisoners and 230,000 oxen were
+taken, and the fact that the pick of the oxen were sent to Macedonia
+to improve the breed there shows how complete was the line of
+communication between Greece and Upper India. The next tribe to be
+dealt with were the Assakenians, and to reach them it was necessary to
+cross the Gauraios, or Panjkora, which was deep, swift as to current,
+and full of boulders. As we find no mention in Arrian's history of the
+passage of the Suastos (Swat River) following on that of the Gauraios,
+we must conclude that Alexander crossed the Panjkora _below_ its
+junction with the Swat, where the river being much enclosed by hills
+would certainly afford a most difficult passage. There are other
+reasons which tend to confirm this view.
+
+The next important action which took place was the siege and capture
+of the city called Massaga, which was only taken after four days'
+severe fighting, during which Alexander was wounded in the foot by an
+arrow. M'Crindle[1] quotes the various names given in Sanscrit and
+Latin literature, and agrees with Rennel in adopting the site of
+Mashanagar, mentioned by the Emperor Baber in his memoirs as lying two
+marches from Bajaor on the river Swat, as representing Massaga. M.
+Court heard from the Yasufzais of Swat that there was a place called
+by the double name of Mashkine and Massanagar 24 miles from Bajaor. It
+is not to be found now, but there is in the survey maps a place on the
+Swat River about that distance from Nawagai (the chief town in Bajaor)
+called Matkanai, close to the Malakand Pass, and this is no doubt the
+place referred to. It is very difficult even in these days to get a
+really authoritative spelling for place-names beyond, or even within,
+the British Indian border; and as these surveys were made during the
+progress of the Tirah expedition when the whole country was armed,
+such information as could be obtained was often unusually sketchy. If
+this is the site of Massaga it would be directly on the line of
+Alexander's route from Nawagai eastwards, as he rounded the spurs of
+the Koh-i-Mor which he left to the north of him, and struck the
+Panjkora some miles below its junction with the Swat. There can be
+little doubt that it was near this spot that the historic siege took
+place. His next objective were two cities called Ora and Bazira, which
+were obviously close together and interdependent. Cunningham places
+the position of Bazira, at the town of Rustam (on the Kalapani River),
+which is itself built on a very extensive old mound and represents the
+former site of a town called Bazar. Rustam stands midway between the
+Swat and Indus, and must always have been an important trade centre
+between the rich valley of Swat and the towns of the Indus. Ora may
+possibly be represented by the modern Bazar which is close by.
+Geographically this is the most probable solution of the problem of
+Alexander's movements, there being direct connection with the Swat
+valley through Rustam which is not to be found farther north.
+Alexander would have to cross the Malakand from the Swat valley to the
+Indus plains, but would encounter no further obstacles if he moved on
+this route. Bazira made a fair show of resistance, but the usual Greek
+tactics of drawing the enemy out into the plains was resorted to by
+Koenos with a certain amount of success; and when Ora fell before
+Alexander, the full military strength of Bazira dispersed and fled for
+refuge to the rock Aornos.
+
+So far we have followed this Greek expedition into regions which are
+beyond the limits of modern Afghanistan, but the new geographical
+detail acquired during the most recent of our frontier campaigns
+enables new arguments to be adduced in favour of old theories (or the
+reverse), and this departure from the strict political boundaries of
+our subject leads us to regions which are at any rate historically and
+strategically connected with it. With Aornos, however, our excursion
+into Indian fields will terminate. Round about Aornos historical
+controversy has ebbed and flowed for nearly a century, and it is not
+my intention to add much to the literature which already concerns
+itself with that doubtful locality. I believe, however, that it will
+be some time yet before the last word is said about Aornos. Of all the
+positions assigned to that marvellous feat of arms performed by the
+Greek force, that which was advanced by the late General Sir James
+Abbott in 1854 is the most attractive--so attractive, indeed, that it
+is hard to surrender it. The discrepant accounts of the capture of the
+famous "rock" given by Arrian (from the accounts of Ptolemy, one of
+the chief actors in the scene), Curtius, Diodoros, and Strabo
+obviously deal with a mountain position of considerable extent, where
+was a flattish summit on which cavalry could act, and the base of it
+was washed by the Indus. All, however, write as if it were an isolated
+mountain with a definite circuit of, according to Arrian, 23 miles and
+a height of 6200 feet (according to Diodoros of 12 miles and over 9000
+feet). The "rock" was situated near the city of Embolina, which we
+know to have been on the Indus and which is probably to be identified
+more or less with the modern town of Amb. The mountain was
+forest-covered, with good soil and water springs. It was precipitous
+towards the Indus, yet "not so steep but that 220 horse and war
+engines were taken up to the summit," all of which Sir James Abbott
+finds compatible with the hill Mahaban which is close to Amb, and
+answers all descriptions excepting that of isolation, for it is but a
+lofty spur of the dividing ridge between the Chumla, an affluent of
+the Buner River, and the lower Mada Khel hills, culminating in a peak
+overlooking the Indus from a height of 7320 feet. The geographical
+situation is precisely such as we should expect under the
+circumstances. The tribespeople driven from Bazira (assuming Bazira to
+be near Rustam) following the usual methods of the mountaineers of the
+Indian frontier, would retreat to higher and more inaccessible
+fastnesses in their rugged hills. There is but one way open from
+Rustam towards the Indus offering them the chance of safety from
+pursuit, and undoubtedly they followed that track. It leads up to the
+great divide north of them and then descends into the Chumla valley
+leading to that of Buner, and the hills which were to prove their
+salvation might well be those flanking the Chumla on the south, rising
+as they do to ever higher altitudes as they approach the Indus. This,
+in fact, is Mahaban. By all the rules of Native strategy in Northern
+India this is precisely the position which they would take up.
+
+Aornos appears to have been a kind of generic name with the Greeks,
+applied to mountain positions of a certain class, for we hear of
+another Aornos in Central Asia, and the word translated "rock" seems
+to mean anything from a mountain (as in the present case) to a
+sand-bank (as in the case of the voyage of Nearkos). No isolated hill
+such as would exactly fit in with Arrian's description exists in that
+part of the Indus valley, and no physical changes such as alteration
+in the course of the Indus, or such as might be effected by the
+tectonic forces of Nature, are likely to have removed such a mountain.
+Abbott's identification has therefore been generally accepted for many
+years, and it has remained for our latest authority to question it
+seriously.
+
+The latest investigator into the archæological interests of the Indian
+trans-frontier is Dr. M. A. Stein, the Inspector-General of Education
+in India. The marvellous results of his researches in Chinese
+Turkistan have rendered his name famous all over the archæological
+world, and it is to him that we owe an entirely new conception of the
+civilization of Indo-China during the Buddhist period. Dr. Stein's
+methods are thorough. He leaves nothing to speculation, and indulges
+in no romance, whatever may be the temptation. He takes with him on
+his archæological excursions a trained native surveyor of the Indian
+survey, and he thus not only secures an exact illustration of his own
+special area of investigation, but incidentally he adds immensely to
+our topographical knowledge of little known regions. This is specially
+necessary in those wild districts which are more immediately
+contiguous to the Indian border, for it is seldom that the original
+surveys of these districts can be anything more than topographical
+sketches acquired, sometimes from a distance, sometimes on the spot,
+but generally under all the disadvantages and disabilities of active
+campaigning, when the limited area within which survey operations can
+be carried on in safety is often very restricted. Thus we have very
+presentable geographical maps of the regions of Alexander's exploits
+in the north, but we have not had the opportunity of examining special
+sites in detail, and there are doubtless certain irregularities in the
+map compilation. This is very much the case as regards those hill
+districts on the right bank of the Indus immediately adjoining the
+Buner valley both north and south of it. Mahaban, the mountain which
+in Abbott's opinion best represents what is to be gathered from
+classical history of the general characteristics of Aornos, is south
+of Buner, overlooking the lower valley close to the Indus River. Dr.
+Stein formed the bold project of visiting Mahaban personally, and
+taking a surveyor with him. It was a bold project, for there were many
+difficulties both political and physical. The tribespeople
+immediately connected with Mahaban are the Gaduns--a most unruly
+people, constantly fighting amongst themselves; and it was only by
+seizing on the exact psychological moment when for a brief space our
+political representative had secured a lull in these fratricidal
+feuds, that Stein was enabled to act. He actually reached Mahaban
+under most trying conditions of wind and weather, and he made his
+survey. Incidentally he effected some most remarkable Buddhist
+identifications; but so far as the identification of Mahaban with
+Aornos is concerned he came to the conclusion that such identification
+could not possibly be maintained. This opinion is practically based on
+the impossibility of fitting the details of the story of Aornos to the
+physical features of Mahaban. It is unfortunate (but perhaps
+inevitable) that even in those incidents and operations of Alexander's
+expedition where his footsteps can be distinctly traced from point to
+point, where geographical conformation absolutely debars us from
+alternative selection of lines of action, the details of the story
+never do fit the physical conditions which must have obtained in his
+time.
+
+As the history of Alexander is in the main a true history, there is
+absolutely no justification for cutting out the thrilling incident of
+Aornos from it. There was undoubtedly an Aornos somewhere near the
+Indus, and there was a singularly interesting fight for its
+possession, the story of which includes so many of the methods and
+tactics familiar to every modern north-west frontiersman, that we
+decline to believe it to be all invention. But the story was written a
+century after Alexander's time, compiled from contemporary records it
+is true, but leaving no margin for inquiry amongst survivors as to
+details. If, instead of ancient history, we were to turn to the
+century-old records of our own frontier expeditions and rewrite them
+with no practical knowledge of the geography of the country, and no
+witness of the actual scene to give us an _ex parte_ statement of what
+happened (for no single participator in an action is ever able to give
+a correct account of all the incidents of it), what should we expect?
+Some furtive investigator might study the story of the ascent of the
+famous frontier mountain, the Takht-i-Suliman (a veritable Aornos!),
+during the expedition of 1882-83, and find it impossible to recognize
+the account of its steep and narrow ascent, requiring men to climb on
+their hands and knees, with the fact that a very considerable force
+did finally ascend by comparatively easy slopes and almost dropped on
+to the heads of the defenders. Such incidents require explanation to
+render them intelligible, and at this distance of time it is only
+possible to balance probabilities as regards Aornos.
+
+Alexander's objective being India, eventually, and the Indus (of
+India, not of the Himalayas) immediately, he would take the road
+which led straightest from Massaga to the Indus; it is inconceivable
+that he would deliberately involve himself and his army in the maze of
+pathless mountains which enclose the head of Buner. He would certainly
+take the road which leads from Malakand to the Indus, on which lies
+Rustam. It has always been a great high-road. One of the most
+interesting discoveries in connection with the Tirah campaign was the
+old Buddhist road, well engineered and well graded, which leads from
+Malakand to the plains of the Punjab--those northern plains which
+abound with Buddhist relics. If we identify Bazar, or Rustam, with
+Bazireh we may assume with certainty that a retreating tribe, driven
+from any field of defeat on the straight high-road which links
+Panjkora with the Indus, would inevitably retire to the nearest and
+the highest mountain ridge that was within reach. This is certainly
+the ridge terminating with Mahaban and flanking the Buner valley on
+the south, a refuge in time of trouble for many a lawless people.
+Probability, then, would seem to favour Mahaban, or some mountain
+position near it. The modern name of this peak is Shah Kot, and it is
+occupied by a mixed and irregular folk. Here Dr. Stein spent an
+unhappy night in a whirling snow-storm, but he succeeded in examining
+the mountain thoroughly. He decided that that position of Mahaban
+could not possibly represent Aornos, for the following reasons:--The
+hill-top is too narrow for military action; the ascent, instead of
+being difficult, is easy from every side; and there is no spring of
+water on the summit, which summit must have been a very considerable
+plateau to admit of the action described; finally, there is no great
+ravine, and therefore no opportunity for the erection of the mound
+described by Arrian, which enabled the Greeks to fusilade the enemy's
+camp with darts and stones. Can we reconcile these discrepancies with
+the text of history?
+
+After the reduction of Bazira Alexander marched towards the Indus and
+received the submission of Peukelaotis, which was then the capital of
+what is now, roughly speaking, the Peshawur district. The site of this
+ancient capital appears to be ascertained beyond doubt, and we must
+regard it as fixed near Charsadda, about 17 miles north-east (not
+north-west as M'Crindle has it) from Peshawur. From this place
+Alexander marched to Embolina, which is said to be a city close
+adjoining the rock of Aornos. On the route thither he is said by
+Arrian to have taken "many other small towns seated upon that river,"
+_i.e_. the Indus; two princes of that province, Cophæus and Assagetes,
+accompanying him. This sufficiently indicates that his march must have
+been up the right bank of the Indus, which would be the natural route
+for him to follow. Arrived at Embolina, he arranged for a base of
+supplies at that point, and then, with "Archers, Agrians, Cænus'
+Troop" and the choicest, best armed, and most expeditious foot out of
+the whole army, besides 200 auxiliary horse and 100 equestrian
+archers, he marched towards the "rock" (8 miles distant), and on the
+first day chose a place convenient for an encampment. The day after,
+he pitched his tents much higher. The ancient Embolina may not be the
+modern Amb, but Amb undoubtedly is an extremely probable site for such
+a base of supplies to be formed, whether the final objective were
+Mahaban or any place (as suggested by Stein) higher up the river. The
+fact that there is a similarity in the names Amb and Embolina need not
+militate against the adoption of the site of Amb as by far the most
+probable that any sagacious military commander would select. A mere
+resemblance between the ancient and modern names of places may, of
+course, be most deceptive. On the other hand it is often a most
+valuable indication, and one certainly not to be neglected.
+Place-names last with traditional tenacity in the East, and obscured
+as they certainly would be by Greek transliteration (after all, not
+worse than British transliteration), they still offer a chance of
+identifying old positions such as nothing else can offer excepting
+accurate topographical description. Once again, if Embolina were not
+Amb it certainly ought to have been.
+
+Alexander's next movements from Embolina most clearly indicate that he
+had to deal with a mountain position. There is no getting away from
+it, nor from the fact that the road to it was passable for horsemen,
+and therefore not insuperably difficult. At the same time he had to
+move as slowly as any modern force would move, for he was traversing
+the rough spurs of a hill which ran to 7800 feet in altitude. Further,
+the mountain was high enough to render signalling by fire useful. The
+"rock" was obviously either a mountain itself or it was perched on the
+summit of a mountain. Ptolemy as usual had conducted the
+reconnaissance. He established himself unobserved in a temporary
+position on the crest, within reach of the enemy, who attempted to
+dispossess him and failed; and it was he who (according to the story)
+signalled to Alexander. Ptolemy had followed a route, with guides,
+which proved rough and difficult, and Alexander's attempt to join him
+next day was prevented by the fierce activity of the mountaineers, who
+were plainly fighting from the mountain spurs. Then, it is said,
+Alexander communicated with Ptolemy by night and arranged a combined
+plan of attack. When it "was almost night" of the following day
+Alexander succeeded in joining Ptolemy, but only after severe fighting
+during the ascent. Then the combined forces attacked the "rock" and
+failed. All this so far is plain unvarnished mountain warfare, and the
+incidents follow each other as naturally as in any modern campaign. It
+becomes clear that the "rock" was a position on the crest of a high
+mountain, the ascent of which was rendered doubly difficult by fierce
+opposition. But it was practicable. Nothing is said about cavalry
+ascending. Why, then, did Alexander take cavalry? This question leads
+to another. Why do our frontier generals always burden themselves with
+cavalry on these frontier expeditions? They cannot act on the
+mountain-sides, and they are useless for purposes of pursuit. The
+answer is that they are most valuable for preserving the line of
+communication. Without the cavalry Alexander had no overwhelming force
+at his disposal, and it would not be very hazardous if we assumed that
+the force which actually reached the crest of the mountain was a
+comparatively small one--much of the original brigade being dispersed
+on the route.
+
+Dr. Stein found the ascent too easy to reconcile with history. This
+might possibly be the effect of long weather action of the slopes of
+mountains subject to severe snow-falls. Twenty-three centuries of wind
+and weather have beaten on those scarred and broken slopes since
+Alexander's day. Those twenty-three centuries have had such effect on
+the physical outlines of land conformation elsewhere as absolutely to
+obliterate the tracks over which the Greek force most undoubtedly
+passed. What may have been the exact effect of them on Mahaban,
+whether (as usual) they rounded off sharp edges, cut out new channels,
+obliterated some water springs and gave rise to others, smoothing
+down the ruggedness of spurs and shaping the drainage, we cannot say.
+Only it is certain that the slopes of Mahaban--and its crest for that
+matter--are not what they were twenty-three centuries ago. We shall
+never recognize Aornos by its superficial features. Then, in the Greek
+story, follows the episode of filling up the great ravine which yawned
+between the Greek position and the "rock" on which the tribespeople
+were massed, and the final abandonment of the latter when, after three
+days' incessant toil, a mound had been raised from which it could be
+assailed by the darts and missiles of the Greeks. Arrian tells the
+story with a certain amount of detail. He states that a "huge rampart"
+was raised "from the level of that part of the hill where their
+entrenchment was" by means of "poles and stakes," the whole being
+"perfected in three days." On the fourth day the Greeks began to build
+a "mound opposite the rock," and Alexander decided to extend the
+"Rampart" to the mound. It was then that the "Barbarians" decided to
+surrender.
+
+In the particular translation from which I have quoted (Rookes, 1829)
+there is nothing said about the "great ravine" of which Stein writes
+that it is clearly referred to by "all texts," and a very little
+consideration will show that it could never have existed. No matter
+what might have been the strength of Alexander's force it could only
+have been numbered by hundreds and not by thousands, when it reached
+the summit of the mountain. We might refer to the modern analogy of
+the expedition to the summit of the Takht-i-Suliman, where it was
+found quite impossible to maintain a few companies of infantry for
+more than two or three days. Numbers engaged in action are
+proverbially exaggerated, especially in the East; but the physical
+impossibility of keeping a large force on the top of a mountain must
+certainly be acknowledged. Even supposing there were a thousand men,
+and that no guards were required, and no reliefs, and that the whole
+force could apply themselves to filling up a "large ravine" with such
+"stakes and poles" as they could carry or drag from the
+mountain-slopes, it would take three months rather than three days to
+fill up any ravine which could possibly be called "large." General
+Abbott, as a scientific officer, was probably quite correct in his
+estimate of the "Rampart" as some sort of a "trench of approach with a
+parapet." There could not possibly have been a "great mound built of
+stakes and poles for crossing a ravine." It may be noted that
+Ptolemy's defensive work on his first arrival on the summit is called
+(or translated) "Rampart," and yet we know that it could only have
+been a palisade or an abattis. The story told by Arrian (and possibly
+maltreated by translators) is doubtless full of inaccuracies and
+exaggerations, but we decline to believe that it is pure invention.
+There is nothing in it, so far, which absolutely militates against the
+Mahaban of to-day (that refuge for Hindustani fanatics at one time,
+and for the discontented tribesfolk of the whole countryside through
+all time) being the Aornos of Arrian. No appearance of "precipices"
+is, however, to be found in the survey of the summit which accompanied
+Dr. Stein's report, and no opportunity for the defeated tribesmen to
+fall into the river. The story runs that the defeated mountaineers
+retreating from the victorious Greeks fell over the precipices in
+their hot haste, and that many of them were drowned in the Indus. This
+is indeed an incident which might be added as an effective addition to
+any tall story of a fight which took place on hills in the immediate
+neighbourhood of a river; but under no conceivable circumstances could
+it be adjusted to the formation of the Mahaban hill, even if it were
+admitted that armoured Greeks were any match in the hills for the
+fleet-footed and light-clad Indians. Probably the incident is purely
+decorative, but we need not therefore assume that the whole story is
+fiction. It has been pointed out by Sir Bindon Blood, who commanded
+the latest expedition to the Buner valley, that failing Mahaban there
+is north of the Buner River, immediately overlooking the Indus, a peak
+called Baio with precipitous flanks on the river side, which would fit
+in with the tale of Aornos better even than Mahaban. The Buner River
+joins the Indus through an impassable gorge steeply entrenched on
+either side, and a mile or two above it is the peak of Baio. So far as
+the Indus is concerned, that river presents no difficulties, for boats
+can be hauled up it far beyond Baio--even to Thakot. Looking northward
+or westward from above Kotkai one sees the river winding round the
+foot of the lower spurs of the Black Mountain on its left or eastern
+bank. Beyond is Baio on its right bank, towering (with a clumsy fort
+on its summit) over the Indus and forming part of a continuous ridge,
+beyond which again in the blue distance is the line of hills over
+which is the Ambela Pass at the head of the Chumla valley. (It is
+curious how the nomenclature hereabouts echoes faintly the Greek
+Embolina.) Above Baio is the ford of Chakesar, from which runs an
+old-time road westward to Manglaor, once the Buddhist capital of Swat.
+It would be all within reach of either Indians or Greeks, so we need
+not quite give up the thrilling tale of Aornos yet, even if Dr. Stein
+defeats us on Mahaban.
+
+Then follows the narrative of an excursion into the country of the
+Assakenoi and the capture of the elephants, which had been taken for
+safety into the hills. The scene of this short expedition must have
+been near the Indus, and was probably the valley of the Chumla or
+Buner immediately under Mahaban, to the north. There was in those
+far-off days a different class of vegetation on the Indus banks to
+any which exists at present. We know that a good deal of the Indus
+plain below its debouchment from the hills was a reedy swamp in
+Alexander's time, and it was certainly the haunt of the rhinoceros for
+centuries subsequently, and consequently quite suitable for elephants,
+and it is probable that for some little distance above its debouchment
+the same sort of pasturage was obtainable. Most interesting perhaps of
+all the incidents in Arrian's history is that which now follows. We
+are told that "Alexander then entered that part of the country which
+lies between the Kophen and the Indus, where Nysa is said to be
+situate." Other authorities, however, Curtius (viii. 10), Strabo (xv.
+697), and Justin (xii. 7), make him a visitor to Nysa before he
+crossed the Choaspes and took Massaga. All this is very vague; the
+river he crossed immediately before taking Massaga was certainly the
+Gauraios or Panjkora.
+
+There is a certain element of confusion in classical writings in
+dealing with river names which we need not wait to investigate; nor is
+it a matter of great importance whether Alexander retraced his steps
+all the way to the country of Nysa (for no particular reason), or
+whether he visited Nysa as he passed from the Kunar valley to the
+Panjkora. The latter is far more probable, as Nysa (if we have
+succeeded in identifying that interesting relic of pre-Alexandrian
+Greek occupation) would be right in his path. Various authorities have
+placed Nysa in different parts of the wide area indicated as lying
+between the Kophen (Kabul) and the Indus, but none, before the Asmar
+Boundary Commission surveyed the Kunar valley in the year 1894, had
+the opportunity of studying the question _in loco_. Even then there
+was no possibility of reaching the actual site which was indicated as
+the site of Nysa; and when subsequently in 1898 geographical surveys
+of Swat were pushed forward wherever it was possible for surveyors to
+obtain a footing, they never approached that isolated band of hills at
+the foot of which Nysa once lay. The result of inquiries instituted
+during the progress of demarcating the boundary between Afghanistan
+and the independent districts of the east from Asmar have been given
+in the _R.G.S. Journal_, vol. vii., and no subsequent information has
+been obtained which might lead me to modify the views therein
+expressed, excepting perhaps in the doubtful point as to _when_, in
+the course of his expedition, Alexander visited Nysa. In the first
+engraved Atlas sheet of the Indian Survey dealing with the regions
+east of the Kunar River, the name of Nysa, or Nyssa, is recorded as
+one of the most important places in that neighbourhood, and it is
+placed just south of the Koh-i-Mor, a spur, or extension, from the
+eastern ridges of the Kunar valley. From what source of information
+this addition to the map was made it is difficult to say, now that the
+first compiler of those maps (General Walker) has passed away. But it
+was undoubtedly a native source. Similarly the information obtained at
+Asmar, that a large and scattered village named _Nusa_ was to be found
+in that position, was also from a native (Yusufzai) source. No
+possible cause can be suggested for this agreement between the two
+native authorities, and it is unlikely that the name could have been
+invented by both. At the same time Nysa, or Nusa, is not now generally
+known to the borderland people near the Indian frontier, and it is
+certainly no longer an important village. It is probably no more than
+scattered and hidden ruins. Above it towers the three-peaked hill
+called the Koh-i-Mor, whose outlines can be clearly distinguished from
+Peshawur on any clear day, and on that hill grows the wild vine and
+the ivy, even as they grow in glorious trailing and exuberant masses
+on the scarped slopes of the Kafiristan hills to the west.
+
+We may repeat here what Arrian has to say about Nysa. "The city was
+built by Dionysos or Bacchus when he conquered the Indians, but who
+this Bacchus was, or at what time or from whence he conquered the
+Indians is hard to determine. Whether he was that Theban who from
+Thebes or he who from Tmolus, a mountain of Lydia, undertook that
+famous expedition into India ... is very uncertain." So here we have a
+clear reference to previous invasions of India from Greece, which were
+regarded as historical in Arrian's time. However, as soon as
+Alexander arrived at Nysa a deputation of Nysæans, headed by one
+Akulphis, waited on him, and, after recovering from the astonishment
+that his extraordinary appearance inspired, they presented a petition.
+"The Nysæans entreat thee O King, for the reverence thou bearest to
+Dionysos, their God, to leave their city untouched ... for Bacchus ...
+built this city for an habitation for such of his soldiers as age or
+accident had rendered unfit for military service.... He called this
+city Nysa (Nuson) after the name of his nurse ... and the mountain
+also, which is so near us, he would have denominated Meros (or the
+thigh) alluding to his birth from that of Jupiter ... and as an
+undoubted token that the place was founded by Bacchus, the ivy which
+is to be found nowhere else throughout all India, flourishes in our
+territories." Alexander was pleased to grant the petition, and ordered
+that a hundred of the chief citizens should join his camp and
+accompany him. It was then that Akulphis, with much native shrewdness,
+suggested that if he really had the good of the city at heart he
+should take two hundred of the worst citizens instead of one hundred
+of the best--a suggestion which appealed at once to Alexander's good
+sense, and the demand was withdrawn. Alexander then visited the
+mountain and sacrificed to Bacchus, his troops meanwhile making
+garlands of ivy "wherewith they crowned their heads, singing and
+calling loudly upon the god, not only by the name of Dionysos, but by
+all his other names." A sort of Bacchic orgy!
+
+But who were the Nysæans, and what became of them? In Arrian's
+_Indika_ he says: "The Assakenoi" (who inhabited the Swat valley east
+of Nysa) "are not men of great stature like the Indians ... not so
+brave nor yet so swarthy as most Indians. They were in old times
+subject to the Assyrians; then after a period of Median rule submitted
+to the Persians ... the Nysaioi, however, are not an Indian race, but
+descendants of those who came to India with Dionysos"; he adds that
+the mountain "in the lower slopes of which Nysa is built" is
+designated Meros, and he clearly distinguishes between Assakenoi and
+Nysaioi. M. de St. Martin says that the name Nysa is of Persian or
+Median origin; but although we know that Assyrians, Persians, and
+Medes all overran this part of India before Alexander, and all must
+have left, as was the invariable custom of those days, representatives
+of their nationality behind them who have divided with subsequent
+Skyths the ethnographical origin of many of the Upper Indian valley
+tribes of to-day, there seems no sound reason for disputing the origin
+of this particular name.
+
+Ptolemy barely mentions Nysa, but we learn something about the Nysæans
+from fragments of the _Indika_ of Megasthenes, which have been
+collected by Dr. Schwanbeck and translated by M'Crindle. We learn that
+this pre-Alexandrian Greek Dionysos was a most beneficent conqueror.
+He taught the Indians how to make wine and cultivate the fields; he
+introduced the system of retiring to the slopes of Meros (the first
+"hill station" in India) in the hot weather, where "the army recruited
+by the cold breezes and the water which flowed fresh from the
+fountains, recovered from sickness.... Having achieved altogether many
+great and noble works, he was regarded as a deity, and obtained
+immortal honours."
+
+Again we read, in a fragment quoted by Strabo, that the reason of
+calling the mountain above Nysa by the name of Meron was that "ivy
+grows there, and also the vine, although its fruit does not come to
+perfection, as the clusters, on account of the heaviness of the rains,
+fall off the trees before ripening. They" (the Greeks) "further call
+the Oxydrakai descendants of Dionysos, because the vine grew in their
+country, and their processions were conducted with great pomp, and
+their kings, on going forth to war, and on other occasions, marched in
+Bacchic fashion with drums beating," etc.
+
+Again we find, in a fragment quoted by Polyænus, that Dionysos, "in
+his expedition against the Indians, in order that the cities might
+receive him willingly, disguised the arms with which he had equipped
+his troops, and made them wear soft raiment and fawn-skins. The spears
+were wrapped round with ivy, and the thyrsus had a sharp point. He
+gave the signal for battle by cymbals and drums instead of the
+trumpet; and, by regaling the enemy with wine, diverted their thoughts
+from war to dancing. These and all other Bacchic orgies were employed
+in the system of warfare by which he subjugated the Indians and the
+rest of Asia."
+
+All these lively legends point to a very early subjugation of India by
+a Western race (who may have been of Greek origin) before the
+invasions of Assyrian, Mede, or Persian. It could not well have been
+later than the sixth century B.C., and might have been earlier by many
+centuries. The Nysæans, whose city Alexander spared, were the
+descendants of those conquerors who, coming from the West, were
+probably deterred by the heat of the plains of India from carrying
+their conquests south of the Punjab. They settled on the cool and
+well-watered slopes of those mountains which crown the uplands of Swat
+and Bajaur, where they cultivated the vine for generations, and after
+the course of centuries, through which they preserved the tradition of
+their Western origin, they welcomed the Macedonian conqueror as a man
+of their own faith and nation. It seems possible that they may have
+extended their habitat as far eastward as the upper Swat valley and
+the mountain region of the Indus, and at one time may have occupied
+the site of the ancient capital of the Assakenoi, Massaga, which there
+is reason to suppose stood near the position now occupied by the town
+of Matakanai; but they were clearly no longer there in the days of
+Alexander, and must be distinguished as a separate race altogether
+from the Assakenoi. As the centuries rolled on, this district of Swat,
+together with the valley of Dir, became a great headquarters of
+Buddhism. It is from this part of the trans-frontier that some of the
+most remarkable of those sculptures have been taken which exhibit so
+strong a Greek and Roman influence in their design. They are the
+undoubted relics of stupas, dagobas, and monasteries belonging to a
+period of a Buddhist occupation of the country, which was established
+after Alexander's time. Buddhism did not become a State religion till
+the reign of Asoka, grandson of that Sandrakottos (Chandragupta) to
+whom Megasthenes was sent as ambassador; and it is improbable that any
+of these buildings existed in the time of the Greek invasion, or we
+should certainly have heard of them.
+
+But along with these Buddhist relics there have been lately unearthed
+certain strange inscriptions, which have been submitted by their
+discoverer, Major Deane,[2] to a congress of Orientalists, who can
+only pronounce them to be in an unknown tongue. They have been found
+in the Indus valley east of Swat, most of them being engraved on stone
+slabs which have been built into towers, now in ruins. The towers are
+comparatively modern, but it by no means follows that these
+inscriptions are so. It is the common practice of Pathan builders to
+preserve any engraved or sculptured relic that they may find, by
+utilizing them as ornamental features in their buildings. It has
+probably been a custom from time immemorial. In 1895 I observed
+evidences of this propensity in the graveyard at Chagan Sarai, in the
+Kunar valley, where many elaborately carved Buddhist fragments were
+let into the sides of their roughly built "chabutras," or sepulchres,
+with the obvious purpose of gaining effect thereby. No one would say
+where those Buddhist fragments came from. The Kunar valley appears at
+first sight to be absolutely free from Buddhist remains, although it
+would naturally be selected as a most likely field for research. These
+undeciphered inscriptions may possibly be found to be vastly more
+ancient than the towers they adorned. It is, at any rate, a notable
+fact about them that some of them "recall a Greek alphabet of archaic
+type." So great an authority as M. Senart inclines to the opinion that
+their authors must be referred to the Skythic or Mongolian invaders of
+India; but he refers at the same time to a sculptured and inscribed
+monument in the Louvre, of unknown origin, the characters on which
+resemble those of the new script. "The subject of this sculpture seems
+to be a Bacchic procession." What if it really is a Bacchic
+procession, and the characters thereon inscribed prove to be an
+archaic form of Greek--the forgotten forms of the Nysæan alphabet?
+
+Whilst surveying in the Kunar valley along the Kafiristan borderland,
+I made the acquaintance of two Kafirs of Kamdesh, who stayed some
+little time in the Afghan camp, in which my own tent was pitched, and
+who were objects of much interest to the members of the Boundary
+Commission there assembled. They submitted gracefully enough to much
+cross-examination, and amongst other things they sang a war-hymn to
+their god Gish, and executed a religious dance. Gish is not supreme in
+their mythology, but he is the god who receives by far the greatest
+amount of attention, for the Kafir of the lower Bashgol is ever on the
+raid, always on the watch for the chance of a Mahomedan life. It is,
+indeed, curious that whilst tolerant enough to allow of the existence
+of Mahomedan communities in their midst, they yet rank the life of a
+Mussulman as the one great object of attainment; so that a Kafir's
+social position is dependent on the activity he displays in searching
+out the common enemy, and his very right to sing hymns of adoration to
+his war-god is strictly limited by the number of lives he has taken.
+The hymn which these Kafirs recited, or sang, was translated word by
+word, with the aid of a Chitrali interpreter, by a Munshi, who has the
+reputation of being a most careful interpreter, and the following is
+almost a literal transcript, for which I am indebted to Dr. MacNab, of
+the Q.O. Corps of Guides:--
+
+     O thou who from Gir-Nysa's (lofty heights) was born
+     Who from its sevenfold portals didst emerge,
+     On Katan Chirak thou hast set thine eyes,
+     Towards (the depths of) Sum Bughal dost go,
+     In Sum Baral assembled you have been.
+     Sanji from the heights you see; Sanji you consult?
+     The council sits. O mad one, whither goest thou?
+     Say, Sanji, why dost thou go forth?
+
+The words within brackets are introduced, otherwise the translation is
+literal. Gir-Nysa means the mountain of Nysa, Gir being a common
+prefix denoting a peak or hill. Katan Chirak is explained to be an
+ancient town in the Minjan valley of Badakshan, now in ruins; but it
+was the first large place that the Kafirs captured, and is apparently
+held to be symbolical of victory. This reference connects the Kamdesh
+Kafirs with Badakshan, and shows these people to have been more
+widespread than they are at present. Sum Bughal is a deep ravine
+leading down to the plain of Sum Baral, where armies are assembled for
+war. Sanji appears to be the oracle consulted before war is
+undertaken. The chief interest of this verse (for I believe it is only
+one verse of many, but it was all that our friends were entitled to
+repeat) is the obvious reference in the first line to the mountain of
+Bacchus, the Meros from which he was born, on the slopes of which
+stood the ancient Nysa. It is, indeed, a Bacchic hymn (slightly
+incoherent, perhaps, as is natural), and only wants the accessories of
+vine-leaves and ivy to make it entirely classical.
+
+That eminent linguistic authority, Dr. Grierson, thinks that the
+language in which the hymn was recited is derived from what Sanscrit
+writers said was the language of the Pisacas, a people whom they
+dubbed "demons" and "eaters of raw flesh," and who may be represented
+by the "Pashai" dwellers in Laghman and its vicinity to-day. Possibly
+the name of the chief village of the Kunar valley Pashat may claim the
+same origin, for Laghman and Kunar both spread their plains to the
+foot of the mountains of Kafiristan.
+
+The vine and the ivy are not far to seek. In making slow progress
+through one of the deep "darras," or ravines, of the western Kunar
+basin, leading to the snow-bound ridges that overlook Bashgol, I was
+astonished at the free growth of the wild vine, and the thick masses
+of ivy which here and there clung to the buttresses of the rugged
+mountain spurs as ivy clings to less solid ruins in England. The
+Kafirs have long been celebrated for their wine-making. Early in the
+nineteenth century, when the adventurer Baber, on his way to found the
+most magnificent dynasty that India has ever seen at Delhi, first
+captured the ancient city of Bajaor, and then moved on to the valley
+of Jandoul--now made historic by another adventurer, Umra Khan--he was
+perpetually indulging in drinking-parties; and he used to ride in from
+Jandoul to Bajaor to join his cronies in a real good Bacchic orgy more
+frequently than was good for him. He has a good deal to say about the
+Kafir wine in that inimitable Diary of his, and his appreciation of
+it was not great. It was, however, much better than nothing, and he
+drank a good deal of it. Through the kindness of the Sipah Salar, the
+Amir's commander-in-chief, I have had the opportunity of tasting the
+best brand of this classical liquor, and I agree with Baber--it is not
+of a high class. It reminded me of badly corked and muddy Chablis,
+which it much resembled in appearance.
+
+  [Illustration: GREEK RETREAT FROM INDIA]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Ancient India_, "Invasion by Alexander the Great." Appendix.
+
+[2] The late Sir H. Deane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GREEK EXPLORATION--THE WESTERN GATES OF INDIA
+
+
+South of the Khaibar route from Peshawur to Kabul and separated from
+it by the remarkable straight-backed range of Sufed Koh, is an
+alternative route _via_ the Kuram valley, at the head of which is the
+historic Peiwar Pass. From the crest of the rigid line of the Sufed
+Koh one may look down on either valley, the Kabul to the north or the
+Kuram to the south; and but for the lack of any convenient lateral
+communications between them, the two might be regarded as a twin
+system, with Kabul as the common objective. But there is no
+practicable pass across the Sufed Koh, so that no force moving along
+either line could depend on direct support from the other side of the
+mountains. It will be convenient here to regard the Kuram as an
+alternative to the Kabul route, and to consider the two together as
+forming a distinct group.
+
+The next important link between Afghanistan and the Indian frontier
+south of the Kuram, is the open ramp of the Tochi valley. The Tochi
+does not figure largely in history, but it has been utilized in the
+past for sudden raids from Ghazni in spite of the difficulties which
+Nature has strewn about its head. The Tochi, and the Gomul River south
+of it, must be regarded as highways to Ghazni, but there is no
+comparison between the two as regards their facilities or the amount
+of traffic which they carry. All the carrying trade of the Ghazni
+province is condensed into the narrow ways of the Gomul. Trade in the
+Tochi hardly extends farther than the villages at its head. About the
+Gomul there hangs many a tale of adventure, albeit adventure of rather
+ancient date, for it is exceedingly doubtful if any living European
+has ever trod more than the lower steps of that ancient staircase.
+Then, south of the Gomul, there follows a whole series of minor passes
+and byways wriggling through the clefts of the mountains, scrambling
+occasionally over the sharp ridges, but generally adhering closely to
+the line of some fierce little stream, which has either split its way
+through the successive walls of rock offered by the parallel uptilted
+ridges, or else was there, flowing gently down from the highlands,
+before these ridges were tilted into their present position. There are
+many such streams, and the history of their exploration is to be found
+in the modern Archives of the Survey of India. They may have been used
+for centuries by roving bands of frontier raiders, but they have no
+history to speak of. South of the Gomul, they all connect Baluchistan
+with India, for Baluchistan begins, politically, from the Gomul; and
+they are of minor importance because, by grace of the determined
+policy of the great maker of the Baluch frontier, Sir Robert Sandeman,
+their back doors and small beginnings in the Baluch highlands are all
+linked up by a line of posts which runs from Quetta to the Gomul _via_
+the Zhob valley. Whoever holds the two ends of the Zhob holds the key
+of all these back doors. There is not much to be said about them. No
+great halo of historical romance hangs around them; and yet the stern
+grandeur of some of these waterways of the frontier hills is well
+worth a better descriptive pen than mine. I know of one, in the depths
+of a fathomless abyss, whose waters rage in wild fury over fantastic
+piles of boulders, tossing up feathers of white spray to make glints
+of light on the smooth apron of the limestone walls which enclose and
+overshadow it, which is matchless in its weird beauty. From rounded
+sun-kissed uplands, where olive groves shelve down long spurs, the
+waters come, and with a gradually deepening and strengthening rush
+they swirl into the embrace of the echoing hills, passing with swift
+transition from a sunny stream to a boiling fury of turgid water under
+the rugged cliffs of the pine-clad Takht-i-Suliman. Then the stream
+sets out again, babbling sweetly as it goes, into the open, just a
+dimpled stream, leaving lonely pools in silent places on its way, and
+breaking up into a hundred streamlets to gladden the mountain people
+with the gift of irrigation.
+
+It is impossible to describe these frontier waterways. There is
+nothing like them to be found amidst scenes less wild and less
+fantastic than their frontier cradles. But full of local light and
+colour (and local tragedy too) as they surely are, they are
+unimportant in the military economy of the frontier, and their very
+wildness and impassability have saved them from the steps of the great
+horde of Indian immigrants. When, however, we reach still farther
+southward to the straight passes leading to Quetta, we are once again
+in a land of history. It is there we find by far the most open gates
+and those most difficult to shut, although the value of them as
+military approaches is very largely discounted by the geographical
+conditions of Western India at the point where they open on to the
+Indus frontier.
+
+Quetta, Kalat, and Las Bela, standing nearly in line from north to
+south, are the watch-towers of the western marches. Quetta and Kalat
+stand high, surrounded by wild hill country. Magnificent cliff-crowned
+mountains overlooking a wilderness of stone-strewed spurs embrace the
+little flat plain on which Quetta lies crumpled. Here and there on the
+plain an isolated smooth excrescence denotes an extinct volcano. Such
+is the Miri, now converted into the protecting fort of Quetta. The
+road from Quetta to the north-west, _i.e._ to Kandahar and Herat, has
+to pass through a narrow hill-enclosed space some eight miles from
+Quetta; and this physical gateway is strengthened and protected by all
+the devices of which military engineering skill is capable, whilst
+midway between Quetta and Kandahar is the formidable Khojak range
+which must always have been a trouble to buccaneers from the
+north-west. From Quetta to the south-east extends that road and that
+railway which, intersecting the complicated rampart of frontier hills,
+finally debouches into the desert plains round Jacobabad in Sind.
+Kalat is somewhat similarly situated. High amongst the mountains,
+Kalat also commands the approaches to an important pass to the plains,
+_i.e._ the Mula, a pass which in times gone by was a commercial
+high-road, but which has long been superseded by the Quetta passes of
+Harnai and Bolan (or Mashkaf). Las Bela is an insignificant Baluch
+town in the valley of the Purali, and at present commands nothing of
+value. But it was not always insignificant, as we shall see, and if
+its military value is not great at present, Las Bela must have stood
+full in the tide of human immigration to India for centuries in the
+past. It is a true gateway, and the story of it belongs to a period
+more ancient than any.
+
+Owing to the peculiar geographical conformation of the country, Quetta
+holds in her keeping all the approaches from the west, thus
+safeguarding Kalat. The Kalat fortress is only of minor importance as
+the guardian of the Mula stairway to the plains of India. It is the
+extraordinary conformation of ridge and valley which forms the great
+defensive wall of the southern frontier. Only where this wall is
+traversed by streams which break through the successive ridges
+gathering countless affluents from left and right in their
+course--affluents which are often as straight and rectangular to the
+main stream as the branches of a pear-tree trained on a wall are to
+the parent stem--is it possible to find an open road from the plains
+to the plateau.
+
+For very many miles north of Karachi the plains of Sind are faced by a
+solid wall of rock, so rigid, so straight and unscalable (this is the
+Kirthar range) as to form a veritably impracticable barrier. There is
+but one crack in it. For a short space at its southern end, however,
+it subsides into a series of minor ridges, and it is here that the
+connection between Karachi and Las Bela is to be found. These southern
+Las Bela approaches (about which there is more to be said) are not
+only the oldest, but they have been the most persistently trodden of
+any in the frontier, and they would be just as important in future as
+they have been in the past but for their geographical position. They
+are commanded from the sea. No one making for the Indus plains can
+again utilize these approaches who does not hold command of the
+Arabian Sea. In this way, and to this extent, the command of the
+Arabian Sea and of the Persian Gulf beyond it becomes vitally
+important to the security of India. Omitting for the present the Gomul
+gateway (the story of the exploration of which belongs to a later
+chapter), and in order to preserve something of chronological sequence
+in this book, it is these most southern of the Baluchistan passes
+which now claim our attention.
+
+Until quite lately these seaboard approaches to India have been almost
+ignored by historians and military strategists (doubtless because so
+little was known about them), and the pages of recent text-books are
+silent concerning them. They lead outwards from the lower Indus
+valleys through Makran, either into Persia or to the coast ports of
+the Arabian Sea. From extreme Western Persia to the frontiers of India
+at Quetta, or indeed to the Indus delta, it is possible for a laden
+camel to take its way with care and comfort, never meeting a
+formidable pass, never dragging its weary limbs up any too steep
+incline, with regular stages and more or less good pasturage through
+all the 1400 or 1500 miles which intervene between Western Persia and
+Las Bela. From the pleasant palm groves of Panjgur in Makran to India,
+it might indeed be well to have an efficient local guide, and indeed
+from Las Bela to Karachi the road is not to be taken quite haphazard;
+nevertheless, if the camel-driver knew his way, he could not only
+lead his charge comfortably along a well-trodden route, but he might
+turn chauffeur at the end of his long march and drive an exploring
+party back in a motor.
+
+In the illimitable past it was this way that Dravidian peoples flocked
+down from Asiatic highlands to the borderland of India. Some of them
+remained for centuries either on the coast-line, where they built
+strange dwellings and buried each other in earthen pots, or they were
+entangled in the mass of frontier hills which back the solid Kirthar
+ridge, and stayed there till a Turco-Mongol race, the Brahuis (or
+Barohis, _i.e._ "men of the hills"), overlaid them, and intermixing
+with them preserved the Dravidian language, but lost the Dravidian
+characteristics. According to their own traditions a large number of
+these Brahuis were implanted in their wild and almost inaccessible
+hills by the conqueror Chenghiz Khan, and some of them call themselves
+Mingals, or Mongols, to this day. This seems likely to be true. It is
+always best to assume in the first instance that a local tradition
+firmly held and strongly asserted has a basis of fact to support it.
+Here are a people who have been an ethnological puzzle for many years,
+talking the language of Southern Indian tribes, but protesting that
+they are Mongols. Like the degenerate descendants of the Greeks in the
+extreme north-west, or like the mixed Arab peoples of the Makran coast
+and Baluchistan, these half-bred Mongols have preserved the
+traditions of their fathers and adopted the tongue of their mothers.
+It is strange how soon a language may be lost that is not preserved by
+the women! What we learn from the Brahuis is that a Dravidian race
+must once have been where they are now, and this supports the theory
+now generally admitted, that the Dravidian peoples of India entered
+India by these western gateways.
+
+No more interesting ethnographical inquiry could be found in relation
+to the people of India than how these races, having got thus far on
+their way, ever succeeded in getting to the south of the peninsula. It
+could only have been the earliest arrivals on the frontier who passed
+on. Later arrivals from Western Persia (amongst whom we may reckon the
+Medes or Meds) remained in the Indus valley. The bar to frontier
+progress lies in the desert which stretches east of the Indus from the
+coast to the land of the five rivers. This is indeed India's second
+line of defence, and it covers a large extent of her frontier.
+Conquerors of the lower Indus valley have been obliged to follow up
+the Indus to the Punjab before striking eastwards for the great cities
+of the plains. Thus it is not only the Indus, but the desert behind
+it, which has barred the progress of immigration and conquest from
+time immemorial, and it is this, combined with the command given by
+the sea, which differentiates these southern gates of India from the
+northern, which lead on by open roads to Lahore, Delhi, and the heart
+of India.
+
+The answer to the problem of immigration is probably simple. There was
+a time when the great rivers of India did not follow their courses as
+they do now. This was most recently the case as regards the Indus and
+the rivers of Central India. In the days when there was no Indus delta
+and the Indus emptied itself into the great sandy depression of the
+Rann of Katch, another great lost river from the north-east, the
+Saraswati, fed the Indus, and between them the desert area was
+immensely reduced if it did not altogether disappear. Then, possibly,
+could the cairn-erecting stone-monument building Dravidian sneak his
+way along the west coast within sight of the sea, and there indeed has
+he left his monuments behind him. Otherwise the Dravidian element of
+Central Southern India could only have been gathered from beyond the
+seas; a proposition which it is difficult to believe. However, never
+since that desert strip was formed which now flanks the Indus to the
+east can there have been a right-of-way to the heart of India by the
+gateways of the west. The earliest exploration of these western roads,
+of which we can trace any distinct record, was once again due to the
+enterprise of the Greeks. We need not follow Alexander's victorious
+footsteps through India, nor concern ourselves with the voyage of his
+fleet down the Indus, and from the mouth of the Indus to Karachi.
+General Haig, in his pamphlet on the Indus delta, has traced out his
+route[3] with patient care, demonstrating from observations taken
+during the course of his surveys the probable position of the
+coast-line in those early days.
+
+From Karachi to the Persian Gulf, a voyage undertaken 300 years B.C.,
+of which a log has been kept from day to day, is necessarily of
+exceeding interest, if only as an indication of a few of the changes
+which have altered the form of that coast-line in the course of
+twenty-two centuries. This old route from Arabia to the west coast of
+India can hardly be left unnoticed, for it illustrates the earliest
+beginning of those sea ways to India which were destined finally to
+supplant the land ways altogether. I have already pointed out that,
+judged by the standard of geographical aptitude only, there is no
+great difficulty in reaching Persia from Karachi. But geographical
+distribution of mountain, river, and plain is not all that is
+necessary to take into account in planning an expedition into new
+territory. There is also the question of supplies. This was the rock
+on which Alexander's enterprise split. In moving out of India towards
+Persia he adopted the same principle which had stood him in good stead
+on the Indus, viz. the maintenance of communication between army and
+fleet. Naturally he elected to retire from India by a route which as
+far as possible touched the sea. This was his fatal mistake, and it
+cost him half his force.
+
+We need not trouble ourselves further with the ethnographical
+conditions of that extraordinary country, Makran, in Alexander's time;
+nor need we follow in detail the changes which have taken place in the
+general configuration of the coast-line between India and the Persian
+Gulf during the last 2000 years, references to which will be found in
+the _Journal of the Royal Society of Arts_ for April 1901. Apart from
+the enormous extension of the Indus delta, and in spite of the
+disappearance of many small islands off the coast, the general result
+has been a material gain by the land on the sea in all this part of
+the Asiatic coast-line.
+
+Alexander left Patala about the beginning of September 326 B.C. to
+push his way through the country of the Arabii and Oritæ to Gadrosia
+(or Makran) and Persia. The Arabii occupied the country between
+Karachi and the Purali (or river of Las Bela), and the Oritæ and
+Gadrosii apparently combined with other tribes to hold the country
+that lay beyond the Purali (or Arabius). He had previously done all
+that a good general can do to ensure the success of his movements by
+personally reconnoitring all the approaches to the sea by the various
+branches of the Indus; by pacifying the people and consolidating his
+sovereignty at Patala so as to leave a strong position behind him
+entirely subject to Greek authority; and by dividing his force so as
+to utilize the various arms with the best possible effect. This force
+was comprised in three divisions; one under Krateros included the
+heavy transport and invalids, and this was despatched to Persia by a
+route which was evidently as well known in that day as it is at
+present. It is never contended by any historian that Alexander did not
+know his way out of India. On the contrary, Arrian distinctly
+insinuates that it was the perversity of pride, the "ambition to be
+doing something new and astonishing" which "prevailed over all his
+scruples" and decided him to send his crank Indus-built galleys to the
+Euphrates by sea, and himself to prove that such an army led by "such
+a general" could force a passage through the Makran wilderness where
+the only previous records were those of disaster. He had heard that
+Cyrus and Semiramis had failed, and that decided him to make the
+attempt.
+
+We can follow Krateros no farther than to point out that his route was
+by the Mulla (and not the Bolan) Pass to Kalat and Quetta. Thence he
+must have taken the Kandahar route to the Helmund, and following that
+river down to the fertile and well-populated plains of lower Seistan
+(or Drangia) he crossed the Kirman desert by a well-known modern
+caravan route, and joined Alexander at or near Kirman; for Alexander
+was "on his way to Karmania" at the time that Krateros joined him, and
+not at Pura (the capital of the Gadrosii) as suggested by St. John.
+One interesting little relic of this march was dug up by Captain
+Mackenzie, R.E., during the construction of the fort on the Miri at
+Quetta. A small bronze figure of Hercules was brought to light, and it
+now rests in the Asiatic Society's Museum at Calcutta.
+
+Alexander, as we have said, left Patala about the beginning of
+September. But where was Patala? Probably it was neither Hyderabad (as
+suggested by General Cunningham) nor Tatta (as upheld by other
+authorities), but about 30 miles S.E. of the former and 60 miles
+E.N.E. of the latter, in which locality, indeed, there are ruins
+enough to satisfy any theory. From Patala we are told by Arrian that
+he marched with a sufficient force to the Arabius; and that is all.
+But from Quintus Curtius we learn that it was nine marches to Krokala
+(a point easier of identification than most, from the preservation of
+the name which survived through mediæval ages in the Karak--the
+much-dreaded pirate of the coast--and can now be recognized in
+Karachi) and five marches thence to the Arabius. He started in cool
+monsoon weather. His route, after leaving Krokala, is determined by
+the natural features of the country as then existing. There was no
+shore route in these days. Alexander followed the subsequent mediæval
+route which connected Makran with Sind in the days of Arab ascendancy,
+a route that has been used as a highway into India for nearly eight
+centuries. It is not the route which now connects Karachi and Las
+Bela, but belongs to the later mediæval phase of history. As the sea
+then extended at least to Liari, in the basin of the Purali or
+Arabius, we are obliged to locate the position of his crossing that
+river as being not far south of Las Bela; where in Alexander's time it
+was "neither wide nor deep," and in these days is almost entirely
+absorbed in irrigation. This does not, I admit, altogether tally with
+the five marches of Quintus Curtius. It would amount to over a hundred
+miles of marching, some of which would be heavy, though not very much
+of it; but the discrepancy is not a serious one. The Arabius may have
+been far to the east of its present channel--indeed, there are old
+channels which indicate that it was so, and it does not follow that
+the river was crossed at the point at which it was struck. The reason
+for placing this crossing so far north is that room is required for
+subsequent operations. After crossing, we are told that Alexander
+"turned to his left towards the sea" (from which he was evidently
+distant some space), and with a picked force he made a sudden descent
+on the Oritæ. He marched one night only through desert country and in
+the morning came to a well-inhabited district. Pushing on with cavalry
+only, he defeated the Oritæ, and then later joining hands with the
+rest of his forces, he penetrated to their capital city. For these
+operations he must necessarily have been hedged in between the Purali
+and Hala range, which he clearly had not crossed as yet. Now we are
+expressly told by Arrian that the capital city of the Oritæ was but a
+village that did duty for the capital, and that the name of it was
+Rambakia. The care of it was committed to Hephæstion that he might
+colonize it after the fashion of the Greeks. But we find that
+Hephæstion certainly did not stay long there, and could only have left
+the native village as he found it, with no very extensive
+improvements.
+
+It would be most interesting to decide the position of Rambakia. What
+we want to find is an ancient site, somewhere approaching the
+sea-coast, say 30 or 40 miles from the crossing of the Purali, in a
+district that might once have been cultivated and populous. We have
+found two such sites--one now called Khair Kot, to the north-west of
+Liari, commanding the Hala Pass; and another called Kotawari,
+south-west of Liari, and very near the sea. The latter has but
+recently been uncovered from the sand, but an existing mud wall and
+its position on the coast indicate that it is not old enough for our
+purpose. The other, Khair Kot, is an undoubted relic of mediæval Arab
+supremacy. It is the Kambali of Idrisi on the high-road from Armail
+(now Bela) to the great Sind port of Debal, and the record of it
+belongs to another history. Nevertheless, Khair Kot is exactly where
+we should expect Rambakia to be, and quite possibly where Rambakia
+was. Amongst the coins and relics collected there, there is, however,
+no trace of Greek inscription; but that this corner of the Bela
+district was once flourishing and populous there is ample evidence.
+
+From Rambakia Alexander proceeded with half his targeteers and part of
+his cavalry to force the pass which the Gadrosii and Oritæ had
+conjointly seized "with the design of stopping his progress." This
+pass might either have been the turning pass at the northern end of
+the Hala, or it might have been on the water-parting from which the
+Phur River springs farther on. I should think it was probably the
+former, where there is better room for cavalry to act.
+
+Immediately after defeating the Oritæ (who apparently made little
+resistance) Alexander appointed Leonatus, with a picked force, to
+support the new Governor of Rambakia (Hephæstion having rejoined the
+army), and left him to make arrangements for victualling the fleet
+when it arrived, whilst he pushed on through desert country into the
+territory of the Gadrosii by "a road very dangerous," and drawing down
+towards the coast. He must then have followed the valley of the Phur
+to the coast, and pushed on along the track of the modern telegraph
+line till he reached the neighbourhood of the Hingol River. We are
+indebted to Aristobulus for an account of this track in Alexander's
+time. It was here that the Ph[oe]nician followers of the army
+gathered their myrrh from the tamarisk trees; here were the mangrove
+swamps, and the euphorbias, which still dot the plains with their
+impenetrable clumps of prickly "shoots or stems, so thick set that if
+a horseman should happen to be entangled therewith he would sooner be
+pulled off his horse than freed from the stem," as Aristobulus tells
+us. Here, too, were found the roots of spikenard, so precious to the
+greedy Ph[oe]nician followers. These same products formed part of the
+coast trade in the days when the Periplus was written, 400 years
+later, though there is little demand for them now.
+
+It was somewhere near the Hingol River that Alexander made a
+considerable halt to collect food and supplies for his fleet. His
+exertions and his want of success are all fully described by Arrian,
+as well as the rude class of fishing villages inhabited by
+Ichthyophagi, all the latter of which might well be cut out of the
+pages of Greek history and entered in a survey report as modern
+narrative. After this we have but slight indications in Arrian's
+history of Alexander's route to Pura, the capital of Gadrosia. Three
+chapters are full of most graphic and lively descriptions of the
+difficulties and horrors of that march. We only hear that he reached
+Pura sixty days after leaving the country of the Oritæ, and there is
+no record of the number of troops that survived. Luckily, however, the
+log kept by the admiral of the fleet, Nearkhos, comes into our
+assistance here, and though it is still Arrian's history, it is
+Nearkhos who speaks.
+
+We must now turn back to follow the ships. I cannot enter in detail
+into the reasons given by General Haig, in his interesting pamphlet on
+the Indus Delta Country, for selecting the Gharo creek as the
+particular arm of the Indus which was finally selected for the passage
+of the fleet seaward. I can only remark that whilst the nature of the
+half-formed delta of that period is still open to conjecture, so that
+I see no reason why the island of Krokala, for instance, should not
+have been represented by a district which bears a very similar name
+nowadays, I fully agree that the description of the coast as given by
+Nearkhos can only possibly apply to that section of it which is
+embraced between the Gharo creek and Karachi.
+
+It is only within very recent times that the Gharo has ceased to be an
+arm of the Indus. For the present, at any rate, we cannot do better
+than follow so careful an observer as General Haig in his conclusions.
+There can be little doubt that Alexander's haven, into which the fleet
+put till the monsoon should moderate, and where it was detained for
+twenty days, was _somewhere near_ Karachi. That it was the modern
+Karachi harbour seems improbable. Of all parts of the western coast of
+India, that about Karachi has probably changed its configuration most
+rapidly, and there is ample room for conjecture as to where that haven
+of refuge of 2000 years ago might actually have been. Let us accept
+the fleet of river-built galleys, manned with oars, and open to every
+phase of wind and weather, as having emerged from it about the
+beginning of October, and as having reached the island of Domai, which
+I am inclined to identify with Manora.
+
+Much difficulty has been found in making the estimate of each day's
+run, as given in stadia, tally with the actual length of coast. I
+think the difficulty disappears a good deal if we consider what means
+there were of making such estimates. Short runs in the river between
+known landmarks are very fairly consistent in the Greek accounts. On
+the basis of such short runs, and with a very vague idea of the effect
+of wind and tide, the length of each day's run at sea was probably
+reckoned at so much per hour. There could hardly have been any other
+way of reckoning open to the Greeks. They recognized no landmarks
+after leaving Karachi. Even had they been able to use a log-line it
+would have told them but little. Wind and current (for the currents on
+this part of the sea mostly follow the monsoon wind) were either
+against them or on their beam all the way to the Hingol, and they
+encountered more than one severe storm which must have broken on them
+with the full force of a monsoon head wind. From the point where the
+fleet rounded Cape Monze and followed the windings of the coast to the
+harbour of Morontobara the estimates, though excessive, are fairly
+consistent; but from this point westward, when the full force of
+monsoon wind and current set against them, the estimates of distance
+are very largely in excess of the truth, and continue so till the
+pilot was shipped at Mosarna who guided them up the coast of Persia.
+Thenceforward there is much more consistency in their log. It must not
+be supposed that Nearkhos was making a voyage of discovery. He was
+following a track that had often been followed before. It was clear
+that Alexander knew the way by sea to the coasts of Persia before he
+started his fleet, and it is a matter of surprise rather than
+otherwise that he did not find a pilot amongst the Malli, who, if they
+are to be identified with the Meds, were one of the foremost sea-going
+peoples of Asia. His Ph[oe]nician and Greek sailors evidently were
+strangers to the coast, and some of his mixed crew of soldiers and
+sailors had subsequently to be changed for drafts from the land
+forces.
+
+We cannot now follow the voyage in detail, nor could we, even if we
+would, indicate the precise position of those islands of which Arrian
+writes between Cape Monze and Sonmiani; some of them may now be
+represented by shoals known to the coasting vessels, whilst others may
+be connected with the mainland. I have no doubt myself that
+Morontobara (the "woman's haven") is represented by the great
+depression of the Sirondha lake. Between Morontobara and Krokala
+(which about answers to Ras Kachari) they touched at the mouth of the
+Purali, or Arabius, not far from Liari, having an island which
+sheltered them from the sea to windward, which is now part of the
+mainland. Near by the mouth of the Arabius was another island "high
+and bare" with a channel between it and the mainland. This, too, has
+been linked up with the shore formation, and the channel no longer
+exists, but there is ample evidence of the ancient character of this
+corner of the coast. Between the Arabius and Krokala (three days'
+sail) very bad weather was made, and two galleys and a transport were
+lost. It was at Krokala that they joined hands with the army again.
+Here Nearkhos formed a camp, and it was "in this part of the country"
+that Leonatus defeated the Oritæ and their allies in a great battle
+wherein 6000 were slain. Arrian adds that a full account of the action
+and its sequel, the crowning of Leonatus with a golden crown by
+Alexander, is given in his other work, but as a matter of fact the
+other account is so entirely different (representing the Oritæ as
+submitting quietly) that we can only suppose this to have been a
+separate and distinct action from the cavalry skirmish mentioned
+before.
+
+It must be noted that the coast hereabouts has probably largely
+changed. A little farther west it is changing rapidly even now, and it
+is idle to look for the names given by the Greeks as marking any
+positive locality known at present. Hereabouts at any rate was the
+spot where Alexander with such difficulty had collected ten days'
+supplies for the fleet. This was now put on board, and the bad or
+indifferent sailors exchanged for better seamen. From Krokala, a
+course of 500 stadia (largely over-estimated) brought them to the
+estuary of the Hingol River (which is described a winter torrent under
+the name of Tomeros), and from this point all connection between the
+fleet and the army appears to have been lost. It was at the mouth of
+the Hingol that a skirmish took place with the natives which is so
+vividly described by Nearkhos, when the Greeks leapt into the sea and
+charged home through the surf. Of all the little episodes described in
+the progress of the voyage this is one of the most interesting; for
+there is a very close description given of certain barbarians clothed
+in the skins of fish or animals, covered with long hair, and using
+their nails as we use fish-knives, armed with wooden pikes hardened in
+the fire, and fighting more like monkeys than men. Here we have the
+real aboriginal inhabitants of India. Not so very many years ago, in
+the woods of Western India, a specimen almost literally answering to
+the description of Nearkhos was caught whilst we were in the process
+of surveying those jungles, and he furnished a useful contribution to
+ethnographical science at the time. Probably these barbarians of
+Nearkhos were incomparably older even than the Turanian races which we
+can recognize, and which succeeded them, and which, like them, have
+been gradually driven south into the fastnesses of Central and
+Southern India.
+
+Makran is full of Turanian relics connecting it with the Dravidian
+races of the south; but there is no time to follow these interesting
+glimpses into prehistoric ethnography opened up by the log of
+Nearkhos. Nor, indeed, can we follow the voyage in detail much
+farther, for we have to take up the route of Alexander, about which
+very much less has hitherto been known than can be told about the
+voyage of Nearkhos. We may, however, trace the track of Nearkhos past
+the great rocky headland of Malan, still bearing the same name that
+the Greeks gave it, to the commodious harbour of Bagisara, which is
+likely enough the Damizar, or eastern bay, of the Urmara headland. The
+Padizar, or western bay, corresponds more nearly with the name
+Bagisara, but as they doubled a headland next day it is clear they
+were on the eastern side of the Isthmus. The Pasiris whom he mentions
+have left frequent traces of their existence along the coast. Kalama,
+reached on the second day from Bagisara, is easily recognizable in the
+Khor Khalmat of modern surveys, and it is here again that we can trace
+a very considerable extension of the land seawards that would
+completely have altered the course of the fleet from the coasting
+track of modern days. The island of Karabine, from which they procured
+sheep, may very well have been the projecting headland of Giaban, now
+connected by a low sandy waste with the mainland. It could never have
+been the island of Astola, as conjectured by M'Crindle and others.
+From Kalama to Kissa (now disappeared) and Mosarna, along the coast
+called Karbis (now Gazban), the course would again be longer than at
+present, for there is much recent sand formation here; and when we
+come to Mosarna itself, after doubling the headland of Jebel Zarain,
+we find the harbour completely silted up. It may be noted that this
+western bay of Pasni was probably exactly similar to the Padizar of
+Urmara or of Gwadur, and that there is a general (but not universal)
+tendency to shallowing on the western sides of all the Makran
+headlands. Here they took the pilot on board, and after this there was
+little difficulty.
+
+In three more days they made Barna (or Badara), which answers to
+Gwadur, where were palm trees and myrtles, and we need follow them for
+the present no farther. Colonel Mockler, who was well acquainted with
+the Makran coast, but hardly, perhaps, appreciated all the changes
+which the coast-line has undergone (neither, indeed, did I till the
+surveys were complete), has traced the course of that historic fleet
+with great care. He has pointed out correctly that two islands (Pola
+and Karabia) have disappeared from the eastern neighbourhood of the
+Gwadur headland and one (Derenbrosa) from its western extremity; and
+he might have added that yet another is breaking up, and rapidly
+disappearing off the headland of Passabandar, near Gwadur. He has
+identified Kyiza (or Knidza), the small town built on an eminence not
+far from the shore, which was captured by stratagem, beyond doubt, and
+has traced the fleet from point to point with a careful analysis of
+all existing records that I cannot pretend to imitate. We cannot,
+however, leave Nearkhos without a passing reference to that island on
+the coast of the Ichthyophagi, and which was sacred to the sun, and
+which was, even in those days, enveloped in such a halo of mystery and
+tradition that even Arrian holds Nearkhos up to contempt for expending
+"time and ingenuity in the not very difficult task of proving the
+falsehood" of these "antiquated fables." I have been to that island,
+the island of Astola, and the tales that were told to Nearkhos are
+told of it still. There, off the southern face of it, is the "sail
+rock," the legendary relic of a lost ship which may well have been the
+transport which Nearkhos did undoubtedly lose off its rocky shores.
+There, indeed, I did not find the Nereid of such fascinating manners
+and questionable customs as Nearkhos describes on the authority of the
+inhabitants of the coast, but sea-urchins and sea-snakes abounded in
+such numbers as to make the process of exploration quite sufficiently
+exciting; and there were not wanting indications of those later days
+when the Meds (now an insignificant fish-eating people scattered in
+the coast hamlets) were the dreaded pirates of the Arabian Sea, and
+used to convey the crews of the ships they captured to that island,
+where they were murdered wholesale. It is curious that the name given
+by Nearkhos is Nosala, or Nuhsala. In these days it is Astola, or more
+properly Hashtala, sometimes even called Haftala. I am unable to
+determine the meaning of the termination to which the numerals are
+prefixed. Another name for it is Sangadip, which is also the mediæval
+name for Ceylon. There can be no doubt about the identity of this
+island of sun worship and historic fable.
+
+We must now turn to Alexander. We left him near the mouth of the
+Hingol, then probably four or five miles north of its present
+position, and nearer the modern telegraph line. So far he had almost
+step by step followed out the subsequent line of the Indo-Persian
+telegraph, and at the Hingol he was not very far south of it. Near
+here Leonatus had had his fight with the Oritæ, and Alexander had
+spent much time (for it must be remembered that he started a month
+before his fleet, and that the fleet and Leonatus at least joined
+hands at this point) in collecting supplies of grain from the more
+cultivated districts north, and was prepared to resume his march along
+the coast, true to his general tactical principle of keeping touch
+with his ships. But an obstacle presented itself that possibly he had
+not reckoned on. The huge barrier of the Malan range, abutting direct
+on the sea, stopped his way. There was no "Buzi" pass (or goat track)
+in those days, such as finally and after infinite difficulty helped
+the telegraph line over, though there was indeed an ancient stronghold
+at the top, which must have been in existence before his time, and was
+likely enough the original city of Malan. He was consequently forced
+into the interior, and here his difficulties began.
+
+We should be at a loss to follow him here, but for the fact that there
+is only one possible route. He followed up the Hingol till he could
+turn the Malan by an available pass westward. Nothing here has altered
+since his days. Those magnificent peaks and mountains which surround
+the sacred shrine of Hinglaz are, indeed, "everlasting hills," and it
+was through them that he proceeded to make his way. It would be a
+matter of immense interest could one trace any record of the Hinglaz
+shrine in classical writings, but there is none that I know of. And
+yet I believe that shrine which, next possibly to Juggernath, draws
+the largest crowds of pilgrims (Hindu and Mussulman alike) of any in
+India, was in existence before the days of Alexander. For the shrine
+is sacred to the goddess Nana (now identified with Siva by Hindus),
+and the Assyrian or Persian goddess Nana is of such immense antiquity
+that she has furnished to us the key to an older chronology even than
+that of Egypt. The famous cylinder of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria,
+tells us that in the year 645 B.C. he destroyed Susa, the capital of
+Elam, and from its temple he carried back the Chaldean goddess Nana,
+and by the express command of the goddess herself, took her from
+whence she had dwelt in Elam, "a place not appointed her," and
+reinstated her in her own sanctuary at Urukh (now Warka in
+Mesopotamia), whence she had originally been taken 1635 years before
+by a conquering king of Elam, who had invaded Accad territory. Thus
+she was clearly a well-established deity in Mesopotamia 2280 years
+B.C. Alexander, however, would have left that Ziarat hidden away in
+the folds of the Hinglaz mountain on his left, and followed the
+windings of the Hingol River some forty miles to its junction with a
+stream from the west, which would again give him the chance of
+striking out parallel to the coast.
+
+We should be in some doubt at what particular point Alexander left the
+Hingol, but for the survival of names given in history as those of a
+people with whom he had to contend, viz. the Parikanoi, the Sagittæ,
+and the Sakæ, names not mentioned by Arrian. Now, Herodotus gives the
+Parikanoi and Asiatic Ethiopians as being the inhabitants of the
+seventeenth satrapy of the Persian Empire, and Bellew suggests that
+the Greek Parikanoi is a Greek transcript of the Persian form of
+Parikan, the plural of the Sanscrit Parvá-ka--or, in other words, the
+_Ba-rohi_--or men of the hills. However this may be, there is the bed
+of the stream called Parkan skirting the north of the Taloi range and
+leading westwards from the Hingol, and we need look no farther for the
+Parikanoi. In support of Bellew's theory it may be stated that it is
+not only in the heart of the Brahui country, but the Sajidi are still
+a tribe of Jalawan Brahuis, of which the chief family is called Sakæ,
+and that they occupy territory in Makran a little to the north of the
+Parkan. There is every reason why Alexander should have selected this
+route. It was his first chance of turning the Malan block, and it led
+most directly westwards with a trend towards the sea. But at the time
+of the year that he was pushing his way through this low valley
+flanked by the Taloi hills, which rose to a height of 2000 feet above
+him on his left, there would not be a drop of water to be had, and the
+surrounding wilderness of sandy hillocks and scanty grass-covered
+waste would afford his troops no supplies and no shelter from the
+fierce autumn heat. All the miseries of his retreat were concentrated
+into the distance (about 200 miles) between the Hingol and the coast.
+
+The story of that march is well told by Arrian. It was here that
+occurred that gallant episode when Alexander proudly refused to drink
+the small amount of water that was offered him in a helmet, because
+his army was perishing with thirst. It must have been near the harbour
+of Pasni, once again almost on the line of the present telegraph, that
+Alexander emerged from the sand-storm with but four horsemen on to
+the sea-coast at last, and instantly set to work to dig wells for his
+perishing troops. Thenceforward Arrian tells us only that he marched
+for seven days along the coast till he reached the well-known highway
+to Karmania, when he turned inland, and his difficulties were at an
+end. Now, that well-known highway was almost better known then than it
+is now. He could only leave the coast near the Dasht River at Gwadur,
+and strike across into the valley of the Bahu, which would lead him
+through a country subsequently great in Arabic history, over the yet
+unsuspected sites of many famous cities, to Bampur, the capital of
+Gadrosia. From leaving the coast to Bampur the duration of his march
+with an exhausted force would be little less than a month. Working
+backward again from that same point (which may be regarded as an
+obligatory one in his route) the seven days' weary drag through the
+sand of the coast would carry him no farther than from the
+neighbourhood of Pasni, and that is why I have selected that point for
+the historic episode of his guiding his army by chance and emerging on
+to the shore unexpectedly, rather than the neighbourhood of the Basol
+River, to which the Parkan route should naturally have led him. He
+clearly lost his way, as Arrian says he did, or else the estimated
+number of marches is wrong. We are told by Arrian that he reached
+Pura, the capital of Gadrosia, on the sixtieth day after leaving the
+country of the Oritæ. This is a little indefinite, as he may be
+considered to have left the country of the Oritæ when he started to
+collect supplies from the northern district, and we do not know how
+long he was on this reconnaissance. Probably, however, the date of
+leaving the coast and striking inland up the Hingol River is the date
+referred to by Arrian, in which case we may estimate that he spent
+about twenty-four days negotiating the fearful country opened up to
+him on the Parkan route ere he touched the seashore again. This is by
+no means an exaggerated estimate if we consider the distance
+(something short of 200 miles) and the nature of his army. A
+half-armed mob, which included women and children, and of which the
+transport consisted of horses and mules and wooden carts dragged by
+men, cannot move with the facilities of a modern brigade. Nor would a
+modern brigade move along that line with the rapidity that has
+distinguished some of our late man[oe]uvres in South Africa. On the
+whole, I think the estimate a probable one, and it brings us to
+Bampur, the ancient capital of Gadrosia.
+
+We have now followed Alexander out of India into Persia. Thenceforward
+there are no great geographical questions to decipher, or knots to be
+untied. His progress was a progress of triumph, and the story of his
+retreat well ends with the thrilling tale of his meeting again with
+Nearkhos, after the latter had harboured his fleet at the mouth of the
+Minab River and set out on the search for Alexander, guided by a
+Greek who had strayed from Alexander's army. Blackened by exposure and
+clothed in rags, Nearkhos was unrecognized till he announced himself
+to the messenger sent to look for him. Even Alexander himself at first
+failed to recognize his admiral in the extraordinary apparition that
+was presented to him in his camp, and could only believe that his
+fleet must have perished and that Nearkhos and Arkias were sole
+survivors. We can imagine what followed. Those were days of ready
+recognition of service and no despatches, and all Persia was open to
+the conquerors to choose their reward.
+
+After Alexander's time many centuries elapsed before we get another
+clear historic view into Makran, and then what do we find? A country
+of great and flourishing cities, of high-roads connecting them with
+well-known and well-marked stages; armies passing and re-passing, and
+a trade which represented to those that held it the dominant
+commercial power in the world, flowing steadily century after century
+through that country which was fatal to Alexander, and which we are
+rather apt now to consider the fag-end of the Baluchistan wilderness.
+The history of Makran is bound up with the history of India from time
+immemorial. Not all the passes of all the frontiers of India put
+together have seen such traffic into the broad plains of Hindustan as
+for certainly three, and possibly for eight, centuries passed through
+the gateways of Makran. As one by one we can now lay our finger on
+the sites of those historic cities, and first begin faintly to measure
+the importance of Makran to India ere Vasco da Gama first claimed the
+honour of doubling the Cape and opened up the ocean highway, we can
+only be astonished that for four centuries more Makran remained a
+blank on the map of the world.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[3] _Indus Delta Country_, 1894.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CHINESE EXPLORATIONS--THE GATES OF THE FAR NORTH
+
+
+There are many gateways into India, gateways on the north as well as
+the north-west and west, and although these far northern ways are so
+rugged, so difficult, and so elevated that they can hardly be regarded
+as of political or strategic importance, yet they are many of them
+well trodden and some were once far better known than they are now.
+Opinions may perhaps differ as to their practical value as military or
+commercial approaches under new conditions of road-making, but they
+never have, so far, been utilized in either sense, and the interest of
+them is purely historical. These are the ways of the pilgrims, and we
+are almost as much indebted to Chinese records for our knowledge of
+them as we are to the researches of modern explorers.
+
+For many a century after Alexander had left the scene of his Eastern
+conquests historical darkness envelopes the rugged hills and plains
+which witnessed the passing of the Greeks. The faith of Buddha was
+strong before their day, but the building age of Buddhism was later.
+No mention is to be found in the pages of Greek history of the
+magnificent monuments of the creed which are an everlasting wonder of
+the plains of Upper India. Such majestic testimony to the living force
+of Buddhism could hardly have passed unnoticed by observers so keen as
+those early Greeks; and when next we are dimly lighted on our way to
+identify the lines of movement and the trend of commerce on the Indian
+frontier, we find a new race of explorers treading their way with
+pious footsteps from shrine to shrine, and the sacred books and
+philosophic teaching of a widespreading faith the objects of their
+quest. The Chinese pilgrim Fa Hian was the first to leave a permanent
+record of his travels. His date is about A.D. 400, and he was only one
+of a large number of Chinese pilgrims who knew the road between India
+and China far better than any one knew it twenty-five years ago.
+
+Although the northern approaches to India from the direction of China
+are rather far afield, yet recent revelations resulting from the
+researches of such enterprising travellers as Sven Hedin and Stein,
+confirming the older records, require some short reference to the
+nature of those communications between the outside world of Asia and
+India which distinguished the early centuries of our era. In those
+early centuries there was to be found in that western extension of
+the Gobi desert which we call Chinese Turkistan, in the low-lying
+country, mostly sand-covered, which stretches to a yellow horizon
+northward beneath the shimmering haze of an almost perpetual dust
+veil, very different conditions of human existence to those which now
+prevail. The zone of cultivation fed by the streams of the Kuen Lun
+was wider, stretching farther into the desert. Rivers ran fuller of
+water, carrying fertility farther afield; great lakes spread
+themselves where now there are but marshes and reeds, and cities
+flourished which have been covered over and buried under accumulating
+shifting sand for centuries. A great central desert there always has
+been within historic period, but it was a desert much modified by
+bordering oases of green fertility, and a spread of irrigated
+cultivation which is not to be found there now.
+
+Amongst the most interesting relics recovered from some of these
+unearthed cities are certain writings in Karosthi and Brahmi (Indian)
+script, which testify to the existence of roads and posts and a
+regular system of communication between these cities of the plain,
+which must have been in existence in those early years of the
+Christian era when Karosthi was a spoken language in Northern India.
+All this now sand-buried country was Buddhist then, and a great city
+overlooked the wide expanse of the Lop Lake, and the rivers of the
+southern hills carried fertility far into the central plain. When the
+pilgrim Fa Hian trod the weary road from Western China to Chinese
+Turkistan by way of Turfan and the Buddhist city of Lop, he followed
+in a groove deep furrowed by the feet of many a pilgrim before him,
+and a highway for devotees for many a century after.
+
+Strange as it may seem, the ancient people of this desert waste--the
+people who now occupy the cultivated strip of land at the foot of the
+Kuen Lun mountains which shut them off from Tibet--are an Indian race,
+or rather a race of Indian extraction, far more allied to the
+Indo-European than to any Mongol, Chinese, Tibetan, or Turk race with
+which they may have been recently admixed. Did they spread northward
+from India through the rugged passes of Northern Kashmir, taking with
+them the faith of their ancestors? We do not know; but there can be
+little doubt that the Chanto of the Lop basin and of Turfan is the
+lineal successor of the people who welcomed the Chinese pilgrims in
+their search after truth. Buddhist then and Mahomedan now, they seem
+to have lost little of their genial spirit of hospitality to
+strangers.
+
+Khotan (Ilchi) was the central attraction of Western Turkistan, one at
+least of the most blessed wayside fountains of faith, the ultimate
+sources of which were only to be found in India. Those ultimate
+sources have long left India. They are concentrated in Lhasa now,
+which city is still the sanctuary of Buddhism to the thousands of
+pilgrims who make their way from China on the east and Mongolia on the
+north as full of devout aspiration and of patient searching after
+spiritual knowledge as was ever a Chinese pilgrim of past ages. Not
+only was Western Turkistan full of the monuments and temples of
+Buddhism scattered through the length of the green strips of territory
+which bordered the dry steppe of the central depression watered on the
+north by the Tarim River, and on the south by the many mountain
+streams which rushed through the gorges of the Kuen Lun, but there was
+an evident extension of outward and visible signs of the faith to the
+northward, embracing the Turfan basin, which in many of its physical
+characteristics is but a minor repetition of that of Lop, and possibly
+even as far west as the great Lake Issyk Kul. Thus the old pilgrim
+route to India from Western China, which was chosen by the devotee so
+as to include as many sacred shrines as could possibly be made to
+assist in adding grace to his pilgrimage, was a very different route
+to that now followed by the pious Mongolian or Western Chinaman to
+Lhasa.
+
+Avoiding the penalties of the Nan Shan system of mountains which
+guards the Tibetan plateau on the north-east, these early pilgrims
+held on their journey almost due west, and, skirting the Mongolian
+steppe within sight of the Tibetan frontier hills, they reached
+Turfan; then turning southward, they passed on to the Lop Nor lake
+region by a well-ascertained route, which at that time intersected the
+well-watered and fertile land of Lulan. There is water still in the
+lower Tarim and in the Konche River beds, but it has proved in these
+late years to be useless for agricultural development owing to the
+increasing salinity of the soil. Several recent attempts at
+recolonizing this area have resulted in total failure. From the Lop
+Lake to Khotan _via_ Cherchen the old-world route was much the same as
+now, but the width of fertility stretched farther north from the Kuen
+Lun foothills, and the temples of Buddhism were rich and frequent, and
+thus were pious pilgrims refreshed and elevated every step of the way
+through this Turkistan region. Khotan appears to have been the local
+centre of the faith. No lake spread out its blue waters to catch the
+sky reflections here, but from the cold wastes of Tibet, through the
+gorges of the great Kuen Lun range, the waters of a river flowed down
+past the temples and stupas of Ilchi to find their way northward
+across the sands to the Tarim.
+
+The high ritual of Buddhism in its ancient form was strange and
+imposing. When we read Fa Hian's account of the great car procession,
+we are no longer surprised at the effect which Buddhist symbolism
+exercised on its disciples. Fa Hian and his fellow-travellers were
+lodged in a sanghârâma, or temple of the "Great Vehicle," where were
+three thousand priests "who assemble to eat at the sound of the
+_ghantâ_. On entering the dining hall their carriage is grave and
+demure, and they take their seats in regular order. All of them keep
+silence; there is no noise with their eating bowls; when the
+attendants give more food they are not allowed to speak to one another
+but only to make signs with the hand." "In this country," says Fa
+Hian, "there are fourteen great sanghârâmas. From the first day of the
+fourth month they sweep and water the thoroughfares within the city
+and decorate the streets. Above the city gate they stretch an awning
+and use every kind of adornment. This is when the King and Queen and
+Court ladies take their place. The Gomâti priests first of all take
+their images in the procession. About three or four li from the city
+they make a four-wheeled image car about 30 feet high, in appearance
+like a moving palace adorned with the seven precious substances. They
+fix upon it streamers of silk and canopy curtains. The figure is
+placed in the car with two Bodhisatevas as companions, while the Devas
+attend on them; all kinds of polished ornaments made of gold and
+silver hang suspended in the air. When the image is 100 paces from the
+gate the King takes off his royal cap, and changing his clothes for
+new ones proceeds barefooted, with flowers and incense in his hand,
+from the city, followed by his attendants. On meeting the image he
+bows down his head and worships at its feet, scattering the flowers
+and burning the incense. On entering the city the Queen and Court
+ladies scatter about all kinds of flowers and throw them down in wild
+profusion. So splendid are the arrangements for worship!"[4] Thus
+writes Fa Hian, and it is sufficient to testify to the strength of
+Buddhism and the magnificence of its ritual in the third century of
+our era, when India still held the chief fountains of inspiration ere
+the holy of holies was transferred to Lhasa and the pilgrim route was
+changed.
+
+So far, then, we need not look for the influence exercised by the most
+recent climatic pulsation of Central Asia which has dried up the
+water-springs and allowed the sand-drifts to accumulate above many of
+the minor townships of the Lop basin, in order to account for the
+trend of Asiatic religious history towards Tibet. It was the gradual
+decay of the faith, and its final departure from its birthplace in the
+plains of India in later centuries, which sent pilgrims on another
+track, and left many of the northern routes to be rediscovered by
+European explorers in the nineteenth century. Most of the Chinese
+pilgrims visited Khotan, but from Khotan onward their steps were bent
+in several directions. Some of them visited Ki-pin, which has been
+identified with the upper Kabul River basin. Here, indeed, were
+scattered a wealth of Buddhist records to be studied, shrines to be
+visited, and temples to be seen. The road from Balkh to Kabul and from
+Kabul to the Punjab was pre-eminently a Buddhist route. Balkh, Haibak,
+and Bamian all testify, as does the neighbourhood of Kabul itself, to
+the existence of a lively Buddhist history before the Mahomedan
+Conquest, and between Kabul and India there are Buddhist remains near
+Jalalabad which rival in splendour those of the Swat valley and the
+Upper Punjab. All these places were objects of devout attention
+undoubtedly, but to reach Kabul _via_ Balkh from Khotan it would be
+necessary to cross the Pamirs and Badakshan. It is not easy to follow
+in detail the footsteps of these devotees, but it is obvious that
+until they entered the "Tsungling" mountains they remained north of
+the great trans-Himalayan ranges and of the Hindu Kush. The Tsungling
+was the dreaded barrier between China and India, and the wild tales of
+the horrors which attended the crossing of the mountains testify to
+the fact that they were not much easier of access or transit at the
+beginning of the Christian era than they are now.
+
+The direct distance between Khotan and Balkh is not less than 700
+miles, and 700 miles of such a mountain wilderness as would be
+involved by the passing of the Pamirs into the valley of the Oxus and
+the plains of Badakshan would represent 900 to 1000 of any ordinary
+travelling. And yet there appear to be indications of a close
+connection between these two centres of Buddhism. The great temple a
+mile or two to the west of Khotan, called the Nava Sanghârâma, or
+royal new temple, is the same as that to the south-west of Balkh,
+according to a later traveller, Hiuen Tsiang, while the kings of
+Khotan were said to be descended from Vaisravana, the protector of the
+Balkh convent. No modern traveller has crossed Badakshan from the
+Pamirs to Balkh, but the general conformation of the country is fairly
+well ascertained, and there can be no doubt that the journey would
+occupy any pilgrim, no matter how devout and enthusiastic, at least
+two and a half months, and another month would be required to traverse
+the road from Balkh _via_ Hiabak, or Baiman, over the Hindu Kush to
+Kabul.
+
+Now we are told that Fa Hian journeyed twenty-five days to the Tsen-ho
+country, from whence, by marching four days southward, he entered the
+Tsungling mountains. Another twenty-five days' rugged marching took
+him to the Kie-sha country, a country "hilly and cold" in "the midst
+of the Tsungling mountains," where he rejoined his companions who had
+started for Ki-pin. It is therefore clear that he did not rejoin them
+at Kabul, nor could they have gone there; and the question
+arises--Where is Kie-sha? The continuation of Fa Hian's story gives
+the solution to the riddle. Another month's wandering from Kie-sha
+across the Tsungling mountains took him to North India. It was a
+perilous journey. The terrors of it remained engraved on the memory of
+the saint after his return to his home in China. Great "poison
+dragons" lived in those mountains, who spat poison and gravel-stones
+at passing pilgrims, and few there were who survived the encounter.
+The impression conveyed of furious blasts of mountain-bred winds is
+vivid, and many travellers since Fa Hian's time have suffered
+therefrom. "On entering the borders" of India he came to a little
+country called To-li. To-li seems to be identified beyond dispute with
+Darel, and with this to guide us we begin to see where our pilgrims
+must have passed. Fifteen days more of Tsungling mountain-climbing
+southwards took him to Wuchung (Udyana), where he remained during the
+rains. Thence he went "south" to Sin-ho-to (Swat), and finally
+"descended" into Gandara, or the Upper Punjab.
+
+From these final stages of his journey India-ward there is little
+difficulty in recognizing that Kie-sha must be Kashmir. In the first
+place, Kashmir lies on the most direct route between Chinese Turkistan
+and India. Nor is it possible to believe that the wealth of Buddhist
+remains which now appeal to the antiquarian in that delightful garden
+of the Himalayas were not more or less due to the first impulse of the
+devotees of the early faith to plant the seeds of Buddhism where the
+passing to and fro of innumerable bands of pilgrims would of
+necessity occur. Through Kashmir lay the high-road to High Asia, at
+that time included in the Buddhist fold, where Indian language had
+crystallized and corroborated the faith that was born in India. Thus
+it was that glorious temples arose amidst the groves and on the slopes
+of Kashmir hills, and even in the days of Fa Hian, when Buddhism was
+already nine centuries old, there must have been much to beguile the
+pilgrim to devotional study. In short, Kashmir could not be overlooked
+by any devotee, and whether the direct route thither was taken from
+Khotan, or whether Kashmir was visited in due course from Northern
+India, we may be certain that it was one of the chief objectives of
+Chinese pilgrimage.
+
+Fa Hian says so little about the kingdom of Kie-sha which can be made
+use of to assist us, that it is not easy to identify the part of
+Kashmir to which he refers. Twenty-five days after entering the
+Tsungling mountains would enable him to reach the valley of Kashmir by
+the Karakoram Pass, Leh, and the Zoji-la at the head of the Sind
+valley. It is not a matter of much consequence for our purposes which
+route he took, as it is quite clear that all these northern routes
+were open to Chinese pilgrim traffic from the very earliest times. The
+alternative route would be to the head of the Tagdumbash Pamir, over
+the Killik Pass, and by Hunza to Gilgit and Astor. The Hunza country
+(Kunjut) has always had an attraction for the Chinese. It has been
+conquered and held by China, and is still reckoned by its inhabitants
+as part of the Chinese Empire. Hunza and Nagar pay tribute to China to
+this day.
+
+If we remember that the pains and penalties of a pilgrimage over any
+of the Hindu Kush passes, or by the Karakoram (the chief trade route
+through all time), to India, is as nothing to the trials which modern
+Mongolian pilgrims undergo between China and Lhasa, over the terrible
+altitudes of the Tibetan plateau, there will be little to surprise us
+in these earlier achievements. Pioneers of exploration in the true
+sense they were not, for the Himalayan byways must have been as well
+known to them as were the Asiatic highways to Alexander ere he
+attempted to reach India. We may assume, however, that Fa Hian entered
+the central valley of Kashmir from Leh, for it gives a reasonable
+pretext for his choice of a route out of it. It is not likely that he
+would go twice over the same ground. He witnessed the pomp and
+pageantry of Buddhist ritual in Kie-sha. The King of the country had
+kept the great five-yearly assembly. He had "summoned Sramanas from
+the four quarters, who came together like clouds." Silken canopies and
+flags with gold and silver lotus-flowers figure amongst the
+ritualistic properties, and form part of the processional arrangements
+which end with the invariable offerings to the priests. "The King,
+taking from the chief officer of the Embassy the horse he rides, with
+its saddle and bridle, mounts it, and then, taking white taffeta,
+jewels of various kinds, and things required by the Sramanas, in union
+with his ministers, he vows to give them all to the priests. Having
+thus given them, they are redeemed at a price from the priests." No
+mention is made of the price, but as the Kashmiri of the past has been
+excellently well described by another pilgrim as a true prototype of
+the Kashmiri of the present, it is unlikely that the King lost much by
+the deal.
+
+The description of Kie-sha as "in the middle of the Tsungling range"
+would hardly apply to any country but Kashmir, and the fact is noted
+that from Kie-sha towards India the vegetation changes in character.
+Having crossed Tsungling, we arrive at North India, says Fa Hian, but
+to reach the "little country called To-li" (Darel) he would have to
+cross by the Burzil Pass into the basin of the Indus, and then follow
+the Gilgit River to a point under the shadow of the Hindu Koh range,
+opposite the head-waters of the Darel. Crossing the Hindu Koh, he
+would then drop straight into this "little country." Remembering
+something of the nature of the road to Gilgit ere our military
+engineers fashioned a sound highway out of the rocky hill-sides, one
+can sympathize with the pious Fa Hian when recalling in after years
+the frightful experiences of that journey.
+
+A few miles beyond Gilgit the rough evidences of a ruined stupa, and a
+still rougher outline of a Buddhist figure cut on the rocks which
+guard a narrow gorge leading up the Hindu Koh slopes, points to the
+take-off for Darel. No modern explorer has followed that route, except
+one of the native explorers of the Indian survey who travelled under
+the soubriquet of "the Mullah." The Mullah made his way through the
+Darel valley to the Indus, and describes it as a difficult route.
+There is little variation in the tale of troubled progress, but "the
+Mullah" makes no mention of Buddhist relics, nor is it likely that
+they would have appealed to him had he seen them. There can be little
+doubt, however, that Darel holds some hidden secrets for future
+enterprise to disclose. "Keeping along Tsungling, they journeyed
+southward for fifteen days," says Fa Hian. "The road is difficult and
+broken with steep crags and precipices in the way. The mountain-side
+is simply a stone wall standing up 10,000 feet. Looking down, the
+sight is confused and there is no sure foothold. Below is a river
+called Sintu-ho (Indus). In old days men bored through the walls to
+make a way, and spread out side ladders, of which there are seven
+hundred in all to pass. Having passed the ladders, we proceed by a
+hanging rope bridge to cross the river." All this agrees fairly well
+with the Mullah's account of ladders and precipices, and locates the
+route without much doubt. The Darel stream joins the Indus some 30 to
+35 miles below Chilas, where the course of the latter river is
+practically unsurveyed. Crossing the Indus, Fa Hian came to Wuchung,
+which is identified with Udyana, or Upper Swat, and there he remained
+during the rains. The Indus below the Darel junction is confined
+within a narrow steep-sided gorge with hills running high on either
+side, those on the east approaching 15,000 and 16,000 feet. There are
+villages, groups of flat-roofed shanties, clinging like limpets to the
+rocks, but there is little space for cultivation, and no record of
+Buddhist remains north of Buner. No systematic search has been
+possible.
+
+Investigations such as led to the remarkable discovery by Dr. Stein of
+the site of that famous Buddhist sanctuary marking the spot where
+Buddha, in a former birth, offered his body to the starving tigress on
+Mount Banj, south of Buner, have never been possible farther north, on
+account of the dangerous character of the hill-people of those
+regions. Other Chinese pilgrims, Song Yun (A.D. 520) and Huec Sheng,
+have recorded that after leaving the capital of ancient Udyana (near
+Manglaor, in Upper Swat) they journeyed for eight days south-east, and
+reached the place where Buddha made his body offering. "There high
+mountains rose with steep slopes and dizzy peaks reaching to the
+clouds," etc. "There stood on the mountain the temple of the collected
+bones which counted 300 priests." But there is no mention of other
+Buddhist sites of importance in the valley of the Indus. Leaving
+Udyana, Fa Hian and his companions went south to the country of
+Su-ho-to (Lower Swat), and finally ("descending eastward") in five
+days found themselves in Gandhara--or the Upper Punjab. Nine days'
+journey eastward from the point where they reached Gandhara they came
+to the place of Buddha's body-offering, or Mount Banj. Such, in brief
+outline, is the story of one pilgrim's journey across the Himalayas to
+India. Other pilgrims undoubtedly entered India _via_ the Kabul River
+valley, but we need hardly follow them. There were hundreds of them,
+possibly thousands, and the pains and penalties of the pilgrimage but
+served to add merit to their devotion.
+
+The point of the story lies in its revelation as regards connection
+between Central Asia and India in the early centuries A.D. Clearly
+there was no pass unknown or unvisited by the Chinese. Not merely the
+direct routes, but all the connecting ways which linked up one
+Buddhist centre with another were equally well known. What has
+required from us a weary process of investigation to overcome the
+difficulties of map-making, was to them, if not exactly an open book,
+certainly a geographical record which could be turned to practical
+use, and it is instructive to note the use that was made of it. As a
+pious duty, bristling with difficulty and danger, travel over the
+wandering tracks which pass through the northern gates of the
+Himalayas was regarded with fervour; but it may be taken for granted
+that less pious-minded adventurers than the Chinese pilgrims would
+most certainly have made good use of that geographical knowledge to
+exploit the riches of India had such a proceeding been possible. We
+know that attempts have been made. From the earliest times the Mongol
+hordes of China and Central Asia have been directed on India, and no
+gateway which could offer any possible hope of admittance has been
+neglected. Baktria (Badakshan), lying beyond the mountain barrier, had
+been at their mercy. The successors to Alexander's legions in that
+country were swamped and dispersed within a century or two of the
+foundation of the Greek kingdom; and the Kabul River way to India has
+let in army after army. But these northern passes have not only barred
+migratory Asiatic hordes through all ages, but have proved too much
+even for small organized Mongol military expeditions.
+
+The Chinese hosts, who apparently thought little of crossing the
+Tibetan frontier over a succession of Alpine passes such as no Western
+general in the world's history has ever encountered, failed to
+penetrate farther than Kunjut. The Mongol invasion of Tibet early in
+the sixteenth century (which is so graphically described in the
+Tarikh-i-Rashidi by Mirza Haidar) was tentatively pushed into Kashmir
+_via_ Ladakh, and was defeated by the natural difficulties of the
+country--not by the resistance of the weak-kneed Kashmiri--much,
+indeed, as a similar expedition to Lhasa was defeated by cold and
+starvation. No modern ingenuity has as yet contrived a method of
+dealing with the passive resistance of serrated bands of mountains of
+such altitude as the Himalayas. No railway could be carried over such
+a series of snow-capped ramparts; no force that was not composed of
+Asiatic mountaineers could attempt to pass them with any chance of
+success; and these northern lines, these eternal defences of Nature's
+making may well be left, a vast silent wilderness of peaks,
+undisturbed by man's puny efforts to improve their strength. Certainly
+the making of highways in the midst of them is not the surest means of
+adding to their natural powers of passive obstruction, although such
+public works may possibly be deemed necessary in the interests of
+peace and order preservation amongst the "snowy mountain men."
+
+Chinese pilgrims no longer tread those rocky mountain-paths (except in
+the pages of Rudyard Kipling's entrancing work), and the tides of
+devotion have set in other directions--to Mecca or to Lhasa; but the
+fact that thousands of Buddhist worshippers yearly undertake a journey
+which, for the hardships entailed by cold and starvation between the
+western borders of China and Lhasa, should surely secure for them a
+reserve of merit equal to that gathered by their forefathers from the
+"Tsungling" mountains, might possibly lead to the question whether the
+plateau of Eastern Tibet does not afford the open way which is not to
+be found farther west. If a Chinese force of 70,000 men could advance
+into the heart of Tibet, and finally administer a severe defeat on the
+Gurkhas (which surely occurred in 1792) in Nepal, it is clear that
+such a force could equally well reach Lhasa. It is also certain that
+the stupendous mountain-chains and the elevated passes, which are the
+ruling features of the eastern entrance into Tibet from China, far
+exceed in natural strength and difficulty those which intervene
+between the plains of India and Lhasa. We are therefore bound to admit
+that it might be possible for an unopposed Chinese force to invade
+India by Eastern Tibet; possibly even by the valley of Assam. There
+is, however, no record that such an attempt has ever been made. The
+savage and untamable disposition of the eastern Himalayan tribes, and
+their intense hostility to strangers may have been, through all time,
+a strong deterrent to any active exploitation of their country; and
+the density of the forests which close down on the narrow ways which
+intersect their hills, give them an advantage in savage tactics such
+as was not possessed by the fighting Gurkha tribe in Nepal. But
+whatever the reason may be, there is apparently no record of any
+Chinese force descending through the Himalayas into the eastern plains
+of India by any of the many ways afforded by the affluents of the
+Brahmaputra. We may, I think, rest very well assured that no such
+attempt could possibly be made by any force other than Chinese, and
+that it is not likely that it ever will be made by them. We do not (at
+present) look to the north-east (to China) for the shadows of coming
+events in India. We look to the north, and looking in that direction
+we are quite content to write down the approach to India by any
+serious military force across Tibet or through the northern gateways
+of Kashmir to be an impossibility.
+
+The footsteps of the Buddhist pilgrim point no road for the tread of
+armies. In the interests of geographical research it is well to follow
+their tracks, and to learn how much wiser geographically they were in
+their day than we are now. It is well to remember that as modern
+explorers we are as hopelessly behind them in the spirit of
+enterprise, which reaches after an ethical ideal, as we are ahead of
+them in the process of attaining exact knowledge of the world's
+physiography, and recording it.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[4] _Buddhist Records of the Western World_, vol. i. p. 27.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MEDIÆVAL GEOGRAPHY--SEISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN
+
+
+It was about eight centuries before Buddhism, debased and corrupted,
+tainted with Siva worship and loaded with all the ghastly
+paraphernalia of a savage demonology, had been driven from India
+across the Himalayas, that the Star of Bethlehem had guided men from
+the East to the cradle of the Christian faith--a faith so like
+Buddhism in its ethical teaching and so unlike in its spiritual
+conceptions,--and during those eight centuries Christianity had
+already been spread by Apostles and missionaries through the broad
+extent of High Asia. Thereupon arose a new propaganda which, spreading
+outwards from a centre in south-west Arabia, finally set all humanity
+into movement, impelling men to call the wide world to a recognition
+of Allah and his one Prophet by methods which eventually included the
+use of fire and sword. The rise of the faith of Islam was nearly
+coincident (so far as India was concerned) with the fall of Buddhism.
+Thenceforward the gentle life-saving precepts of Gautama were to be
+taught in the south, and east, and north; in Ceylon, Burma, China, and
+Mongolia after being first firmly rooted in Tibet and Turkistan, but
+never again in the sacred groves of the land of their birth. And this
+raging religious hurricane of Islam swept all before it for century
+after century until, checked at last in Western Europe, it left the
+world ennobled by many a magnificent monument, and, by adding to the
+enlightenment of the dark places of the earth, fulfilled a mission in
+the development of mankind. With it there arose a new race of
+explorers who travelled into India from the west and north-west,
+searching out new ways for their commerce, and it is with them now and
+their marvellous records of restless commercial activity that we have
+to deal. Masters of the sea, even as of the land, no military and
+naval supremacy which has ever directed the destinies of nations was
+so widespread in its geographical field of enterprise as that of the
+Arabs. The whole world was theirs to explore. Their ships furrowed new
+paths across the seas, even as their khafilas trod out new highways
+over the land; and at the root of all their movement was the
+commercial instinct of the Semite. After all it was the eternal
+question of what would pay. Their progenitors had been builders of
+cities, of roads, of huge dams for water storage and irrigation, and
+directors for public works in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The might of
+the sword of Islam but carved the way for the slave-owner and the
+merchant to follow. Thus it is that mediæval records of exploration in
+Afghanistan and Baluchistan are mostly Arab records; and it is from
+them that we learn the "open sesame" of India's landward gates, long
+ere the seaports of her coasts were visited by European ships.
+
+Nothing in the history of the world is more surprising than the rapid
+spread of Arab conquests in Asia, Africa, and Western Europe at the
+close of the seventh century of our era, excepting, perhaps, the
+thoroughness of the subsequent disappearance of Arab influence, and
+the absolute effacement of the Arabic language in those countries
+which Arabs ruled and robbed. In Persia, Makran, Central Asia, or the
+Indus valley, hardly a word of Arabic is now to be recognized.
+Geographical terms may here and there be found near the coast,
+surviving only because Arab ships still skirt those shores and the
+sailor calls the landmarks by old-world names. Even in the English
+language the sea terms of the Arab sailor still live. What is our
+"Admiral" but the "Al mir ul bahr" of the Arabian Sea, or our "Barge"
+but his "Barija," or warship! But in Sind, where Arab supremacy lasted
+for at least three centuries, there is nothing left to indicate that
+the Arab ever was there.
+
+The effacement of the Arab in India is chiefly due to the Afghan, the
+Turk, and the Mongol. Mahmud of Ghazni put the finishing blow to Arab
+supremacy in the Indus valley, when he sacked Multan about the
+beginning of the eleventh century; and subsequently the destroying
+hordes of Chenghiz Khan and Tamerlane completed the final downfall of
+the Empire of the Khalifs.
+
+Between the beginning of the eighth century and that of the eleventh
+the whole world of the Indian north-west frontier and its broad
+hinterland, extending to the Tigris and the Oxus, was much traversed
+and thoroughly well known to the Arab trader. In Makran we have seen
+how they shaped out for themselves overland routes to India,
+establishing big trade centres in flourishing towns, burying their
+dead in layers on the hill-sides, cultivating their national fruit,
+the date, in Makran valleys, and surrounding themselves with the
+wealth and beauty of irrigated agriculture. The chief impulse to Arab
+exploration emanated from the seat of the Khalifs in Mesopotamia, and
+the schools of Western Persia and Bagdad appear to have educated the
+best of those practical geographers who have left us their records of
+travel in the East; but there are indications of an occasional influx
+of Arabs from the coasts of Southern Arabia about whom we learn
+nothing whatever from mediæval histories. It will be at any rate
+interesting to discuss the general trend of exploration and travel,
+associated either with pilgrimage or commerce, which distinguished the
+days of Arab supremacy, and which throws considerable light on the
+geography of the Indian borderland before its political features were
+rearranged by the hand of Chenghiz Khan and his successors. This has
+never yet been attempted by the light of recent investigations, and
+even now it can only be done partially and indifferently from the want
+of completed maps. The borderland which touches the Arabian
+Sea--Southern Baluchistan--has been completely explored and mapped,
+and the more obvious inferences to be derived from that mapping have
+already been made. But Seistan, Karmania, the highways and cities of
+Turkistan (Tocharistan) and Badakshan have not, so far as I know, been
+outlined in any modern work based on Arab writings and collated with
+the geographical surveys of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission and
+their reports. It was after all but a cursory examination of a huge
+area of most interesting country that was possible within the limited
+time devoted to boundary demarcation labours in 1883-85; but the
+physical features of this part of Asia being now fairly well defined,
+there is a good deal to be inferred with reasonable probability from
+the circumstance that highways and cities must ever be dependent for
+their location on the distributions of topography.
+
+The first impression produced by the general overlook of all the
+historic area which lies between Eastern Persia and the sources on the
+Oxus, is one of surprise. There is so little left of this great busy
+world of Arab commerce. It seems to have dropped out of the world's
+economy, and certain regions to have reverted to a phase of pristine
+freedom from sordid competition, which argues much for a decreased
+population and a desiccated area of once flourishing lands.
+
+There are no forests and jungles in Western Afghanistan, or at least
+only in restricted spaces on the mountain-slopes, so that there is no
+wild undergrowth uprooting and covering the evidences of man's busy
+habitation such as we find in Ceylon and the Nepal Tarai; where may be
+seen strange staring stone witnesses of the faith of former centuries,
+half hidden amidst the wild beauty and luxuriance of tropical forest
+growth. There is nothing indeed quite so interesting. Nature has
+spread out smooth grass slopes carpeted with sweet flowers in summer,
+but frozen and windswept in winter; and beneath the surface we know
+for a surety that the buried remains of centuries of busy traffic and
+marketing lie hidden, but there is frequently no sign whatever above
+ground. It is difficult to account for the utter want of visible
+evidence. In the processes of clearing a field for military action,
+when it becomes essential to remove some obstructive mud-built village
+and trace a clear and free zone for artillery fire, it is often found
+that the work of destruction is exceedingly difficult. Only with the
+most careful management can the debris be so dispersed that it affords
+no better cover to the enemy than the village which it once
+represented. As for effacing it altogether, only time, with the
+assistance of wind and weather, can accomplish that. But it is
+remarkable with what completeness time succeeds. I have stood on the
+site of a buried city in Sind--a city, too, of the mediæval era of
+Arab ascendency--and have recognized no trace of it but what appeared
+to be the turbaned effigies of a multitude of faithful mourners in
+various expressive attitudes of grief and despair, who represented the
+ancient cemetery of the city. The city had been wiped off the land as
+clean as if it had been swept into the sea, but the burying places
+remained, and the stone mourners continue mourning through the
+centuries.
+
+The architectural order of these Khalmat tombs is quite Saracenic, and
+the vestiges of geometrical design which relieve the plain surface of
+the stone work and accentuate the lines of arch and moulding, are all
+clean cut and clear. At the end of each tomb, set up on a pedestal,
+the folded turban testifies in hard stone to the faith of the occupant
+beneath. The sharp edges of the slabs and the clearness of the
+ornamental carving are sufficient to prove that the age of these tombs
+and monuments cannot be so very remote, although remote enough to have
+led to the effacement of the township to which they belong. Sometimes
+a mound, where no mound would naturally occur, indicates the base of
+one of the larger buildings. Sometimes in the slanting rays of the
+evening sun certain shadows, unobserved before, take shape and
+pattern themselves into the form of a basement; and almost always
+after heavy rain strange little ornaments, beads, and coins, glass
+bangles, rings, etc., are washed out on the surface which tell their
+own tale as surely as does the widespread and infinitely varied
+remnants of household crockery. This last feature is sometimes quite
+amazing in its variety and extent, and the quality of the local finds
+is not a bad indication of the quality of the local household which
+made use of it. "Celadon" ware is abundant from Karachi to Babylon,
+and some of it is of extraordinary fineness and beauty of glaze. Pale
+sage green is invariably the colour of it, and the tradition of luck
+which attaches to it is common from China to Arabia.
+
+In places where vanished towns were in existence as late as the
+eighteenth century (for instance, in the Helmund valley below Rudbar),
+debris of pottery may be found literally in tons. In other places,
+still living, where generations of cities have gradually waxed and
+waned in successive stages, each in turn forming the foundation of a
+new growth, it is very difficult to derive any true historical
+indication from the debris which is to be found near the surface.
+Nothing but systematic and extensive excavation will suffice to prove
+that the existing conglomeration of rubbishy bazaars and ruined
+mosques is only the last and most unworthy phase of the existence of a
+city the glory of whose history is to be found in the world-wide
+tradition of past centuries. And so it happens that, moving in the
+footsteps of these old mediæval commercial travellers, with the story
+of their travels in one's hand, and the indications of hill and plain
+and river to testify to the way they went, and a fair possibility of
+estimating distances according to their slipshod reckoning of a "day's
+journey," one may possess the moral certainty that one has reached a
+position where once there stood a flourishing market-town without the
+faintest outward indication of it. Without facilities for digging and
+delving, and the time for careful examination, there must necessarily
+be a certain amount of conjecture about the exact locality of some
+even of the most famous towns which were centres of Arab trade through
+High Asia. Some indeed are to be found still under their ancient
+names, but others (and amongst them many of great importance) are no
+longer recognizable in the place where once they palpitated with
+vigorous Eastern life.
+
+The area of Asia which for three or four centuries witnessed the
+monopoly of Arab trade included very nearly the whole continent. Asia
+Minor may be omitted from that area, and the remoter parts of China;
+but all the Indian borderland was literally at their feet; and we can
+now proceed to trace out some of their principal lines of route and
+their chief halting-places in those districts of which the mediæval
+geography has lately become known.
+
+It is not at all necessary, even if it were possible, to follow the
+records of all the eminent Arab travellers who at intervals trod these
+weary roads. In the first place they often copied their records from
+one another, so that there is much vain repetition in them. In the
+second place they are not all equally trustworthy, and their writing
+and spelling, especially in place-names, wants that attention to
+diacritical marks which in Eastern orthography is essential to correct
+transliteration. It is perhaps unfortunate that the most eminent
+geographer amongst them should not have been a traveller, but simply a
+compiler.
+
+Abu Abdulla Mohamed was born at Ceuta in Morocco towards the end of
+the eleventh century. Being descended from a family named Idris, he
+came to be known as Al Idrisi. The branch of the family from which
+Idrisi sprang ruled over the city of Magala. He travelled in Europe
+and eventually settled at the Court of Roger II. in Sicily. Here he
+wrote his book on geography. He quotes the various authors whom he
+consulted in its compilation, and derived further information from
+travellers whose accounts he compared and tested. The title of his
+work is _The Delight of those who seek to wander through the Regions
+of the World_, and it is from the French translation of this work by
+Jaubert that the following notes on the countries lying beyond the
+western borders of India are taken. This account may be accepted as
+representing the condition of political and commercial geography
+throughout those regions at the end of the eleventh century, some
+eighty years or so after the borders of India had been periodically
+harried by Mahmud of Ghazni, and not very long before the Mongol host
+appeared on the horizon and made a clean sweep of Asiatic
+civilization.
+
+To the west of the Indian frontier in those early days lay the Persian
+provinces of Makran and Sejistan (Seistan), which two provinces
+between them appear to represent a great part of modern Baluchistan.
+The "Belous" were not yet in Baluchistan; they lived north of the
+mountains occupied by the "Kufs," with whom they are invariably
+associated in Arab geography. "The Kufs," says Idrisi, "are the only
+people who do not speak Persian in the province of Kerman. Their
+mountains reach to the Persian Gulf, being bordered on the north by
+the country of Najirman (?Nakirman), on the south and east by the sea
+and the Makran deserts, on the west by the sea and the 'Belous'
+country and the districts of Matiban and Hormuz." These are doubtless
+the "Bashkird" mountains, and the "species of Kurd, brave and savage"
+which inhabited them under the name of Kufs probably represent the
+progenitors of the present inhabitants.
+
+The "Bolous" or "Belous" lived in the plains to the north "right up
+to the foot of the mountains," and these are the people (according to
+Mr. Longworth Dames) who, hailing originally from the Caspian
+provinces, are the typical Baluch tribespeople of to-day.
+
+These mountains, which Idrisi calls the "cold mountains," extend to
+the north-west of Jirift and are "fertile, productive, and wooded."
+"It is a country where snow falls every year," and of which "the
+inhabitants are virtuous and innocent." There have been changes since
+Idrisi's time, both moral and physical, but here is a strong item of
+evidence in favour of the theory of the gradual desiccation which has
+enveloped Southern Baluchistan and dried up the water-springs of
+Makran. What Idrisi called the "Great Desert" is comprehensive. All
+the great central wastes of Persia, including the Kerman desert as
+well as the basin of the Helmund south of the hills, the frontier
+hills of the Sind border up to Multan, were a part of it, and they
+were inhabited by nomadic tribes of "thieves and brigands."
+
+Modern Seistan is a flat, unwholesome country, distributed
+geographically on either side of the Helmund between Persia and
+Afghanistan. It owes its place in history and its reputation for
+enormous productiveness to the fact that it is the great central basin
+of Afghanistan, where the Helmund and other Afghan rivers run to a
+finish in vast swamps, or lagoons. Surrounded by deserts, Seistan is
+never waterless, and there was, in days which can hardly be called
+ancient, a really fine system of irrigation, which fertilized a fairly
+large tract of now unproductive land on the Persian side of the river.
+The amount of land thus brought under cultivation was considerable,
+but not considerable enough to justify the historic reputation which
+Seistan has always enjoyed as the "Granary of Asia." This traditional
+wealth was no doubt exaggerated from the fact that the fertility of
+Seistan (like that of the Herat valley, which is after all but an
+insignificant item in Afghan territory) was in direct contrast to the
+vast expanse of profitless desert with which it was surrounded--a
+green oasis in the midst of an Asiatic wilderness.
+
+The Helmund has taken to itself many channels in the course of
+measurable time. Its ancient beds have been traced and mapped, and
+with them have been found evidences of closely-packed townships and
+villages, where the shifting waters and consequent encroachment of
+sand-waves leave no sign of life at present.
+
+Century after century the same eternal process of obliteration and
+renovation has proceeded. Millions of tons of silt have been deposited
+in this great alluvial basin. Levels have changed and the waters have
+wandered irresponsibly into a network of channels westward. Then the
+howling, desiccating winds of the north-west have carried back
+sand-waves and silt, burying villages and filling the atmosphere for
+hundreds of miles southward with impalpable dust, crossing the Helmund
+deserts even to the frontier of India. There is no measurable scale
+for the force of the Seistan winds. They scoop up the sand and sweep
+clean the surface of the earth, polishing the rounded edges of the
+ragged walls of the Helmund valley ruins. It is a notable fact that no
+part of these ruins face the wind. All that is left of palaces and
+citadels stands "end on" to the north-west. For a few short months in
+the year the wind is modified, and then there instantly arises the
+plague of insects which render life a burden to every living thing.
+And yet Seistan has played a most important part in the history of
+Asia, and may play an important rôle again.
+
+Arab records are very full of Seistan. The earliest of them that give
+any serious geographical information are the records of Ibn Haukel,
+but there are certainly indications in his account which engender a
+suspicion that he never really visited the country. He mentions the
+capital Zarinje (of which the ruins cover an enormous area to the east
+of Nasratabad, the present capital) and writes of it as a very large
+town with five gates, one of which "leads to Bist." There were
+extensive fortifications, and a bazaar of which he reckons the annual
+revenue to be 1000 direms.
+
+There were canals innumerable, and always the wind and the windmills.
+It is curious that he traces the Helmund as running to Seistan first
+and then to the Darya-i-Zarah. This is in fact correct, only the
+Darya-i-Zarah (or Gaod-i-Zireh, as we know it) receives no water from
+the Helmund until the great Hamún (lagoons) to the north of Nasratabad
+are filled to overflow. He also mentions two rivers as flowing into
+the Zarah--one from Farah (an important place in his time), which is
+impossible, as it would have to cross the Helmund; and one from Ghur.
+This indicates almost certainly that the name Zarah was not confined,
+as it is now, to the great salt swamp south of Rudbar on the Helmund,
+but it included the Hamúns north of Nasratabad, into which the Farah
+River and the Ghur River do actually empty themselves. At present
+these two great lake systems are separated by about 120 miles of
+Helmund River basin, and are only connected occasionally in flood time
+by means of the overflow (called Shelag) already referred to. The
+mention of Bist, and of the bridge of boats across the river at that
+point, is important, for it is clear that about the year A.D. 950 one
+high-road for trade eastward was across the desert, _i.e._ _via_ the
+Khash Rud valley from Zarinje to about the meridian of 63 E.L. and
+then straight over the desert to Bist (Kala Bist of modern mapping).
+The further mention of robats (or resting-places) _en route_,
+indicates that it was well kept up and a much traversed high-road.
+Subsequently Girishk appears to have become the popular crossing-place
+of the river, but it is well to remember that the earlier route still
+exists, and could readily be made available for a flank march on
+Kandahar.
+
+From Idrisi's writings we learn that a century later, _i.e._ about the
+end of the eleventh century, the Seistan province extended far beyond
+its present limits. Bamian and Ghur (_i.e._ the central hills of
+Afghanistan) were _vis-à-vis_ to that province; Farah was included;
+and probably the whole line of the frontier hills from the Sulimanis,
+opposite Multan, to Sibi and Kalat. It was an enormous province, and a
+new light breaks on its traditional wealth in grain and agricultural
+produce when we understand its vast extent.
+
+The regions of Ghur and Dawar bordered it to the north, and there is a
+word or two to be said about both hereafter. Ghur in the eleventh
+century included the valley of Herat and all the wedge of mountainous
+country south of it to Dawar, but how far Seistan extended into the
+heart of the mountain system which culminates to the south-west of
+Kabul it is difficult to say. It is difficult to understand the
+statement that Bamian, for instance, bordered Seistan, with Ghur in
+between, unless, indeed, in these early days of Ghur's history (for
+Ghur was only conquered by the Arabs in A.D. 1020, and was still far
+from intertwining its history with that of Ghazni when Idrisi wrote)
+the greatness of Bamian overshadowed the light of the lesser valleys
+of Ghur, and Bamian was the ruling province of Central Afghanistan.
+This, indeed, seems possible. The district of Dawar to the south of
+Ghur has always been something of a mystery to geographers. Described
+by Idrisi as "vast, rich, and fertile," and "the line of defence on
+the side of Ghur, Baghnein, and Khilkh," it would be impossible to
+place it without a knowledge of the towns mentioned, were it not that
+we are told that Derthel, one of the chief towns of Dawar, is on the
+Helmund, and that one crosses the river there "in order to reach
+Sarwan." This at once indicates the traditional ford at Girishk as the
+crossing-place, and Zamindawar as the Dawar of Idrisi. Khilkh then
+becomes intelligible also as a town of the Khilkhi (the people who
+then occupied Dawar, described as Turkish by Idrisi, and probably
+identified with the modern Ghilzai), and finds its modern
+representative in the Kalat-i-Ghilzai which crowns the well-known rock
+on the road from Kandahar to Kabul. "The country is inhabited by a
+people called Khilkh," says Idrisi. "The Khilkhs are of a Turkish
+race, who from a remote period have inhabited this country, and whose
+habitations are spread to the north of India on the flank of Ghur and
+in western Seistan." Thus the position of the Ghilzai in the
+ethnography of Central Afghanistan appears to have been established
+long before the days of Mongol irruption. Then as now they formed a
+very important tribal community.
+
+It is, however, sometimes difficult to reconcile Idrisi's account of
+the routes followed by his countrymen in this part of Asia with
+existing geographical features. Deserts and mountains must have been
+much the same as they are now, and the best, if not the only, way to
+unravel the geographical tangle is to take his itinerary and see where
+it leads us. Of Baghnein on the southern borders of Seistan, he says
+it is an "agreeable country, fertile and abundant in fruits." From
+there (_i.e_. the country, not the town) to Derthel one reckons one
+day's journey through the nomad tribes of Bechinks, Derthel being
+"situated on the banks of the Helmund and one of the chief towns of
+Dawar."
+
+So we have to cross an open uncultivated region for 40 miles or so
+from Baghnein to reach Derthel, on the Helmund. Again, "one crosses
+the Helmund at Derthel to reach Sarwan--a town situated about one
+day's journey off," on which depends a territory which produces
+everything in abundance. "Sarwan is bigger than Fars, and more rich in
+fruit and all sorts of productions. Grapes are transported to Bost (or
+Bist), a town two days distant passing by Firozand, which possesses a
+big market, and is on the traveller's right as he travels to Benjawai,
+which is _vis-à-vis_ to Derthel." "Rudhan (?Rudbar) is a small town
+south of the Helmund."
+
+The Helmund valley has been surveyed from Zamindawar to its final exit
+into the Seistan lagoons, and we know that at Girishk there is a very
+ancient ford, which now marks, and has always marked, the great
+highway from Kandahar to Herat. South of Girishk, at the junction of
+the Arghandab with the Helmund, we find extensive and ancient ruins at
+Kala Bist; and south of that again there are many ruins at intervals
+in the Helmund valley; but these latter are comparatively recent,
+dating from the time of the Kaiani Maliks of the eighteenth century.
+
+Assuming that the Helmund fords have remained constant, and placing
+Derthel on one side of the river at Girishk and Benjawai on the other,
+we find on our modern maps that from the ford it is a possible day's
+journey to Kala Sarwan, higher up the Helmund, where "fruit and grapes
+are to be had in abundance," and from whence they might certainly have
+been sent to Bist, where grapes do not grow. Baghnein, separated from
+Derthel by a strip of nomad country, one day's journey wide, might
+thus be on either side the Helmund; but its contiguity to Ghur seems
+to favour a position to the west, rather than to the east, of the
+river, somewhere east of the plains of Bukwa about Washir.
+
+Now it is certain that no Arab traveller, crossing the Helmund desert
+from the west by the direct route recently exploited in British Indian
+interests below Kala Bist and south of the river, could by any
+possibility have reached a grape-growing and highly-cultivated country
+in one day's journey. The inference, then, is tolerably clear. Arab
+traders and travellers never made use of this southern route. Nor
+should we ourselves make use of such a route as that _via_ Nushki and
+the Koh-i-Malik Siah, were we not forced into it by Afghan policy. The
+natural high-road from the east of Persia and Herat to India is _via_
+the plains of Kandahar and the ford of Girishk, and the Arabs, with
+all Khorasan at their feet, were not likely to travel any other way.
+
+Undoubtedly the system of approach to the Indus valley, open to Arab
+traffic from Syria and Bagdad, most generally used and most widely
+recognized was that through the Makran valleys to Karachi and Sind,
+whilst the inland route, _via_ Persia and Seistan, made the well-known
+ford of the Helmund at Girishk, or the boat bridge at Kala Bist, its
+objective, and passed over the river to the plains about Kandahar. But
+it is a very remarkable, and possibly a significant, fact that the
+continuation of the route to Sind and the Indus valley from the plains
+about Kandahar is not mentioned by any Arab writer. Did the Arabs
+descend through any of the well-known passes of the frontier--the
+Mulla, Bolan, Saki-Sarwar, or Gomul--into the plains of India?
+Possibly they did so; but in that case it is difficult to account for
+so important a geographical feature as the frontier passes of Sind
+being ignored by the greatest geographer of his day.
+
+Following Idrisi's description of the Helmund province we have a brief
+itinerary from the Helmund ford (Derthel or Benjawai) to Ghazni, said
+to be nine days' journey inland. None of the places mentioned are to
+be identified in modern maps except Cariat, which is more than
+probably Kariut, a rich and fertile district in the Arghandab valley
+in the direct line to Kalat-i-Ghilzai. This route passes well to the
+north-east of Kandahar, which was apparently of little account in
+Idrisi's days. Although there are extensive ruins at Kushk-i-Nakhud,
+indicated by a huge artificial mound half-way between Girishk and
+Kandahar, there is nothing in Idrisi's writings by which they can be
+identified.
+
+Ghazni was then a large town "surrounded by mud walls and a ditch.
+There are many houses and permanent markets in Ghazni; much business
+is done there. It is one of the 'entrepots' of India. Kabul is nine
+days' journey from it." This is not much to say of the city which had
+been enriched by the spoils carried away from Muttra and Somnath, and
+by the treasures amassed during seventeen fierce raids of that Mahmud
+who, by repeated conquests, made all Northern and Western India
+contribute to his treasury.
+
+Later, in 1332, the Arab traveller, Ibn Batuta, writes of Ghazni as a
+small town set in a waste of ruins--a description which fits it not
+inaptly at the present day; but in Idrisi's time, before the wars with
+Ghur led to its destruction, whilst still the wealth of a great part
+of India supported its magnificence, and whilst it was still the
+theme of glowing panegyric by contemporary historians, one would
+expect a rather more enthusiastic notice. But even Kabul (nine days'
+journey distant from Ghazni) is only recognized as "_L'une des grandes
+villes de l'Inde, entourée de murs_," with a "_bonne citadelle et au
+dehors divers faubourgs_."[5]
+
+There is little to interest us, however, in tracing out the routes
+that linked up Ghazni and Kabul with the Helmund. They have been the
+same through all time, with just the difference of place-names. Towns
+and villages, caravanserais and posts, have come and gone, but that
+historic road has been marked out by Nature as one of the grandest
+high-roads in Asia, from the days of Alexander to those of Roberts.
+Two minars tapering to the sky on the plain before Ghazni are all that
+are left of its ancient glories, and one cannot but contrast the
+scattered debris of that once so famous city with the solid endurance
+of the far greater and older architectural efforts in Egypt and
+Assyria. Southern Afghanistan is indeed singularly poor and empty of
+historic monuments. Even now were Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat, its
+three great cities, to be flattened out by a widespread earthquake
+there would be little that was not of Buddhist origin left for the
+future archæologist to make a stir about.
+
+Idrisi writes of the Kingdom of Ghur as apart from Herat, although a
+great part of the long Herat valley was certainly included. He calls
+it a country "mountainous and well inhabited, where one finds springs,
+rivers, and gardens--easy to defend and very fertile. There are many
+cultivated fields and flocks. The inhabitants speak a language which
+is not that of the people of Khorasan, and they are not Mohammedans."
+Who were they? The Khilkhis or Ghilzais we know at that time
+overspread the southern hills of Dawar; but who were the people
+speaking a strange language in the land of the Chahar Aimak where now
+dwell the Taimanis, unless they were the Taimanis themselves whose
+traditions date from the time of Moses?
+
+More recently the Ghilzais have left Zamindawar, and the Taimanis have
+been pressed backward and upward into the central hills by the Afghan
+Durani clans, who circle round westward, forming a fringe on the
+foothills between Herat and Kandahar, and who have now completely
+monopolized Zamindawar. Here, indeed, the truculent Nurzai and
+Achakzai, and other elements of the Durani section of Afghan
+ethnography, flourish exceedingly, and it is in this corner of
+Afghanistan, bordering on the Herat highway to India, that nearly all
+the fanatics and ghazis of the country are bred. They presented so
+turbulent and uncompromising a front to strangers in 1882 that there
+was great difficulty in getting a fair survey of the land of the
+Chahar Aimak or of Zamindawar.
+
+The mediæval provinces of Ghur and Bamain figure so largely in the
+records of Arab geography, and appear to have been so fully open to
+commerce during the centuries succeeding the Arab conquests, that one
+naturally wonders whether there can have been any remarkable change in
+the physical configuration of those regions which, in these later
+days, has rendered them more inaccessible and unapproachable. The Arab
+accounts of trade routes flit easily from point to point, taking
+little reckoning of long distances and gigantic ice-bound passes, or
+the perils of a treacherous climate. An itinerary which deals with
+stupendous mountains and extreme altitudes has little more of
+descriptive illustration in these Arab records than such as would
+apply to camel tracks across the sandy desert or over the flat plain.
+Nor is the distance which figures as a "day's journey" sensibly
+changed to suit the route. Forty miles or so across the backbone of
+the Hindu Kush is written of in much the same terms as if it were
+forty miles over the plains. Giving the Arab travellers all credit for
+far greater powers of endurance and determination than we moderns
+possess, we must still believe that there is a great deal of
+exaggeration (or forgetfulness) in these heroic records of the past.
+It is unlikely that the physical conditions of the country have
+materially changed.
+
+So little has been written of this central region of modern
+Afghanistan (within which lie the ruins of more than one kingdom), so
+little has it been traversed by modern explorers, that it may be
+useful to give some slight general description of the country with
+which these records deal, including Bamain and Kabul and the mountain
+system occupied by the Taimani and Hazara tribes as well as the
+prolific region of Zamindawar with the routes which traverse it.
+
+No part of Afghanistan has been subject to more speculative theories,
+or requires more practical elucidation, than this mountain region in
+which so large a share of the drama of Afghan history has been played.
+Before the days of the Anglo-Russian agreement on the subject of the
+northern boundaries of Afghanistan nothing was known of its geography,
+beyond what might be gathered from the doubtful records of Ferrier's
+journey--and that was very little. The geography of a country shapes
+its history just as surely in the East as in the West, and we have
+consequently much new light thrown on the interesting story of the
+rise and fall of the Ghur dynasties by the fairly comprehensive
+surveys of the region of their turbulent activities which were carried
+out in 1882-83.
+
+From these sources we obtain a very fair idea of the general
+conformation of Central Afghanistan, _i.e._ that part of Afghanistan
+which is occupied by the tribes known as the Chahar Aimak, _i.e._ the
+Jamshidis, the Hazaras, Firozkohis, and Taimanis. It consists in the
+first place of a huge irregular tableland--or uplift--which has been
+deeply scored and eroded by centuries of river action, the rivers
+radiating from the central mass of the Koh-i-Babar to the west of
+Kabul and flowing in deep valleys either directly northward towards
+the Oxus, due west towards Herat (eventually to turn northward), or
+south-west in irregular but more or less parallel lines to the Helmund
+lagoons in Seistan.
+
+The Kabul River basin also finds its head near the same group of river
+sources. The central mountain mass, the Koh-i-Babar, is high, rocky,
+generally snow-capped and impassable. To the north it sends down long,
+barren, and comparatively gentle spurs to the main plateau level,
+which is deeply cut into by the northern system of rivers, including
+the Murghab and the Balkh Ab. But the strangest feature in this
+network of hydrography is the long, deep, narrow valley (almost
+ditch-like in its regularity) which has been eroded by the Hari Rud
+River as it makes its way due west, cutting off the sources of the
+northern group from those of the Helmund or south-western group. It is
+a most remarkable valley, depressed to a depth of 1000 to 2000 feet
+below the general plateau level, bounded on the north by a
+comparatively level line of red-faced cliffs, and on the south by
+another straight flat-backed range called the Band-i-Baian (or farther
+west, the Sufed Koh), which has been carved into the semblance of a
+range by the parallel valleys of the Hari Rud on the north and the
+Tagao Ishlan on the south, which hug the range between them.
+
+No affluents of any consequence join either stream. Either separate or
+together they make their way with straight determination westward
+towards Herat. South of this curious ditch rise the many streamlets
+which work their way, sometimes through comparatively open valleys
+where the floor level has been raised by the centuries of detritus,
+sometimes through steep and narrow gorges where the harder rock of the
+plateau formation presents more difficulties to erosion, into the
+great Helmund basin. These are affluents of the Adraskand, the Farah
+Rud, and the Helmund, all of which have the same bourne in the Seistan
+depression. High up between the Farah Rud and the Helmund affluents
+isolated rugged peaks and short ranges crease and crumple the surface
+of the inhospitable land of the Hazaras, who occupy all the highest of
+the uplands and all the sources of the streams, a hardy, handy race of
+Mongols, living in wild seclusion, but proving themselves to be one of
+the most useful communities amongst the many in Afghanistan. We have
+some of them as sepoys in the Indian Army. Lower down in the same
+river basins, where the gentle grass-covered valleys sweep up to the
+crests of the hills, cultivation becomes possible. Here flocks of
+sheep dot the hill-sides, and the land is open and free; but there are
+still isolated and detached ribs of rocky eminence rising to 11,000
+and 12,000 feet, maintaining the mountainous character of the scenery,
+and rivers are still locked in the embrace of occasional gorges which
+admit of no passing by. This is the land of that very ancient people,
+the Taimanis.
+
+The fierce and lawless Firozkohis live in the Murghab basin on the
+plateau north of the Hari Rud, the Jamshidis to the west of them in
+the milder climate of the lower hills, into which the plateau
+subsides.
+
+Whilst we are chiefly concerned in tracing out the mediæval commercial
+routes of Afghanistan, we may briefly summarize the events which prove
+that those traversed between Herat and the central kingdoms were
+important routes, worn smooth by the feet of armies as well as by the
+tread of pack-laden khafilas. They are still very rough and they
+present solid difficulties here and there, but in the main they are
+passable commercial roads, although little commerce wends its way
+about them now.
+
+In the Middle Ages the Kingdom of Ghur included the Herat valley as
+far as Khwaja Chist above Obeh in the valley of the Hari Rud, as well
+as all the hill country to the south-east. About the earliest mention
+of Ghur by any traveller is that of Ibn Haukel, who speaks of Jebel al
+Ghur, and talks of plains, ring-fenced with mountains, fruitful in
+cattle and crops, and inhabited by infidels (_i.e._ non-Mussulmans).
+The later history of Ghur is inextricably intertwined with that of
+Ghazni.
+
+Mahmud of Ghazni frequently invaded the hills of Ghur which lay to the
+west of him, but never made any practical impression on the Ghuri
+tribespeople. In 1020, however, Mahomedans conquered Ghur effectually
+from Herat. About a century later (this is after the time of Idrisi,
+whose records we are following) a member of the ruling Ghuri family
+(Shansabi) was recognized as lord of Ghur, and it was one of his sons
+(Alauddin) who inflicted such terrible reprisals on Ghazni when he
+sacked and destroyed that city and its people. It was about this time
+(according to some authorities) that the kingdom of Bamian was founded
+by another member of the same family; but we find Bamian distinctly
+recognized as a separate kingdom by Idrisi a century or so earlier.
+From 1174 to 1214 Bamian was the seat of government of a branch of
+this family ruling all Tokharistan (Turkistan), during which period
+Seistan and Herat were certainly tributary to Ghur. Ghur then became
+so powerful, that it was said that prayers in the name of the Ghuri
+were read from uttermost India to Persia, and from the Oxus to Hormuz.
+
+In 1214 Ghur was reduced first by Mahomedans from Khwarezm (Khiva),
+and shortly afterwards by Chenghis Khan and his Mongol hosts. About
+the middle of the thirteenth century, however, a recrudescence of
+power appeared under the Kurt (or Tajik) dynasty subject to the
+supreme government of the Mongols. Seistan, Kabul, and Tirah were
+then ruled from Herat as the capital of Ghur. Timur finally broke up
+Herat and Ghur in 1383, since which time its history has been as
+obscure as the geography of the region which surrounded it. Such in
+brief is the stormy tale of Ghur, and it leads to one or two
+interesting deductions. There was evidently constant and ready
+communication with Herat, Bamian, and Ghazni. The capital of Ghur must
+have been an important town, situated in a fertile and fairly populous
+district, which, although it was mountainous, yet enjoyed an excellent
+climate. It must have been a military centre too, with fortresses and
+places of defence. During its later history it is clear that Ghur was
+often governed from Herat, but in earlier mediæval days Ghur possessed
+a distinct capital and a separate entity amongst Afghan kingdoms, and
+was able to hold its own against even so powerful an adversary as
+Mahmud of Ghazni, whilst its communications were with Bamian on the
+north-east rather than with Kabul, which was then regarded as an
+"Indian" city. We can at any rate trace no record of a direct route
+between Ghur and Kabul.
+
+In the twelfth century we read that the capital of Ghur was known as
+Firozkohi, which name (says Yule) was probably appropriated by the
+nomad Aimak tribe now called Firozkohi; but within the limits of what
+is now recognized as the habitat of the Firozkohi (_i.e._ the plateau
+which forms the basin of the Upper Murghab), it is impossible to find
+any place which would answer to what we know of the general condition
+of the surroundings and climate of the capital of Ghur, and which
+would justify a claim to be considered a position of commanding
+eminence. The altitude of the Upper Murghab branches is not more than
+6000 to 7000 feet above sea-level, at which height the climate
+certainly admits of agriculture, but no place that has been visited,
+nor indeed any position in the valleys of the Upper Murghab affluents,
+corresponds in any way to what we are told of this capital.
+
+If we look for the best modern lines of communication through Central
+Afghanistan we shall certainly find that they correspond with mediæval
+routes, fitting themselves to the conformation of the country. Central
+Afghanistan is open to invasion from the north, west, and south, but
+not directly from the east. The invasion of Ghur from Ghazni, for
+instance, must have been directed by Kalat-i-Gilzai, Kariut, and Musa
+Kila (in Zamindawar), to Yaman, which lies a little to the east of
+Ghur (or Taiwara). So far as we know there are no passes leading due
+west from Ghazni to the heart of the Taimani country.
+
+From the south the Helmund and its affluents offer several openings
+into the heart of the Hazara highlands to the east of Taimani land,
+amidst the great rocky peaks of which the positions were fixed from
+stations on the Band-i-Baian. But there is no certain information
+about the inhabited centres of Hazara population; and from what we
+know of that desolate region of winter snow and wind, there never
+could have been anything to tempt an invader, nor would any sound
+commercial traveller have dreamt of passing that way from Seistan to
+Bamian and Kabul. The idea that Alexander ever took an army up the
+Helmund valley, and over the Bamian passes, must be regarded as most
+improbable in spite of the description of Quintus Curtius, who
+undoubtedly describes a route which presented more difficulties than
+are quite appropriate to the regular Kandahar to Kabul road. On the
+other hand, from Seistan by the Farah Rud there is a route which is
+open to wheeled traffic all the way to Daolatyar on the upper Hari
+Rud. Daolatyar may be regarded as the focus of several routes trending
+north-eastward from Seistan, with the ultimate objective of Bamian and
+the populous valleys of Ghur.
+
+One of the chief affluents of the Farah Rud is now known as the Ghur,
+and we need look no farther than this valley for the central interest
+of the Ghur kingdom, although the exact position of the capital may
+still be open to discussion. Between the Tagao Ghur and the Farah Rud
+are the Park Mountains, which are almost Himalayan in general
+characteristics and beauty, with delightful valleys and open spaces,
+terraced fields, well-built two-storied wooden houses, pretty
+villages, orchards with an abundance of walnuts and vines trailing
+over the trees; the Ghur valley itself being broad and open with a
+clear river of sweet water in its midst. This is near its junction
+with the Farah Rud. Above this, for a space, the valley narrows to a
+gorge and there is no passing along it, whilst above the gorge again
+it becomes wide, cultivated, and well populated, and this is where the
+Taimani headquarters of Taiwara are found. Taiwara is locally known as
+Ghur, and may be absolutely on the site of the ancient capital, for
+there are ruins enough to support the theory. Beyond an intervening
+band of hills to the south are two valleys full of cultivation and
+trees, wherein are two important places, Nili and Zarni, which
+likewise boast of extensive ruins, whilst at Jam Kala, hard by, there
+is perched on a high spur above the road with only one approach, a
+remarkable stone-built fort. Yaman, to the east of Taiwara, in the
+Helmund drainage, is a permanent Taimani village. Here also are very
+ancient ruins, and the people say that they date from the time of
+Moses. At that time they say that cups were buried with the dead, one
+at the head and one at the foot of the corpse. Our native surveyor
+Imám Sharif saw one of these cups with an inscription on it, but was
+unable to secure the relic.
+
+Nili and Zarni are in direct connection with Farah, with no
+inconvenient break in the comparatively easy line of communication;
+and they all (including Taiwara) are in direct communication with
+Herat, by a good khafila route (_i.e._ good for camels). But the
+routes differ widely, that from Herat to Taiwara by Farsi being more
+direct, whilst the route from Herat to Zarni by Parjuman (which is
+well kept up between these two places) passes well to the south. All
+these places, again, are connected with the Hari Rud valley at Khwaja
+Chist (the Ghur frontier) by a good passable high-road, which first
+crosses the hills between Zarni and Taiwara, then passes under the
+shadow of a remarkable mountain called Chalapdalan, or Chahil Abdal
+(12,700 feet high--about which many mysterious traditions still
+hover), over the Burma Pass into the Farah Rud drainage, thence over
+another pass into the valleys of the Tagao Ishlan, and finally over
+the Band-i-Baian into the Hari Rud valley at Khwaja Chist.
+
+This is the route described by Idrisi as connecting Ghur with Herat,
+as we shall see. The Ghur district is linked up with Daolatyar and
+Bamian by the Farah Rud line of approach, or by a route, described as
+good, which runs east into the Hazara highlands, and then follows the
+Helmund. The latter is very high. There is therefore absolutely no
+difficulty in traversing these Taimani mountain regions in almost any
+direction, and the facility for movement, combined with the beauty and
+fertility of the country, all point unmistakably to Taiwara and its
+neighbourhood as the seat of the Ghuri dynasty of the Afghan kings.
+
+The picturesque characteristics of Ghur extend southward to Zamindawar
+on its southern frontier, the valleys of the Helmund, the Arghandab,
+the Tarnak, and Arghastan--this is a land of open, rolling watersheds,
+treeless, but covered with grass and flowers in spring, and crowned
+with rocky peaks and ridges of rugged grandeur alternating with the
+rich beauty of pastoral fields. The summer of their existence is in
+curious contrast to the stern winter of the storm-swept highlands
+above them, or the dreary expanse of drab sand-dusted desert below.
+The route upstream to the backbone of the mountains, and so over the
+divide to the kingdom of Bamian, was once a well-trodden route.
+
+Since so many routes converge on Daolatyar at the head of the Hari Rud
+valley, one would naturally look for Daolatyar to figure in mediæval
+geography as an important centre. It is not easy, however, to identify
+any of the places mentioned by Idrisi as representing this particular
+focus of highland routes. Between Ghur and Herat, or between Ghur and
+Ghazni, the difficulty lies in the number and extent of populous
+towns, any one of which may represent an ancient site, to say nothing
+of ruins innumerable. Between Taiwara and Herat we get no information
+from Idrisi till we reach Khwaja Chist on the frontier. He merely
+mentions the existence of a khafila road, and then he counts seven
+days' journey between Khwaja Chist and Herat, reckoning the first as
+"short."
+
+The names of the halting-places between Khwaja Chist and Herat are
+Housab, Auca, Marabad, Astarabad, Bajitan (or Najitan), and Nachan.
+Auca I have no hesitation in identifying with Obeh. There is a large
+village at Marwa which might possibly represent Marabad, and Naisan
+would correspond in distance with Nachan, but this is mere guesswork;
+to identify the others is impossible, without further examination than
+was undertaken when surveying the ground.
+
+The story of the commerce of Central Asia, which centred itself in
+Herat in the days of Arab supremacy, has a strong claim on the student
+of Eastern geography, for it is only through the itineraries of these
+wandering Semetic merchants and travellers that we can arrive at any
+estimation of the peculiar phase of civilization which existed in Asia
+in the mediæval centuries of our era; a period at which there is good
+reason to suppose that civilization was as much advanced in the East
+as in the West. It is not the professional explorers, nor yet the
+missionaries (great as are their services to geography), who have
+opened up to us a knowledge of the world's highways and byways
+sufficient to lead to general map illustration of its ancient
+continents, so much as the everlasting pushing out of trade
+investigations in order to obtain the mastery of the road to wealth.
+
+India and its glittering fame has much to answer for, but India (that
+is to say, the India we know, the peninsula of India) was so much
+more get-at-able by sea than by land even in the early days of
+navigation, that we do not learn so much about the passes through the
+mountains into India as the way of the ships at sea, and the coast
+ports which they visited. According to certain Arab writers large
+companies of Arabs settled in the borderland and coasts of India from
+the very earliest days. Indeed, there are evidences of their existence
+in Makran long before the days of Alexander; but there is very little
+evidence of any overland approach to India across the Indus.
+Hindustan, to the mediæval Arab, commenced at the Hindu Kush, and
+Kabul and Ghazni were "Indian" frontier towns; and the invasions and
+conquests of India dating back to Assyrian times include no more than
+the Indus basin, and were not concerned with anything farther south.
+The Indus, with its flanking line of waterless desert, was ever a most
+effectual geographical barrier.
+
+The Arabs entered India and occupied the Indus valley through Makran,
+and throughout their writings we find, strangely, little reference to
+any of the Indian frontier passes which we now know so well. But in
+the north and north-west of Afghanistan, in the Seistan and the Oxus
+regions, they were thoroughly at home both as traders and travellers;
+and with the assistance of their records we can make out a very fair
+idea of the general network of traffic which covered High Asia. The
+destroying hordes of the subsequent Mongol invasions, and the
+everlasting raids of Turkmans and Persians on the border, have clean
+wiped out the greater number of the towns and cities mentioned by
+them, and the map is now full of comparatively modern Turkish and
+Persian names which give no indication whatever of ancient occupation.
+There are, nevertheless, some points of unmistakable identity, and
+from these we can work round to conclusions which justify us in
+piecing together the old route-map of Northern Afghanistan to a
+certain extent. This is not unimportant even to modern geographers.
+The roads of the old khafila travellers may again be the roads of
+modern progress. We know, at any rate, that the Arabs of 1000 years
+ago were much the same as the Arabs of to-day in their manners and
+methods. Their routes were camel routes, not horse routes, and their
+day's journey was as far as a camel could go in a day, which was far
+in the wider and more waterless spaces of desert or uninhabited
+country, and very much shorter when convenient halting-places
+occurred. These Arab itineraries are bare enumeration of place-names
+and approximate distances. As for any description of the nature of the
+road or the scenery, or any indication of altitude (which they
+possibly had no means of judging), there is not a trace of it; and the
+difficulties of transliteration in place-names are so great as to
+leave identification generally a matter of mere guesswork.
+
+One of the most interesting geographical centres from which to take
+off is Herat, and it may be instructive to note what is said about
+Herat itself and its connections with the Oxus and Seistan. Herat,
+says Idrisi, is "great and flourishing, it is defended inside by a
+citadel, and is surrounded outside by 'faubourgs.' It has many gates
+of wood clamped with iron, with the exception of the Babsari gate,
+which is entirely of iron. The Grand Mosque of the town is in the
+midst of the bazaars.... Herat is the central point between Khorasan,
+Seistan, and Fars." Ibn Haukel (tenth century) mentions a gate called
+the Darwaza Kushk, which is evidence that Kushk was of importance in
+those days, though no separate mention is made of that place; and he
+adds that the iron gate was the Balkh gate, and was in the midst of
+the city. The strategical value of the position was clearly
+recognized.
+
+That grand edifice, the Mosalla, with its mosques and minars, which
+stood outside the walls of Herat and was the glory of the town in 1883
+(when it was destroyed in the interests of military defence), had no
+previous existence in any other form than that which was given it when
+it was built in the twelfth century.
+
+Both Ibn Haukel and Idrisi mention a mountain about six miles from
+Herat, from which stone was taken for paving (or mill-stones), where
+there was neither grass nor wood, but where was a place (in Ibn
+Haukel's time, but not mentioned by Idrisi) "inhabited, called Sakah,
+with a temple or Church of Christians." Idrisi says this mountain was
+"on the road to Balkh, in the direction of Asfaran." This would seem
+to indicate that Asfaran, "on the road to Balkh," must be Parana (or
+Parwana), an important position about a day's march north of Herat.
+Ibn Haukel says nothing about the road to Balkh, which can only be
+northward from Herat, but merely mentions that the mountain was on the
+desert or uncultivated side of Herat, where was a river which had to
+be crossed by a bridge. This could only be _south_ of Herat. Asfaran
+is also stated to be on the road to _Seistan_ and to have had four
+places dependent on it, one of which was Adraskand; and the route to
+Asfaran from Herat is further described as three days' journey
+(Idrisi). Ibn Haukel also describes Asfaran as possessing four
+dependent towns, and places it between Farah and Herat, or _south_ of
+Herat. As Adraskand[6] is a well-known place between Herat and Farah,
+we must assume that this is either another Asfaran, or that Idrisi has
+made a mistake in copying Ibn Haukel. It might possibly be represented
+by Parah, twenty-five miles south-west of Herat, although the limited
+area of cultivable ground around renders this unlikely. Subzawar would
+indicate a far more promising position for an important trade centre
+such as Asfaran must have been, and would accord better with the three
+days' journey from Herat of Idrisi, or the itinerary from Farah given
+by Ibn Haukel, while the extensive ruins around testify to its
+antiquity. Asfaran was almost certainly Subzawar.
+
+Considering the interest which may once again surround the question of
+communications from Herat to India, it may be useful to point out that
+the route connecting Farah with Herat 1000 years ago remains
+apparently unchanged. The bridge called the Pul-i-Malun, over the Hari
+Rud, must have been in existence then, and there was another bridge
+over the Farah River one day's march below Farah, on the highway
+between Herat and Seistan. To the west of Herat, on the ruin-strewn
+road to Sarakhs, we have one or two interesting geographical
+propositions.
+
+Idrisi mentions a place possessing considerable local importance
+"before Herat had become what it is now," about 9 miles west of Herat,
+called Kharachanabad. This can easily be recognized in the modern
+Khardozan, a walled but very ancient town, which is about 8½ miles
+distant. Between it and the walls of the city there is now no place of
+importance, nor does it appear likely, for local reasons, that there
+ever could have been any. Another place, called Bousik, or Boushinj
+(Pousheng, according to Ibn Haukel), is said to be half the size of
+Sarakhs, built on the flat plain 6 miles distant from the mountains,
+surrounded with walls and a ditch, with brick houses, and inhabitants
+who were commercial, rich, and prosperous, and "who drink the water of
+the river that runs to Sarakhs." This indicates a site on the banks of
+the Hari Rud. The only modern place of importance which answers this
+description is the ancient town of Zindajan, which is about 6 miles
+from the mountains, and which (according to Ferrier) still bears the
+name of Foosheng. This name, however, was not recognized by the Afghan
+Boundary Commission. "To the west of Bousik are Kharkerde and Jerkere.
+One reckons two days' journey to this last town, which is well
+populated, smaller than Kuseri, but where there is plenty of water and
+cultivation. From Jerkere to Kharkerde is two days' journey." These
+two places are obviously on the road to Nishapur. There is an ancient
+"haoz," or tank, below the isolated hill of Sangiduktar, near the
+Persian frontier, which might well represent what is left of Jerkere,
+and Kharkerde lies beyond it, on the road to Rue Khaf (itself a very
+ancient site, probably representing Rudan), near Karat. Another place
+which has a very ancient and troubled history is Ghurian, about
+thirteen miles west of Zindajan. This is readily identified as the
+Koure of Idrisi, which is described as twelve miles from Bousik, on
+the left of the high-road westward, and about three miles from it.
+
+This corresponds exactly with Ghurian, and proves that the high-road
+has retained its position through ages. Koure is described as an
+important town, but there is no mention of walls or defences. Another
+place, second only in importance to Bousik, is Kouseri. It is in fact
+said to be equal to Bousik, and to possess "running water and
+gardens." There can be little doubt that this is Kuhsan (or Kusan),
+one of the most important towns of the Herat valley.
+
+This great high-road, intersecting the plain from the north-west gate
+of the city, is a pleasant enough road in the spring and summer
+months. For a space it runs singularly free from crowded villages and
+close cultivation, and the tread of a horse's hoof is amongst
+low-growing flowers of the plain, a dwarf yellow rose with maroon
+centre being the most prominent. Then, as one skirts the Kaibar River
+as it runs to a junction with the Hari Rud from the northern hills,
+cultivation thickens and villages increase.
+
+The road next hugs the Hari Rud, and, passing the high-walled town of
+Zindajan to the south, runs, white and even and hard, with the scarlet
+and purple of poppies and thistles fringing it, between long gravel
+slopes of open dasht and the twin-peaked ridge of Doshak, to Rozanak
+and Kuhsan. Kuhsan is a little to the south of the Kaman-i-Bihist. It
+was here that the British Commission of the Russo-Afghan Boundary
+gathered in the late autumn of 1884, one half from England and the
+other half from India. The drab squares of the cultivated plain were
+bare then, in November, and the poplars on the banks of the river were
+scattering yellow leaves to the blasts of the bitter north-west winds
+of autumn which sweep through Khorasan and Seistan, making of life a
+daily burden. But there came a marvellous change in the spring-time,
+when the world was scarlet and green below and blue above; when the
+sand-grouse began to chatter through the clear sky; then
+Kaman-i-Bihist (the bow of Paradise) justified its name. The old Arab
+of the trading days who wandered northward to Sarakhs must have loved
+this place.
+
+Stretching Sarakhs-ward are the hills, rocky and broken along the
+river edge, but gradually giving place eastward to easy rounded
+slopes, softened by rain and snow, and washed into smooth spurs with
+treacherous waterways between which become quagmires under the
+influence of a north-western "shamshir." The extraordinary effect of
+denudation which yearly results from the heavy rain-storms which are
+so frequent in spring and early summer in these hills must have
+absolutely changed their outlines during the centuries which have
+elapsed since the Semitic trader trod them. A summer storm-cloud
+charged with electricity may burst on their summits, and the whole
+surface of the slopes at once becomes soft and pulpy. Mud avalanches
+start on the steeper grades and carry down thousands of tons of slimy
+detritus in a crawling mass, and spread it out in fans at their feet.
+It is not safe to say that the modern passes of the Paropamisus north
+of Herat--the Ardewan and the Babar--were the passes of mediæval
+commerce, although the Ardewan is marked by certain wells and ruined
+caravanserais which show that it has long been used. It seems possible
+that these passes may have shifted their positions more than once.
+There was undoubtedly a well-trodden route from Bousik, which carried
+the traveller more directly to Sarakhs than would the Ardewan or even
+the Chashma Sabz Pass. This road followed the river more closely than
+any railway ever will. It turned the river gorge to the east, and
+probably passed through the hills by the Karez Ilias route, which runs
+almost due north to Sarakhs. The only certain indication which we can
+find in Idrisi is the statement that the "silver hill" (_i.e._ the
+hill of the silver mine) is on the road from Herat to Sarakhs. The
+Simkoh (silver hill) is still a well-known feature in the broken range
+of the Paropamisus, near that route. But it is difficult after
+centuries of disturbing forces, natural and artificial, to identify
+the sites of many of the towns and markets mentioned by Idrisi, who
+places Badghis to the west of Bousik, and gives the "silver hill" as
+one of its "dependencies." There were two considerable towns, Kua (or
+Kau) and Kawakir, said to have been near the silver hill, and there is
+mention of a place called Kilrin in this neighbourhood. Probably the
+ruins at Gulran represent the latter, but Kua and Kawakir are not
+identified. Gulran was one of the most fascinating camps of the Afghan
+Boundary Commission. On the open grass slopes stretching in gentle
+grades northward, bordered by the line of red Paropamisan cliffs to
+the south and west and by the open desert stretching to Merv on the
+north, it was, during one or two early months of the year, quite an
+ideal camping-ground.
+
+It was here that the wild asses of the mountains made a raid on the
+humble four-footed followers of the Commission, and signified their
+extreme disgust at the free use which was made of their
+feeding-grounds; thus witnessing to the condition of primeval
+simplicity into which that once populous district had subsided after
+centuries of border raid and insecurity. The remains of an old karez,
+or underground irrigation channel, not far north of Gulran, testified
+to a former condition of cultivation and prosperity.
+
+From Gulran (which is connected with the Herat plains directly by the
+pass called Chashma Sabz) roads stretch northwards and north-eastwards,
+without obstacle, to the open Turkistan plains, where ancient sites
+abound. Idrisi's indications, however, are but a very uncertain
+foundation for identifying most of them. The "dependencies" of Badghis
+are said to be Kua, Kughanabad, Bast, Jadwa, Kalawun, and Dehertan,
+the last place being built on a hill having neither vegetation nor
+gardens; but "lead is found there, and a small stream."
+
+The great trade centres of Turkistan, north of the Paropamisus, in
+mediæval days were undoubtedly near Panjdeh, at the confluence of the
+Kushk and Murghab rivers, and at Merv-el-Rud, or Maruchak. Two or
+three obvious routes lead from the passes above Kaman-i-Bihist, or
+above Herat, to Panjdeh and Maruchak. One is indicated by the drainage
+of the Kushk River, and the other by that of the Kashan, which is more
+or less parallel to the Kushk to the east of it, with desolate Chol
+country in between. From Herat the most direct route to Panjdeh and
+Merv is by the Babar Pass, or by Korokh, the Zirmast Pass, and Naratu.
+Korokh (Karuj) is mentioned both by Ibn Haukel and Idrisi as being
+situated three marches from Herat, surrounded by entrenchments, and in
+the "gorge of mountains," with gardens and orchards and vines. The
+Korokh of to-day is between the mountains, but only some twenty-five
+miles from Herat. This modern Korokh has, however, many evidences of
+great antiquity, and it is on the high-road to an important group of
+passes leading past Naratu to Bala Murghab and Maruchak. The most
+remarkable feature about Korokh is a grove of pine trees closely
+resembling the "stone" pine of Italy, which mass themselves into a
+dark blotch on the landscape and mark Korokh in this treeless country
+most conspicuously. There are no other trees of the same sort to be
+found now in this part of Asia, but I was told that they once were
+abundant in the Herat valley, which renders it possible that the
+"arar" trees, mentioned by Ibn Haukel as a peculiar source of revenue
+to Bousik, may have been of this species. Naratu, again, is very
+ancient, and its position among the hills (for it is a hill-fortress)
+seems to identify it with Dahertan. Undoubtedly this was one of the
+most important of the old routes northward, and it is a route of which
+account should be taken to-day.
+
+In the Kuskh River more than one ancient site was observed, Kila Maur
+being obviously one of the most important, whilst in the Kashan stream
+there were evidences of former occupation at Torashekh and at
+Robat-i-Kashan. Whilst there is a general vague resemblance between
+the names of certain old Arab towns and places yet to be found in the
+Herat valley and Badghis, it is only here and there that it has been
+possible to identify the precise position of a mediæval site. The
+dependencies of Badghis, enumerated by Idrisi, require the patient and
+careful researches of a Stein to place them accurately on the basis
+of such vague definitions as are given. We are merely told that
+Kanowar and Kalawun are situated at a distance of three miles one from
+the other, and that between them there is neither running water nor
+gardens. "The people drink from wells and from rain-water. They
+possess cultivated fields, sheep, and cattle." Such a description
+would apply excellently well to any two contiguous villages in the
+Chol country anywhere between the Kushk and the Kashan. Those rolling,
+wave-like hills, with their marvellous spread of grass and flowers in
+summer, and their dreary, wind-scoured bareness in winter, are
+excellent for sheep and cattle at certain seasons of the year; but
+water is only to be found at intervals, and there are much wider
+distances than three miles where not even wells are to be found.
+
+Writing again of Herat, Idrisi says that, starting towards the east in
+the direction of Balkh, one encounters three towns in the district of
+Kenef: Tir, Kenef, and Lakshur; and that they are all about equally
+distant, it being one day's journey to Tir, one more to Kenef, and
+another to Lakshur (Lacschour). Tir is a rich town where the "prince
+of the country" resides, larger than Bousik, full of commerce and
+people, with brick-built houses, etc. Kenef is as large, but more
+visited by foreigners; and Lakshur is equal to either. They are all of
+them big towns of commercial importance, Lakshur being bounded on the
+west by the Merv-el-Rud province, of which the capital is
+Merv-el-Rud.
+
+Assuming for the present that Maruchak, on the Murghab, represents
+Merv-el-Rud (Merv of the River), where are we to place these three
+important sites, so that the last shall be east of the Maruchak
+province and only three days' journey from Herat? The distance from
+Herat to Maruchak is not less than 150 miles, and it is called by
+Idrisi a six days' journey. Starting towards the east can only refer
+to the Balkh route already referred to, _i.e._ _via_ Korokh and the
+Zirmast Pass. It cannot mean the Hari Rud valley, for that leads to
+Bamian rather than Balkh. By the Korokh route, however, it is possible
+to follow a more direct line to Balkh than any which would pass by
+Maruchak or Bamian. There is on this route, east of Naratu and
+south-east of Maruchak, a place called Langar which might possibly
+correspond to Lakshur, and it is not more than 70 to 80 miles from
+Herat. From Langar there is an easy pass leading over the
+Band-i-Turkistan more or less directly to Maimana and Balkh, and it
+seems probable that this was a recognized khafila route. Tir is an
+oft-repeated name in the Herat district. The river itself was called
+Tir west of Herat, and there is the bridge of Tir (Tir-pul) just above
+Kuhsan. The mountains, again, to the north-east are known as Tir
+Band-i-Turkistan, and the Tir mentioned as on the road to Balkh must
+certainly have been east of Herat. Of Kenef I can trace no evidence.
+It must have been close to Korokh.
+
+That this route, through the Korokh valley and across the
+water-parting by the Zirmast Pass to Naratu, was the high road between
+Herat and Balkh I have very little doubt. It was the route selected
+for mail service during the winter when the Afghan Boundary Commission
+camp was at Bala Murghab, on the Murghab River, and it was seldom
+closed by snow, although the Zirmast heights rise to over 7000 feet,
+and the Tir Band-i-Turkistan (which represents the northern _rebord_
+or revetment of the uplands which contain the Murghab drainage) cannot
+be much less. The intense bitterness of a Northern Afghan winter is
+more or less spasmodic. It is only the dreaded shamshir (the
+"scimitar" of the north-west) which is dangerous, and travelling is
+possible at almost every season of the year. The condition of the
+mountain ways and passes immediately above Bala Murghab is not that of
+steep and difficult tracks across a rugged and rocky divide. In most
+cases it is possible to ride over them, or, indeed, off them, in
+almost any direction; but as these mountains extend eastward they
+alter the character of their crests. From Herat to Maruchak this is
+not, however, the direct road; the Kushk River, or the Kashan,
+offering a much easier line of approach.
+
+All our investigations in 1884 tended to prove beyond dispute that
+Maruchak represents the famous old city of Merv-el-Rud, the "Merv of
+the River," to which every Arab geographer refers. Sir Henry Rawlinson
+sums up the position in the Royal Geographical Society's _Proceedings_
+(vol. viii.), when he points out that there were two Mervs known to
+the ancient geographer. One is the well-known Russian capital in
+trans-Caspia, the "Merv of the Oasis," a city which, in conjunction
+with Herat and Balkh, formed the tripolis of primitive Aryan
+civilization. It was to this place that Orodis, the Parthian king,
+transported the Roman soldiers whom he had taken prisoners in his
+victory over Crassus, and here they seemed to have formed a
+flourishing colony.
+
+Merv was in early ages a Christian city, and Christian congregations,
+both Jacobite and Nestorian, flourished at Merv from about A.D. 200
+till the conquest of Persia by the Mahomedans. Merv the greater has as
+stirring a history as any in Asia, but Merv-el-Rud, which was 140
+miles south of the older Merv, is altogether of later date. This city
+is said to have been built by architects from Babylonia in the fifth
+century A.D., and was flourishing at the time of the Arab invasion.
+All this Oxus region (Tokharistan) was then held by a race of
+Skytho-Aryans (white Huns) called Tokhari or Kushan, and their
+capital, Talikhan, was not far from Maruchak. Now, Merv-el-Rud is the
+only great city named in history on the Upper Murghab, above Panjdeh,
+before the end of the fourteenth century A.D. After that date, in the
+time of Shah Rokh (Timur's son), the name Merv-el-Rud disappears, and
+Maruchak takes its place in all geographical works, the inference
+being that, Merv-el-Rud being destroyed in Timur's wars, Maruchak was
+built in its immediate neighbourhood. This surmise of Rawlinson's is
+confirmed by the appearance of Maruchak, which is but an insignificant
+collection of inferior buildings surrounded by a mud wall, with a
+labyrinth of deep canal cuttings in front of it and a rough irregular
+stretch of untilled country around. Merv-el-Rud must have been a much
+greater place.
+
+There are, however, abundant evidences of grass-covered ruins, both
+near Maruchak and at the junction of the Chaharshamba River with the
+Murghab some 10 miles above Maruchak. Sir Henry Rawlinson points out
+the strategic value of this point, as the Chaharshamba route leads
+nearly straight into the Oxus plains and to Balkh. At the point of the
+junction of the two rivers the valley of the Murghab hardly affords
+room enough for a town of such importance as we are led to believe
+Merv-el-Rud to have been, even after making all due allowance for
+Oriental exaggeration. It is only about Maruchak that the valley
+widens out sufficiently to admit of a large town. It seems probable,
+therefore, that the site of Maruchak must be near the site of
+Merv-el-Rud, although it does not actually command the entrance to
+the Chaharshamba valley and the road to Afghan Turkistan.
+
+On this road, some 30 miles from the junction of the rivers, there is
+to be seen on the slopes which flank the southern hills, the jagged
+tooth-edged remains of a very old town (long deserted) which goes by
+the name of Kila Wali. It is here, or close by, that the Tochari
+planted their capital Talikan, at one time the seat of government of a
+vast area of the Oxus basin. There is, however, another Talikan[7] in
+Badakshan to the east of Balkh, and there are symptoms that some
+confusion existed between the two in the minds of our mediæval
+geographers. Ibn Haukel writes of Talikan as possessing more wholesome
+air than Merv-el-Rud, and he refers to the river running between the
+two. This is evidently in reference to the capital of Tocharistan at
+Kila Wali. Again when he writes of Talikan as the largest city in
+Tocharistan, "situated on a plain, near mountains," he is correct
+enough as applied to Kila Wali, but this has nothing to do with
+Andarab and Badakshan with which we find it directly associated in the
+context.
+
+On the other hand the Talikan in Badakshan was one of a group of
+important cities whose connection with India lay through Andarab and
+the northern passes of the Hindu Kush. Between Maruchak and Panjdeh,
+along the banks of the Murghab, are ruins innumerable, the sites of
+other towns which it is impossible to identify with precision. There
+can be little doubt, however, that the remains of the bridge which
+once spanned the river at a point between Maruchak and Panjdeh marked
+the site of Dizek (or Derak, according to Idrisi), which we know to
+have been built on both sides of the river, and that Khuzan existed
+near where Aktapa now is (_i.e._ near Panjdeh). The name Dizek is
+still to be recognized, but it is applied to a curious sequence of
+ancient Buddhist caves which have been carved out of the cliffs at
+Panjdeh, and not to any site on the river banks.
+
+The confusion which occasionally exists between places bearing the
+same name in mediæval geographical annals is very obvious in Idrisi's
+description of Merv. The greater Merv (the Russian provincial capital)
+is clearly mixed up in his mind with the lesser Merv when, in
+describing the latter, he says that Merv-el-Rud is situated in a plain
+at a great distance from mountains, and that its territory is fertile
+but sandy; three grand mosques and a citadel adorn an eminence and
+water is brought to it by innumerable canals, all of which is
+applicable to Merv but not to Merv-el-Rud. He then continues with a
+description of the greater Merv, which is quite apropos to that
+locality, and makes it clear incidentally that Khiva (not Merv)
+represents the ancient Khwarezm. Again, he enumerates towns and places
+of Mahomedan origin which are "dependent" on "Merv." Amongst them we
+find Mesiha, a pretty, well-cultivated place one day's journey to the
+west of Merv; Jirena (Behvana), a market-town 9 miles from Merv, and 3
+from Dorak (? Dizek), a place situated on the banks of the river; then
+Dendalkan, an important town two days from Merv on the road to
+Sarakhs; Sarmakan, a large town to the left of Dorak and 3 miles
+farther, Dorak being situated on the banks of the river at 12 miles
+from Merv in the direction of Sarakhs; Kasr Akhif (or Ahnef), a little
+town at one day's distance from Merv on the road to Balkh; Derah, a
+small town 12 miles from Kasr Ahnef where grapes were abundant. Here,
+says Idrisi, the river divides the town in two parts which are
+connected by a bridge. It is quite impossible to straighten out this
+geographical enumeration, unless we assume that it refers to
+Merv-el-Rud and not to Merv. Then Mesiha becomes a possibility, and
+might be looked for among the ruined sites on the Kushk
+River--possibly at Kila Maur. Dorak, at 12 miles from Merv in the
+direction of Sarakhs, and Dendalkan at two days' journey in the same
+direction, would still be on the river banks. Kasr Ahnef we know to
+have been built after the Arab invasion in the valley of the Murghab,
+about 12 miles from Khuzan (identified by Rawlinson with Ak Tepe) and
+15 from Merv-el-Rud, and must have been situated near the
+Band-i-Nadir, where the desert road to Balkh enters the hills. Ak Tepe
+must once have been a place of great importance, both strategically
+(as it commands the position of the two important highways southward
+to Herat, the Kushk and the Murghab valleys) and commercially. But
+apparently its importance did not survive to Arab times. Dendalkan was
+certainly near Ak Tepe.
+
+In making our surveys of this historic district it was exceedingly
+difficult to associate the drab and dreary landscape of this Chol
+(loess) country and its intersecting rivers with such a scene of busy
+commercial life as the valleys must have presented in Arab times. The
+Kushk is at best a "dry" river, as its name betokens, an
+unsatisfactory driblet in a world of sandy desolation. Reeds and
+thickets hide its narrow ways, and it is only where its low banks
+recede on either hand as it emerges into the flat plains above Panjdeh
+that there is room for anything that could by courtesy be called a
+town. The Murghab River shows better promise.
+
+Below Maruchak, where towns once crowded, it widens into green spaces,
+and the multiplicity and depth of the astonishing system of canals
+which distribute the waters of the river on its left bank leave no
+room to doubt the strength of the former population that constructed
+them. Where the pheasants breed now in myriads, in reedy swamps and
+scrubby thickets, there may lie hidden the foundations of many an old
+town with its caravanserais, its mosques, and its baths. The economic
+value of the Murghab River is still great in Northern Afghanistan. No
+one watching the sullen flood pouring past Bala Murghab in the winter
+time and looking up to the dark doors of the mountains from whence it
+seems to emerge, could have any idea of the wealth and fertility and
+the spread of its usefulness which is to be found on the far side of
+those doors. From its many cradles in the Firozkohi uplands to its
+many streamlets reaching out round Merv and turning the desert into a
+glorious field of fertility, the Murghab does its duty bravely in the
+world of rivers, and well deserves all that has ever been written in
+its praise by past generations of geographers.
+
+Amongst the many high-roads of Northern Afghanistan which are
+mentioned by the Arab writers, none is more frequently referred to
+than the road from Herat to Balkh, _i.e._ to Afghan Turkistan.
+Intervening between Herat and Afghan Turkistan there is immediately
+north the easy round-backed range called by various names which have
+been lumped under the term Paropamisus, down the northern slopes of
+which the Kushk and Kashan made a fairly straight way through the sea
+of rounded slopes and smooth steep-sided hills which constitute the
+Chol. But this range is but an extension of the southern rampart of
+the Firozkohi upland, which forms the upper basin of the Murghab and
+overlooks the narrow valley of the Hari Rud.
+
+The northern rampart or buttress of that upland is the Tir
+Band-i-Turkistan, the western flank of which is turned by the Murghab
+River as it makes its way northward. So that there are several ways by
+which Afghan Turkistan may be reached from Herat. Setting aside the
+Hari Rud route to Bamian or Kabul, which would be a difficult and
+lengthy detour for the purpose of reaching Balkh, there is the route
+we have already mentioned _via_ Korokh, Naratu, and Langar, and thence
+over the Band-i-Turkistan, or down the Murghab. But there is another
+and probably the most trodden way, _via_ the Kashan to the Murghab
+valley at the junction of the Chaharshamba River, and up that river to
+the divide at its head, passing over into the Kaisar drainage, and so,
+either to Andkhui and the Oxus, or to Maimana and Balkh. This was the
+route made use of generally by the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission,
+and the existence of ancient tanks (called "Haoz") and of "robats" (or
+halting-places) at regular intervals in the Kashan valley, testifies
+to its use at no very ancient date.
+
+The entrance to the Chaharshamba valley is very narrow, so narrow as
+to preclude the possibility of any large town ever having occupied
+this position; but it opens out as one passes the old Kila Wali ruins
+where there is ample space for the old capital of Tocharistan to have
+existed. On the north, trailing streams descend from the Kara Bel
+plateau (a magnificent grass country in summer and a cold scene of
+windy desolation in winter), and their descent is frequently through
+treacherous marshes and shining salt pitfalls, making it exceedingly
+difficult to follow them to the plateau edge. To the south are the
+harder features of the Band-i-Turkistan foothills, the crest of the
+long black ridge of this Band being featureless and flat, as is
+generally the case with the boundary ridges and revetments of a
+plateau country. Over the Chaharshamba divide (at about 2800 feet) and
+into the Kaisar drainage is an introduction to a country that is
+beautiful with the varied beauty of low hill-tops and gentle slopes,
+until one either by turning north, debouches into the flat desert
+plains of the Oxus at Daolatabad, or continuing more easterly, arrives
+at Maimana, the capital of the little province of Almar, the centre of
+a small world of highly cultivated and populous country, and a town
+which must from its position represent one or other of the ancient
+trade centres mentioned by Idrisi. Here we leave behind the long lines
+of Turkman kibitkas looking like rows of black bee-hives in the
+snow-spread distance, and find the flat-roofed substantial houses of a
+settled Uzbek population, with flourishing bazaars and a general
+appearance of well-being inside the mud walls of the town.
+
+Idrisi writes that Talikan is built at the foot of a mountain which is
+part of the Jurkan range (Band-i-Turkistan), and that it is on the
+"paved" route between Merv and Balkh. This at once indicates that
+route as an important one compared with other routes (there being a
+desert route across the Karabel plateau from near Panjdeh in addition
+to those already mentioned), although there is no sign of any serious
+road-making to be detected at present. Sixty miles from Talikan, on
+the road to Balkh, Idrisi places Karbat, a town not so large as
+Talikan but more flourishing and better populated. The distance
+reckoned along the one possible route here points to Maimana, which is
+just 60 miles from Talikan, but there is no other indication of
+identity. Karbat was a dependency of the province of Juzjan (or
+Jurkan, probably Guzwan), and 54 miles to the east of it was the town
+of Aspurkan, a small town, itself 54 miles from Balkh. Now Balkh, by
+any possible route, is at least 130 to 140 miles from Maimana, but if
+we assume Aspurkan to have been just half-way (as Idrisi makes it)
+between Maimana and Balkh, we find Sar-i-pul (a small place
+indifferently supplied with water, and thus answering Idrisi's
+description of Aspurkan) almost exactly in that position. In support
+of this identification of Aspurkan with Sar-i-pul there is the name
+Aspardeh close to Sar-i-pul. Other places are mentioned by Idrisi as
+flourishing centres of trade and industry in this singularly favoured
+part of Afghanistan, where the low spurs and offshoots of the
+Band-i-Turkistan break gently into the Oxus plains. He says that
+Anbar, one day's march to the south-west of Aspurkan, was a larger
+place than Merv-el-Rud, with vineyards and gardens surrounding it and
+a fair trade in cloth. There, both in summer and winter, the chief of
+the country resided. Two days from Aspurkan, and one from Karbat, was
+the Jewish colony of Yahudia, a walled town with a good commercial
+business. This colony is also mentioned by Ibn Haukel as situated in
+the district of Jurkan. From Yahudia to Shar (a small town in the
+hills) was one day's march. The main road south-west from Sar-i-pul
+has probably remained unchanged through the centuries. It runs to
+Balangur (? Bala Angur) and Kurchi, the former being 10 miles and the
+latter 30 from Sar-i-pul. Either might represent the site of Anbar.
+Twenty miles from Kurchi is Belchirag, and Belchirag is about 25 from
+Maimana. It would thus represent the site of the ancient Yahudia
+fairly well, whilst 25 to 30 miles from Belchirag we find Kala Shahar,
+a small town in the mountains, still existing. Jurkan is described as
+a town by Idrisi (and as a district by Ibn Haukel), built between two
+mountains, three short marches from Aspurkan, and Zakar is another
+commercial town two marches to the south-east. I should identify
+Jirghan of our maps with Jurkan, and Takzar with Zakar.
+
+All this part of Afghan Turkistan is rich in agricultural
+possibilities. The Uzbek population of the towns and the Ersari
+Turkmans of the deserts beyond Shibarghan are all agriculturists, and
+the land is great in fruit. They are a peaceful people, hating the
+Afghan rule and praying for British or any other alternative.
+Shibarghan is an insignificant walled town with a small garrison of
+Afghan Kasidars; always in straits for water in the dry season. The
+road between Shibarghan and Sar-i-pul is flat, skirting the edge of
+the rolling Chol to the east of it. Sar-i-pul itself is but a small
+walled town in rotten repair, sheltering a few Kasidars and two guns,
+but no regular Afghan troops. There are a few Jews there who make and
+sell wine, and a few Peshawur bunniahs (shopkeepers).
+
+From Sar-i-pul a direct road runs to Bamian and Kabul _via_ Takzar to
+the south-east, and strikes the hill country almost at once after
+leaving Sar-i-pul. It surmounts a high divide (about 11,000 feet), and
+crosses the Balkh Ab valley to reach Bamian. There is another route up
+the Astarab stream leading to Chiras at the head of the Murghab River
+and into the Hazara highlands; but these were never trade routes
+except for local purposes. The Hazaras send down to the plain their
+camel hair-cloth and receive many of the necessities of life in
+exchange, but there is no through traffic.
+
+The characteristics of the Astarab road are typical of this part of
+Afghanistan. After passing Jirghan the valley is shut in by
+magnificent cliffs from 700 to 1000 feet high. The vista is closed by
+snow peaks to the south, which, with the brilliancy of up-springing
+crops on the banks of the river, form a picture of almost Alpine
+beauty. There is, curiously enough, an entire absence of forest in
+the valley, but blocks of a soft white clay mixed with mica lend a
+weird whiteness to its walls, dazzling the eye, and making patchwork
+of Nature's colouring. Snakes abound in great numbers, mostly
+harmless, but the deadly "asp-i-mar" is amongst them. There is a
+yellow variety which is freely handled by the Uzbeks, who call this
+snake Kamchin-i-Shah-i-Murdan. About eight miles beyond Jirghan the
+Uzbek population ceases. From this point there are only Firozkohis and
+some few Taimanis who have been ejected from the Hari Rud valley for
+their misdeeds. They are all robbers by profession, supporting
+existence by slave trading. They kidnap girls and boys from the Hazara
+villages of the highlands and trade them to the Uzbeks in exchange for
+guns, ammunition, and horses. These Taimani robbers are by no means
+the only slave dealers. Nearly every well-to-do establishment in
+Afghan Turkistan has one or two Hazara slaves. The prices paid, of
+course, vary, but 300 krans each was paid for two girls bought in
+1883. Expert native authorities have a very high opinion of the
+handiness of Hazara slave girls. They are good at needlework, turning
+out most exquisite embroidery, and they are never idle.
+
+The narrowness of the Astarab gorge renders it impossible to follow
+the river along the whole of its course. The road finally leaves the
+valley and strikes up to the plateau on its left bank. One remarkably
+persistent feature in these valley formations is the existence of two
+plateau levels, or terraces; that immediately overlooking the valley
+being sometimes 100 feet lower than the second platform which is
+thrown back for a considerable distance, leaving a broad terrace
+formation between the line of its cliff edge and that bordering the
+stream. Occasionally there is more than one such terrace indicating
+former geologic floors of the valley.
+
+On gaining the plateau level a very remarkable scene opens out--a
+broad green dasht, or plain, slopes away to a sharp line westwards
+bordered by glittering cliffs and intersected by the white line of the
+road. In the midst of this setting of white and green are the remains
+of what must once have been a town of considerable importance, which
+goes by the name locally of the Shahar-i-Wairan, or ancient city. Such
+buildings as remain are of sun-dried brick; there appears to be no
+indication of the usual wall or moat surrounding this city, and
+nothing suggestive of a canal or "karez"; nothing, in short, but
+scattered ruins covering about one and a half square miles. The
+kabristan (or graveyard) was easily recognizable, and its vast size
+furnished some clue to the size of the city. All history, all
+tradition even, about this remarkable place seems lost in oblivion;
+but a city of such pretensions must have had a fair place in geography
+from very early times. It seems improbable, however, that it could
+have been more than a summer residence in its palmy days, for winter
+at this elevation (nearly 7000 feet) and in such an exposed locality
+would be very severe indeed. The only indication which can be derived
+from Idrisi's writings is the reference to the small town in the
+mountains called Shah (Shahar) one day's march from the Jewish colony
+of Yahudia. As already explained there is a Kila Shahar some 25 to 30
+miles from Yahudia (if we accept the position of Belchirag as more or
+less representing that place), but the Shahar-i-Wairan is nearer by
+some 10 miles, and fits better into the geographical scheme. I should
+be inclined to identify the Shahar-i-Wairan with the ancient Shahar
+(or Shah) and the Kila Shahar as a later development of the same
+place. The point, however, to be specially noted about this
+geographical theory is that there is no route by which camels can pass
+either over the Band-i-Turkistan or the mountains enclosing the Balkh
+Ab from the district of Sangcharak southward. The province of
+Sangcharak, which corresponds roughly to the ancient district of
+Jurkan (or Gurkan), is rich throughout, with highly cultivated valleys
+and a dense population, but it is a sort of geographical cul-de-sac.
+
+Communication with the plains of the Oxus and with Balkh (by the lower
+reaches of the Balkh Ab) is easy and frequent, but there never could
+have been a khafila road over the rugged plateau land and mountains
+which divide it from the basin of the Helmund.
+
+From time immemorial efforts have been made to reach Kabul by the
+direct route from Herat which is indicated by the remarkable lie of
+the Hari Rud valley. It was never recognized as a trade route,
+although military expeditions have passed that way; and it has always
+presented a geographical problem of great interest. From Herat
+eastwards, past Obeh as far as Daolatyar, there is no great difficulty
+to be overcome by the traveller, although the route diverges from the
+main valley for a space. Between Daolatyar and the head of
+Sar-i-jangal stream (which is the source and easternmost affluent of
+the Hari Rud) the valley is well populated and well cultivated, with
+abundant pasturage on the hills. But the winter here is severe. From
+the middle of November to the middle of February snow closes all the
+roads, and even after its disappearance the deep clayey tracks are
+impassable even for foot travellers. In the neighbourhood of a small
+fort called Kila Sofarak, about 40 miles from Daolatyar, there is a
+parting of the ways. Over the water-parting at the head of the stream
+by the Bakkak Pass a route leads into the Yakulang valley, a
+continuation of the Band-i-Amir, or river of Balkh, which, in the
+course of its passage through the gorges of the mountains, here forms
+a series of natural aqueducts uniting seven narrow and deep lakes.
+Inexpressibly wild and impressive is the character of the scenery
+surrounding those deep-set lakes in the depths of the Afghan hills.
+
+Near the lakes are the ruins of two important towns or fortresses,
+Chahilburj, and Khana Yahudi. On a high rock between them are the
+ruins of Shahr-i-Babar the capital of kings who ruled over a country
+most of which must have been included in the Hazara highlands, and was
+probably more or less conterminous with the Bamian of Idrisi. Between
+the Yakulang and the Bamian valley is a high flat watershed. Looking
+north-west a vast broken plateau, wrinkled and corrugated by minor
+ranges, and scored by deep valleys and ravines, fills up the whole
+space from the mountains standing about the source of the Murghab and
+Hari Rud to the Kunduz River of Badakshan.
+
+So little is this part of modern Afghanistan known, that it may be as
+well to give a short description of the existing lines of
+communication connecting the Oxus plains and Herat with Bamian and
+Kabul, before attempting to follow out their mediæval adaptation to
+commercial intercourse.
+
+From Balkh, or Mazar-i-Sharif, or from Deh Dadi (the new fortified
+position near Mazar) the most direct routes southward either follow
+the Balkh Ab valley to Kupruk and the Zari affluent, and then crossing
+the Alakah ridge pass into the river valley again, and so reach the
+Band-i-Amir and the head of the river at Yakulang; or passing by the
+Darra Yusuf (a most important affluent of the Balkh River) attain more
+directly to Bamian. Balkh and Mazar lie close together on the open
+plain, and about 10 miles to the south of them rises the northern wall
+of the plateau called Elburz, through which the Balkh River, and other
+drainage of the plateau, forces its passage. Thus the whole course of
+the Balkh River, from its head to within a mile or two of Balkh, lies
+within a deep and narrow ditch cut out from the plateau which fills up
+the space from the Elburz to the great divide of Central Afghanistan.
+East and west of the Balkh River the plateau increases in elevation as
+it reaches southward, culminating in knolls or peaks 12,000 and 13,000
+feet high about the latitude 35° 30', and falling gently where it
+encloses the actual sources of the river. It is this plateau, or
+uplift, which forms the dominant topographical feature of Northern
+Afghanistan.
+
+West of the Balkh Ab it is represented by the Firozkohi uplands, which
+contain the head valleys of the Murghab, bordered on the north by the
+Tirband-i-Turkistan from the foot of which stretch away towards the
+Oxus the endless sand-waves of the Chol, and by the highlands of
+Maimana and Sangcharak, and which trend northward to within a few
+miles of Balkh. At Balkh its northern edge is well defined by the
+Elburz, but between Balkh and Maimana it is more or less merged into
+the great loess sand sea, and its limitations become indefinite. East
+of the longitude of Balkh it is lost in a distance whither our
+surveyors have not traced its outlines, but where without doubt it
+fills a wide area north of the Hindu Kush, determining the nature of
+the Badakshan River sources and shaping itself into a vast upland
+region of mountain and deep sunk gully, and generally preserving the
+same characteristics throughout, till it overlooks the valley of the
+Oxus. That part of it which embraces the affluents of the Balkh Ab and
+the Kunduz is described as intensely wild and dreary, traversed by
+irregular folds and ridges which rise in more or less rounded slopes
+to great altitudes, hiding amongst them deep-seated valleys and
+gulches, wherein is to be found all that there is of cultivation and
+beauty. From above it presents the aspect of a huge drab-coloured,
+hill-encumbered desert where man's habitation is not, and Nature has
+sunk her brightest efforts out of sight. These efforts are to be found
+in the valleys, which are excavated by ages of erosion, steep sided,
+with precipitous cliffs overhanging, and a narrow green ribbon of
+fertility winding through the flat floor of them.
+
+Across those dreary uplands, or else wandering blindfold along the
+bottom of the river troughs, run the roads and tracks of the country;
+some of them being the roads of centuries of busy traffic. A little
+apart from the obvious route supplied by the lower course of the Balkh
+Ab, and more important as leading more directly to the crest of the
+main divide, is the road from Mazar to the Band-i-Amir district which
+is practically the best road to Kabul. This strikes on to the plateau
+and crosses several minor passes over spurs dividing the heads of
+certain eastern affluents of the Balkh Ab before it drops into the
+trough of the Darra Yusuf. Following the course of this river, and
+skirting the towns of Kala Sarkari and Sadmurda, it strikes off from
+its head over a pass called Dandan Shikan (the "tooth-breaker") into
+the Kamard valley which runs eastwards into the big river of
+Badakshan--the Kunduz. From Kamard over three passes into the
+Saigan--another valley draining deeply eastwards into the Kunduz. From
+this again, two parallel routes and passes southward connect Saigan
+with the Bamian depression. Here the river of Bamian also runs east,
+parallel to Saigan and Kamard (the three forming three parallel
+depressions in the general plateau land), but meeting an affluent
+draining from the east, the two join and curve northward into the
+Kunduz.
+
+This new affluent from the east is important, for it leads over the
+easy Shibar Pass into the head of the Ghorband valley and to Charikar.
+Finally, there is the well-travelled route from Bamian, leading
+southward over the Hajigak Pass into the Helmund valley at
+Gardandiwal, where it crosses the river and then proceeds _via_ the
+Unai Pass and Maidan to Kabul. Such is the general system of the Balkh
+communications with Kabul.
+
+From Tashkurghan, east of Mazar, there are other routes equally
+important. There is a direct road southward, which starts through an
+extraordinary defile, where perpendicular walls of slippery rock
+enclose a narrow cleft which hardly admits the passing of a loaded
+mule to Ghaznigak and Haibak. From Haibak you may follow up the
+Tashkurgan River to its head and then drop over the Kara Pass into
+Kamard at Bajgah, and so to Bamian again; or you may avoid Bamian
+altogether and striking off south-east from Haibak over the plateau,
+slip down into the Kunduz drainage at Baghlan, and then follow it to
+its junction with the Andarab at Dosh. This position at Dosh gives
+practical command of all the passes over the Hindu Kush into the Kabul
+basin, for the Andarab drains along the northern foot of the Hindu
+Kush, and commands the back doors of all passes between the Chapdara
+(or Chahardar) and the Khawak.
+
+The most trodden route to-day is that which is the most direct between
+Kabul and Mazar, _i.e._ the route _via_ Bamian and the Darra Yusuf.
+This is the route taken by the late Amir when he met his cousin Ishak
+Khan in the field of Afghan Turkistan and defeated him. It is not the
+route taken by the Afghan Boundary Commission in returning from the
+same field in 1885. They returned by Haibak and Dosh and deploying
+along the northern foot of the Hindu Kush, crossed by nearly every
+available pass either into the Ghorband valley or that of the
+Panjshir.
+
+It would almost appear from mediæval geographical record that there
+was no way between Herat and Kabul that did not lead to the Bamian
+valley. This is very far from accurately representing the actual
+position, for Bamian lies obviously to the north of the direct line of
+communication. Bamian was undoubtedly a place of great significance,
+probably more important as a Buddhist centre than Kabul, more valuable
+as a centre trade-market subsequently than the Indian city, as Kabul
+was called. But its significance has disappeared, and it is now far
+more important for us to know how to reach Kabul directly from the
+west than how to pass through Bamian. The route to Bamian and Kabul
+from Herat diverges at the small deserted fort of Sofarak, and follows
+the Lal and the Kerman valleys at the head of the Hari Rud. Crossing
+the Ak Zarat Pass southward there is little difficulty in traversing
+the Besud route to the Helmund, from whence the road to Kabul over the
+Unai Pass is open. The Bakkak Pass northward is the only real
+difficulty between Herat and Bamian; much worse, indeed, than anything
+on the route between Herat and Kabul direct; so that we have
+determined the existence of a fairly easy route by the Hari Rud from
+Herat to Kabul, and another route, with but one severe pass, between
+Herat and Bamian. We must, however, remember that we are dealing with
+Alpine altitudes. Overlooking the Yakulang head of the Balkh River are
+magnificent peaks of 13,000 and 14,000 feet, and the passes are but a
+few thousand feet lower. The valley of the Bamian, deep sunk in the
+great plateau level, is between 8000 and 9000 feet above sea-level,
+and the passes leading out of it are over 10,000 feet. To the south is
+the magnificent snow-capped array of the Koh-i-Baba (or probably
+Babar, from the name of the ancient people who occupied Bamian), the
+culminating group of the central water-parting of Afghanistan running
+to 16,000 and 17,000 feet. It is altitude, nothing but sheer altitude,
+which is the effectual barrier to approach through the mountains which
+divide the Oxus and Kabul basins. Rocky and "tooth-breaking" as may be
+the passes of these northern hills they are all practicable at certain
+times and seasons, but for months they are closed by the depth of
+winter snows and the fierce terror of the Asiatic blizzard. The deep
+valleys traversing the storm-ridden plateau are often beautiful
+exceedingly, and form a strange contrast to the dull grey expanse of
+rocky ridge and treeless plain of the weird plateau land; but in order
+to reach them, or to pass from one to the other, high altitudes and
+rugged pathways must always be negotiated.
+
+In the days before the Mahomedan conquest, the pilgrim days of devout
+Chinese searchers after truth, the footsteps of the Buddhist devotees
+can be very plainly traced. Balkh was a specially sacred centre; and
+the magnificence of the Bamian relics are also celebrated. We should
+not have known precisely the route followed by the pilgrims had they
+not left their traces half-way between Balkh and Bamian at Haibak.
+Here in the heart of this stony and rugged wilderness is an open
+cultivated plain, green with summer crops and streaked with the dark
+lines of orchard foliage. Little white houses peep out from amongst
+the greenery, and there is a kind of Swiss summer holiday air
+encompassing this mountain oasis which must have enchanted the
+votaries of Buddha in their time. The Buddhist architects of old were
+unsurpassed, even by the Roman Catholic Monks of later ages in the
+selection of sites for their monasteries and temples. The sweet
+seductions which Nature has to offer in her mountain retreats were as
+a thanksgiving to the pilgrim, weary footed and sore with the terrible
+experiences of travel which was far rougher than anything which even
+the most devoted Hajji can place to the credit of his account with the
+recording angel of the present day, and they were appreciated
+accordingly. Haibak, although not quite on the straight line to
+Bamian, was not to be overlooked as a resting-place, and here one of
+the quaintest of all these northern religious relics was literally
+unearthed by Captain Talbot[8] during the progress of the Russo-Afghan
+surveys. A small circular stupa was discovered cut out of solid rock
+below the ground level. It was surrounded by a ditch, and crowned by a
+small square-built chamber which was also cut out of the rock _in
+situ_. There was nothing to indicate the origin or meaning of a stupa
+in such a position, and time was wanting for anything more than a
+superficial examination; but here we had the evidence of Buddhist
+occupation and Buddhist worship forming a distinct link between Balkh
+and Bamian, and marking one resting-place for the weary pilgrim. As
+for caves, the country round Haibak appears to be studded with them.
+
+So long must this strange region of ditch-like valleys, carved out of
+the wrinkled central highlands of Afghanistan, have existed as the
+focus of devout pilgrimage, if not of commercial activity, under the
+Bamian kings, that the absence of any record descriptive of the routes
+across it is rather surprising. Above the surface of the plateau the
+long grey folds of the hills follow each other in monotonous
+succession, with little relief from vegetation and unmarked by forest
+growth. It is generally a scene of weary, stony desolation through
+which narrow, white worn tracks thread their way. In the valleys it is
+different. Cut squarely out of the plateau these intersecting valleys,
+cliff bound on either side with reddish walls such as border the
+valley of Bamian, offer fair opportunity for colonization. Where the
+valleys open out there is space enough for cultivation, which in early
+summer makes pretty contrast with the ruddy hills that hedge it. Where
+it spreads out from the mouth of the gorges nourished by hundreds of
+small channels which carry the water far afield, it is in most
+charming contrast to the gaunt ruggedness of the hills from whence it
+emerges. Such is the general outlook from the Firozkohi plateau,
+looking northward into the Oxus plains when the yellow dust haze,
+driven southward by the north-western winds, lifts sufficiently from
+athwart the plains to render it possible to see towards Maimana or
+into the valley of Astarab.
+
+The valley of Bamian stands at a level of about 8500 feet; the passes
+out of it northward to Balkh or southward to Kabul rise to 11,000 and
+12,000 feet. It is the mystery of its unrecorded history and the local
+evidences of the departed glory of Buddhism, which render Bamian the
+most interesting valley in Afghanistan. Massive ruins still look down
+from the bordering cliffs, and for six or seven miles these cliffs are
+pierced by an infinity of cave dwellings. Little is left of the
+ancient city but its acropolis (known as Ghulghula), which crowns an
+isolated rock in the middle of the valley. Enormous figures (170 and
+120 feet high) are carved out of the conglomerate rock on the sides of
+the Bamian gorge. Once coated with cement, and possibly coloured, or
+gilt, these images must have appealed strongly to the imagination of
+the weary pilgrim who prostrated himself at their feet. "Their golden
+lines sparkle on every side," says Huen Tsang, who saw them in the
+year A.D. 630, when he counted ten convents and 1000 monks of the
+"Little Vehicle" in the valley of Bamian.
+
+Twelve hundred and fifty years later the great idols were measured by
+theodolite and tape, and duly catalogued as curiosities of the world's
+museum. We know very little of the later history of Bamian. The city
+was swept off the face of the valley by Chengiz Khan; and Nadir Shah,
+in later times, left the marks of his artillery on the face of cliffs
+and images. Moslem destroyers and iconoclasts have worked their wicked
+will on these ancient monuments, but they witness to the strength and
+tenacity of a faith that still survives to sway a third of the human
+race.
+
+Chahilburj and Shahr-i-Babar (31 miles above Chahilburj at the
+junction of the Sarikoh stream with the Band-i-Amir) with the ruined
+fortresses of Gawargar and Zohak, wonderful for the multiplicity of
+its lines of defence, all attest to the former position of Bamian in
+Afghan history and explain its prominence in mediæval annals. And yet
+there is not much said about the road thither from Balkh, or onward to
+the "Indian city" of Kabul.
+
+Idrisi just mentions the road connecting Balkh with Bamian, which he
+describes as follows: "From Balkh to Meder (a small town in a plain
+not far from mountains) three days' journey. From Meder to Kah
+(well-populated town with bazaar and mosque) one day's journey. From
+Kah to Bamian three days." Bamian he describes as of about the same
+extent as Balkh, built on the summit of a mountain called Bamian, from
+which issue several rivers which join the Andarab, possessing a
+palace, a grand mosque, and a vast "faubourg"; and he enumerates
+Kabul, Ghazni, and Karwan (which we find elsewhere to be near
+Charikar) amongst others as dependencies of Bamian.
+
+It is not easy to identify Meder and Kah. The total distance from
+Balkh to Bamian is at least 200 miles by the most direct route _via_
+the Darra Yusuf. Forty miles a day through such a country must be
+regarded as a fine performance, even for Arab travellers who would
+think little of 50 or 60 miles over the flats of Turkistan. However,
+we must take the record as we find it, and assume that the camels of
+those days (for the Arabs never rode horses on their journeys) were
+better adapted for work in the hills than they are at present.
+
+The inference, however, is strong that not very much was really known
+about this mountain region south of the Balkh plain. To the pilgrim it
+offered no terrors; but to the merchant, with his heavily laden
+caravan, it is difficult to conceive that 800 or 900 years ago it
+could have been much easier to negotiate than it is to the Bokhara
+merchants of to-day, who take a much longer route between the Oxus and
+Kabul than that which carries them past Bamian.
+
+The province of Badakshan to the east (the ancient Baktria) is still
+but indifferently explored. It is true that certain native explorers
+of the Indian Survey have made tracks through the country, passing
+from the Pamir region to the Oxus plains; but no English traveller has
+recently done more than touch the fringe of that section of the Hindu
+Kush system which includes Kafiristan and its extension northwards,
+encircled by the great bend of the Oxus River. Kafiristan has ever
+been an unexplored region--a mountain wilderness into which no call of
+Buddhism ever lured the pilgrim, no Moslem conqueror (excepting
+perhaps Timur) ever set his foot, until the late Amir Abdurrahmon
+essayed to reduce that region and make it part of civilized
+Afghanistan. Even he was content to leave it alone after a year or two
+of vain hammering at its southern gates. Kafiristan formed part of the
+mediæval province, or kingdom, of Bolor; but it is always written of
+as the home of an uncouth and savage race of people, with whom it was
+difficult to establish intercourse. Kafiristan is, however, in these
+modern days very much curtailed as the home of the Kafir. Undoubtedly
+many of the border tribes fringing the country (Dehgans, Nimchas,
+etc.), who are now to be numbered amongst the most fanatical of Moslem
+clans, are comparatively new recruits to the faith, and therefore
+handle the new broom with traditional ardour; but they were not so
+long ago members of the great mixed community of Kafirs who, driven
+from many directions into the most inaccessible fastnesses of the
+hills by the advance of stronger races north and south, have occupied
+remote valleys, preserving their own dialects, mixing up in strange
+confusion Brahman, Zoroastian, and Buddhist tenets with classical
+mythology, each valley with apparently a law and a language of its
+own, until it is impossible to unravel the threads of their
+complicated relationship. Here we should expect to find (and we do
+find) the last relics of the Greek occupation of Baktria, and here are
+certainly remnants of a yet more ancient Persian stock, with all the
+flotsam and jetsam of High Asia intermingled. They are, from the point
+of view of the Kabul Court, all lumped together as Kafirs under two
+denominations, Siahposh and Lalposh; and not till scientific
+investigation, such as has not yet reached Afghanistan, can touch them
+shall we know more than we do now. No commercial road ever ran through
+the heart of Kafiristan, but there were two routes touching its
+eastern and western limits, viz. that on the east passing by Jirm, and
+that on the west by Anjuman, both joining the Kokcha River, which are
+vaguely referred to by our Arab authorities. That by Jirm is certainly
+impracticable for any but travellers on foot.
+
+Badakshan (_i.e._ the province) was apparently full of well-populated
+and flourishing towns 1000 years ago. The names of many of them are
+given by Idrisi, but it is not possible to identify more than a few.
+The ancient Khulm (50 miles east of Balkh) was included in Badakshan.
+In Idrisi's day it was a place "of which the productions and
+resources were very abundant: there is running water, cultivated
+fields, and all sorts of vegetable productions." From thence to
+Semenjan "a pretty town, in every way comparable to Khulm, commercial,
+populated, and encircled with mud walls," two days' journey. Then we
+have "from Balkh to Warwalin" (a town agreeable and commercial with
+others dependent on it), two days. From Warwalin to Talekan, two days.
+Talekan is described as only one-fourth the size of Balkh, on the
+banks of a big river in a plain where there are vineyards. And then,
+strangely enough, we find "from Balkh to Khulm west of Warwalin is a
+two-days' journey. From Semenjan to Talekan, two days."
+
+This is a puzzle which requires some adjustment. From Balkh to Khulm
+is about 50 miles and may well pass as two days' journey. But from
+Balkh to Warwalin is also said to be a two-days' journey, and from
+Warwalin to Talekan two days, whilst Khulm is two days _west_ of
+Warwalin. The difficulty lies in the fact that all these places must
+be on a line running almost due _east_ from Balkh. It was and is the
+great high-road of Badakshan in the Oxus plains. Moreover, Talekan has
+been fixed by native surveyors at a point about 150 miles east of
+Balkh which fully corresponds in its physical features to the
+description given of that place above. If, however, we assume 150
+miles to represent six days' journey instead of four, the difficulty
+vanishes. We then have Balkh to Khulm, two days; Khulm to Warwalin,
+two days; and Warwalin to Talekan, two days. This would place Warwalin
+somewhere about Kunduz, which is, indeed, a very probable position for
+it.
+
+Semenjan is important. Two days from Talekan; two days from Khulm;
+five days from Andarab.
+
+Andarab is fortunately a fixed position. The description given of it
+by Idrisi places it at the junction of the Kaisan (or Kasan) stream
+with the Andarab, both of which retain their ancient names. Andarab is
+a very old and a very important position in all itineraries, from
+Greek times till now, and it may be important again. But seeing that
+Khulm is separated from Talekan by four days, it is difficult to
+distinguish between Semenjan and Warwalin which is also two days from
+each of those places. This illustrates the problems which beset the
+unravelling of Arab itineraries. Seeing, however, that Talekan and
+Warwalin have already been confused once, it is, I think, justifiable
+to assume that the same mistake has occurred again. Such an assumption
+would place Semenjan about where Haibak is, and where some central
+town of importance must have always been, judging from its important
+geographical position. Haibak is rather more than a hundred miles from
+Andarab by the only practicable khafila route, which is a very fair
+five-days' journey. This would indicate that the route followed by the
+English Commission for the settlement of the Russo-Afghan frontier
+from Balkh to Kabul was one of those recognized as trade routes in
+the tenth and eleventh centuries. The location of one other town in
+Badakshan is of interest, and that is a town called by Idrisi
+"Badakshan," which gave its name to the province. The first assumption
+to make is that the modern capital Faizabad is on or near the site of
+the ancient one. Let us see how it fits Idrisi's itinerary. The
+information is most meagre. From Talekan to Badakshan, seven days.
+From Andarab to the same town (going east), four days. Badakshan is
+described as a town "not very large but possessing many dependencies
+and a most fertile soil. The vine and other trees grow freely, and the
+country is watered by running streams. The town is defended by strong
+walls, and it possesses markets, caravanserais, and baths. It is a
+commercial centre. It is built on the west bank of the Khariab, the
+largest river of those which flow to the Oxus." It is elsewhere stated
+that the Khariab is another name for the Oxus or Jihun. It is added
+that horses are bred there and mules; and rubies and lapis lazuli
+found in the neighbourhood and distributed through the world. Musk
+from Wakhan is brought to Badakshan. Also Badakshan adjoins Canouj, a
+dependency of India. The two provinces which are found immediately
+beyond the Oxus (under one government) are Djil and Waksh, which lie
+between the Khariab (? Oxus) and Wakshab rivers, of which the first
+bathes the eastern part of Djil and the other the country of Waksh.
+The Waksh joins the Oxus from the north near the junction of the
+latter with the Kunduz. Then follow the names of places dependent on
+Waksh, of which Helawerd and Menk seem to be the chief.
+
+Now Faizabad is about 70 miles from Talekan, and about 160 at least
+from Andarab. From Andarab the route strikes east at first, but after
+crossing the Nawak Pass, over a spur of the Hindu Kush (which is
+itself crossed near this point by the Khawak), it turns and passes
+down the valley of Anjuman to Jirm and Faizabad. Jirm is on the left
+bank of the Kokcha or Khariab--Faizabad being on the right,--and its
+altitude (4800 feet) would certainly admit of vine-growing and may be
+suitable for horse-breeding; but it must be admitted that in both
+these particulars Faizabad has the advantage, although Jirm is the
+centre of the mining industry in lapis lazuli, if not in rubies. Jirm
+is about 130 miles from Andarab, and 80 (with a well-marked road
+between) to Talekan. To fit Idrisi's itinerary we should have to
+select a spot in the Anjuman valley some sixty miles south of Jirm.
+This would involve an impossible altitude for either wine or horses
+(in that latitude), so we are forced to conclude that the itinerary is
+wrong. If it were exactly reversed and made seven days from Andarab
+and four from Talekan, Jirm would represent the site of the ancient
+capital exactly. Some such adjustment as this is necessary in order to
+meet the requirements, and Idrisi's indications of the climate. On
+the whole, I am inclined to believe that Jirm represents the ancient
+capital. However that may be, it is important to note that the Anjuman
+route from the pass at the head of the Panjshir valley was a
+recognized route in the Middle Ages, and emphasizes the importance of
+the Andarab position in Afghanistan. We have seen that from the very
+earliest times, prior to the Greek invasion of India, this was
+probably the region of western settlements in Baktria. It is about
+here that we find the greatest number of indications (if place-names
+are to be trusted) of Greek colonization. It is one of the districts
+which are to be recognized as distinctly the theatres of Alexander's
+military movements during his famous expedition. It commands four, if
+not five, of the most important passes across the Hindu Kush. The
+surveyor who carried his traverse up to the head of the Andarab and
+over the Khawak Pass into the Panjshir found a depression in the Hindu
+Kush range which admitted of two crossings (the Til and Khawak) at an
+elevation of about 11,650 feet, neither of which presented any great
+physical difficulty apart from that of altitude, both leading by
+comparatively easy grades into the upper Panjshir valley.
+
+It is reported that since the Russo-Afghan Commission surveyors passed
+that way, the late Amir has constructed a passable road for commercial
+purposes, which can be kept open by the employment of coolie labour in
+removing the snow, and that khafilas pass freely between Kabul and
+Badakshan all the year round. In the tenth century there is ample
+evidence that it was a well-trodden route, for we find it stated that
+from Andarab to Hariana (travelling southward) is three days' journey.
+"Hariana is a small town built at the foot of a mountain and on the
+banks of a river, which, taking its source near Panjshir (Banjohir)
+traverses that town without being utilized for irrigation until,
+reaching Karwan, it enters into the territory of India and joins its
+waters to the Nahrwara (Kabul) River. The inhabitants of Hariana
+possess neither trees nor orchards. They only cultivate vegetables,
+but they live by mining. It is impossible to see anything more perfect
+than the metal which is extracted from the mines of Panjshir, a small
+town built on a hill at one day's distance from Hariana and of which
+the inhabitants are remarkable for violence and wickedness
+(mechanceté) of their character. The river, which issues from
+Panjshir, runs to Hariana as we have said." ... "From there (?
+Hariana) to Karwan, southward, two days' journey." "The town of Karwan
+is small but pretty, its environs are agreeable, bazaars frequent,
+inhabitants well-off. The houses are built of mud and bricks. Situated
+on the banks of a river which comes from Panjshir, this town is one of
+the principal markets of India."
+
+From this account it is clear that the village of Panjshir must have
+been somewhere near the modern Khawak, and Hariana about 20 miles
+lower down the stream. But the site is not identified. Karwan was
+obviously near the site of the modern Charikar, and might possibly be
+Parwan, a very ancient site. It is worthy of note that in the tenth
+century all the Kabul province was "India." Of all the passes
+traversing the Hindu Kush we have mention only of this, the Khawak,
+and (indirectly) of the group which connect Kabul with Bamian; and it
+may be doubted whether in the Middle Ages any use was made of the
+Shibar, Chapdara, or others that lie between the Kaoshan and Irak for
+commercial purposes.
+
+There is, however, strong inference that the Greeks made use of the
+Kaoshan, or Parwan, which is also commanded from Andarab. The
+excellent military road constructed by the late Amir from Charikar, up
+the Ghorband valley and over the Chapdara Pass, is a modern
+development.
+
+Here, however, we must take leave of the routes to India, which are
+sufficiently dealt with elsewhere, and returning to Badakshan see if
+we can unravel some of the mediæval geography of the region which
+stretches eastward to the Oxus affluents and the Pamirs. We know that
+between Khotan and Balkh there was a very well-trodden pilgrim route
+in the earlier days of our era (from the first century to the tenth),
+when both these places were full of the high-priests of Buddhism. Was
+it also a commercial route? The shortest way to determine its
+position is to examine the map and see which way it must have run at a
+time when (if we are to believe Mr. Ellsworthy Huntington's theories
+of periodic fluctuations of climate in High Asia) all that vastly
+elevated region was colder, less desiccated, and possibly more fertile
+than now, whilst its glaciers and lakes were larger and more
+extensive.
+
+Before turning eastward into the highlands and plateau of Asia it is
+interesting to note that north of the Oxus the districts of Jil (which
+was the region of mountains) and Waksh were both well known, and
+boasted many important commercial centres. The two districts (under
+one government) lay between the Wakshab which joins the Oxus from the
+north to the north-east of Khulm, and the Khariab, which is clearly
+another river than the Khariab (now the Kokcha) of Badakshan, and
+which is probably the Oxus itself (see preceding note). These
+trans-Oxus regions take us afield into the Khanates of Central Asia
+beyond Afghanistan, and we can only note in passing that 1000 years
+ago Termez was the most important town on the Oxus, commanding as it
+did the main river crossing from Bokhara to Khulm and Balkh; Kabadian
+also being very ancient. Termez may yet again become significant in
+history.
+
+References to the Pamir region are very scanty, and indicate that not
+much was known about them. The most direct road from Khotan in Chinese
+Turkistan to Balkh, a well-worn pilgrim route of the early centuries
+of our era, is that which first strikes north-west to Yarkand, and
+then passing by the stone fort of Tashkurghan (one of the ancient
+landmarks of Central Asian travel) follows the Tashkurghan River to
+its head, passes over the Wakhjir Pass from the Tagdumbash Pamir into
+the valley of the Wakhab (or Panja) River and follows that river to
+Zebak in Badakshan. So far it is a long, difficult, and toilsome route
+rising to an altitude of 15,000 to 16,000 feet, but after passing
+Zebak to Faizabad and so on through Badakshan to Balkh, it is a
+delightful road, full of picturesque beauty and incident. At certain
+seasons of the year no part of it would appear formidable to such
+earnest and determined devotees as the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims. From
+Huen Tsang's account, however, it would seem that a still more
+northerly route was usually preferred, one which involved crossing the
+Oxus at Termez or Kilif. It is a curious feature in connection with
+Buddhist records of travel (even the Arab records) that no account
+whatever seems to be taken of abstract altitude, _i.e._ the altitude
+of the plains. So long as the mountains towered above the pilgrims'
+heads they were content to assume that they were traversing lowlands.
+Never does it seem to have occurred to them that on the flat plains
+they might be at a higher elevation than on the summits of the Chinese
+or Arabian hills. The explanation undoubtedly lies in the fact that
+they had no means of determining elevation. Hypsometers and aneroids
+were not for them. The gradual ascents leading to the Pamir valleys
+did not impress them, and so long as they ascended one side of a range
+to descend on the other, the fact that the descent did not balance the
+ascent was more or less unobserved. Wandering over the varied face of
+the earth they were content to accept it as God made it, and ask no
+questions. Recent investigations would lead us to suppose that in the
+palmy days of Buddhist occupation of Chinese Turkistan, when Lop Nor
+spread out its wide lake expanse to reflect a vista of towns and
+villages on its banks, refreshing the earth by a thousand rivulets not
+then impregnated with noxious salts; when high-roads traversed that
+which is now but a moving procession of sand-waves following each
+other in silent order at the bidding of the eternal wind; when men
+made their arrangements for posting from point to point, and forgot to
+pay their bills made out in the Karosthi language, the climate was
+very different from what it is now.
+
+It was colder, moister, and the zones of cultivation far more
+extensive, but it may also be that these regions were not so highly
+elevated; indeed, there is good reason for believing that the eternal
+processes of expansion and contraction of the earth's crust, never
+altogether quiescent, is more marked in Central Asia than elsewhere,
+and that the gradual elevation, which is undoubtedly in operation now,
+may have also affected the levels of river-beds and intervening
+divides, and thrown out of gear much of the original natural
+possibilities for irrigation. However that may be, it is fairly
+certain that no great amount of trade ever crossed the Pamirs. Marco
+Polo crossed them, passing by Tashkurghan and making his way eastwards
+to Cathay, and has very little to say about them except in admiration
+of the magnificent pasturage which is just as abundant and as
+nutritious now as it was in his time. Idrisi's information beyond the
+regions of the Central Asian Khanates and the Oxus was very vague. He
+says that on the borders of Waksh and of Jil are Wakhan and Sacnia,
+dependencies of the country of the Turks. From Wakhan to Tibet is
+eighteen journeys. "Wakhan possesses silver mines, and gold is taken
+from the rivers. Musk and slaves are also taken from this country.
+Sacnia town, which belongs to the Khizilji Turks, is five days from
+Wakhan, and its territory adjoins China." Wakhan probably included the
+province of the same name that now forms the extreme north-eastern
+extension of Afghanistan, but the Tibet, which was eighteen days'
+journey distant, in nowise corresponds with the modern Tibet. Assuming
+that it was "Little Tibet" (or Ladakh), which might perhaps correspond
+in the matter of distance, we should still have some difficulty in
+reconciling Idrisi's description of the "Ville de Tibet" with any
+place in Ladakh. He says "the town of Tibet is large, and the country
+of which it is the capital carries the name." This country belongs to
+the "Turks Tibetians." Its inhabitants entertain relations with
+Ferghana, Botm,[9] and with the subjects of the Wakhan; they travel
+over most of these countries, and they take from them their iron,
+silver, precious stones, leopard skins, and Tibetan musk. This town is
+built on a hill, at the foot of which runs a river which discharges
+into the lake Berwan, situated towards the east. It is surrounded with
+walls, and serves as the residence of a prince, who has many troops
+and much cavalry, who wear coats of mail and are armed _de pied en
+cap_. They make many things there, and export robes and stuff of which
+the tissue is thick, rough, and durable. These robes cost much, and
+one gets slaves and musk destined for Ferghana and India. There does
+not exist in the world creatures endowed with more beautiful
+complexions, with more charming figures, more perfect features, and
+more agreeable shape than these Turk slaves. They are disrobed and
+sold to merchants, and it is this class of girl who fetches 300
+dinars. The country of Bagnarghar lies between Tibet and China,
+bounded on the north by the country of the Kirkhirs (Kiziljis in
+another MS.), possibly Kirghiz.
+
+The course of the river on which the town is built, no less than the
+name of the lake into which that river falls and the description of
+the Turk slave girls (as of the cavalry), is quite inapplicable to
+anything to be found in modern Tibet. I have little doubt that the
+Tibet of Idrisi was a town on the high-road to China, which followed
+the Tarim River eastward to its bourne in Lake Burhan. Lake Burhan is
+now a swamp distinct from Lob, but 1000 years ago it may have been a
+part of the Lob system, and Bagnarghar a part of Mongolia. The
+description of the slave girls would apply equally well to the Turkman
+women or to the Kirghiz, but certainly not to the flat-featured,
+squat-shaped Tibetan, although there are not wanting good looks
+amongst them. Then follows, in Idrisi's account, a list of the
+dependencies of Tibet and some travellers' tales about the musk-deer.
+It is impossible to place the ancient town of Tibet accurately. There
+are ruined sites in numbers on the Tarim banks, and amongst them a
+place called Tippak, but it would be dangerous to assume a connection
+between Tibet and Tippak. This is interesting (and the interest must
+be the excuse for the digression from Afghanistan), because it
+indicates that modern Chinese Turkistan was included in Tibet a
+thousand years ago, and it further throws a certain amount of light on
+the origin of the remarkable concentration of Buddhist centres in the
+Takla Makan.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] Joubert's translation.
+
+[6] Adraskand is mentioned as "a little place with cultivation,
+gardens, and plenty of sweet water," and as one of the four towns
+under the domination of Asfaran. This corresponds fairly well with the
+modern town of Kila Adraskand of the same name. On the same southern
+route from Herat, undoubtedly, was "Malin Herat, at one day's journey,
+a town surrounded by gardens." The picturesque ruins of the bridge
+called the Pul-i-Malun, across the Hari Rud, on the Kandahar road, is
+evidence of the former existence of a town of Malun, of which no trace
+remains to-day, but which must have corresponded very closely with
+Rozabagh.
+
+[7] Talikhan in modern maps.
+
+[8] Now Colonel the Hon. M. G. Talbot, R.E.
+
+[9] The name or term Bot is locally applied now to certain Himalayan
+districts as well as to Tibet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ARAB EXPLORATION--MAKRAN
+
+
+Between Arabia and India is the strange land of Makran, in the
+southern defiles and deserts of which country Alexander lost his way.
+Had he by chance separated himself from the coast and abandoned
+connection with his fleet he might have passed through Makran by more
+northerly routes to Persia, and have made one of those open ways which
+Arab occupation opened up to traffic 1000 years later. Makran is not
+an attractive country for the modern explorer. It is not yet a popular
+field for enterprise in research (though it well may become so), and a
+few words of further description are necessary to explain how it was
+that the death-trap of Alexander proved to be the road to wealth and
+power of the subsequent Arab.
+
+  [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF ANCIENT & MEDIÆVAL MAKRAN
+    TO ILLUSTRATE PAPER BY COL. T. H. HOLDICH.]
+
+From the sun-swept Arabian Sea a long line of white shore, with a
+ceaseless surf breaking on it, appears to edge it on the north. This
+is backed by other long lines of level-topped hills, seldom rising to
+conspicuous peaks or altitudes, but just stretched out in long
+grey and purple lines with a prominent feature here and there to serve
+as a useful landmark to mariners. Now and then when the shoreline is
+indented, the hills actually face the sea and there are clean-cut
+scarped cliffs presenting a square face to the waves. At such points
+the deep rifted mountains of the interior either extend an arm to the
+ocean, as at Malan, or it may be that a narrow band of ancient ridge
+leaves jagged sections of its length above sea-level, parallel to the
+coast-line, and that between it and the hills of the interior is a
+sandy isthmus with sea indentation forming harbours on either side.
+This country, for a width of about 100 miles, is called Makran. It is
+the southernmost region of Southern Baluchistan, a country
+geologically of recent formation, with a coastal uplift from the
+sea-bottom of soft white sand strata capped here and there by
+laterite. Such a formation lends itself to quaint curiosities in hill
+structure. A protecting cap may preserve a pinnacle of soft rock,
+whilst all around it the persistence of weather action has cut away
+the soil. Gigantic cap-crowned pillars and pedestals are balanced in
+fantastic array about the mountain slopes; deep cuttings and gorges
+are formed by denudation, and from the gullies so fashioned amongst
+these hills there may tower up a scarped cliff edge for thousands of
+feet, with successive strata so well defined that it possesses all the
+appearance of massive masonry construction.
+
+The sea which beats with unceasing surf on the shores of Makran is
+full of the wonders of the deep. From the dead silent flat surface,
+such as comes with an autumn calm, monstrous fish suddenly shoot out
+for 15 or 20 feet into the air and fall with a resounding slap almost
+amounting to a detonation. Whales still disport themselves close
+inshore, and frighten no one. It is easy, however, to understand the
+terror with which they inspired the Greek sailors of Nearkhos in their
+open Indian-built boats as they wormed their way along the coast.
+Occasionally a whale becomes involved with the cable of the
+Indo-Persian telegraph line and loops himself into it, with fatal
+results. There are islands off the shore, cut out from the mainland.
+Some of them are in process of disappearance, when they will add their
+quota to the bar which makes approach to the Makran shores so
+generally difficult; others, more remote, bid fair to last as the
+final remnants of a long-ago submerged ridge through ages yet to come;
+and one regrets that the day of their enchantment has passed. Of such
+is that island of Haftala, Hashtala, Nuhsala (it is difficult to
+account for the variety of Persian numerals which are associated with
+its name), which is called Nosala by Nearkhos and said by him to be
+sacred to the sun. In the days of the Greeks it was enveloped in a
+haze of mystery and tradition. The Karaks who made of this island a
+base for their depredations, finally drew down upon themselves the
+wrath of the Arabs, and this led incidentally to one of the most
+successful invasions of India that have ever been conducted by sea and
+land.
+
+But it is not only the historical and legendary interest of this
+remarkable coast which renders it a fascinating subject for
+exploration and romance. The physical conditions of it, the bubbling
+mud volcanoes which occasionally fill the sea with yellow silt from
+below, and always remain in a perpetual simmer of boiling activity;
+the weird and fantastic forms assumed by the mud strata of recent
+sea-making, which are the basis of the whole structure of ridge and
+furrow which constitute Makran conformation, no less than the
+extraordinary prevalence of electric phenomena,--all these offered the
+Arabian Sea as a promising gift to the inventive faculty of such Arab
+genius as revelled in stories of miraculous enterprise. On a still,
+warm night when the stars are all ablaze overhead the sea will, of a
+sudden, spread around in a sheet of milky white, and the sky become
+black by contrast with the blackness of ink. Then again will there be
+a transformation to a bright scintillating floor, with each little
+wavelet dropping sparks of light upon it; and from the wake of the
+vessel will stretch out to the horizon a shining way, like a silver
+path into the great unknown. Meanwhile, the ship herself will be lit
+up by the electric genii. Each iron rod or stanchion will gleam with a
+weird white light; each spar will carry a little bunch of blue flame
+at its point; the mast-head will be aflame, and softly through the
+wonders of this strange Eastern sea the ship will stalk on in solemn
+silence and most "excellent loneliness." Small wonder that Arab
+mariners were stirring storytellers, living as they did amidst the
+uncounted wonders of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
+
+Hardly less strange is the land formation of this southern edge of
+Baluchistan. It is an old, old country, replete with the evidences of
+unwritten history, the ultimate bourne of much of the flotsam and
+jetsam of Asiatic humanity; a cul-de-sac where northern intruders meet
+and get no farther. Yet geologically it is very new--so new that one
+might think that the piles of sea-born shells which are to be found
+here and there drifted into heaps on the soft mud flats amongst the
+bristling ridges, were things of yesterday; so new, in fact, that it
+has not yet done changing its outline. There is little difficulty in
+marking the changes in the coast-line which must have occurred since
+the third century B.C. One may even count up the island formations and
+disappearances which have occurred within a generation; so incomplete
+that the changing conditions of its water-supply have left their marks
+everywhere over it. Desiccated forests are to be found with the trees
+still standing, as they will continue to stand in this dry climate for
+centuries. Huge masonry constructions, built as dams for the retention
+of water in the inland hills, testify to the existence of an abundant
+water-supply within historic periods; as also do the terraced slopes
+which reach down in orderly steps to the foot of the ridges, each step
+representing a formerly irrigated field. The water has failed;
+whether, as is most probable, from the same desiccating processes
+which are drying up lakes and dwindling glaciers in both northern and
+southern hemispheres, or whether there has been special interference
+with the routine of Nature and man has contributed to his own undoing,
+it is impossible at present to say, but the result is that Makran is
+now, and has been for centuries, a forgotten and almost a forsaken
+country. In order to understand the remarkable peculiarity of its
+geographical formation one requires a good map. Ridges, rather than
+ranges, are the predominant feature of its orography. Ridges of all
+degrees of altitude, extension, and rockiness, running in long lines
+of parallel flexure on a system of curves which sweeps them round
+gradually from the run of Indus frontier hills to an east and west
+strike through Makran, and a final trend to the north-west, where they
+guard the Persian coasts of the Gulf. As a rule they throw off no
+spurs, standing stiff, jagged, naked, and uncompromising, like the
+parallel walls of some gigantic system of defences, and varying in
+height above the plain from 5000 feet to 50. The higher ranges have
+been scored by weather and wet, with deep gorges and drainage lines,
+and their scarred sides present various degrees of angle and
+declivity, according to the dip of the strata that forms them. Some of
+the smaller ridges have their rocky backbone set up straight, forming
+a knife-like edge along which nothing but a squirrel could run. Across
+them, breaking through the axis almost at right angles run some of the
+main arteries of the general drainage system; but the most important
+features of the country are the long lateral valleys between the
+ridges, the streams of which feed the main rivers. These are often 8
+or 10 miles in width, with a flat alluvial bottom, and one may ride
+for mile after mile along the open plain with clay or sand spread out
+on either hand, and nothing but the distant wall of the hills flanking
+the long and endless route. Some of these valleys are filled with a
+luxuriance of palm growth (the dates of Panjgur, for instance, being
+famous), and it is this remarkable feature of long, lateral valleys
+which, through all the ages, has made of Makran an avenue of approach
+to India from the west. The more important ranges lie to the north,
+facing the deserts of Central Baluchistan. It is in the solid phalanx
+of the coastal band of hills that the most marked adherence to the
+gridiron, or ridge and furrow formation, is to be found.
+
+Exceptionally, out of this banded system arises some great mountain
+block forming a separate feature, such as is the massive crag-crowned
+cliff-lined block of Malan, west of one of the most important rivers
+of Makran (the Hingol), to which reference has already been made. From
+it an arm stretches southwards to the sea, and forms a square-headed
+obstruction to traffic along the coast, which almost defeated the
+efforts of the Indo-Persian telegraph constructors when they essayed
+to carry a line across it, and did entirely defeat the intentions of
+Alexander the Great to conduct his army within sight of his
+Indus-built fleet. It is within the folds of this mountain group that
+lies hidden that most ancient shrine of Indo-Persian worship, to which
+we have already referred in the story of Alexander's retreat.
+
+It is the possibilities of Makran as an intervening link in the route
+from Europe to India which renders that country interesting at the
+present time, and it is therefore with a practical as well as
+historical interest that we take up the story of frontier exploration
+from the time when we first recognize the great commercial movements
+of the Arab races, centuries after the disappearance of the last
+remnants of ancient explorations by Assyrians, Persians, and Greeks.
+It is extraordinary how deep a veil of forgetfulness was drawn over
+Southern Baluchistan during this unrecorded interval. For a thousand
+years, from the withdrawal of Alexander's attenuated force to the rise
+and spread of Islam, we hear nothing of Makran, and we are left to the
+traditions of the Baluch tribes to fill up the gap in history. What
+the Arabs made of mediæval Makran as a gate of India may be briefly
+told. Recent surveys have revealed their tracks, although we have no
+clear record of their earliest movements. We know, however, that there
+was an Arab governor of Makran long previous to the historical
+invasion of India in A.D. 712, and that there must have been strong
+commercial interest and considerable traffic before his time. Arabia,
+indeed, had always been interested in Makran, and amongst other relics
+of a long dead past are those huge stone constructions for
+water-storage purposes to which we have referred, and which must have
+been of very early Arab (possibly Himyaritic) building, as well as a
+host of legends and traditions, all pointing to successive waves of
+early tribal emigration, extending from the Persian frontier to the
+lower Arabius--the Purali of our time.
+
+Hajjaj, the governor of Irak, under the Kalif Walid I., projected
+three simultaneous expeditions into Asia for the advancement of the
+true faith. One was directed towards Samarkand, one against the King
+of Kabul, and the third was to operate directly on India through the
+heart of Makran. The Makran field force was organised in the first
+instance for the purpose of punishing certain Karak and Med pirates,
+who had plundered a valuable convoy sent by the ruler of Ceylon to
+Hajjaj and to the Kalif. These Karaks probably gave their names to the
+Krokala of Nearkhos, and the Karachi of to-day, and have disappeared.
+The Meds still exist. The expedition, which was placed under the
+command of an enterprising young general aged seventeen, named Mahomed
+Kasim, not only swept through Makran easily and successfully, but
+ended by establishing Mahomedan supremacy in the Indus valley, and
+originated a form of government which, under various phases, lasted
+till Mahmud of Ghazni put an end to a degenerated form of it by
+ousting the Karmatian rulers of Multan in A.D. 1005. The original
+force which invaded Sind under Mahomed Kasim, and which was drawn
+chiefly from Syria and Irak, consisted of 6000 camel-riders and 3000
+infantry. In Makran the Arab governor (it is important to note that
+there was an Arab governor of Makran before that country became the
+high-road to India) added further reinforcements, and there was also a
+naval squadron, which conveyed catapults and ammunition by sea to the
+Indus valley port of Debal. It was with this small force that one of
+the most surprising invasions of India ever attempted was successfully
+carried through Makran--a country hitherto deemed impracticable, and
+associated in previous history with nothing but tales of disaster. For
+long, however, we find that Mahomed Kasim had both the piratical Meds,
+and the hardly less tractable Jats (a Skythic people still existing in
+the Indus valley) in his train, and the news of his successes carried
+to Damascus brought crowds of Arab adventurers to follow his fortunes.
+When he left Multan for the north, he is said to have had 50,000 men
+under his command. His subsequent career and tragic end are all
+matters of history.
+
+The points chiefly to note in this remarkable invasion are that the
+Arab soldiers first engaged were chiefly recruited from Syria; that,
+contrary to their usual custom, they brought none of their women with
+them; and that none of them probably ever returned to their country
+again. Elliott tells us of the message sent them by the savage Kalif
+Suliman: "Sow and sweat, for none of you will ever see Syria again."
+What, then, became of all these first Arab conquerors of Western
+India? They must have taken Persian-speaking wives of the stock of
+Makran and Baluchistan, and their children, speaking their
+mother-tongue, lost all knowledge of their fathers' language in the
+course of a few generations. There are many such instances of the
+rapid disappearance of a language in the East. For three centuries,
+then, whilst a people of Arab descent ruled in Sind, there existed
+through Makran one of the great highways of the world, a link between
+West and East such as has never existed elsewhere on the Indian
+border, save, perhaps, through the valley of the Kabul River and its
+affluents. Along this highway flowed the greater part of the mighty
+trade of India, a trade which has never failed to give commercial
+predominance to that country which held the golden key to it, whether
+that key has been in the hands of Arab, Turk, Venetian, Portuguese,
+or Englishman. And though there are traces of a rapid decline in the
+mediæval prosperity of Makran after the commencement of the eleventh
+century, yet its comparative remoteness in geographical position saved
+it subsequently from the ruthless destruction inflicted by Turk and
+Tartar in more accessible regions, and left to it cities worth
+despoiling even in the days of Portuguese supremacy.
+
+It is only lately that Makran has lapsed again into a mere
+geographical expression. Twenty years ago our maps told us nothing
+about it. It might have been, and was, for all practical purposes, as
+unexplored and unknown as the forests of Africa. Now, however, we have
+found that Makran is a country of great topographical interest as well
+as of stirring history. And when we come to the days of Arab
+ascendency, when Arab merchants settled in the country; when good
+roads with well-marked stages were established; when, fortunately for
+geography, certain Western commercial travellers, following, _longo
+intervallo_, the example of the Chinese pilgrims--men such as Ibn
+Haukal of Baghdad, or Istakhri of Persepolis--first set to work to
+reduce geographical discovery to systematic compilation, we can take
+their books and maps in our hands, and verify their statements as we
+read. It is true that they copied a good deal from each other, and
+that their manner of writing geographical names was obscure, and
+leaves a good deal to be desired--a fault, by the way, from which the
+maps of to-day are not entirely free--yet they are on the whole as
+much more accurate than the early Greek geographers as the area of
+their observations is more restricted. We may say that Makran and Sind
+are perhaps more fully treated of by Arab geographers than any other
+portion of the globe by the geographers who preceded them; and as
+their details are more perfect, so, for the most part, is the
+identification of those details rendered comparatively easy by the
+nature of the country and its physical characteristics. With the
+exception of the coast-line the topography of Makran to-day is the
+topography of Makran in Alexandrian days. This is very different
+indeed from the uncertain character of the Indus valley mediæval
+geography. There the extraordinary hydrographical changes that have
+taken place; the shifting of the great river itself from east to west,
+dependent on certain recognized natural laws; the drying up and total
+disappearance of ancient channels and river-beds; the formation of a
+delta, and the ever-varying alterations in the coast-line (due greatly
+to monsoon influences), leave large tracts almost unrecognizable as
+described in mediæval literature. Makran is, for the most part, a
+country of hills. Its valleys are narrow and sharply defined; its
+mountains only passable at certain well-known points, which must have
+been as definite before the Christian era as they are to-day; and it
+is consequently comparatively easy to follow up a clue to any main
+route passing through that country.
+
+Makran is, in short, a country full of long narrow valleys running
+east and west, the longest and most important being the valley of Kej.
+The main drainage of the country reaches the sea by a series of main
+channels running south, which, inasmuch as they are driven almost at
+right angles across the general run of the watersheds, necessarily
+pass through a series of gorges of most magnificent proportions, which
+are far more impressive as spectacles than they are convenient for
+practical road-making. Thus Makran is very much easier to traverse
+from east to west than it is from north to south.
+
+I have, perhaps, said enough to indicate that the old highways through
+Makran, however much they may have assisted trade and traffic between
+East and West, could only have been confined to very narrow limits
+indeed. It is, in fact, almost a one-road country. Given the key,
+then, to open the gates of such channels of communication as exist,
+there is no difficulty in following them up, and the identification of
+successive stages becomes merely a matter of local search. We know
+where the old Arab cities _must_ have been, and we have but to look
+about to find their ruins. The best key, perhaps, to this mediæval
+system is to be found in a map given by the Baghdad traveller, Ibn
+Haukal, who wrote his account of Makran early in the tenth century,
+and though this map leaves much to be desired in clearness and
+accuracy, it is quite sufficient to give us the clue we require at
+first starting. In the written geographical accounts of the country,
+we labour under the disadvantage of possessing no comparative standard
+of distance. The Arab of mediæval days described the distance to be
+traversed between one point and another much as the Bedou describes it
+now. It is so many days' journey. Occasionally, indeed, we find a
+compiler of more than usual precision modifying his description of a
+stage as a long day's journey, or a short one. But such instances are
+rare, and a day's journey appears to be literally just so much as
+could conveniently be included in a day's work, with due regard to the
+character of the route traversed. Across an open desert a day's
+journey may be as much as 80 miles. Between the cities of a
+well-populated district it may be much less. Taking an average from
+all known distances, it is between 40 and 50 miles. Nor is it always
+explained whether the day's journey is by land or sea, the unit "a
+day's journey" being the distance traversed independent of the means
+of transit.
+
+In Ibn Haukal's map, although we have very little indication of
+comparative distance, we have a rough idea of bearings, and the
+invaluable datum of a fixed starting-point that can be identified
+beyond doubt. The great Arab port on the Makran coast, sometimes even
+called the capital of Makran, was Tiz; and Tiz is a well-known coast
+village to this day. About 100 miles west of the port of Gwadur there
+is a convenient and sheltered harbour for coast shipping, and on the
+shores of it there was a telegraph station of the Persian Gulf line
+called Charbar. The telegraph station occupied the extremity of the
+eastern horn of the bay, and was separated inland by some few miles of
+sandy waste from a low band of coarse conglomerate hills, which
+conceal amongst them a narrow valley, containing all that is left of
+the ancient port of Tiz. If you take a boat from Charbar point, and,
+coasting up the bay, land at the mouth of this valley, you will first
+of all be confronted by a picturesque little Persian fort perched on
+the rocks on either hand, and absolutely blocking the entrance to the
+valley. This fort was built, or at least renewed, in the days of
+General Sir F. Goldsmid's Seistan mission, to emphasize the fact that
+the Persian Government claimed that valley for its own. About a mile
+above the fort there exists a squalid little fishing village, the
+inhabitants of which spend their spare moments (and they have many of
+them) in making those palm mats which enter so largely into the house
+architecture of the coast villages, as they sit beneath the shade of
+one or two remarkably fine "banian" trees. The valley is narrow and
+close, and the ruins of Tiz, extending on both sides the village, are
+packed close together in enormous heaps of debris, so covered with
+broken pottery as to suggest the idea that the inhabitants of old Tiz
+must have once devoted themselves entirely to the production of
+ceramic art ware. Every heavy shower of rain washes out fragments of
+new curiosities in glass and china. Here may be found large quantities
+of an antique form of glass, the secret of the manufacture of which
+has (according to Venetian experts) long passed away, only to be
+lately rediscovered. It takes the shape of bangles chiefly, and in
+this form may be dug up in almost any of the recognized sites of
+ancient coast towns along the Makran and Persian coasts. It is
+apparently of Egyptian origin, and was brought to the coast in Arab
+ships. Here also is to be found much of a special class of pottery, of
+very fine texture, and usually finished with a light sage-green glaze,
+which appears to me to be peculiarly Arabic, but of which I have yet
+to learn the full history. It is well known in Afghanistan, where it
+is said to possess the property of detecting poison by cracking under
+it, but even there it is no modern importation. This is the celadon to
+which reference has already been made. The rocky cliffs on either side
+the valley are honey-combed with Mahomedan tombs, and the face of
+every flat-spaced eminence is scarred with them. A hundred generations
+of Moslems are buried there. The rocky declivities which hedge in this
+remarkable site may give some clue to the yet more ancient name of
+Talara which this place once bore. Talar in Baluchi bears the
+signification of a rocky band of cliffs or hills.
+
+The obvious reason why the port of Tiz was chosen for the point of
+debarkation for India is that, in addition to the general convenience
+of the harbour, the monsoon winds do not affect the coast so far west.
+At seasons when the Indus delta and the port of Debal were rendered
+unapproachable, Tiz was an easy port to gain. There must have been a
+considerable local trade, too, between the coast and the highly
+cultivated, if restricted, valleys of Northern Makran, and it is more
+than probable that Tiz was the port for the commerce of Seistan in its
+most palmy days.
+
+From Tiz to Kiz (or Kej, which is reckoned as the first big city on
+the road to India in mediæval geography) was, according to Istakhri
+and Idrisi, a five-days' journey. Kiz is doubtless synonymous with
+Kej, but the long straight valley of that name which leads eastwards
+towards India has no town now which exactly corresponds to the name of
+the valley. The distance between Tiz and the Kej district is from 160
+to 170 miles. No actual ruined site can be pointed out as yet marking
+the position of Kiz, or (as Idrisi writes it) Kirusi, but it must have
+been in the close neighbourhood of Kalatak, where, indeed, there is
+ample room for further close investigation amongst surrounding ruins.
+About the city, we may note from Idrisi that it was nearly as large as
+Multan, and was the largest city in Makran. "Palm trees are
+plentiful, and there is a large trade," says our author, who adds that
+it is two long days' journey west of the city of Firabuz. From all the
+varied forms which Arab geographical names can assume owing to
+omission of diacritical marks in writing, this place, Firabuz, has
+perhaps suffered most. The most correct reading of it would probably
+be Kanazbun, and this is the form adopted by Elliott, who conjectures
+that Kanazbun was situated near the modern Panjgur. From Kej to
+Panjgur is not less than 110 miles, a very long two-days' journey. Yet
+Istakhri supports Idrisi (if, indeed, he is not the original author of
+the statement) that it is two days' journey from Kiz to Kanazbun. This
+would lead one to place Kanazbun elsewhere than in the Panjgur
+district, more especially as that district lies well to the north of
+the direct road to India, were it not for local evidence that the
+fertile and flourishing Panjgur valley must certainly be included
+somehow in the mediæval geographical system, and that the conditions
+of khafila traffic in mediæval times were such as to preclude the
+possibility of the more direct route being utilized. To explain this
+fully would demand a full explanation also of the physical geography
+of Eastern Makran. I have no doubt whatever that Sir H. Elliott is
+right in his conjecture, and that amongst the many relics of ancient
+civilization which are to be found in Panjgur is the site of Kanazbun.
+Kanazbun was in existence long before the Arab invasion of Sind. The
+modern fort of Kudabandan probably represents the site of that more
+ancient fort which was built by the usurper Chach of Sind, when he
+marched through Makran to fix its further boundaries about the
+beginning of the Mahomedan era. Kanazbun was a very large city indeed.
+"It is a town," says Idrisi, "of which the inhabitants are rich. They
+carry on a great trade. They are men of their word, enemies of fraud,
+and they are generous and hospitable." Panjgur, I may add, is a
+delightfully green spot amongst many other green spots in Makran. It
+is not long ago that we had a small force cantoned there to preserve
+law and order in that lawless land. There appeared to be but one
+verdict on the part of the officers who lived there, and that verdict
+was all in its favour. In this particular, Panjgur is probably unique
+amongst frontier outposts.
+
+The next important city on the road to Sind was Armail, Armabel, or
+Karabel, now, without doubt, Las Bela. From Kudabandan to Las Bela is
+from 170 to 180 miles, and there is considerable variety of opinion as
+to the number of days that were to be occupied in traversing the
+distance. Istakhri says that from Kiz to Armail is six days' journey.
+Deduct the two from Kiz to Kanazbun, and the distance between Kanazbun
+and Armail is four days. Ibn Haukal makes it fourteen marches from
+Kanazbun to the port of Debal, and as he reckons Armail to be six
+from Debal on the Kanazbun road, we get a second estimate of eight
+days' journey. Idrisi says that from Manhabari to Firabuz is six
+marches, and we know otherwise that from Manhabari to Armail was four,
+so the third estimate gives us two days' journey. Istakhri's estimate
+is more in accordance with the average that we find elsewhere, and he
+is the probable author of the original statements. But doubtless the
+number of days occupied varied with the season and the amount of
+supplies procurable. There were villages _en route_, and many
+halting-places. The _Ashkalu l' Bilad_ of Ibn Haukal says: "Villages
+of Dahuk and Kalwan are contiguous, and are between Labi and Armail";
+from which Elliott conjectures that Labi was synonymous with Kiz.
+Idrisi states that "between Kiz and Armail two districts touch each
+other, Rahun and Kalwan." I should be inclined to suggest that the
+districts of Dashtak and Kolwah are those referred to. They are
+contiguous, and they may be said to be between Kiz and Armail, though
+it would be more exact to place them between Kanazbun and Armail.
+Kolwah is a well-cultivated district lying to the south of the river,
+which in its upper course is known as the Lob. I should conjecture
+that this may be the Labi referred to by Ibn Haukal.
+
+The city of Armail, Armabel (sometimes Karabel), or Las Bela, is of
+great historic interest. From the very earliest days of historical
+record Armail, by right of its position commanding the high-road to
+India, must have been of great importance. Las Bela is but the modern
+name derived from the influx of the Las or Lumri tribe of Rajputs. It
+is at present but an insignificant little town, picturesquely perched
+on the banks of the Purali River, but in its immediate neighbourhood
+is a veritable _embarras de richesse_ in ancient sites. Eleven miles
+north-west of Las Bela, at Gondakahar, are the ruins of a very ancient
+city, which at first sight appear to carry us back to the
+pre-Mahomedan era of Arab occupation, when the country was peopled by
+Arabii, and the Arab flag was paramount on the high seas. Not far from
+them are the caves of Gondrani, about which there is no room for
+conjecture, for they are clearly Buddhist, as can be told from their
+construction. We know from the Chachnama of Sind that in the middle of
+the eighth century the province of Las Bela was part of a Buddhist
+kingdom, which extended from Armabel to the modern province of Gandava
+in Sind. The great trade mart for the Buddhists on the frontier was a
+place called Kandabel, which Elliott identifies with Gandava, the
+capital of the province of Kach Gandava. It is, however, associated in
+the Chachnama with Kandahar, the expression "Kandabel, that is,
+Kandahar" being used, an expression which Elliott condemns for its
+inaccuracy, as he recognizes but the one Kandahar, which is in
+Afghanistan. It happens that there is a Kandahar, or Gandahar, in
+Kach Gandava, and there are ruins enough in the neighbourhood to
+justify the suspicion that this was after all the original Kandabel
+rather than the modern town of Gandava.
+
+The capital of this ancient Buddha--or Buddhiya--kingdom I believe to
+have been Armabel rather than Kandabel, it being at Armabel that Chach
+found a Buddhist priest reigning in the year A.H. 2, when he passed
+through. The curious association of names, and the undoubted Buddhist
+character of the Gondrani caves, would lead one to assign a Buddhist
+origin also to the neighbouring ruins of Gondakahar (or Gandakahar)
+only that direct evidence from the ruins themselves is at present
+wanting to confirm this conjecture. They require far closer
+investigation than has been found possible in the course of ordinary
+survey operations. The country lying between Las Bela and Kach Gandava
+is occupied at present by a most troublesome section of the Dravidian
+Brahuis, who call themselves Mingals, or Mongols, and who possibly may
+be a Mongolian graft on the Dravidian stock. They may prove to be
+modern representatives of the old Buddhist population of this land,
+but their objection to political control has hitherto debarred us from
+even exploring their country, although it is immediately on our own
+borders. About 8 miles north of Las Bela are the ruins of a
+comparatively recent Arab settlement, but they do not appear to be
+important. It is probable that certain other ruins, about 1½ miles
+east of the town, called Karia Pir, represent the latest mediæval
+site, the site which was adopted after the destruction of the older
+city by Mahomed Kasim on his way to invade Sind. Karia Pir is full of
+Arabic coins and pottery. So many invasions of India have been planned
+with varied success by the Kalifs of Baghdad since the first invasion
+in the days of Omar I. in A.D. 644, till the time of the final
+occupation of Sind in the time of the sixth Kalif Walid, about A.D.
+712, that there is no difficulty in accounting for the varied sites
+and fortunes of any city occupying so important a strategical position
+as Bela.
+
+From Armail we have a two-days' march assigned by Istakhri and Idrisi
+as the distance to the town of Kambali, or Yusli, towards India. These
+two places have, in consequence of their similarity in position,
+become much confused, and it has been assumed by some scholars that
+they are identical. But they are clearly separated in Ibn Haukal's
+map, and it is, in fact, the question only of which of two routes
+towards India is selected that will decide which of the two cities
+will be found on the road. There is (and always must have been) a
+choice of routes to the ancient port of Debal after passing the city
+of Armail. That route which led through Yusli in all probability
+passed by the modern site of Uthal. Close to this village the
+unmistakable ruins of a considerable Arab town have been found, and I
+have no hesitation in identifying them as those of Yusli. About
+Kambali, too, there can be very little doubt. There are certain
+well-known ruins called Khairokot not far to the west of the village
+of Liari. We know from mediæval description that Kambali was close to
+the sea, and the sea shaped its coast-line in mediæval days so as
+nearly to touch the site called Khairokot. Even now, under certain
+conditions of tide, it is possible to reach Liari in a coast
+fishing-boat, although the process of land formation at the head of
+the Sonmiani bay is proceeding so fast that, on the other hand, it is
+occasionally impossible even to reach the fishing village of Sonmiani
+itself. The ruins of Khairokot are so extensive, and yield such large
+evidences of Arab occupation that a place must certainly be found for
+them in the mediæval system. Kambali appears to be the only possible
+solution to the problem, although it was somewhat off the direct road
+between Armail and Debal.
+
+From either of these towns we have a six-days' journey to Debal,
+passing two other cities _en route_, viz. Manabari and the "small but
+populous town of Khur."
+
+The Manhanari of Istakhri, Manbatara of Ibn Haukal, or Manabari of
+Idrisi, again confronts us with the oft-repeated difficulty of two
+places with similar names, there being no one individual site which
+will answer all the descriptions given. General Haig has shown that
+there was in all probability a Manjabari on the old channel of the
+Indus, nearly opposite the famous city of Mansura, some 40 miles
+north-east of the modern Hyderabad, which will answer certain points
+of Arabic description; but he shows conclusively that this could not
+be the Manhabari of Ibn Haukal and Idrisi, which was two days' journey
+from Debal on the road to Armail. As we have now decided what
+direction that road must have taken, after accepting General Haig's
+position for Debal, and bearing in mind Idrisi's description of the
+town as "built in a hollow," with fountains, springs, and gardens
+around it, there seems to me but little doubt that the site of the
+ancient Manhabari is to be found near that resort of all Karachi
+holiday-makers called Mugger Pir. Here the sacred alligators are kept,
+and hence the recognized name; but the real name of the place,
+divested of its vulgar attributes, is Manga, or Manja Pir. The affix
+Pir is common throughout the Bela district, and is a modern
+introduction. The position of Mugger Pir, with its encircling walls of
+hills, its adjacent hot springs and gardens (so rare as to be almost
+unique in this part of the country), its convenient position with
+respect to the coast, and, above all, its interesting architectural
+remains, mark it unmistakably as that Manhabari of Idrisi which was
+two days' march from Debal.
+
+Whether Manhabari can be identified with that ancient capital of
+Indo-Skythia spoken of by Ptolemy and the author of the _Periplus_ as
+Minagar, or Binagar, may be open to question, though there are a good
+many points about it which appear to meet the description given by
+more ancient geographers. The question is too large to enter on now,
+but there is certainly reason to think that such identification may be
+found possible. The small but populous town of Khur has left some
+apparent records of its existence near the Malir waterworks of
+Karachi, where there is a very fine group of Arab tombs in a good
+state of preservation. There is a village called Khair marked on the
+map not far from this position, and the actual site of the old town
+cannot be far from it, although I have not had the opportunity of
+identifying it. It is directly on the road connecting Debal with
+Manhabari. With Manhabari and Khur our tale of buried cities closes in
+this direction. We have but to add that General Haig identifies Debal
+with a ruin-covered site 20 miles south-west of Thatta, and about 45
+miles east-south-east of Karachi.
+
+All these ancient cities eastwards from Makran are associated with one
+very interesting feature. Somewhat apart from the deserted and hardly
+recognizable ruins of the cities are groups of remarkable tombs,
+constructed of stone, and carved with a most minute beauty of design,
+which is so well preserved as to appear almost fresh from the hands of
+the sculptor. These tombs are locally known as "Khalmati."
+
+Invariably placed on rising ground, with a fair command of the
+surrounding landscape, they are the most conspicuous witnesses yet
+remaining of the nature of the Saracenic style of decorative art which
+must have beautified those early cities. The cities themselves have
+long since passed away, but these stone records of dead citizens still
+remain to illustrate, if but with a feeble light, one of the darkest
+periods in the history of Indian architecture. These remains are most
+likely Khalmati (_not_ Karmati) and belong to an Arab race who were
+once strong in Sind and who came from the Makran coast at Khalmat. The
+Karmatians were not builders.
+
+We have so far only dealt with that route to India which combined a
+coasting voyage in Arab ships with an overland journey which was
+obviously performed on a camel, or the days' stages could never have
+been accomplished. But the number of cities in Western Makran and
+Kirman which still exist under their mediæval names, and which are
+thickly surrounded with evidences of their former wealth and
+greatness, certifies to a former trade through Persia to India which
+could have been nowise inferior to that from the shores of Arabia or
+Egypt. Indeed, the overland route to India through Persia and Makran
+was probably one of the best trodden trade routes that the world has
+ever seen. It is almost unnecessary to enumerate such names as Darak,
+Bih, Band, Kasrkand, Asfaka, and Fahalfahra (all of which are to be
+found in Ibn Haukal's map), and to point out that they are represented
+in modern geography by Dizak, Geh, Binth, Kasrkand, Asfaka, and Bahu
+Kalat. Degenerated and narrowed as they now are, there are still
+evidences written large enough in surrounding ruins to satisfy the
+investigator of the reality and greatness of their past; whilst the
+present nature of the routes which connect them by river and mountain
+is enough to prove that they never could have been of small account in
+the Arab geographical system. One city in this part of Makran is, I
+confess, something of a riddle to me still. Rasak is ever spoken of by
+Arab geographers as the city of "schismatics." There is, indeed, a
+Rasak on the Sarbaz River road to Bampur, which might be strained to
+fit the position assigned it in Arab geography; but it is now a small
+and insignificant village, and apparently could never have been
+otherwise. There is no room there for a city of such world-wide fame
+as the ancient headquarters of heresy must have been--a city which
+served usefully as a link between the heretics of Persia and those of
+Sind.
+
+Istakhri says that Rasak is two days' journey from Fahalfahra (which
+there is good reason for believing to be Bahu Kalat), but Idrisi makes
+it a three-days' journey from that place, and three days from Darak,
+so that it should be about half-way between them. Now, Darak can
+hardly be other than Dizak, which is described by the same authority
+as three days' journey from Firabuz (_i.e._ Kanazbun). It is also said
+to have been a populous town, and south-west of it was "a high
+mountain called the Mountain of Salt." South-west of Dizak are the
+highest mountains in Makran, called the Bampusht Koh, and there is
+enough salt in the neighbourhood to justify the geographer's
+description. It may also be said to be three days' journey from
+Kanazbun. Somewhere about half-way between Dizak and Bahu Kalat is the
+important town of Sarbaz, and from a description of contiguous ruins
+which has been given by Mr. E. A. Wainwright, of the Survey Department
+(to whom I am indebted for most of the Makran identifications), I am
+inclined to place the ancient Rasak at Sarbaz rather than in the
+position which the modern name would apply to it. It is rather
+significant that Ibn Haukal omits Rasak altogether from his map. Its
+importance may be estimated from Idrisi's description of it taken from
+the translation given by Elliott in the first volume of his History of
+India: "The inhabitants of Rasak are schismatics. Their territory is
+divided into two districts, one called Al Kharij, and the other Kir"
+(or Kiz) "Kaian. Sugar-cane is much cultivated, and a considerable
+trade is carried on in a sweetmeat called 'faniz,' which is made
+here.... The territory of Maskan joins that of Kirman." Maskan is
+probably represented by Mashkel at the present day, Mashkel being the
+best date-growing district in Southern Baluchistan. It adjoins Kirman,
+and produces dates of such excellent quality that they compare
+favourably with the best products of the Euphrates. Idrisi's
+description of this part of Western Makran continues thus: "The
+inhabitants have a great reputation for courage. They have date-trees,
+camels, cereals, and the fruit of cold countries." He then gives a
+table of distances, from which we can roughly estimate the meaning of
+"a day's journey." After stating that Fahalfahra, Asfaka, Band, and
+Kasrkand are dependencies of Makran which resemble each other in point
+of size and extent of their trade, he goes on to say, "Fahalfahra to
+Rasak two days." (Istakhri makes it three days, the distance from Bahu
+Kalat to Sarbaz being about 80 miles.) "From Fahalfahra to Asfaka two
+days." (This is almost impossible, the distance being about 160 miles,
+and the route passing through several large towns.) "From Asfaka to
+Band one day towards the west." (This is about 45 miles south-west
+rather than west.) "From Asfaka to Darak three days." (150 to 160
+miles according to the route taken.) "From Band to Kasrkand one day."
+(About 70 miles, passing through Bih or Geh, which is not mentioned.)
+"From Kasrkand to Kiz four days." This is not much over 150 miles, and
+is the most probable estimate of them all. It is possible, of course,
+that from 70 to 80 miles may have been covered on a good camel within
+the limits of twenty-four hours. Such distances in Arabia are not
+uncommon, but we are not here dealing with an absolutely desert
+district, devoid of water. On the contrary, halting-places must have
+always been frequent and convenient.
+
+I cannot leave this corner of Makran without a short reference to what
+lay beyond to the north-west, on the Kirman border, as it appears to
+me that one or two geographical riddles of mediæval days have recently
+been cleared up by the results of our explorations. Idrisi says that
+"Tubaran is near Fahraj, which belongs to Kirman. It is a
+well-fortified town, and is situated on the banks of a river of the
+same name, which are cultivated and fertile. From hence to Fardan, a
+commercial town, the environs of which are well populated, four days.
+Kir Kaian lies to the west of Fardan, on the road to Tubaran. The
+country is well populated and very fertile. The vine grows here and
+various sorts of fruit trees, but the palm is not to be found."
+Elsewhere he states that "from Mansuria to Tubaran about fifteen
+days"; and again, "from Tubaran to Multan, on the borders of Sind, ten
+days." Here there is clearly the confusion which so constantly arises
+from the repetition of place-names in different localities. Multan and
+Mansuria are well-known or well-identified localities, and Turan was
+an equally well-recognized district of Lower Sind, of which Khozdar
+was the capital. Turan may well be reckoned as ten days from Multan,
+or fifteen from Mansuria, but hardly the Tubaran, about which such a
+detailed and precise description is given. There are two places called
+indifferently Fahraj, Pahrag, Pahra, or Pahura, both of which are in
+the Kirman district; one, which is shown in St. John's map of Persia,
+is not very far from Regan, in the Narmashir province, and is
+surrounded far and wide with ruins. It has been identified by St. John
+as the Pahra of Arrian, the capital of Gadrosia, where Alexander
+rested after his retreat through Makran. The other is some 16 miles
+east of Bampur, to the north-west of Sarbaz. Both are on the banks of
+a river, "cultivated and fertile"; both are the centres of an area of
+ruins extending for miles; both must find a place in mediæval
+geography. For many reasons, into which I cannot fully enter, I am
+inclined to place the Pahra of Arrian in the site near Bampur. It
+suits the narrative in many particulars better than does the Pahra
+identified with Fahraj by St. John. The latter, I have very little
+doubt, is the Fahraj of Idrisi, and the town of Tubaran was not far
+from it. Fardan may well have been either Bampur itself (a very
+ancient town) or Pahra, 16 miles to the east of it; and between Fardan
+and Fahraj lay the district of Kir (or Kiz) Kaian, which has been
+stated to be a district of Rasak. "On Tubaran," says Idrisi, "are
+dependent Mahyak, Kir Kaian, Sura" (? Suza), "Fardan" (? Bampur or
+Pahra), "Kashran" (? Khasrin), "and Masurjan. Masurjan is a
+well-peopled commercial town surrounded with villages on the banks of
+the Tubaran, from which town it is 42 miles distant. Masurjan to Darak
+Yamuna 141 miles, Darak Yamuna to Firabuz 175 miles." If we take Regan
+to represent the old city of Masurjan, and Yakmina as the modern
+representative of Darak Yamuna, we shall find Idrisi's distances most
+surprisingly in accordance with modern mapping. Regan is about 40
+miles from Fahraj, and the other distances, though not accurate of
+course, are much more approximately correct than could possibly have
+been expected from the generality of Idrisi's compilation.
+
+I cannot, however, now open up a fresh chapter on mediæval geography
+in Persia. It is Makran itself to which I wish to draw attention. In
+our thirst for trans-frontier knowledge farther north and farther
+west, we have somewhat overlooked this very remarkable country. Idrisi
+commences his description with the assertion that "Makran is a vast
+country, mostly desert." We have not altogether found it so. It is
+true that the voyager who might be condemned to coast his way from the
+Gulf of Oman to the port of Karachi in the hot weather, might wonder
+what of beauty, wealth, or even interest, could possibly lie beyond
+that brazen coast washed by that molten sea; might well recall the
+agonies of thirst endured during the Greek retreat; might think of the
+lost armies of Cyrus and Simiramis; and whilst his eye could not fail
+to be impressed with the grand outlines of those bold headlands which
+guard the coast, his nose would be far more rudely reminded of the
+unpleasant proximity of Ichthyophagi than delighted by soft odours of
+spikenard or myrrh. And yet, for century after century, the key to the
+golden gate of Indian commerce lay behind those Makran hills. Beyond
+those square-headed bluffs and precipices, hidden amongst the serrated
+lines of jagged ridges, was the high-road to wealth and fame, where
+passed along not only many a rich khafila loaded with precious
+merchandise, but many a stout array of troops besides. Those citizens
+of Makran who "loved fair dealing, who were men of their word, and
+enemies to fraud," who welcomed the lagging khafila, or sped on their
+way the swift camel-mounted soldiers of Arabia, could have little
+dreamed that for centuries in the undeveloped future, when trade
+should pass over the high seas round the southern coast of Africa, and
+the Western infidel should set his hated foot on Eastern shores,
+Makran should sink out of sight and into such forgetfulness by the
+world, that eventually this ancient land of the sun should become
+something less well known than those mountains of the moon in which
+lay the far-off sources of the Egyptian Nile.
+
+Yet it is not at all impossible that Makran may once again rise to
+significance in Indian Councils. Men's eyes have been so much turned
+to the proximity of Russia and Russian railways to the Indian frontier
+that they have hardly taken into serious consideration the problems of
+the future, which deal with the direct connection overland between
+India and Europe other than those which touch Seistan or Herat. That
+such connection will finally eventuate either through Seistan or Herat
+(or through both) no one who has any appreciation of the power of
+commercial interests to overcome purely military or political
+objections will doubt; but meanwhile it may be more than interesting
+to prove that a line through Persia is quite a practicable scheme,
+although it would not be practicable on any alignment that has as yet
+been suggested. It would not be practicable by following the coast,
+for instance. It would be useless to link up Teheran with Mashad,
+unless the Seistan line were adopted in extension; and the proposal to
+join Ispahan to Seistan through Central Persia would involve such a
+lengthening of the route to India as would seriously discount its
+value. The only solution of the difficulty is through Makran to
+Karachi. Military nervousness would thus be met by the fact that
+Russia could make no use of such a line for purposes of invasion,
+inasmuch as it would be commanded and protected from the sea.
+Political difficulties with Afghanistan would be absolutely avoided by
+a Persian line. Whether that would be better than a final agreement
+with Russia based on mutual interest, which would certainly make
+strongly for the peace of our borders, is another question. I am only
+concerned just now in illustrating the geography of Makran and
+pointing out its facilities as a land of possible routes to India, and
+in showing how the exploration of Baluchistan and of Western India was
+secured in mediæval times by means of these routes.
+
+It will, then, be interesting to note that at the eastern extremity of
+Makran, dovetailed between the Makran hills as they sweep off with a
+curve westward and our Sind frontier hills as they continue their
+general strike southwards, is the little state of Las Bela. The
+mountain conformation which encloses it makes the flat alluvial
+portion of the state triangular in shape, and from the apex of the
+triangle to the sea runs a river now known as the Purali, which in
+ancient times was called the Arabis from the early Arab occupation of
+the region. There are relics of apparent Arabic origin which,
+independently of Greek records, testify to a very early interest in
+this corner of the Indian borderland. Las Bela has a history which is
+not without interest. It has been a Buddhist centre, and the caves of
+Gondakahar near by testify to the ascetic fervour of the Buddhist
+priesthood. The grave of one of the greatest of frontier political
+leaders, Sir Robert Sandeman, lies near this little capital. Already
+it forms an object of devotional pilgrimage through all the Sind
+countryside. Possibly once again it may happen that Las Bela will be a
+wayside resting-place on the road to India, as it has undoubtedly been
+in the centuries of the past. It is not difficult to reach Las Bela
+from Karachi by following the modern telegraph line. There are no
+great physical obstacles interposed to make the way thorny for the
+slow-moving train of a khafila, and where camels can take their
+stately way there the more lively locomotive can follow. Should the
+railway from Central Persia (let us say Ispahan) ever extend its iron
+lines to Las Bela, it will make little of the rest of its extension to
+Karachi. It is the actual physical arrangement of Makran topography
+only which really matters; and here we are but treading in the
+footsteps of the ubiquitous Arab when first he made his way
+south-eastward from Arabia, or from Syria, to the Indian frontier. He
+could, and he did, pass from the plateau of Persia into the very heart
+of Makran without encountering the impediment of a single difficult
+pass.
+
+Although the chief trade route of the Arabs to India was not through
+Persia, but by way of the sea in coasting vessels, it is probable that
+both Arabs and Persians before them made good use of the geographical
+opportunities offered for an approach to the Indus valley and Northern
+India, and that the central line of Persian approach through Makran
+had been a world-old route for centuries. It is really a delightful
+route to follow, full of the interest of magnificent scenery and of
+varied human existence, and it is the telegraph route from Ispahan to
+Panjgur in Makran. With the initial process of reaching Ispahan,
+whether through the Kurdistan hills from Baghdad by way of Kermanshah
+and the ancient town of Hamadan to Kum (the mountain road selected for
+the telegraph line), or whether from Teheran to Kum and thence by
+Kashan (a line not so replete with hills), we have no concern. This
+part of Persia now falls by agreement under the influence of Russia,
+and it is only by further agreement with Russia that this link in any
+European connection could be forged. But from Ispahan to Karachi one
+may still look over the wide uplands of the Persian plateau and
+imagine, if we please, that it is for England to take her share in the
+development of these ancient highways into a modern railway. Ispahan
+is 5300 feet above sea-level, and from Ispahan one never descends to a
+lower level than 3000 feet till one enters Makran.
+
+As Ispahan lies in a wide valley separated by a continuous line of
+flanking hills from the main high road of Central Persia, which
+connects Teheran and Kashan with Kirman, passing through Yezd, it is
+necessary to cross this intervening divide in order to reach Yezd.
+There is a waterway through the hills, near Taft, a little to the
+south-west of Yezd which meets this difficulty. From Yezd onwards to
+the south-west of Kirman, Bam, and the populous plains of Narmashir
+and Regan, the road is never out of sight of mountains, the long lines
+of the Persian ranges flanking it north and south culminating in the
+magnificent peak of the Koh-i-Basman, but leaving a wide space between
+unhindered by passes or rivers. From Narmashir the modern telegraph
+passes off north-eastward to Seistan, and from there follows the new
+trade route to Nushki and Quetta. It is probable that through all ages
+this palpable method of circumventing the Dasht-i-Lut (the Kirman
+desert) by skirting it on the south was adopted by travellers seeking
+Seistan and Kandahar. There is, however, the difficulty of a
+formidable band of mountains skirting the desert Seistan, which would
+be a difficulty to railway construction. From Regan to Bampur and
+Panjgur the normal and most convenient mountain conformation (although
+the ranges close in and the valleys narrow) points an open way, with
+no obstacle to bar the passage even of a motor; but after leaving
+Bampur on the east there is a divide (of about 4000 to 5000 feet) to
+be crossed before dropping into the final system of Mashkhel drainage,
+which leads straight on to Panjgur, Kalat, and Quetta. Early Arab
+commercial explorers did not usually make this detour to Quetta in
+order to reach the Indus delta country, nor should we, if we wished to
+take the shortest line and the easiest through Persia to Karachi or
+Bombay. Much depends on the objective in India. Calcutta may be
+reached from the Indus valley by the north-western lines on the normal
+Indian gauge, or it may be reached through the Rajputana system on the
+metre gauge. But for the latter system and for Bombay, Karachi becomes
+our objective. To reach Karachi _via_ Seistan and Quetta would add at
+least 500 unnecessary miles to our route from Central Persia, an
+amount which equals the total distance between the present Russian
+terminus of the Transcaspian line at Kushk and our own Indian terminus
+at New Chaman. A direct through line from Panjgur to Karachi by the
+old Arab caravan route, within striking distance from the sea, would
+apparently outflank not only all political objections, but would
+satisfy those military objectors who can only see in a railway the
+opportunity for invasion of India.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+EARLIEST ENGLISH EXPLORATION--CHRISTIE AND POTTINGER
+
+
+The Arabs of the Mediæval period, whose footsteps we have been
+endeavouring to trace, were after their fashion true geographers and
+explorers. True that with them the process of empire-making was
+usually a savage process in the first instance, followed by the
+peaceable extension of commercial interests. Trade with them (as with
+us) followed the flag, and the Semitic instinct for making the most of
+a newly-acquired property was ever the motive for wider exploration.
+With the Chinese, during the Buddhist period, the ecstatic bliss of
+pilgrimage, and the acquirement of special sanctity, were the motive
+power of extraordinary energies; but with this difference of impulse
+the result was much the same. Arab trader and Chinese pilgrim alike
+gave to the world a new record, a record of geographical fact which,
+simple and unscientific as it might be, was yet a true revelation for
+the time being. But when Buddhism had become a memory, and Arab
+domination had ceased to regulate the affairs of the Indus valley;
+when the devastating hordes of the Mongol swept through Afghanistan to
+the plains of India, geographical record no longer formed part of the
+programme, and exploration found no place in the scheme of conquest.
+The Mongol and the Turk were not geographers, such as were the Chinese
+pilgrim and the Arab, and one gets little or nothing from either of
+geographical record, in spite of the abundance of their historical
+literature and the really high standard of literary attainment enjoyed
+by many of the Turk leaders. That truly delightful historical
+personage Babar, for instance, "the adventurer," the founder of the
+Turk dynasty in India, good-looking, intellectual, possessed of great
+ability as a soldier, endowed with true artistic temperament as
+painter, poet, and author, the man who has left to all subsequent ages
+an autobiography which is almost unique in its power of presenting to
+the mind of its reader the impression of a "whole, real, live, human
+being," with all his faults and his fancies, his affections and
+aspirations, was apparently unimpressed with the value of dull details
+of geography. He can say much about the human interests of the scenes
+of his wanderings; he can describe landscape and climate, flowers and
+fruits (especially melons); but though he doubtless possessed the true
+bandit's instinct for local topography (which must, indeed, have been
+very necessary in many of the episodes of his remarkable career) he
+makes no systematic attempt to place before us a clear notion of the
+geographical conditions of Afghanistan as they existed in his time.
+His literary cousin Haidar is far more useful as a geographer. To him
+we owe something more than a vague outline of the elusive kingdom of
+Bolar and the limits of Kafiristan, but he merely touches on
+Afghanistan in its connection with Tibet, and says little of the
+country with which we are now immediately concerned.
+
+The one pre-eminent European traveller of the thirteenth century
+(1272-73), the immortal Marco Polo, hardly touched Afghanistan. He and
+his kinsmen passed by the high valleys of Vardos and Wakhan on their
+way to Kashgar and Cathay, but his geographical information is so
+vague as to render it difficult (until the surveys of these regions
+were completed) to trace his footsteps. The raid of Taimur into
+Kafiristan early in the fifteenth century, when it is said that he
+reached Najil from the Khawak Pass over the Hindu Kush, will be
+referred to again in dealing with Masson's narrative; but even to this
+day it is doubtful how far he succeeded in penetrating into
+Kafiristan, although the geographical inference of a practicable
+military line of communication between Andarab and the head of the
+Alingar River is certain. Three hundred and thirty years after Polo's
+journey another European traveller passed through Badakshan and across
+the Pamirs. This was the lay Jesuit, Benedict Goës, a true
+geographer, bent on the exploration of Cathay and the reconnaissance
+of its capabilities as a mission field. He crossed the Parwan Pass of
+the Hindu Kush from Kabul to Badakshan and journeyed thence to
+Yarkand; but he did not survive to tell his story in sufficient detail
+to leave intelligible geography. We find practically no useful
+geographical records of Afghanistan during many centuries of its
+turbulent history, so that from the time of Arab commercial enterprise
+to the days of our forefathers in India, when Afghanistan began to
+loom large on the political horizon as a factor in our relations with
+Russia and it became all important to know of what Afghanistan
+consisted, there is little to collect from the pages of its turbid
+history which can fairly rank as a record of geographical exploration.
+It took a long time to awaken an intelligent interest in trans-Indus
+geography in the minds of India's British administrators. But for
+Russia it is possible that it would have remained unawakened still;
+but early in the nineteenth century the shadow of Russia began to loom
+over the north-western horizon, and it became unpleasantly obvious
+that if we did not concern ourselves with Afghan politics, and secure
+some knowledge of Afghan territory, our northern neighbours would not
+fail to secure the advantages of early action.
+
+It is strange to recall the fact that we are indebted to the Emperor
+Napoleon Buonaparte for the first exploration made by British
+officers into the trans-frontier regions of Afghanistan and
+Baluchistan in British political interests. Nearly a century ago (in
+1810) the uneasiness created by the ambitious schemes of that most
+irrepressible military freebooter resulted in the nomination of two
+officers of Bombay Infantry to investigate the countries lying to the
+west of what was then British India, with a view to ascertaining the
+possibilities of invasion. The Punjab and Sind intervened between
+British India and the hinterland of the frontier, and their
+independence and jealous suspicion of the expansive tendency of the
+British Raj added greatly to the difficulties and the risks of any
+such trans-frontier enterprise. The Bombay Infantry has ever been a
+sort of nursery for explorers of the best and most famous type, and
+the two young gentlemen selected for this remarkable exploit were
+worthy forerunners of Burton and Speke. The traditions of intelligence
+service may almost be said to have been founded by them. The rule of
+exploration a century ago admitted of no elaborate preparation: a
+knowledge of the languages to be encountered was the one acquisition
+which was deemed indispensable; and there can be little doubt that the
+knowledge of Oriental tongues was an advantage which in those days
+very rapidly led to distinction. It was probably less widespread but
+much more thorough than it is at present. Captain Christie and
+Lieutenant Pottinger started fair in the characters which they meant
+to assume during their travels. They embarked as natives in a native
+ship, and from the very outset they found it necessary to play up to
+their disguise. The port of Sonmiani on the north-eastern shores of
+the Arabian Sea was the objective in the first instance, and the rôle
+of horse-dealers in the service of a Bombay firm was the part they
+elected to play. How far it really imposed on Baluch or Afghan it is
+difficult to say. One cannot but recollect that when another gallant
+officer in later years assumed this disguise on the Persian frontier,
+he was regarded as a harmless but eccentric European, who injured
+nobody by the assumption of an expert knowledge which he did not
+possess. He was known locally for years after his travels had ceased
+as the English officer who "called himself" a horse-dealer.
+
+Sonmiani was a more important port a century ago than it is now that
+Karachi has absorbed the trade of the Indus coast; but even then the
+mud flats which render the village so unapproachable from the coast
+were in process of formation, and it was only with favourable
+conditions of tide that this wretched and long overlooked little
+seaport could be reached. Sonmiani, however, may yet again rise to
+distinction, for it is a notable fact that the facility for reaching
+the interior of Baluchistan and the Afghan frontier by this route,
+which facility decided its selection by Christie and Pottinger, is no
+less nowadays than it was then. The explanation of it lies in the fact
+that the route practically turns the frontier hills. It follows the
+extraordinary alignment of their innumerable folds, passing between
+them from valley to valley instead of breaking crudely across the
+backbone of the system, and slips gently into the flat places of the
+plateau land which stretch from Kharan to Kandahar. The more obvious
+reason which presented itself to these early explorers was doubtless
+the avoidance of the independent buffer land of Sind. They experienced
+little difficulty, in spite of many warnings of the dangers in front
+of them, when they left Sonmiani for Bela. At Bela they interviewed an
+interesting and picturesque personality in the person of the Jam, and
+were closely questioned about the English and their proceedings.
+Apparently the Jam was prepared to accept their description of things
+European generally, until they ventured to describe a 100-gun warship
+and its equipment. Such an astounding creation he was unable to
+believe in, and he frankly said so. From Bela the great northern
+high-road led to the old capital, Khozdar, through a district infested
+with Brahui robbers; but there was no better alternative, and the two
+officers followed it. On the whole, the Brahui tribespeople treated
+them well, and there was no serious collision. Khozdar was an
+important centre in those days, with eight hundred houses, and certain
+Hindu merchants from Shikarpur drove a thriving business there.
+Nothing was more extraordinary in the palmy days of Sind than the
+widespread commercial interests of Shikarpur. Credit could be obtained
+at almost all the chief towns of Central Asia through the Shikarpur
+merchants, and it was by draft, or "hundi," on Hindu bankers far and
+wide that travellers were able to keep themselves supplied with cash
+as they journeyed through these long stages.
+
+The route to Kalat passed by Sohrab and Rodinjo, and the two wayfarers
+reached Kalat on February 9, 1810. The cold was intense; they were
+quite unprepared for it, and suffered accordingly. Living with the
+natives and putting up at the Mehman Khana (the guest house) of such
+principal villages or towns as possessed one, they naturally were
+thrown very closely into contact with native life, and learned native
+opinions. The views of such travellers when dealing with the social
+details of native existence are especially valuable, and the opinions
+expressed by them of the character and disposition of the people
+amongst whom they lived, and with whom they daily conversed on every
+conceivable subject, are infinitely to be preferred to those of the
+state officials of that time who lived in an artificial atmosphere.
+Thus we find very considerable divergence in the opinions expressed
+regarding Baluch and Afghan character between such close observers as
+Pottinger or Masson and such eminent authorities as Burnes and
+Elphinstone. The splendid hospitality and the affectation of
+frankness which is common to all these varied types of frontier
+humanity, combined with their magnificent presence, and very often
+with a determined adherence to certain rules of guardianship and the
+faithful discharge of the duties which it entails, are all of them
+easily recognizable virtues which are much in the minds and mouths of
+official travellers with a mission. The counteracting vices, the
+spirit of fanatical hatred, of thievish malevolence, and the utter
+social demoralization which usually (but not always) distinguishes
+their domestic life and disgusts the stranger, is not so much _en
+evidence_, and is only to be discerned by those who mix freely with
+ordinary natives of the jungle and bazaar. As an instance, take
+Pottinger's estimate of Persian character; it is really worth
+recording as the impression of one of the earliest of English soldier
+travellers. "Among themselves, with their equals, the Persians are
+affable and polite; to their superiors, servile and obsequious;
+towards their inferiors, haughty and domineering. All ranks are
+equally avaricious, sordid, and dishonest.... Falsehood they look on
+... as highly commendable, and good faith, generosity, and gratitude
+are alike unknown to them. In debauchery none can exceed them, and
+some of their propensities are too execrable and infamous to admit of
+mention.... I feel inclined to look upon Persia, at the present day,
+to be the very fountainhead of every species of tyranny, cruelty,
+meanness, injustice, extortion, and infamy that can disgrace or
+pollute human nature, and have ever been found in any age or nation."
+These are strong terms to use about a people of whom we have been
+assured that the basis of their youthful education is to "ride, to
+shoot, and to speak the truth!" and yet who is it who knows Persia who
+will say even now that they are undeserved? May the Persian parliament
+mend their morals and reform their methods--if, indeed, such a "silk
+purse" as a parliament can be made out of such crude material as the
+Persian plebs!
+
+In spite of endless vexations and much spiteful malevolence, which
+included endless attempts to trip up Pottinger in his assumed disguise
+(and which, it must be admitted, were met by a not too strict
+adherence to the actual truth on Pottinger's part), he does not
+condemn the Baluchi and the Afghan in such terms as he applies to the
+Persian; but he illustrates most forcibly the dangers arising from
+habitual lawlessness due to the semi-feudal system of the Baluch
+federation, and consequent want of administrative responsibility. In
+spite, however, of endless difficulties, he finally got through, and
+so did Christie; and for the getting through they were both largely
+indebted to the vicarious hospitality of village chiefs and heads of
+independent clans.
+
+At Kalat they found it far easier to get into the timber and mud
+fortress than to get out again, and this difficulty repeated itself at
+Nushki. At Nushki begins the real interest of their adventures.
+Christie (after the usual wrangling and procrastination which attended
+all arrangements for onward movement) took his way to Herat on almost
+the exact line of route (_via_ Chagai, the Helmund, and Seistan) which
+was followed seventy-three years later by the Russo-Afghan Boundary
+Commission. Pottinger made what was really a far more venturesome
+journey _via_ Kharan to Jalk and Persia. The meeting of these two
+officers eventually at Ispahan in the darkness of night, and their
+gradual recognition of each other, is as dramatic a story as the
+meeting of Nearkhos with Alexander in Makran, or of Nansen with
+Jackson amongst the ice-floes of the Far North.
+
+Christie gives us but small detail of his adventures. He necessarily
+suffered much from thirst, but met with no serious encounters. Beyond
+a well-deserved tribute to the sweet beauty of that picturesque
+wayside town of Anardara in his careful record of his progress
+northward from Seistan, where he made Jalalabad (which he calls
+Doshak) his base for further exploration, he says very little about
+the country he passed through. Incidentally he mentions Pulaki
+(Poolki) as a very remarkable relic of past ages. He describes the
+ruins of this place as covering an area of 16 square miles. Ferrier
+mentions the same place subsequently, and locates it about a day's
+march to the north of Kala-i-Fath (which Christie did not visit), and
+it must have been one of the most famous of mediæval towns in Seistan.
+But as collective ruins covering an area of 500 square miles have been
+noted by Mr. Tate, the surveyor of the late Seistan mission, who
+camped in their midst to the north of Kala-i-Fath, the exact site of
+Pulaki may yet require careful research before it is identified.
+Seistan is the land of half-buried ruins. No such extent of ruins
+exists anywhere else in the world. It seems probable, therefore, that,
+like the sites of many another ancient city of Seistan, Pulaki has
+been either partially or absolutely absorbed in the boundless sea of
+desert sand, which envelops and hides away each trace of the past as
+its waves move forward in irresistible sequence before the howling
+blasts of the north-west.
+
+Christie's route through Seistan followed the track connecting
+Jalalabad on the Helmund with Peshawaran on the Farah Rud in dry
+seasons, but which disappears in seasons of flood, when the two hamúns
+or lakes of Seistan become one. Pushing on to Jawani he passed
+Anardara on April 4, and reached Herat on the 18th. His description of
+Herat is of a very general character, but is sufficient to indicate
+that no very great change took place between the time of his visit and
+that of the 1883 Commission. He was fairly well received, and
+remained a month without any incident worthy of note, leaving on May
+18 for Persia.
+
+This century-old visit of a British officer to Herat is chiefly
+notable for its revelations as to the attitude of the Afghan
+Government and people towards the English at the time it was made.
+With the exception of the risk inseparable from travel in a lawless
+country infested with organised bands of professional robbers, there
+appears to have been no hostility bred by fanaticism or suspicion of
+the trend of British policy. Afghanistan was socially in about the
+same stage of development that France was in the days of Louis XI.--or
+England a little earlier; and it is only the solidity conferred on
+Afghan administration by the moral support of the British Government
+which has effected any real change. Were England to abandon India
+to-morrow there would be nothing to prevent a lapse into the same
+condition of social anarchy which prevailed a century ago. India would
+become the bait for ceaseless activity on the part of every Afghan
+border chief who thought he had following sufficient to make a raid
+effective. A thin veneer of civilization has crept into Afghanistan
+with motors and telegraphs, but with it also has arisen new incentives
+to hostility from dread of a possible loss of independence, and (in
+the western parts of Afghanistan) from real fanatical hatred to the
+infidel. Thus Afghanistan is actually more dangerous as a field of
+exploration to the individual European at the present moment than it
+was in the days of Christie and Pottinger. At the same time, British
+military assistance would not only be welcome nowadays in case of a
+conflict with a foreign enemy, but it would be claimed as the
+fulfilment of a political engagement and expected as a right.
+
+Christie's stay at Herat seems to have been quite uneventful, and when
+he left for Persia no one barred his way. The Persian frontier then
+seems to have been rather more than 20 miles distant from
+Herat--Christie places it a mile beyond the village of "Sekhwan," 22
+miles from the city. The only place which appears to correspond with
+the position of Sekhwan now is Shakiban, which probably represents
+another village. Making rapid progress westward through Persia, he
+eventually reached Ispahan, where he rejoined Pottinger on June 30. It
+must have been a hot and trying experience!
+
+Lieutenant Pottinger's adventures after leaving Nushki (from which
+place he had considerable difficulty in effecting his departure) were
+more exciting and apparently more risky than those of Christie. He
+selected a route which no European has subsequently attempted, and
+which it would be difficult to follow from his description of it were
+it not that this region has now been completely surveyed. He struck
+southwards down the Bado river, which leads almost directly to Kharan
+and the desert beyond it stretching to the Mashkhel "hamún" or swamp.
+He did not visit Kharan itself, and he apparently misplaces its
+position by at least 50 miles, unless, indeed (which is quite
+possible), the present site of the Naoshirwani capital is far removed
+from that of a century ago. I am unaware, however, that any evidence
+exists to that effect.
+
+Until the desert was encountered there was no great difficulty on this
+route, but the horror of that desert crossing fully atoned for any
+lack of unpleasant incident previously. It would even now be regarded
+as a formidable undertaking, and we can easily understand the deadly
+feelings that beset this pioneer explorer as he made his way in the
+month of April from Kharan on a south-westerly track to the border of
+Persia at Jalk. His description of this desert, like the rest of his
+narrative, is full of instructive suggestion. The scope of his
+observation generally, and the accuracy of the information which he
+collected about the infinitely complex nationality of the Baluch
+tribes, renders his evidence valuable as regards the natural phenomena
+which he encountered; and no part of this evidence is more interesting
+than his story of the Kharan desert, especially as no one since his
+time has made anything like a scientific examination of its
+construction and peculiarities. He describes it as a sea of red sand,
+"the particles of which were so light that when taken in the hand
+they were scarcely more than palpable; the whole is thrown into an
+irregular mass of waves, principally running from east to west, and
+varying in height from 10 to 20 feet. Most of them rise
+perpendicularly on the opposite side to that from which the prevailing
+wind blows (north-west), and might readily be fancied at a distance to
+resemble a new brick wall. The side facing the wind slopes off with a
+gradual declivity to the base (or near it) of the next windward wave."
+He further describes a phenomenon which he observed in the midst of
+this sand sea, which I think has not been described by any later
+traveller or surveyor. He says "the desert seemed at a distance of
+half a mile or less to have an elevated or flat surface from 6 to 12
+inches higher than the summits of the waves. This vapour appeared to
+recede as we advanced, and once or twice completely encircled us,
+limiting the horizon to a very confined space, and conveying a most
+gloomy and unnatural sensation to the mind of the beholder; at the
+same moment we were imperceptibly covered with innumerable atoms of
+small sand, which, getting into our eyes, mouths and nostrils, caused
+excessive irritation, attended with extreme thirst that was increased
+in no small degree by the intense heat of the sun." This was only
+visible during the hottest part of the day. Pottinger's explanation of
+this curious phenomenon is that the fine particles of this dust-sand,
+which are swept into the air almost daily by the force of the
+north-west winds, fail to settle down at once when those winds cease,
+but float in the air by reason of some change in their specific
+gravity due to rarefaction from intense heat; and he adds that he has
+seen this condition of sand-haze at the same time that, in an opposite
+quarter, he has observed the mirage or luminous appearance of water
+which is common to all deserts. Crossing the bed of the Budu (the
+Mashkhel nullah--dry in April), he makes a curious mistake about the
+direction of its waters, which he says run in a south-easterly
+direction towards the coast. It actually runs north-west and empties
+itself (when there is water in it) into the Mashkhel swamps. I must
+admit, however, that, from personal observation, it is often
+exceedingly difficult to decide from a casual inspection in which
+direction the water of these abnormally flat nullahs runs. Shortly
+after passing the Mashkhel, he encountered an ordinary dust-storm,
+followed by heavy rain, which much modified the terrors of the awful
+heat.
+
+Pottinger has something to say about the hot winds that occur between
+June and September in these regions, known as the Bad-i-Simun, or
+pestilential winds, which kill men exposed to them and destroy
+vegetation, but his information was not derived from actual
+observation, and it is difficult to get any really authentic account
+of these winds. Parts of the Sind desert are equally subject to them.
+After losing his way (which was inexcusable on the part of his guide
+with the hills in sight), he arrived finally at the delightful little
+valley of Kalagan, near Jalk, where the terrors of nature were
+exchanged for those of his human surroundings. Kalagan is one of the
+sweetest and greenest spots of the Baluch frontier, and it is easy to
+realize Pottinger's intense joy in its palm groves and orchards. He
+was now in Persia, and his subsequent proceedings do not concern our
+present purpose. He travelled by Sib and Magas to Pahra and Bampur,
+maintaining his disguise as a Pirzada, or wandering religious student,
+with some difficulty, as he was insufficiently versed in the tenets of
+Islam. However, he acted up to his Moslem professions with a certain
+amount of success till he reached Pahra, where he was at once
+recognized as an Englishman by a boy who had previously met an English
+officer exploring in Southern Persia. But he was excellently well
+treated at Pahra, in strange contrast to his subsequent treatment at
+Bampur, close by. He eventually reached Kirman, and passed on by the
+regular trade route to Ispahan.
+
+It is impossible to take leave of these two gallant young officers
+without a tribute of admiration for their magnificent pluck, the
+tenacity with which they held to their original purpose, the
+forbearance and cleverness with which they met the persistent and
+worrying difficulties which were set in their way by truculent native
+officials, and the accuracy of their final statements. Pottinger
+really left little to be discovered about the distribution of Baluch
+tribes, and if his mapping exhibits some curious eccentricities, we
+must remember that it was practically a compilation from memory, with
+but the vaguest means at his disposal for the measurement of
+distances. It was a first map, and by the light of it the success of
+the subsequent explorations of Masson (which covered a good deal of
+the same ground in Baluchistan) is fairly accounted for. Christie died
+a soldier's death early in his career, but Pottinger lived to transmit
+an honoured name to yet later adventurers in the field of geography.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+AMERICAN EXPLORATION--MASSON
+
+
+In 1832 Lord William Bentinck, then Governor-General of India, found
+Shah Sujah, the deposed Amir of Kabul, living as a pensioner at
+Ludhiana when he visited the Punjab for an interview with its ruler
+Ranjit Singh. At that interview the question of aiding Shah Sujah to
+regain his throne from the usurper Dost Mahomed, who was suspected of
+Russian proclivities, was mooted; and it was then, probably, that the
+seeds of active interference in Afghan politics were sown, although
+the idea of aiding Shah Sujah was negatived for the time being. The
+result was the mission of Alexander Burnes to Kabul, which formed a
+new era in Central Asian geography. From this time forward the map of
+Afghanistan commenced to grow. The story of Burnes' first journey to
+Kabul was published by Murray in 1834, and his example as a
+geographical observer stimulated his assistants Leech, Lord, and Wood
+to further enterprise during a second journey to the same capital.
+Indeed the geographical work of some of these explorers still remains
+as our standard reference for a knowledge of the configuration of
+Northern Badakshan. This was the beginning of official recognition of
+the value of trans-Indian geographical knowledge to Indian
+administration; but then, as now, information obtained through
+recognized official agents was apt to be regarded as the only
+information worth having; and far too little effort was made to secure
+the results of travellers' work, who, in a private capacity and
+unhindered by official red tape, were able to acquire a direct
+personal knowledge of Afghan geography such as was absolutely
+impossible to political agents or their assistants.
+
+Before Indian administrators had seriously turned their attention to
+the Afghan buffer-land and set to work to fill up "intelligence"
+material at second hand, there was at least one active European agent
+in the field who was in direct touch with the chief political actors
+in that strange land of everlasting unrest, and who has left behind
+him a record which is unsurpassed on the Indian frontier for the width
+of its scope of inquiry into matters political, social, economic, and
+scientific, and the general accuracy of his conclusions. This was the
+American, Masson. It must be remembered that the Punjab and Sind were
+almost as much _terra incognita_ to us in 1830 as was Afghanistan. The
+approach to the latter country was through foreign territory. The Sikh
+chiefs of the Punjab and the Amirs of Sind were not then necessarily
+hostile to British interests. They watched, no doubt, the gradual
+extension of the red line of our maps towards the north-west and west,
+and were fully alive to the probability that, so far as regarded their
+own countries, they would all soon be "painted red." But there was no
+official discourtesy or intoleration shown towards European
+travellers, and in the Sikh-governed Punjab, at any rate, much of the
+military control of that most military nationality was in the hands of
+European leaders. Nor do we find much of the spirit of fanatical
+hatred to the Feringhi even in Afghanistan at that time. The European
+came and went, and it was only due to the disturbed state of the
+country and the local absence of law and order that he ran any risk of
+serious misadventure.
+
+In these days it would be impossible for any European to travel as
+Masson or Ferrier travelled in Afghanistan, but in those days there
+was something to be gained by friendship with England, and the
+weakness of our support was hardly suspected until it was disclosed by
+the results of the first Afghan war. So Masson and Ferrier assumed the
+rôle of Afghan travellers, clothed in Afghan garments, but more or
+less ignorant of the Afghan language, living with the people,
+partaking of their hospitality, studying their ways, joining their
+pursuits, discussing their politics, and placing themselves on terms
+of familiarity, if not of intimacy, with their many hosts in a way
+which has never been imitated since. No one now ever assumes the
+dress of the Afghan and lives with him. No one joins a caravan and
+sits over the nightly fire discussing bazaar prices or the character
+of a chief. A hurried rush to Kabul, a few brief and badly conducted
+interviews with the Amir, and the official representative of India's
+foreign policy returns to India as an Afghan oracle, but with no more
+knowledge of the real inwardness of Afghan political aspiration, or of
+the trend of national thought and feeling, than is acquired during a
+six months' trip of a travelling M.P. in India. Consequently there is
+a peculiar value in the records of such a traveller as Masson. They
+are in many ways as valuable now as they were eighty years ago, for
+the character of the Afghan has not changed with his history or his
+politics. To some extent they are even more valuable, for it is
+inevitable that the story of a long travel through an unknown and
+unimagined world should be received with a certain amount of
+reservation until later experience confirms the tale and verifies
+localities.
+
+Fifty years elapsed before the footsteps of Masson could be traced
+with certainty. Not till the conclusion of the last Afghan war, and
+the final reshaping of the surveys of Baluchistan, could it be said
+exactly where he wandered during those strenuous years of unremitting
+travel. And now that we can take his story in detail, and follow him
+stage by stage through the Indian borderlands, we can only say that,
+considering the circumstances under which his observations were taken
+and recorded, it is marvellously accurate in geographical detail. Were
+his long past history of those stirring times as accurate as his
+geography or as his antiquarian information there would be little
+indeed left for subsequent investigators to add.
+
+Masson was in the field before Burnes. In the month of September 1830
+the Resident in the Persian Gulf writes to the Chief Secretary to the
+Government of India[10] that "an American gentleman of the name of
+Masson" arrived at Bushire from Bassadore on the "13th June last," and
+that he described himself as belonging to the state of Kentucky,
+having been absent for ten years from his country, "which he must
+consequently have left when he was young, as he is now only about
+two-and-thirty years of age." The same letter says that previous to
+the breaking out of the war between Russia and Persia in 1826 Masson
+"appears to have visited Khorasan from Tiflis by way of Mashed and
+Herat, making no effort to conceal his European origin," and that from
+Herat he went to Kandahar, Shikarpur, and Sind.
+
+Masson appears to have furnished some valuable information to the
+Indian Government regarding the Durani occupation of Herat and the
+political situation in Kabul and Kandahar, which, according to his
+own account, he subsequently regretted, as he obviously regarded the
+British attitude towards Afghanistan at that time in much the same
+light as certain continental nations regarded the British attitude
+towards the Transvaal previous to the last Boer war. "About the same
+time," says the same letter from the Resident at Bushire, Masson was
+much in the Bahawalpur country (Sind), after which he proceeded to
+Peshawar, Kabul, Ghazni, etc. Extracts from his reports of his
+journeys are forwarded with other information. In his book (_Travels
+in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, the Punjab, and Kalat_, published in
+1842) Masson opens his story with the autumn of 1826, when he was in
+Bahawalpur and Sind, which he had approached through Rajputana, and
+not from Afghanistan. He has much to say about Bahawalpur which,
+however interesting and valuable as first-hand information about a
+foreign state in 1826, no longer concerns this story. From Bahawalpur
+he passed on to Peshawar and Kabul, from Kabul to Kandahar, and thence
+to Shikarpur. As the incidents of his remarkable journey between
+Kandahar and Shikarpur, described in the letter of the Bushire
+Resident, are obviously the same as those in his book, the inference
+is strong that the journey from Tiflis to Herat and Kandahar (which is
+not mentioned in the book) has been somehow misplaced in the
+Resident's record.
+
+When Masson entered Afghanistan from Peshawar there is certain
+indirect evidence that this was the first time that he crossed the
+Afghan border. He knew nothing of the Pashto language, which would be
+remarkable in the case of a man like Masson, who always lived with the
+people and not with the chiefs, and there is not the remotest
+reference to any previous visit to Herat in his subsequent history. We
+will at any rate follow the text of his own narrative, and surely no
+narrative of adventure that has ever appeared before or since in
+connection with Afghan exploration can rival it for interest. Peshawar
+was at that time held by four Pathan Sirdars, brothers, who were
+hardly independent, as they held their country (a small space
+extending to about 25 miles round Peshawar, and which included Kohat
+and Hangu) entirely at the pleasure of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Chief of
+the Punjab. Some show of making a strike for independence had been
+made in connection with the Yusufzai rising led by Saiad Ahmad Shah,
+but it had been suppressed, and during the temporary occupation of
+Peshawar by the Sikhs the city had been despoiled and devastated.
+Masson estimated that there were about fifty or sixty thousand
+inhabitants in Peshawar, where he was exceedingly well treated.
+"People of all classes were most civil and desirous to oblige." He was
+an honoured guest at all entertainments.
+
+How long Masson remained at Peshawar it is difficult to say, for there
+is a most lamentable absence of dates from his records, and Peshawar
+appears to have been the base from which he started on a good many
+excursions. Finally he made acquaintance with a Pathan who offered to
+accompany him to Kabul, and he left Peshawar for Afghanistan by the
+Khaibar route. He mentions two other routes as being popular in those
+days, _i.e._ those of Abkhana and Karapa, and he asserts that they
+were far more secure for traders than the Khaibar, but not so level
+nor so direct. Masson started with his companion, dressed as a Pathan,
+but taking nothing but a few pais (copper coins) and a book. His
+companion, however, possessed a knife tied up in a corner of his
+pyjamas. After cautiously crossing the plains and some intervening
+hills, they struck the high road of the Khaibar apparently not far
+from Ali Masjid, and here they fell in with the first people they had
+met _en route_--about twenty men sitting in the shade of a rock,
+"elderly, respectable, and venerable." They were hospitably received
+and entertained, and news of the arrival of a European quickly spread.
+Every European was expected to be a doctor in those days, and Masson
+had to assume the rôle and make the most of his limited medical
+knowledge. He either prescribed local remedies, or healed the sick on
+Christian Science principles with a certain amount of success--enough
+to ensure him a welcome wherever he went. It is a curious story for
+any one who has traversed the Khaibar in these later days to read. A
+European with a most limited knowledge of Pushto tramping the road in
+company with a Pathan, living the simple life of the people, picking
+up information every yard of the way, keenly interested in his rough
+surroundings, taking count of the ragged groups of stone-built huts
+clinging to the hill-sides or massed around a central citadel in the
+open plain, with here and there a disintegrating monument crowning the
+hill-top with a cupola or dome, the like of which he had never seen
+before.
+
+Masson had hardly realized in these early days that he was on one of
+the routes most sacred to pilgrimage of all those known to the
+disciples of Buddha, and it was not till later years that he set about
+a systematic exploration of the extraordinary wealth of Buddhist
+relics which lie about Jalalabad and the valleys adjoining the Khaibar
+route to Kabul. On his journey he made his way with the varied
+incidents of adventure common to the time--robbed at one place,
+treated with hospitality at another; sitting under the mulberry trees
+discussing politics with all the energy of the true Afghan (who is
+never deficient in the power of expressing his political sentiments),
+and, taking it altogether, enjoying a close, if not an absolutely
+friendly, intimacy with the half-savage people of those wholly savage
+hills. An intimacy, such as no other educated European has ever
+attained, and which tells a tale of a totally different attitude on
+the part of the Afghan towards the European then, to that which has
+existed since. The fact that Masson was American and not English
+counted for nothing. The difference was not recognized by the Afghans,
+although it was explained by him sometimes with careful elaboration.
+It was the time when Dost Mahomed ruled in Kabul, but with the claims
+of Shah Sujah (possibly backed by both Sikh and British) on the
+political horizon. It was a time of political intrigue amongst Afghan
+Sirdars and chiefs so complicated and so widespread as to be almost
+unintelligible at this distance of time, and not even Masson, with all
+his advantages of intimate association and great powers of intuition,
+seems to have fathomed the position satisfactorily. Consequently it
+was to the interests of the Afghan Government to stand well with the
+British, even if it were equally their aim to keep on good terms with
+Russia--in short, to play the same game that has lasted during the
+rest of the century, and which threatens to last for many another
+decade yet. But this was before the mission of Burnes, and before the
+events of the subsequent Afghan war had taught the Afghan that British
+arms were not necessarily invincible, nor British promises always
+trustworthy.
+
+Apart from the ordinary chances of disaster on the roads arising from
+the lack of law and order, any European would have met with a
+hospitable reception at that time, and Masson himself relates how, in
+Kabul, during some of the friendly gatherings which he attended, the
+respective probabilities of British or Russian intervention in Kabul
+affairs was a common subject of discussion. It is easy for one who
+knows the country to picture him sitting under the shade of the
+mulberry trees, with the soft lush of the Afghan summer in grass and
+flowers about him, the scent of the willow in the air, and, across the
+sliding blue of the Kabul River, a dim haze shadowing the rounded
+outlines of some ancient stupa, whilst trying to unriddle the tangle
+of Afghan politics or taking notes of weird stories and ancient
+legends. Nothing seems to have come amiss to his inquiring mind.
+Archæology, numismatics, botany, geology, and history--it was all new
+to him, and an inexhaustible opportunity lay before him. He certainly
+made good use of it. He busied himself, amongst other things, with an
+inquiry into the origin of the Siahposh Kafirs, and, although his
+speculations regarding them have long been discounted by the results
+of subsequent investigation from nearer points of view, it is
+interesting to note how these savages were then regarded by the
+nearest Mahomedan communities. Masson admits that the history of a
+Greek origin is supported by all natural and historical indications,
+but he declines to accept "so bold and welcome an inference." Why he
+should call it "bold and welcome" and then reject it, is not
+explained, but it is probable that he accepted the claim to a Greek
+origin on the part of the Kafirs as indicating that they claimed to
+be Greek and nothing but Greek. When we consider the number and extent
+of the Greek colonies which once existed beyond the Hindu Kush it
+would indeed be surprising if there were no survival of Greek blood in
+the veins of the people who, in the last stronghold of a conquered and
+hunted race, represent the debris of the once powerful Baktrian
+kingdom. Incidentally he discussed the interesting episode of Timur's
+invasion of Kafiristan, a subject on which no recent investigations
+have thrown any further light. The story, as told by Timur's
+historian, Sharifudin, says that in A.D. 1399, when Timur was at
+Andarab, complaints were made to him of outrage and oppression by the
+exaction of tribute, or "Karaj," against the idolaters of Katawar and
+the Siahposh. It appears that Katawar was then the general name for
+the northern regions of Kafiristan, although no reference to that name
+had been recorded lately.
+
+Timur is said to have taken a third part of the army of the Andarab
+against the infidels, and to have reached Perjan (probably Parwan),
+from whence he detached a part of his force to act to the north of
+that place, whilst he himself proceeded to Kawak, which is certainly
+Khawak at the head of the Panjshir valley. If Perjan is Parwan (which
+I think most probable) this distribution of his force would indicate
+that he held the Panjshir valley at both ends, and thus secured his
+flank whilst operating in Kafiristan. From Khawak he "made the
+ascent" of the mountains of "Ketnev" (_i.e._ he crossed the
+intervening snow-covered divide between the Panjshir and the head of
+the Alishang) and descended upon the fortress of Najil. This was
+abandoned by the Siahposh Kafirs, who held a high hill on the left
+bank of the river. After an obstinate fight the hill was carried, and
+the male infidels, "whose souls were blacker than their garments,"
+were killed, and their women and children carried away. Timur set up a
+marble pillar with an inscription recording the event, and it would be
+exceedingly interesting if that pillar could be identified. Masson
+thinks that a structure which he ascertained to have been in existence
+in his time a little to the north of Najil, known as the Timur Hissar
+(Timur's Fort), may be the fort which Timur destroyed after it had
+been abandoned by the Kafirs, and that the record of his victory would
+be found near by. The chief of Najil in Masson's time claimed descent
+from Timur, and there was (and is still) so much of Tartar tradition
+enveloping the valley of Najil (or the upper Alishang) as to make it
+fairly certain that Tartar, or Mongol, troops did actually invade that
+valley from the Panjshir, and that there is consequently a practicable
+pass from the Panjshir into the upper Alishang.
+
+If we are correct in our assumption of the position of Farajghan and
+Najil in the modern maps of Afghanistan, as determined from native
+sources of information (for no surveyor has ever laid down the course
+of the upper affluents of the Alishang) this Mongol force must have
+crossed from about the centre of the Panjshir valley. It is a matter
+of interest to observe that, historically, between Afghan Turkistan
+and the Kabul plain the fashionable pass over the Hindu Kush until
+quite recently was the Parwan, and this, no doubt, was due to the fact
+that its altitude (12,300 feet) is less by quite 2000 feet than that
+of the Kaoshan which closely adjoins it, although the Kaoshan is in
+some other important respects the easier pass of the two. The Khawak,
+at the head of the Panjshir, is lower still (11,650 feet), but it
+offers a more circuitous route; whilst the Chahardar, the pass
+selected by the Amir Abdurrahmon for the construction of a high-road
+into Afghan Turkistan from the Kabul plain, is as high as the Kaoshan.
+All these routes converge on the important strategical position of
+Charikar, adjoining the junction of the Ghorband and Panjshir rivers;
+and they all lead from that ancient strategical centre of Baktria, the
+Andarab basin. Undoubtedly through all time the passage over the
+Khawak (now a well-trodden khafila route, said to be open to traffic
+all the year round) must have been the most attractive to the
+freebooters and adventurers of the north; but there appears to have
+been a reputation for ferocity and strength attached to the
+inhabitants of the Panjshir valley, which was remarkable even in the
+days when the only recognized right was might, and half Asia was
+peopled by barbarians. They were spoken of with the respect due to a
+condition of savage independence by the Arab writers who detail the
+geography of these regions, and it is probable that they shared the
+historical lawlessness of their Kafir neighbours (the Siahposh), even
+if in those days they did not share a race affinity. At the beginning
+of the sixteenth century the Emperor Babar notes that the Panjshir
+people paid tribute to their neighbours the Kafirs.
+
+Masson's observations on this troublous corner of Asiatic geography
+are shrewd and interesting, and as much to the purpose to-day as they
+were when they were written. The explorations of McNair and Robertson
+over the Kafiristan border from Chitral, and the march of Lockhart's
+party through the Arnawai valley, added much to the geographical
+knowledge of the eastern fringe of Kafiristan, whilst the
+identification of the Koh-i-Mor with the classic Meros, and of certain
+sections of the eastern Kafirs as representative of the ancient
+Nysæans, clearly establishes the Greek connection about which Masson
+was so sceptical. But the Kafirs of Central and Western Kafiristan,
+the inhabitants of the upper basins of the Alishang and Alingar about
+the centre of the Hindu Kush and of the Badakshan rivers to the north,
+are just as unknown to us as they were to him. The only certain
+inference that we can draw from the total absence of history about
+these valleys of the Hindu Kush is that between the Khawak Pass at
+the head of the Panjshir valley on the west, and the Minjan Pass
+leading to Chitral on the east, there is not, and never has been, a
+practicable route connecting the Kabul basin with Badakshan. No Arab
+khafilas ever passed that way; no hordes of raiding robbers from
+Central Asian fields ever forced a passage southward through those
+Kafir defiles; they are still dark and impenetrable, the home of
+distinct and separate valley communities, differing as widely in form
+of speech as in superstitious ritual, the very flotsam and jetsam of
+High Asia, as wild as the eagles above them or the markhor on their
+craggy hill-sides.
+
+We will not follow Masson into the mazes of Afghan political history.
+It is all a story of the past, but a story with a moral to it. Had the
+Government of India in those days but troubled itself to obtain
+information from existing practical sources within its reach, instead
+of improvising a most imperfect political intelligence system, the
+subsequent war with Afghanistan would have been conducted on very
+different lines to those which were adopted, if it ever took place at
+all.
+
+Masson made his way steadily to Kabul after meeting with adventures
+and vicissitudes enough for a two-volume novel, and passed on to
+Ghazni, where the army of Dost Mahomed Khan was then encamped, and
+with which he took up his quarters. Here he was well received, and he
+interviewed the great Afghan Chief (who settled his quarrel with his
+brothers from Kandahar without fighting), and thus records his opinion
+of a remarkable personage in history: "Dost Mahomed Khan has
+distinguished himself on various occasions by acts of personal
+intrepidity ... has proved himself an able Commander, equally well
+skilled in stratagem and polity, and only employs the sword when other
+means fail. He is remarkably plain in attire.... I should not have
+conjectured him a man of ability either from his conversation or his
+appearance"; but "a stranger must be cautious in estimating the
+character of a Durani from his appearance," which caution he also
+found it necessary to exercise in the case of Dost Mahomed's corpulent
+brother, Mahomed Khan, the Governor of Ghazni. From Ghazni, Masson
+continued his journey to Kandahar, still trudging the weary road on
+foot in the doubtful company of casual Pathan wayfarers; and he
+accepts the savage treatment which he experienced at the hands of
+certain Lohanis near Ghazni as all in the day's work, never
+complaining of his want of luck so long as he got off with his life,
+and always ready to accept the chances of the most unsafe road rather
+than remain inactive. At Kandahar he again set himself to acquire a
+store of useful political information, though with what object it is
+difficult to say. He certainly did not mean it for the Indian
+Government, for he regrets later on in his career that he ever gave
+any of it away, and as a record of almost unintelligible Afghan
+intrigue it could hardly have interested his own. He was a wide
+observer, however, and must have been the possessor of a most
+remarkable memory. He was indeed a whole intelligence department in
+himself. After some weird and gruesome experiences in Kandahar (where,
+however, he was personally made welcome) he left for Shikarpur by the
+Quetta and Bolan route, and it was on this journey that he nearly lost
+his life. He committed the error of allowing the caravan with which he
+was to travel to precede him, trusting to his being able to catch it
+up _en route_. He fell amongst the Achakzai thieves of those ugly
+plains, and being everywhere known and recognised as a Feringhi, he
+passed a very rough time with them. They stripped him of his clothing
+after beating him and robbing him of his money, and left him
+"destitute, a stranger in the centre of Asia, unacquainted with the
+language--which would have been useful to me--and from my colour
+exposed on all occasions to notice, inquiry, ridicule, and insult."
+However, "it was some consolation to find the khafila was not far
+off," and eventually he joined it; but he nearly died of cold and
+exposure, and it took him years to recover from the rheumatism set up
+by crouching naked over the embers of the fire at night.
+
+There are several points about this remarkable journey which might
+lead one to suspect that romance was not altogether a stranger to it,
+were it not that the route itself is described with surprising
+accuracy. It has only lately been possible to verify step by step the
+road described by Masson. He could hardly have carried about volumes
+of notes with him under such conditions as his story depicts, and it
+might very well have happened that he dislocated his topography or his
+ethnography from lapse of memory. But he does neither; and the most
+amazing feature of Masson's tales of travel is that in all essential
+features we knew little more about the country of the Afghans after
+the last war with Afghanistan than he could have told us before the
+first. Shall (or Quetta as we know it now) is described as a town of
+about 300 houses, surrounded by a slight crenelated wall. The "huge
+mound" (now the fort) is noted as supporting a ruinous citadel, the
+residence of the Governor. Fruit was plentiful then, and he adds that
+"Shall is proverbially celebrated for the excellence of its lambs." By
+the desolate plain of Dasht-i-bedoulat and the Bolan Pass, Masson trod
+the well-known route to Dadar and Shikarpur. He lived a strange life
+in those days. No one since his time has rubbed shoulders with Afghan
+and Baluch, intimately associating himself with all their simple and
+savage ways; reckoning every man he met on the road as a robber till
+he proved a friend; absolutely penniless, yet still meeting with rough
+hospitality and real kindness now and then, and ever absorbing with a
+most marvellous power of digestion all that was useful in the way of
+information, whether it concerned the red-hot sand-strewn plains, or
+the vermin-covered thieves and outcasts that disgraced them. It was
+quite as often with the lowest of the gang as with the leaders that he
+found himself most intimately associated.
+
+In those days Sind was a country as unknown to us geographically as
+Afghanistan. The Indus and its capacity for navigation was a matter of
+supreme interest, but the deserts of Sind were eyed askance, and
+across those deserts came little call for exploration. The government
+of the country under the Sind Amirs was decrepit and loose, leaving
+district municipalities to look after themselves, and promoting no
+general scheme for the public good. Shikarpur had been a great centre
+of trade under the Duranis, and its financial credit extended far into
+Central Asia. But in Masson's time much of that credit had disappeared
+with the capitalists who supported it--chiefly Hindu bankers--who
+migrated to the cities of Multan and Amritsar as the Sikh power in the
+Punjab became a more and more powerful factor in frontier politics.
+Whether Masson is correct in his estimate of the mischief done by the
+reckless supply of funds from Shikarpur to the restless nobles of
+Afghanistan, who were thus enabled to set on foot raids and inroads
+into each other's territories, is, I think, doubtful. The want of
+money never stayed an Afghan raid--on the contrary it is more apt to
+instigate it. From Shikarpur he bent his steps towards the Punjab. No
+modern traveller, racing down the Indus valley by a north-western
+train, can well appreciate the amount of human interest and activity
+which lies hidden beyond the wide flat plains of tamarisk jungle that
+stretch between him and the frontier hills. This same Indus valley was
+Arabic India for centuries, and there were Greek settlements centuries
+earlier than the Arabs; none of this escaped Masson.
+
+The vicissitudes of this weary walk were many. Masson was put to
+curious expedients in order to keep himself even decently clothed.
+From under one hospitable roof he stole out in the evening, when the
+ragged retinue of his host were all in a state of stupefaction from
+drink, in order to be spared their too familiar adieux. It is a
+remarkable fact that he found himself able to pass muster as a Mongol
+on his journey, there being a tradition in Sind that some Mongols were
+as fair as Englishmen. From Rohri on the Indus he made his way almost
+exactly along the line of the present railway, through Bhawalpur to
+Uch, continually losing his way in the narrow tracks that intersected
+the intricate jungle, with but a rupee or two in his pocket, and
+nothing but the saving grace of the village masjid as a refuge for the
+night. His experiences with wayfarers like himself, the lies that he
+heard (and I am afraid also told), the hospitality which he received
+both from men and women, and the variety of incident generally which
+adorns this part of Masson's tale is a refreshing contrast to the
+dreary monotony of the modern traveller's tale of Indian travel, the
+bare record of a dusty railway experience, with here and there a new
+impression of old and worn-out themes. He was impressed with the
+"contented, orderly, and hospitable" character of the people of
+Northern Sind, whose condition was "very respectable" notwithstanding
+an oppressive government. Saiads and fakirs, pirs and spiritual guides
+of all sorts were an abomination to him, but it is somewhat new to
+hear of Saiads that "they may commit any crime with impunity." At
+Fazilpur (in Bhawalpur) he found an old friend, one Rahmat Khan, and
+was once again in the lap of native luxury. Clean clothes, a bed to
+lie on, and good food, kept him idle for a month ere he started again
+northward for Lahore. Rahmat Khan was almost too generous. He spent
+his last rupee recklessly on a nautch, and had to borrow from the
+Hindus of his bazaar in order to find two rupees to present to his
+guest for the cost of his journey to Lahore. Of this large sum it is
+interesting to note that Masson had still eight annas left in his
+pocket on his arrival at that city. Alas for the good old days! What a
+modern tramp might achieve in India if he were allowed free play it is
+difficult to guess, but never again will any European travel 360 miles
+in India and feed himself for two months on a rupee and a half.
+
+Masson notes the extraordinary extent of ancient ruins around Uch,
+and correctly infers the importance of that city in the days of Arab
+ascendency. He has much to say that is still interesting about Multan
+and its surroundings. It must have been new to historians to hear that
+the heat of Multan is due to the maledictions of the Saint Shams
+Tabieri, who was flayed alive by the progenitors of the people who now
+venerate his shrine. Multan was in the hands of the Sikhs when Masson
+was there. From Multan Masson ceased to follow the modern line of
+railway, and adopted a route north of the Ravi River until near the
+city, when he recrossed to the southern bank. Lost in admiration of
+the luxuriance of the cultivation of this part of the Punjab, and full
+of the interest aroused by the fact that he was on classical ground,
+the ground of ancient history, he wandered into Lahore. Lahore and the
+Sikh administration, the character of Ranjit Singh and his policy
+towards British and Afghan neighbours, are all part of Indian history,
+but it is interesting to recall the prominence of French and Italians
+in the Punjab 100 years ago. General Allard was encountered quite
+accidentally by Masson, who was at once recognized as a European, and
+found himself able to talk French fluently. This naturally led to his
+entertainment by the General at his own splendid establishments. The
+beautiful tomb of Jehangir, the Shahdera, was occupied as a residence
+by the French general, Amise, who died, so they said, in expiation of
+his impiety in cleaning it up and making it tidy--which was probably
+very necessary. The tomb of Anarkalli, south of the city, was used as
+a harem by M. Ventura, the Italian general, whilst the well-known
+Avitabile lived in a house decorated after the fashion of Neapolitan
+art in cantonments to the east of the city. The lovely gardens of
+Shalimar had already been robbed of much of their beauty by the
+transfer of marble and stone from their pavilions for the building of
+Amritsar, the new religious capital of the Sikhs. Lahore is "a dull
+city in the commercial sense," says Masson, and Amritsar "has become
+the great mart of the Punjab." We need not follow Masson's
+explorations in the Punjab and Sind, further than to relate that he
+finally left Lahore during the rainy season (he was riding now, and in
+fairly easy circumstances) and made his way south again _via_ Multan,
+Haidarabad, and Tatta, to Karachi. There is a lamentable want of dates
+about this narrative, and it is almost impossible to fix the month, or
+even the year, in which Masson visited any particular part of the
+frontier.
+
+His next exploits and explorations conducted from Karachi are
+sufficiently remarkable in themselves to place Masson quite at the
+head of the list of frontier explorers. He stands, indeed, in the same
+relation to the Indian borderland as Livingstone does to Africa. He
+first made a sea trip in Arab crafts up the Persian Gulf, visiting
+Muskat and obtaining a passage in a cruiser of the H.E.I. Company to
+Bushire. This we know from Major David Wilson's report to have been in
+1830. It was then that he gave up the record of his previous travels,
+to which we have referred, and which he subsequently thought he had
+reason to regret. A month or two was passed at Tabriz, and a trip up
+the Tigris to Bagdad and Basrah. From Basrah he returned in a merchant
+vessel to Muskat, and finally made Karachi again in an Arab bagala. At
+Karachi he was not permitted to land, owing (as he suspected) to
+another party of Englishmen who were then attempting to explore the
+Indus. This turned out to be Captain Burnes' (afterwards Sir Alex.
+Burnes) party. The objection was based on a somewhat ridiculous notion
+of the capacity of the English to carry about regiments of soldiers
+concealed in _boxes_, and Masson subsequently learned that having no
+boxes with him, the opposition in his case had been withdrawn by the
+Amirs of Sind as tantamount to a breach of hospitality. However, for
+the time he was forced to return to Urmara on the Makran coast, from
+which place he hoped to reach Kalat. In this he was disappointed, but
+he found his way back to Sonmiani in an Arab dunghi (or bagala),
+which, with the monsoon wind at her back, was run in gallant style
+straight over the shallow bar into the harbour with hardly a foot of
+water below her. The practice of medicine was what sustained Masson at
+this period, but his reputation was slightly impaired by a crude
+prescription of sea water. A lady, too, who suffered from a
+disposition of her face to break out into white blotches, and who
+appealed for a remedy, was told that she would look much better all
+white. This again led to a lively controversy; but on the whole the
+practice of medicine was as useful to Masson as it has proved through
+all ages to explorers in all regions of the world.
+
+The story of Masson's next journey through Las Bela and Eastern
+Baluchistan to Kalat and the neighbourhood of Quetta, must have been
+an almost unintelligible record for half a century after it was
+written. It is almost useless to repeat the names of the places he
+visited. Five-and-twenty years ago these names were absolutely
+unfamiliar, an empty sound signifying nothing to the dwellers on the
+British side of the Baluch frontier. Gradually they have emerged from
+the regions of the vague unknown into the ordered series of completed
+maps; and nothing testifies more surely to the general accuracy of
+Masson's narrative than the possibility which now exists of tracing
+his steps from point to point through these wild and desolate regions
+of rocky ridge and salt-edged jungle in Eastern Baluchistan. It is
+certainly significant that in the year 1830 more should have been
+known of the regions that lie between Karachi and Quetta or Kandahar,
+than was known fifty years later when plans were elaborated for
+bringing Quetta into railway communication with India.
+
+Had Masson's information been properly digested, the most direct route
+to Kalat, Quetta, or Kandahar, _via_ the Purali River, would surely
+have been weighed in administrative councils, and the advantage of
+direct communication with the seaport by a cheaply constructed line
+would have received due consideration. But Masson's work was still
+unproven and unchecked, and it would have been more than any
+Englishman's life was worth to have attempted in 1880 the task which
+he undertook with such light-hearted energy. His observations of the
+country he passed through, and the complicated tribal distribution
+which distinguishes it are necessarily superficial, but they are
+shrewd. It was clearly impossible for him to attempt any form of
+survey, and without some map evidence of the scene of his wanderings
+his explorations were deprived at the time of their chief
+significance. From Las Bela to Kalat he appears to have encountered no
+more dangerous adventure than might befall any Baluch traveller in the
+same regions. From Kalat he wandered at leisure northward till he
+overlooked the Dasht-i-bedaulat from the heights of Chahiltan. This
+well-known Quetta peak has probably often been ascended by Englishmen
+in late years, and the misty legend which is wreathed around it is
+familiar to every regimental mess in the Quetta garrison. It is
+perhaps a little disappointing to remember that the first white man
+who achieved its ascent and told the story of the forty heaven-sent
+infants who gambol about its summit to the eternal glory of the
+sainted Hazart Ghaos (the patron saint of Baluch children), was an
+American. Masson's interesting record of Chahiltan botany, however,
+would be more useful if he translated the native names into botanical
+language.
+
+From Quetta he returned to Kalat, and, determined to see as much of
+the borderland as possible, he made his return journey from Kalat to
+Sonmiani _via_ the Mulla Pass. The pass is still an interesting
+feature in Baluch geography. It was once the popular route from the
+plains to the highlands, when trade was more frequent between Kalat
+and Hindustan, and may serve a useful purpose again. Very few even of
+frontier officials know anything of it. Masson gives a capital
+description of the Mulla route, "easy and safe, and may be travelled
+at all seasons." From Jhal he went south through Sind to Sehwan, the
+antiquity of which place gives him room for much speculation; but from
+Sehwan to Sonmiani his route is not so clear. He started backwards on
+his tracks from Sehwan, then struck southward through lower Sind,
+passing on his way many ancient sites (locally known as "gôt," _i.e._
+kôt, or fort), the origin of which he was apparently unable to
+determine, but halting at no place with a name that is still
+prominent, unless the modern Pokran represents his Pokar. I am not
+aware whether the "gôts" described by Masson in lower Sind have as yet
+been scientifically examined, but his description of them tallies
+with that of similar ruins lately found near Las Bela (especially as
+regards the stone-built circle), which, occurring as they do in Makran
+and the valley of the Purali (the ancient Arabis), are possibly relics
+of the building races of Arabs (Sab[oe]an or Himyaritic) who occupied
+these districts in early ages before they became withered and
+waterless with the gradual alteration of their geographical
+conditions. Other constructions, such as the cylindrical heaps on the
+hills, are more certainly Buddhist. Masson was unaware that he was
+traversing a province which figured as Bodh in Arab chronicles, and is
+full of the traces of Buddhist occupation. Makran, Las Bela, and the
+Sind borderland still offer a mine of wealth for archæological
+research. The last two or three days' march was in company with a
+Bulfut (Lumri) camel-man, whose mount was shared by Masson. As the
+Lumri sowar was in the habit not only of taking opium himself but of
+giving it to his camel, the morning's ride was sometimes perilously
+lively.
+
+One would have thought that after so extensive an exploration, filled,
+as it was, with daily risk from the hostility of fanatics, or the more
+common (in those days) assaults of robbers, Masson would have had
+enough of adventure to last him some years. It was not so. He appears
+to have been an irreclaimable nomadic vagabond, and his only thought,
+now that he had reached the West, was to be off again to Afghanistan.
+Kalat again was his first objective, and to reach that place he
+followed very much the same route as before. From Kalat, however, to
+Kandahar and Kabul, he opened up a new line which is worth
+description. There is little to record as far as Kalat. Once again he
+joined a mixed Afghan khafila returning from India, and followed the
+route which leads through Las Bela, Wad, and Khozdar. It was spring,
+and the country was bright with flowers, the narrow little valleys
+being full of the brilliance of upspringing crops. It is a mistake to
+regard Baluchistan as a waste corner of Asia, the dumping ground of
+the rubbish left over from the world's creation. Much of it,
+doubtless, is inexpressibly dreary, and in certain dry and sun-baked
+plains scarred with leprous streaks of salt eruption, it is
+occasionally difficult to realize the beauty of the spring and summer
+time in valleys where water is still fairly abundant, and the green
+things of the earth seem mostly to congregate. A bed of scarlet
+tulips, or the yellow sheen of the flowering shrub which spreads
+across the plain of Wad would make any landscape gay, and the long
+jagged lines of purple hills with chequered shadows patching their
+rugged spurs would be a fascinating background to any picture. "Only
+man is vile,"--but this is not true either.
+
+The character of the mixed inhabitants of these valleys of Eastern
+Baluchistan (we have no room for ethnological disquisitions) is as
+rugged as their hills, and as varied with patches of brightness as
+their plains. Masson knew them as no one knows them now, and he
+evidently loved them. His life was never safe from day to day, but
+that did not prevent much good comradeship, some genuine friendship,
+and a shrewd appreciation of the straight uprightness of those who,
+like the patriarchs and prophets of old, seemed to be the righteous
+few who leaven the whole lump. Masson was not a missionary, he was
+only a well-educated and most observant vagabond, but what he has to
+say of Baluch (or Brahui) character is just what Sandeman said half a
+century later, and what Barnes or MacMahon[11] would say to-day.
+
+What Masson never seemed to appreciate (any more than the Arab traders
+who trod the same roads in mediæval centuries) was the change of
+altitude that accrued after long travelling over apparently flat
+roads. The natural change in the character of vegetation with the
+increase of altitude appears, therefore, to surprise him. He reached
+Kalat without much incident. Here he parted with the Peshin Saiads and
+the Brahuis of the caravan, and proceeded with the Afghan contingent
+to Kandahar. The direct road from Kalat to Kandahar runs through the
+Mangachar valley and thence crosses the Khwaja Amran, or Kojak range,
+by the Kotal-i-bed into Shorawak, and runs northward to Kandahar
+through the eastern part of the Registan, without touching the main
+road from Quetta till within a march or two of Kandahar itself. It is
+worth noting that there was no want of water on this route, and no
+great difficulties were experienced in passing through the hills.
+Irrigation canals and the intricacies of natural ravines in Shorawak
+seem to have been the chief obstacles. It is a route which was never
+made use of during the last Afghan war, nor, so far as I can discover,
+during the previous one. The Achakzai tribespeople (some of whom were
+with the khafila returning to their country from Bombay) behaved with
+remarkable modesty and good faith, and altogether belied their natural
+characteristics of truculence and treachery. The journey was made on
+camel-back in a kajáwa, a method of travelling which ensures a good
+overlook of the proceedings of the khafila and the country traversed
+by it, but which can have few other recommendations. Kandahar,
+however, was not Masson's objective on this trip. Afghanistan was in
+its usual state of distracted politics, and Kabul was the centre of
+distraction. To Kabul, therefore, Masson felt himself impelled; like
+the stormy petrel he preferred a troubled horizon and plenty of
+incident to the calmer seas of oriental existence in the flat plains
+of Kandahar. His journey with an Afghan khafila by the well-trodden
+road which leads to Ghazni was quite sufficiently full of incident,
+and the extraordinary rapacity of the Ghilzai tribes, who occupy the
+road as far as that city, leaves one astonished that enough was left
+of the khafila for useful business purposes in Kabul. Masson was
+impressed with the desolation and degradation of Ghazni. He can hardly
+believe that this waste wilderness of mounds around an insignificant
+town, with its two dreary sentinel minars standing out on the plain,
+and a dilapidated tomb where rests all that is left of the great
+conqueror Mahmud, can be the city of such former magnificence as is
+described in Afghan history. Every traveller to Ghazni has been
+touched with the same feeling of incredulity, but it only testifies to
+the remarkable power possessed by the destroying hordes of Chenghiz
+Khan and his successors of making a clean sweep of the cities which
+fell into their hands.
+
+A few days before Masson's arrival in Kabul (this is one of the rare
+dates which we find recorded in his story) in June 1832, three
+Englishmen had visited the city. These were Lieutenant Burnes, Dr.
+Gerard, and the Rev. Joseph Wolff. He does not appear to have actually
+met them. Mr. Wolff had been fortunate enough to distinguish himself
+as a prophet, and had acquired considerable reputation. An earthquake
+preceding certain local disturbances between the Sunis and the Shiahs,
+which he foretold, had established his position, and imitators had
+begun to arise amongst the people. No better account of the city of
+Kabul, the beauty of its surroundings, its fruit and its trade, and
+the social customs of its people, is to be found than that of Masson.
+What he observed of the city and suburbs in 1832 might almost have
+been written of the Kabul of fifty years later; but the last
+twenty-five years have introduced many radical changes, and good roads
+for wheeled vehicles (not to mention motors) and a small local railway
+have done more even than the stucco palaces and fantastic halls of the
+late Amir Abdurrahmon to change the character of the place. The
+curious spirit of tolerance and liberality which still pervades Kabul
+and distinguishes it from other Afghan towns, which makes the life of
+an individual European far more secure there than it would be in
+Kandahar, the absence of Ghazidom and fanaticism, was even more marked
+then than it is now. Armenian Christians were treated with more than
+toleration, they intermarried with Mahomedans; the fact that Masson
+was known to be a Feringhi never interfered with the spirit of
+hospitality with which he was received and treated. Only on one
+occasion was he insulted in the streets, and that was when he wore a
+Persian cap instead of the usual lunghi. But the Jews were as much
+anathema as they are now, and Masson tells a curious tale of one Jew
+who was stoned to death by Mahomedans for denying the divinity of
+Jesus Christ, after the Christian community of Armenians had declined
+to carry out the punishment. To this day nothing arouses Afghan hatred
+like the cry of Yahudi (Jew), and it may very possibly be partly due
+to their firm conviction in their origin as Ben-i-Israel.
+
+The summer of 1832 at Kabul must have been a delightful experience,
+but with the coming autumn the restlessness of the nomad again seized
+on Masson and he made that journey to Bamian in company with an Afghan
+friend, one Haji Khan, chief of Bamian, which followed the mission of
+Burnes to Kunduz, and proved the possibilities of the route to Afghan
+Turkestan by the southern passes of the Hindu Kush. Bamian was then
+separated from Kabul by the width of the Besud territory, which was
+practically controlled by a semi-independent Hazara chief,
+Yezdambaksh. Beyond Bamian the pass of Ak Robat defined the northern
+frontier of Afghanistan, beyond which again were more semi-independent
+chiefs, of whom by far the most powerful, south of the Oxus, was Mir
+Murad Beg of Kunduz. Amongst them all political intrigue was in a
+state of boiling effervescence. Haji Khan (a Kakar soldier of fortune)
+from Western Afghanistan knew himself to be unpopular with the Amir
+Dost Mahomed Khan, and had shrewd suspicions that spite of a
+long-tried friendship, he was regarded as a dangerous factor in Kabul
+politics. Yezdambaksh, influenced doubtless by his gallant wife, who
+rode and fought by his side and was ever at his elbow in council,
+trimmed his course to patch up a temporary alliance with Haji Khan
+under the pretext of suffocating the ambition of the local chief of
+Saighan; whilst Murad Beg about that time was strong enough to
+preserve his own position unassisted and aloof. Into the seething
+welter of intrigue arising from the conflicting interests of these
+many candidates for distinction in the Afghan border field Masson
+plunged when he accepted Haji Khan's invitation to join him at Bamian.
+Across the lovely plain of Chardeh, bright with the orange blossoms of
+the safflower, Masson followed the well-known route to Argandi and
+over the Safed Khak Pass to the foot of the divide which is crossed by
+the Unai (called Honai by Masson), meeting with the usual demands for
+"karij," or duty, from the Hazaras at their border, with the usual
+altercations and violence on both sides. Well known as is this route,
+it may be doubted whether any better description of it has ever been
+written than that of Masson. Instead of striking straight across the
+Helmund at Gardandiwal by the direct route to Bamian, the party
+followed the course of the Helmund, then fringed with rose bushes and
+willows, passing through a delightfully picturesque country till they
+fell in with the Afghan camp, after much wandering in unknown parts on
+the banks of the Helmund, at a point which it is difficult to
+identify.
+
+The story of the daily progress of the oriental military camp, and the
+daily discussions with Haji Khan, who appeared to be as frank and
+childlike in his disclosures of his methods as any chattering booby,
+is excellent. There is no doubt that Masson at this time exercised
+very considerable influence over his Afghan and Hazara acquaintances,
+and he is probably justified in his claim to have prevented more than
+one serious row over the everlasting demands for karij. It is to be
+noted that two guns were dragged along with this expedition by forced
+Hazara labour, eighty men being required for one, and two hundred for
+the other, assisted by an elephant. The calibre of the guns is not
+mentioned. At a place called Shaitana they were still south of the
+Helmund, and in the course of their progress through Besud visited the
+sources of the Logar. Near these sources is the Azdha of Besud, the
+petrified dragon slain by Hazrat Ali (not to be confused with Azdha of
+Bamian), a volcanic formation stretching its white length through
+about 170 yards, exhaling sulphurous odours. The red rock found about
+its head is supposed to be tinged with blood. The Azdha afterwards
+seen and described at Bamian is of "more imposing size."
+
+Another long march (apparently on the road to Ghazni) brought the
+expedition to the frontier of Besud, at a point reckoned by Masson as
+three marches from the Ghazni district. From here they retraced their
+steps and crossed the Helmund at Ghoweh Kol (? Pai Kol), making for
+Bamian. This closed the Besud expedition, which, regarded as a
+geographical exploration, is still authoritative, no complete survey
+of that district having ever been made. From the Helmund they reached
+Bamian by the Siah Reg Pass, thus proving the possibility of
+traversing that district by comparatively unknown routes which were
+"not on the whole difficult to cavalry, though impracticable to
+wheeled carriages." The guns were left in Besud, to be dragged through
+by Hazaras. It must be remembered that this was early winter, and the
+frozen snow rendered the passes slippery and difficult. The aspect of
+the Koh-i-Baba (? Babar) mountains, and their "craggy pinnacles"
+(which, by reason of their similarity of outline, gave much trouble to
+our surveyors in 1882-83) seems to have impressed Masson greatly. The
+descent into the Bamian valley was "perfectly easy, and the road
+excellent throughout." Masson's contributions to the Asiatic Society
+on the subject of Bamian and its "idols" are well known. His
+observations were acute, and on the whole accurate. He rightly
+conjectured these wonderful relics to be Buddhist, although he never
+grasped the full extent of Buddhist influence, nor the extraordinary
+width of their occupation in Northern Afghanistan. His conjectures and
+impressions need not be repeated, but his somewhat crude sketches of
+Bamian and the citadel of Gulgula intensify the regret which I always
+feel that a thoroughly competent photographer was not attached to the
+long subsequent Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission.
+
+Masson's wanderings in the company of the Afghan chief Haji Khan and
+his redoubtable army through the valleys and over the passes of the
+Hindu Kush and its western spurs is full of interest to the military
+reader. The Afghan force consisted largely of cavalry, as did that of
+the gallant Hazara chief, Yezdambaksh. Nothing is said about infantry,
+but it was probably little better than a badly armed mob chiefly
+concerned in guarding the guns which reached the valley of Bamian,
+but, as already stated, they could not follow the cavalry over the
+Siah Reg Pass from Besud. They were sent round by the "Karza" Pass,
+which is probably the one known as Kafza on our maps, which indicates
+the most direct route from Kabul to Bamian.
+
+It is necessary to follow the ostensible policy of these military
+movements in order to render Masson's account of them intelligible.
+Haji Khan was acting in concert with Yezdambaksh and his Hazara
+troops, with the presumed object of crushing first Mahomed Ali, the
+chief of Saighan (north of Bamian), and ultimately repeating the
+process on Rahmatulla Khan, the chief of Kamard (north of Saighan). In
+order to effect this he had to pass up the Bamian valley to its
+northern head, marked by the Ak Robat Pass (10,200 feet high), and
+thence descend into the Saighan valley by the route formed by one of
+its southern tributaries. It was early winter (or late autumn), but
+still the passes seemed to have been more or less free from snow, and
+the Ak Robat Pass in particular appears to have given little trouble,
+although the valley contracts almost to a gorge in the descent.
+Masson noted evidences of the former existence of a considerable town
+near this route on the descent from Ak Robat. Much to his
+astonishment, instead of smashing the Saighan opposition with his
+superior force, Haji Khan proceeded to patch up an alliance with
+Mahomed Ali, which was cemented by his marrying one of the daughters
+of that wily chief. Here, however, he experienced a cruel
+disappointment. Instead of the lovely bride whom he had been led to
+expect, he received a squat and snub-nosed Hazara girl, who was,
+indeed, of very doubtful parentage. This little swindle, however, was
+not permitted to interfere with his politics. The alliance ought to
+have aroused the suspicion of Yezdambaksh, but the latter seems to
+have trusted to the strength of his following to meet any possible
+contingency.
+
+The next step was to proceed to Kamard and repeat the process of
+occupation. Here, however, an unexpected difficulty arose. The
+easy-going, hard-drinking Tajik chief of Kamard was far too wily to
+put himself into Haji Khan's power, and with some of the Uzbek chiefs
+who owed their allegiance to that fine old border bandit Murad Khan of
+Kunduz (of whom we shall hear again), positively declined to permit
+Haji Khan to come farther. Meanwhile, however, a force had advanced
+over the divide between Saighan and Kamard by a pass which Masson
+calls the Nalpach (or horseshoe-breaking pass), which can hardly be
+the same as the well-known Dandan Shikan (or tooth-breaking pass),
+but is probably to the east of it, leading more directly to Bajgah.
+Before ascending the pass, Masson noted the remains of an ancient town
+or fort built of immense stones, and here they halted. Here also snow
+fell. Next day a reconnaissance in force was made over the Nalpach
+Pass ("long, but not difficult"), and apparently part of the force
+descended into Kamard and commenced hostile operations against the
+Kamard chieftain. Haji Khan, however, returned to camp. He had now
+succeeded in breaking up the Hazara force which was with him into two
+or three detached bodies, so the opportunity was ripe for one of the
+blackest acts of treachery that ever disgraced Afghan history--which
+is saying a good deal. He entrapped and seized the fine old Hazara
+chief, Yezdambaksh, and, after dragging him about with him under
+circumstances of great indignity, he finally executed him. The Hazara
+troops seem to have scattered without striking a concerted blow; their
+camp was looted, whilst such wretched refugees as were caught were
+stripped and enslaved.
+
+The savage barbarity of these proceedings, especially of the method of
+the execution of Yezdambaksh (a rope being looped round the wretched
+victim's neck, the two ends of which were hauled tight by a mixed
+company of relatives and enemies), disgusted Masson deeply, and there
+is a very obvious disposition evinced hereafter to part company with
+his treacherous host, although he makes some attempt to excuse these
+proceedings by pointing out that Haji Khan, after meeting with an
+unexpected rebuff from Kamard (which he dare not resent so long as the
+redoubtable Murad Beg loomed in the distance as the protector of the
+frontier chiefs of Badakshan), would have been unable to keep and feed
+his troops in the winter without scattering the Hazara contingent and
+possessing himself of the resources of Besud.
+
+Winter had already set in, and the subsequent story is instructive in
+illustration of the difficulties which beset the road between Kabul
+and Bamian during the winter season. The resources of Bamian were
+insufficient even for his diminished force (now reduced to about its
+original strength of eight hundred), and the Ghulam Khana contingent
+grew restive and impatient, demanding to go back to Kabul. The passes,
+however, were not only closed by snow, but the position at Karzar was
+held by Hazaras, who, however much they were demoralised by the
+execution of their chief, might well be expected to make reprisals.
+The Ghulam Khana men, about two hundred and twenty strong, therefore
+moved in force from Bamian, with the hope of being able to influence
+the Hazaras to let them pass through Besud. Apparently they did not
+rank as true Afghans. No great resistance was made at Karzar, although
+they were not admitted to shelter. They were freely looted, and
+eventually allowed to pass after three days' detention, exposed to
+the terrific blasts of a winter shamal (north-west wind) in snow which
+was then breast high. Many of them perished before reaching Kabul, and
+many more were permanently disabled from frostbites.
+
+Haji Khan, meanwhile, settled down as the uninvited guest of the
+people of Bamian, and ensconced himself and his wives in the fort of
+Saidabad, a strongly built construction of burnt bricks of immense
+size, which Masson believed to have been built by the Arabs. Saidabad
+is hard by the detached position of Gulgula; it is described by Masson
+in considerable detail. Here, at an altitude of about 8500 feet, a
+winter in Bamian is endurable, and Haji Khan avowed his intention of
+remaining. It is interesting to note that a khafila from Bokhara for
+Kabul arrived about this time, and was duly looted. Even in winter the
+route (as a commercial route) was open.
+
+Masson's efforts were now directed towards getting back to Kabul. His
+first essay was in company of two brothers of Haji Khan, who vowed to
+get to Kabul somehow, even if, as Afghans, they had to fight their way
+through Besud. The party followed up the Topchi valley from Bamian,
+and crossing by the Shutar Gardan Pass, they reached Karzar. Here
+again Masson noted extensive ruins _en route_. The road was bad and
+the difficulties great, "leading over precipices," but they did,
+nevertheless, succeed in crossing the main divide. Here Masson
+experienced a very bad time, and to his disgust found that he must
+retrace his steps to Bamian, owing to counter orders from Haji Khan
+recalling the escort. There appeared, however, a prospect of getting
+out of Bamian by the Shibar Pass (an easy pass), leading to the head
+of the Ghorband valley; and trusting to certain arrangements made by a
+Paghmani chief, Masson made a fresh attempt, passing eastward the
+ancient remains of Zohak, and ascending by a fairly easy open track to
+the valley or plain of Irak. Probably this pass is the one known as
+Khashka in our maps. The wind was terrific, but the comparative
+freedom from snow was an unexpected advantage.
+
+Passing eastwards from Irak (still on the northern slopes of the Hindu
+Kush) the party made comparatively easy progress by a valley which
+Masson calls Bubulak (where he observed tobacco to be growing). They
+gradually ascended until once again they found themselves in snow, but
+instead of making direct for the Shibar they inclined to a more
+northerly pass called Bitchilik, which is separated from the Shibar by
+a slight kotal (or divide). Here they found the Paghmani chief whom
+they expected to join, but they found also that the section of Hazaras
+who held these passes then were determined to bar their passage. Once
+again Masson had to abandon the attempt (albeit the Shibar route to
+Kabul would have been a very devious and dangerous one), and returned
+to Bamian.
+
+There are one or two circumstances about this exploration of the
+western Hindu Kush passes which deserve attention. For once Masson is
+slightly inaccurate in his geography when he states that the Irak
+stream drains into the Bamian valley. It joins the Bamian River after
+it has left the valley and turned northward. So slight an error is
+only a useful proof of his general accuracy. Another remarkable fact
+was that he, a Feringhi, was elected by the Afghan gang with which he
+was temporarily associated as their Khan, or chief! He was a little
+better dressed than most of them in European chintzes. He found
+himself utterly unable to restrain their looting propensities, but he
+made himself quite popular by his civility and his small presents to
+the wretched Hazaras on whom they were quartered. Incidentally he
+gives us a most valuable impression of the nature of an important
+group of Afghan passes, and I doubt if his information has ever been
+much improved upon.
+
+Finally, the surrender of the Karzar position by the Hazaras reopened
+the road to Kabul, and Masson was enabled to reach that capital by the
+Topchi, Shutar Gardan, Kalu, Hajigak routes to Gardandiwal on the
+Helmund. The Hajigak route he describes as easy of ascent, but "steep
+and very troublesome" in the south. The Shutar Gardan (called
+Panjpilan now) was "intricate and dangerous," but the passing of it
+was done at night. This is, and always has been, the main khafila
+route between Kabul, Bamian, and Bokhara. The journey from the Helmund
+across the Unai (which pass was itself "difficult") was not
+accomplished without great distress. A winter shumal caught Masson on
+the road, and but for the timely shelter at Zaimuni would have
+terminated his career there and then. Masson describes the terrific
+effect of the wind with great vigour, but those who have experienced
+it will not accuse him of exaggeration.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] _Selections from Travels and Journals preserved in the Bombay
+Secretariat_, Forrest, 1908.
+
+[11] Now Sir Hugh Barnes and Sir Henry MacMahon, one a past, and the
+other the present, Agent for the Governor-General in Baluchistan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AMERICAN EXPLORATION--MASSON (_continued_)
+
+
+On Masson's return to Kabul he observed the first symptoms of active
+interest in Afghan politics on the part of the Indian Government, in
+the person of an accredited native agent (Saiad Karamat Ali) who had
+travelled with Lieut. Conolly to Herat. Colonel Stoddart was at that
+time detained in Bokhara, and was apparently under the impression that
+he was befriended by a "profligate adventurer," one Samad Khan, who
+had succeeded in establishing himself there as a pillar of the State
+after imposing on so astute a politician as the Amir Dost Mahomed Khan
+and on many of the leading Afghan Sirdars. Masson seems to have been
+better aware of the character of this Khan than the Indian Government,
+for he notes that "to be befriended by such a man is in itself
+calamitous."
+
+It is quite comprehensible that the Indian Government should not duly
+appreciate the position of an adventurer like Masson and his intimate
+acquaintance with Afghanistan and its riotous rulers; but it was
+unfortunate; for it is not too much to say that Indian Government
+officials at that time were but amateurs in their knowledge of Afghan
+politics compared to Masson; and much of the horrors of subsequent
+events might have been avoided could Masson have been admitted freely
+and fully to their counsels. However, for a time he employed himself
+in collecting historical and scientific notes on Afghanistan, which we
+still regard as standard works for reference. No one has succeeded
+better in giving us an impression of the leading characteristics of
+the Afghan chiefs of his time, and probably there is not much
+improvement effected by a century of moral development. Steeped up to
+the eyes in treachery towards each other, debauchees, drunkards,
+liars, and murderers, one cannot but admire their extraordinary
+virility. It was truly a case of the survival of the fittest, and the
+fittest were certainly remarkable men.
+
+The Amir Dost Mahomed Khan was one of the worst, and one of the best.
+One of the twenty-two sons of Sirafraz Khan, he worked his way upwards
+by truly Afghan methods; methods which in the early days of his career
+were utterly detestable, but which attained some sort of reflected
+dignity later, when there were not wanting signs that in a different
+environment he might have been truly great. He was illiterate and
+uneducated, but appreciated the advantages of elementary schooling in
+others. Into the strange welter of political intrigue which forms
+Afghan history during the period of his rise to power we need not
+enter; but it is necessary to note the extraordinary difference with
+which the stranger in the land, a Feringhi, was regarded throughout
+Afghanistan, then, as compared with his reception at present. It is
+even possible that the life of a Feringhi was then safer (_i.e._
+deemed of more importance) than that of any ordinary Afghan chief. It
+is certain that there was a strong feeling that it was well to be on
+good terms with the representatives of a powerful neighbouring state.
+This feeling was greatly weakened by the results of the first Afghan
+war, and has never again been completely restored.
+
+Although we are only dealing with Masson as an explorer, it is
+impossible not to express sympathy with his whole-hearted admiration
+for the country of the Afghan. His description of the beauties of the
+land, especially in early spring with the awakening of the season of
+flowers, the irresistible charm of the mountain scenery of the
+Kohistan as the gradual burst of summer bloom crept upwards over the
+hills--all this finds an echo in the heart of every one who has ever
+seen this "God granted" land; where, after all, the seething scum of
+Afghan politics is very much confined to a class, although it
+undoubtedly sinks deeper and reaches the mass of the people with more
+of the force of self-interest than is the case in India, where the
+historical pageant of kings and dynasties has passed over the great
+mass of India's self-absorbed people and left them profoundly
+unconscious of its progress.
+
+In the year 1833 Masson resumed his researches in the neighbourhood of
+Kabul, commencing in the plains about 25 miles north-east from Kabul,
+and 8 or 10 from Charikar. These researches were continued for some
+years, until the failure of the mission to Kabul in 1838 obliged him
+to leave the country; and in his proposal to resume them again in 1840
+he was opposed by "a miserable fraction of the Calcutta clique," who
+had recourse to "acts as unprecedented, base, and illegal as perhaps
+were ever perpetrated under the sanction of authority against a
+subject of the British Crown." So that apparently he claimed British
+nationality before he left Afghanistan. However that may be, it is
+certain that no subsequent explorer has added much that is of value to
+the extraordinary evidences of ancient occupation collected by Masson.
+Here, he maintains, once existed the city of Alexandria founded by
+Alexander on the Kabul plain; and a recent announcement from Kabul
+that the site of an ancient city has been discovered obviously refers
+to the same position at Begram near Charikar, and is a useful
+commentary on the rapidity with which the fame and name of an original
+explorer can disappear.
+
+The Masson collection of coins, which totalled between 15,000 and
+20,000 in 1837, and which was presented to the East India Company,
+proved a veritable revelation of unknown kings and dynasties, and
+contributed enormously to our positive knowledge of Central Asian
+history. The vast number of Cufic coins found at Begram show that the
+city must have existed for some centuries after the Mahomedan
+invasion. Chinese travellers tell of a city called Hupian in this
+neighbourhood, but Masson is inclined to place the site of Hupian near
+Charikar, where there was, in his time, a village called Malek Hupian.
+He thinks that Begram had certainly ceased to exist at the time of
+Timur's expedition to India; or that conqueror would not have found it
+necessary to construct a canal from the Ghorband stream in order to
+colonize this favoured corner of the Kabul plain. The canal still
+exists as the Mahighir, and the people of the neighbourhood talked
+Turki in Masson's time. Three miles east of Kabul there is another
+ancient site known as Begram. This was probably the precursor of Kabul
+itself, and other "Begrams" are known in India. The term appears to be
+generic and to denote a famous site. Buddhist relics lie thickly round
+about the Afghan Begrams, groups of them being very abundant
+throughout the Kabul valley.
+
+It was after his first visit to Begram that Masson became acquainted
+with M. Honigberger, whom he describes as a gentleman from Lahore bent
+on archaeological research; and at the close of the autumn Dr.
+Gerard, the companion of Lieut. Burnes, appeared at Kabul.
+Honigberger's researches, like those of Gerard, appear to have been
+confined to archæology, and the results of them form an interesting
+story which was given to the world by Eugene Jacquet; but as neither
+of these gentlemen can be said to have contributed to the early
+geographical knowledge of the country, no further reference need be
+made to them, beyond remarking that Honigberger very narrowly escaped
+being murdered on his subsequent journey to Bokhara.
+
+Masson's extraordinary capability of dealing with every class of
+people with whom he came in contact, and his consequent apparent
+immunity from the dangers which beset the ordinary unaccredited
+traveller, should not lead to the assumption that Afghanistan was a
+safe country to travel in at the time of our first political
+negotiations, in spite of there being less fanaticism at that time;
+whilst the trans-Oxus states were then almost unapproachable. There,
+at least, the gradual encroachment of Russian civilization has
+absolutely altered the conditions of European existence, and Bokhara
+has become quite a favourite resort for tourists.
+
+Masson's story of Afghan intrigue, which is the substance of Afghan
+history at this period, is as interesting as are his archæological
+investigations, for it affords us a view of events which occurred
+behind the scenes, shut off from India by the curtain of the frontier
+hills; but whilst he thus occupied his busy mind with the past and
+the present policy of Afghanistan, he did not lose sight of the
+opportunity for making fresh excursions into Afghan territory. His
+visits to the Kabul valley and Peshawar can hardly claim to be
+original explorations, though he undoubtedly acquired by them a local
+geographical knowledge far in advance of anything then existing on the
+Indian side of the border, and some of it ranks as authoritative even
+now. It must not be supposed that these visits and investigations were
+carried on without grave risk and constant difficulty, but by this
+time Masson had so wide and so varied a personal acquaintance with the
+leading chiefs and tribespeople of the country that he usually
+succeeded in distinguishing friend from foe, and extricated himself
+from positions which would have been fatal to any one less
+knowledgeable than himself.
+
+During the year 1835 we learn that Masson was in Northern Afghanistan,
+chiefly at Kabul, gathering information; but there appears to be
+hardly a place which now figures in our maps with any prominence in
+the Kabul province which he did not succeed in visiting; and as
+regards some of them (Kunar, for instance) there was nothing added to
+his record for at least sixty years. He penetrated the Alishang valley
+to within 12 miles of Najil, a point which no European has succeeded
+in reaching since; but his sphere of observation was always too
+restricted to enable him to make much of his geographical
+opportunities. Najil is now somewhat doubtfully placed on our maps
+from native information gathered during the surveys executed with the
+Afghan campaign of 1878-80.
+
+It was at this period in Masson's career (in 1835) that English
+political interest in Kabul began to take an active shape. About this
+time Masson accepted a proposal from the Indian Government (which
+reached him through Captain Wade, the political officer on the Punjab
+frontier) to act as British agent and keep the Government informed as
+to the progress of affairs in Kabul. It is rather surprising that
+Masson, who never misses an opportunity of asserting that he was not
+an Englishman, and was by no means in sympathy with the policy of the
+Indian Government towards Afghanistan, should have accepted this
+responsibility. However, he did so, for a time at least, though he
+subsequently requested that he might be relieved from the duties
+entailed by such an equivocal position. He negotiated the foundation
+of a commercial treaty between India and Kabul, but with scant
+success. This period of seething intrigue at Kabul (as also between
+Dost Mahomed Khan and the Sikhs) was hardly favourable to its
+inception. His efforts were duly acknowledged by the Government, but
+his position as agent became untenable when he found that it led to
+interference with the great object of his residence in Afghanistan,
+_i.e._ antiquarian research. We can only touch upon the political
+events of 1836-37 cursorily, in spite of their absorbing interest, in
+order to follow the sequence of Masson's career.
+
+At the beginning of 1836 the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh were
+consolidating their position on the Western Punjab frontier, whilst
+Dost Mahomed Khan was working all he knew to secure men and money for
+military purposes. This led to a half-hearted renewal of
+correspondence between Masson and Wade. The commencement of the year
+1837 was marked by active preparations on the part of Dost Mahomed for
+a campaign against the Sikhs, resulting in an equivocal victory for
+the Afghans near Jamrud under Akbar Khan, but no essential change in
+the relative position as regards the Peshawar frontier. Various were
+the projects set on foot at this time for the assassination of the
+Amir, and in the general network of bloody intrigue Masson was not
+overlooked; but he was discreetly absent from Kabul during the winter
+of 1836-37, having previously found it necessary to keep his house
+full of armed men. He returned to Kabul in the spring.
+
+Towards the end of September 1837 Captain Burnes arrived in Kabul on
+that historical commercial mission which was to result in a disastrous
+misunderstanding between the Indian Government and the Amir. If we are
+to believe Masson, it would be difficult to conceive a more
+mismanaged and hopelessly bungled political function than this mission
+proved to be; but we must remember that in experience of the Afghan
+character and knowledge of intrigue the Indian Government and Council
+were by no means experts. It is difficult to believe that the mere
+fact of inadequate recognition of his services and consequent
+disappointment could have so affected a man of Masson's independence
+of character, natural ability, and clear sense of justice, as to lead
+him to misrepresent the position absolutely. As a commercial mission
+he regarded it as unnecessary.
+
+Burnes was instructed to proceed first to Haidarabad (in Sind) for the
+purpose of opening up the Indus to commercial navigation, and thence
+to journey _via_ Attok to Peshawar (held by the Sikhs), Kabul, and
+Kandahar, back again to Haidarabad, all in the interest of a trade
+which was already flourishing between Afghanistan and ports on the
+Indus already established. "The Governments of India and of England,"
+says Masson, "as well as the public at large were never amused and
+deceived by a greater fallacy than that of opening the Indus as
+regards commercial objects."
+
+The keynote of Masson's policy was non-interference, so long as
+interference either in trade or politics was not forced on the British
+Government. At that time such views were undoubtedly sound; but even
+then there was a stir in the political atmosphere which betokened much
+nervousness in high quarters on the subject of Persian and Russian
+intrigues with Afghanistan. So far, however, as Masson observes,
+"there was little notion entertained at this time of convulsing
+Central Asia, of deposing and setting up Kings, of carrying on wars,
+of lavishing treasure, and of the commission of a long train of crimes
+and follies." But with the arrival of Burnes at Kabul trade interests
+seem to have faded and those of a more active policy to have taken
+their place. The weak point in this change of policy appears to have
+been the want of definite instructions from the Government of India to
+their agent.
+
+The appearance of a Russian officer (Lieut. Vektavitch) at Kabul from
+the Russian camp at Herat in December (he had, according to Masson, no
+real authority to support him, and could only have been acting as a
+spy on Burnes) was a source of much agitation; but nothing whatever
+appears to have eventuated from his residence in Kabul, except grave
+risk to himself. Masson never believed in the dangers arising from
+either Persian or Russian intrigue (and he was certainly in a position
+to judge), and he remarks about Vektavitch "that such a man could have
+been expected to defeat a British mission is too ridiculous a notion
+to be entertained; nor would his mere appearance have produced such a
+result had not the mission itself been set forth without instructions
+for its guidance, and had it not been conducted recklessly, and in
+defiance of all common sense and decorum." This, indeed, is the
+attitude assumed by Masson throughout towards the mission, although he
+was still in the service of the Indian Government and acting under
+Burnes.
+
+Burnes certainly seems to have behaved with great want of dignity in
+the presence of the Amir and his Sirdars; making obeisance, and
+addressing the Amir as if he were a dependant. Nor can his private
+arrangements and his method of living in Kabul be commended as those
+of a dignified agent. European manners and customs were looser in
+those days in India than they are now, but with all latitude for the
+_autres temps autres m[oe]urs_ excuse for his conduct, his ideas of
+Eastern life seem to have been almost too oriental even for the
+approval of the dissolute Afghan. Certain it is that no proposal made
+by him on his own responsibility to the Amir (especially as regards
+the cession of Peshawar on the death of Ranjit Singh) was supported by
+his Government, and time after time he enjoyed the humiliation of
+being obliged to eat his own words. On these occasions it would appear
+that Masson seldom omitted the opportunity of saying "I told you so."
+
+In the interests of geographical explorations, this mission of Burnes
+was important. Whatever else he was, there is no question that he was
+as keen a geographical observer as Masson himself, and even if the
+wisdom of the despatch of his assistants (Lieut. Leech to Kandahar,
+and Dr. Lord with Lieut. Wood to Badakshan) may be questioned on
+political grounds, it led to a series of remarkable explorations, some
+of which even now furnish authority for Afghan map-making.
+
+In May 1837, Lieut. Eldred Pottinger arrived on leave from India (with
+the interest of his father Sir Henry Pottinger to back him), and
+immediately made secret preparations for his adventurous journey
+through the Hazarajat from Kabul to Herat, which terminated in his
+participation in the defence of Herat against the Persians. Thus was
+the first authentic account received of the nature of that difficult
+mountain region which has subsequently been so thoroughly exploited.
+Afghanistan was just beginning to be known.
+
+Masson naturally disapproved of Pottinger's exploit, for he found
+himself in hot water owing to the suspicion that he connived at it. He
+says: "I have always thought that however fortunate for Lieut.
+Pottinger himself, his trip to Herat was an unlucky one for his
+country; the place would have been fought as well without him; and his
+presence, which would scarcely be thought accidental, although truly
+it was so, must not only have irritated the Persian King, but have
+served as a pretext for the more prominent exertions of the Russian
+staff. It is certain that when he started from Kabul he had no idea
+that the city would be invested by a Persian army." Colonel Stoddart
+was then the British agent in the Persian Camp.
+
+Incidentally it may be useful to note the results of the occupation of
+Seistan about this time by an Afghan army under Shah Kamran, Governor
+of Herat and brother to Dost Mahomed; the one brother, in fact, whom
+he feared the most. Kamran's army had threatened Kandahar in the early
+spring and had spread into Seistan. Here the cavalry horses perished
+from disease, and the finest force which had marched from Herat for
+years was placed absolutely _hors de combat_. Unable to obtain the
+assistance of the army in the field, the frontier fortress of Ghorian
+surrendered, and thus reduced Kamran to the necessity of retirement on
+Herat and sustaining a siege. The destructive climate of Seistan has
+evidently not greatly changed during the last century.
+
+Masson's view of the policy best adapted to the tangled situation was
+the surrender of Peshawur to Sultan Mahomed Khan (the Amir's brother),
+who already enjoyed half its revenues, which would have been an
+acceptable proposition to the Sikh chief, Ranjit Singh (who found the
+occupation of Peshawar a most profitless undertaking), and would at
+the same time have reconciled the chiefs at Kandahar. The Amir Dost
+Mahomed would have reconciled himself to a situation which he could
+not avoid and the Indian Government would have enjoyed the credit of
+establishing order on their frontiers on a tolerably sure basis
+without committing themselves to any alliance, for (he writes) "my
+experience has brought me to the decided opinion that any strict
+alliance with powers so constituted would prove only productive of
+mischief and embarrassment, while I still thought that British
+influence might be usefully exerted in preserving the integrity of the
+several states and putting their rulers on their good behaviour."
+Subsequent events proved the soundness of these views, but we must
+remember that Masson wrote "after the event." That he did, however,
+strongly counsel Burnes to make no promise in the name of his
+Government of the cession of Peshawar to the Amir on the death of
+Ranjit Singh, is clear, and it is impossible to say how far the
+disappointment felt by the Amir at the refusal of the Indian
+Government to ratify this promise may have affected his subsequent
+actions. Masson thinks that Burnes should have been recalled, but he
+admits the difficulty that beset him owing to want of instructions.
+"The folly of sending such a man as Captain Burnes without the fullest
+and clearest instructions was now shown," etc. etc. It is surprising
+that with his confidence in the ability of his immediate Chief so
+absolutely destroyed, he should have continued to serve under him.
+
+Finally, on April 26, Burnes and Masson left Kabul together in a hurry
+and were subsequently joined by Lord and Wood, and "thus closed a
+mission, one of the most extraordinary ever sent forth by a
+Government, whether as to the singular manner in which it was
+conducted, or as to the results." Shortly after Masson resigned an
+appointment under the Government of India which he stigmatises as
+"disagreeable and dishonourable." It was a pity that he held it so
+long.
+
+When Masson reached India he found that the Government had already
+decided to restore the refugee Shah Sujah to the throne of Kabul, and
+that a military expedition to Kandahar had been arranged. What he has
+to say about the manner of this arrangement and the nature of the
+influence brought to bear on Lord Auckland to bring it about is not
+more pleasant reading than is his story of the Kabul Mission. This
+tale, indeed, does not belong to the history of exploration any
+further than to indicate under what conditions the first military
+geographical knowledge of Farther Afghanistan was gained by such true
+explorers as Pottinger, Lord, and Wood; and what amount of actually
+new information was attained by Burnes' mission. This was very
+considerable, as we shall see when we follow Burnes' assistants into
+the field. Meanwhile we have not quite done with Masson.
+
+The closing incidents of the career of this remarkable man, as an
+explorer, call for little more comment. Once again, in the year
+preceding the disastrous termination to our first occupation of Kabul,
+did he make Karachi and Sonmiani his base of departure for a fresh
+venture in behalf of archæological research in Afghanistan. It was his
+intention to proceed to Kandahar and Kabul, but his plans were
+frustrated by as remarkable a series of incidents as could well have
+barred the progress of any traveller. The Government of India,
+instigated by reports which (according to Masson) were the results of
+local intrigue and were palpably false, considered itself justified in
+an expedition to Kalat and the deposition of its Brahui chief, Mehrab
+Khan. This expedition was successfully carried out by General
+Wiltshire, and Mehrab Khan was killed in the defence of his citadel.
+Subsequently a British agent, Lieut. Loveday, was appointed to Kalat,
+and Masson found him there on his arrival from Sonmiani. Masson's
+description of him and of his crude political methods is not
+flattering, and his weak surrender of Kalat to the badly armed Brahui
+rabble who attacked the place in the interests of the late Khan's son
+was certainly disgraceful. That surrender, which was only wiped out by
+Nott's advance on Kalat, and the final suppression of the Brahui
+revolt, cost Loveday his life, and placed Masson in deadly peril. He,
+however, succeeded in reaching Quetta, where Captain Bean was in
+political charge; but this officer not only put him into confinement
+but treated him with positive barbarity.
+
+It is difficult to understand the political view of Masson's existence
+in Baluchistan. If any man was capable of unriddling the network of
+intrigue that occupied all the Baluch chiefs at this time, or could
+bring anything of personal influence to bear on them, it was
+undoubtedly Masson, and something of his history was at any rate
+known. But he had resigned service under the Indian Government as
+"disagreeable and dishonourable," and his reappearance at a time when
+all Baluchistan was in the ferment of seething revolt was perhaps
+regarded with suspicion. It is also quite conceivable that the local
+political officer regarded him simply as an interloping loafer, and,
+until he became better acquainted with Masson's character and ability,
+would be no more likely to pay him attention than would any political
+officer on the frontier to-day who suddenly found himself confronted
+with a European in native dress with no valid explanation of his
+appearance under very ambiguous circumstances. The days were not long
+past when European loafers of any nationality whatsoever could, and
+did, find not only service, but distinction, in the courts and armies
+of native chiefs who were hostile to British interests. One can only
+gather from Masson's strange story that there was no officer in the
+British political service at that time with intuition sufficient to
+enable him to appraise the situation correctly, or make use of other
+experience than his own.
+
+Here, however, we must leave Masson. As an explorer in Afghanistan he
+stands alone. His work has never been equalled; but owing to the very
+unsatisfactory methods adopted by all explorers in those days for the
+recording of geographical observations it cannot be said that his
+contribution to exact geographical knowledge was commensurate with
+his extraordinary capacity as an observant traveller, or his
+remarkable industry.
+
+It is as a critic on the political methods of the Government of India
+that Masson's records are chiefly instructive. Hostile critics of
+Indian administrative methods usually belong to one of two classes.
+They are either uninformed, notoriety-seeking demagogues playing to a
+certain party gallery at home, or they are disappointed servants of
+the Government, by whom they consider that their merits have been
+overlooked. To this latter class it must be conceded that Masson
+belonged, in spite of his expressed contempt for government service.
+Thus the virulence of his attacks on the ignorance and fatuity of the
+political officials with whom he was brought in contact must be freely
+discounted, because of the obvious animus which pervades them. Still
+it is to be feared there is too much reason to believe that private
+interest was the recommendation which carried most weight in the
+appointment of unfledged officers, both civil and military, to
+political duty on the Indian frontier. These gentlemen took the field
+without experience, and without that which might to a certain extent
+take the place of experience, viz. an education in the main principles
+both social and economical which govern the conditions of existence of
+the people with whom they had to deal. A knowledge of political
+economy, law, and languages is not enough to enable the young
+administrator to take his place on the frontier, if he knows not
+enough of the characteristics of the frontier tribes-people to enable
+him to maintain the dignity of his position. Even physically there are
+qualifications which are not always regarded as useful, which make for
+strong influence and good government. A man may be physically powerful
+enough to use his strength in fair contest to the immense enhancement
+of his personal prestige, but he must not strike a blow where the blow
+cannot be returned; and above all he must not endeavour to conciliate
+by a silly display of obsequious attention, unless he is prepared to
+sacrifice all his personal influence and destroy the respect due to
+his office.
+
+Setting aside Masson's sentiments of disgust and horror (which he
+really felt) that the fate of men should have been placed at the mercy
+of the political officers in whom, at that time, Lord Auckland was
+pleased to repose confidence, and his assertions that "on me developed
+the task to obtain satisfaction for the insults some of these shallow
+and misguided men thought fit to practise," his own account of the
+extraordinary complexity of intrigue, and the unfathomable abyss of
+deceit and crime which distinguished the political field of native
+Baluchistan, is quite enough to account for much of their failure to
+deal with the situation. At the same time, it is a strong indication
+of the necessity for a sounder system of political education than any
+which now exists. Possibly a time may come when we shall cease to see
+systems of administration suitable to the plains applied to frontier
+mountaineers, or, for that matter, the foreign methods of India
+hammered into the nomadic pastoral peoples of other continents than
+Asia, where they are wholly inapplicable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ENGLISH OFFICIAL EXPLORATION--LORD AND WOOD
+
+
+Then followed the Afghan Campaign of 1839-40, a campaign which was in
+many ways disastrous to our credit in Afghanistan both as diplomats
+and soldiers, but which undoubtedly opened out an opportunity for
+acquiring a general knowledge of the conformation of the country which
+was not altogether neglected. With the political methods attending the
+inception of the campaign (treated with such scathing scorn by
+Masson), and the strange bungling of an overweighted and unwieldy
+force armed with antique weapons we have nothing to do. The question
+is whether, apart from the acquisition of route sketches and
+intelligence reports dependent on the movements of the army in the
+field, was there anything that could rank as original exploration in
+new geographical fields? Lieut. North's excellent traverse and report
+of the route to Kandahar, which still supplies data for an integral
+part of our maps, was distinguished for more accuracy of detail and
+observation than most efforts of a similar character made at that
+time; but it can hardly be regarded as an illustration of new and
+original exploration, the route itself being well enough known to
+British Missions, although never before surveyed. It is undoubtedly
+one of the best map contributions of the period.
+
+The adventures of Dr. Lord and Lieut. Wood in Badakshan, and the
+remarkable journey of Broadfoot across Central Afghanistan, however,
+belong to another category. These explorations covered new ground,
+much of which has never since been visited by European travellers, and
+they are authoritative records still. There were missed opportunities
+in abundance. Also opportunities which were not missed, but of which
+our records are so incomplete and obscure that the modern map-maker
+can extract but little useful information from them.
+
+When Burnes was in Kabul on his first commercial mission, Dr. Lord and
+Lieut. Leech of the Bombay Engineers were attached to his staff, and
+both these gentlemen, with Lieut. Wood of the Indian Navy,
+distinguished themselves by much original research, and have left
+records the value of which has been proved by subsequent observations.
+In the middle of October 1837 Dr. Lord left Kabul on an expedition
+into the plains of the Koh Daman, to the north of that city, which was
+to be extended to the passes of the Hindu Kush leading into Badakshan,
+when he was subsequently invited to attend the court of Murad Beg,
+the chief of Kunduz, in his professional capacity. Murad Beg was one
+of the strongest chiefs of that time. As a bold and astute freebooter
+and successful warrior he had made his name great amongst the Uzbeks
+south of the Oxus, and had consolidated their scattered clans for the
+time being into a formidable cohesion, the strength of which made
+itself felt and respected at Kabul. Where Dost Mahomed's influence
+ceased on the north there commenced that of Murad Beg, and the line of
+division may be said to have extended from Ak Robat at the head of the
+Bamian valley on the west, to the passes and foot-hills of the Hindu
+Kush above Andarab on the east. It was late in the year for Lord to
+attempt the passing of the Hindu Kush, and he appears to have lingered
+too long amongst the delightful autumn scenes of that land of
+enchantment, the Koh Daman. He selected the passes which strike off
+from Charikar, near the junction of the Ghorband with the Panjshir
+rivers. There has always been a slight confusion in the naming of this
+group of passes, owing to the universal habit in Afghanistan of
+bestowing the name of some possibly insignificant village site on
+rivers, passes, and roads, without attaching any distinct and definite
+name to these features themselves.
+
+From that break in the hills which gives passage to the Ghorband from
+the south-west and the Panjshir from the north-east there strikes off
+one well-known route across the backbone of the Hindu Kush, which is
+marked near the southern foot of the mountains by the ancient town of
+Parwan--a commercial site more ancient than that of Kabul--the
+headquarters of Sabaktagin, the Ghuri conqueror, when he wrested Kabul
+from the Hindu kings, and of Timur the Tartar in later ages.
+Consequently, the pass which bears north from that point is often
+called the Parwan. It was, according to Lord, the chief khafila route
+from Badakshan (although it may be doubted whether it was ever as
+popular as the Khawak when the Panjshir route was not closed by tribal
+hostility), notwithstanding that far less traffic passed that way than
+by Bamian and the Unai. The head of the pass was known as Sar Alang,
+so that it figures in geographical records frequently under this name
+also, whilst the local name acquired for it in the course of surveying
+in 1883 was Bajgah. To the west of this is the Kaoshan Pass, which is
+also known _par excellence_ as the pass of "Hindu Kush"; and farther
+west again is the Gwalian (or Walian), an alternative to the Kaoshan
+when the latter is in flood. Lord selected the Parwan or Sar Alang
+Pass, narrow, rocky, and uneven, with a fall of about 200 feet per
+mile, and was fairly defeated in his attempt to cross, on October 19,
+by snow. This is about the closing time of the passes generally, the
+Parwan being only 12,300 feet in altitude, although Lord estimated it
+at 15,000. It is worth noting here that the Russo-Afghan Boundary
+Commission party crossed by the Chahardar Pass (a pass to the west
+again of the Walian) in the same month of October without encountering
+any insuperable difficulty from snow, although the Chahardar is more
+than 1000 feet higher than the Parwan. The fact that Lord met a
+khafila snow-bound near the top of the pass indicates that it was
+closed rather unexpectedly. Valuable observations were, however, the
+result of this reconnaissance. It revealed the fact that snow lies
+lower and deeper on the northern side of the Hindu Kush than on the
+southern, a fact which is in direct opposition to the general
+characteristics of the Himalayas. The explanation is, however, simple.
+In both cases the snow lies lowest on that side which reaches down to
+low humid plains and much precipitation of moisture. Where the barrier
+of the mountains breaks the upward sweep of vapour-bearing currents,
+there snowfall is arrested, and the highlands become desiccated.
+Lord's observation as a geologist also determined the constitution of
+these mountains. He noted the rugged uplift (beautiful from the
+admixture of pure white felspar and glossy black hornblende) of the
+central granite peaks through the overlying gneiss, schists, and
+slate, which thus revealed the extension of one of the great primeval
+folds of Himalayan conformation.
+
+Returning from his attempt to cross the pass, Lord had the good
+fortune to be able to extend his researches for a day's march up the
+Ghorband valley, and to explore the ancient lead mines of Ferengal,
+which have been sunk in the Ghorband conglomerates, but had long been
+abandoned by the Afghans. These he found to have been worked on
+"knowledge and principle, not on blind chance,"--as might have been
+expected in a country which still possesses some of the best practical
+mining and irrigation engineers in the world; and he testifies, _inter
+alia_, to the extraordinary effect of the exceeding dryness of the
+interior, as evidenced by the preservation from decay of dead animals.
+Similar phenomena have been observed in many parts of the world both
+before and since, and it would appear that a satisfactory scientific
+explanation is still wanting for this preservative tendency of caves
+and mines; the atmosphere, in some cases where well-preserved remains
+are found, being subject to exactly the same conditions of humidity as
+the outer air.
+
+It was during this interesting exploratory trip that Dr. Lord received
+a welcome invitation to visit Murad Beg in the Uzbek capital of
+Kunduz, where his professional advice was in urgent demand. Although
+the northern passes of the Hindu Kush were closed, the route to
+Badakshan was still open _via_ Bamian and Khulm, and it was by this
+route that for the first (and apparently the last) time the journey
+from Kabul to Kunduz was made by European officers. Lord was
+accompanied by Lieut. Wood, and it is to Wood's summary of the
+conditions of the route that we now refer. As far as Bamian it was
+already beginning to be a well-known road (well known, that is, to
+European travellers); but beyond that point it was a new venture then,
+nor can any record be traced of subsequent investigations on it.
+
+Wood summarises the route by first enumerating the seven passes which
+have to be negotiated before reaching Kunduz (or Khulm), and gives us
+a slight description of them all. Four of these passes were in Afghan
+territory, and three beyond. Of the passes of Ispahak and Unai he
+merely remarks that a mail-coach might be driven over them. The
+Hajigak group he regards as the "Key-guide to the Bamian line," the
+Hajigak being the highest pass encountered (about 11,000 feet). A
+little to the north is the Irak, and to the south is the Pushti
+Hajigak (Kafzur in modern maps); the Hajigak, or Irak, being open to
+khafilas for ten months of the year, but for a considerably less
+period to the passage of troops. The next pass Wood calls Kalloo
+(Panjpilan in our maps), which he regards as being lower than Hajigak.
+Then follows the descent into Bamian. Next is the Ak Robat Pass
+(10,200 feet), between the valleys of Bamian and Saighan, of which
+Wood reports that "it is open to wheeled traffic of all description."
+As far as this (the then frontier of Afghanistan) Wood refers to the
+fact, already recorded, that the Amir's Lieutenant--Haji Khan--was
+able to take field-pieces "of a size between 12- and 18-pounders." We
+already know the conditions under which this passage of artillery was
+effected. It is also on record that Nadir Shah took guns as far as
+Saighan. What is not so generally known is that the Uzbek chief, Murad
+Beg, took an 18-pounder over the rest of the route from Saighan to
+Kunduz. The three remaining passes are (1) the Dandan Shikan, between
+Saighan and Kamard, of which Wood reports the north face to be
+exceedingly difficult, and where he would never have believed that a
+gun could pass, had it not been actually traversed by the 18-pounder
+of Murad Beg. It may be mentioned here that it took 1100 men to drag
+that gun up the northern face of the pass, so that Wood is quite
+justified in classing it as only fit for camels. Then follows (2) the
+Kara Pass, leading from Kamard into the valley of the Tashkurghan
+River, about which the only remark made by Wood is that it may be
+turned by the pass of Surkh Kila (which involves a considerable
+detour). As Wood does not definitely state which is (3) the seventh
+pass, we may assume that it is the Shamsuddin, which is merely a
+detour to avoid an awkward reach of the Tashkurghan valley.
+
+This is probably the first clear exposition which has ever been made
+of the general nature of the route connecting Kabul with Afghan
+Turkistan, and for it we must give Lieut. Wood all the credit that is
+fully due; for no subsequent surveys and investigations have
+materially altered his opinion. It must not be forgotten that in
+dealing with the story of Afghan exploration we are touching on past
+records. The far-sighted policy of public works development, which
+distinguished the late Amir Abdurrahmon, led to the extension of roads
+for facilitating commerce between the Oxus and Kabul, the full effect
+of which we have yet to learn. To the north of Kabul the roads opened
+to khafila traffic, _via_ the Chahardar Pass and the Khawak, have
+introduced a new and important feature into the system of Afghan
+communications; and it is more than probable that the facilities for
+wheeled traffic between Kabul and Tashkurghan have lately been largely
+increased.[12] It is well also to remember that it is not the physical
+difficulties of rough roads and narrow passes which form the chief
+obstacle to the movement of large bodies of troops. Roads can be made,
+and crooked places straightened with comparative ease, but altitude,
+sheer altitude, still remains a formidable barrier, which no modern
+ingenuity has taught us to overcome. Deep impassable snow-drifts, and
+the fierce killing blasts of the north-westers of Afghanistan close
+these highland fields for months together; and neither roads nor
+railways (still less air-ships) can prevail against them.
+
+When Wood and Lord turned eastward from Khulm, and passed on to Kunduz
+and Badakshan, they were treading ground which was absolutely new to
+the European explorer, and which has seldom been reached even by the
+ubiquitous native surveyor. Lord gives us but a scanty account of
+Kunduz and northern Badakshan in his report, and we must turn to the
+immortal Wood (the discoverer of one of the Oxus' sources) for fuller
+and more picturesque detail. Wood left Kunduz for the upper Oxus in
+the early spring of 1838, and it is somewhat remarkable that he should
+have effected an important exploration successfully in regions so
+highly elevated at the worst season of the year. Before following Wood
+to the Oxus, we may add a few further details of that important march
+from Kabul to Kunduz.
+
+It was in November 1837 that Wood and Lord were again in Kabul after
+their unsuccessful attempt to cross the Parwan Pass, and losing no
+time they started on the 15th for Badakshan by the Bamian route,
+crossing the Unai Pass and the elevated plain which separates it from
+the Helmund without difficulty. They encountered large parties of
+half-starved Hazaras seeking the plains on their annual pilgrimage to
+warm quarters for the winter. They crossed the Hajigak Pass on the
+19th "with great ease," then passing the divide between the Afghan and
+Turkistan drainage; but they had to make a considerable detour to
+avoid the direct Kalu Pass, and entered Bamian by the precipitous
+Pimuri defile and the volcanic valley of Zohak. The Ak Robat Pass
+presented no difficulty. In Saighan they encountered the slave-gang of
+wretched Hazara people who were being then conducted to Kunduz as
+yearly contribution. Not much is said about the Dandan Shikan Pass
+dividing Saighan from Kamurd, where they were welcomed by the drunken
+old chief Rahmatulla Khan, whose character for reckless hospitality
+seems to have been a well-known feature in Badakshan. He is mentioned
+by every traveller who passed that way since Burnes' mission in 1832.
+On the 28th they reached Kuram, where they found another slave-gang
+being conducted by Afghans from Kabul, who had the grace to appear
+much ashamed of being caught red-handed in a traffic which has never
+commended itself to Afghan public opinion. Amongst Uzbeks it is
+different, the custom of man-stealing appears to have smothered every
+better feeling, and the traffic in human beings extends even into
+their domestic arrangements. Their wives are just as much "property"
+as their slaves. A little below Kuram they struck off to the right by
+a direct route to Kunduz, and passing over a district which had "a
+wavy surface," "affording excellent pasturage," which involved the
+crossing of the pass of Archa, they finally crossed the Kunduz River,
+and making their way through the swampy district of Baglan and
+Aliabad, reached Kunduz on December 4.
+
+Wood is not enthusiastic about Kunduz. He calls it one of the most
+wretched towns in Murad Beg's dominions. "The appearance of Kunduz
+accords with the habits of an Uzbek; and by its manner, poverty and
+filth, may be estimated the moral worth of its inhabitants." He
+thought a good deal of Murad Beg all the same, and could not deny his
+great abilities. "But with all his high qualifications Murad Beg is
+but the head of an organised banditti, a nation of plunderers, whom,
+however, none of the neighbouring states can exterminate." Murad Beg
+has joined his fathers long ago, but no recent account of Kunduz much
+alters Wood's opinion of it. The wretched Badakshanis whom Murad Beg
+conquered, and whom he set to live or die in the dank pestilential
+marshes which fill up the space between the Badakshan highlands and
+the Oxus, have since then been restored to their own country; and of
+Badakshan we heard enough from the Amir's officials connected with the
+Pamir Boundary Commission to lead us to believe in it as a veritable
+land of promise, a land whose natural beauty and fertility may be
+compared to that of Kashmir--but this was told of the mountain
+regions, not of the Oxus flats.
+
+When Wood got away from Kunduz and travelled eastwards to Faizabad and
+Jirm he does rise to enthusiasm, and tells us of scenes of natural
+beauty which no European eye has seen since he passed that way. On
+December 11, in mid-winter, Wood started from Kunduz with the
+permission of Murad Beg to trace the "Jihun" to its source, and the
+story of this historical exploration will always be most excellent
+reading.
+
+First crossing an open plain with a southern background of mountains,
+a plain of jungle grass, moist and unfavourable to human life, with
+stifling mists of vapour flitting uneasily before them, the party
+reached higher ground and the town of Khanabad. Behind Khanabad rises
+the isolated peak of Koh Umbar, 2500 feet above the plain, which
+appears to be a remarkable landmark in this region. It has never yet
+been fixed geographically. Passing through the low foot-hills
+surrounding this mountain, Wood emerged into the plain of Talikhan,
+and reached the ancient town of that name in a heavy downpour of
+winter rain. Here at once he encountered reminiscences of Greek
+occupation and claimants to the lineage of Alexander the Great. The
+trail of the Greek occupation of Baktria clings to Badakshan as does
+that of Nysa to the valleys of Kafiristan. The impression of Talikhan
+is summed up by Wood in the statement that it is a most disagreeable
+place in rainy weather. He might say the same of every town in Afghan
+Turkistan. He has much to say of Uzbek character and idiosyncrasies.
+In one respect he says that the habits of Uzbek children are superior
+to those of young Britons. They do not rob sparrows' nests! Here, too,
+Wood found himself on the track of Moorcroft. Striking eastward he
+crossed the Lataband Pass (since fixed at 5650 feet in height) and
+first encountered snow. From the pass he describes the surrounding
+view as glorious: "In every quarter snowclad peaks shot up into the
+sky," and he gives the name Khoja Mahomed to the range (unnamed in our
+maps) which crosses Badakshan from north-east to south-west and forms
+the chief water-parting of the country. Before him the Kokcha "rolled
+its green waters through the rugged valley of Duvanah." The summit of
+Lataband is wide and level and the descent eastwards comparatively
+easy.
+
+Through the pretty vale of Mashad (where Wood's party crossed the
+Varsach River) to Teshkhan the road led generally over hilly country
+covered with snow; but leaving Teshkhan it rises over the pass of
+Junasdara (fixed by Wood at 6600 feet), crossing one of the great
+spurs of the Khoja Mahomed system, and descended to Daraim, "a valley
+scarce a bowshot across, but watered, as all the valleys in Badakshan
+are, by a beautiful stream of the purest water, and bordered, wherever
+there is soil, by a soft velvet turf." To Daraim succeeded the plain
+of Argu and the "wavy" district of Reishkhan, which reached to the
+valley of the Kokcha. So far, since leaving Talikhan, they had met
+with "no sign of man or beast," but the latter were occasionally in
+close proximity, for the path was made easy by hog tracks, and Wood
+has some grisly tales to tell about the ferocity of the wolves of the
+country. Junasdara he describes as a difficult or steep pass, but he
+notes the fact that Murad Beg had crossed it with artillery which left
+evidence in wheel tracks.
+
+Of Faizabad, when Wood was there, "scarcely a vestige was left," and
+Jirm had become the capital of the country. But Faizabad has risen to
+importance since, and according to the reports of subsequent native
+explorers, has regained a good deal of its commercial importance.
+"Behind the site of the town the mountains are in successive ridges to
+a height of at least 2000 feet" (_i.e._ above the plain); "before it
+rolls the Kokcha in a rocky trench-like bed sufficiently deep to
+preclude all danger of inundation. Looking up the valley, the ruined
+and uncultivated gardens are seen to fringe the stream for a distance
+of two miles above the town." Faizabad is about 3950 feet above
+sea-level. Wood makes it about 500 feet lower, and his original
+observations were probably of more than equal value with those of
+subsequent native explorers. But certain recent improvements in
+exploring instruments, and certain refinements in computing the value
+of such observations, render the balance of probability in favour of
+the later records. Wood (as a sailor) was a professional observer, and
+where observations alone are concerned his own are excellent.
+
+From Faizabad Wood went to Jirm, which he regarded as a more important
+position than Faizabad. Elsewhere an opinion has been expressed that
+Jirm was the ancient capital of the country. Wood took the shortest
+road to Jirm which leaves the Kokcha valley and passes over the Kasur
+spur, winding by a high and slippery path for some distance along the
+face of the hill. It was a two days' march. The fort at Jirm he
+describes as the most important in Murad Beg's dominions. His stay at
+Jirm gave him the opportunity of visiting the lapis-lazuli mines near
+the head of the Kokcha River under the shadow of the Hindu Kush just
+bordering Kafiristan. This experience was useful, for Wood not only
+contributes a most interesting account of the working of the mines,
+but places on record the impracticable nature of the route which
+follows the Kokcha River from its source above the mines to Jirm. Near
+the assumed source, and not far south of the mines, there are two
+passes across the Hindu Kush, viz. the Minjan, which connects with the
+well-known Dorah and leads to Chitral, and the Mandal, which unites
+the head of the Bashgol valley of Kafiristan with the Minjan sources
+of the Kokcha. The upper reaches of the Kokcha River form the Minjan
+valley. Sir George Robertson crossed the Mandal in 1889 and fixed its
+height at over 15,000 feet, and he places the head of the Minjan (or
+Kokcha) much farther south than it appears in our maps. As the Mandal
+Pass connects Kafiristan with the Minjan valley of the Kokcha
+(pronounced by Wood to be almost impracticable above Jirm), it is of
+no great geographical importance; nor, owing to the same
+impracticability, is the Minjan Pass itself of any great consequence,
+although it connects with Chitral. The Dorah (14,800 feet), on the
+other hand, links up Chitral with another branch of the Kokcha,
+passing by the populous commercial town of Zebak, and is consequently
+a pass to be reckoned with in spite of its altitude. It is, in short,
+the chief pass over the Hindu Kush directly connecting India with
+Badakshan; but a pass which is nearly as high as Mont Blanc affords no
+royal gateway through the mountains.
+
+Wood had sufficiently indicated the nature of the Kokcha valley
+between Jirm and Minjan. At the point where the mines occur it is
+about 200 yards wide. On both sides the mountains are "high and
+naked," and the river flows in a trough 70 feet below the bed of the
+valley. We know that it is not a practicable route. It is, however,
+much to be regretted that no modern explorer has touched the valley of
+Anjuman to the west of Minjan, which, whilst it is perhaps the main
+contributor to the waters of the Kokcha, also appears to have
+contained a recognised route in mediæval times. "If you wish not to go
+to destruction, avoid the narrow valley of Koran," is a native warning
+quoted by Wood, which seems to apply to the upper Kokcha. As a
+passable khafila route, Idrisi writes that from Andarab to Badakshan
+_towards the east_ is a four days' journey. Andarab (the ancient site)
+being fixed at the junction of the Kasan stream with the Andarab
+River, the only possible route eastwards would be to the head of the
+Andarab at Khawak, and thence over the Nawak Pass into the Anjuman
+valley. Nor can the Nawak (which is as well known a pass as the
+Khawak) have any _raison d'être_ unless it connects with that valley.
+There is, however, the possibility of a wrong inference from Idrisi's
+vague statement. "Badakshan" (which was represented by either Jirm or
+Faizabad) is actually east of Andarab, but to reach it by the obvious
+route of the lowlands, following the Kunduz River and ultimately
+striking eastwards, would involve starting from Andarab to the west of
+north. But just as the Mandal leading into the Minjan valley opens up
+no useful route in spite of being a well-known pass, so may the Nawak
+lead to nothing really practicable in Anjuman. This, indeed, is
+probably the case, but Anjuman remains to be explored.
+
+Returning to Jirm, Wood awaited the opportunity for his historic
+exploration of the Oxus. This occurred at the end of January 1838,
+when news came to Jirm that the Oxus was frozen above Darwaz. The only
+route open to travellers in the snow time of that region is the bed of
+the frozen river, and Wood determined to make the best use of the
+opportunity. He was anxious to visit the ruby mines of the Oxus
+valley, but in this he did not succeed, owing to the extreme
+difficulties of the route following the river from its great bend
+northward to the district of Gharan, in which these mines are
+situated. He met the remnants of a party returning from Gharan which
+had lost nearly half its numbers from an avalanche when he reached
+Zebak, and wisely determined to expend his efforts in following up the
+course of the river to its source, rather than tempt Providence by a
+dangerous detour. To reach Zebak from Jirm it was necessary to follow
+the Kokcha to its junction with the Wardoj and then turn up that
+valley to Zebak. This journey in winter, with the biting blasts of the
+glacier-bred winds of the Hindu Kush in their teeth, was sufficiently
+trying. These devastated regions seem to be never free from the plague
+of wind. It is bad enough in the Pamirs in summer, but in winter when
+superadded to the effects of a cold registering 6° below zero it must
+have been maddening. There was no great difficulty in crossing the
+divide between Zebak (a small but not unimportant town) and the elbow
+of the Oxus River at Ishkashm.
+
+Once again since the days of Wood a party of Europeans, which included
+two well-known geographers (Lockhart and Woodthorpe, both of whom have
+since gone to their rest), reached Ishkashm in 1886, and they were
+treated there with anything but hospitality. Wood seemed to have fared
+better. With the authority of Murad Beg to back him, and his own tact
+and determination to carry him through, he succeeded in overcoming all
+obstacles, and from point to point he made his way to where the Oxus
+forks at Kila Panja. From Ishkashm to Kila Panja the valley was fairly
+wide and open, and here for the first time he met those interesting
+nomadic folk the Kirghiz.
+
+Wood's observations on the people he met are always acute and
+interesting, but he seems rather to have been influenced (as he admits
+that he may have been) by his Badakshani guides in framing his
+estimate of Kirghiz character. Thieves and liars they may be. These
+characteristics are common in High Asia, but even in these particulars
+they compare favourably with Uzbeks and Afghans generally. At any rate
+he trusted them, and it was with their assistance that he reached the
+source of the Oxus. Without them in a world of snow-covered hills and
+depressions, with every halting-place buried deep and not a trace of a
+track to be seen, he would have fared badly. At Kila Panja he was
+faced with a difficulty which gave him anxious consideration. Could he
+have guessed what issues would thereafter hang on a decision to that
+momentous question--which branch of the Oxus led to its real
+source--it would have caused him even greater anxiety. Ultimately he
+followed the northern branch which waters the Great Pamir, and after
+almost incredible exertion in floundering through snowdrifts and
+scratching his way along the ice road of the river surface, on
+February 19, 1838, he overlooked that long narrow expanse of frozen
+water which is now known as Victoria Lake.
+
+We may discuss the question of the source, or sources, of the Oxus
+still, and trace them to the great glaciers from which the lakes north
+and south of the Nicolas range are fed, or to the ice caverns of the
+Hindu Kush as we please--there are many sources, and it is not in the
+power of mortal man to measure their relative profundity--but Wood
+still lives in geographical history as the first explorer of the upper
+Oxus, and will rank with Speke and Grant as the author of a solution
+to one of the great riddles of the world's hydrography. With infinite
+labour he dug a hole through the ice and found the depth of the lake
+at its centre to be only 9 feet. Were he to plumb it again in these
+days he would find it even less, for the lake (like all Central Asian
+lakes) is growing smaller and shallower year by year. The information
+which he absorbed about the high regions of Asia, the Pamirs (the
+Bam-i-dunya), was wonderfully correct on the whole, and is strong
+evidence of his ability in sifting the mass of miscellaneous matter
+with which the Asiatic usually conceals a geographical truth. He is
+incorrect only in the matter of altitude, which he fixes too high by
+more than a thousand feet, and he makes rather a strange mistake in
+recording that the Kunar (the Chitral River) rises north of the Hindu
+Kush and breaks through that range. Otherwise it would be difficult to
+add to or to correct his information by the light of subsequent
+surveys. With his return journey surrounded by all the enchantment of
+bursting spring in those regions we need not concern ourselves. After
+a three months' absence he rejoined Dr. Lord at Kunduz.
+
+Wood's return to Kunduz was but the prelude to another journey of
+exploration into the northern regions of Badakshan which, in some
+respects, was the most important of all his investigations, for it is
+to the information obtained on this journey that we are still indebted
+for what little knowledge we possess of the general characteristics of
+the Oxus valley above Termez. Dr. Lord was summoned in his medical
+capacity to visit a chief at Hazrat Imam on the Oxus River, and Wood
+seized the opportunity to explore the Oxus basin from Hazrat Imam
+upwards through Darwaz.
+
+Kunduz itself has been described by both authorities as a miserable
+swamp-bound town, with pestilential low-lying flats stretching beyond
+it towards the Oxus. This low country is, however, productive, and is
+probably by this time largely reclaimed from the grass and reed beds
+which covered it. Into this poisonous swamp country the Uzbek chief
+had imported the wretched Badakshani Tajiks whom he had captured
+during his extensive raids, for the purpose of colonizing. Wood
+reckons that 100,000 people must have originally been dumped into this
+swamp land, of whom barely 6000 were left when he was at Kunduz.
+Between the swamp and the Oxus was a splendid stretch of prairie or
+pasture land, reaching to the tangled jungle which immediately fringed
+the river below the Darwaz mountains, and this naturally excited his
+admiration. "Eastward" of Khulm "to the rocky barriers of Darwaz all
+the high-lying portion of the valley is at this season (March) a wild
+prairie of sweets, a verdant carpet enamelled with flowers"; and he
+describes the "low swelling" hills fringing these plains as "soft to
+the eye as the verdant sod which carpets them is to the foot." This is
+very pretty, and quite accords with the general description of country
+which forms part of the Oxus valley much farther west. The Oxus
+jungles, however, only occur at intervals. In Wood's time (1838) they
+were a thick tangle of low-growing scrub, which formed the haunts of
+wild beasts which were a terror to the dwellers in the plains. Tigers
+are found in those patches of Oxus jungle still. Hazrat Imam then
+ranked with Zebak and Jirm as one of the most important towns of
+Badakshan. East of Hazrat Imam were the traces of a gigantic canal
+system with its head about Sherwan, from which point to the foot-hills
+of Darwaz the river is (or was) fordable in almost any part. Wood
+forded it at a point near Yang Kila, opposite Saib in Kolab, in March,
+and found the river running in three channels, only one of which was
+really difficult. In this one, however, the current was running 4
+miles an hour and the width of the channel was about 200 yards. It was
+only by uniting the forces of the party to oppose the stream that
+they were able to effect the passage. Thus was Wood probably the first
+European to set his foot in Kolab north of the Oxus. The river-bottom
+in this part of its course is generally pebbly, and at the Sherwan
+ford guns had been taken across. Near the mouth of the Kokcha (here a
+sluggish muddy stream) Wood found the site of an ancient city which he
+calls Barbarra, and which I think is probably the Mabara of Idrisi.
+
+Wood's next excursion from Kunduz was by the direct high road westward
+to Mazar, where he and Lord hoped to find relics of Moorcroft (in
+which quest they were successful), and back again. This only confirmed
+what was previously known of the facility of that route, one of the
+most ancient in the world, and the attention which had been paid to it
+by the construction of covered tanks (they would be called Haoz
+farther west) at intervals for the convenience of travellers. The
+final recall of these two explorers to Kabul afforded them the
+opportunity for investigating the route which runs directly south from
+Kunduz by the river valley of that name to the junction with the
+Baghlan. Thence, following the Baghlan to its head, they crossed by
+the Murgh Pass into the valley of Andarab, and diverging eastward they
+adopted the Khawak Pass to reach the Panjshir valley, and so to Kabul.
+No great difficulties were encountered on this route (which has only
+been partially explored since), involving only two passes between the
+Oxus and Kabul, _i.e._ the Murgh (7400 feet) which is barely mentioned
+by Wood, and the Khawak (11,650 feet--Wood makes it 1500 feet higher),
+and it undoubtedly possesses many advantages as the modern popular
+route between Kabul and Badakshan. It is not the high-road to Mazar
+(the capital of Afghan Turkistan), which will always be represented by
+the Bamian route, but it must be recognised as a fairly easy means of
+communication in summer between the chief fords of the Oxus and the
+Kabul valley. The Greek settlements were about Baghlan and Andarab,
+and undoubtedly this was the road best known to them across the Hindu
+Kush, and probably as much used as the Kaoshan or Parwan passes, which
+were more direct. For many centuries, however, in mediæval history the
+Panjshir valley possessed such an evil reputation as the home of the
+worst robbers in Asia, that a wide berth was given to it by casual
+travellers. Timur Shah made good use of it for military purposes, as
+we have seen, and latterly it has been improved into a fair commercial
+high-road under Afghan engineers. The Panjshir inhabitants (once
+Kafirs--now truculent Mohamedans) have been reduced to reason, and it
+will be in the future what it has been in the ancient past--one of the
+great khafila routes of Asia. When Wood crossed it in May it was not
+really practicable for horses, and the party made their way across
+with considerable difficulty. It is the altitude, and the altitude
+alone, which renders it a formidable military barrier, and thus will
+it remain as part of that great Hindu Kush wall which forms the
+central obstruction of a buffer state.
+
+Before taking leave of these two most successful (and most
+trustworthy) explorers of Afghanistan, it may be useful to sum up
+their views on that little-known region, Badakshan. The plains, the
+useful and beautiful valleys of Badakshan, lie in the embrace of a
+kind of mountain horse-shoe, which shuts them off from the Oxus on the
+north-east and east and winds round to the Hindu Kush on the south.
+The weak point of the semicircular barrier occurs at the junction with
+the Hindu Kush, where the pass between Zebak and Ishkashm is only 8700
+feet high. From the slopes of the Hindu Kush mountain torrents drain
+down through the valleys of Zebak (called the Wardoj by Wood), the
+Minjan (or Kokcha) and the Anjuman into the great central river of
+Kokcha. Of these valleys, so far as we know, only the Wardoj is really
+practicable as a northerly route to the Oxus. Shutting off the head of
+the Kokcha system, a lateral range called Khoja Mahomed by Wood (a
+name which ought to be preserved), in which are many magnificent
+peaks, sends down its contributions north-west to the Kunduz. We know
+nothing about these valleys, and Wood tells us nothing, but the
+geographical inference is strong that all this part of upper
+Badakshan, including the heads of the Kokcha and Kunduz affluents, is
+but a wide inhospitable upland plateau of a conformation similar to
+that which lies east and west of it, cut into deep furrows and
+impassable gorges by the mountain streams which run thousands of feet
+below the plateau level. Within it will almost certainly be traced in
+due course of time the evidences of those primeval parallel folds, or
+wrinkles, which form the basis of Himalayan construction. Probably the
+Khoja Mahomed represents one of them, and the heads of the streams
+which feed the Kokcha and the eastern affluents of the Kunduz will be
+found (as already indicated in the Wardoj, or Zebak, stream) to take
+their source in deep, lateral, ditch-like valleys, which, closely
+underlying these folds, have been reshaped and altered by ages of
+denudation and seismic destruction.
+
+The few inhabitants who are hidden away in remote villages and hamlets
+belong to the great Kafir community. This is a part of unexplored
+Kafiristan rather than Badakshan, and he will be a bold man indeed who
+undertakes its investigation. No Asiatic secret now held back from
+view will command so much vivid interest in its unfolding as will the
+ethnographical conditions of these people when we can really get at
+them. This mountain region occupies a large share of Badakshan. The
+rest of the plateau land to the west we know fairly well and have
+sufficiently described. The wonder of the world is that the deeply
+recessed valleys of it, the Bamian, Saighan, Kamard, Baghlan, and
+Andarab depressions should have figured so largely in the world's
+history. That a confined narrow ribbon of space such as Bamian,
+difficult of access, placed by nature in the heart of a wilderness,
+should have been the centre not only of a great kingdom but the focus
+of a great religion, would be inexplicable if we did not remember that
+through it runs the connecting link between the wealth of India and
+the great cities of the Oxus plains and Central Asia.
+
+The northern slopes and plains of Badakshan, between the mountains and
+the Oxus, form part of a region which once represented the wealth of
+civilization in Asia. The whole region was dotted with towns of
+importance in mediæval times, and the fame of its beauty and wealth
+had passed down the ages from the days of Assyria and Greece to those
+of the destroying Mongol hordes. From prehistoric times nations of the
+west had planted colonies in Baktria, and here are to be gathered
+together the threads of so many ethnographical survivals as may be
+represented by the successive Empires of the West. Baktria is the
+cradle of a marvellously mixed ethnography, and to all who have seen
+the weird beauty of that strange land, the fascination which it has
+ever possessed for the explorer and pilgrims is no matter of surprise.
+
+A word or two must be added here about that previous explorer
+(Moorcroft) in Northern Afghanistan whose fate was ascertained by
+Lord. It is most unfortunate that some of the most important
+manuscripts of this unfortunate Asiatic traveller were never
+recovered, but his story has been written and will be referred to in
+further detail. We have direct testimony to the fate which finally
+overtook him in Dr. Lord's report of his visit to Mazar-i-Sharif,
+which was made with the express purpose of recovering all the records
+that might be traced of Moorcroft's travels in Afghan Turkistan.
+
+A previous story of Moorcroft is highly interesting. An early Tibetan
+explorer (the celebrated Abbé Huc) told a tale of a certain Englishman
+named Moorcroft, who was reported to have lived in Lhasa for twelve
+years previous to the year 1838 and who was supposed to have been
+assassinated on his way back to India _via_ Ladak. The story was
+circumstantial and attracted considerable attention. We know now from
+a memorandum of Dr. Lord written in May 1838, that in the early spring
+of that year when he and Lieut. Wood visited Mazar-i-Sharif they
+discovered that the German companion of Moorcroft (Trebeck) had died
+in that city, leaving amongst many loose records a slip of paper, with
+the date September 6, 1825, thereon, noting the fact that "Mr. M."
+(Moorcroft) "died on August 27th." Dr. Lord's investigations led him
+to the conclusion that Moorcroft died at Andkhui, a victim "not more
+to the baneful effects of the climate than to the web of treachery and
+intrigue with which he found himself surrounded and his return cut
+off." Trebeck, who seems to have been held in great estimation by the
+Afghans, died soon after; neither traveller leaving any substantial
+account of his adventures. Moorcroft's books (thirty volumes) were
+recovered, and the list of them would surprise any modern traveller
+who believes in a light and handy equipment. Dr. Lord's inquiries, in
+my opinion, effectually dispose of the venerable Abbé's story of
+Moorcroft's residence at Lhasa; although, of course, the record of his
+visit to Western Tibet and the Manasarawar Lakes earlier in the
+century must have been well enough known; and the Tibetans may
+possibly have believed in a reincarnation of their one and only
+European visitor in their own capital.
+
+This chapter cannot be closed without a tribute of respect to those
+most able and enterprising geographers who (chiefly as assistants to
+Burnes) were the means of first giving to the world a reasonable
+knowledge of the geography of Afghanistan. The names of Leech, Lord,
+and Wood will always remain great in geographical story, and although
+none of them individually (nor, indeed, all of them collectively)
+covered anything like as wide an area as the American Masson, they
+effected a far greater change in the maps of the period--for Masson
+was no map-maker. As regards Sir Alexander Burnes, his initiative in
+all that pertained to geographical exploration was great and valuable,
+but he was individually more connected with the exploitation of
+Central Asian and Persian geography than with that of Afghanistan.
+Previous to the year 1836, when he undertook his political mission to
+Kabul (and when he was travelling over comparatively old ground), he
+had already extended his journeys across the Hindu Kush to the Oxus,
+Bokhara, and Persia; and the book which he published in 1834 was a
+revelation in Central Asian physiography and policy. But as an
+explorer in Afghanistan he owed his information chiefly to his
+assistants, and undoubtedly he was splendidly well served. The
+ridiculous and costly impedimenta which seemed to be recognised as a
+necessary accompaniment to a campaign or "an occupation" in those
+days--the magnificent tents, the elephants, wives and nurseries and
+retinue of military officers--found no place whatever in the
+explorers' camps. Men were content to make their way from point to
+point and take their chance of native hospitality. They lived with the
+people amongst whom they moved, and they gradually became almost as
+much of them as with them. Perhaps their views, political and social,
+became somewhat too warmly tinted with local colour by these methods,
+but undoubtedly they learned more and they saw more, and they acquired
+a wider, deeper sympathy with native aspirations and native character
+than is possible to travellers who move _en prince_ amongst a people
+who only interest them as races dominating a certain section of the
+mountains and plains of a strange world. All honour to the names of
+Leech, Lord, and Wood--especially Wood.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[12] The latest reports indicate that there is now a road fit for
+motor traffic between Kabul and Afghan Turkistan, as well as between
+Kabul and Badakshan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA--MOORCROFT
+
+
+One of the most disappointing of the early British explorers of our
+Indian trans-frontier was Moorcroft. Disappointing, because he got so
+little geographical information out of so large an area of adventure.
+Moorcroft was a veterinary surgeon blessed with an unusually good
+education and all the impulse of a nomadic wanderer. He was
+Superintendent of the H.E.I. Company's stud at Calcutta, and his views
+on agricultural subjects generally, especially the improvement of
+stock, were certainly in advance of his time, although it seems
+extraordinary that he should have sought further inspiration in the
+wilds of the then unexplored trans-Himalayas or in Central Asia. The
+Government of India were evidently sceptical as to the value of such
+researches, and he received but cold comfort from their grudging
+spirit of support, which ended in a threat to cut off his pay
+altogether after a few years' sojourn in Ladak whilst studying the
+elementary principles of Tibetan farming. Neither would they supply
+him with the ample stock of merchandise which he asked for as a means
+of opening up trade with those chilly countries; and when, finally, he
+assumed the position of a high political functionary, and became the
+vehicle of an offer to the Government of India of the sovereignty of
+Ladak (which certainly might have led to complications with the Sikh
+Government of the Punjab) he was rather curtly told to mind his own
+business.
+
+On the whole, it is tolerably clear that the Government represented by
+old John Company was not much more favourable to irresponsible
+travelling over the border and political intermeddling than is our
+modern Imperial institution. However, the fact remains that Moorcroft
+showed a spirit of daring enterprise, which led to the acquirement of
+a vast amount of most important information about countries and
+peoples contiguous to India of whom the Government of the time must
+have been in utter ignorance. When he first exploited Ladak, Leh was
+the _ultima thule_ of geographical investigation. What lay beyond it
+was almost blank conjecture, and a residence of two years must have
+ended in the amassing of a vast fund of useful information.
+Unfortunately, much of that information was lost at his death, and the
+correspondence and notes which came into the hands of his biographer
+were of such a character--so extraordinarily discursive and frequently
+so little relevant to the subject of his investigation--as to leave an
+impression that Moorcroft was certainly eccentric in his
+correspondence if not in more material ways. We get very little
+original geographical suggestion from him; but his constant and
+faithful companion Trebeck is much more consistent and careful in such
+detail as we find due to his personal observation, and it is to
+Trebeck rather than Moorcroft that the thanks of the Asiatic map-maker
+are due. With the Ladak episodes of Moorcroft's career we have nothing
+to do here, beyond noting that there is ample evidence that he never
+reached Lhasa, and never resided there, in spite of the persistent
+rumours which prevailed (even in Tibet) that a traveller of his name
+had lived in the city. It is exceedingly difficult to account for this
+rumour, unless indeed we credit the authors of it with a confusion of
+ideas between Lhasa, the capital of Tibet proper, and Leh, the capital
+of little Tibet.
+
+The interest of Moorcroft's adventures so far as we are now concerned
+commences with his journey from Peshawar to Kabul, Badakshan and
+Bokhara in 1824, when he was undoubtedly the first in the field of
+British Central Asiatic exploration. He owed his safe conduct from
+Peshawar (which place he reached only after some most unpleasant
+experiences in passing through the Sikh dominions of the Punjab) to a
+political crisis. Dost Mahomed Khan was consolidating his power at
+Kabul, but he had not then squared accounts with Habibullah the son of
+the former governor, his deceased elder brother Mahomed Azim Khan; and
+certain other members of his family (his brothers, Yar Mahomed, Pir
+Mahomed, and Sultan Mahomed), who were governors in the Indus
+provinces, thought it as well to step in and effect an arrangement. It
+was their stately march to Kabul which was Moorcroft's opportunity.
+Those were days when an Englishman was yet of interest to the Afghan
+potentate, who knew not what turn of fortune's wheel might necessitate
+an appeal for the intervention of the English.
+
+Moorcroft did not love the Afghans, and between the unauthorised
+robbers of the Kabul road and the official despoilers of the city he
+paid dearly for the right of transit through Afghanistan of himself
+and his merchandise. It was this assumed rôle of merchant (if indeed
+it was assumed) that hampered Moorcroft from first to last in his
+journeys beyond the frontier of British India. There was something to
+be made out of him, either by fair means or foul, and the rapacious
+exactions to which he was subjected were probably not in the least
+modified by his obstinate refusals to meet what he considered unjust
+demands. Invariably he had to pay in the end. His account of the road
+to Kabul is interesting from the keen observation which he brought to
+bear on his surroundings. He has much to say about the groups of
+Buddhist buildings which are so marked a feature at various points of
+the route, and his previous experiences in Tibet left him little room
+for doubt as to the nature of them. It is strange that locally there
+was not a tale to be told, not even a legend about them, which even
+indefinitely maintained their Buddhist origin.
+
+From Kabul Moorcroft succeeded in getting free with surprisingly
+little difficulty, though several members of his party declined to go
+farther. He gradually made his way by the Unai and Hajigak passes to
+Bamian, and thence to Haibak and Balkh. He was not slow to recognize
+the connection between the obvious Buddhist relics of Bamian and those
+which he had seen on the Kabul road; and at Haibak he visited a tope
+called Takht-i-Rustam (a generic name for these topes in Central Asia)
+of which his description tallies more or less with that of Captain
+Talbot, R.E., who unearthed what is probably the same relic some sixty
+years later. To Moorcroft we owe the identification of Haibak with the
+old mediæval town of Semenjan, and he states that he was told on the
+spot that this was its ancient name. No such name was recognised sixty
+years later, but the evidence of Idrisi's records confirms the fact
+beyond dispute.
+
+We need not enter into details of this well-worn and often described
+route. Moorcroft's best efforts were not directed to gazetteering, and
+we have much abler and more complete accounts of it than his. After
+passing the Ak Robat divide, Moorcroft found himself beyond Afghan
+jurisdiction and within the reach of that historic Uzbek chieftain,
+Murad Beg of Kunduz. Although Murad Beg was little better than a
+successful freebooter, he is a personage who has left his own definite
+mark on the history of days when British interest was just dawning on
+the Oxus banks. Moorcroft fell into his hands, and in spite of
+introductions he fared exceedingly badly. Indeed there can be little
+doubt that the cupidity excited by the possibility of so much plunder
+would have ended fatally for him, but for a happy inspiration which
+occurred to him when his affairs appeared to be _in extremis_. With
+great difficulty and at the peril of his life he made his way eastward
+to Talikhan, where resided a saintly Pirzada, uncle of Murad Beg, the
+one righteous man whose upright and dignified character redeemed his
+people from the taint of utter barbarism and treachery. He had
+discrimination enough to read Moorcroft aright, and at once
+discountenanced the tales that had been assiduously set abroad of his
+being a British spy upon the land; and he had firmness and authority
+sufficient to deliver him from the rapacity of his truculent nephew,
+and procure him freedom to depart after months of delay in the
+pestilential atmosphere of Kunduz. Yet this grand old Mahomedan saint
+patronised the institution of slavery, and was not above making a
+profit out of it, though at the same time he firmly declined to
+receive presents or have bribes for his good offices.
+
+As other travellers following in Moorcroft's footsteps at no great
+distance of time fell also into the hands of Murad Beg, and
+experienced very different treatment, it is useful just to note
+Moorcroft's description of him. He says: "I scarcely ever beheld a
+more forbidding countenance. His extremely high cheekbones gave the
+appearance to the skin of the face of its being unnaturally stretched,
+whilst the narrowness of the lower jaw left scarcely room for the
+teeth which were standing in all directions; he was extremely
+near-sighted." Not an attractive description! The spring had well
+advanced, and it was not till the middle of February 1825 that
+Moorcroft was able to resume his journey to the Oxus. He travelled
+from Kunduz to Tashkurghan and Mazar, and from the latter place he
+followed the most direct route to Bokhara _via_ the Khwaja Salar ferry
+across the Oxus, reaching Bokhara on February 25. Here his narrative
+ends, and we only know from Dr. Lord and Wood that he returned from
+Bokhara to Andkhui, and died there apparently of fever contracted in
+Kunduz. He was buried near Balkh. Trebeck died soon after, and was
+buried at Mazar-i-Sharif. Burnes visited and described the tombs of
+both travellers, but they have long since disappeared.
+
+As a geographer there is much that is wanting in the methods of this
+most enterprising traveller, who at least pioneered the way to High
+Asia from British India but who never made geographical exploration a
+primary object of his labours. He was true to the last to his trade as
+a student of agriculture, and it is in this particular, rather than
+in the regions of geography or history, that the value of his studies
+chiefly lies. He was the first to point out the general character of
+that disastrous road to Kabul which has cost England so dear, and he
+is still, with Burnes and Lord and Wood, our chief authority for the
+general characteristics of Badakshan and of the Oxus valley east of
+Balkh. He did not, however, touch the Oxus east of Khwaja Salar, and
+consequently did not see or appreciate the great spread of splendid
+pastoral country which lies between the pestilential marsh lands of
+Kunduz and the river.
+
+One would be apt to gather a pessimistic idea of lower Badakshan from
+the pages of Moorcroft's story, which are undoubtedly tinted strongly
+with the gloomy and grey colouring of his own unhappy experiences. Of
+Balkh he has very little to say; he noted no antiquities about Balkh,
+but he calls attention to the wide spaces covered with ruins which are
+to be found at intervals scattered over the plains between Balkh and
+the Oxus. It is a little difficult to follow his exact route across
+the Oxus plains by the light of modern maps, but his Feruckabad is
+probably our Feruk, and I gather that his Akbarabad is Akcha or
+Akchaabad. The condition of Balkh, of Akcha, and of the ruin-studded
+plains of the Oxus were evidently much the same in 1824 as they were
+in 1884. Khwaja Salar (where Moorcroft crossed the Oxus in ferry-boats
+drawn by horses) has since become historical. It was accepted in the
+Anglo-Russian protocols defining the Afghan boundary as an important
+point in the Russo-Afghan boundary delimitation, but it was not to be
+found. Moorcroft gives a very good reason for its disappearance, by
+stating that the place was razed to the ground just the day before he
+arrived there. Since then the ruins of the old village have been
+devoured by the shifting Oxus, and nothing but a ziarat at some
+distance from the river remains as a record of the distinguished saint
+who gave it its name.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BURNES
+
+
+No traveller who ever returned to his country with tales of stirring
+adventure ever attracted more interest, or even astonishment, than
+Lieut. Alexander Burnes. He published his story in 1835, when the Oxus
+regions of Asia were but vaguely outlined and shadowy geography. It
+did not matter that they had been the scene of classical history for
+more than 2000 years, and that the whole network of Oxus roads and
+rivers had been written about and traversed by European hosts for
+centuries before our era. That story belonged to a buried past, and
+the British occupation of India had come about in modern history by
+way of the sea. England and Russia were then searching forward into
+Central Asia like two blind wrestlers in the dark, feeling their
+ground before them ere they came to grips. A veil of mystery hung over
+these highlands, a geographical fog that had thickened up, with just a
+thinner space in it here and there, where a gleam of light had
+penetrated, but never dispersed it, since the days when Assyrian and
+Persian, Skyth, Greek, and Mongul wandered through the highest of
+Asiatic highways at their own sweet will.
+
+In the present year of grace and of red tape bindings to most books of
+Asiatic travels, when the best of the geographical information
+accumulated by the few who bear with them the seal of officialdom is
+pigeon-holed for a use that never will be made of it, it is quite
+refreshing to fall back on these most entertaining records of men who
+(whether official or otherwise) all travelled under the same
+conditions of association with the natives of the country they
+traversed, accepting their hospitality, speaking their language,
+assuming their manners and dress, and passing with the crowd (and with
+the crowd only) as casual wayfarers. The fact of their European origin
+was almost always suspected, if not known, to certain of the better
+informed of their Asiatic hosts, but they were seldom given away. It
+was nobody's business to quarrel with England then. A hundred years
+ago the military credit of England stood high, and the irrepressible
+advance of the red line of the British India-border impressed the mind
+of the Asiatic of the highlands beyond the plains as evidence of an
+irresistible power. Russia then made no such impression. She was still
+far off, and the ties of commerce bound the Oxus Khanates to India,
+even when Russian goods were in Asiatic markets. The bankers of the
+country were Hindus--traders from the great commercial centre of
+Shikarpur. It is strange to read of this constant contact with Hindus
+in every part of Central Asia in those days, when the _hundi_ (or
+bill) of a Shikarpur banker was as good as a letter of credit in any
+bazaar as far as the Russian border. The power of England in India
+undoubtedly loomed much larger in Asiatic eyes before the disasters of
+the first Afghan war, and Englishmen of the type of Burnes, Christie,
+Pottinger, Vigne, and Broadfoot were able to carry out prolonged
+journeys through districts that are certainly not open to English
+exploration now. Even were English officers to-day free under existing
+political conditions to travel beyond the British border at all, it is
+doubtful whether any disguise would serve as a protection.
+
+The day has passed for such ventures as those of Burnes, and we must
+turn back a page or two in geographical history if we wish to
+appreciate the full value of British enterprise in exploring
+Afghanistan. Undoubtedly Burnes ranks high as a geographer and
+original pioneer. The fact that there is little or nothing left of the
+scene of his travels in 1830-32 and 1833 which has not been reduced to
+scientific mapping now, does not in any way detract from the merit of
+his early work; although it must be confessed that the perils of
+disguise prevented the use of any but the very crudest methods of
+ascertaining position and distance, and his map results would, in
+these days, be regarded as disappointing. Sind and the Punjab being
+trans-border lands, there were always useful and handy opportunities
+for teaching the enterprising subaltern of Bombay Infantry how to
+travel intelligently; with the natural result that no corps in the
+world possessed a more splendid record of geographical achievement
+than the Bombay N.I.
+
+Burnes began well in the Quartermaster-General's department, and was
+soon entrusted with political power. Full early in his career he was
+despatched with an enterprising sailor, Lieut. Wood, on a voyage up
+the Indus which was to determine the commercial possibilities of its
+navigation, and which did in fact lead to the formation of the Indus
+flotilla--some fragments of which possibly exist still. It is most
+interesting to read the able reports compiled by these young officers;
+and one might speculate idly as to the feelings with which they would
+now learn that within half a century their flotilla had come and gone,
+superseded by one of the best paying of Indian railways. Their
+feelings would probably be much the same as ours could we see fifty
+years hence a well-established electric train service between Kabul
+and Peshawar, and a double or treble line of rails linking up Russia
+with India _via_ Herat. We shall not see it. It will be left to
+another generation to write of its accomplishment.
+
+Searching the archives of the Royal Geographical Society for the story
+of Burnes the traveller (apart from the voluminous records of Burnes
+the diplomat), I came across a book with this simple inscription on
+the title-page: "To the Royal Geographical Society of London, with the
+best wishes for its prosperity by the Author." This is Vol. I. of
+Burnes' Travels. It is written in the attenuated, pointed, and
+ladylike style which was the style of the very early Victorian era. It
+hardly leads to an impression of forceful and enterprising character.
+
+On January 2, 1831, Burnes made his first plunge into the wilderness
+which lay between him and Lahore, the capital of the Sikh kingdom, and
+he entered that city on the 17th. There he was most hospitably
+received by the French officers in the service of Ranjit Singh,
+Messieurs Allard and Court, and was welcomed by the Maharaja Ranjit
+Singh, who treated him with "marked affability." Burnes was
+accompanied by Dr. Gerard, and the two travellers were taken by Ranjit
+Singh to a hunting party in the Punjab, a description of which serves
+as a forcible illustration of the changes which less than one century
+of British administration has effected in the plains of India. Never
+will its like be seen again in the Land of the Five Rivers. The
+guests' tents were made of Kashmir shawls, and were about 14 feet
+square. One tent was red and the other white, and they were connected
+by tent-walls of the same material, shaded by a _Shamiana_ supported
+on silver-mounted poles. In each tent stood a camp-bed with Kashmir
+shawl curtains. It was, as Burnes remarks, not an encampment suited to
+the Punjab jungles; and the hunting procession headed by the
+Maharaja, dressed in a tunic of green shawls, lined with fur, his
+dagger studded with the richest brilliants, and a light metal shield,
+the gift of the ex-king of Kabul (Shah Sujah, who, it will be
+remembered, also surrendered the Koh-i-Nor diamond to Ranjit Singh
+about this time), as the finishing touch to his equipment, must have
+been quite melodramatic in its effects of colour and movement. It was,
+as a matter of fact, a pig-sticking expedition, but the game fell to
+the sword rather than to the spear; such of it, that is to say, as was
+not caught in traps. The party was terminated by a hog-baiting
+exhibition, in which dogs were used to worry the captive pigs, after
+the latter were tied by one leg to a stake. When the pigs were
+sufficiently infuriated, the entertainment concluded with letting them
+loose through the camp, in order, as Ranjit said, "that men might
+praise his humanity."
+
+Such episodes, however they might beguile the journey to the Afghan
+frontier, belong to other histories than that of Afghan exploration,
+and little more need be said of Burnes' experiences before reaching
+the Afghan city of Peshawar, than that he experienced very different
+treatment _en route_ to that which made Moorcroft's journey both
+perilous and disheartening. In Peshawar the two brothers of Dost
+Mahomed Khan (Sultan Mahomed and Pir Mahomed) seem to have rivalled
+each other in courtly attentions to their guests, and Burnes was as
+much enchanted with this garden of the North-West as any traveller of
+to-day would be, provided that his visit were suitably timed. Burnes
+thus sums up his impression of Ranjit Singh: "I never quitted the
+presence of a native of Asia with such impressions as I left this man;
+without education, and without a guide, he conducts all the affairs of
+his kingdom with surpassing energy and vigour, and yet he wields his
+power with a moderation quite unprecedented in an Eastern prince."
+
+On leaving Lahore Burnes received this salutary advice from M. Court,
+packed in a French proverb, "Si tu veux vivre en paix en voyageant,
+fais en sorte de hurler comme les loups avec qui tu te trouves." And
+he set himself to conform to this text (and to the excellent sermon
+which accompanied it) with a determination which undoubtedly served as
+the foundation of his remarkable success as a traveller. It cannot be
+too often insisted that the experiences of intelligent and cultivated
+Europeans in the days of close association with the Asiatic led to an
+appreciation of native character and to an intimacy with native
+methods, which is only to be found in India now amongst missionaries
+and police officers, if it is to be found at all. But even with all
+the advantages possessed by such experiences as those of Burnes and of
+the intrepid school of Asiatic travellers of his time, it required an
+intuitive discernment almost amounting to genius to detect the motive
+springs of Eastern political action.
+
+It may be doubted (as Masson doubted) whether to the day of his death
+Burnes himself quite understood either the Afghan or the Sikh. But he
+vigorously conformed to native usages in all outward show: "We threw
+away all our European clothes and adopted without reserve the costume
+of the Asiatic. We gave away our tents, beds, and boxes, and broke our
+tables and chairs--a blanket serves to cover the saddle and to sleep
+under.... The greater portion of my now limited wardrobe found a place
+in the 'kurjin.' A single mule carried the whole of the baggage."
+Armed with letters of introduction from a holy man (Fazl Haq), who
+boasted a horde of disciples in Bokhara, and with all the graceful
+good wishes which an Afghan potentate knows how to bestow, Burnes left
+Peshawar and the two Afghan sirdars, and started for Kabul. It is
+instructive to note that he avoided the Khaibar route, which had an
+evil reputation.
+
+It would be interesting to trace Burnes' route from Peshawar to
+Bokhara, _via_ Kabul and Bamian, were it not that we are dealing with
+ground already sufficiently well discussed in these pages. Moreover,
+Burnes travelled to Kabul in company which permitted him to make
+little or no use of his opportunities for original geographical
+research. After he left Kabul the vicissitudes and difficulties that
+beset him were only such as might be experienced by any recognised
+official political mission, and he experienced none of the vexatious
+opposition and delay which was so fatal to Moorcroft. _En route_ he
+passed through Bamian, Haibak, Khulm, and Balkh; he visited Kunduz,
+and identified the tomb of Trebeck at Mazar; and by the light of a
+brilliant moon he stood by the grave of Moorcroft, which he found
+under a wall outside the city, apart from the Mussulman cemeteries.
+The three days passed at Balkh were assiduously employed in local
+investigation and the collection of coins and relics. He found coins,
+or tokens, dating from early Persian occupation to the Mogul
+dynasties, and he notes the size of the bricks and their shape, which
+he describes as oblong approaching to square; but he mentions no
+inscriptions.
+
+At this time Balkh was in the hands of the Bokhara chief, and Burnes
+was already in Bokhara territory. The journey across the plains to the
+Oxus was made on camels, Burnes being seated in a kajawa, and
+balancing his servant on the other side. It was slow, but it gave him
+the opportunity of overlooking the broad Oxus plain and noting the
+general accuracy of the description given of it by Quintus Curtius. As
+they approached the Oxus it was found necessary to employ a Turkman
+guard. Burnes does not say from what Turkman tribe his guard was
+taken, but from his description of them, their dress, equipment, and
+steeds, they were clearly men of the same Ersari tribe that was found
+fifty years later in the same neighbourhood by the Russo-Afghan
+Boundary Commission. "They rode good horses and were armed with a
+sword and long spear. They were not encumbered with shields and
+powder-horns like other Asiatics, and only a few had matchlocks....
+They never use more than a single rein, which sets off their horses to
+advantage."
+
+On the banks of the river they halted near the small village of Khwaja
+Salar. This was the same place evidently that Moorcroft visited, and
+which he described as destroyed in a raid; and it was here that Burnes
+made use of the peculiar horse-drawn ferry which has already been
+described. Fifty years later the ferry was at Kilif, and nothing was
+to be found of the "village" of Khwaja Salar. Burnes' astonishment at
+the quaint, but most efficient, method of utilizing the power of
+swimming horses to haul the great ferry-boats has been shared by every
+one who has seen them since; but he noted a fact which has not been
+observed by other travellers, viz. that _any_ horse was taken for the
+purpose, no matter whether trained or not; and he states that the
+horses were yoked to the boat by a rope fixed to the hair of the mane.
+If so, this method was improved on during the next half-century, for
+the rope is now attached to a surcingle. "One of the boats was dragged
+over by two of our jaded ponies; and the vessel which attempted to
+follow us without them was carried so far down the stream as to detain
+us a whole day on the banks till it could be brought up to the camp
+of our caravan." The river at this point is about 800 yards wide, and
+runs at the rate of three to four miles an hour. The crossing was
+effected in fifteen minutes. Burnes adds: "I see nothing to prevent
+the general adoption of this expeditious mode of crossing a river....
+I had never before seen the horse converted to such a use; and in my
+travels through India I had always considered that noble animal as a
+great encumbrance in crossing a river." And yet after two centuries of
+military training in the plains of India, we English have not yet
+arrived at this economical use of this great motive power always at
+our command in a campaign!
+
+After passing the Oxus the chief interest of Burnes' story commences.
+His life at Bokhara and his subsequent journey through the Turkman
+deserts to Persia form a record which, combined with his own physical
+capability, his energy, and his unfailing tact, good humour, and
+modesty, stamp him as one of the greatest of English travellers. His
+name has its own high place in geographical annals. We shall never
+cease to admire the traveller, whatever we may think of the diplomat.
+But once over the Oxus his story hardly concerns the gates of India.
+He was beyond them, he had passed through, and was now on the far
+landward side, still on a road to India; but it is a road over which
+it no longer concerns us to follow him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE GATES OF GHAZNI--VIGNE
+
+
+Amongst original explorers of Afghanistan place must be found for G.
+T. Vigne, who made in 1836 a venturesome, and, as it proved, a most
+successful exploration of the Gomul route from the Indus to Ghazni.
+Vigne was not a professional geographer so much as a botanist and
+geologist, and the value of his work lies chiefly in the results of
+his researches in those two branches of science, although he has left
+on record a map of his journey which quite sufficiently illustrates
+his route. He had previously visited Ladak (Little Tibet) and Kashmir,
+and had made passing acquaintance with the Chief of the Punjab, Ranjit
+Singh, in whose service foreigners found honourable employment. Masson
+was in the field at the same time as Vigne, and the success of his
+antiquarian researches in Northern Afghanistan, as well as those of
+Honigberger and other archæologists during the time that Dost Mahomed
+ruled in Kabul, and whilst the Amir's brother, Jabar Khan, befriended
+Europeans, indicated a very different political atmosphere from that
+which has subsequently clouded the Afghan horizon, so far as European
+travellers are concerned.
+
+Vigne found no difficulty whatever in passing through Punjab territory
+to the Indus Valley near Dera Ismail Khan, where he joined a Lohani
+khafila which was making its annual journey to Ghazni with a valuable
+stock of merchandise consisting chiefly of English goods. In the
+genial month of May the khafila left Draband and took the world-old
+Gomul route through the frontier hills to the central uplands of
+Afghanistan. The heat must have been awful, and as Vigne lived the
+life of the Lohani merchants, and shared their primitive shelter from
+day to day, it is not surprising that we find him complaining gently
+of the climate. The Lohanis treated him with the utmost kindness and
+consideration from first to last; and the story of his travels is in
+pleasing contrast to the tale told by Masson about the same time, of
+his adventures on the Kandahar side. This was due chiefly, no doubt,
+to Vigne's success as a doctor. It is always the doctors who make the
+best way amongst uncivilized peoples, and India especially (or rather
+the British Raj in India) owes almost as much to doctors as to
+politicians. There is also a fellow-feeling which binds together
+travellers of all sorts and conditions when bound for the same bourne,
+taking together the same risks, experiencing the same trials and
+difficulties, and enjoying unrestrained intercourse. This kind of
+fellowship is world wide. One can trace a genial spirit of
+_camaraderie_ pervading the wanderings of Chinese pilgrims, the tracks
+of mediæval Arab merchants, the ways of modern missionaries, or the
+ocean paths of sailors. Once on the move, with the sweet influences of
+primitive nature pervading earth and air around, we may find, even in
+these days, that the Afghan becomes quite a sociable companion, and
+that he is to be trusted so far as he gives his word.
+
+Vigne seems to have had no trouble whatever except such as arose from
+the persistent neglect of his medical instructions in cases of severe
+illness. As the khafila followed the Gomul River closely, it was, of
+course, subject to attack from the irrepressible Waziris on its flank,
+and had to pay heavy duties to the Suliman Khel Ghilzais as soon as it
+touched their country. There is little change in these respects since
+1836, except that the Gomul route has been made plain and easy through
+the first bands of frontier hills till it reaches the plateau, and the
+Waziris are under better control. The interest of the journey lies in
+that section of it which connects Domandi (the junction of the Gomul
+and the Kundar Rivers) with Ghazni. This central part of Afghanistan
+has never yet been surveyed. From the Takht-i-Suliman a few peaks have
+been indifferently fixed on the ridges which form the divide between
+the Gomul and the Ghazni drainage, but the hilly country beyond,
+stretching to the Ghazni plain, is absolutely unreconnoitred. We have
+still to appeal to Broadfoot and Vigne for geographical authority in
+these regions, although native information (but not native surveyors)
+has furnished details of a route which sufficiently corresponds with
+that of both these enterprising travellers.
+
+There is some confusion about dates in Vigne's account, but it appears
+that the khafila reached the Sarwandi Pass (which he calls
+Sir-i-koll--7200 feet) over the central divide on the 12th June, and
+thence descended into the Kattawaz country on the Ghazni side of this
+central water-parting. About this region we have no accurate
+geographical knowledge. Beyond the Sarwandi ridge, and intervening
+between it and Ghazni, is a secondary pass, called Gazdarra in our
+maps, crossing a ridge near the northern foot of which is Dihsai (the
+nearest approach to Vigne's Dshara), which was reached by Vigne on the
+16th June. Probably the two names represent the same place.
+
+Vigne's description of the central Sarwandi ridge corresponds
+generally with what we know in other parts of the nature of those long
+sweeping folds which traverse the central plateau from north-east to
+south-west, preserving more or less a direction parallel to the
+frontier. He writes of it as a broken and tumbled mass of sandstone,
+but about "Dshara" he speaks of gently undulating hills exhibiting
+small peaks of limestone and denuded patches of shingle. Between the
+Sarwandi and the Dshara ridge the plain was covered with glittering
+sand and was sweet with the scent of wild thyme. Somewhere on the
+"level-topped" Sarwandi ridge there was said to be the ruins of an
+ancient city called Zohaka, with gates of burnt brick, which Vigne did
+not see, but in his map he indicates a position for it a long way to
+the east of the ridge. It is quite probable that the ruins of more
+than one ancient city are to be found in the neighbourhood of this
+very ancient highway. Ancient as it is, however, it formed no part of
+the mediæval commercial system of the Arabs--a system which apparently
+did not include the frontier passes into India; and I have failed to
+identify Vigne's Zohaka with any previous indications. These uplands
+to the south of Ghazni evidently partake of the general
+characteristics of the Wardak and Logar Valleys beyond them,
+intervening between Ghazni and Kabul. Vigne was enchanted with the
+prospect around him, and with the clear sweet atmosphere filled with
+the aroma of wild thyme, wormwood, and the scented willow. It has
+charmed many a weary soldier since his time.
+
+At Dshara, finding that the Lohani khafila was not going to Ghazni but
+intended to follow a straighter route to Kabul, whilst at the same
+time a very ready and profitable business was being done in the
+well-populated valleys around, Vigne set off by himself with one
+Kizzilbash guide for Ghazni. He says many hard things of the Lohanis
+for breaking their promise of escort to Ghazni, remarks which seem
+scarcely to accord with his free acknowledgments of their great
+kindness to him elsewhere. As the opinion of so observant a traveller,
+sharing the trials of the road with a band of native merchants, is
+always interesting when it concerns the company with which he was
+associated, I will quote his opinion of the Lohanis. "Taking them
+altogether, I look on the Lohanis as the most respectable of the
+Mahomedans and the most worthy of the notice and assistance of our
+countrymen. The Turkish gentleman is said to be a man of his word; he
+must be an enviable exception; but I otherwise solemnly believe that
+there is not a Mahomedan--Sunni or Shiah--between Constantinople and
+Yarkand who would hesitate to cheat a Feringi, Frank or European, and
+who would not lie and scheme and try to deceive when the temptation
+was worth his doing so," etc. This, of course, includes the Lohanis.
+
+At Ghazni, Vigne found a servant of Moorcroft's, who gave him
+interesting information about the travels of that unfortunate
+explorer; and he takes some useful notes of the present military
+position and former condition of that city before its utter
+destruction by Allah-u-din, Ghuri. He determined to depart somewhat
+from the regular route to Kabul, and diverged from the straight road
+which runs to the Sher-i-dahan in order to visit the "bund-i-sultan,"
+or reservoir, which had been constructed by Mahmud on the Ghazni River
+for the proper water-supply of the town in its palmy days. As his last
+day's travel took him to Lungar and Maidan before reaching Kabul he
+evidently made a considerable detour westward. He inspected a copper
+mine (with which he was greatly disappointed) at a place called Shibar
+_en route_. To reach Shibar he made a long day's march from Ser-ab (?
+Sar-i-ab), near the head of the Logar River. It is difficult to trace
+this part of his route by the light of the map which he borrowed from
+Honigberger. He clearly followed up the Ghazni River nearly to its
+source, and then struck across to the head of the Logar, where he
+correctly places Ser-ab, and where he found an agent of Masson's
+engaged in excavating a tope. He next visited Shibar, and finally
+marched by Lungar to Maidan and Kabul. He must, therefore, have
+crossed the divide between the Ghazni River and the Logar, but we fail
+to follow him to the Shibar copper mine.
+
+Shibar is the name of the pass which divides the Turkistan drainage
+from the Ghorband, or Kabul, system; but it would be totally
+impracticable to reach that point in a day's excursion from Ser-ab. We
+must, therefore, conclude that there is another Shibar somewhere,
+undetected by our surveyors.
+
+At Kabul he received a hospitable welcome from the Nawab Jabar Khan,
+brother of the Amir Dost Mahomed, and here he fell in with Masson. We
+need not trace his journey farther, for his subsequent footsteps only
+followed the well-worn tracks to the Punjab. To Vigne we owe a vague
+reference to a yet earlier English traveller in Afghanistan, one
+Hicks, who died and was buried near the Peshawar gate of the old city.
+The inscription on his tomb in English was--
+
+     HICKS, SON OF WILLIAM AND ELIZABETH HICKS,
+
+and Vigne adds that "by its date he must have lived a hundred and
+fifty years ago." This is the earliest record we have of an English
+traveller reaching Kabul, and it is strange that nothing is known
+about Hicks, who certainly could not have inscribed his own epitaph!
+The remarkable feature about the tomb is that such a memorial of a
+Christian burial should have remained so long unmolested in a Moslem
+country. No vestige of the tomb was discovered during the occupation
+of Kabul in 1879-80.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ENGLISH OFFICIAL EXPLORATION--BROADFOOT
+
+
+In the year 1839 and in the month of October Lieut. J. S. Broadfoot of
+the Indian Engineers made a memorable excursion across Central
+Afghanistan, intervening between Ghazni and the Indus Valley, which
+resulted in the acquisition of much information about one of the gates
+of India which is too little known. No one has followed his tracks
+since with any means of making a better reconnaissance, nor has any
+one added much to the information obtained by him. It is true that
+Vigne had been over the ground before him, but there is no comparison
+between the use which Broadfoot made of his opportunities and the
+geography which Vigne secured. Both took their lives in their hands,
+but Vigne passed along with his Lohani khafila in days preceding the
+British occupation of Afghanistan. There was no fanatical hostility
+displayed towards him. On the contrary, his medical profession was a
+recommendation which won him friends and good fellowship all along the
+line. A few years had much changed the national (if one can use such
+a word with regard to Afghanistan) feeling towards the European. From
+day to day, and almost from hour to hour, Broadfoot felt that his life
+hung on the chances of the moment. He was told by friends and enemies
+alike that he would most certainly be killed. Yet he survived to do
+good service in other fields, and to maintain the reputation of that
+most distinguished branch of the military service, the Indian
+Engineers. Broadfoot was but typical of his corps, even in the
+scientific ability displayed in his researches, the clearness and the
+soundness of the views he expresses, the determined pluck of his
+enterprise, and his knowledge of native life and character. Durand,
+North, Leach, and Broadfoot were Lieutenants of Engineers at the same
+time, and their reports and their work are all historical records.
+
+Previously to his start on the Gomul reconnaissance Broadfoot had the
+opportunity of reconnoitring much of the country to the south of
+Ghazni bordering the Kandahar-Ghazni route. He had, therefore, a very
+fair acquaintance with the people with whom he had to deal, and a
+fairly well fixed point of departure for his work. His methods were
+the time-honoured methods of many past generations of explorers. He
+took his bearings with the prismatic compass, and he reckoned his
+distance by the mean values obtained from three men pacing.
+Consequently, he could not pretend, in such circumstances as he was
+placed (being hardly able to leave his tent in spite of his disguise),
+to complete much in the way of topography; but his clear description
+of the ground he passed over, and the people he passed amongst,
+furnishes nearly all that is necessary to enable us to realise the
+practical value and the political difficulty of that important line of
+communication with Central Afghanistan.
+
+From Ghazni southwards to Pannah there is nothing but open plain. From
+near Pannah to the Sarwandi Pass, which crosses the main divide (the
+Kohnak range) between the Helmund and the Indus basins, there is much
+of the ridge and furrow formation which distinguishes the
+north-western frontier, the alignment of the ridges being from N.E. to
+S.W., but the Gazdarra Pass over the Kattawaz ridge is not formidable,
+and the road along the plain of Kattawaz is open. In Kattawaz were
+groups of villages, denoting a settled population, and as much
+cultivation as might be possible amidst a lawless, crop-destroying,
+and raiding generation of Ghilzais.
+
+"Kattasang, as viewed from Dand" (on the northern side) "appears a
+mass of undulating hills, and as bare as a desert; it is the resort in
+summer of some pastoral families of Suliman Khels." Approaching the
+main divide of Sarwandi by the Sargo Pass two forts are passed near
+Sargo, which sufficiently well illustrate the characteristics of
+perpetual feud common to clans or families of the Ghilzai fraternity.
+The forts are close to each other; one of them is known as Ghlo kala
+(thieves' fort), but they are probably both equally worthy of the
+name. The inhabitants of these forts absolutely destroyed each other
+in a family feud, so that nothing now remains. Their very waters have
+dried up.
+
+Near the Sargo, on the Ghazni side of the Sarwandi Pass, is Schintza,
+at which place Vigne also halted, and from Schintza commences the real
+ascent to the Sarwandi. The ascent, and indeed the crossing
+altogether, are described by Broadfoot as easy. Vigne does not say
+much about this. From the foot of the Sarwandi one branch of the Gomul
+takes off, and from that point to the Indus the great trade route
+practically follows the Gomul on a gradually descending grade. It is a
+stony, rough, and broken hill route, now expanding into a broad track
+of river-bed, now contracting into a cliff-bordered gully,
+occasionally leaving the river and running parallel over adjoining
+cliffs, but more often involving the worry of perpetual crossing and
+re-crossing of the stream. Here and there is an expansion (such as the
+"flower-bed," Gulkatz) into a reed-covered flat, and occasionally
+there occurs a level open border space which the blackened stones of
+previous khafilas denote as a camping-ground. Wild and dreary, carving
+its way beneath the heat-cracked and rain-seared foot-hills of
+Waziristan, strewn with stones and boulders, and disfigured by
+leprous outbreaks of streaky white efflorescence, the Gomul in the hot
+weather is not an attractive river. In flood-time it is dangerous, and
+it is in the hottest of the hot weather months that the route is
+fullest of the moving khafila crowds.
+
+In Broadfoot's time the worst part of the route was between the
+plateau and the Indus plains. This is no longer so, for a
+trade-developing and road-making Government has made the rough places
+plain, and engineered a first-class high-road thus far. And there is
+this to be noted about that section of it which still lies beyond the
+ken of the frontier officer and which as yet the surveyor has not
+mapped. Not a single camel-load in Broadfoot's khafila had to be
+shifted on account of the roughness of the route between Ghazni and
+the Indus, and not a space of any great length occurred over which
+guns might not easily pass. The drawback to the route as a high-road
+for trade has ever been the blackmailing propensities of Waziris and
+cognate tribes who flank the route on either side. Broadfoot's khafila
+lost no less than 100 men in transit; but this was at a time when the
+country was generally disturbed. In more peaceful days previously
+Vigne refers to constant losses both of men and property, but to
+nothing like so great an extent.
+
+Broadfoot still stands for our authority in all that pertains to the
+central Afghan tribes-people--chiefly the Suliman Khel clan of
+Ghilzais--who occupy the Highlands between Waziristan and Ghazni.
+Under the iron heel of the late Amir of Afghanistan no doubt much of
+their turbulent and feud-loving propensities has been repressed, and
+with its repression has followed a development of agriculture, and a
+general improvement throughout the favoured districts of Kattawaz and
+the Ghazni plain. Here the climate is exceptionally invigorating, and
+much of the sweet landscape beauty of the adjoining districts of
+Wardak and Logar (two of the loveliest valleys of Afghanistan) is
+evidently repeated. Several fine rivers traverse these uplands, the
+Jilgu and the Dwa Gomul (both rising from the central divide near to
+the sources of the Tochi) having much local reputation, and claiming a
+crude sort of reverence from the wild tribes of the plateau which is
+only accorded to the gifts of Allah. The Suliman Khel are not
+nomads--though like all Afghans they love tents--and their villages,
+clinging to wall-sides or clustering round a central tower, are well
+built and often exceedingly picturesque. The Ghilzai skill at the
+construction of these underground irrigation channels called karez is
+famous throughout Afghanistan. It is, however, the more westerly clans
+who especially excel in the development of water-supply. The Suliman
+Khel and the Nasirs take more kindly to the khafila and "povindah"
+form of life, and this Gomul route is the very backbone of their
+existence. It is a pity that we know so little about it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+FRENCH EXPLORATION--FERRIER
+
+
+Amongst modern explorers of Afghanistan who have earned distinction by
+their capacity for single-handed geographical research and ability in
+recording their experiences, the French officer M. Ferrier is one of
+the most interesting and one of the most disappointing. He is
+interesting in all that relates to the historical and political
+aspects of Afghanistan at a date when England was specially concerned
+with that country, and so far and so long as his footsteps can now be
+traced with certainty on our recent maps, he is clearly to be credited
+with powers of accurate observation and a fairly retentive memory. It
+is just where, as a geographer, he leaves the known for the unknown,
+and makes a plunge into a part of the country which no European has
+actually traversed before or since, that he becomes disappointing. He
+is the only known wanderer from the west who has traversed the uplands
+of the Firozkohi plateau from north to south; and it is just that
+region of the Upper Murghab basin which our surveyors were unable to
+reach during the progress of the Russo-Afghan Boundary mapping. The
+rapidity of the movements of the Commission when once it got to work
+precluded the possibility, with only a weak staff of topographers, of
+detailing native assistants to map every corner of that most
+interesting district, and naturally the more important section of the
+country received the first attention. But they closed round it so
+nearly as to leave but little room for pure conjecture, and it is
+quite possible to verify by local evidence the facts stated by
+Ferrier, if not actually to trace out his route and map it.
+
+M. Ferrier's career was a sufficiently remarkable one. He served with
+the French army in Africa, and was delegated with other officers to
+organise the Persian army. Here he was regarded by the Russian
+Ambassador as hostile to Russian interests, and the result was his
+return to France in 1843, where he obtained no satisfaction for his
+grievances. Deciding to take service with the Punjab Government under
+the Regency which succeeded Ranjit Singh, he left France for Bagdad
+and set out from that city in 1845 for a journey through Persia and
+Afghanistan to India.
+
+Ferrier reached Herat seven years after the siege of that place by the
+Persians, and four years after the British evacuation of Afghanistan,
+and his story of interviews with that wily politician, Yar Mahomed
+Khan, are most entertaining. It is satisfactory to note that the
+English left on the whole a good reputation behind them. His attempt
+to reach Lahore _via_ Balkh and Kabul was frustrated, and he was
+forced off the line of route connecting Balkh with Kabul at what was
+then the Afghan frontier. It was at this period of his travels that
+his records become most interesting, as he was compelled to pass
+through the Hazara country to the west of Kabul by an unknown route
+not exactly recognisable, crossing the Firozkohi plateau and
+descending through the Taimani country to Ghur. From Ghur he was sent
+back to Herat, and so ended a very remarkable tour through an
+absolutely unexplored part of Afghanistan. His final effort to reach
+the Punjab by the already well-worn roads which lead by Kandahar and
+Shikarpur was unsuccessful. Considering the risks of the journey, it
+was a surprising attempt. It was in the course of this adventure that
+he came across some of the ill-starred remnants of the disasters which
+attended the British arms during the evacuation of Afghanistan. There
+were apparently Englishmen in captivity in other parts of Afghanistan
+than the north, and the fate of those unfortunate victims to the
+extraordinary combination of political and military blundering which
+marked those eventful years is left to conjecture.
+
+Such in brief outline was the story of Afghan exploration as it
+concerned this gallant French officer, and from it we obtain some
+useful geographical and antiquarian suggestions. The province of
+Herat he regards as coincident with the Aria of the Greek historians,
+and the Aria metropolis (or Artakoana) he considers might be
+represented either by Kuhsan or by Herat itself. He expends a little
+useless argument in refuting the common Afghan tradition that any part
+of modern Herat was built by Alexander. Between the twelfth century
+and the commencement of the seventeenth Herat has been sacked and
+rebuilt at least seven times, and its previous history must have
+involved many other radical changes since the days of Alexander. It
+is, however, probable that the city has been built time after time on
+the site which it now occupies, or very near it. The vast extent of
+mounds and other evidences of ancient occupation to the north of it,
+together with its very obvious strategic importance, give this
+position a precedence in the district which could never have been
+overlooked by any conqueror; but the other cities of Greek geography,
+Sousa and Candace, are not so easy to place. Ferrier may be right in
+his suggestion that Tous (north-west of Mashad) represents the Greek
+Sousa, but he is unable to place Candace. To the west of Herat are
+three very ancient sites, Kardozan, Zindajan (which Ferrier rightly
+identified with the Arab city of Bouchinj), and Kuhsan, and Candace
+might have stood where any of them now stand.
+
+Ferrier's description of Herat and its environment fully sustains Sir
+Henry Rawlinson's opinion of him as an observant traveller. For a
+simple soldier of fortune he displays remarkable erudition, as well as
+careful observation, and there is hardly a suggestion which he makes
+about the Herat of 1845 which subsequent examination did not justify
+in 1885. It was the custom during the residence of the English Mission
+under Major d'Arcy Todd in Herat for some, at least, of the leading
+Afghan chiefs to accept invitations to dinner with the English
+officers, a custom which promoted a certain amount of mutual
+good-fellowship between Afghans and English, of which the effects had
+not worn off when Ferrier was there. When, finally, Yar Mahomed was
+convinced that Ferrier had no ulterior political motive for his visit,
+and was persuaded to let him proceed on his journey, a final dinner
+was arranged, at which Ferrier was the principal guest. It appears to
+have been a success. "At the close of the repast the guests were
+incapable of sitting upright, and at two in the morning I left these
+worthy Mussulmans rolling on the carpet! The following day I prepared
+for my departure." In 1885 manners and methods had changed for the
+better. The English officers employed on the reorganisation of the
+defences of the city were occasionally entertained at modest
+tea-parties by the Afghan military commandant, but no such rollicking
+proceedings as those recounted by Ferrier would ever have been
+countenanced; and it must be confessed that Ferrier's accounts, both
+here and elsewhere, of the social manners and customs of the Afghan
+people are a little difficult to accept without reservation. We must,
+however, make allowances for the times and the loose quality of Afghan
+government. He left Herat by the northerly route, passing Parwana, the
+Baba Pass, and the Kashan valley to Bala Murghab and Maimana.
+
+Ferrier has much to say that is interesting about the tribal
+communities through which he passed, especially about the Chahar
+Aimak, or wandering tent-living tribes, which include the Hazaras,
+Jamshidis, Taimanis, and Firozkohis. He is, I think, the first to draw
+attention to the fact that the Firozkohis are of Persian origin, a
+people whose forefathers were driven by Tamerlane into the mountains
+south of Mazanderan, and were eventually transported into the Herat
+district. They spring from several different Persian tribes, and take
+the name Firozkohi from "a village in the neighbourhood of which they
+were surrounded and captured." The origin of the name Ferozkohi has
+always been something of a geographical puzzle, and it is doubtful
+whether there was ever a city originally of that name in Afghanistan,
+although it may have been applied to the chief habitat of this
+agglomeration of Persian refugees and colonists.
+
+Ferrier's account of his progress includes no geographical data worthy
+of remark. Politically, this part of Afghan Turkistan has remained
+much the same during the last seventy years, and geographically one
+can only say that his account of the route is generally correct,
+although it indicates that it is compiled from memory. For instance,
+there is a steep watershed to be crossed between Torashekh and Mingal,
+but it is not of the nature of a "rugged mountain," nor could there
+have ever been space enough for the extent of cultivation which he
+describes in the Murghab valley. He is very much at fault in his
+description of the road from Nimlik (which he calls Meilik) to Balkh.
+The hills are on the right (not left) of the road, and are much higher
+than those previously described as rugged mountains. No water from
+these hills could possibly reach the road, for there is a canal
+between them, the overflow of which, however, might possibly swamp the
+road. Balkh hardly responds to his description of it. There is no
+mosque to the north of Balkh, nor is the citadel square.
+
+The road from Khulm to Bamian passes through Tashkurghan (which is due
+east of Mazar--not south) and Haibak, and changes very much in
+character before reaching Haibak. From Haibak to Kuram the description
+of the road is fairly correct, but no amount of research on the part
+of later surveyors has revealed the position of "Kartchoo" (which
+apparently means locally a market); nor could Ferrier possibly have
+encountered snow in July on any part of this route, even if he saw
+any. We must, however, consider the conditions under which he was
+travelling, and make allowances for the impossibility of keeping
+anything of the nature of a systematic record. At Kuram, a well-known
+point above Haibak on the road to Kabul, he reached the Uzbek
+frontier. Beyond this point--into Afghanistan--no Uzbek would venture,
+and it was impossible to proceed farther on the direct route to Kabul.
+Yielding to the pressure of friendly advice, he made a retrograde
+detour to Saripul, through districts occupied by Hazaras, and
+"Kartchoo" was but a nomadic camp that he encountered during his first
+day out from Kuram. Clearly he was making for the Yusuf Darra route to
+Saripul; and his next camp, Dehao, marks the river. It may possibly be
+the point marked Dehi on modern maps. At Saripul he was not only well
+received by the Uzbek Governor, Mahomed Khan, but the extraordinary
+influence which this man possessed with the Hazaras, Firozkohis, and
+other Aimak tribes of northern Afghanistan enabled Ferrier to procure
+food and horses at irregular stages which carried him to Ghur in the
+Taimani land.
+
+It is this part of Ferrier's journey which is so tantalizing and so
+difficult to follow. He must have travelled both far and fast. Leaving
+Saripul on July 11, he rode "ten parasangs," over country very varied
+in character, to Boodhi. Now this country has been surveyed, and there
+can be no reasonable doubt about the route he took southwards. But no
+such place as Boodhi has ever been identified, nor have the
+remarkable sculptures which were observed _en route_, fashioned on an
+"enormous block of rock," been found again, although careful inquiries
+were made about them. They may, of course, have been missed, and
+information may have been purposely withheld, for geographical surveys
+do not permit of lengthy halts for inquiry on any line of route.
+Ferrier's description of them is so full of detail that it is
+difficult to believe that it is imaginary. He mentions that on the
+plain on which Boodhi stood, "two parasangs to the right," there were
+the "ruins of a large town," which might very possibly be the ruins
+identified by Imam Sharif (a surveyor of the Afghan Boundary
+Commission), and which would fix the position of "Boodhi" somewhere
+near Belchirag on the main route southward to Ghur. Belchirag is about
+55 miles from Saripul. The next day's ride must have carried him into
+the valley of the Upper Murghab on the Firozkohi plateau, crossing the
+Band-i-Turkistan _en route_, and it was here that he met with such a
+remarkable welcome at the fortress of Dev Hissar.
+
+Ferrier describes the valley of the Upper Murghab in terms of rapture
+which appear to be a trifle extravagant to those who know that
+country. No systematic survey of it, however, has ever been possible,
+and to this day the position of Dev Hissar is a matter of conjecture,
+and the charming manners of its inhabitants (so unlike the ordinary
+rough hospitality of the men and the unobtrusive character of the
+women of the Firozkohi Aimak) are experiences such as our surveyors
+sighed for in vain! As a mere guess, I should be inclined to place Dev
+Hissar near Kila Gaohar, or to identify it with that fort. At any
+rate, I prefer this solution of the puzzle to the suggestion that Dev
+Hissar and its delightful inhabitants, like the previous sculptures,
+were but an effort of imagination on the part of this volatile and
+fascinating Frenchman.
+
+There is always an element of suspicion as to the value of Ferrier's
+information when he deals with the feminine side of Hazara human
+nature. For instance, he asserts that the Hazara women fight in their
+tribal battles side by side with their husbands. This is a feature in
+their character for independence which the Hazara men absolutely deny,
+and it is hardly necessary to add that no confirmation could be
+obtained anywhere of the remarkable familiarity with which the ladies
+of Hissar are said by Ferrier customarily to treat their guests.
+
+The next long day's ride terminated at Singlak (another unknown
+place), which was found deserted owing to a feud between the Hazaras
+and Firozkohis. It was evidently within the Murghab basin and short of
+the crest of the line of watershed bordering the Hari Rud valley on
+the north, for the following day Ferrier crossed these hills, and the
+Hari Rud valley beneath them (avoiding Daolatyar), at a point which he
+fixes as "six parasangs S.W. of Sheherek." Again it is impossible to
+locate the position. Kila Safarak is at the head of the Hari Rud, and
+Kila Shaharak is in another valley (that of the Tagao Ishlan), so that
+it will perhaps be safe to assume that it was nowhere near either of
+these places, but at a point some 10 miles west of Daolatyar, which
+marks the regular route for Ghur from the north.
+
+Ferrier's description of this part of his journey is vague and
+unsatisfactory. No such place as Kohistani, "situated on a high plain
+in the midst of the Siah Koh," is known any more than is Singlak. The
+divide, or ridge, which he crossed in passing from the Murghab valley
+to the narrow trough of the Hari Rud is lower than the hills on the
+south of the river. He could not possibly have crossed snow nor
+overlooked the landscape to Saripul. It is doubtful if Chalapdalan,
+the mountain which impressed him so mightily, is visible from any part
+of the broken watershed north of the Hari Rud. Chalapdalan is only
+13,600 feet high, and there would have been no snow on it in July. As
+we proceed farther we fail to identify Ferrier's Tingelab River,
+unless he means the Ab-i-lal. The Hari Rud does not flow through
+Shaharak, and no one has found a village called Jaor in the Hari Rud
+valley. Continuing to cross the Band-i-Baian (which he calls Siah
+Koh) from Kohistani Baba, a very long day's ride brought him to
+Deria-dereh, also called "Dereh Mustapha Khan," which was evidently a
+place of importance and the headquarters of a powerful section of
+either Hazaras or Taimanis under a Chief, Mustapha Khan. Here, in a
+small oblong valley entirely closed by mountains, was a little lake of
+azure colour and transparent clearness which lay like a vast gem
+embedded in surrounding verdure ... "around which were somewhat
+irregularly pitched a number of Taimani tents, separated from each
+other by little patches of cultivation and gardens enclosed by stone
+walls breast high.... The luxuriance of the vegetation in this valley
+might compare with any that I had ever seen in Europe. On the summits
+of the surrounding mountains were several ruins, etc. etc." Ash and
+oak trees were there. Fishermen were dragging the lake, women were
+leading flocks to the water, and young girls sat outside the tents
+weaving bereks (barak, or camel-hair cloth), and contentment was
+depicted on every face.
+
+From Deria-dereh another long day's ride brought him to Zirni, which
+he describes as the ancient capital of Ghur. From the Band-i-Baian (or
+Koh Siah, as he calls it) to Zirni is at least 100 miles by the very
+straightest road, and that would pass by Taiwara. It is clear that he
+did not take that road, or he could hardly have ignored so important a
+position as Taiwara. If he made a detour eastward he would pass
+through Hazara country--very mountainous, very high and difficult,
+and the length of the two days' journey would be nearer 150 miles than
+100. To the first day's journey (as far as Deria-dereh) he gives ten
+hours on horseback, which in that country might represent 60 miles;
+but no such place as he describes, no lake with Arcadian surroundings,
+has been either seen or heard of by subsequent surveyors within the
+recognized limits of Taimani country. If it exists at all, it is to
+the east of the great watershed from which spring the Ghur River and
+the Farah Rud, hidden within the spurs of the Hazara mountains. This
+is just possible, for this wild and weatherbeaten country has not been
+so fully reconnoitred as that farther west; but it makes Ferrier's
+journey extraordinary for the distances covered, and fully accounts
+for the fact that he has preserved so little detail of this eventful
+ride that, practically, there is nothing of geographical interest to
+be learnt from it.
+
+Ferrier's description of the ruins which are to be found in the
+neighbourhood of Zirni and Taiwara, especially his reference to a
+"paved" road leading towards Ghazni, is very interesting. He is fully
+impressed with the beauty of the surrounding country, and what he has
+to say about this centre of an historical Afghan kingdom has been more
+or less confirmed by subsequent explorers. Only the "Ghebers" have
+disappeared; and the magnificent altitude of the "Chalap Dalan"
+mountain, described by him as one of the "highest in the world," has
+been reduced to comparatively humble proportions. Its isolated
+position, however, undoubtedly entitles it to rank as a remarkable
+geographical feature.
+
+At Zirni Ferrier found that his further progress towards Kandahar was
+arrested, and from that point, to his bitter disgust, he was compelled
+to return to Herat. From Zirni to Herat was, in his day, an unmapped
+region, and he is the first European to give us even a glimpse of that
+once well-trodden highway. His conjectures about the origin of the
+Aimak tribes which people Central Afghanistan are worthy of study, as
+they are based on original inquiry from the people themselves; but it
+is very clear that either time has modified the manners of these
+people, or that popular sources of information are not always to be
+trusted. He repeats the story of the fighting propensities of Hazara
+women when dealing with the Taimanis, and adds, as regards the latter,
+that "a girl does not marry until she has performed some feat of
+arms." It may be that "feats of arms" are not so easy of achievement
+in these days, but it is certain that such an inducement to marry
+would fail to be effective now. It might even prove detrimental to a
+girl's chances.
+
+Once again we can only regard with astonishment Ferrier's record of a
+ride from "Tarsi" (Parsi) to Herat, at least 90 miles, in one night. A
+district Chief told Captain (now Colonel) the Hon. M. G. Talbot, who
+conducted the surveys of the country in 1883, that "a good Taimani on
+a good horse" might accomplish the feat, but that nobody else could.
+Ferrier, with his considerable escort, seemed to have found no
+difficulty, but undoubtedly he was in excellent training. His general
+description of the country that he passed through accords with the
+pace at which he swept through it, and nothing is to be gained by
+criticising his hasty observations. At Herat he was fortunate in
+securing the consent of Yar Mahomed Khan to his project for reaching
+the Punjab _via_ Kandahar and Kabul; and with letters from that wily
+potentate to the Amir Dost Mahomed Khan and his son-in-law Mahomed
+Akbar Khan this "Lord of the Kingdom of France, General Ferrier" set
+out on another attempt to reach India. In this he was unsuccessful,
+and his path was a thorny one. He travelled by the road which had been
+adopted as the post-road between Herat and Kandahar, during the
+residence of the English Mission at Herat--a route which, leaving
+Farah to the west, approaches Kandahar by Washir and Girishk, and
+which is still undoubtedly the most direct road between the two
+capitals. But the particularly truculent character of the Durani
+Afghan tribes of Western Afghanistan rendered this journey most
+dangerous for a single European moving without an armed escort, and he
+was robbed and maltreated with fiendish persistency. It was a
+well-known and much-trodden old road, but it has always been, and it
+is still, about the worst road in all Afghanistan for the fanatical
+unpleasantness of its Achakzai and Nurzai environment.
+
+After leaving Washir Ferrier was imprisoned at Mahmudabad, and again
+when he reached Girishk, and the story of the treatment he received at
+both places says much for the natural soundness of his constitution.
+Luckily he fell in with a friendly Munshi who had been in English
+service, who, whilst warning Ferrier that he might consider the
+position of his head on his shoulders as "wonderfully shaky," did a
+good deal to dissipate the notion that he was an English spy, and
+helped him through what was indeed a very tight place. It was at this
+point of his journey that Ferrier heard of an English prisoner in
+Zamindawar,--a traveller with "green eyes and red hair,"--and the fact
+that he actually received a note from this man (which he could not
+read as it was written in English) seems to confirm that fact. He
+could do nothing to help him, and no one knows what may have been the
+ultimate fate of this unfortunate captive.
+
+Ferrier is naturally indignant with Sir Alexander Burnes for
+describing the Afghans as "a sober, simple steady people" (Burnes'
+_Travels in Bokhara_, vol. i. pp. 143, 144). How Burnes could ever
+have arrived at such an extraordinary estimate of Afghan character is
+hard to imagine, and it says little for those perceptive faculties for
+which Masson has such contempt. But it not inaptly points the great
+contrast that does really exist between the Kabuli and the Kandahari
+to this day. When the English officers of the Afghan Boundary
+Commission in 1883 were occupied in putting Herat into a state of
+defence, their personal escort was carefully chosen from soldiers of
+the northern province, who, by no means either "sober or simple," were
+at any rate far less fanatical and truculent than the men of the west,
+and they were, on the whole, a pleasant and friendly contingent to
+deal with.
+
+At Girishk, and subsequently, Ferrier has certain geographical facts
+of interest to record. Some of them still want verification, but they
+are valuable indications. He notes the immense ruins and mounds on
+both sides the Helmund at Girishk. He was in confinement at Girishk
+for eight days, where he suffered much from "the vermin which I could
+not prevent from getting into my clothes, and the rattling of my
+inside from the scantiness of my daily ration." However, his trials
+came to an end at last, and he left Girishk "with a heart full of
+hatred for its inhabitants and a lively joy at his departure," fording
+the Helmund at some little distance from the town. He remarks on the
+vast ruins at Kushk-i-Nakhud, where there is a huge artificial mound.
+A similar one exists at Sangusar, about 3 miles south-east of
+Kushk-i-Nakhud. At Kandahar the final result of a short residence that
+was certainly full of lively incident, and an interview with the
+Governor Kohendil Khan (brother of the Amir Dost Mahomed), was a
+return to Girishk. This must have been sickening; but it resulted in a
+series of excursions into Baluch territory which are not
+uninstructive. The ill-treatment (amounting to the actual infliction
+of torture) which Ferrier endured at the hands of the Girishk Governor
+(Sadik Khan, a son of Kohendil Khan) on this second visit to Girishk,
+was even worse than the first, and it was only by signing away his
+veracity and giving a false certificate of friendship with the brute
+that he finally got free again. He was to follow the Helmund to Lash
+Jowain in Seistan, but the attempt was frustrated by a local
+disturbance at Binadur, on the Helmund. So far, however, this abortive
+excursion was of certain geographical interest as covering new ground.
+The places mentioned by Ferrier _en route_ are all still in existence,
+but he gives no detailed account of them.
+
+Once more a start was made from Girishk, and this time our explorer
+succeeded in reaching Farah by the direct route through Washir. It was
+in the month of October, and the fiery heat of the Bakwa plain was
+sufficiently trying even to this case-hardened Frenchman. About Farah
+he has much to say that still requires confirmation. Of the exceeding
+antiquity of this place there is ample evidence; but no one since
+Ferrier has identified the site of the second and later town of Farah
+"an hour" farther north or "half an hour" from the Farah Rud (river),
+where bricks were seen "three feet long and four inches thick," with
+inscriptions on them in cuneiform character, amidst the ruins. This
+town was abandoned in favour of the older (and present) site when Shah
+Abbas the Great besieged and destroyed it, but there can be no doubt
+that the bricks seen by Ferrier must have possessed an origin long
+anterior to the town, which only dates from the time of Chenghiz Khan.
+The existence of such evidence of the ancient and long-continued
+connection between Assyria and Western Afghanistan would be
+exceedingly interesting were it confirmed by modern observation. Farah
+is by all accounts a most remarkable town, and it undoubtedly contains
+secrets of the past which for interest could only be surpassed by
+those of Balkh. At Farah Ferrier was lodged in a "hole over the north
+gate of the town, open to the violent winds of Seistan, which rushed
+in at eight enormous holes, through which also came the rays of the
+sun." Here wasps, scorpions, and mice were his companions, and it must
+be admitted that Ferrier's account of the horrors of Farah residence
+have been more or less confirmed by all subsequent travellers to
+Seistan. But he finally succeeded in obtaining, through the not
+inhospitable governor, the necessary permission from Yar Mahomed Khan
+of Herat (whose policy in his dealings with Ferrier it is quite
+impossible to decipher) to pass on to Shikarpur and Sind; and the
+permission is couched in such pious and affectionate terms, that the
+"very noble, very exalted, the companion of honour, of fortune, and of
+happiness, my kind friend, General Ferrier," really thought there was
+a chance of escaping from his clutches. He was, by the way, invited
+back again to Herat, but he was told that he might please himself.
+
+Here follows a most interesting exploration into a stretch of
+territory then utterly unreconnoitred and unknown, and it is
+unfortunate that this most trying route through the flats and wastes
+which stretch away eastwards of the Helmund lagoons should still be
+but sketchily indicated in our maps. It is, however, from Farah to
+Khash (where the Khash Rud is crossed), and from Khash to the Helmund,
+but a track through a straight region of desolation and heat,
+relieved, however (like the desert region to the south of the
+Helmund), by strips of occasional tamarisk vegetation, where grass is
+to be found in the spring and nomads collect with their flocks.
+Watering-places might be developed here by digging wells, and the
+route rendered practicable across the Dasht-i-Margo as it has been
+between Nushki and Seistan, but when Ferrier crossed it it was a
+dangerous route to attempt on tired and ill-fed horses. The existence
+of troops of wild asses was sufficient evidence of its life-supporting
+capabilities if properly developed. Ferrier struck the Helmund about
+Khan Nashin. Here a most ill-timed and ill-advised fight with a Baluch
+clan ended in a disastrous flight of the whole party down the Helmund
+to Rudbar, and it would perhaps be unkind to criticise too closely the
+heroics of this part of Ferrier's story.
+
+At Rudbar Ferrier again noticed bricks a yard square in an old dyke,
+whilst hiding. Rudbar was well known to the Arab geographers, but this
+record of Ferrier's carries it back (and with it the course of the
+Helmund) to very ancient times indeed. Continuing to follow the river,
+they passed Kala-i-Fath and reached "Poolka"--a place which no longer
+exists under that name. This is all surveyed country; but no
+investigator since Ferrier has observed the same ancient bricks at
+Kala-i-Fath which Ferrier noted there as at Farah and Rudbar. There is
+every probability, however, of their existence. All this part of the
+Helmund valley abounds in antiquities which are as old as Asiatic
+civilization, but nothing short of systematic antiquarian exploration
+will lead to further discoveries of any value.
+
+Ferrier was now in Seistan, and we may pass over his record of
+interesting observations on the wealth of antiquarian remains which
+surrounded him. It is enough to point out that he was one of the first
+to call public attention to them from the point of view of actual
+contact. It must be accepted as much to the credit of Ferrier's
+narrative that the latest surveys of Seistan (_i.e._ those completed
+during the work of the Commission under Sir H. MacMahon in 1903-5)
+entirely support the account given in his _Caravan Journeys_ as he
+wandered through that historic land. By the light of the older maps,
+completed during the Afghan Boundary Commission some twenty years
+previously, it would have been difficult to have traced his steps. We
+know now that the lake of Seistan should, with all due regard to its
+extraordinary capacity for expansion and contraction, be represented
+as in MacMahon's map, extending southwards to a level with the great
+bend of the Helmund. Ferrier's narrative very conclusively illustrates
+this position of it, and proves that such an expansion must be
+regarded as normal. We can no longer accurately locate the positions
+of Pulaki and Galjin, but from his own statements it seems more than
+probable that the first place is already sand-buried. They were not
+far north of Kala-i-Fath. From there he went northward to Jahanabad,
+and north-west (not south-west) to Jalalabad. It was at Jahanabad that
+he nearly fell into the hands of Ali Khan, the chief of Chakhansur
+(Sheikh Nassoor of Ferrier), the scoundrel who had previously murdered
+Dr. Forbes and hung his body up to be carefully watered and watched
+till it fell to pieces in gold ducats. There was an unfortunate
+superstition current in Baluchistan to the effect that this was the
+normal end of European existence! Luckily it has passed away. Escaping
+such a calamity, he turned the lake at its southern extremity,
+passing through Sekoha, and travelled up its western banks till, after
+crossing the Harat Rud, he reached Lash Jowain. From here to Farah and
+from Farah once again to Herat, his road was made straight for him,
+and we need only note what he has to say about the extent of the ruins
+near Sabzawar to be convinced that here was the mediæval provincial
+capital of Parwana. At Herat he was enabled to do what would have
+saved him a most adventurous journey (and lost us the pleasure of
+recording his work as that of a notable explorer of Afghanistan),
+_i.e._ take the straight road back to Teheran from whence he came.
+
+With this we may bid adieu to Ferrier, but it is only fair to do tardy
+justice to his remarkable work. I confess that after the regions of
+Central Afghanistan had been fairly well reconnoitred by the surveyors
+of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission, considerable doubt remained
+in my mind as to the veracity of Ferrier's statements. I still think
+he was imposed upon now and then by what he _heard_, but I have little
+doubt that he adhered on the whole (and the conditions under which he
+travelled must be remembered) to a truthful description of what he
+_saw_. It is true that there still remains wanting an explanation of
+his experiences at that restful island in the sea of difficulty and
+danger which surrounded him--Dev Hissar--but I have already pointed
+out that it may exist beyond the limits of actual subsequent
+observation; and as regards the stupendous bricks with cuneiform
+inscription, it can only be said that their existence in the
+localities which he mentions has been rendered so probable by recent
+investigation, that nothing short of serious and systematic
+excavation, conducted in the spirit which animated the discovery of
+Nineveh, will finally disprove this most interesting evidence of the
+extreme antiquity of the cities of Afghanistan, and their relation to
+the cities of Mesopotamia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+SUMMARY
+
+
+The close of the Afghan war of 1839-40 left a great deal to be desired
+in the matter of practical geography. It was not the men but the
+methods that were wanting. The commencement of the second and last
+Afghan war in 1878 saw the initiation of a system of field survey of a
+practical geographical nature, which combined the accuracy of
+mathematical deduction with the rapidity of plane table topography. It
+was the perfecting of the smaller class of triangulating instruments
+that made this system possible, quite as much as the unique
+opportunity afforded to a survey department in such a country as India
+for training topographers. It worked well from the very first, and
+wherever a force could march or a political mission be launched into
+such a region of open hill and valley as the Indian trans-frontier,
+there could the surveyors hold their own (no matter what the nature of
+the movement might be) and make a "square" survey in fairly accurate
+detail, with the certainty that it would take its final place
+without squeezing or distortion in the general map of Asia. This was
+of course very different from the plodding traverse work of former
+days, and it rapidly placed quite a new complexion on our
+trans-frontier maps. Since then regular systematic surveys in
+extension of those of India have been carried far afield, and it may
+safely be said now that no country in the world is better provided
+with military maps of its frontiers than India. In Baluchistan,
+indeed, there is little left to the imagination. A country which forty
+years ago was an ugly blank in our maps, with a doubtful locality
+indicated here and there, is now almost as well surveyed as Scotland.
+Afghanistan, however, is beyond our line, "out of bounds," and the
+result is that there are serious gaps in our map knowledge of the
+country of the Amir, gaps which there seems little probability of
+investigating under the present closure of the frontier to explorers.
+
+  [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF HINDU KUSH PASSES]
+
+By far the most important of these gaps are the uplands of Badakshan,
+stretching from the Oxus plains to the Hindu Kush. The plains of
+Balkh, as far east as Khulm and Tashkurghan, from whence the high-road
+leads to Haibak, Bamian, and the Hindu Kush passes, are fairly well
+mapped. The Oxus, to the north of Balkh, is well known, and the fords
+and passages of that river have been reckoned up with fair accuracy.
+From time immemorial every horde of Skythic origin, Nagas, Sakas, or
+Jatas, must have passed these fords from the hills and valleys of the
+Central Asian divide on their way to India. The Oxus fords have seen
+men in millions making south for the valleys of Badakshan and the
+Golden Gates of Central Asiatic ideal which lay yet farther south
+beyond the grim line of Hindu Kush. Balkh (the city) must have stood
+like a rock in the human tide which flowed from north to south. From
+the west, too, from Asia Minor and the Persian provinces, as well as
+from the Caspian steppes to the north-west, must have come many a
+weary band of tear-stained captives, transported across half a
+continent by their conquerors to colonize, build cities, and gradually
+amalgamate with the indigenous people, and so to disappear from
+history. From the west came Parthians, Medes, Assyrians, and Greeks,
+who did not altogether disappear. But no such human tide ever flowed
+into Badakshan from the east nor yet from the south. To the east are
+the barrier heights of the Pamirs. No crowd of fugitives or captives
+ever faced those bleak, inhospitable, wind-torn valleys that we know
+of. Nor can we find any trace of emigration from India. Yet routes
+were known across the Pamirs, and in due time, as we have seen, small
+parties of pilgrims from China made use of these routes, seeking for
+religious truth in Balkh when, as a Buddhist centre, Balkh was in
+direct connection with the Buddhist cities of Eastern Turkistan. And
+Buddhism itself, when it left India, went northward and flourished
+exceedingly in those same cities of the sandy plain, where the people
+talked and wrote a language of India for centuries after the birth of
+Christ. Balkh, however, never stayed the tide which overlapped it and,
+passing on, lost itself in the valleys under the Hindu Kush, or else,
+surmounting that range, streamed over into the Kabul basin. Whether
+the tide set in from north or west, the overflow was forced by purely
+geographical conditions into precisely the same channels, and in many
+cases it drifted into the hills and stayed there. What we should
+expect to find in Balkh, then (whenever Dr. Stein can get there), are
+records in brick, records in writing, and records in coin, of nearly
+every great Asiatic movement which has influenced the destinies of
+India from the days of Assyria to those of Mohamed. What a history to
+unfold!
+
+Of the Badakshan uplands south and south-east of Balkh, we have but
+most unsatisfying geographical record. In the days preceding the first
+Afghan war when Burnes, Moorcroft, Lord, and Wood were in the field,
+we certainly acquired much useful information which is still all that
+we have for scientific reference. Moorcroft, as we have seen, made
+several hurried journeys between Balkh and Kunduz under most perilous
+conditions, when endeavouring to escape from the clutches of the
+border chief, Murad Beg. But Moorcroft's opportunities of scientific
+observation were small, and his means of ascertaining his
+geographical position were crude, and we gain little or nothing from
+his thrilling story of adventure, beyond a general description of a
+desolate region of swamp and upland which forms the main features of
+Northern Badakshan.
+
+Lord and Wood, who followed Moorcroft at no great interval, and who
+were also in direct personal touch with Murad Beg under much the same
+political circumstances, have furnished much more useful information
+of the routes and passes between Haibak and Kunduz, and given us a
+very fair idea of the physical configuration of that desolate
+district. Lord's memoir on the _Uzbek State of Kundooz_ (published at
+Simla in July 1838) is indeed the best, if not the only, authoritative
+document concerning the history and policy of Badakshan, giving us a
+fair idea of the conditions under which Murad Beg established and
+consolidated his position as the paramount chief of that country, and
+the guardian of the great commercial route between Kabul and Bokhara;
+but there is little geographical information in the memoir. The four
+fortified towns of the Kunduz state, Kunduz, Rustak, Talikhan, and
+Hazrat Imam, are described rather as depositories for plunder than as
+positions of any great importance, and the real strength of Murad
+Beg's military force lay in the quality of his hordes of irregular
+Uzbek horsemen and the extraordinary hardiness and endurance of the
+Kataghani horses. So highly esteemed is this particular breed that the
+late Amir of Afghanistan would permit of no export of horses from
+Kataghan, reserving them especially for the purpose of mounting his
+own cavalry.
+
+We learn incidentally of the waste and desolation caused by the
+poisonous climate of the fens and marshes between Hazrat Imam and
+Kunduin, to which Murad Beg had transported 20,000 Badakshani families
+for purposes of colonization, and where Dr. Lord was told that barely
+1000 individuals had survived; but Wood tells us much more than this
+in his charming book on the Oxus. From the point where he left the
+main road from Kabul to Bokhara (a little below Kuram north of the
+Saighan valley) till he reached Kunduz, he was passing over country
+and by-ways which have never been revisited by any European
+geographer. He tells us that "the plain between the streams that water
+Kunduz and Kuram has a wavy surface, and though unsuited to
+agriculture has an excellent pasturage. The only village on the road
+is Hazrat Baba Kamur. On the eastern side the plain is supported by a
+ridge of hills sloping down from the mountains to the south. We
+crossed it by the pass of Archa (so called from the fir trees which
+cover its crest), from the top of which we had a noble view of the
+snowy mountains to the east, the outliers of Hindu Kush. Next day we
+forded the river of Kunduz, and continuing to journey along its right
+bank, through the swampy district of Baghlan and Aliabad, reached the
+capital of Murad Beg on Monday the 4th Dec. (1837)." The story of
+Wood's travels in Badakshan has already been told; the moon-lit march
+from Kunduz through the dense jungle grass and swamp, often knee-deep
+in water; the gradual rise to higher ground above; the floating vapour
+screen that hovered over the fens; Khanabad and its quaint array of
+colleges and students, and the Koh Umber mountain, isolated and
+conspicuous, dividing the plains of Kunduz and Talikhan--all these are
+features which will indicate the general character of that part of
+Badakshan but leave us no fixed and determined position. The Koh Umber
+in particular must be a remarkable topographical landmark, as it
+towers 2500 feet above the surrounding plain with a snow-covered
+summit. Wood says of it that it is central to the districts of
+Talikhan, Kunduz, and Hazrat Imam, and its pasturage is common to the
+flocks of all three plains. But it is an undetermined geographical
+feature, and still remains in its solitary grandeur, a position to be
+won by future explorers.
+
+From Khanabad to Talikhan, Faizabad, and Jirm (which, it will be
+recollected, was once the capital of Badakshan--probably the
+"Badakshan" of Arab geography), we have the description of a
+mountainous country supporting the conjectural topography of our maps,
+which indicate that this route borders and occasionally crosses a
+series of gigantic spurs or offshoots of a central range (which Wood
+calls the Khoja) which must itself be a north-easterly arm of the
+Hindu Kush, taking off from the latter range somewhere near the
+Khawak Pass. Here, then, is one of the most important blanks in the
+map of our frontier. Inconceivably rugged and difficult of access, it
+seems probable that it is more accessible from Badakshan than from the
+south. We know from Wood's account of the extraordinary difficulty
+that beset his efforts to reach the lapis-lazuli mines above Jirm in
+the Kokcha River something of the general nature of these northern
+valleys and defiles of Kafiristan reaching down to lower Badakshan. It
+would, indeed, be a splendid geographical feat to fix the position and
+illustrate the topography of this roughest section of Asia.
+
+Between the Khawak Pass of the Hindu Kush which leads to Andarab, and
+the Mandal, or Minjan, passes, some 70 miles to the east, we have
+never solved the problem of the Hindu Kush divide. What lies behind
+Wood's Khoja range, between it and the main divide? We have the valley
+called Anjuman, which is believed to lead as directly to Jirm from the
+Khawak Pass as Andarab does to Kunduz. It is an important feature in
+Hindu Kush topography, but we know nothing of it. We may, however,
+safely conjecture that the Minjan River, reached by Sir George
+Robertson in one of his gallant attempts to explore Kafiristan, is the
+upper Kokcha flowing past the lapis-lazuli mines to Jirm. But where
+does it rise? And where on the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush do
+the small affluents of the Alingar and Alishang have their beginning?
+These are the hidden secrets of Kafiristan. It is here that those
+turbulent people (who, by the way, seem to exhibit the same
+characteristics from whatever valley of Kafiristan they come, and to
+be much more homogeneous than is usually supposed) hide themselves in
+their upland villages, amidst their magnificent woods and forests,
+untroubled by either Afghan or European visitors. Here they live their
+primitive lives, enlivened with quaint ceremonies and a heathenism
+equally reminiscent of the mythology of Greece, the ritual of
+Zoroaster, and the beliefs of the Hindu. Who will unravel the secrets
+of this inhabited outland, which appears at present to be more
+impracticable to the explorer than either of the poles? Yule, in his
+preface to the last edition of Wood's _Oxus_, remarks that Colonel
+Walker, the late Surveyor-General of India (and one of the greatest of
+Asiatic geographers) repeatedly expressed his opinion that there is no
+well-defined range where the Hindu Kush is represented in our maps,
+and he adds that such an expression of opinion can only apply to that
+part of the Hindu Kush which lies east of the Khawak Pass. Sir Henry
+Yule refers to Wood's incidental notices of the mountains which he saw
+towering to the south of him, "rising to a vast height and bearing far
+below their summits the snow of ages," in refutation of such an
+opinion; and he further quotes the "havildar's" (native surveyor)
+report of the Nuksan and Dorah passes in confirmation of Wood.
+
+Since Yule wrote, Woodthorpe's surveys of the Nuksan and Dorah passes
+during the Lockhart mission leave little doubt as to the nature of the
+Hindu Kush as far west as those passes, but it is precisely between
+those passes and the Khawak, along the backbone of Kafiristan, that we
+have yet to learn the actual facts of mountain conformation. And here
+possibly there may be something in Walker's suggestion. The mountains
+to which Wood looked up from Talikhan or Kishm, towering to the south
+of him and covered with perpetual snow, certainly formed no part of
+the main Hindu Kush divide. Between them and the Hindu Kush is either
+the deep valley of Anjuman, or more probably the upper drainage of the
+Minjan, which, rising not far east of Khawak, repeats the almost
+universal Himalayan feature of a long, lateral, ditch-like valley in
+continuation of the Andarab depression, marking the base of the
+connecting link in the primeval fold formed by the Hindu Kush east and
+west of it. We should expect to find the Kafiristan mountain
+conformation to be an integral part of the now recognised Himalayan
+system of parallel mountain folds, with deep lateral valleys fed by a
+transverse drainage. The long valley of the Alingar will prove to be
+another such parallel depression, and we shall find when the map is
+finished that the dominating structural feature of all this wild
+hinterland of mountains is the north-east to south-west trend of
+mountain and valley which marks the Kunar (or Chitral) valley on the
+one side and the Panjshir on the other. The reason why it is more
+probable that the Minjan River takes the direct drainage of the
+northern slopes of this Kafiristan backbone into a lateral trough than
+that the Anjuman spreads its head into a fan, is that Sir George
+Robertson found the Minjan, below the pass of Mandal, to be a far more
+considerable river than its assumed origin in the official maps would
+make it. He accordingly makes a deep indentation in the Hindu Kush
+divide (on the map which illustrates his captivating book, _The Kafirs
+of the Hindu Kush_), bringing it down southward nearly half a degree
+to an acute angle, so as to afford room for the Minjan to rise and
+follow a course in direct line with its northerly run (as the Kokcha)
+in Badakshan. This is a serious disturbance of the laws which govern
+the structure of Asiatic mountain systems, as now recognized, and it
+is indeed far more likely that the Minjan (Kokcha) follows those laws
+which have placed the Andarab and the Panjshir (or for that matter the
+Indus and the Brahmaputra) in their parallel mountain troughs, than
+that the primeval fold of the Hindu Kush has become disjointed and
+indented by some agency which it would be impossible to explain. Who
+is going to complete the map and solve the question?
+
+We are still very far from possessing a satisfactory geographical
+knowledge of even the more accessible districts of Badakshan. We still
+depend on Wood for the best that we know of the route between
+Faizabad and Zebak; and of those Eastern mountains which border the
+Oxus as it bends northward to Kila Khum we know positively nothing at
+all.
+
+But beyond all contention the hidden jewels to be acquired by
+scientific research in Badakshan are archæological and antiquarian
+rather than geographical. Now that Nineveh and Babylon have yielded up
+their secrets, there is no such field out of Egypt for the antiquarian
+and his spade as the plains of Balkh. But enough has been said of what
+may be hidden beneath the unsightly bazaars and crumbling ruins of
+modern Balkh. Whilst Badakshan literally teems with opportunities for
+investigation, certain features of ancient Baktria appear to be
+especially associated with certain sites; such, for instance, as the
+sites of Semenjan (Haibak), Baghlan, Andarab, and particularly the
+junction of the rivers at Kasan. That Andarab (Ariaspa) held the
+capital of the Greek colonies there can be as little doubt as that
+Haibak and its neighbourhood formed the great Buddhist centre between
+Balkh and Kabul. Again, who is going to make friends with the Amir of
+Afghanistan and try his luck? It must be a foreigner, for no
+Englishman would be permitted by his own government to pass that way
+at present.
+
+The wild and savage altitudes of Badakshan and Kafiristan by no means
+exhaust the unexplored tracts of Afghanistan. We have the curious
+feature of a well-surveyed route connecting Ghazni with Kandahar, one
+of the straightest and best of military routes trodden by armies
+uncountable from the days of Alexander to those of Roberts, a narrow
+ribbon of well-ascertained topography, dividing the two most important
+of the unexplored regions of Afghanistan. North-west of this road lies
+the great basin of the central Helmund. South-east is a broken land of
+plain, ribbed and streaked with sharp ridges of frontier formation,
+about which we ought to know a great deal more than we do. Up the
+frontier staircases and on to this plain run many important routes
+from India. The Kuram route strikes it at its northern extremity and
+leaves it to the southward. The Tochi valley route, and the great
+mercantile Gomal highway strike into the middle of it, and yet no one
+of our modern frontier explorers has ever reached it from one side or
+the other. We still depend on Broadfoot's and Vigne's account of what
+they saw there, although it is only just on the far side of the rocky
+band of hills which face the Indus.
+
+About midway between Ghazni and Bannu is the water-parting which
+separates the Indus drainage from that of the Helmund, and at this
+point there are some formidable peaks, well over 12,000 feet in
+height, to distinguish it. The Tochi passage is easy enough as far as
+the Sheranni group of villages near the head of its long cultivated
+ramp, but beyond that point the traveller becomes involved in the
+narrow lateral valleys which follow the trend of the ridges which
+traverse his path, where streams curl up from the Birmal hills to the
+south and from the high altitudes which shelter the Kharotis on the
+north. It is a perpetual wriggle through steep-sided rocky waterways,
+until one emerges into more open country after crossing the main
+divide by the Kotanni Pass. The hills here are called Jadran, and it
+is probable that the Jadran divide and that of the Kohnak farther
+south are one and the same. Beyond the Kotanni Pass to Ghazni the way
+is fairly open, but we know very little about it beyond the historical
+fact that the arch-raider, Mahmud of Ghazni, used to follow this route
+for his cavalry descents on the Indian frontier with most remarkable
+success. The remains of old encampments are to be seen in the plain at
+the foot of the Tochi, and disjointed indications of an ancient
+high-road were found on the hill slopes to the north of the stream by
+our surveyors.
+
+Of the actual physical facts of the Gomul route we have only the
+details gathered by Broadfoot under great difficulties, and a
+traveller's account by Vigne. What they found has already been
+described, and the frontier expedition to the Takht-i-Suliman in 1882
+sufficiently well determined the position of the Kohnak water-parting
+to give a fixed geographical value to their narratives. But we have no
+topography beyond Domandi and Wana. We know that the ever-present
+repellent band of rocky ridge and furrow, the hill and valley
+distribution which is distinctive, has to be encountered and passed;
+but the route does not bristle with the difficulties of narrow ways
+and stony footpaths as does the Tochi, and there is no doubt that it
+could soon be reduced to a very practicable artillery road. The
+important point is that we do not know here (any more than as regards
+the upper Tochi) a great deal that it concerns us very much to know.
+We have no mapping of the country which lies between the Baluch
+frontier and Lake Abistada, the land of the stalwart Suliman Khel
+tribes-people, and it is a country of which the possible resources
+might be of great value to us if ever we are driven again to take
+military stock of Afghanistan.
+
+But the importance of good mapping in this part of Afghanistan is due
+solely to its position in geographical relation to the Indian
+frontier. It is different when we turn to the stupendous altitudes of
+the high Hazara plateau land to the north of the Ghazni-Kandahar
+route. With this we are not likely to have any future concern, except
+that which may be called academic. In spite of the reputation for
+sterile wind-scoured desolation which the uplands hiding the upper
+Helmund valleys have always enjoyed, it is not to be forgotten that
+there are summer ways about them, and strong indications that some of
+these ways are distinctly useful. Our knowledge of the Helmund River
+(such knowledge, that is to say, as justifies us in mapping the
+course of the river with a firm line) from its sources ends almost
+exactly at the intersection of the parallel of 34° of North latitude
+with the meridian of 67° East longitude. For the next 120 miles we
+really know nothing about its course, except that it is said to run
+nearly straight through the heart of the Hazara highlands.
+
+Two very considerable, but nameless, rivers run more or less parallel
+to the Helmund to the south of it, draining the valleys of Ujaristan
+and Urusgan, the upper part of the latter being called Malistan. What
+these valleys are like, or what may be the nature of the dividing
+water-parting, we do not know, nor have we any authentic description
+of the valley of Nawar, which lies under the Gulkoh mountain at the
+head of the Arghandab, but apparently unconnected with it. Native
+information on the subject of these highly elevated valleys is
+excessively meagre, nor are they of any special interest from either
+the strategic or economic point of view. Far more interesting would it
+be to secure a geographical map of those northern branches of the
+Helmund, the Khud Rud, and the Kokhar Ab, which drain the mountain
+districts to the east of Taiwara above the undetermined position of
+Ghizao on the Helmund. These mountain streams must rush their waters
+through magnificent gorges, for the peaks which soar above them rise
+to 13,000 feet in altitude, and the country is described as
+inconceivably rugged and wild. This is the real centre and home of the
+Hazara communities, and, in spite of the fact that there are certain
+well-ascertained tracks traversing the country and connecting the
+Helmund with the valley of the Hari Rud, we know that for the greater
+part of the year they must be closed to all traffic. They are of no
+importance outside purely local interests. The comparatively small
+area yet unexplored which lies to the north of the Hazara mountains,
+shut off from them by the straight trough of the Hari Rud and
+embracing the head of the Murghab River of Turkistan, is almost
+equally unimportant, although it would be a matter of great interest
+to investigate a little more closely the remarkable statements of
+Ferrier which bear on this region.
+
+When we have finally struck a balance between our knowledge and our
+ignorance of that which concerns the landward gates of India, we shall
+recognize the fact that we know all that it is really essential that
+we should know of these uplifted approaches. They are inconceivably
+old--as old as the very mountains which they traverse. What use may be
+made of them has been made long ago. We have but to turn back the
+pages of history and we find abundant indications which may enable us
+to gauge their real value as highways from Central Asia to India.
+History says that none of the tracks which lead from China and Tibet
+have ever been utilized for the passage of large bodies of people
+either as emigrants, troops, commercial travellers, or pilgrims into
+India, although there exists a direct connection between China and the
+Brahmaputra in Assam, and although we know that the difficulties of
+the road between Lhasa and India are by no means insuperable. Nor by
+the Kashmir passes from Turkistan or the Pamirs is it possible to find
+any record of a formidable passing of large bodies of people, although
+the Karakoram has been a trade route through all time, and although
+the Chinese have left their mark below Chitral. Yet we have had
+explorers over the passes connecting the upper Oxus affluents with
+Gilgit and Chitral who have not failed, some of them, to sound a
+solemn note of warning.
+
+Before the settlement of the Oxus extension of the northern boundary
+of Afghanistan, something of a scare was started by a demonstration of
+the fact that it is occasionally quite easy to cross the Kilik Pass
+from the Taghdumbash Pamir into the Gilgit basin, or to climb over the
+comparatively easy slopes of the flat-backed Hindu Kush by the
+Baroghel Pass and slip down into the valley of the Chitral. There was,
+however, always a certain amount of geographical controversy as to the
+value of the Chitral or of the Kilik approach after the crossing of
+the Hindu Kush had been effected. Much of the difference of opinion
+expressed by exploring experts was due to the different conditions
+under which those undesirable, troublesome approaches to India were
+viewed. Where one explorer might find a protruding glacier blocking
+his path and terminating his excursions, another would speak of an
+open roadway.
+
+From season to season in these high altitudes local conditions vary to
+an extent which makes it impossible to forecast the difficulties which
+may obtrude themselves during any one month or even for any one
+summer. In winter, _i.e._ for at least eight months of the year, all
+are equally ice-bound and impracticable, and although the general
+spirit of desiccation, which reigns over High Asia and is tending to
+reduce the glaciers and diminish the snowfall, may eventually change
+the conditions of mountain passages to an appreciable extent (and for
+a period), it would be idle to speculate on any really important
+modification of these difficulties from such natural climatic causes.
+We must take these mountain passes as we find them now, and as the
+Chinese pilgrim of old found them, placed by Nature in positions
+demanding a stout heart and an earnest purpose, determined to wrest
+from inhospitable Nature the merit of a victorious encounter with her
+worst and most detestable moods, ere we surmount them. To the pilgrim
+they represented the "strait gate" and "narrow way" which ever leads
+to salvation, and he accepted the horrors as a part of the sacrifice.
+To us they represent troublesome breaks in the stern continuity of our
+natural defences which can be made to serve no useful purpose, but
+which may nevertheless afford the opportunity to an aggressive and
+enterprising enemy to spy out the land and raise trouble on the
+border. We cannot altogether leave them alone. They have to be watched
+by the official guardians of our frontier, and all the gathered
+threads of them converging on Leh or Gilgit must be held by hands that
+are alert and strong. It is just as dangerous an error to regard such
+approaches to India as negligible quantities in the military and
+political field of Indian defence, as to take a serious view of their
+practicability for purposes of invasion.
+
+Beyond this scattered series of rugged and elevated by-ways of the
+mountains crossing the great Asiatic divide from regions of Tibet and
+the Pamirs, to the west of them, we find on the edge of the unsurveyed
+regions of Kafiristan that group of passages, the Mandal and Minjan,
+the Nuksan and the Dorah which converge on Chitral as they pass
+southward over the Hindu Kush from the rugged uplands of Badakshan.
+None of these appear to have been pilgrim routes, nor does history
+help us in estimating their value as gateways in the mountains. They
+are practicable at certain seasons, and one of them, the Dorah, is a
+much-trodden route, connecting what is probably the best road
+traversing upper Badakshan from Faizabad to the Hindu Kush with the
+Chitral valley, and it enjoys the comparatively moderate altitude of
+about 14,500 feet above sea-level. A pass of this altitude is a pass
+to be reckoned with, and nothing but its remote geographical position,
+and the extreme difficulty of its approaches on either side (from
+Badakshan or Chitral), can justify the curious absence of any
+historical evidence proving it to have witnessed the crossing of
+troops or the incursions of emigrants. For the latter purpose, indeed,
+it may have served, but we know too little about the ethnography or
+derivation of the Chitral valley tribes to be able to indulge in
+speculation on the subject.
+
+What we know of the Dorah is that it is the connecting commercial link
+between Badakshan and the Kunar valley during the summer months (July
+to September), when mules and donkeys carry over wood and cloth goods
+to be exchanged for firearms and cutlery with other produce of a more
+local nature, including (so it is said) Badakshi slaves. It has been
+crossed in early November in face of a bitter blizzard and piercing
+cold, but it is not normally open then. The Nuksan Pass, which is not
+far removed from it, is much higher (16,100 feet) and is frequently
+blocked by glacial ice; but the Dorah, which steals its way through
+rugged defiles from the Chitral valley over the dip in the Hindu Kush
+down past the little blue lake of Dufferin into the depths of the
+gorges which enclose the upper reaches of the Zebak affluent of the
+great Kokcha River of Badakshan, (about which we have heard from
+Wood), is the one gateway which is normally open from year to year,
+and its existence renders necessary an advanced watch-tower at
+Chitral. Like the Baroghel and other passes to the east of it, it is
+not the Dorah itself but the extreme difficulty of the narrow ways
+which lead to it, the wildness and sterility of the remote regions
+which encompass it on either side, which lock this door to anything in
+the shape of serious military enterprise.
+
+Beyond the Dorah to the westward, following the Kafiristan divide of
+the Hindu Kush, we may well leave unassisted Nature to maintain her
+own work of perfect defence, for there is not a track that we can
+discover to exist, nor a by-way that we can hear of which passes
+through that inconceivably grand and savage wilderness of untamed
+mountains. Undoubtedly such tracks exist, but judging from the
+remarkable physical constitution of the Kafir, they are such as to
+demand an exceptional type of mountaineer to deal with them. It is
+only when we work our way farther westward to those passes which lead
+into the valleys of the upper Kabul River affluents, from the Khawak
+Pass at the head of the Panjshir valley to the Unai which points the
+way from Kabul to Bamian, that we find material for sober reflection
+derived from the records of the past.
+
+The general characteristics of these passes have been described
+already--and something of their history. We have seen that they have
+been more or less open doors to India through the ages. Men literally
+"in nations" have passed through them; the dynasties of India have
+been changed and her destinies reshaped time after time by the
+facilities of approach which they have afforded; and if the modern
+conditions of things military were now what they were in the days of
+Alexander or of Baber, there would be no reason why her destinies
+should not once again be changed through use of them. We must remember
+that they are not what they have been. How far they have been opened
+up by artificial means, or which of them, besides the Nuksan and the
+Chahardar, have been so improved, we have no means of knowing, but we
+may take it for granted that the Public Works Department of
+Afghanistan has not been idle; for we know that that department was
+very closely directed by the late Amir, and that his staff of
+engineers is most eminent and most practical.[13]
+
+The base of all this group of passes lies in Badakshan, so that the
+chief characteristics as gates of India are common to all. It has been
+too often pointed out to require repetition that the plains of
+Balkh--all Afghan Turkistan in short--lie at the mercy of any
+well-organized force which crosses the Oxus southwards; but once that
+force enters the gorges and surmounts the passes of the Badakshan
+ramparts a totally new set of military problems would be presented.
+The narrowness and the isolation of its cultivated valleys; the vast
+spaces of dreary, rugged desolation which part them; the roughness and
+the altitude of the intervening ranges--in short, the passive
+hostility of the uplands and their blank sterility would create the
+necessity for some artificial means of importing supplies from the
+plains before any formidable force could be kept alive at the front.
+Modern methods point to military railways, for the ancient methods
+which included the occupation of the country by well-planted military
+colonies are no longer available. All military engineers nowadays
+believe in a line, more or less perfect, of railway connection between
+the front of a field force and its base of supply. But it would be a
+long and weary, if not absolutely hopeless, task to bring a railway
+across the highlands of Badakshan to the foot of the Hindu Kush from
+the Oxus plains.
+
+We have read what Wood has to say of the routes from Kunduz southward
+to Bamian and Kabul. This is the recognized trade route; the great
+highway to Afghan Turkistan. Seven passes to be negotiated over as
+many rough mountain divides, plunges innumerable into the deep-rifted
+valleys by ways that are short and sharp, a series of physical
+obstacles to be encountered, to surmount any one of which would be a
+triumph of engineering enterprise. Amongst the scientific devices
+which altitude renders absolutely necessary, would be a repeated
+process of tunnelling. No railway yet has been carried over a sharp
+divide of 10,000 or 11,000 feet altitude, subject to sudden and severe
+climatic conditions, without the protection of a tunnel. As a work of
+peaceful enterprise alone, this would be a line probably without a
+parallel for the proportion of difficulty compared to its length in
+the whole wide world. As a military enterprise, a rapid construction
+for the support of a field army, it is but a childish chimera. Yet we
+are writing of Badakshan's best road!
+
+It is true that by the Haibak route to Ghori and that ancient military
+base of the Greeks, Andarab, the difficulty of the sheer physical
+altitude of great passes is not encountered, and there are spaces
+which might be pointed out where a light line could be engineered with
+comparative facility. Even to reach thus far from the Oxus plains
+would be a great advantage to a force that could spend a year or two,
+like a Chinese army, in devising its route, but this comparative
+facility terminates at the base of the Hindu Kush foot-hills; and it
+matters not beyond that point whether the way be rough or plain, for
+the wall of the mountains never drops to less than 12,500 feet, and no
+railway has ever been carried in the open over such altitudes.
+Tunnelling here would be found impossible, owing to the flat-backed
+nature of the wide divide. With what may happen in future military
+developments; whether a fleet of air-ships should in the farther
+future sail over the snow-crested mountain tops and settle, replete
+with all military devices in gunnery and stores, on the plains of the
+Kohistan of Kabul we need hardly concern ourselves. It is at least an
+eventuality of which the risk seems remote at present, and we may rest
+content with the Hindu Kush barrier as a defensive line which cannot
+be violated in the future as it has been in the past by any formidable
+force cutting through Badakshan, without years of preparation and
+forewarning.
+
+For any serious menace to the line of India's north-western defence we
+must look farther west--much farther west--for enough has been said of
+the great swelling highlands of the Firozkohi plateau, and of the
+Hazara regions south of the Hari Rud sources, to indicate their
+impracticable nature as the scene of military movement. It is, after
+all, the highways of Herat and Seistan that form the only avenues for
+military approach to the Indian frontier that are not barred by
+difficulties of Nature's own providing, or commanded from the sea.
+Once on these western fields we are touching on matter which has been
+so worn threadbare by controversy that it might seem almost useless to
+add further opinions. Historically it seems strange at first sight
+that, compared with the northern approaches to which Kabul gives the
+command, so very little use has been made of this open way. It was not
+till the eighteenth century saw the foundation laid for the Afghan
+kingdom that the more direct routes between Eastern Persia and the
+Indus became alive with marching troops. The reason is, obviously,
+geographical. Neither trade, nor the flag which preceded it from the
+west, cared to face the dreary wastes of sand to the south of the
+Helmund, backed, as they are, by the terrible band of the Sind
+frontier hills full of untamed and untameable tribes, merely for the
+purpose of dropping into the narrow riverain of the lower Indus,
+beyond which, again, the deserts of Rajputana parted them from the
+rich plains of Central India. When the Indus delta and Sind were the
+objective of a military expedition, the conquerors came by way of the
+sea, or by approaches within command of the sea--never from Herat.
+Herat was but the gateway to Kandahar, and to Kabul in the days when
+Kabul was "India."
+
+It was not, so far as we can tell, till Nadir Shah, after ravaging
+Seistan and the rich towns of the Helmund valley, found a narrow
+passage across the Sind frontier hills that any practical use was ever
+made of the gates of Baluchistan. Although there are ethnological
+evidences that a remnant of the Mongol hordes of Chenghis Khan settled
+in those same Sind hills, there is no evidence that they crossed them
+by any of the Baluch passes. It seems certain that in prehistoric
+times, when the geographical conditions of Western India were
+different from what they are now, Turanian peoples in tribal crowds
+must have made their way into India southwards from Western Asia, but
+they drifted by routes that hugged the coast-line. We have now,
+however, replaced the old natural geographical conditions by an
+artificial system which totally alters the strategic properties of
+this part of the frontier. We have revolutionised the savage
+wilderness of Baluchistan, and made highways not only from the Indus
+to the Helmund, but from Central India to the Indus. The old barriers
+have been broken down and new gateways thrown open. We could not help
+breaking them down, if we were to have peace on our borders; but the
+process has been attended with the disadvantage that it obliges us to
+take anxious note of the roads through Eastern Persia and Western
+Afghanistan which lead to them.
+
+For just about one century since the first scare arose concerning an
+Indian invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte, have we been alternating
+between periods of intense apprehension and of equally foolish apathy
+concerning these Western Indian gateways. The rise and fall of public
+apprehension might be expressed by a series of curves of curious
+regularity. At present we are at the bottom of a curve, for reasons
+which it is hardly necessary to enter into; but it is not an inapt
+position for a calm review of the subject. There is, then, one great
+highway after passing through Herat (which city is about 60 miles from
+the nearest Russian military post), a highway which has been quite
+sufficiently well described already, of about 360 miles in length
+between Herat and Kandahar; Kandahar, again, being about 80 miles
+from our frontier--say 500 miles in all; and the distinguishing
+feature of this highway between Russia and India is the comparative
+ease with which that great Asiatic divide which extends all the way
+from the Hindu Kush to the Persian frontier (or beyond) can be crossed
+on the north of Herat. There, this great central water-parting, so
+formidable in its altitudes for many hundreds of miles, sinks to
+insignificant levels and the comparatively gentle gradients of a
+debased and disintegrated range. This divide is parted and split by
+the passage of the Hari Rud River; but the passage of the river is
+hill-enclosed and narrow, with many a rock-bound gorge which would not
+readily lend itself to railway-making (although by no means precluding
+it), so that the ridges of the divide could be better passed
+elsewhere.
+
+We must concede that, taking it for all in all, that 500 miles of
+railway gap which still yawns between the Indian and Russian systems
+is an easy gap to fill up, and that it affords a road for advance
+which (apart from the question of supplies) can only be regarded as an
+open highway. Then there is also that other parallel road to Seistan
+from the Russian Transcaspian line across the Elburz mountains (which
+here represents the great divide) via Mashad--a route infinitely more
+difficult, but still practicable--which leads by a longer way to the
+Helmund and Kandahar. Were it not for the political considerations
+arising from the respective geographical positions of these two
+routes, one lying within Persian territory and the other being Afghan,
+they might be regarded as practically one and the same. Neither of
+them could be used (in the aggressive sense) without the occupation of
+Herat, and most assuredly should circumstances arise in which either
+of the two should be used (in the same aggressive sense) the other
+would be utilized at the same time.
+
+This is, then, the chief problem of Indian defence so far as the
+shutting of the gate is concerned, and there are no two ways of
+dealing with it. We must have men and material sufficient in both
+quantity and quality to guard these gates when open, or to close them
+if we wish them shut. The question whether these western gates should
+remain as they are, easily traversable, or should yield (as they must
+do sooner or later) to commercial interests and admit of an iron way
+to link up the Russian and Indian railway systems is really
+immaterial. In the latter case they might be the more readily closed,
+for such a connection would serve the purposes of a defence better
+than those for offence; but in any case in order to be secure we must
+be strong.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[13] Afghan Turkistan and Badakshan are now said to be connected with
+Kabul by good motor roads.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+     Abbas the Great, Shah, 494
+
+     Abbot, General Sir James, cited, 107-109, 119
+
+     Abdurrahmon, Amir, 357, 377, 419
+
+     Ab-i-lal river, 486
+
+     Abistada, Lake, 514
+
+     Abkhana route, 351
+
+     Abu Abdulla Mohammed (Al Idrisi). _See_ Idrisi
+
+     Accadian tradition cited, 34, 73
+
+     Achakzai (Duranis), 212, 361, 375, 491
+
+     Adraskand, 229 _and n._;
+       river, 216
+
+     Aegospotami, xiii, 160, 163
+
+     Afghan, Armenian identification of word, 50
+
+     Afghan Boundary Commission. _See_ Russo-Afghan
+
+     Afghan Turkistan:
+       Agricultural possibilities of, 251
+       Ferrier in, 481
+       Greek settlements in, 31
+       Kabul, route to:
+         Modern improvements in, 419 _and n._, 522 _n._
+         Wood's account of, 418-19
+       Richness of, known to Tiglath Pilesur, 49
+       Route to, by southern passes of Hindu Kush, 378
+       Routes to, from Herat, 248
+       Slavery in, 253
+       Snakes in, 253
+       Valley formations in, 253-4
+
+     Afghanistan:
+       Arab exploration of, 192
+       Assyrian colonies in highlands of, 61
+       Barbarity in, 78-9
+       Boundary Commission. _See_ Russo-Afghan
+       British attitude towards, in early 19th century, 349;
+         Afghan attitude towards British, 337-8
+       British war with (1839-40):
+         Conduct of, 359, 411
+         Effects of, 346, 353, 392
+         Geographical information acquired during, 411-12
+         Remnants of British disasters in, 478
+       British war with (1878-80), surveys in connection with, 397, 500
+       Christie's and Pottinger's exploration of, 329 _et seq._
+       Durani corner of, character of, 212
+       _Ethnography of Afghanistan_ (Bellew) cited, 20, 91
+       Foreign policy of, 353
+       Greek names in, 21
+       Helmund boundary of, 80
+       Hinterland of India, viewed as, 5
+       Indian land gates always held by, 22
+       Language of, Persian in origin, 21
+       Natural beauty of, 392
+       Persia:
+         Colonies of, in, 61
+         Intrigues of, British nervousness as to, 399-400
+         War with (1837), 402
+       Persian Empire including, in antiquity, 21
+       Rain-storms in, 233-4
+       Russian intrigues regarding, British nervousness as to, 399-400
+       Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission. _See that title_
+       Rulers of (Ben-i-Israel), traditions of, 49-50
+       Social conditions in, past and present, 337-8, 395
+       Surveying of, gaps in, 501;
+         important unexplored regions, 514
+
+     Afghanistan, Central:
+       Aimak tribes of, 488-9
+       Broadfoot's exploration of, 412, 470 _et seq._
+       Conformation of, 215
+       Hazara highlands, 84-6
+       Records of, scanty, 213-14
+       Routes through, 220, 222-3
+       Survey of (1882-3), 212, 214
+
+     Afghanistan, North (Baktria):
+       Alexander in, 88
+       Altitudes of peaks and passes in, 262-3
+       Assyrian estimate of, 6
+       Irrigation works in, 75-6
+       Kafir inhabitants of, 50
+       Kyreneans in, 91
+       Milesian Greeks (Brankhidai) transported to, 16, 19, 20, 31, 45,
+           87, 91;
+         survival of Greek strain in, 354-5, 358
+       Murghab river's economic value in, 246-7
+       Plateau of, 258
+       Route to, from Mesopotamia, 47-8, 54, 67-8, 70
+       Winter climate of, 240
+
+     Afghanistan, South:
+       Christie's and Pottinger's exploration of, 329 _et seq._
+       Firearms imported into, 55
+       Historic monuments scarce in, 211
+
+     Afghans:
+       Burnes' estimate of, 491
+       Durani. _See that title_
+       European travellers' intercourse with (unofficial), 452, 457-8
+       Foreigners, attitude towards, 337-8, 353, 392
+       Masson's intimacy with, 346-7, 350, 352, 362-3;
+         his influence with, 380
+       Slavery, attitude towards, 421
+
+     Afridi (Aprytae), 28, 31
+
+     Aimak tribes of Central Afghanistan, 488-9
+
+     Ak Robat, 446
+
+     Ak Robat pass, 378, 382, 421;
+       Wood's account of, 417
+
+     Ak Tepe (Khuzan), 245-6
+
+     Ak Zarat pass, 262
+
+     Akbar Khan (Afghan general), 398
+
+     Akcha (Akbarabad), 449
+
+     Akulphis, 125
+
+     Al Kharij, 313
+
+     Alakah ridge, 257
+
+     Alauddin (Allah-u-din), 218, 467
+
+     Alexander the Great:
+       Alexandreia (? Herat) founded by, 77
+
+     Alexander the Great:
+       Bakhi obliterated by, 31-2
+       Brankhidai of Milesia exterminated by, 20
+       Expedition of, to India:
+         Aornos episode, 106-107, 109-21
+         Army, constituents of, 64-5
+         Course and incidents of, 66-8, 70, 76-9, 83, 86-8, 90, 92-4,
+           96, 98-100, 103-107, 111-22, 125
+         Darius' flight from, 47-8, 67-8
+         Geographical information possessed by, 10, 26, 29, 38, 61, 79,
+           86, 147
+         Greek influence of, in Indus valley less than supposed, 22
+         Greeks in Afghanistan welcoming, 16, 63
+         Knowledge acquired by, 60
+         Mutiny beyond Indus, 46
+         Nature of, 60, 65
+         Recruitment from Greece during, 92
+         Retreat, route of, 38, 51, 86, 145-54, 156, 161-6, 291
+         Skythic tribes encountered by, 93
+       Marriage of Alexander with Roxana, 92
+       Philotas tortured to death by, 78
+       Reverential attitude towards, still felt in India, 58-9
+
+     Alexandreia (Bagram, Herat), 77, 87, 93, 96, 393
+
+     Ali Khan, 497
+
+     Ali Masjid, 351
+
+     Aliabad, 421, 505
+
+     Alingar (Kao) river, 96, 99-100, 327, 358, 507, 509
+
+     Alishang river, 99, 356-8, 507
+
+     Alishang valley, Masson in, 396
+
+     Allard, General, 366, 455
+
+     Almar, 249
+
+     Altitude:
+       Abstract, mediæval ignorance of, 279
+       As a factor in defence, 419
+
+     Amb (Embolina), 107-108, 114-15, 121
+
+     Ambela pass, 121
+
+     Amise, General, 366
+
+     Amritsar, 363, 367
+
+     Anardara, 335, 336
+
+     Anbar, 250-51
+
+     Andarab (Adraspa, Ariaspa, Zariaspa):
+       Alingar river, communication with, 327
+       Capital of Greek colonies situated in, 511
+       Fertility of, 90
+       Greek settlements about, 435
+       Haibak route to, 524
+       Site of, 272, 427-8
+       Strategic importance of, 92, 275, 277, 357
+       Timur at, 355
+       otherwise mentioned, 243, 272-4, 276
+
+     Andarab river, 268, 272, 428;
+       strategic importance of, 261
+
+     Andarab valley, 88, 90, 438, 509
+
+     Andkhui, 248, 439, 448
+
+     Anjuman, 270
+
+     Anjuman valley, 274, 436, 507, 509;
+       importance of route, 275;
+       unexplored, 427-8
+
+     Aornos, 92, 106-107, 109-21
+
+     Aprytae (Afridi), 28, 31
+
+     Arabian Sea:
+       Command of, necessary for safety of southern Baluchistan passes,
+         140-41
+       Islands in, disappearance of, 286, 288
+       Phenomena of, 286-7
+
+     Arabic, derivatives from, 192
+
+     Arabii, 146, 305
+
+     Arabius river. _See_ Purali
+
+     Arabs:
+       Ascendency of, in seventh century, 191-2
+       Himyaritic, 372
+       Indian invasion by, 293-4
+       Indian route used by, _via_ Girishk, 209
+       Makran under ascendency of, 292-5
+       Methods of, mediæval and modern, 227
+       Records of travel by, untrustworthiness of, 213
+       Saboean, 372
+       Sind under, 293, 311, 366
+
+     Arbela, Arbil. _See_ Erbil
+
+     Arbela, battle of, 47, 67
+
+     Archa pass, 421, 505
+
+     Ardewan pass, 234
+
+     Argandi, 379
+
+     Arghandab river, 83, 86, 208, 224, 515
+
+     Arghastan river, 224
+
+     Argu plain, 424
+
+     Aria, 32, 479. _See also_ Herat
+
+     Ariaspa. _See_ Andarab
+
+     Arigaion, 103
+
+     Arimaspians, 14
+
+     Aristobulus cited, 151-2
+
+     Armail (Armabel, Karabel, Las Bela), 150, 304-307, 320;
+       distances to, 303-304
+
+     Armenia, Israelites deported to, 39, 49
+
+     Arnawai valley, 358
+
+     Arrian cited, 19-20, 51, 54, 62-3, 87, 89, 91, 103, 104, 107, 114,
+       118, 119, 124, 126, 147, 148, 150, 152-3, 155, 156, 160, 165-6,
+       316
+
+     Artakoana, 32, 77, 479. _See also_ Herat
+
+     Artobaizanes, 68
+
+     Asfaka, 312, 314
+
+     Asfaran (? Subzawar), 229-30
+
+     Asmar Boundary Commission (1894), 123
+
+     Asoka, 129
+
+     Aspardeh, 250
+
+     Aspasians, 96, 100, 103, 104
+
+     Aspurkan (? Sar-i-pul), 250, 252
+
+     Assagetes, 114
+
+     Assakenians, 96, 104
+
+     Assakenoi, 121, 126, 129
+
+     Asshur (Assyrian god), 53
+
+     Assur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), 52, 162-3
+
+     Assyria:
+       Afghan colonies of, 61
+       Buildings in, nature of, 40-43
+       Israelite serfs in, 39
+
+     Assyrian Empire, Second:
+       Afghanistan as viewed by, 6
+       Art of, 7, 52-4
+       Babylonian overthrow of, 52
+       Golden age of, 51-3
+       Influence of, in India, 70
+       Israelites deported by, 16, 39, 44, 49, 61
+       Naval fight of, first, 52
+       Satrapies, institution of, 44
+
+     Astarab stream and route to Bamian, 252-4;
+       valley, 266
+
+     Astarabad, 225
+
+     Astola I. (Haftala), 160
+
+     Attok, Carpatyra probably near, 29
+
+     Auca (Obeh), 225
+
+     Auckland, Lord, 405, 409
+
+     Avitabile, 367
+
+     Azdha of Bamian, 380
+
+     Azdha of Besud, 380
+
+
+     Babar (Baba) pass, 234, 236, 481
+
+     Baber, Emperor, cited, 133, 358;
+       estimate of, 326-7
+
+     Babylon:
+       Antiquities of, 73
+       Assyria overthrown by, 52
+       Barrenness of country round, 41
+
+     Badakshan:
+       Alexander in, 93
+       Antiquarian treasures in, 511
+       Balkh-Pamirs route across, 177-8
+       British knowledge of, only recent, 345
+       Climate of, 422
+       Dorah route from, to Kunar valley, 520
+       Exploration of, by Indian surveyors, 268-9
+       Geographical knowledge of uplands of, defective, 501, 503, 510
+       Greek settlements and remains in, 20, 31, 423
+       Kabul, modern all-the-year-round route to, 275-6, 419 _n._,
+         522 _n._
+       Kafirs anciently in, 132
+       Lord's and Wood's mission to, 402
+       Moorcroft's journey to, 444
+       Railway across uplands to, impracticability of, 523
+       Routes to, compared, 414
+       Wood's views on, 436-7
+
+     Badakshan (town) (? Jirm), 273-5
+
+     Badakshani transported by Murad Beg, 432, 505
+
+     Badghis, 235, 236, 237
+
+     Bado river, 338-9
+
+     Baghdad:
+       Masson at, 368
+       Railway from, _via_ Hamadan and Kum, question as to, 322
+
+     Baghlan, 90, 261, 421, 505, 511;
+       Greek settlements about, 435
+
+     Baghlan river, 434;
+       valley, 437
+
+     Baghnein, 206-208
+
+     Bagisara (? Damizar), 158
+
+     Bagnarghar, 282-3
+
+     Bagram (Alexandreia), 77, 87, 93, 96, 393
+
+     Bahawalpur, 349, 364
+
+     Bahrein Is., 56
+
+     Bahu Kalat (Fahalfahra), 312-14
+
+     Bahu valley, 165
+
+     Baio peak, 120-21
+
+     Bajaor, 103
+
+     Bajaur, 128
+
+     Bajgah, 261, 384
+
+     Bajgah (Parwan, Sar Alang) pass, 414
+
+     Bajitan (Najitan), 225
+
+     Bakhi, 31-32
+
+     Bakhtyari, 32
+
+     Bakkak pass, 256, 262
+
+     Baktra. _See_ Balkh
+
+     Baktria. _See_ Badakshan
+
+     Bakwa plain, 493
+
+     Bala Murghab, 237, 240, 247, 481
+
+     Balangur (Bala Angur), 251
+
+     Balkh:
+       Antiquity of, 7, 71, 73
+       Approach to, by Akcha road, 72, 73
+       Buddhism at, 263, 502-503
+       Coins and relics at, 459
+       Ferrier's account of, 482
+       Importance of, in antiquity, 88
+       Khotan, distance from, 177
+       Modern, 71-4
+       Moorcroft at, 446, 449
+       Persian satrapy including, 31
+       Routes to, from:
+         Bamian, 267-8
+         Bokhara, 278
+         Herat, 239-40, 247-8
+         Kabul, 272-3
+         Khotan, 277, 278-9
+         Merv, 249-50
+         Punjab, 177
+         Southward, 257
+
+     Balkh Ab river, 215
+
+     Balkh Ab valley, 252, 255, 257;
+       route to Kabul, 259-60
+
+     Balkh plains:
+       Antiquarian interest of, 88, 511
+       Extent and character of, 74
+       Mapping of, 501
+       Rivers of, 75
+       Waterway ruins of, 76
+
+     Balkh (Band-i-Amir) river:
+       Course of, 257-8
+       Lakes and aqueducts of, 256
+       Sarikoh, junction with, 267
+       Scenery of, 262-3
+       Source of, 84
+
+     Baluch Confederation:
+       Kaiani Maliks at head of, 37
+       Lawlessness of, 334
+
+     Baluchistan:
+       Arab exploration of, 192
+       Desert of, 82
+       Exploration of, modern, 194;
+         by Christie and Pottinger, 329 _et seq._
+       Firearms imported into, 55
+       Frontier of, the Gomul, 137
+       Hinterland of India, viewed as, 5
+       Hot winds of, 341
+       Language of, Persian in origin, 21
+       Lasonoi emigration to, 30
+       Makran. _See that title_
+       Mediæval geography regarding, 200
+       Mongol invasion of India through, 526
+       Natural features and conditions of, 32-3, 47, 373
+       Persian Empire including, 21
+       Political intrigue in, 409
+       Southern passes from, into India commanded from the sea, 140-41
+       Surveying of, 501
+
+     Baluchistan, East:
+       Inhabitants of, character of, 373-4
+       Masson's travels in, 369
+
+     Baluchistan, South:
+       Brahui of, 34
+       Configuration of, 48
+
+     Baluchs, Masson's intimacy with, 374
+
+     Bam, 323
+
+     Bamain, 213-14
+
+     Bam-i-dunya. _See_ Pamirs
+
+     Bamian:
+       Buddhist relics at, 177, 263, 265-6, 381, 446
+       Founding of kingdom of, 218
+       Importance of, in Middle Ages, 205, 261-2, 267
+       Masson in, 378-86
+       Route through, importance of, 438
+       Routes to, from:
+         Balkh, 267-8
+         Ghur, 224
+         Kabul (open in winter), 385-6
+         Oxus plains, 257
+         Sar-i-pul, 252
+
+     Bamian (Unai) pass, 87, 221
+
+     Bamian river, 260, 388
+
+     Bamian valley:
+       Description of, 263, 265-6
+       Importance of, 437-8
+
+     Bampur:
+       Alexander at, 165, 166, 316
+       Mountain conformation of, 323
+       Pottinger at, 342
+
+     Bampusht Koh mountains, 313
+
+     Band (Binth), 311-12, 314
+
+     Band-i-Amir mountains, 257
+
+     Band-i-Amir river. _See_ Balkh river
+
+     Band-i-Baian (Siah Koh, Sufed Koh) mountains, 84, 215, 486, 487
+
+     Band-i-Nadir, 245
+
+     Band-i-Turkistan, 239, 249, 250, 484
+
+     Banj mountain, 184, 185
+
+     Banjohir (Panjshir), 276-7
+
+     Bannu, 512
+
+     Baraki, 91
+
+     Barbarra (? Mabara), 434
+
+     Barna, Badara (Gwadur), 159
+
+     Barnes, Sir Hugh, 374 _and n._
+
+     Baroghel pass, 517, 521
+
+     Barohi, meaning of term, 34, 163. _See also_ Brahuis
+
+     Bashgol valley, 426
+
+     Bashkird mountains, 200
+
+     Basrah, 368
+
+     _Bassarika_ cited, 62
+
+     Bast, 236
+
+     Bazar (ancient) (Rustam, Bazira, Bazireh), 106, 113, 114
+
+     Bazar (modern) (? Ora), 106
+
+     Bean, Captain, 406-407
+
+     Begram, site of ancient city at, 393;
+       Cufic coins at, 394
+
+     Behistan inscriptions cited, 30
+
+     Behvana (Jirena), 245
+
+     Bela (in Baluchistan), 331
+
+     Bela. _See_ Las Bela
+
+     Belchirag, 251, 255, 484
+
+     Bellew cited, 32, 35, 163-4;
+       his _Ethnography of Afghanistan_ cited, 20, 91;
+       his _Inquiry_ cited, 21
+
+     Belous (Bolous), 200
+
+     Ben-i-Israel, traditions of, 49-50, 378
+
+     Benjawai, 207, 208, 210
+
+     Bentinck, Lord Wm., 344
+
+     Berwan lake, 282
+
+     Bessos (later Artaxerxes), 47, 68, 76, 88, 90
+
+     Besud route to the Helmund, 262
+
+     Besud territory, 378, 380-81
+
+     Bih (Geh), 311-12, 314
+
+     Binadur, 493
+
+     Binth (Band), 311-12, 314
+
+     Birdwood, Sir Geo., cited, 53
+
+     Birmal hills, 513
+
+     Birs Nimrud, 41, 43, 71
+
+     Bist (Kala Bist), 204, 207, 208
+
+     Bitchilik pass, 387
+
+     Blood, Sir Bindon, cited, 120
+
+     Bodh, 372
+
+     Bokhara (Sogdiæ):
+       Alexander's success in, 92
+       Balkh under chief of, 459
+       Kabul and Bamian, main route from, 389
+       Khulm and Balkh route from, 278
+       Modern popularity of, 395
+       Moorcroft's journey to, 444
+
+     Bolan (Mashkaf) pass, 139, 362
+
+     Bolar, kingdom of, 327
+
+     Boledi, 36-7
+
+     Bolor, Kafiristan part of, 269
+
+     Bolous (Belous), 200
+
+     Bombay N.I., geographical record of, 454
+
+     Boodhi, 483-4
+
+     Botm, 282 _and n._
+
+     Bouchinj (Zindajan), 479
+
+     Bousik (Boushinj, Pousheng), 231, 234, 237
+
+     Brahmi script cited, 171
+
+     Brahuis (Barohis):
+       Baluchistan, in, 331
+       Masson's estimate of, 374
+       Mingals, 142, 306
+       Revolt of, at Kalat, 406
+       Sakæ, 163-4
+       Stock of, 34
+       Traditions of, 142
+
+     Brankhidai of Milesia, 20, 91
+
+     Brick buildings of antiquity, 42-3
+
+     Broadfoot, Lieut. J. S., 513;
+       travels of, in Central Afghanistan, 412, 470 _et seq._;
+       estimate of, 471
+
+     Bubulak, 387
+
+     Buddhism:
+       Balkh, at, in antiquity, 72, 263, 502-503
+       Bamian, relics in, 263-6, 381, 446
+       Building age of, a later development, 170
+       Haibak, at, 264-5, 511
+       Jalalabad, relics at, 352
+       Kashmir, in, 179-80
+       Nava Sanghârâma, 178
+       Ritual of, 174-6, 181-2
+       Sind, ruins in, 372
+       Swat, in, 129
+       Takla Makan, in the, 283
+
+     _Buddhist Records of the Western World_, quoted, 175-6
+
+     Buddhiya kingdom, 305-306
+
+     Budu river, 341
+
+     Bunbury cited, 31
+
+     Buner river, 108, 120-21
+
+     Buner valley, Blood's expedition to, 120
+
+     Bushire, 348
+
+     Burhan, Lake, 283
+
+     Burnes, Sir Alexander, Indus navigation by, 368, 454;
+       at court of Ranjit Singh, 455-7;
+       mission of, to Kabul (1832), 344, 376;
+       to Kunduz, 378;
+       _Travels in Bokhara_ quoted, 455, 491;
+       date of publication, 344, 351;
+       commercial mission of, to Kabul (1837), 398-401, 404-405;
+       work of, 440-41;
+       estimate of, 453, 461
+
+     Burzil pass, 182
+
+
+     Candace, 479
+
+     Canouj, 273
+
+     Cariat (Kariut), 210
+
+     Carpatyra, 28-9
+
+     Cavalry on frontier expeditions, 117
+
+     Celadon ware, 82-3, 197, 300
+
+     Chach of Sind, 303, 306
+
+     Chachnama of Sind cited, 305
+
+     Chagai, 335
+
+     Chagan Sarai, 130
+
+     Chahar Aimak, 212, 214, 481
+
+     Chaharburjak, 81
+
+     Chahardar (Chapdara) pass, 261, 415, 419, 522
+       Height of, 357
+       Military road over, 277
+
+     Chaharshamba river and route to Balkh from Herat, 242, 248
+
+     Chahil Abdal (Chalapdalan) mountain, 223, 486, 488
+
+     Chahilburj, 257, 267
+
+     Chahiltan heights, 370-71
+
+     Chakesar ford, 121
+
+     Chakhansur, 497
+
+     Chalapdalan (Chahil Abdal) mountain, 223, 486, 488
+
+     Chandragupta (Sandrakottos), 129
+
+     Chapdara pass. _See_ Chahardar
+
+     Charbar, 299
+
+     Chardeh plain, 379
+
+     Charikar:
+       Military road from, over Chapdara pass, 277
+       Strategical position of, 357
+
+     Charsadda, 114
+
+     Chashma Sabz pass, 234, 235
+
+     Chenghiz Khan, 72, 85, 142, 193, 194, 218, 267, 376, 526
+
+     Cherchen, 174
+
+     China, Buddhist pilgrimage routes from, 169 _et seq._, 502, 518
+
+     Chinese Turkistan:
+       Buddhist occupation of, 280
+       Conditions of life in, in antiquity, 171, 172
+       Tibet, included in, 283
+
+     Chiras, 252
+
+     Chitral, passes converging on, 426-7, 519
+
+     Chitral river. _See_ Kunar river
+
+     Chitral valley:
+       Accessibility of, 517
+       Dorah route to, 519-20
+
+     Choaspes. _See_ Kunar
+
+     Chol country, 236, 238, 246, 247, 258
+
+     Christians:
+       Armenian, in Kabul, 377
+       Merv, at, 241
+       Sakah, at, 229
+
+     Christie, Captain, 329 _et seq._
+
+     Chumla river, 108;
+       valley, 121
+
+     Climate as affecting race distribution, 8, 46
+
+     Conolly, Lieut., 390
+
+     Cophæus, 114
+
+     Court, M., 455, 457
+
+     Crockery debris, 82, 197
+
+     Cufic coins, 394
+
+     Cunningham, General, cited, 106, 148
+
+     Curtius, Quintus, cited, 107, 122, 148-9, 221, 459
+
+     Cyrus, King of Persia, 79, 147
+
+
+     Dadar, 362
+
+     Dahuk (? Dashtak), 304
+
+     Dames, Longworth, cited, 201
+
+     Damizar (? Bagisara), 158
+
+     Dand, 472
+
+     Dandan Shikan pass, 260, 384, 421;
+       Wood's account of, 418
+
+     Daolatabad, 249
+
+     Daolatyar, 221, 223-4, 256, 486
+
+     Daraim valley, 424
+
+     Darak (Dizak), 311-14
+
+     Darak Yamuna (Yakmina), 317
+
+     Dards, 31
+
+     Darel (To-li), 179, 182-3
+
+     Darel stream, 183-4
+
+     Darius, flight of, from Alexander, 47, 67;
+       death of, 70
+
+     Darius Hystaspes, transportation of Greeks by, 16, 19, 20, 31, 45,
+       87, 91
+
+     Darra Yusuf river, 257, 200
+
+     Darwaz mountains, 432-3
+
+     Darya-i-Zarah (Gaod-i-Zireh), 204
+
+     Dasht river, 165
+
+     Dasht-i-bedoulat plain, 362, 370
+
+     Dasht-i-Lut, 323
+
+     Dasht-i-Margo desert, 81, 495
+
+     Dawar (Zamindawar), 83, 205-206, 223, 491
+
+     Deane, Major Sir H., cited, 129
+
+     Debal, 293, 301, 303, 307, 308, 310
+
+     Deh Dadi, 257
+
+     Dehao (? Dehi), 483
+
+     Dehertan (? Dahertan), 236, 237
+
+     Dehgans, 269
+
+     Dehi (? Dehao), 483
+
+     _Delight of those who seek to wander through the Regions of the
+      World, The_ (Idrisi), cited, 199 _et seq._
+
+     Dendalkan, 245, 246
+
+     Dera Ismail Khan, 463
+
+     Derah, 245
+
+     Derak (Dizek), 244
+
+     Dereh Mustapha Khan (Deria-dereh), 487
+
+     Derenbrosa, I., 159
+
+     Derthel, 206-208, 210
+
+     Deserts as barriers, 7-9
+
+     Dev Hissar fortress, 484-5
+
+     Dev Kala, 89, 92
+
+     Dihsai (Dshara), 465-6
+
+     Diodoros cited, 107
+
+     _Dionysiaka_ cited, 62
+
+     Dir valley, 129
+
+     Dizak (Darak), 311-14
+
+     Dizek (Derak), 244
+
+     Djil, 273
+
+     Doctors as travellers, 463
+
+     Domai (Manora), I., 154
+
+     Domandi, 464, 513
+
+     Dorah pass, 508-509;
+       nature and importance of, 426-7, 519-21
+
+     Dorak (? Dizek), 245
+
+     Dosh, 261
+
+     Doshak. _See_ Jalalabad
+
+     Doshak range, 233
+
+     Dost Mahomed Khan, 344, 353, 359, 390, 403, 444, 462, 490;
+       operations by, against Sikhs, 397-8;
+       methods and estimate of, 360
+
+     Drangia. _See_ Seistan
+
+     Dravidian Brahuis, 306
+
+     Dravidian races entering India, 142-4
+
+     Dshara (Dihsai), 465-6
+
+     Dufferin lake, 520
+
+     Durand, 471
+
+     Durani Afghans:
+       Districts inhabited by, 212
+       Herat under occupation of, 348
+       Shikarpur, at, 363
+       Truculence of, 212, 490
+       Zarangai alleged to be recognisable as, 33-4
+
+     Duvanah valley, 424
+
+     Dwa Gomul river, 475
+
+
+     Eastward migrations, 6, 7, 9, 45, 49
+
+     Ecbatana:
+       Darius' flight to, 47-8, 67
+       Route, direct, to India from, 51
+
+     Egypt, buildings in, 40
+
+     Elam, 163
+
+     Elburz mountains:
+       Alexander's passage of, 74, 76, 258
+       Rivers of, 75
+       Road across, 528
+       mentioned, 74, 257
+
+     Elliott, Sir H., cited, 302, 304, 305;
+       quoted, 313
+
+     Embolina (Amb), 107-108, 114-15, 121
+
+     Erbil (Arbil):
+       Battle of Arbela at, 47
+       Route from, to Hamadan, 48
+
+     Ersari Turkmans, 251, 459-60
+
+     Esar Haddon, King of Assyria, 52
+
+     Ethiopians, Asiatic, problem regarding, 34-6, 163
+
+     Euxine (Black Sea):
+       Milesian colonies S. and W. of, 18
+       Skythic nomads N. of, 14, 19
+
+     Explorations of Indian trans-frontier, recentness of, 1, 17, 32,
+       60, 345
+
+
+     Fa Hian, 170, 172, 178, 180, 181, 184-5;
+       quoted, 174-6, 179, 183
+
+     Fahalfahra (Bahu Kalat), 312-14
+
+     Fahraj (Pahrag, Pahra, Pahura), 315, 317;
+       two places so named, 316
+
+     Faizabad:
+       Dorah route from, 519
+       Situation of, 273-4, 425
+       Wood's account and estimate of, 422, 425
+       Zebak, route from, 511
+       mentioned, 279, 506
+
+     Farah (Prophthasia):
+       Alexander the Great at, 78
+       Antiquity of, 7
+       Ferrier at, 493-4
+       Herat, route from, 230-34
+       Situation of, 7
+
+     Farah Rud river, 204, 216, 221, 336, 488, 494
+
+     Farajghan, 356
+
+     Fardan (? Bampur or Pahra), 315-17
+
+     Farsi, 223
+
+     Fazilpur, 365
+
+     Fazl Hag, 458
+
+     Ferengal, lead mines at, 416
+
+     Ferghana, 282
+
+     Ferrier, M., career of, 477;
+       at Herat, 477-8;
+       journey across Firozkohi plateau, 476, 478, 484;
+       route to Ghur, 485-7;
+       imprisonments of, 491-3;
+       at Farah, 493-4;
+       in Seistan, 496-7;
+       back to Herat, 498;
+       methods of, 346;
+       estimate of, 476, 480, 498;
+       cited, 214, 231, 335, 516;
+       _Caravan Journeys_ cited, 497
+
+     Ferrying by ponies, 89-90, 449, 460-61
+
+     Feruk (Feruckabad), 449
+
+     Firabuz (Kanazbun), 302-303;
+       distances from, 304, 313, 317
+
+     Firozand, 207
+
+     Firozkohi (mediæval capital of Ghur), 219
+
+     Firozkohi plateau:
+       Ferrier's journey across, 476, 478, 484;
+         route to Ghur, 485-7
+       Impracticability of, for military operations, 525
+       Outlook from, 266
+       mentioned, 247, 258
+
+     Firozkohis:
+       District of, 84, 214, 217, 219, 253
+       Origin of, 481
+
+     Foosheng, 231
+
+     Forbes, Dr., murder of, 497
+
+     Forrest's _Selections from Travels and Journals preserved in the
+       Bombay Secretariat_ quoted, 348, _and n._
+
+
+     Gadrosia. _See_ Makran
+
+     Gadrosii, 146, 151
+
+     Gaduns, 111
+
+     Gadurs, 35
+
+     Galjin, 497
+
+     Gandhara (Upper Punjab), 99, 179, 185
+
+     Gandava (Sind), 305
+
+     Gaod-i-Zireh (Darya-i-Zarah), 204
+
+     Gardandiwal, 260, 379, 388
+
+     Gauraians, 96
+
+     Gauraios river. _See_ Panjkora
+
+     Gawargar, 267
+
+     Gazban (Karbis), 159
+
+     Gazdarra pass, 465, 472
+
+     Geh (Bih), 311-12, 314
+
+     Geography:
+       Ancient records of, absence of, 14-16, 18, 29
+       Distances, difficulties of estimating, by "a day's journey," 298
+       Influence of, on migratory movements, 9, 45-6;
+         on history, 214
+       Makran, of, 295 _et seq._
+       Official _v._ unofficial, 332, 345
+       Persian, extent and accuracy of, 17, 25-6, 29, 31
+       Recent advances in, 1, 17, 32, 60
+
+     Gerard, Dr., 376, 395
+
+     Germany, firearms from, imported to Persia, Seistan, etc., 55
+
+     Gharan, 429
+
+     Gharo river, 153
+
+     Ghazni (region):
+       Raids from, 136
+       Vigne's exploration of, 462, 465
+
+     Ghazni river, 468
+
+     Ghazni (town):
+       Alauddin's sack of, 218
+       Desolation of, 210-11, 376
+       Kandahar, route to, 512
+       Masson at, 359-60
+       Vigne at, 467
+
+     Ghaznigak, 261
+
+     Ghilzais (Khilkhis):
+       Districts of, 375-6
+       Importance of, 206, 212
+       Suliman Khel. _See that title_
+
+     Ghizao, 515
+
+     Ghorband drainage system, 468
+
+     Ghorband river, 413
+
+     Ghorband valley:
+       Beauty of, 97
+       Easy pass to, 260, 261, 387
+       Lead mines in, 416
+       Military road up, 277
+
+     Ghori, 524
+
+     Ghoweh Kol (? Pai Kol), 380
+
+     Ghulam Khana, 385
+
+     Ghur:
+       Ferrier at, 478
+       Ghazni to, no direct route from, 220
+
+     Ghur, kingdom of:
+       Description and history of, in mediæval times, 205, 211-13,
+         217-19
+       Routes through, in mediæval times, 220-24
+
+     Ghur river, 204, 221, 488
+
+     Ghur valley, 221-2
+
+     Ghurian (Koure), 231-2
+
+     Giaban headland, 159
+
+     Gichki, 37
+
+     Gilgit basin, 517;
+       river, 182
+
+     Girishk:
+       Ferrier's imprisonment at, 491-3
+       Ford at, 204, 206-10
+       Kandahar route by, 490
+       Ruins at, 492
+
+     Gish (war god), 131
+
+     Glass, Arabic, 300
+
+     Gobi desert, 171
+
+     Goës, Benedict, 327-8
+
+     Goldsmid, General Sir F., 299
+
+     Gomul river, 136, 464, 473-4
+
+     Gomul route from the Indus to Ghazni, Vigne's exploration of, 462,
+       512, 513
+
+     Gondakahar (Gandakahar, Gondekehar) caves, 305, 306, 320
+
+     Gondrani caves, 305, 306
+
+     Granikos river, 66
+
+     Great Britain:
+       Afghan attitude towards, 337-8;
+         British attitude towards Afghanistan in early nineteenth
+           century, 349
+       Afghan war (1839-40). _See_ Afghanistan, British war with
+       Afghan war (1878-80), surveys in connection with, 397, 500
+       Sixteenth century, condition of England in, 2
+
+     Greeks:
+       Baghlan and Andarab, settlements about, 435
+       Baktria, deportation to, 87, 91;
+         survival of strain in, 354-5, 358, 423
+       Dionysian, migration of, to Indian frontier, 16, 19, 62-3,
+         124-5, 358, 423
+       Indian art, influence on, 59-60
+       Kyrenean, in Baktria, 91
+       Milesian. _See that title_
+       Persian Empire, relations with, 20-21, 36, 61
+       Women of, as influencing language in Indus valley, 22
+
+     Grierson, Dr., cited, 132
+
+     Gulgula citadel, 381, 386
+
+     Gulkatz, 473
+
+     Gulkoh mountain, 515
+
+     Gulran (? Kilrin), 235
+
+     Gurkhas in Nepal, 188
+
+     Guzwan (? Gurkan, Juzjan, Jurkan, Jirghan), 250, 251, 255
+
+     Gwadur (Barna, Badara), 159, 299
+
+     Gwalian (Walian) pass, 414
+
+
+     Habibullah, 444
+
+     Haftala (Astola, Hashtala, Nuhsala, Nosala) Island, 161, 286
+
+     Haibak (Semenjan):
+       Andarab, distance from, 272;
+         route to, 524
+       Buddhist remains at, 177, 264-5, 511
+       Description of, 271
+       Moorcroft at, 446
+       mentioned, 261, 482
+
+     Haidar, cited, 186, 327
+
+     Haidarabad, 399
+
+     Haig, General, 27;
+       cited, 309-10;
+       _Indus Delta Country_ by, cited, 145, 153
+
+     Haji Khan, 378-87, 417
+
+     Hajigak pass, 260, 420, 446;
+       Masson's account of, 388;
+       Wood's account of, 417
+
+     Hajjaj, 292
+
+     Hala pass, 150
+
+     Hamadan, 322;
+       telegraph route from, to Teheran, 48
+
+     Harat Rud, 498
+
+     Hari Rud river:
+       Course of, 528
+       Herat-Kabul route by, 248, 256, 262
+       Pul-i-Malun across, 229 _n._, 230
+       Source of, 84, 256
+
+     Hari Rud valley, 215, 485-6, 528
+
+     Hariana, 276-7
+
+     Harnai pass, 139
+
+     Hazaras:
+       Characteristics of, 216, 481
+       Country of, nature of, 84-6, 214, 221, 516;
+         British interest in, merely academic, 514
+       Forced labour of, 380-81
+       Haji Khan's treachery against, 384
+       Kidnapping of, by Taimanis, 253
+       Masson's relations with, 387-8
+       Slave-gangs of, 421
+       Trading of, 252
+       Women of, Ferrier's account of, 485
+       Yezdambaksh, under, 378-9
+
+     Hazart Ghaos, 371
+
+     Hazrat Baba Kamur, 505
+
+     Hazrat Imam, 432-3, 504, 505, 506
+
+     Hedin, Sven, 170
+
+     Helawerd, 274
+
+     Helmund basin, 201;
+       central unexplored, 512
+
+     Helmund river (Etymander):
+       Course of:
+         Description of, 81-2, 83-4, 379
+         Variations in, 79-80, 202
+       Crossing-places on, 204-10, 380
+       Detritus borne by, 81
+       Indus, route to, 527
+       Northern branches of, unexplored, 515
+       Ruins bordering, 492
+       Unexplored portion of, 512, 515
+
+     Helmund valley:
+       Antiquarian treasures in, 496
+       Description of, 79 _et seq._
+       Nadir Shah in, 526
+       Pottery débris in, 197
+       Survey of, thoroughness of, 207
+
+     Hephæstion, 94, 95, 99, 150, 151
+
+     Herat (Aria):
+       Ancient cities on or near site of, 77
+       Balkh, routes to, 239-40, 247-8
+       Capital of Ghur in mediæval times, 219
+       Christie at, 336-7
+       Commerce of, during Arab supremacy, 225
+       Defence of, against the Persians (1837), 402
+       Description of, by Idrisi, 228
+       Durani occupation of, 348
+       Farah, route to, 230-34
+       Ferrier at, 477;
+         his views as to, 479
+       India, military route to, 525-6
+       Kabul, route to, by Hari Rud, 248, 256, 262;
+         other routes, 257
+       Kandahar, direct route to, 490, 525-8
+       Mosalla, 228
+       Panjdeh and Merv, route to, 236
+       Persian satrapy including, 32
+       Persian siege of, 477
+       Tributary to Ghur in mediæval times, 218
+
+     Herat valley, 202, 205, 211-12, 217;
+       route from, to India, 209;
+       trees in, 237
+
+     Herodotus cited, 17, 25, 26, 30, 31, 33-4, 56, 163
+
+     Hicks, 469
+
+     Hindu Koh range, 182
+
+     Hindu Kush mountains:
+       Direction of, 4
+       Geographical knowledge of, defective, 508-9
+       Passes over, 274, 327, 328, 357, 378, 381-2, 387, 413-15,
+           426-7, 434-5, 507, 517, 519-25
+         Andarab in relation to, 275, 277
+         Command of, 261
+         Masson's account of, 388
+         Mediæval use of, 277
+         Wood's account of, 417-18
+       Snow line of, on north and south sides, 415
+
+     Hinglaz mountain and shrine, 162-3
+
+     Hingol river, 291;
+       Alexander at, on the retreat, 151, 157, 161-3, 166
+
+     History, unimportance of, to the ancients, 11, 25
+
+     Hiuen Tsiang cited, 178
+
+     Honigberger, M., 394-5, 462, 468
+
+     Hormuz, 200
+
+     Housab, 225
+
+     Huc, Abbé, cited, 439, 440
+
+     Huec Sheng, 184
+
+     Huen Tsang cited, 262, 279
+
+     Huntington, Ellsworthy, cited, 8, 278
+
+     Hunza (Kunjut), 180-81
+
+     Hupian, 394
+
+     Hyperboreans, 14, 19
+
+
+     Ibn Batuta cited, 210
+
+     Ibn Haukel of Baghdad cited, 203, 217, 228-31, 236, 237, 243,
+         251, 255, 295, 303;
+       _Ashkalu l' Bilad_ of, quoted, 304, 308-309;
+       map of Makran by, cited, 297-8, 307, 312, 313
+
+     Ichthyophagi, 160, 318
+
+     Idrisi (Abu Abdulla Mohammed) cited,199 _et seq._, 301-304,
+         307-309, 312, 313, 315-17, 427-8, 434, 446;
+       quoted, 303, 314, 316-17
+
+     Ilchi (Khotan), 172
+
+     _Iliad_ cited, 12
+
+     Imám Sharif, 222
+
+     India (_for particular districts, rivers, etc., see their names_):
+       Aboriginal inhabitants of, 157
+       Afghanistan:
+         Commercial treaty with, attempted, 397;
+           Burnes' mission, 398-401, 404-5
+         Land gates of India always in possession of, 22
+       Arab invasion of, by land and sea, 287
+       Art of:
+         Assyrian influence on, 7, 52-4
+         Greek influence on, 6, 22, 59-60, 129
+         Syrian and Armenian influence on, 6
+       Aryan influx to, 61
+       Assyrian influence in, 70;
+         on art, 7, 52-4
+       Bombay N.I., record of, 454
+       Defences of, natural:
+         North and north-east frontier, on, 3
+         South frontier, on--ridge and valley formation, 140;
+         Indus to Punjab desert, 7, 143-4, 226, 526
+       Dravidian races entering, 142-4, 158
+       Gold-fields of, 51
+       Government of:
+         Characteristics of, 408-10
+         Masson's criticisms of, 408, 409
+       Greek impression left on, slightness of, 59
+       History of, ancient, non-existent, 11
+       Makran route to. _See under subheading_ Routes
+       N.W. barrier of, true situation of, 5
+       Population of, not indigenous, 49
+       Railway systems of, 324
+       Rajput families of, 7
+       Routes to:
+         Makran route:
+           Arab supremacy, under, 226, 294, 311
+           Importance of, in antiquity, 167-8
+           Modern ignorance regarding, 141;
+             modern possibilities as to, 319-24
+         Northern, from Mongolia, 169 _et seq._, 186 _et seq._
+         Persian, 311, 319, 321-4
+         Sea-routes to N.W. in antiquity, 55
+       Russian designs as to, question of, 319-20
+       Trade of:
+         Persian, 21
+         Syrian and Phoenician, 13, 45
+         Wealth of, 295
+       Turanian races in, 157-8
+
+     Indian Survey, 183
+
+     Indus river (Sintu ho):
+       Boundary of early exploration, 7
+       Burnes' flotilla on, 454
+       Course of, variations in, 26-7, 296
+       Delta of, area of, 27
+       Desert flanking, 143-4, 226, 526
+       Gharo, creek of, 153
+       Gorge of, below the Darel, 183-4
+       Haig's _Indus Delta Country_ cited, 145, 153
+       Navigability of, near Baio, 121
+       Opening of, to commercial navigation, Burnes' mission regarding
+         (1837), 399
+       Rann of Katch, estuary of, in antiquity, 144
+       Routes from, to Helmund river and Central India, 527
+       Voyage down, by Scylax, 26-8
+
+     Indus valley:
+       Climate of, 46;
+         fog, 85-6
+       Greek and Arabic remains in, 364;
+         Greek language and its disappearance, 21, 59
+       Inscriptions, undecipherable, found in, 129-30
+       Mahomedan supremacy in, 293
+       Pathans in, ancient settlement of, 28
+       Persian satrapy including large part of, 31
+       Routes to, through Makran, 141. _See also under_ India--Routes
+       Vegetation in, in antiquity, 121-2
+
+     Inscriptions on stone slabs, 129-30;
+       on bricks, 494, 496, 499
+
+     Irak, 292;
+       valley, 387;
+       stream, 388;
+       pass, 417
+
+     Irrigation in Afghanistan, 75-6, 475
+
+     Ishak Khan, 261
+
+     Ishkashm, 429
+
+     Islam. _See_ Mahomedanism
+
+     Ispahan:
+       Railway from, question as to, 319, 321-2
+       Telegraph route from, to Panjgur, 322
+
+     Ispahak pass, Wood's description of, 417
+
+     Israelites:
+       Assyrian deportation of, 16, 39, 44, 49, 61
+       Disappearance of, as a nation, 40
+
+     Issyk Kul lake, 173
+
+     Istakhri of Persepolis cited, 295, 302, 303, 307, 308, 312
+
+
+     Jabar Khan, 462, 469
+
+     Jacobabad, 139
+
+     Jacquet, Eugene, 395
+
+     Jadran hills, 513
+
+     Jadwa, 236
+
+     Jagdallak defile, 95
+
+     Jahanabad, 497
+
+     Jhal, 371
+
+     Jalalabad (Doshak), 335, 497;
+       Buddhist relics near, 177, 352
+
+     Jalawan Brahuis, 164
+
+     Jalk, 335
+
+     Jam Kala, 222
+
+     Jamrud, 398
+
+     Jamshidis, 214, 216, 481
+
+     Jaor, 486
+
+     Jats, Jatas, 293, 501
+
+     Jawani, 336
+
+     Jebel al Ghur, 217
+
+     Jerkere, 231
+
+     Jews (Yahudi):
+       Afghan hatred of, 50, 377
+       Balkh, at, 71
+       Sar-i-pul, at, 252
+       Transportations of, 44
+       Yahudia, at 251, 255
+
+     Jihun. _See_ Oxus.
+
+     Jil district, 278
+
+     Jilgu river, 475
+
+     Jirena (Behvana), 245
+
+     Jirghan (? Jurkan, Gurkan, Juzjan, Guzwan), 250, 251, 255;
+       range, 249
+
+     Jirift, 201
+
+     Jirm (? Badakshan), 270, 506
+       Position and importance of, 270, 274-5
+       Wood's estimate of, 422, 425-6
+
+     Joubert's translation of Idrisi cited. _See_ Idrisi
+
+     _Journal of the Royal Society of Arts_ cited, 146
+
+     Junasdara pass, 424-5
+
+     Jurkan (Gurkan, Juzjan, ?Guzwan or Jirghan), 250, 251, 255;
+       range, 249
+
+     Jutes, 61
+
+
+     Kabadian, 278
+
+     Kabul:
+       Arab expedition against, 292
+       Burnes' mission to (1832), 344, 376;
+         his commercial mission to (1837-8), 392, 398-401, 404-405
+       Hicks' tomb at, 469
+       Masson British agent in, 397;
+         his account of, 376-7
+       Mediæval estimate of, as "Indian" town, 211, 219, 226, 262;
+         mediæval description quoted, 211
+       Modern conditions in, social and material, 377
+       Moorcroft's journey to, 444
+       Routes to and from:
+         Afghan Turkistan, Wood's account of route to, 418-19;
+           modern improvements in, 419 _and n._, 522 _n._
+         Andarab, Khafila road to, 88
+         Badakshan, all-the-year-round route to, 275-6, 419 _n._
+         Balkh, Frontier Commission's route from, 272-3
+         Bamian, route to, open in winter, 385-6
+         Bokhara and Bamian, main route to, 389
+         Herat, route from, by Hari Rud, 248, 256, 262;
+           other routes, 257
+         Kunduz, 416, 523
+         Mazar and Band-i-Amir, by, 259-261
+         Peshawar _via_ Kuram valley and Peiwar pass, 135
+         Punjab, route from:
+           Buddhist character of, 177
+           Kunar, Laghman and Lundai valleys, by, 101
+         Sar-i-pul, from, 252
+       Vigne at, 468-9
+
+     Kabul province, India in Middle Ages, 277
+
+     Kabul (Kophen, Nahrwara) river:
+       Alexander's probable course along, 100
+       Source of, 84
+       mentioned, 96, 276
+
+     Kabul river basin (Ki-pin), 96, 176, 215
+
+     Kabulis, 492
+
+     Kach (Kaj), meaning of term, 35
+
+     Kach Gandava, 305-306
+
+     Kafir wine, 133-4
+
+     Kafiristan:
+       Homogeneity of natives of, 508
+       Inhabitants of, 96, 269
+       Ivy and vine in, 124
+       Timur's invasion of, 327, 355-6
+       Unexplored wildness of, 269-70
+
+     Kafirs in Afghanistan:
+       Badakshan, in, 437
+       Ignorance regarding, 269-70
+       Kunar valley, in, 102-103;
+         two Kafirs of Kamdesh, 131-2
+       Siahposh. _See that title_
+
+     _Kafirs of the Hindu Kush, The_ (Robertson), cited, 510
+
+     Kafzur (Hajigak) pass, 417
+
+     Kah, 267, 268
+
+     Kaiani of Seistan, 34
+
+     Kaiani kingdom, ruins of, 82
+
+     Kaiani Maliks, 37, 208
+
+     Kaibar river, 232
+
+     Kaisan (Kasan) river, 272
+
+     Kaisar drainage, 248-9
+
+     Kala Bist, 204, 207, 208
+
+     Kala Sarkari, 260
+
+     Kala Sarwan, 206-208
+
+     Kala Shahar, 251, 255
+
+     Kala-i-Fath, 355, 496, 497
+
+     Kalagan, 342
+
+     Kalah, ruins of, 42
+
+     Kalama (Khor Khalmat), 158
+
+     Kalapani river, 106
+
+     Kalat, 323
+       British expedition to, 406
+       Christie and Pottinger at, 332
+       Masson at, 370-71
+       Strategic position of, 138-9
+
+     Kalat-i-Ghilzai (Khilkh), 206, 210
+
+     Kalatak, 301
+
+     Kalawun, 236, 238
+
+     Kalloo (Panjpilan) pass, 417
+
+     Kalu, 388
+
+     Kalwan (? Kolwah), 304
+
+     Kaman-i-Bihist, 232, 236
+
+     Kamard, Tajik chief of, 383, 384, 421
+
+     Kamard valley, 260, 261, 437
+
+     Kambali (? Khairokot), 150, 307-308
+
+     Kamdesh, 131
+
+     Kamran, Shah, 403
+
+     Kanazbun (Firabuz), 302-303;
+       distances from, 304, 313, 317
+
+     Kandabel, 305
+
+     Kandahar:
+       Flank march on, possibility of, 204-5
+       Indian frontier, distance from, 528
+       Kabul compared with, in matter of tolerance, 377
+       Leech's mission to, 401-402
+       Masson at, 360-61
+       Mediæval insignificance of, 210
+       Routes from, to:
+         Ghazni, 512
+         Herat, 490;
+           Herat as gateway to, 525-8
+         Kabul, Alexander's, 86-7
+         Kalat, _via_ Mangachar valley, 374-5
+         Sonmiani, 331
+
+     Kandahar (in Kach Gandava), 305-306
+
+     Kandaharis, 492
+
+     Kanowar, 238
+
+     Kao river. _See_ Alingar
+
+     Kaoshan pass, 435:
+       Alexander's passage of, tradition as to, 87
+       Greek control of, before Alexander's expedition, 20, 91;
+         Greek use of, 277
+       Height of, 88, 357
+       "Hindu Kush," known as the pass of, 414
+
+     Kara pass, 260, 418
+
+     Karabel (Armail, Armabel, Las Bela), 304-307, 320
+
+     Karabel plateau:
+       Description of, 248
+       Route across, from near Panjdeh to Balkh, 250
+
+     Karabia I., 159
+
+     Karabine, 158
+
+     Karachi:
+       Approaches to, 140-41
+       Configuration of, changes in, 153
+       Makran route to, modern possibilities as to, 319-24
+       Malir waterworks, 310
+       Masson refused landing at, 368
+       Voyage from, to Persian Gulf (by Nearkhos), 146, 152-61
+
+     Karakoram pass, 180
+
+     Karakoram trade route, 181, 517;
+       description of, 3-4
+
+     Karaks, 286, 292
+
+     Karamat Ali, Saiad, 390
+
+     Karapa route, 351
+
+     Karat, 231
+
+     Karbat, 250
+
+     Karbis (Gazban), 159
+
+     Kardos, 327
+
+     Kardozan, 479
+
+     Karez Ilias route to Sarakhs, 234
+
+     Karia Pir, 307
+
+     Kariut (Cariat), 210
+
+     Karmania, 32, 165
+
+     Karmatians, 293, 311
+
+     Karomurs, 71
+
+     Karosthi language, 280;
+       script cited, 171
+
+     Kartchoo, 482
+
+     Karuj (Korokh), 236, 237
+
+     Karwan (? Parwan), 276-7
+
+     Karza (? Kafza) pass, 382, 385
+
+     Kasan, 511;
+       stream, 428
+
+     Kashan, 322;
+       river, 236, 237, 240;
+       valley, 481
+
+     Kashmir (Kie-sha):
+       Buddhism in, 179-80
+       Fa Hian in, 178-9, 182
+       Persian knowledge of, 31
+
+     Kashmir passes, no records of military use of, 517
+
+     Kashmund mountains, 100, 101
+
+     Kashran (? Khasrin), 317
+
+     Kaspioi, 31
+
+     Kaspira (Kasmira), 31
+
+     Kasr Akhif (Ahnef), 245
+
+     Kasrkand, 311-12, 314
+
+     Kasur spur, 426
+
+     Kataghani horses, 504-505
+
+     Katan Chirak, 132
+
+     Katawar, 355
+
+     Kattasang, 472
+
+     Kattawaz plain, 465, 472, 475
+
+     Kawak (Khawak), 355
+
+     Kawakir, 235
+
+     Kej (Kiz, Kirusi, ?Labi), 301-302
+
+     Kej valley, 297
+
+     Kenef, 238
+
+     Kunjut (Hunza), 180-181
+
+     Kerman desert, 201;
+       valley, 262
+
+     Kermanshah, 322
+
+     Ketnev, 356
+
+     Khaibar route to India:
+       Evil reputation of, 458
+       Hyphæstion's march by, 95
+       Masson's journey by, 351-2
+
+     Khair, 310
+
+     Khair Kot (? Kambali), 150, 307-308
+
+     Khalmat tombs, 196, 310-11
+
+     Khan Nashin, 495
+
+     Khana Yahudi, 257
+
+     Khanabad, 423, 506
+
+     Kharachanabad (Khardozan), 230
+
+     Kharan, 331, 335, 339
+
+     Kharan desert, 339-41
+
+     Khardozan (Kharachanabad), 230
+
+     Khariab river, 278
+
+     Khariab (Kokcha) river, 270, 273, 274
+
+     Kharkerde, 231
+
+     Kharotis, 513
+
+     Khash, 495
+
+     Khash Rud valley, 204
+
+     Khashka pass, 387
+
+     Khasrin (? Kashran), 317
+
+     Khawak pass:
+       Height of, 357, 435
+       Importance of, 521
+       Popularity of, 414
+       Timur at, 327, 355, 435
+       otherwise mentioned, 261, 275, 277, 419, 428, 434, 507
+
+     Khawak river, 274
+
+     Khazar, 388
+
+     Khilkh (Kalat-i-Ghilzai), 206
+
+     Khilkhis. _See_ Ghilzais
+
+     Khiva (Khwarezm), 218, 244
+
+     Khizilji Turks, 281-2
+
+     Khoes river, 99-100
+
+     Khoja Mahomed range, 424, 436, 437, 506, 507
+
+     Khojak range, 139
+
+     Khor Khalmat (Kalama), 158
+
+     Khorasan, 348
+
+     Khorienes, 93
+
+     Khotan (Ilchi):
+       Balkh, distance from, 177;
+         route to, 277, 278-9
+       Buddhist centre, as, 172, 174
+
+     Khozdar:
+       Christie and Pottinger at, 331
+       Masson at, 373
+       Turan, capital of, 315
+
+     Khulm, 88, 270-72, 416;
+       river, 84
+
+     Khur, 308, 310
+
+     Khurd Kabul defile, 95
+
+     Khud Rud, 515
+
+     Khuzan (Ak Tepe), 245-6
+
+     Khwaja Amran (Kojak) range, 374
+
+     Khwaja Chist, 217, 223
+
+     Khwaja Salar, 448, 449, 460
+
+     Khwarezm (Khiva), 218, 244
+
+     Ki-pin (Kabul river basin), 176
+
+     Kie-sha. _See_ Kashmir.
+
+     Kila Adraskand, 229 _n._
+
+     Kila Gaohar, 485
+
+     Kila Khum, 511
+
+     Kila Maur, 237, 245
+
+     Kila Panja, 430
+
+     Kila Shaharak, 486
+
+     Kila Sofarak, 256
+
+     Kila Wali, 243, 248
+
+     Kilif, 279;
+       pony ferry at, 89-90, 460
+
+     Kilik pass, 180, 517
+
+     Kilrin (? Gulran), 235
+
+     Kir (Kiz) Kaian, 313-17
+
+     Kirghiz (? Kirkhirs):
+       Idrisi's account of, 282-3
+       Wood's estimate of, 430
+
+     Kirman, 311, 313-15, 322-3;
+       telegraph _via_, to India, 69
+
+     Kirman desert, 147
+
+     Kirthar range, 140
+
+     Kishm, 509
+
+     Kiz (Kirusi, Kej, ?Labi), 301-302
+
+     Kiz (Kir) Kaian, 313-17
+
+     Kizzilbash, 467
+
+     Knidza (Kyiza), 160
+
+     Koh Daman:
+       Alexander at, 94
+       Description of, 96-7
+       Lord's expedition to, 412-13
+
+     Koh-i-Babar (Baba) mountains:
+       Altitude of, 263
+       Nature and direction of, 84, 381
+       Rivers starting from, 215
+
+     Koh-i-Basman, 323
+
+     Koh-i-Malik Siah, 209
+
+     Koh-i-Mor (Meros) mountains, 105, 123-4, 358
+
+     Koh Umber mountain, 423, 506
+
+     Kohendil Khan, 493
+
+     Kohistan:
+       Inhabitants of, 96
+       Mountain scenery of, 392
+
+     Kohistan plains, 87
+
+     Kohistani, 486
+
+     Kohistani Babas, 487
+
+     Kohnak divide, 513
+
+     Kojak (Khwaja Amran) range, 374
+
+     Kokcha (Khariab, Minjan) river:
+       Course of, nature of, at Faizabad, 424, 425
+       Mouth of, 434
+       Robertson's view regarding, 510
+       Route by headwaters of, nature of, 426, 427, 436
+       mentioned, 270, 273, 274, 507, 520
+
+     Kokcha valley, 424, 425, 427
+
+     Kokhar Ab river, 515
+
+     Kolab, 433-4
+
+     Kolar gold-fields, 51
+
+     Kolwah (? Kalwan), 304
+
+     Konche river, 174
+
+     Kophen river. _See_ Kabul river
+
+     Korokh (Karuj), 236, 237, 239, 240
+
+     Kotal-i-bed, 374
+
+     Kotal Murgh pass, 90
+
+     Kotanni pass, 513
+
+     Koure (Ghurian), 231-2
+
+     Koyunjik mound, 43
+
+     Krateros, 103, 147
+
+     Krokala, 148, 153, 156
+
+     Kua (Kau), 235, 236
+
+     Kudabandan, 303
+
+     Kuen Lun mountains, 171, 172, 173
+
+     Kufs, 200
+
+     Kughanabad, 236
+
+     Kuhsan, Kusan (? Kuseri, Kouseri), 232-3, 239, 479
+
+     Kum, 322
+
+     Kunar (Choaspes, Chitral) river, 122, 431;
+       importance of, 100
+
+     Kunar (Choaspes, Chitral) valley:
+       Description of, 100-103
+       Direction of, 509-10
+       Dorah route from, 520
+       Ivy and vine in, 133
+       Kafirs in, 102-103;
+         of Kamdesh, 131-2
+       Masson's investigations as to, 396
+       Survey of (1894), 123
+
+     Kundar river, 464
+
+     Kunduz (town):
+       Burnes' mission to, 378
+       Description of, 504
+       Lord's invitation to, 413, 416, 420-422
+       Southward routes from, to Bamian and Kabul, 523
+       Warwalin near, 272
+       Wood's estimate of, 422
+
+     Kunduz district:
+       Fortified towns of, 504
+       Pestilential climate of, 432, 447-9, 505
+       Kunduz river, 261, 421, 428, 436, 505;
+         scenery of, 257, 259-260
+
+     Kunduz valley route to Kabul, 434
+
+     Kunjut, 186
+
+     Kupruk, 257
+
+     Kuram, 482-3, 505
+
+     Kuram valley route, 135, 512
+
+     Kurchi, 251
+
+     Kurdistan hills, 322
+
+     Kurt (Tajik) dynasty in Ghur, 218
+
+     Kuseri, Kouseri (? Kuhsan, Kusan), 231-3
+
+     Kushan (Tokhari), 241
+
+     Kushk, 324
+
+     Kushk river, 236, 237, 240;
+       description of, 246
+
+     Kushk-i-Nakhud, 210, 492
+
+     Kyiza (Knidza), 160
+
+
+     Labi (? Kiz, Kirusi, Kej), 304
+
+     Ladakh ("Little Tibet"):
+       Idrisi's description of the town of, 281
+       Mongol invasion _via_, 186
+       Moorcroft in, 443-4
+       Vigne in, 462
+
+     Laghman valley, 96, 99-101;
+       inhabitants of, 100, 133
+
+     Lahore:
+       Burnes at, 455
+       Masson at, 366-7
+
+     Lakshur (? Langar), 238-9
+
+     Lalposh, 270
+
+     Lamghan. _See_ Laghman
+
+     Language, women's preservation of, 22, 143, 295
+
+     Lapis-lazuli mines above Jirm, 426, 507
+
+     Las (Lumri) tribe of Rajputs, 305
+
+     Las Bela (Armail, Armabel, Karabel):
+       Distances to, 303-304
+       Gadurs of, 35
+       Historic interest of, 304-307, 320
+       Masson at, 369
+       Ruins near, 372
+       Strategic position of, 138-9
+
+     Lash Jowain, 493, 498
+
+     Lasonoi, 30
+
+     Lataband pass, 424
+
+     Leach, Lieut., 471
+
+     Lead mines of Ferengal in Ghorband valley, 416
+
+     Leech, Lieut., on Burnes' staff, 401-402, 412;
+       work and methods of, 440-41
+
+     Leh, 180, 443, 444, 519
+
+     Leonatus, 151, 156, 161
+
+     Lhasa:
+       Buddhist centre, as, 172-3
+       Moorcroft's residence at, question as to, 439-40, 444
+       Pilgrimages to, 181, 187
+       Route from, to India, 517
+
+     Liari, 308
+
+     Lockhart mission, 358, 429, 509
+
+     Logar river, 380, 468;
+       valley, 466, 475
+
+     Lohanis, 360, 463, 467
+
+     Lob, 283
+
+     Lop basin, 172, 173
+
+     Lop Nor, 171, 174, 280
+
+     Lord, Dr., mission of, to Badakshan, 402;
+       expedition of, to Koh Daman and Hindu Kush passes, 412-15;
+       in Ghorband valley, 416;
+       at Kunduz, 413, 416, 420-21;
+       visit of, to Hazrat Imam, 432;
+       investigations by, regarding Moorcroft, 439;
+       _Uzbek State of Kundooz_ by, 504;
+       cited, 420, 505
+
+     Loveday, Lieut., 406
+
+     Ludhiana, 344
+
+     Ludi (Lydoi), 30
+
+     Lulan, 174
+
+     Lumri (Las) tribe of Rajputs, 35, 305
+
+     Lundai valley, 101
+
+     Lungar, 468
+
+     Lydoi (Ludi), 30
+
+
+     Mabara (? Barbarra), 434
+
+     Mackenzie, Captain, 148
+
+     M'Crindle cited, 159
+
+     MacMahon, Sir Henry, 374 _and n._, 497
+
+     MacNab, Dr., 131
+
+     McNair, 358
+
+     Mada Khel hills, 108
+
+     Mahaban (Shah Kot), 108, 110-11, 113, 117-21
+
+     _Mahabharata_ cited, 12, 63
+
+     Mahighir canal, 394
+
+     Mahmud of Ghazni, Multan conquered by (1005), 192-3, 293;
+       raids by, 200, 210, 218, 513;
+       tomb of, 376;
+       mentioned, 219, 468
+
+     Mahmudabad, 491
+
+     Mahomed Akbar Khan, 490
+
+     Mahomed Ali, Chief of Saighan, 378-9, 382-3
+
+     Mahomed Azim Khan, 444
+
+     Mahomed Kasim, 293-4, 307
+
+     Mahomed Khan, Sultan, 360, 403, 483
+
+     Mahomedanism, rise of, 187
+
+     Mahomedans:
+       Balkh, at, 72, 74
+       Kafir attitude towards, 131
+       Vigne's estimate of, 467
+
+     Maidan, 260, 468
+
+     Maimana, 239, 248-50, 258, 481
+
+     Makran (Gadrosia). _For particular districts, etc., see their
+         names_
+       Alexander's retreat through, 38, 51, 86, 145-54, 161-6
+       Ancient relics in, 56
+       Arabian interest in, prior to A.D. 712, 292;
+         Arab governors of, 193, 292, 293
+       Baluch traditions as to, 291
+       Bampur the ancient capital of, 165
+       Boledi long the ruling tribe in, 36-7
+       Coasting trade of, in antiquity, 57
+       Configuration, orography, and geological features of, 32-3, 48,
+         285, 288-91, 296
+       Decline of, in eleventh century, 295
+       Desiccation of, 288-9
+       Greek knowledge of, in ancient time scanty, 37
+       Hots of (? Uxoi), 34
+       Islands off, disappearance of, 286, 288
+       Kaiani Maliks' supremacy in, 37
+       Kushite race in, question as to, 34-5
+       Negroes in, 36
+       Persian satrapies including, 32, 200
+       Physical features of. _See subheading_ Configuration
+       Ports of, for importation of firearms, 55
+       Route through, to India under Arab supremacy, 209, 226, 294, 311
+         Ignorance as to, 141
+         Importance of, in antiquity, 167-8
+         Modern possibilities as to, 319-24
+       Stone-built circles in, 372
+       Tombs in (Khalmati), 310-11
+       Turanian relics in, 158
+       View of, from Arabian Sea, 284-5
+
+     Malan headland, 158, 285, 291;
+       range, 161-2, 164
+
+     Malek Hupian, 394
+
+     Malistan valley, 515
+
+     Malli (? Meds), 155, 160-61
+
+     Malun Herat, 229 _n_.
+
+     Manabari, 308-309
+
+     Manasarawar lakes, 440
+
+     Manbatara, 308
+
+     Mandal pass, 426, 507, 519
+
+     Manga (Manja, Mugger) Pir, 309
+
+     Mangachar valley, 374
+
+     Manglaor, 121
+
+     Manhabari (? Minagar, Binagar), 304, 309-10
+
+     Manjabari, 309
+
+     Manora (Domai) Island, 154
+
+     Mansura, 309
+
+     Mansuria, 315-16
+
+     Mashad:
+       Russian telegraph _via_, 69
+       Seistan, route to, 528
+       Teheran, objections regarding railway to, 319
+
+     Mashad valley, 424
+
+     Mashkaf (Bolan) pass, 139
+
+     Mashkel (? Maskan), 313-14;
+       swamp, 323, 339, 341
+
+     Massaga:
+       Alexander's capture of, 105, 122;
+         route from, 113
+       Nysæans at, question as to, 128-9
+
+     Marabad, 225
+
+     Marakanda (Samarkand), 88
+
+     Mardians, 68, 76
+
+     Maruchak. _See_ Merv-el-Rud
+
+     Marwa, 225
+
+     Masson, arrival of, at Bushire, 348, 368;
+       in Peshawar, 350;
+       journey to Kabul _via_ Khaibar route, 351-4, 359;
+       to Ghazni and Kandahar, 359-60;
+       to Quetta and Shikapur, 361-3;
+       in the Punjab, 364-5;
+       at Lahore, 365-367;
+       to Karachi, 377;
+       trips by water, 367-8;
+       in E. Baluchistan, 369; at Chahiltan, 370-71;
+       through Sind, 371-2;
+       again to Kalat, Kandahar, and Kabul, 372-7;
+       Besud expedition, 378, 380;
+       to Bamian (1832), 378-86;
+       to Kabul, 386, 388;
+       researches near Kabul, 393;
+       accepts post as British agent in Kabul, 397;
+       relations with Burnes, 399-401, 404;
+       resigns office under Indian Government, 405, 407;
+       experiences at Quetta, 406-7;
+       meeting with Vigne, 469;
+       intimacy with Afghans, 346-7, 350, 352, 362-363;
+       influence with them, 380;
+       intimacy with Baluchs, 374;
+       coins collected by, 393;
+       criticisms of Indian Government by, 408, 409;
+       value of work of, 345, 347-8, 367, 388, 391, 396, 407;
+       methods of, 346;
+       estimate of, 361, 370, 372, 395-6, 408;
+       _Travels in Afghanistan_, _etc._, see that title;
+       otherwise mentioned, 458, 462, 463, 468, 491
+
+     Masurjan, 317
+
+     Matakanai, 105, 128
+
+     Matiban, 200
+
+     Mazanderan, 481
+
+     Mazar, 434, 435, 448, 459
+
+     Mazar-i-Sharif, 257, 439
+
+     Meder, 267, 268
+
+     Meds (? Malli), 155, 160-61, 292-3
+
+     Megasthenes, 129;
+       his _India_ cited, 126-7
+
+     Mehrab Khan, 406
+
+     Meilik (Nimlik), 482
+
+     Menk, 274
+
+     Mesiha, 245
+
+     Mesopotamia:
+       Earliest immigrants into, question as to origin of, 34-5
+       Irrigation works necessary in, 40-41
+       Israelite deportations to, 39
+       Nana-worship in, 163
+       Teheran-Mashad route from, to Baktria, 47-8, 54, 70
+
+     Merv-el-Rud:
+       Confused with Russian Merv by Idrisi, 244-5
+       Date and destruction of, 241-2
+       otherwise mentioned, 236, 239, 240-41
+
+     Merv of the Oasis (Russian):
+       Balkh, routes to, 249-50
+       Confused with Merv-el-Rud by Idrisi, 244
+       Herat route from, 236
+       Historic importance of, 241
+
+     Milesian Greeks:
+       Brankhidai, 20
+       Colonies of:
+         N. of Euxine, 14
+         S. and W. of Euxine, 18
+       Transportation of, to Baktria region, 16, 19, 20, 31, 45
+
+     Miletus:
+       Alexander's reduction of (334 B.C.), 66
+       Carpet-making industry of, 18
+       Destruction of, date of, 16
+
+     Minab river, 166
+
+     Minagar, Binagar (? Manhabari), 304, 309-10
+
+     Mingal, 482
+
+     Mingals, 142, 306
+
+     Minjan pass, 507, 519;
+       Chitral route through, 359, 426
+
+     Minjan river. _See_ Kokcha
+
+     Minjan valley, 132, 426, 436
+
+     Miri fort of Quetta, 138, 148
+
+     Mockler, Col., cited, 159-60
+
+     Mongols:
+       Afghanistan, in central plateau of, 85
+       Asiatic civilization overrun by, 200
+       Army of, destroyed on the Karakoram route, 4
+       Chenghiz Khan, under, 73
+       Ghur dynasty, subject to, 218
+       India:
+         Central Southern, problem of arrival in, 142-4
+         Invasion of, by, 326
+         Military expeditions to, attempted, 186
+         Pilgrimages to, 169 _et seq._
+
+     Monze, Cape, 154
+
+     Moorcroft, explorations by, 440;
+           question as to residence at Lhasa, 444;
+           journey from to Kabul, Badakshan, and Bokhara, 444-8;
+           official attitude towards, 442-3;
+           records of, 443;
+           fate of, 438-9;
+           grave of, 259;
+           estimate of, 443-4, 448, 503-504;
+           otherwise mentioned, 423, 434, 467
+
+     Morontobara, 154-5
+
+     Mosarna, 161
+
+     Mugger (Manga, Manja) Pir, 309
+
+     Mugheir (Ur), 42
+
+     Mula (Mulla) pass, 139, 140, 147, 371
+
+     Multan:
+       Hindu bankers in, 363
+       Mahmud's conquest of (1005), 193, 293
+       Masson's account of, 366
+       Tubaran, distance from, 315
+
+     Murad Beg, Mir of Kunduz, position of, 378-9, 504;
+           Badakshani families transported by, 432, 505;
+           Lord's invitation by, 413, 416;
+           estimate of, 413;
+           Wood's estimate of, 422;
+           Moorcroft's experience and estimate of, 446-8;
+           otherwise mentioned, 385, 418, 425, 429, 503
+
+     Murad Khan of Kunduz, 383
+
+     Murgh pass, 434-5
+
+     Murghab basin, Upper, unmapped, 477
+
+     Murghab river:
+       Economic value of, 246-7
+       Head of, unexplored, 516
+       Head valleys of, 258
+       Ruins on, 243-4
+       Upper, climate of, 220
+       otherwise mentioned, 215, 236, 239-41
+
+     Murghab valley, 242, 282, 284
+
+     Muskat, 55
+
+     Mustapha Khan, 487
+
+     Muttra, 210
+
+
+     Nachan, 225
+
+     Nadir Shah, 267, 418, 526
+
+     Nagas, 501
+
+     Nahrwara river. _See_ Kabul river
+
+     Naisan, 225
+
+     Najil, 327, 356, 396-7
+
+     Najirman (? Nakirman), 200
+
+     Najitan (Bajitan), 225
+
+     Nalpach pass, 383-4
+
+     Nan Shan mountain system, 173
+
+     Nana (Chaldean goddess), 162-3
+
+     Naoshirwan, 339
+
+     Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor, 328-329
+
+     Naratu, 236, 237, 239, 248
+
+     Narmashir, 323
+
+     Nasirs, 475
+
+     Nasratabad, 203
+
+     Nassoor, Sheikh, 497
+
+     Nava Sanghârâma, 178
+
+     Navigation, ancient, character of, 13, 56-7
+
+     Nawagai, 103
+
+     Nawak pass, 274, 428
+
+     Nawar valley, 515
+
+     Nearkhos, 26, 27;
+       voyage of, from Karachi to Persian Gulf, 145, 152-61, 286;
+       meeting of, with Alexander, 166-7;
+       cited, 286
+
+     Negroes, Asiatic, 36
+
+     New Chaman, 324
+
+     Nicolas range, 431
+
+     Nikaia (modern Kabul), Alexander at, 98. _See also_ Kabul
+
+     Nili, 222
+
+     Nimchas, 269
+
+     Nimlik (Meilik), 482
+
+     Nimrud, 71
+
+     Nineveh:
+       Ruins of, 42, 43
+       Zenith of, 52
+
+     Nishapur, 231
+
+     Nomadic life, conditions of, 23-5
+
+     Nonnus of Panopolis cited, 62-3, 98
+
+     North, Lieut., value of geographical work by, 411-12, 471
+
+     Nott, 406
+
+     Nuhsala (Nosala, Haftala, Hashtala) island, 161, 286
+
+     Nuksan pass, 508-509, 519, 520, 522
+
+     Nurzai, 212, 491
+
+     Nusa. _See_ Nysa
+
+     Nushki:
+       Christie and Pottinger at, 38
+       Route _via_, 209, 323
+       Telegraph to, 323
+
+     Nysa, Nyssa (Nusa, Nuson):
+       Tradition regarding, 62, 122-6
+       War-hymn connected with, 131-2
+
+     Nysæan inscriptions, question as to, 129-30
+
+     Nysaioi, 126-7
+
+
+     Obeh (Auca), 217, 225, 256
+
+     _Odyssey_ cited, 12
+
+     Olbia, 19
+
+     Omar I., Kalif of Baghdad, 307
+
+     Ora (? modern Bazar), 106
+
+     Oritæ, 146, 150, 151, 156, 161
+
+     Orodis, 241
+
+     Oxus district, mediæval geography of, 277 _et seq._
+
+     Oxus jungles, 433
+
+     Oxus (Jihun, Khariab) river:
+       Channel of, variations in, 89
+       Fords of, accurate knowledge of, 501-502
+       Irrigation works connected with, 75
+       Khariab a name for, 273, 278
+       Pony ferry over, at Kilif, 89-90, 460;
+         at Khwaja Salar, 449, 460-61
+       Wood's explorations of, 420, 423, 428-35
+
+     Oxydrakai, 127
+
+
+     Pactyans. _See_ Pathans
+
+     Padizar bay, 158, 159
+
+     Paghman offshoot of Hindu Kush, 97
+
+     Paghman, 387
+
+     Pahrag (Pahra, Pahura, Fahraj), 315, 317, 342;
+       two places so named, 316
+
+     Pamirs:
+       Climate of, 429
+       Mediæval geography of, 277 _et seq._
+       Routes across, 502
+       Taghdumbash, 517
+
+     Panja (Wakhab) river, 279
+
+     Panjdeh:
+       Buddhist caves at, 244
+       Herat, routes from, 236
+       Karabel plateau route from near, to Balkh, 250
+
+     Panjgur:
+       Dates of, 290
+       Description of, 302-303
+       Mountain conformation of, 323
+       Railway from, to Karachi, question as to, 324
+       Telegraph route to, from Ispahan, 322
+
+     Panjkora river, 104, 122
+
+     Panjkora valley, 96
+
+     Panjpilan (Kalloo, Shutar Gardan) pass, 386, 388, 417
+
+     Panjshir (Banjohir), 276-7
+
+     Panjshir pass, 87-8
+
+     Panjshir route between Kabul and Andarab, 87-8, 414
+
+     Panjshir valley:
+       Mediæval reputation of, 435
+       Timur in, 355-6
+       otherwise mentioned, 261, 275, 356-7, 434, 510, 521
+
+     Pannah, 472
+
+     Parah, 230
+
+     Parana (Parwana), 229, 481, 498
+
+     Parikanoi, 163-4
+
+     Parjuman, 223
+
+     Park mountains, 221
+
+     Parkan stream, 164
+
+     Paropamisos (Hindu Kush), 79, 234, 247. (_See also_ Hindu Kush.)
+
+     Parsi (Tarsi), 489
+
+     Parwan (? Karwan), 276-7
+
+     Parwan (Sar Alang, Bajgah) pass, 328, 435;
+       altitude of, 357;
+       description of, 414
+
+     Parwana (Parana), 229, 481, 498
+
+     Pashai, 133
+
+     Pashat, 133
+
+     Pasiris, 158
+
+     Pasni, bay of, 159, 164
+
+     Patala, 146, 148
+
+     Pathans:
+       Ancient settlement of, in present situation, 28
+       Greek names among, 21
+       Inscriptions used by, for decoration, 129-30
+       Persian origin of language of, 21
+
+     Peiwar pass, 135
+
+     Periplus cited, 310
+
+     Perjan (? Parwan), 355
+
+     Persepolis:
+       Alexander the Great at, 68
+       Inscriptions at, cited, 30
+
+     Persia:
+       Afghanistan:
+         Colonies in, 61
+         Intrigues regarding, British nervousness as to, 399-400
+         War with (1837), 402
+       Army of, French officers' organisation of, 477
+       Charbar point fort built by, 299
+       Configuration of western, 48
+       Desert regions of, 69;
+         "Great Desert," 201
+       Firearms imported into, 155
+       Helmund boundary of, 80
+       Routes through, to the East, two, 69;
+         routes to India, 311, 319, 321-4
+       Russia:
+         Sphere of influence of, 322
+         French organisation of Persian army resented by, 477
+         War with (1826), 348
+
+     Persian Empire:
+       Extent of, 21, 26-7
+       Geographical information possessed by, extent and accuracy of,
+         17, 25-6, 29, 31
+       Greek permeation of, 20-21; Greek attitude towards, 36
+       Indian hinterland under control of, in Alexander's time, 61
+       Indian trade of, 21
+       Nations subject to, lists of, 29-30
+       Satrapies of, identification of, 30-32
+
+     Persian Gulf:
+       Command of, necessary for safety of southern Baluchistan passes,
+         141
+       Masson's trip up, 367
+       Voyage to, from Karachi (by Nearkhos), 146, 152-61
+
+     Persians, Pottinger's estimate of, 333-4
+
+     Peshawar:
+       Cession of, to Afghanistan mooted by Burnes, 401, 404
+       Moorcroft's journey from, to Kabul and Bokhara, 444
+       Route to, from Kabul _via_ Kuram valley and Peiwar pass, 135
+       Sikh occupation of, 350
+
+     Peshawaran, 336
+
+     Peukelaotis, 99, 114
+
+     Philotas, 78
+
+     Phur river, 151
+
+     Physical geography, influence of, on migratory movements, 9, 45-6;
+       on history, 214
+
+     Pimuri defile, 421
+
+     Pir Mahomed, 445, 456
+
+     Pisacas, 133
+
+     Place-names, value of, in identifications, 115
+
+     Pokran (? Pokar), 371
+
+     Pola Island, 159
+
+     Polo, Marco, 281, 327
+
+     Polyænus quoted, 127-8
+
+     Pony-ferries on the Oxus--at Kilif, 89-90, 460;
+       at Khwaja Salar, 449, 460-61
+
+     Poolka, 496
+
+     Poolki (Pulaki), 335-6, 497
+
+     Pottinger, Lieut., explorations by, 329 _et seq._;
+       at Herat, 402;
+       quoted--on Persian character, 333-4;
+       on the Kharan desert, 339-40
+
+     Pousheng (Boushinj, Bousik), 231, 234, 237
+
+     Ptolemy (son of Lagos), with Alexander's expedition, 103, 104, 116;
+       cited, 37, 104, 310
+
+     Pul-i-Malun bridge, 229 _n._, 230
+
+     Pulaki (Poolki), 335-6, 497
+
+     Punjab:
+       Alexander's march on, 94
+       Fa Hian in, 179, 185
+       French and Italians in, 366
+       Greek architecture and sculpture in, 59
+       Ranjit Singh's hunting party in, 455-6
+       Sikh Government, under, 345-6, 363
+
+     Pura, 165
+
+     Purali (Arabius) river, 146, 148, 149, 156, 292, 305, 320, 370
+
+     Pushti Hajigak (Kafzur) pass, 417
+
+     Pushto, 350, 352
+
+
+     Quetta (Shall):
+       British ignorance regarding, in 1880, 369
+       Masson and Bean at, 406;
+         Masson's account of, 362
+       Strategic importance of, 137-9
+       Telegraph to, from Seistan, 323
+
+     Quintus Curtius. _See_ Curtius
+
+
+     Ragozin's _Chaldea_ quoted, 43
+
+     Rahmat Khan, 365
+
+     Rahmatulla Khan, 382, 421
+
+     Rahun, 304
+
+     Rajput tribes, 35
+
+     Rajputana desert, 27
+
+     Ramayana cited, 12, 63
+
+     Rambakia, 150
+
+     Ranjit Singh, Bentinck's interview with (1832), 344;
+       position of, 350, 398;
+       Burnes' entertainment by, 455-6;
+       Burnes' estimate of, 457;
+       Vigne's acquaintance with, 462;
+       mentioned, 401, 404
+
+     Ras Kachari, 156
+
+     Rasak (? Sarbaz), 312-14
+
+     Ravi river, 366
+
+     Rawlinson, Sir Henry, cited, 241, 242, 245, 479;
+       his _Five Monarchies_ quoted, 43
+
+     Regan, 316, 317, 323
+
+     Registan, 375
+
+     Reishkhan district, 424
+
+     Robat-i-Kashan, 237
+
+     Roberts, Lord, 87
+
+     Robertson, Sir George, 358, 426, 507, 510
+
+     Rohri, 364
+
+     Rokh, Shah, 242
+
+     Rookes cited, 118
+
+     Roxana, 92
+
+     _R.G.S. Journal_ cited, 123;
+       _Proceedings_ cited, 241
+
+     Rozabagh, 229 _n._
+
+     Rozanak, 233
+
+     Ruby mines of Oxus valley, 428
+
+     Rudbar (? Rudhan), 207, 496
+
+     Rue Khaf (? Rudan), 231
+
+     Russia:
+       Afghan intrigues of, British nervousness regarding, 399-400
+       India:
+         Designs on, question as to, 319-20
+         Route to, nature of, 527-8
+       Persia:
+         Army organisation of, resented by, 477
+         Sphere of influence in, 322
+         War with (1826), 348
+       Transcaspian railway terminus, 324
+
+     Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission:
+       Camps of, 233, 235, 240
+       Escort of English officers of, 492
+       Geographical surveys in Reports of, 194, 264
+       Kwaja Salar, disappearance of, 450
+       Rapidity of movements of, 477
+       Routes of, 78, 248, 261, 272-3, 335, 415
+       otherwise mentioned, 71, 83, 231
+
+     Rustak, 504
+
+     Rustam (Bazira), 106, 113, 114
+
+
+     Sabaktagin, 414
+
+     Sacnia, 281
+
+     Sadik Khan, 493
+
+     Sadmurda, 260
+
+     Safed Khak pass, 379
+
+     Safed Koh, 95
+
+     Sagittæ, 163
+
+     St. John cited, 148, 316
+
+     Saiad Ahmad Shah, 350
+
+     Saib, 433
+
+     Saidabad fort, 386
+
+     Saighan valley, 260, 379, 382, 421, 437, 505
+
+     Sajidi, 164
+
+     Sakæ, 163, 164
+
+     Sakah, 229
+
+     Sakas, 501
+
+     Samad Khan, 390
+
+     Samaria, date of fall of, 39
+
+     Sarmakan, 245
+
+     Samarkand (Marakanda), 88, 292
+
+     Sandeman, Sir Robert, 137, 320;
+       cited, 374
+
+     Sandrakottos (Chandragupta), 129
+
+     Sangadip Island, 161
+
+     Sangcharak, 258;
+       mountains, 255
+
+     Sangiduktar, 231
+
+     Sangusar, 492
+
+     Sar Alang (Parwan, Bajgah) pass, 414
+
+     Saraswati river, 27, 144
+
+     Sarakhs, 230, 233, 234
+
+     Sarbaz (? Rasak), 312, 314;
+       river, 312
+
+     Sardanapalus (Assur-bani-pal), 52, 162-3
+
+     Sargo pass, 472
+
+     Sargon, 39, 45
+
+     Sar-i-jangal stream, 256
+
+     Sarikoh stream, 267
+
+     Sar-i-pul (? Aspurkan), 250-52, 483
+
+     Sarwan (Kala Sarwan), 206-208
+
+     Sarwandi (Sir-i-koll) pass, 465, 472;
+       ridge, 465-6
+
+     Satibarzanes, 77
+
+     Schintza, 473
+
+     Schwanbeck, Dr., 126
+
+     Scylax of Caryanda, 26-9
+
+     Sehwan, 371
+
+     Seistan (Sejistan, Drangia, Drangiana):
+       Afghan army's experience in, 403
+       Climate and natural conditions in, 80, 85, 201-203, 403, 494
+       Extent of, less than of ancient Drangiana, 78;
+         extent in mediæval times, 205
+       Firearms imported into, 55
+       Goldsmid's mission to, 299
+       Inhabitants of, mentioned by Herodotus, 33
+       Lake of, 497
+       Route to Mashad, 528
+       Persian satrapy, 32, 200
+       Ruins in, abundance of, 336
+       Reputation of, 201-202
+       Surveys of, 496-7
+       Telegraph to, from Narmashir, 323
+       Tributary to Ghur in mediæval times, 218
+
+     Sekhwan, 338
+
+     Sekoha, 498
+
+     Sejistan. _See_ Seistan
+
+     Semenjan. _See_ Haibak
+
+     Semiramis, 147
+
+     Senacherib, King of Assyria, 52
+
+     Senart, M., cited, 130
+
+     Seneca, cited, 21
+
+     Ser-ab (? Sar-i-ab), 468
+
+     Shah, 251, 255
+
+     Shah Kot (Mahaban), 108, 110-11, 113, 117-21
+
+     Shaharak, 486
+
+     Shahar-i-Babar, 257, 267
+
+     Shahar-i-Wairan (? Shahar, Shah), 254-5
+
+     Shaitana, 380
+
+     Shakiban, 338
+
+     Shams Tabieri, Saint, 366
+
+     Shamshirs, 233-4, 240
+
+     Shamsuddin pass, 418
+
+     Shansabi, 218
+
+     Sharif, Imam, 484
+
+     Sharifudin cited, 355
+
+     Sheherek, 486
+
+     Sheranni, 512
+
+     Sher-i-dahan, 468
+
+     Sherwan, 433-4
+
+     Shibar, 468
+
+     Shibar pass, 260, 277, 387
+
+     Shibarghan, 251-2
+
+     Shikapur, financial credit of, 331-2, 363, 452-3
+
+     Shorawak, 374-5
+
+     Shutar Gardan (Kalloo, Panjpilan) pass, 386, 388, 417
+
+     Siah Koh (Band-i-Baian), 486, 487
+
+     Siah Reg pass, 381
+
+     Siahposh Kafirs, 270, 354-6, 358
+
+     Siam, celadon furnaces in, 83
+
+     Sidonians, deportation of, by Assyria, 52
+
+     Sikhs, Dost Mahomed's operations against, 397-8
+
+     Simkoh, 234
+
+     Sind:
+       Arab ascendency in, 192, 293, 311, 366;
+         their geography of, 296;
+         buried Arab city in, 196
+       Assyrian art in pottery of, 54
+       Buddhist ruins in, 372
+       Frontier passes of, 209
+       Hot winds in, 341
+       Independent government, under, 329, 331, 345-6, 363
+       Masson in, 349; his account of, 365
+       Mongols settled in, 526
+       Mountain barrier of, 140
+
+     Singlak, 485
+
+     Sin-ho-to. _See_ Swat
+
+     Sintu-ho river. _See_ Indus
+
+     Sirafraz Khan, 391
+
+     Sir-i-koll (Sarwandi) pass, 465
+
+     Sirondha lake, 155
+
+     Skytho-Aryans, 241
+
+     Skyths:
+       Caspian, at north and west of, 19
+       Central Asia, of, 50;
+         Alexander's encounter with, 92-3
+       Euxine, at north of, 14
+       Westward migration of, 61
+
+     Slavery in Badakshan, 520
+
+     Sofarak, 262
+
+     Sogdia (Bokhara), 32, 92
+
+     Sohrab, 332
+
+     Somnath, 210
+
+     Song Yun cited, 184
+
+     Sonmiani, 308, 368;
+       route from, to interior, 330-31
+
+     Sousa, 479
+
+     Spinasuka pass, 103
+
+     Stein, Dr. M. A., 237, 503;
+       Buddhist sanctuary discovered by, 184;
+       methods of, 109-11;
+       cited, 111, 113, 117-18, 120-21, 170
+
+     Stoddart, Colonel, 390, 402
+
+     Stone-built circles, 372
+
+     Strabo cited, 107, 122;
+       quoted, 127
+
+     Stewart, General, 95
+
+     Subzawar, 230, 498
+
+     Sufed Koh mountains, 135, 215
+
+     Su-ho-to (Lower Swat), 185
+
+     Sujah, Shah, 344, 353, 405, 456
+
+     Suliman, Kalif, 294
+
+     Suliman hills, torrents and passes of, 36-7
+
+     Suliman Khel Ghilzais:
+       Broadfoot the authority on, 474-5
+       Duties levied by, 464, 474-5
+       Kattasang, in, 472
+       Land of, unexplored, 514
+
+     Sultan Mahomed, 445, 446
+
+     Sura (? Suza), 317
+
+     Surkh Kila pass, 418
+
+     Survey methods, perfecting of, 500
+
+     Suza (? Sura), 317
+
+     Swat (Sin-ho-to, Su-ho-to):
+       Buddhism in, 129
+       Fa Hian in, 179, 185
+       Geographical surveys of, 123
+       Uplands of, 128
+
+
+     Tabriz, 368
+
+     Taft, 322
+
+     Tagao Ghur river, 221
+
+     Tagao Ishlan river, 215-16, 223;
+       valley, 486
+
+     Tagdumbash Pamir, 180, 279, 517
+
+     Taimanis:
+       Country of, 84, 214, 217, 220, 222-223, 478, 488
+       Kidnapping by, in Afghan Turkistan, 253
+       Traditions of, 212
+       Women of, Ferrier's account of, 489
+       mentioned, 481, 489
+
+     Taiwara (Ghur):
+       Herat, route from, 223
+       Importance of, 487
+       Ruins at, 222, 488
+       mentioned, 220, 515
+
+     Tajik (Kurt), dynasty in Ghur, 218
+
+     Tajiks, Badakshani, 432
+
+     Takla Makan, 283
+
+     Takht-i-Rustam (tope at Haibak), 446
+
+     Takht-i-Suliman mountain:
+       Expedition to (1882), 112, 119, 513
+       River gorges of, 137
+       mentioned, 137, 464
+
+     Takzar (Zakar), 251, 252
+
+     Talara, 300-301
+
+     Talbot, Colonel the Hon. M. G., R.E., 264 _and n._, 446;
+       cited, 489-90
+
+     Talekan, 271-4
+
+     Talikan, 241, 243, 504;
+       Mahomedan saint at, 447
+
+     Talikan (Talikhan), 243 _and n._, 249
+
+     Talikan plains, 506, 509
+
+     Talikhan plain, 423
+
+     Taloi range, 164
+
+     Tamerlane. _See_ Timur
+
+     _Tarikh-i-Rashidi_ cited, 186
+
+     Tarim river, 173, 174, 283
+
+     Tarnak river, 224
+
+     Tashkurghan:
+       Fort of, 279, 281
+       Kabul, routes to, 260, 419
+       Moorcroft at, 448
+       otherwise mentioned, 88, 482
+
+     Tashkurghan river, 261, 279
+
+     Tarsi (Parsi), 489
+
+     Tate, Mr. G. P., cited, 336
+
+     Taxila, 29, 94, 99
+
+     Taxiles, 99
+
+     Teheran:
+       Hamadan telegraph route to, 48
+       Kashan, question as to railway _via_, 322
+       Mashad route from, 54, 77;
+         question as to railway by, 319
+
+     Termez, 278, 279
+
+     Teshkhan, 424
+
+     Thakot, 121
+
+     Tibet:
+       Chinese Turkistan formerly included in, 283
+       Gold-fields of, 51
+       Gold-digging legends concerning, 31
+       Idrisi's description of, 281-3
+       Invasion of India from, possibility as to, 188
+       Mongol invasion of, 186-7
+       Moorcroft in, 439-40
+
+     Tibetans, modern, 283
+
+     Tiglath Pilesur, King of Assyria, 6, 44, 46, 49, 51, 52, 57
+
+     Tigris river, 368
+
+     Til pass, 275
+
+     Timur Hissar, 356
+
+     Timur Shah (Tamerlane):
+       Herat and Ghur broken up by, 219
+       Kafiristan invaded by, 327, 355-6, 435
+       Merv-el-Rud destroyed by, 242
+       otherwise mentioned, 193, 394, 414, 481
+
+     Tingelab river, 486
+
+     Tippak, 283
+
+     Tir, 238-9
+
+     Tir Band-i-Turkistan mountains, 239, 240, 247, 258
+
+     Tirah Expedition, 105
+
+     Tiz (Talara), 299-301
+
+     Tochi river, 475
+
+     Tochi valley, 136;
+       route by, 512-14
+
+     Todd, Major d'Arcy, 480
+
+     Tokhari (Kushan), 241
+
+     Tokharistan (Oxus region), 241;
+       capital of, 243
+
+     To-li (Darel), 179, 182-3
+
+     Tomeros river, 157
+
+     Tous, 479
+
+     Topchi valley, 386, 388
+
+     Torashekh, 237, 482
+
+     Transportation of whole populations, 40, 44
+
+     Travel, _camaraderie_ of, 463-4
+
+     _Travels in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, the Punjab, and Kalat_
+      (Masson) cited, 349 _et seq._
+
+     Trebeck, 439-40, 444, 448, 459
+
+     Tsungling, 177, 178
+
+     Tubaran, 315-17
+
+     Turan, 315-16
+
+     Turfan, 172
+
+     Turki language, 394
+
+     Turkistan, Afghan. _See_ Afghan Turkistan
+
+     Turkman women, 283
+
+     Turkmans, Ersari, 459-60
+
+     Turks, Khizilji, 281-2
+
+     Turks Tibetans, 282
+
+
+     Uch, 364, 366
+
+     Udyana (Wuchung), 179, 184
+
+     Ujaristan valley, 515
+
+     Unai (Honai, Bamian) pass, 87, 260, 262, 379, 389, 414, 420, 446;
+       importance of, 521;
+       Wood's description of, 417
+
+     Ur (Mugheir), 42
+
+     Urmara, 368
+
+     Urukh (Warka), 163
+
+     Urusgan valley, 515
+
+     Uthal, 307
+
+     Uzbeks:
+       Agricultural pursuits of, 251
+       Dwellings of, 249
+       Kirghiz compared with, 430
+       Man-stealing propensities of, 421
+       Murad Khan acknowledged liege by, 383, 413
+       Snake-handling by, 253
+       Wood's estimate of, 423
+
+
+     Vaisravana, 178
+
+     Varsach river, 424
+
+     Vektavitch, Lieut., 400
+
+     Ventura, General, 367
+
+     Victoria Lake, 430-31
+
+
+     Wad, 373
+
+     Wade, Captain, 397, 398
+
+     Wainwright, E. A., cited, 313
+
+     Wakhab (Panja) river, 279
+
+     Wakhan, 273, 281, 327
+
+     Wakhjir pass, 279
+
+     Waksh, 273, 278
+
+     Wakshab river, 273, 278
+
+     Walian (Gwalian) pass, 414
+
+     Walid I., Kalif, 292, 307
+
+     Walker, General, cited, 123, 508
+
+     Wana, 513
+
+     Wardak valley, 466, 475
+
+     Wardoj river, 429, 437
+
+     Wardoj (Zebak) valley, 436
+
+     Warka (Urukh), 163
+
+     Warwalin, 271-2
+
+     Washir, 490
+
+     Wazirabad lake, 98
+
+     Waziris, 464, 474
+
+     Waziristan, 473
+
+     Weather, effects of, on natural features, 117-18
+
+     Westward migrations, 45, 61
+
+     Wilson, Major David, cited, 368
+
+     Wiltshire, General, 406
+
+     Wine made by Kafirs, 133-4
+
+     Wood, Lieut., mission of, to Badakshan, 402;
+       with Lord, 412, 416-18, 420, 422, 432, 439;
+       explorations of the Oxus by, 420, 423, 428-35;
+       Indus navigation by, 454; cited, 505-507, 523;
+       estimate of, 431;
+       value of work of, 418
+
+     Wolff, Rev. Joseph, 376
+
+     Woodthorpe, 429, 509
+
+     Wuchung (Udyana), 179, 184
+
+     Wynaad gold-fields, 51
+
+
+     Xenophon, retreat of, from Persia, 18, 42;
+       appreciation of, 66;
+       cited, 42
+
+     Xerxes, 20, 31, 91
+
+
+     Yahudi. _See_ Jews
+
+     Yahudia, 251, 255
+
+     Yakmina (Darak Yamuna), 317
+
+     Yakulang, 262; valley, 256
+
+     Yaman, 220, 222
+
+     Yang Kila, 433
+
+     Yar Mahomed Khan, 445, 477, 480, 490, 494
+
+     Yarkand, 279, 328
+
+     Yezd, 322
+
+     Yezdambaksh, 378, 382-4
+
+     Yule, Sir Henry, cited, 219, 508
+
+     Yusli, 307-308
+
+     Yusuf Darra route to Sar-i-pul, 483
+
+     Yusufzai rising, 350
+
+
+     Zaimuni, 389
+
+     Zakar (Takzar), 251, 252
+
+     Zal valley, 262
+
+     Zamindawar (Dawar), 83, 205-206, 223, 491
+
+     Zarah swamp, 204
+
+     Zarangai, 33-4
+
+     Zardaspan, 90
+
+     Zari stream, 257
+
+     Zariaspa. _See_ Andarab
+
+     Zarinje, 203, 204
+
+     Zarni, 222
+
+     Zebak:
+       Faizabad, route from, 511
+
+     Zebak:
+       Importance of, 427, 429, 433
+       mentioned, 279
+
+     Zebak river, 437, 520
+
+     Zebak (Wardoj) valley, 436
+
+     Zhob valley, 137
+
+     Zindajan (Bouchinj), 231, 232, 479
+
+     Zirmast pass, 236, 239, 240
+
+     Zirni, 487, 488
+
+     Zohak, 267, 387;
+       valley, 421
+
+     Zohaka, 466
+
+     Zoji-la, 180
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gates of India, by Thomas Holdich
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gates of India, by Thomas Holdich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Gates of India
+       Being an Historical Narrative
+
+Author: Thomas Holdich
+
+Release Date: June 17, 2013 [EBook #42970]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GATES OF INDIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tnbox">
+<p class="center"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></p>
+<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original
+document have been preserved.</p>
+
+<p>"crank" on page 147 is a possible typo.</p>
+<p>"Bamain" on page 213 is a possible typo.</p>
+<p>"Semetic" on page 225 is a possible typo.</p>
+<p>"Zoroastian" on page 270 is a possible typo.</p>
+<p>"Aegospotami" (in index) not found in text.</p>
+<p>"Kardos" (in index) not found in text.</p>
+<p>Spelling differences between the index and the text were resolved
+in favor of the text.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_001.jpg" width="105" height="30" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br />
+LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br />
+MELBOURNE</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO<br />
+ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br />
+TORONTO</p>
+
+<h1>
+<span class="s05">THE</span><br />
+GATES OF INDIA</h1>
+
+<p class="p2 center">BEING<br />
+<span class="b12">AN HISTORICAL NARRATIVE</span></p>
+
+<p class="p4 center"><span class="s08">BY</span><br />
+<span class="b12">COLONEL SIR THOMAS HOLDICH</span><br />
+<span class="s08">K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B., D.Sc.</span><br />
+<span class="s05">AUTHOR OF</span><br />
+<span class="s05">'THE INDIAN BORDERLAND,' 'INDIA,' 'THE COUNTRIES OF THE KING'S AWARD'</span></p>
+
+<p class="center p4 s08"><i>WITH MAPS</i></p>
+
+<p class="center p4">MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br />
+ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON<br />
+1910</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_V" id="Page_V">v</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>As the world grows older and its composition both
+physical and human becomes subject to ever-increasing
+scientific investigation, the close interdependence
+of its history and its geography becomes more and
+more definite. It is hardly too much to say that
+geography has so far shaped history that in unravelling
+some of the more obscure entanglements
+of historical record, we may safely appeal to our
+modern knowledge of the physical environment of
+the scene of action to decide on the actual course
+of events. Oriental scholars for many years past
+have been deeply interested in reshaping the map
+of Asia to suit their theories of the sequence of
+historical action in India and on its frontiers. They
+have identified the position of ancient cities in
+India, sometimes with marvellous precision, and
+have been able to assign definite niches in history
+to historical personages with whose story it would
+have been most difficult to deal were it not intertwined
+with marked features of geographical environment.
+But on the far frontiers of India, beyond
+the Indus, these geographical conditions have only
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_VI" id="Page_VI">vi</a></span>
+been imperfectly known until recently. It is only
+within the last thirty years that the geography of
+the hinterland of India&mdash;Tibet, Afghanistan, and
+Baluchistan&mdash;have been in any sense brought under
+scientific examination, and at the best such examination
+has been partial and incomplete. It is
+unfortunate that recent years have added nothing
+to our knowledge of Afghanistan, and it seems
+hopeless to wait for detailed information as to some
+of the more remote (and most interesting) districts
+of that historic country. As, therefore, in the course
+of twenty years of official wanderings I have amassed
+certain notes which may help to throw some light
+on the ancient highways and cities of those trans-frontier
+regions which contain the landward gates
+of India, I have thought it better to make some
+use of these notes now, and to put together the
+various theories that I may have formed from time
+to time bearing on the past history of that country,
+whilst the opportunity lasts. I have endeavoured to
+present my own impressions at first hand as far as
+possible, unbiased by the views already expressed
+by far more eminent writers than myself, believing
+that there is a certain value in originality. I have
+also endeavoured to keep the descriptive geography
+of such districts as form the theatre of historical
+incidents on a level with the story itself, so that
+the one may illustrate the other.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst investigating the methods of early explorers
+into the hinterland of India it has, of course,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_VII" id="Page_VII">vii</a></span>
+been necessary to appeal to the original narratives
+of the explorers themselves so far as possible.
+Consequently I am indebted to the assistance afforded
+by quite a host of authors for the basis of this
+compilation. And I may briefly recount the names
+of those to whom I am under special obligation.
+First and foremost are Mr. M'Crindle's admirable
+series of handy little volumes dealing with the Greek
+period of Indian history, the perusal of which first
+prompted an attempt to reconcile some of the
+apparent discrepancies between classical story and
+practical geography, with which may be included
+Sir A. Cunningham's <i>Coins of Alexander's Successors
+in Kabul</i>. For the Arab phase of commercial
+exploration I am indebted to Sir William Ouseley's
+translation, <i>Oriental Geography of Ibn Haukel</i>, and
+the <i>Géographie d'Edrisi; traduite par P. Aimedée
+Joubert</i>. For more modern records the official reports
+of Burnes, Lord, and Leech on Afghanistan;
+Burnes' <i>Travels into Bokhara, etc.; Cabul</i>, by the
+same author; <i>Ferrier's Caravan Journeys</i>; Wood's
+<i>Journey to the Sources of the Oxus</i>; Moorcroft's
+<i>Travels in the Himalayan Provinces</i>; Vigne's
+<i>Ghazni, Kabul, and Afghanistan</i>; Henry Pottinger's
+<i>Travels in Baloochistan and Sinde</i>; and last,
+but by no means least, Masson's <i>Travels in
+Afghanistan, Beluchistan, the Panjab, and Kalat</i>,
+all of which have been largely indented on. To
+this must be added Mr. Forrest's valuable compilation
+of Bombay records. It has been indeed one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_VIII" id="Page_VIII">viii</a></span>
+of the objects of this book to revive the records
+of past generations of explorers whose stories have
+a deep significance even in this day, but which are
+apt to be overlooked and forgotten as belonging to
+an ancient and superseded era of research. Because
+these investigators belong to a past generation it by
+no means follows that their work, their opinions, or
+their deductions from original observations are as
+dead as they are themselves. It is far too readily
+assumed that the work of the latest explorer must
+necessarily supersede that of his predecessors. In
+the difficult art of map compilation perhaps the
+most difficult problem with which the compiler has
+to deal is the relative value of evidence dating from
+different periods. Here, then, we have introduced
+a variety of opinions and views expressed by men
+of many minds (but all of one type as explorer),
+which may be balanced one against another with a
+fair prospect of eliminating what mathematicians call
+the "personal equation" and arriving at a sound
+"mean" value from combined evidence. I have
+said they are all of one type, regarded as explorers.
+There is only one word which fitly describes that
+type&mdash;magnificent. We may well ask have we any
+explorers like them in these days? We know well
+enough that we have the raw material in plenty for
+fashioning them, but alas! opportunity is wanting.
+Exploration in these days is becoming so professional
+and so scientific that modern methods hardly admit
+of the dare-devil, face-to-face intermixing with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_IX" id="Page_IX">ix</a></span>
+savage breeds and races that was such a distinctive
+feature in the work of these heroes of an older
+age. We get geographical results with a rapidity
+and a precision that were undreamt of in the early
+years (or even in the middle) of the last century.
+Our instruments are incomparably better, and our
+equipment is such that we can deal with the hostility
+of nature in her more savage moods with comparative
+facility. But we no longer live with the
+people about whom we set out to write books&mdash;we
+don't wear their clothes, eat their food, fraternize
+with them in their homes and in the field, learn
+their language and discuss with them their religion
+and politics. And the result is that we don't <i>know</i>
+them half as well, and the ratio of our knowledge
+(in India at least) is inverse to the official position
+towards them that we may happen to occupy. The
+missionary and the police officer may know something
+of the people; the high-placed political administrator
+knows less (he cannot help himself),
+and the parliamentary demagogue knows nothing at
+all. My excuse for giving so large a place to the
+American explorer Masson, for instance, is that he
+was first in the field at a critical period of Indian
+history. Apart from his extraordinary gifts and
+power of absorbing and collating information, history
+has proved that on the whole his judgment both
+as regards Afghan character and Indian political
+ineptitude was essentially sound. Of course he was
+not popular. He is as bitter and sarcastic in his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_X" id="Page_X">x</a></span>
+unsparing criticisms of local political methods in
+Afghanistan as he is of the methods of the Indian
+Government behind them; and doubtless his bitterness
+and undisguised hostility to some extent discounts
+the value of his opinion. But he knew the
+Afghan, which we did not: and it is most instructive
+to note the extraordinary divergence of opinion that
+existed between him and Sir Alexander Burnes as
+regards some of the most marked idiosyncrasies of
+Afghan character. Burnes was as great an explorer
+as Masson, but whilst in Afghanistan he was the
+emissary of the Indian Government, and thus it
+immediately became worth while for the Afghan
+Sirdar to study his temper and his weaknesses and
+to make the best use of both. Thus arose Burnes'
+whole-hearted belief in the simplicity of Afghan
+methods, whilst Masson, who was more or less
+behind the scenes, was in no position to act as
+prompter to him. It was just preceding and during
+the momentous period of the first Afghan war
+(1839-41) that European explorers in Afghanistan
+and Baluchistan were most active. Long before
+then both countries had been an open book to the
+Ancients, and both may be said geographically to
+be an open book to us now. There are, however,
+certain pages which have not yet been properly
+read, and something will be said later on as to
+where these pages occur.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XI" id="Page_XI">xi</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr" colspan="2"><span class="s08">PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER I</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Early Relations between East and West&mdash;Greece
+and Persia and Early Tribal Distributions on
+the Indian Frontier</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER II</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Assyria and Afghanistan&mdash;Ancient Land Routes&mdash;Possible
+Sea Routes</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER III</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Greek Exploration&mdash;Alexander&mdash;Modern Balkh&mdash;The
+Balkh Plain and Baktria</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER IV</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Greek Exploration&mdash;Alexander&mdash;The Kabul Valley
+Gates</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER V</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Greek Exploration&mdash;The Western Gates</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">135</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XII" id="Page_XII">xii</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER VI</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Chinese Explorations&mdash;The Gates of the North</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER VII</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Mediæval Geography&mdash;Seistan and Afghanistan</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_190">190</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER VIII</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Arab Exploration&mdash;The Gates of Makran</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER IX</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Earliest English Exploration&mdash;Christie and Pottinger</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_325">325</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER X</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">American Exploration&mdash;Masson&mdash;The Nearer Gates,
+Baluchistan and Afghanistan</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_344">344</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER XI</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">American Exploration&mdash;Masson (<i>continued</i>)&mdash;The
+Nearer Gates, Baluchistan and Afghanistan</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_390">390</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER XII</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Lord and Wood&mdash;The Farther Gates, Badakshan
+and the Oxus</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_411">411</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER XIII</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Across Afghanistan to Bokhara&mdash;Moorcroft</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_442">442</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XIII" id="Page_XIII">xiii</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER XIV</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Across Afghanistan to Bokhara&mdash;Burnes</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_451">451</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER XV</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">The Gates of Ghazni&mdash;Vigne</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_462">462</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER XVI</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">The Gates of Ghazni&mdash;Broadfoot</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_470">470</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER XVII</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">French Exploration&mdash;Ferrier</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_476">476</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdb" colspan="3">CHAPTER XVIII</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tda"><span class="smcap">Summary</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_500">500</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdi">INDEX</td>
+<td class="tdr tdi"><a href="#Page_531">531</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XIV" id="Page_XIV"></a></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XV" id="Page_XV">xv</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>LIST OF MAPS</h2>
+<table summary="List of Maps">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr" colspan="3"><span class="s08">FACE PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1.</td>
+<td class="tda">General Orographic Map of Afghanistan and Baluchistan,
+showing Arab trade routes (see <a href="#Page_190">page 190</a> <i>et seq.</i>)</td>
+<td class="tdr"><i><a href="#i017">With Introduction</a></i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>2.</td>
+<td class="tda">Sketch of Alexander's Route through the Kabul Valley to
+India</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i112">94</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>3.</td>
+<td class="tda">Greek Retreat from India (<i>Journal of the Society of Arts</i>,
+April 1901)</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i155">135</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>4.</td>
+<td class="tda">The Gates of Makran (<i>Journal of the Royal Geographical
+Society</i>, April 1906)</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i306">284</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>5.</td>
+<td class="tda">Sketch of the Hindu Kush Passes</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i524">500</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="figcenter p6"><a name="i017" id="i017"></a>
+<img src="images/i_017.jpg" width="550" height="480" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">OROGRAPHICAL MAP OF
+AFGHANISTAN &amp; BALUCHISTAN<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">COMPILED BY SIR THOMAS H. HOLDICH, K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B.</span><br />
+<br />
+<a href="images/i_017fs.jpg">View larger image</a></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+<p>Since the gates of India have become water gates
+and the way to India has been the way of the sea,
+very little has been known of those other landward
+gates which lie to the north and west of the
+peninsula, through which have poured immigrants
+from Asia and conquerors from the West from time
+immemorial. It has taken England a long time to
+rediscover them, and she is even now doubtful
+about their strategic value and the possibility of
+keeping them closed and barred. It is only by an
+examination of the historical records which concern
+them, and the geographical conditions which surround
+them, that any clear appreciation of their
+value can be attained; and it is only within the
+last century that such examinations have been
+rendered possible by the enterprise and activity of
+a race of explorers (official and otherwise) who have
+risked their lives in the dangerous field of the
+Indian trans-frontier. In ancient days the very
+first (and sometimes the last) thing that was learned
+about India was the way thither from the North.
+In our times the process has been reversed, and we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span>
+seek for information with our backs to the South.
+We have worked our way northward, having
+entered India by the southern water gates, and
+as we have from time to time struggled rather
+to remain content within narrow borders than to
+push outward and forward, the drift to the north
+has been very slow, and there has never been,
+right from the very beginning, any strenuous haste
+in the expansion of commercial interests, or any
+spirit of crusade in the advance of Conquest.</p>
+
+<p>So late as the early years of the sixteenth
+century England was but a poor country, with less
+inhabitants than are now crowded within the
+London area. There was not much to spare, either
+of money or men, for ventures which could only be
+regarded in those days as sheer gambling speculations.
+The splendid records of a successful voyage
+must have been greatly discounted by the many
+dismal tales of failure, and nothing but an indomitable
+impulse, bred of international rivalry, could
+have led the royal personages and the few wealthy
+citizens who backed our earliest enterprises to open
+their purse-strings sufficiently wide to find the
+necessary means for the equipment of a modest
+little fleet of square-sailed merchant ships.
+National tenacity prevailed, however, in the end.
+The hard-headed Islander finally succeeded where
+the more impetuous Southerner failed, and England
+came out finally with most of the honours of a long
+commercial contest. It was in this way that we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span>
+reached India, and by degrees we painted India our
+own conventional colour in patches large enough
+to give us the preponderating voice in her general
+administration. But as we progressed northward
+and north-westward we realized the important fact
+that India&mdash;the peninsula India&mdash;was insulated and
+protected by geographical conformations which
+formed a natural barrier against outside influences,
+almost as impassable as the sea barriers of England.
+On the north-east a vast wilderness of forest-covered
+mountain ranges and deep lateral valleys
+barred the way most effectually against irruption
+from the yellow races of Asia. On the north where
+the curving serrated ramparts of the north-east
+gave place to the Himalayan barrier, the huge
+uplifted highlands of Tibet were equally impassable
+to the busy pushing hordes of the Mongol; and it
+was only on the extreme north-west about the
+hinterland of Kashmir, and beyond the Himalayan
+system, that any weakness could be found in the
+chain of defensive works which Nature had sent to
+the north of India. Here, indeed, in the trans-Indus
+regions of Kashmir, sterile, rugged, cold, and
+crowned with gigantic ice-clad peaks, there is a
+slippery track reaching northward into the depression
+of Chinese Turkestan, which for all time has
+been a recognised route connecting India with
+High Asia. It is called the Karakoram route.
+Mile upon mile a white thread of a road stretches
+across the stone-strewn plains, bordered by the bones
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span>
+of the innumerable victims to the long fatigue of
+a burdensome and ill-fed existence&mdash;the ghastly
+debris of former caravans. It is perhaps the
+ugliest track to call a trade route in the whole
+wide world. Not a tree, not a shrub, exists, not
+even the cold dead beauty which a snow-sheet
+imparts to highland scenery, for there is no great
+snowfall in the elevated spaces which back the
+Himalayas and their offshoots. It is marked, too,
+by many a sordid tragedy of murder and robbery,
+but it is nevertheless one of the northern gates of
+India which we have spent much to preserve, and
+it does actually serve a very important purpose in
+the commercial economy of India. At least one
+army has traversed this route from the north with
+the prospect before it of conquering Tibet; but
+it was a Mongol army, and it was worsted in a
+most unequal contest with Nature.</p>
+
+<p>India (if we include Kashmir) runs to a northern
+apex about the point where, from the western extension
+of the giant Muztagh, the Hindu Kush
+system takes off in continuation of the great Asiatic
+divide. Here the Pamirs border Kashmir, and
+here there are also mountain ways which have
+aforetime let in the irrepressible Chinaman, probably
+as far as Hunza, but still a very long way
+from the Indian peninsula. Then the Hindu Kush
+slopes off to the south-westward and becomes the
+divide between Afghanistan and Kashmir for a
+space, till, from north of Chitral, it continues with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span>
+a sweep right into Central Afghanistan and merges
+into the mountain chain which reaches to Herat.
+From this point, north of Chitral, commences the
+true north-west barrier of India, a barrier which
+includes nearly the whole width of Afghanistan
+beyond the formidable wall of the trans-Indus
+mountains. It is here that the gates of India are
+to be found, and it is with this outermost region of
+India, and what lies beyond it, that this book is
+chiefly concerned.</p>
+
+<p>As the history of India under British occupation
+grew and expanded and the painting red process
+gradually developed, whilst men were ever reaching
+north-westward with their eyes set on these
+frontier hills, the countries which lay beyond came
+to be regarded as the "ultima thule" of Indian
+exploration, and Afghanistan and Baluchistan were
+reckoned in English as the hinterland of India,
+only to be reached by the efforts of English adventurers
+from the plains of the peninsula. And that
+is the way in which those countries are still
+regarded. It is Afghanistan in its relations to
+India, political, commercial, or strategic, as the case
+may be, that fills the minds of our soldiers and
+statesmen of to-day; and the way to Afghanistan is
+still by the way of ships&mdash;across the ocean first, and
+then by climbing upward from the plains of India
+to the continental plateau land of Asia. It was not
+so twenty-five centuries ago. One can imagine the
+laughter that would echo through the courts and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span>
+palaces of Nineveh at the idea of reaching Afghanistan
+by a sea route! Think of Tiglath Pilesur,
+the founder of the Second Assyrian Empire,
+seated, curled, and anointed, surrounded by his
+Court and flanked by the sculptured art of his
+period (already losing some of the freshness
+and vigour of First Empire design) in the
+pillared halls of Nineveh, and counting the value
+of his Eastern satrapies in Sagartia, Ariana, and
+Arachosia, with outlying provinces in Northern
+India, whilst meditating yet further conquests to
+add to his almost illimitable Empire! No shadow
+of Babylon had stretched northward then. No
+premonition of a yet larger and later Empire overshadowed
+him or his successors, Shalmaneser and
+Sargon. Northern Afghanistan was to these
+Assyrian kings the dumping ground of unconsidered
+companies of conquered slaves, a bourne
+from whence no captive was ever likely to return.
+No record is left of the passing of those bands of
+colonists from West to East. We can only gather
+from the writings of subsequent historians in
+classical times that for centuries they must have
+drifted eastward from Syria, Armenia, and Greece,
+carrying with them the rudiments of the arts and
+industries of the land they had left for ever, and
+providing India with the germs of an art system
+entirely imitative in design, colour, and relief.
+The Aryan was before them in India. Already the
+foundations were laid for historic dynasties, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span>
+Rajput families were dating their origin from the
+sun and moon, whilst somewhere from beneath the
+shadow of the Himalayas in the foothills of Nipal
+was soon to arise the daystar of a new faith, a
+"light of Asia" for all centuries to come.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to set a limit to the number and
+variety of the people who, in these early centuries,
+either migrated, or were deported, from West to
+East through Persia to Northern Afghanistan, or
+who drifted southwards into Baluchistan. Not until
+the ethnography of these frontier lands of India is
+exhaustively studied shall we be able to unravel
+the influence of Assyrian, Median, Persian, Arab,
+or Greek migrations in the strange conglomeration
+of humanity which peoples those countries. Baktra
+(Balkh), in Northern Afghanistan, must have been
+a city of consequence in days when Nineveh was
+young. Farah, a city of Arachosia in Western
+Afghanistan on the borders of Seistan, must have
+been a centre from whence Assyrian arts and
+industries were passed on to India for ages; for
+Farah lies directly on the route which connects
+Seistan with the southern passes into the Indus
+valley. The Indus itself seems to have been the
+boundary which limited the efforts of migration
+and exploration. Beyond the Indus were deserts
+in the south and wide unproductive plains of the
+Punjab in the north, and it is the deserts of the
+world's geography which, far more than any other
+feature, have always determined the extent of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span>
+human tidal waves and influenced their direction.
+They are as the promontories and capes of the
+world's land perimeter to the tides of the ocean.
+Beyond these parched and waterless tracts, where
+now the maximum temperatures of sun-heat in
+India are registered, were vague uncertainties and
+mythical wonders, the tales of which in ancient
+literature are in strange contrast to the exact information
+which was obtained of geographical conditions
+and tribal distributions in the basins of the
+Kabul or Swat rivers, or within the narrow valleys
+of Makran.</p>
+
+<p>A recent writer (Mr. Ellsworth Huntington) has
+expressed in picturesque and convincing language
+the nature of the relationship which has ever existed
+between man and his physical environments
+in Asia, and has illustrated the effect of certain
+pulsations of climate in the movement of Asiatic
+history. The changing conditions of the climate of
+High Asia, periods of desiccation and deprivation
+of natural water-supply alternating with periods of
+cold and rainfall, acting in slow progression through
+centuries and never ceasing in their operation, have
+set "men in nations" moving over the face of that
+continent since the beginning of time, and left a
+legacy of buried history, to be unearthed by explorers
+of the type of Stein, such as will eventually
+give us the key to many important problems in
+race distribution. But more important even than
+climatic influence is the direct influence of physical
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span>
+geography, the actual shaping of mountain and
+valley, as a factor in directing the footsteps of early
+migration. Nowadays men cross the seas in thousands
+from continent to continent, but in the days
+of Egyptian and Assyrian empire it was that straight
+high-road which crossed the fewest passes and tapped
+the best natural resources of wood and water which
+was absolutely the determining factor in the direction
+of the great human processions; and although
+change of climate may have set the nomadic
+peoples of High Asia moving with a purpose more
+extensive than an annual search for pasturage, and
+have led to the peopling of India with successive
+nations of Central Asiatic origin, it was the knowledge
+that by certain routes between Mesopotamia
+and Northern Afghanistan lay no inhospitable
+desert, and no impassable mountain barrier, that
+determined the intermittent flow from the west,
+which received fresh impulse with every conquest
+achieved, with every band of captives available for
+colonizing distant satrapies. To put it shortly,
+there was an easy high-road from Mesopotamia
+through Persia to Northern Afghanistan, or even
+to Seistan, and not a very difficult one to Makran;
+and so it came about that migratory movements,
+either compulsory or voluntary, continued through
+centuries, ever extending their scope till checked
+by the deserts of the Indian frontier or the highlands
+of the Pamirs and Tibet, or the cold wild
+wastes of Siberia.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus Afghanistan and Baluchistan, the countries
+with which we are more immediately concerned, were
+probably far better known to Assyrian and Persian
+kings than they were to the British Intelligence
+Office (or its equivalent) of a century ago. The
+first landward explorations of these countries are
+lost in pre-historic mists, but we find that the first
+scientific mission of which we have any record
+(that which was led by Alexander the Great) was
+well supplied with fairly accurate geographical information
+regarding the main route to be followed
+and the main objectives to be gained.</p>
+
+<p>In tracing out, therefore, or rather in sketching,
+the gradual progress of exploration in Afghanistan
+and Baluchistan, and the gradual evolution of those
+countries into a proper appanage of British India,
+we will begin (as history began) from the north and
+west rather than from the south and the plains of
+Hindustan.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p class="center">EARLY RELATIONS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST. GREECE
+AND PERSIA AND EARLY TRIBAL DISTRIBUTIONS
+ON THE INDIAN FRONTIER.</p>
+
+<p class="p2">It is unfortunately most difficult to trace the conditions
+under which Europe was first introduced
+to Asia, or the gradual ripening of early acquaintance
+into inter-commercial relationship. Although
+the eastern world was possessed of a sound literature
+in the time of Moses, and although long before
+the days of Solomon there was "no end" to the
+"making of books," it is remarkable how little has
+been left of these archaic records, and it is only by
+inference gathered from tags and ends of oriental
+script that we gradually realize how unimportant to
+old-world thinkers was the daily course of their
+own national history. India is full of ancient
+literature, but there is no ancient history. To the
+Brahmans there was no need for it. To them the
+world and all that it contains was "illusion," and it
+was worse than idle&mdash;it was impious&mdash;to perpetuate
+the record of its varied phases as they appeared to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span>
+pass in unreal pageantry before their eyes. We
+know that from under the veil of extravagant epic
+a certain amount of historical truth has been
+dragged into daylight. The "Mahabharata" and
+the "Ramayana" contain in allegorical outline the
+story of early conflicts which ended in the foundation
+of mighty Rajput houses, or which established
+the distribution of various races of the Indian
+peninsula. Without an intimate knowledge of the
+language in which these great epics are written it
+is impossible to estimate fully the nature of the
+allegory which overlies an interesting historical
+record, but it has always appeared to be sufficiently
+vague to warrant some uncertainty as to the
+accuracy of the deductions which have hitherto
+been evolved therefrom. Nevertheless it is from
+these early poems of the East that we derive all
+that there is to be known about ancient India, and
+when we turn from the East to the West strangely
+enough we find much the same early literary conditions
+confronting us.</p>
+
+<p>About 950 years before Christ, two of the most
+perfect epic poems were written that ever delighted
+the world, the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i> of Homer. The
+first begins with Achilles and ends with the funeral
+of Hector. The second recounts the voyages and
+adventures of Ulysses after the destruction of Troy.
+With our modern intimate knowledge of the coasts
+of the Mediterranean it is not difficult to detect,
+amidst the fabulous accounts of heroic adventures,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span>
+many references to geographical facts which must
+have been known generally to the Greeks of the
+Homeric period, dealing chiefly with the coasts and
+islands of the Western sea. There is but little reference
+to the East, although many centuries before
+Homer's day there was a sea-going trade between
+India and the West which brought ivory, apes, and
+peacocks to the ports of Syria. The obvious inference
+to be derived from the general absence of
+reference to the mysteries of Eastern geography is
+that there was no through traffic. Ships from the
+East traded only along the coast-lines that they knew,
+and ventured no farther than the point where an interchange
+of commodities could be established with
+the slow crawling craft of the West, the navigation
+of the period being confined to hugging the
+coast-line and making for the nearest shelter when
+times were bad. The interchange of commodities
+between the rough sailor people of those days did
+not tend to an interchange of geographical information.
+Probably the language difficulty stood in the
+way. If there was no end to the making of books
+it was not the illiterate and rough sailor men who
+made them. Nor do sailors, as a rule, make them
+now. It is left to the intelligent traveller uninterested
+in trade, and the journalistic seeker after
+sensation, to make modern geographical records;
+and there were no such travellers in the days of
+Homer, even if the art of writing had been a
+general accomplishment. In days much later than
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span>
+Homer we can detect sailors' yarns embodied in
+what purport to be authentic geographical records,
+but none so early. We have a reference to certain
+Skythic nomads who lived on mare's milk, and who
+had wandered from the Asiatic highlands into the
+regions north of the Euxine, which is in itself deeply
+interesting as it indicates that as early as the ninth
+century <span class="s08">B.C.</span> Milesian Greek colonies had started
+settlements on the shores of the Black Sea. As
+the centuries rolled on these settlements expanded
+into powerful colonies, and with enterprising people
+such as the early Greeks there can be little doubt
+that there was an intermittent interchange of commerce
+with the tribes beyond the Euxine, and that
+gradually a considerable, if inaccurate, knowledge
+of Asia, even beyond the Taurus, was acquired.
+The world, for them, was still a flat circular disc
+with a broad tidal ocean flowing around its edge,
+encompassing the habitable portions about the
+centre.</p>
+
+<p>Africa extended southward to the land of Ethiop
+and no farther, but Asia was a recognised geographical
+entity, less vague and nebulous even than
+the western isles from whence the Ph&oelig;nicians
+brought their tin. There were certain fables
+current among the Greeks touching the one-eyed
+Arimaspians, the gold-guarding griffins, and the
+Hyperboreans, which in the middle of the sixth
+century were still credited, and almost indicate
+an indefinite geographical conception of northern
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span>
+Asiatic regions. But it is probable that much more
+was known of Asiatic geography in these early
+years than can be gathered from the poems and
+fables of Greek writers before the days of Herodotus
+and of professional geography. There were no
+means of recording knowledge ready to the hand
+of the colonist and commercial traveller then; even
+the few literary men who later travelled for the
+sake of gaining knowledge were dependent largely
+on information obtained scantily and with difficulty
+from others, and the expression of their knowledge
+is crude and imperfect. But what should we
+expect even in present times if we proceeded to
+compile a geographical treatise from the works of
+Milton and Shakespere? What indeed would be
+the result of a careful analysis of parliamentary
+utterances on geographical subjects within, say, the
+last half century? Would they present to future
+generations anything approaching to an accurate
+epitome of the knowledge really possessed (though
+possibly not expressed) by those who have within
+that period almost exhausted the world's store of
+geographical record? The analogy is a perfectly
+fair one. Geographers and explorers are not
+always writers even in these days, and as we work
+backwards into the archives of history nothing is
+more astonishing than the indications which may
+be found of vast stores of accurate information of
+the earth's physiography lost to the world for want
+of expression.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was between the sixth century <span class="s08">B.C.</span> and the
+days of Herodotus that Miletus was destroyed,
+and captive Greeks were transported by Darius
+Hystaspes from the Lybian Barké to Baktria,
+where we find traces of them again under their
+original Greek name in the northern regions of
+Afghanistan. It was long ere the days of Darius
+that the hosts of Assyria beat down the walls of
+Samaria and scattered the remnants of Israel
+through the highlands of Western Asia. Where
+did they drift to, these ten despairing tribes?
+Possibly we may find something to remind us of
+them also in the northern Afghan hills.</p>
+
+<p>It was probably about the same era that some
+pre-Hellenic race, led (so it is written) by the
+mythical hero Dionysos, trod the weary route from
+the Euxine to the Caspian, and from the southern
+shores of the Caspian to the borderland of modern
+Indian frontier, where their descendants welcomed
+Alexander on his arrival as men of his own faith
+and kin, and were recognised as such by the great
+conqueror. Now all this points to an acquaintance
+with the geographical links between East and West
+which appears nowhere in any written record. Nowhere
+can we find any clear statement of the actual
+routes by which these pilgrims were supposed to
+have made their long and toilsome journeys. Just
+the bare facts are recorded, and we are left to guess
+the means by which they were accomplished. But
+it is clear that the old-world overland connection
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span>
+between India and the Black Sea is a very old
+connection indeed, and further, it is clear that what
+the Greeks may not have known the Persians
+certainly did know. When Herodotus first set
+solidly to work on a geographical treatise which
+was to embrace the existing knowledge of the
+whole world, he undoubtedly derived a great deal
+of that knowledge from official Persian sources;
+and it may be added that the early Persian department
+for geographical intelligence has been proved
+by this last century's scientific investigations to
+have collected information of which the accuracy is
+certainly astonishing. It is only quite recently,
+during the process of surveys carried on by the
+Government of India through the highlands and
+coast regions of Baluchistan and Eastern Persia,
+that anything like a modern gazetteer of the tribes
+occupying those districts has been rendered possible.
+Twenty-five years ago our military information concerning
+ethnographic distributions in districts lying
+immediately beyond the north-western frontier was
+no better than that which is contained in the lists
+of the Persian satrapies, given to the world by
+Herodotus nearly 500 years before the Christian
+era. Twenty-five years ago we did not know of
+the existence of some of the tribes and peoples
+mentioned by him, and we were unable to identify
+others. Now, however, we are at last aware that
+through twenty-four centuries most of them have
+clung to their old habitat in a part of the Eastern
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span>
+world where material wealth and climatic attractions
+have never been sufficient to lead to annihilation by
+conquest. Oppressed and harried by successive
+Persian dynasties, overrun by the floatsam and
+jetsam of hosts of migratory Asiatic peoples from
+the North, those tribes have mostly survived to
+bear a much more valuable testimony to the knowledge
+of the East entertained by the West in the
+days of Herodotus than any which can be gathered
+from written documents.</p>
+
+<p>The Milesian colonies founded on the southern
+and western shores of the Euxine in the sixth
+and seventh centuries <span class="s08">B.C.</span>, whilst retaining their
+trade connection with the parent city of Miletus
+(where sprang that carpet-making industry for
+which this corner of Asia has been famous ever
+since), found no open road to the further eastern
+trade through the mountain regions that lie south
+of the Black Sea. Half a century after Herodotus
+we find Xenophon struggling in almost helpless
+entanglement amongst these wild mountains comparatively
+close to the Greek colonies; and it
+was there that he encountered the fiercest opposition
+from the native tribes-people that he met
+with during his famous retreat from Persia. It
+is always so. Our most active opponents on the
+Indian frontier are the mountaineers of the immediate
+borderland&mdash;the people who <i>know</i> us best,
+and therefore fear us most. It was chiefly through
+Miletus and the Cilician gates that Greek trade
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>
+with Persia and Babylon was maintained. There
+were no Greek colonies on the rugged eastern
+coasts of the Black Sea&mdash;sufficient indication that
+no open trade route existed direct to the Caspian
+by any line analogous to that of the modern railway
+that connects Batum with Baku. On the north of
+the Euxine, however, there were great and flourishing
+colonies (of which Olbia at the mouth of the
+Borysthenes, or Dnieper, was the most famous)
+which undoubtedly traded with the Skythic peoples
+north and west of the Caspian. From these sources
+came the legends of Hyperboreans and Griffins and
+other similar tales, all flavoured with the glamour
+of northern mystery, but none of them pointing to
+an eastern origin. Recent investigations into the
+ethnography of certain tribes in Afghanistan, however,
+seem to prove conclusively that even if there
+was no recognised trade between Greece and India
+before Miletus was destroyed by Darius Hystaspes,
+and Greek settlers were transported by the Persian
+conqueror to the borders of the modern Badakshan,
+yet there must have been Greek pioneers in colonial
+enterprise who had made their way to the Far East
+and stayed there. For instance, we have that
+strange record of settlements under Dionysos
+amongst the spurs and foothills of the Hindu Kush,
+which were clearly of Greek origin, although Arrian
+in his history of Alexander's progress through Asia
+is unable to explain the meaning of them.</p>
+
+<p>There is more to be said about these settlements
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span>
+later. The first actual record of settlement of Greeks
+in Baktria is that of Herodotus, to which we have
+referred as being affected by Darius Hystaspes in
+the sixth century before Christ, and the descendants
+of these settlers are undoubtedly the people referred
+to by Arrian as "Kyreneans", who could be no other
+than the Greek captives from the Lybian Barke.
+Their existence two centuries later than Herodotus
+is attested by Arrian, and they were apparently in
+possession of the Kaoshan pass over the Hindu
+Kush at the time of Alexander's expedition.
+Another body of Greeks is recorded by Arrian to
+have been settled in the Baktrian country by
+Xerxes after his flight from Greece. These were
+the Brankhidai of Milesia, whose posterity are said
+to have been exterminated by Alexander in punishment
+for the crimes of their grandfather Didymus.
+The name Barang, or Farang, is frequently repeated
+in the mountain districts of Northern Afghanistan
+and Badakshan, and careful inquiry would no doubt
+reveal the fact that surviving Greek affinities are
+still far more widely spread through that part of
+Asia than is generally known. All these settlements
+were antecedent to Alexander, but beyond
+these recorded instances of Greek occupation there
+can be little doubt that (as pointed out by Bellew
+in his <i>Ethnography of Afghanistan</i> and supported
+by later observations) the Greek element had been
+diffused through the wide extent of the Persian
+sovereignty for centuries before the birth of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span>
+Alexander the Great. It is probable that each of
+the four great divisions of the ancient Greeks had
+contributed for a thousand years before to the
+establishment of colonies in Asia Minor, and from
+these colonies bands of emigrants had penetrated
+to the far east of the Persian dominions, either as
+free men or captives. Amongst the clans and tribal
+sections of Afghans and Pathans are to be found to
+this day names that are clearly indicative of this
+pre-historic Greek connection.</p>
+
+<p>Persia at her greatest maintained a considerable
+overland trade with India, and Indian tribute formed
+a large part of her revenues. All Afghanistan was
+Persian; all Baluchistan, and the Indian frontier to
+the Indus. The underlying Persian element is
+strong in all these regions still, the dominant language
+of the country, the speech of the people,
+whether Baluch or Pathan, is of Persian stock, whilst
+the polite tongue of Court officials, if not the Persian
+of Tehran or Shiraz, is at least an imitation of
+it. It is hardly strange that the Greek language
+should have absolutely disappeared. We have the
+statement of Seneca (referred to by Bellew in his
+<i>Inquiry</i>) that the Greek language was spoken in the
+Indus valley as late as the middle of the first century
+after Christ; "if indeed it did not continue to be
+the colloquial in some parts of the valley to a
+considerably later period." As this is nearly two
+centuries after the overthrow of Greek dominion in
+Afghanistan, it at least indicates that the Greek
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span>
+settlements established four centuries earlier must
+have continued to exist, and to be reinforced by
+Greek women (for children speak their mother's
+tongue) to a comparatively late period; and that
+the triumph of the Jat over the Greek did not by
+any means efface the influence of the Greek in
+India for centuries after it occurred. It is probable
+that when the importation of Greek women (who
+were often employed in the households of Indian
+chiefs and nobles at a time when Greek ladies
+married Indian Princes) ceased, then the Greek
+language ceased to exist also. The retinue and
+followers of Alexander's expedition took the women
+of the country to wife, and it is not, as is so often
+supposed, to the results of that expedition so much
+as to the long existence of Greek colonies and
+settlements that we must attribute the undoubted
+influence of Greek art on the early art of India.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we have a wide field before us for inquiry
+into the early history of ethnographical movement
+in Asia, as it affected the relation between Europe
+and Afghanistan. Afghanistan (which is a modern
+political development) has ever held the landward
+gates of India. We cannot understand India without
+a study of that wide hinterland (Afghan, Persian,
+and Baluch) through which the great restless human
+tide has ever been on the move: now a weeping
+nation of captives led by tear-sodden routes to a
+land of exile; now a band of merchants reaching
+forward to the land of golden promise; or perchance
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span>
+an army of pilgrims marching with their
+feet treading deep into narrow footways to the
+shrines of forgotten saints; or perchance an armed
+host seeking an uncertain fate; a ceaseless, waveless
+tide, as persistent, as enterprising, and infinitely
+more complicated in its developments than the
+process of modern emigration, albeit modern emigration
+may spread more widely.</p>
+
+<p>Living as we do in fixed habitations and hedged
+in not merely by narrow seas but by the conventionalities
+of civilized existence, we fail to realize
+the conditions of nomadic life which were so familiar
+to our Asiatic ancestors. Something of its nature
+may be gathered to-day from the Kalmuk and
+Kirghiz nomads of Central Asia. A day's march
+is not a day's march to them&mdash;it is a day's normal
+occupation. The yearly shift in search of fresh pasture
+is not a flitting on a holiday tour; it is as much
+a part of the year's life as the change of raiment
+between summer to winter. Everything moves;
+the home is not left behind; every man, woman, and
+child of the family has a recognised share in the
+general shift. Perhaps that of the Kirghiz man is
+the easiest. He smokes a lazy pipe in the bright
+sunshine and watches his boys strip off the felt
+covering of his wicker-built "kibitka," whilst his
+wife with floating bands of her white headdress
+fluttering in the breeze, and her quilted coat turned
+up to give more freedom to her booted legs, gets
+together the household traps in compact bundles for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>
+the great hairy camel to carry. Her efforts are
+not inartistic; long experience has taught her
+exactly where every household god can be stowed
+to the best advantage. Meanwhile the happy,
+good-looking Kirghiz girls are racing over the
+grass country after sheep, and ere long the little
+party is making its slow but sure way over the
+breezy steppes to the passes of the blue mountains,
+which look down from afar on to the warmer plains.
+And who has the best of it? The free-roving,
+untrammelled child of the plain, quite godless, and
+taking no thought for the morrow, or the carefully
+cultured and tight-fitted product of civilization to
+whom the motor and the railway represent the
+only thinkable method of progression? That,
+however, is not the point. What we wish to
+emphasize is the apparent inability on the part
+of many writers on the subject of ancient history
+and geography to realize the essential difference
+between then and now as regards human migratory
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>There is often an apparent misconception that
+there is more movement in these days of railways
+and steamers and motors than existed ten centuries
+before Christ. The difference lies not in the comparative
+amount of movement but in the method of
+it. In one sense only is there more movement&mdash;there
+are more people to travel; but in a broader
+sense there is much less movement. Whole nations
+are no longer shifted at the will of the conqueror
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span>
+across a continent, trade seekers no longer devote
+their lives to the personal conduct of caravans;
+armies swelled to prodigious size by a tagrag following
+no longer (except in China) move slowly over
+the face of the land, devouring, like a swarm of
+locusts, all that comes in their way. Colonial
+emigration perhaps alone works on a larger scale
+now than in those early times; but taking it "bye
+and large," the circulation of the human race, unrestricted
+by political boundaries, was certainly more
+constant in the unsettled days of nomadic existence
+than in these later days of overgrown cities and
+electric traffic. If little or nothing is recorded of
+many of the most important migrations which have
+changed the ethnographic conditions of Asia, whilst
+at the same time we have volumes of ancient philosophy
+and mythology, it is because such changes
+were regarded as normal, and the current of contemporary
+history as an ephemeral phenomenon
+not worth the labour of close inquiry or a manuscript
+record.</p>
+
+<p>Such a gazetteer as that presented to us by
+Herodotus would not have been possible had there
+not been free and frequent access to the countries
+and the people with whom it deals. It is impossible
+to conceive that so much accuracy of detail could
+have been acquired without the assistance of personal
+inquiry on the spot. If this is so, then the
+Persians at any rate knew their way well about
+Asia as far east as Tibet and India, and the Greeks
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span>
+undoubtedly derived their knowledge from Persia.
+When Alexander of Macedon first planned his
+expedition to Central Asia he had probably more
+certain knowledge of the way thither than Lord
+Napier of Magdala possessed when he set out
+to find the capital of Theodore's kingdom in
+Abyssinia, and it is most interesting to note the
+information which was possessed by the Greek
+authorities a century and a half before Alexander's
+time.</p>
+
+<p>One notable occurrence pointing to a fairly
+comprehensive knowledge of geography of the
+Indian border by the Persians, was the voyage of
+the Greek Scylax of Caryanda down the Indus,
+and from its mouth to the Arabian Gulf, which
+was regarded by Herodotus as establishing the
+fact of a continuous sea. This voyage, or mission,
+which was undertaken by order of Darius who
+wished to know where the Indus had its outlet and
+"sent some ships" on a voyage of discovery, is
+most instructive. It is true that the accounts of it
+are most meagre, but such details as are given
+establish beyond a doubt that the expedition was
+practical and real. The Persian dominions then
+extended to the Indus, but there is no evidence that
+they ever extended beyond that river into the peninsula
+of India. The Indus of the Persian age was
+not the Indus of to-day, and its outlet to the sea
+presumably did not differ materially from that of
+the subsequent days of Alexander and Nearkos.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span>
+Thanks to the careful investigations of the Bombay
+Survey Department, and the close attention which
+has been given to ancient landmarks by General
+Haig during the progress of his surveys, we know
+pretty certainly where the course of the Lower
+Indus must have been, and where both Scylax and
+Nearkos emerged into the Arabian Sea. The
+Indus delta of to-day covers an area of 10,000
+square miles with 125 miles of coast-line, and it
+presents to us a huge alluvial tract which is everywhere
+furrowed by ancient river channels. Some
+of these are continuous through the delta, and
+can be traced far above it; others are traceable for
+only short distances. Without entering into details
+of the rate of progression in the formation of Delta
+(which can be gathered not only from the abandoned
+sites of towns once known as coast ports, but from
+actual observation from year to year), it may be
+safely assumed that the Indus of Alexander and
+Scylax emptied itself into the Ran of Kach, far to
+the south of its present debouchment. The volume
+of its waters was then augmented by at least one
+important river (the Saraswati), which, flowing from
+the Himalayas through what is now known as the
+Rajputana desert, was the source of widespread
+wealth and fertility to thousands of square miles
+where now there is nothing to be met with but
+sandy waste. As far as the Indus the Persian
+Empire is known to have extended, but no farther;
+and it was important to the military advisers of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span>
+Darius that something should be known of the
+character of this boundary river.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever the ships sent by Darius may have
+gone it is quite clear that they did not sail <i>up</i> the
+Indus, or there would have been no objective for
+an expedition which was organised to determine
+where the Indus met the sea by the process of sailing
+down that river. Moreover, the voyage up the
+Indus would have been tedious and slow, and could
+only have been undertaken in the cold weather with
+the assistance of native pilots acquainted with the
+ever-shifting bed of the river, which, so far as its
+liability to change of channel is concerned, must
+have been much the same in the days of Darius as
+it is at present. The possibility, therefore, is that
+Scylax made his way to the Upper Indus overland,
+for we are told that the expedition <i>started</i> from the
+city of Carpatyra in the Pactyan country. This in
+itself is exceedingly instructive, indicating that the
+Pactyans, or Pathans, or Pukhtu speaking peoples
+have occupied the districts of the Upper Indus for
+four-and-twenty centuries at least; and coincident
+with them we learn that the Aprytæ or Afridi
+shared the honour of being resident landowners.
+Nor need we suppose that the beginning of this
+history was the beginning of their existence. The
+Afridi may have rejoiced in his native hills ten or
+twenty centuries before he was written about by
+Herodotus. We need not stay to identify the site
+of Carpatyra. The Upper Indus valley is full of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span>
+ancient sites. A century and a half later Taxilla
+was the recognized capital of the Upper Punjab,
+and Carpatyra meanwhile may have disappeared.
+Anyhow we hear of Carpatyra no more, nor has the
+ingenuity of modern research thrown any certain
+light on its position. It is, however, probably near
+Attok that we must look for it. Scylax made his
+way down the Indus in native craft that from long
+before his day to the present have retained their
+primitive form, a form which was not unlike that of
+the coast crawling "ships" of Darius. He proved
+the existence of an open water-way from the Upper
+Punjab to the Persian Gulf, and incidentally his
+expedition shows us that the chief lines of communication
+through the width of the Persian Empire
+were well known, and that the road from Susa to
+the Upper Indus was open. The outlying satrapies
+of the Persian Empire could never have been
+added one by one to that mighty power without
+definite knowledge of the way to reach them. It
+was not merely a spasmodic expedition, such as
+that of Scylax, which pointed the way to the conquests
+of the Far East; it was the gathered information
+of years of experience, and it was on
+the basis of this experience (unwritten and unrecorded
+so far as we know) that Alexander
+founded his plans of campaign.</p>
+
+<p>The detailed list of peoples included in the
+satrapies of the Persian Empire, whilst it is more
+ethnographical than geographical in its character,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span>
+is sufficient proof in itself of the existence of constant
+movement between Persia and the borderland
+of Afghanistan, which assuredly included commercial
+traffic. This enumeration has been compared with
+a catalogue of tribal contingents which swelled the
+great army of Xerxes, an independent statement,
+and therefore a valuable test to the general accuracy
+of Herodotus; and it is still further confirmed by
+the list of nations subject to the Persian king
+found in the inscriptions of Darius at Behistan
+and Persepolis. We are not immediately concerned
+with the satrapies included in Western Asia and
+Egypt, but when Herodotus makes a sudden
+departure from his rule of geographical sequence
+and introduces a satrapy on the remotest east of
+the Persian Empire, we immediately recognize that
+he touches the Indian frontier.</p>
+
+<p>The second satrapy most probably corresponds
+with that part of Central Afghanistan south of the
+Kabul River, which lies west of the Suliman Hills
+and north of the Kwaja Amran or Khojak. Every
+name mentioned by Herodotus certainly has its
+counterpart in one or other of the tribes to be
+found there to this day, excepting the Lydoi
+(whose history as Ludi is fairly well known) and
+the Lasonoi, who have emigrated, the former into
+India and the latter to Baluchistan.</p>
+
+<p>The seventh satrapy, again, comprised the
+Sattagydai, the Gandarioi, the Dadikai, and the
+Aparytai ("joined together"), an association of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span>
+names too remarkable to be mistaken. The Sattag
+or Khattak, the Gandhari, the Dadi, and the Afridi
+are all trans-Indus people, and without insisting
+too strongly on the exact habitat of each, originally
+there can be little doubt that the seventh satrapy
+included a great part of the Indus valley.</p>
+
+<p>The eleventh satrapy is also probably a district
+of the Indian trans-frontier, although Bunbury
+associates the name Kaspioi with the Caspian Sea.
+It is far more likely that the Kaspioi of Herodotus
+are to be recognized as the people of the ancient
+Kaspira or Kasmira, and the Daritæ as the Daraddesa
+(Dards) of the contiguous mountains. All
+Kashmir, even to the borders of Tibet (whence
+came the story of the gold-digging ants), was well
+enough known to the Persians and through them
+to Herodotus.</p>
+
+<p>The twelfth satrapy comprised Balkh and Badakshan&mdash;what
+is now known as Afghan Turkistan.
+It was here that, generations before Alexander's
+campaign, those Greek settlements were founded
+by Darius and Xerxes which have left to this day
+living traces of their existence in the places originally
+allotted to them. In Afghan Turkistan also
+was founded the centre of Greek dominion in this
+part of Asia after the conquest of Persia, and it is
+impossible to avoid the conviction that there was a
+connection between these two events. The Greeks
+took the country from the Bakhi; but there are no
+people of this name left in these provinces now.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span>
+They may (as Bellew suggests) be recognized again
+in the Bakhtyari of Southern Persia, but it seems
+unlikely; and it is far more probable that they
+were obliterated by Alexander as his most active
+opponents after he passed Aria (Herat) and Drangia
+(Seistan).</p>
+
+<p>The sixteenth satrapy was north of the Oxus,
+and included Sogdia and Aria (Herat). South of
+Aria was the fourteenth satrapy, represented by
+Seistan and Western Makran, with "the islands
+of the sea in which the King settles transported
+convicts"; and east of this again was the seventeenth
+satrapy covering Southern Baluchistan and
+Eastern Makran. It is only during the last twenty-five
+years that an accurate geographical knowledge
+of these uninviting regions has been attained. The
+gradual extension of the red line of the Indian
+border, with the necessity for preserving peace
+and security, has gradually enveloped Makran and
+Persian Baluchistan, the Gadrosia and Karmania
+of the Greeks, and has brought to light many
+strange secrets which have been dormant (for they
+were no secrets to the traveller of the Middle
+Ages) for a few centuries prior to the arrival of the
+British flag in Western India. It is an inhospitable
+country which is thus included. "Mostly desert," as
+one ancient writer says; marvellously furrowed and
+partitioned by bands of sun-scorched rocky hills, all
+narrow and sharp where they follow each other in
+parallel waves facing the Arabian Sea, or massed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span>
+into enormous square-faced blocks of impassable
+mountain barrier whenever the uniform regularity
+of structure is lost. And yet it is a country full
+not only of interest historical and ethnographical,
+such as might be expected of the environment of
+a series of narrow passages leading to the western
+gates of India, but of incident also. There are
+amongst these strange knife-backed volcanic ridges
+and scarped clay hills valleys of great beauty, where
+the date-palms mass their feathery heads into a
+forest of green, and below them the fertile soil is
+moist and lush with cultured vegetation. But we
+have described elsewhere this strangely mixed land,
+and we have now only to deal with the aspect of
+it as known to the Greeks before the days of
+Alexander. That knowledge was ethnographical
+in its quality and exceedingly slight in quantity.
+Herodotus mentions the Sagartoi, Zarangai, Thamanai,
+Uxoi, and Mykoi. These are Seistan
+tribes. The Sagartoi were nomads of Seistan,
+mentioned both amongst tribes paying tribute
+and those who were exempt. The Zarangai
+were the inhabitants of Drangia (Seistan), where
+their ancient capital fills one of the most remarkable
+of all historic sites. The Zarangai are said
+to be recognizable in the Afghan Durani. No
+Afghan Durani would admit this. He claims a
+very different origin (as will be explained), and in
+the absence of authoritative history it is never
+wise to set aside the traditions of a people about
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span>
+themselves, especially of a people so advanced as
+the Duranis. More probable is it that the ancient
+geographical appellation Zarangai covers the historic
+Kaiani of Seistan supposed to be the same as the
+Kakaya of Sanscrit.</p>
+
+<p>The Uxoi may be the modern Hots of Makran&mdash;a
+people who are traditionally reckoned amongst
+the most ancient of the mixed population which has
+drifted into the Makran ethnographic cul-de-sac,
+and who were certainly there in Alexander's time.
+In eastern Makran, Herodotus mentions only the
+Parikanoi and the Asiatic Ethiopian. Parikan is
+the Persian plural form of the Sanscrit Parva-ka,
+which means "mountaineer." This bears exactly
+the same meaning as the word Kohistani, or Barohi,
+and is not a tribal appellation at all, although
+the latter may possibly have developed into the
+Brahui, the well-known name of a very important
+Dravidian people of Southern Baluchistan (highlanders
+all of them) who are akin to the Dravidian
+races of Southern India. The Asiatic Ethiopian
+presents a more difficult problem. During the
+winter of 1905 careful inquiries were made in
+Makran for any evidence to support the suggestion
+that a tribe of Kushite origin still existed in
+that country. It is of interest in connection with
+the question whether the earliest immigrants into
+Mesopotamia (these people who, according to
+Accadian tradition, brought with them from the
+South the science of civilization) were a Semitic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span>
+race or Kushites. It is impossible to ignore the
+existence of Kushite races in the east as well as
+the south. We have not only the authority of the
+earliest Greek writings, but Biblical records also
+are in support of the fact, and modern interest only
+centres in the question what has become of them.
+Bellew suggests that it was after the various Kush
+or Kach, or Kaj tribes that certain districts in
+Baluchistan are called Kach Gandava or Kach
+(Kaj) Makran, and that the chief of these tribes
+were the Gadara, after whom the country was
+called Gadrosia. This seems mere conjecture. At
+any rate the term Kach, sometimes Kachchi, sometimes
+Katz, is invariably applied to a flat open
+space, even if it is only the flat terrace above a
+river intervening between the river and a hill, and is
+purely geographical in its significance. But it was
+a matter of interest to discover whether the Gadurs
+of Las Bela could be the Gadrosii, or whether they
+exhibited any Ethiopian traits. The Gadurs, however,
+proved to be a section of the Rajput clan of
+Lumris, a proud race holding themselves aloof
+from other clans and never intermarrying with
+them. There could be no mistake about the
+Rajput origin of the red-skinned Gadur. He was
+a Kshatrya of the lunar race, but he might very
+possibly represent the ancient Gadrosii, even
+though he is no descendant of Kush. The other
+Rajput tribes with whom the Gadurs coalesce have
+apparently held their own in Las from a period
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span>
+quite remote, and must have been there when
+Alexander passed that way.</p>
+
+<p>Asiatic negroes abound in Makran: some of them
+fresh importations from Africa, others bred in the
+slave villages of the Arabian Sea coast, as they
+have been for centuries. They are a fine, brawny,
+well-developed race of people, and some of the
+best of them are to be found as stokers in the
+P. &amp; O. service; but they do not represent
+the Asiatic Ethiopian of Herodotus, who could
+hardly compile a gazetteer for the Greeks which
+should include all the ethnographical information
+known to the Persians, any more than our Intelligence
+Department could compile a complete
+gazetteer of the whole Russian Empire. To the
+maritime Greek nation the overwhelming preponderance
+of the huge Empire which overshadowed
+them must have created the same
+feeling of anxious suspicion that the unwieldy
+size of Russia presents to us, and it is not very
+likely that military intelligence of a really practical
+nature was offered gratis to the Greeks by the
+Persian geographers and military leaders. It is
+not surprising, therefore, that Herodotus did not
+know all that existed on the far Persian frontier.
+There are tribes and peoples about Southern
+Baluchistan who are as ancient as Herodotus but
+who are not mentioned. For instance, the ruling
+tribe in Makran until quite recently (when they
+were ousted by certain Sikh or Rajput interlopers
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>
+called Gichki) were the Boledi, and their country
+was once certainly called Boledistan. The Boledi
+valley is one of the loveliest in a country which is
+apt to enhance the loveliness of its narrow bands of
+luxuriance by their rarety and their narrowness. It
+is a sweet oasis in the midst of a barren rocky sea,
+and must always have been an object of envy to
+dwellers outside, even in days when a fuller water-supply,
+more widely spread, turned many a valley
+green which is now deep drifted with sand.
+Ptolemy mentions the Boledis, so that they can
+well boast the traditional respectability of age-long
+ancestry. The Boledis are said to have
+dispossessed the Persian Kaiani Maliks, who ruled
+Makran in the seventeenth century, when they
+headed what is known as the Baluch Confederation.
+This may be veritable history, but their pride of
+race and origin, on whatever record it is based,
+has come to an end now; it has been left to the
+present generation to see the last of them. A few
+years ago there was living but one representative
+of the ruling family of the Boledis, an old lady
+named Miriam, who was exceedingly cunning in
+the art of embroidery, and made the most bewitching
+caps. She was, I believe, dependent on the
+bounty of the Sultan of Muscat, who possesses a
+small tract of territory on the Makran coast.
+Herodotus apparently knew nothing about the
+Boledis, nor can it be doubted that the Greek
+knowledge of Makran was exceedingly scanty.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span>
+Thus, whilst Alexander marched to the Indian
+frontier, well supplied with information as to the
+ways thither when once he could make Persia his
+base, he was almost totally ignorant of the one
+route out of India which he eventually followed,
+and which so nearly enveloped his whole force
+in disaster.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p class="center">ASSYRIA AND AFGHANISTAN&mdash;ANCIENT LAND ROUTES&mdash;POSSIBLE
+SEA ROUTES</p>
+
+<p class="p2">With the building up of the vast Persian Empire,
+and the gradual fostering of eastern colonies, and
+the consequent introduction of the manners and
+methods of Western Asia into the highlands of
+Samarkand and Badakshan, other nationalities were
+concerned besides Persians and Greeks. Captive
+peoples from Syria had been deported to Assyria
+seven centuries before Christ. The House of
+Israel had been broken up (for Samaria had fallen
+in 721 <span class="s08">B.C.</span> before the victorious hosts of Sargon),
+and some of the Israelitish families had been
+deported eastwards and northwards to Northern
+Mesopotamia and Armenia. With the vitality of
+their indestructible race it is at least possible that
+a remnant survived as serfs in Assyria, preserving
+their own customs and institutions&mdash;secretly if not
+openly&mdash;intermarrying, trading, and money-making,
+yet still looking for the final restoration of Israel
+until the final break-up of the Assyrian Kingdom.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span>
+They were never absolutely absorbed, and never
+forgot to recount their historic pedigree to their
+children.</p>
+
+<p>With the final overthrow of the Assyrian Kingdom
+we lose sight of the tribes of Israel, who for
+more than a century had been mingled with the
+peoples of Northern Mesopotamia and Armenia.
+At least history holds no record of their further
+national existence. From time immemorial in
+Asia it had been customary for the captives taken
+in war to be transported bodily to another field for
+purposes of colonization and public labour. When
+the world was more scantily peopled such methods
+were natural and effectual; the increase of working
+power gained thereby being of the utmost importance
+in days when enormous irrigation canals were
+excavated, and bricks had to be fashioned for the
+construction of walled cities.</p>
+
+<p>The extent and magnificence of Assyrian building
+must have demanded an immense supply of
+such manual labour for the purpose of brickmaking.
+All the mighty works of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and
+Babylon were literally "the work of men's hands."
+In Mesopotamia was captured labour especially
+necessary. Stone was indeed available at Nineveh,
+but the barrenness of the soil which stretches flatly
+from the rugged hills of Kurdistan across Mesopotamia
+rendered the country unproductive unless
+enormous works of irrigation were undertaken
+for the distribution of water. Mesopotamia is a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span>
+country of immense possibilities, but the wealth of it
+is only for those who can distribute the waters of its
+great rivers over the productive soil. The yearly
+inundations of the Euphrates and Tigris are but
+sufficient for the needs of a narrow strip of land on
+either side the rivers, and the crops of the country
+undeveloped by canals can only support a scattered
+and scanty population. Towards the south there
+is another difficulty. The flat soil becomes water-logged
+and marshy and runs to waste for want of
+drainage. There is no stone for building purposes
+near Babylon. Approaching Babylon over the
+windy wastes of scrub-powdered plain there is
+nothing to be seen in the shape of a hill. Long,
+low, flat-topped mounds stretch athwart the horizon
+and resolve themselves on nearer approach into
+deeply scarred and weather-worn accretions of
+debris, or else they are banks of ancient waterways
+winding through the steppe, the last remnants
+of a stupendous system of irrigation. Then
+there breaks into view the solitary erection which
+stands in the open plain overlooking a wide vista
+of marsh and swamp to the west, which represents
+the ruins called Birs Nimrud, the Ziggurat or
+temple which, in successive tiers devoted to the
+powers of heaven, supported the shrine of Mercury.
+It is by far the most conspicuous object in the
+Babylonian landscape; huge, dilapidated, and unshapely,
+it mounts guard over a silent, stagnant,
+swampy plain.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now the remarkable feature in all these gigantic
+remains of antiquity is that they are built of brick.
+In the wide expanse of Mesopotamia plain around
+there is not a stone quarry to be found. Of
+Nineveh, we learn from the masterly records of
+Xenophon that as he was leading the surviving
+10,000 Greeks in their retreat from the disastrous
+field of Babylon back to the sunny Hellespont,
+some 200 years after the destruction of Nineveh,
+he came upon a vast desert city on the Tigris.
+The wall of it was 25 feet wide, 100 feet high,
+with a 20-foot basement of stone. This was
+all that was left of Kalah, one of the Assyrian
+capitals. A day's march farther north he came on
+another deserted city with similar walls. These
+were the dry bones of Nineveh, already forgotten
+and forsaken. Two centuries had in these early
+ages been sufficient to blot out the memory of
+Assyrian greatness so completely that Xenophon
+knew not of it, nor recognized the place where his
+foot was treading. Barely seventy years ago was
+the memory of them restored to man, and tokens
+of the richness and magnificence of the art which
+embellished them first given to the world. The
+mounds representing Nineveh and Babylon are
+some of them of enormous size. The mound of
+Mugheir (the ancient Ur) is the ancient platform
+of an Assyrian palace, which is faced with a wall
+10 feet thick of red kiln-dried bricks cemented with
+bitumen. Some of these platforms were raised
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span>
+from 50 to 60 feet above the plain and protected
+by massive stone masonry carried to a height exceeding
+that of the platform. But the Babylonian
+mound of Birs Nimrud, which rises from the plain
+level to the blue glazed masonry of the upper tier
+of the Ziggurat, is altogether a brick construction.
+The debris of the many-coloured bricks now forms
+a smooth slope for many feet from its base; but
+above, where the square blocks of brickwork still
+hold together in scattered disarray, you may still
+dig out a foot-square brick with the title and
+designations of Nebuchadnezzar imprinted on its
+face. These artificial mounds could only have
+been built at an enormous cost of labour. The
+great mound of Koyunjik (the palace of Nineveh)
+covers an area of 100 acres and reaches up 95 feet
+at its highest point. It has been calculated that
+to heap up such a pile would "require the
+united efforts of 10,000 men for twelve years, or
+20,000 men for six years" (Rawlinson, <i>Five
+Monarchies</i>), and then only the base of the palace
+is reached; and there are many such mounds,
+for "it seems to have been a point of honour with
+the Assyrian Kings that each should build a new
+palace for himself" (Ragozin, <i>Chaldaea</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Only conquering monarchs with whole nations
+as prisoners could have compassed such results.
+This, indeed, was one of the great objectives of
+war in these early times. It was the amassing of a
+great population for manual labour and the creation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span>
+of new centres of civilization and trade. Thus it
+was that the peoples of Western Asia&mdash;Egyptians,
+Israelites, Jews, Ph&oelig;nicians, Assyrians, Babylonians,
+and even Greeks&mdash;were transported over
+vast distances by land, and a movement given to
+the human race in that part of the world which has
+infinitely complicated the science of ethnology.
+The peopling of Canada by the French, of North
+America by the English, of Brazil by the Portuguese,
+of Argentina and Chile by Spaniards and Italians,
+is perhaps a more comprehensive process in the
+distribution of humanity and more permanent in its
+character. But ancient compulsory movement, if not
+as extensive as modern voluntary emigration, was
+at least wholesale, and it led to the distribution of
+people in districts which would not naturally have
+invited them. The first process in the consolidation
+of a district, or satrapy, was the settlement of
+inhabitants, sometimes in supercession of a displaced
+or annihilated people, sometimes as an
+ethnic variety to the possessors of the soil. Tiglath
+Pileser was the first Assyrian monarch to consolidate
+the Empire by its division into satrapies. Henceforward
+the outlying provinces of the dominions
+were convenient dumping places for such bodies
+of captives as were not required for public works
+at home.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing would be more natural than that Sargon
+should deport a portion of the Israelitish nation to
+colonize his eastern possessions towards India, just as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span>
+Darius Hystaspes later employed the same process
+to the same ends when he deported Greeks from the
+Lybian Barke to Baktria. There is nothing more
+astonishing in the fact that we should find a
+powerful people claiming descent from Israel in
+Northern Afghanistan than that we should find
+another people claiming a Greek origin in the
+Hindu Kush.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was the importance of peopling waste lands
+and raising up new nations out of well-planted
+colonies overlooked ten centuries before Christ
+any more than it is now. Then it was a matter
+of transporting them overland and on foot to the
+farthest eastern limits of these great Asiatic empires.
+Always east or south they tramped, for nothing
+was known of the geography of the North and
+West. Eastwards lay the land of the sun, whence
+came the Indians who fought in the armies of
+Darius, and where gold and ivory, apes and peacocks
+were found to fill Ph&oelig;nician ships. To-day
+it is different. The peopling of the world with
+whites is chiefly a Western process. Emigrants go
+out in ships, not as captives, but almost equally in
+compact bodies&mdash;the best of our working men to
+Canada, and many of the best of our much-wanted
+domestic servants to South Africa. It is a perpetual
+process in the world's economy, and perhaps the
+chief factor in the world's history; but in the old,
+old centuries before the Christian era it was
+necessarily a land process, and the geographical
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span>
+distribution of the land features determined the
+direction of the human tide. Some twenty years
+before the fall of Samaria and the deportation of
+the ten tribes of Israel, Tiglath Pileser had effected
+conquests in Asia which carried him so far east
+that he probably touched the Indus. Why he
+went no farther, or why Alexander subsequently
+left the greater part of the Indian peninsula unexplored,
+is fully explicable on natural grounds,
+even if other explanations were wanting.</p>
+
+<p>The Indus valley would offer to the military
+explorers from the West the first taste of the
+quality of the climate of the India of the plains
+which they would encounter. The Indus valley in
+the hot weather would possess little climatic attraction
+for the Western highlander. Alexander's
+troops mutinied when they got far beyond the
+Indus. Any other troops would mutiny under
+such conditions as governed their outfit and their
+march. It is more than possible that the great
+Assyrian conqueror before him encountered much
+the same difficulty. It is clear, however, historically,
+that the Assyrian knew and trod the way to Northern
+Afghanistan (or Baktria), and if we examine the
+map of Asia with any care we shall see that there
+is no formidable barrier to the passing of large
+bodies of people from Nineveh to Herat (Aria), or
+from Herat to the Indus valley, until we reach the
+very gates of India on the north-west frontier.
+Four centuries later than Tiglath Pileser the battle
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span>
+of Arbela was fought to a finish between Alexander
+and Darius (who possessed both Greek and Indian
+troops in his army) on a field which is not so very
+far to the east of Nineveh, and which is probably
+represented more or less accurately by the modern
+Persian town of Erbil. The modern town may not
+be on the exact site of the action, and we know
+that the ancient town was some sixty miles away
+from the battlefield. However that may be, we
+learn that in the general retreat of the Persians
+which followed the battle, Darius made his way to
+Ecbatana, the ancient capital of the Medes. There
+he remained for about a year, but hearing of
+Alexander's advance from Persepolis in the spring
+of 330 <span class="s08">B.C.</span> he fled to the north-east, with a view to
+taking refuge with his kinsman Bessos, who was
+then satrap of Baktria. This gives us the clue to
+the general line of communication between Northern
+Mesopotamia and Baktria (or Afghanistan) in ancient
+days; and the twenty-five centuries which have
+rolled by since that early period have done little to
+modify that line.</p>
+
+<p>Until the beginning of the nineteenth century
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> from the earliest times with which we can come
+into contact through any human record, this high-road
+(not the only one, but the chief one) must
+have been trodden by the feet of thousands of
+weary pilgrims, captives, emigrants, merchants, or
+fighting men&mdash;an intermittent tide of humanity
+exceeding in volume any host known to modern
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>
+days&mdash;bringing East into touch with the West to
+an extent which we can hardly appreciate. It may
+be said that the straightest road to Baktria did not
+lie through Ecbatana. It did not; but independently
+of the fact that Ecbatana was a city of great
+defensive capacity, and of reasons both political
+and military which would have impelled Darius to
+take that route, we shall find if we examine the
+latest Survey of India map of Western Persia that
+the geographical distribution of hill and valley
+make it the easiest, if not the shortest, route. The
+configuration of Western Persia, like that of
+Makran and Southern Baluchistan extending to
+our own north-west frontier, mainly consists of
+long lines of narrow ridges curving in lines parallel
+to the coast, rocky and mostly impassable to
+travellers crossing their difficult ridge and furrow
+formation transversely, but presenting curiously easy
+and open roads along the narrow lateral valleys.
+Ecbatana once stood where the modern Hamadan
+now stands. The road from Arbil (or Erbil) that
+carries most traffic follows this trough formation
+to Kermanshah and then bends north-eastward to
+Hamadan. From Hamadan to Rhagai and the
+Caspian gates, which was the route followed by
+Darius in his flight from Ecbatana, the road was
+clearly coincident with the present telegraph line
+to Tehran from Hamadan, which strikes into the
+great post route eastward to Mashad and Herat,
+one of the straightest and most uniformly level
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>
+roads in all Asia. It must always have been so.
+Remarkable physical changes have occurred in
+Asia during these twenty-five centuries, but
+nothing to alter the relative disposition of mountain
+and plain in this part of Persia, or to change
+the general character of its ancient highway. All
+this part of Persia was under the dominion of the
+Assyrian king when the tribes of Israel left Syria
+for Armenia. He had but recently traversed the
+road to India, and he knew the richness of Baktria
+(of Afghan Turkistan and Badakshan) and could
+estimate what a colony might become in these
+eastern fields.</p>
+
+<p>What more natural than that he should draft
+some of his captives eastward to the land of promise?
+There is not an important tribe of people
+in all that hinterland of India that has not been
+drafted in from somewhere. There is not a people
+left in India, for that matter, that can safely call
+themselves indigenous. From Persia and Media,
+from Aria and Skythia, from Greece and Arabia,
+from Syria and Mesopotamia they have come, and
+their coming can generally be traced historically,
+and their traditions of origin proved to be true.
+But there is one important people (of whom there
+is much more to be said) who call themselves
+Ben-i-Israel, who claim a descent from Kish, who
+have adopted a strange mixture of Mosaic law and
+Hindu ordinance in their moral code, who (some
+sections at least) keep a feast which strangely
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span>
+accords with the Passover, who hate the Yahudi
+(Jew) with a traditional hatred, and for whom no
+one has yet been able to suggest any other origin
+than the one they claim, and claim with determined
+force; and these people rule Afghanistan. It may
+be that they have justification for their traditions,
+even as others have; they may yet be proved to
+stand in the same relationship to the scattered
+remnants of Israel as some of the Kafir inhabitants
+of Northern Afghanistan can be shown to hold to
+the Greeks of pre-Alexandrian days. It is difficult
+to account for the name Afghan: it has been said
+that it is but the Armenian word Aghvan (Mountaineer).
+If this is so, it at once indicates a connection
+between the modern Afghan and the Syrian
+captives of Armenia.</p>
+
+<p>But whilst "men in nations" were thus traversing
+the highlands of Persia from Mesopotamia to
+Northern Afghanistan by highways so ancient that
+they may be regarded almost as geographical
+fixtures as everlasting as the hills, we do not find
+much evidence of traffic with the Central Asian
+States north of the Oxus.</p>
+
+<p>Early military excursions into the land of the
+Skyths were more for the purpose of dealing
+with the predatory habits of these warlike tribes,
+who afterwards peopled half of Europe as well
+as India, than of promoting either trade or geographical
+inquiry; and it was the route which led
+to Northern Afghanistan and Baktria through
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>
+Northern Persia which was most attractive from
+its general accessibility and promise of profit. It
+was this way that Northern Kashmir and the gold-fields
+of Tibet were touched. The Indian gold
+which formed so large a part of the Persian
+revenues in the time of Darius undoubtedly came
+from Northern India and Tibet. Old as are the
+workings of the Wynaad gold-fields in the west,
+and Kolar in the east, of the peninsula, it is unlikely
+that either of these sources was known to
+Persia.</p>
+
+<p>The more direct routes to India from Ecbatana,
+passing through Central Persia <i>via</i> Kashan, Yezd,
+and Kirman, terminated on the Helmund or in
+Makran, and there is no evidence that the mountain
+system which faces the Indus was ever crossed
+by invading Persian hosts. There was, indeed, a
+tradition in Alexander's time that an attempt had
+been made to traverse Makran and that it had
+failed. This, says Arrian, was one of the reasons
+why Alexander obstinately chose that route on his
+retirement from India. In spite, however, of the
+geographical difficulties which render it improbable
+that the hosts of Tiglath Pileser (who could have
+dealt with the Skythians of the north readily
+enough) ever broke across the north-western gateways
+of India's mountain borderland, there was
+undoubtedly a close connection between Assyria
+and India of which the evidence is still with us.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the golden age of the Second Empire
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span>
+of Assyria, after the subjugation of Babylon and
+the consolidation of the Empire by Tiglath Pileser,
+during the reigns of Sargon and Senacherib (who
+fought the first Assyrian naval fight), Esar Haddon
+(who destroyed Sidon and removed the inhabitants)
+and Assur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), to the final
+overthrow of Assyria by Babylon in 625 <span class="s08">B.C.</span>, when
+the star of Nebuchadnezzar arose on the southern
+horizon, Assyria held the supreme command of
+Eastern commerce, and Nineveh dictated the
+cannons of art to the world. No event more profoundly
+affected the commerce of Asia than the
+destruction of Sidon and the bodily transfer of its
+commercial inhabitants to Assyria. This was the
+age of Assyrian art, of literature, and of architecture;
+Assyrian culture realized its culminating
+point in the reign of Assur-bani-pal, when the
+library at Nineveh far surpassed any library that
+the world had ever seen. It was then that intercourse
+between Assyria and India became unbroken
+and intimate. Then public works of the largest
+dimensions were undertaken, and colonies formed
+for the purpose of developing the riches of the
+newly acquired lands in the East. Assyrian art
+found its way to India, and the affinity between
+Assyrian and Indian art is directly traceable still in
+spite of the impress subsequently effected by Greece
+and Rome.</p>
+
+<p>The carpets that are spread on the floors of
+every Anglo-Indian home and which, as Turkish,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span>
+Persian, Central Asian, or Indian, are to be found
+in every carpet shop in London, usually possess
+in the intricacies of their pattern some trace of
+ancient Assyrian art. As Sir George Birdwood
+has long ago pointed out, general similarities between
+Assyrian and Indian design in carpet patterns
+may possibly be due to a common Turanian origin,
+pre-Semitic and pre-Aryan; but there are details
+of architectural plan in the Southern Indian temples
+which, quite as much as the reproduction of the
+ancient Assyrian "knop and flower" in its infinite
+variety of form (all expressing more or less conventionally
+the cone and the lotus of the original
+idea), testify to an infinitely old art affinity, and
+at the same time witness to the wonderful vitality
+of intelligent design.</p>
+
+<p>The tree of life so largely interwoven into
+Eastern fabrics was the "Asherah" or "grove"
+sacred to Asshur the supreme god of the Assyrians,
+the Lord and Giver of life; and it appears to have
+been the development of the "Hom" or lotus,
+which, although it is a Kashmir valley plant, is
+always admirably rendered in Assyrian sculpture.
+Eventually the date palm took the place of the
+Hom in the Euphrates valley, just as the vine
+replaced it in Asia Minor and Greece. In Central
+Asian rugs we find the cone replaced by the pomegranate,
+and the tree of life becomes a pomegranate
+tree. There is too much intricacy in such similarity
+of ornamental detail between Assyrian and Indian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>
+art for the result to have been merely developments
+from a common pre-historic stock along separate
+lines. They are clearly imitations one of the other,
+and the similarity is but another link in the chain
+of evidence which proves that the highways of
+Asia connecting Assyria with India through Persia
+were well-trodden ways seven centuries at least
+before Christ, even if the sea route from the Red
+Sea and Euphrates had not then reached the Indus
+and western coast of India.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst all historical evidence points to the
+Tehran-Mashad route as the great highway which
+linked Mesopotamia with Baktria in past ages,
+there are certain curious little indications that
+the southern road through Persia, viz. Yezd and
+Kirman, was also well known, for it is a remarkable
+fact (which may be taken for what it is worth) that
+it is in the villages and bazaars of Sind that the
+potters may be found whose conservative souls
+delight in the reproduction of a class of ornamental
+decoration which most clearly indicates an Assyrian
+origin. The direct route to Sind from Mesopotamia
+is not by way of Herat. It is (as will be subsequently
+explained) <i>via</i> Kirman and Makran, but
+there is absolutely no historical evidence to support
+the suggestion that this was a route utilized by the
+Assyrians; and there is, on the other hand, Arrian's
+statement that roads through Makran were unknown
+or but legendary.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible, however, to ignore the fact that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>
+the sea route to North-western India was utilized
+in very ancient times; and although its connection
+with the northern landward gates of India may
+appear to be rather obscure, that connection is a
+matter which actually concerns us rather nearly in
+the present day. For it is by this ancient sea
+route that Persia and Baluchistan, Seistan and
+Afghanistan derive those supplies of small arms
+and ammunition which are abundant in those
+countries, but which never pass through India.
+Muskat is the chief depot for distribution, and the
+Persian ports of Bandar Abbas, Jask, or Pasni on
+the Makran coast are utilized as ports for the
+interior, leading by routes which are quite sufficiently
+good for caravan traffic towards the point
+where Afghan territory meets that of Persia and
+Baluchistan just south of Seistan. Once in Seistan
+they are well behind the passes which split our
+nearer line of defence in the trans-Indus hills.
+Even our command of the sea fails to suppress this
+traffic, which has led to such a general distribution
+of arms of precision (chiefly of German manufacture),
+that these countries may fairly claim to be
+able to arm their whole population. No recent
+researches in the Persian Gulf or on the Persian
+coast have added much to the sum of our knowledge
+respecting the early navigation of these
+Eastern seas, but there can be no question as to
+its immense antiquity. The Ph&oelig;nician settler in
+Syria and Mesopotamia has been traced back to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span>
+his primeval home in the Bahrein Islands, which,
+if Herodotus is correct in his estimated date for
+the founding of Tyre (2756 years <span class="s08">B.C.</span>), takes us
+back to very early times indeed for the coast
+navigation of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Seas.
+Hiram, King of Tyre, could look back through long
+ages to the days when his Ph&oelig;nician forefathers
+started their well-packed vessels (the Ph&oelig;nicians
+were famous for their skill in stowing cargo) to
+crawl along the coasts of Makran and Western
+India for the purpose of acquiring those stores of
+spices and gold which first made commerce profitable,
+or else to make their way westward, guided
+by the headlands and shore outlines of Southern
+Arabia, to gather the riches from African fields.
+Makran is full of strange relics of immense age for
+which none can account. Since Egyptology has
+become a recognized science, who will lay the
+foundations of such a science for Southern Arabia
+and Makran? When will some one arise with the
+wisdom and the leisure to write of the power of
+ancient Arabia, and to trace the impressions left on
+the whole world of commerce, of art, of architecture,
+and literature by the ancient races who hailed from
+the South?</p>
+
+<p>We cannot tell when the first sea-borne trade
+passed to and fro between India and the Erythrean
+Sea, a creeping, slow-moving trade making the best
+shift possible of wind and tide, and knowing no
+guide but the pole star of that period, and the rocky
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>
+headlands and islands of the Makran coast. Many
+of the ancient islands exist no more, but the coast
+is a peculiarly well-marked one for the mariner still.
+Probably the coast trade was earlier than the overland
+caravan traffic; but the latter was certainly
+co-existent with the Assyrian monarchy when Persia
+and Central Asia lay at the feet of the conqueror
+Tiglath Pileser.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p class="center">GREEK EXPLORATION&mdash;ALEXANDER&mdash;MODERN BALKH&mdash;THE
+BALKH PLAIN AND BAKTRIA</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Twenty-two centuries have rolled away since the
+first military expedition from Europe was organized
+and led into the wilds of an Asia which was probably
+as civilized then as it is now. Two thousand
+two hundred years, and yet along the wild stretches
+of the Indian frontier, where a mound here and
+there testifies to the former existence of some
+forgotten camp, or where in the slant rays of the
+evening sun faint indications may be traced on the
+level Punjab flats of the foundation of a city long
+since dead, the name of the great Macedonian is
+uttered with reverence and awe as might be the
+name of a god who can still influence the lives of
+men, yet qualified by an affix which indicates a
+curious survival of the mythological conception of
+gods as human beings. You may wander through
+some of the valleys cleft through the western
+frontier hills, where an intermittent rivulet of
+water spreads a network of streamlets on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>
+boulder-covered bed of the nullah, and where the
+stony hills rise in barren slopes on either side, and
+find, perchance half hidden by weather-worn debris
+and tufts of stringy verdure, the remains of what
+was once an artificial water-channel, stone built
+and admirably graded, and you may ask who was
+responsible for this construction. Not a man can
+say. There is no history, no tradition even, connected
+with it. It passes their understanding.
+Doubtless it was the work of "Sekunder" (Alexander)&mdash;that
+prehistoric, mythological, incomprehensible,
+and yet beneficent being who lives in the
+minds of the frontier people as the apotheosis of
+the Deputy Commissioner. Yet the impression
+left on India by the Greeks is marvellously small.
+It is chiefly to be found in the architecture and the
+sculpture of the Punjab. The Greek language
+disappeared from the Indus valley about the end of
+the tenth century <span class="s08">A.D.</span>, and there is hardly a Greek
+place-name now to be recognized anywhere on the
+Indus banks. But any unusual relic of the past, the
+story of which has passed beyond the memory of
+the present tribes-people (even though it may be
+obviously of mediæval Arabic origin), is invariably
+attributed to Alexander. It is, however, chiefly
+in the sculpture and decorations of Buddhist
+buildings (which never existed in Alexander's
+day) that clear evidence exists of Greek art conception.
+The classical features and folded raiment
+of the sculptured saints and buddhas, which are
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>
+found so freely in certain parts of the Punjab, are
+obviously derived from original Greek ideals which
+may very possibly have been transmitted through
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>With Alexander in India we have nothing to do
+in these pages. It is as the first explorer in the
+regions beyond India, the Afghan and Baluchistan
+hinterlands, that he at present concerns us; and it
+may fairly be stated that no later expedition combining
+scientific research with military conquest
+ever added more to the sum of the world's knowledge
+of those regions than that led by Alexander.
+For centuries after it no light arises on the geographical
+horizon of the Indian border. Indeed, not
+until political exigencies caused by Russia's steady
+advance towards India compelled a revision of
+political boundaries in Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan,
+and India, was any very accurate idea obtained
+of the geographical conditions of Northern and
+Western Afghanistan, or of Baluchistan, or of
+Southern Persia. The mapping of these countries
+has been recent, and the progress of it, as year
+by year the network of Indian triangulation and
+topography spread westward and northward, has
+reopened many sources of light which, if not
+altogether new, have lain hidden ever since the
+Macedonian conqueror passed over them. Long
+before the Greek army mustered on the banks of
+the Hellespont we have seen that the highways to
+the East were well trodden and well known. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>
+was not likely that Alexander's intelligence department
+was lacking in information. For many
+centuries subsequent to that expedition the rise
+of the Parthian power absolutely cut off these old-world
+trade communications and set the restless
+tides of human emigration into new channels. But
+in Alexander's time there was nothing in Persia
+to interrupt the interchange of courtesies between
+East and West.</p>
+
+<p>The great Aryan tide had already flowed from
+the Central Asian highlands into India, but Jutes
+and Skyths had yet to make that great drift westward
+which peopled half of Europe with nomadic
+tribes speaking kindred tongues&mdash;a drift which
+never rested in its westward advance till, as
+Anglians and Saxons, it had enveloped England
+and faced its final destiny in an American continent.
+Assyria had passed by with arts and
+commerce rather than with arms, and Persia had
+followed in Assyrian tracks. Both had established
+colonies half-way to India in the Afghan highlands,
+Persia with the aid of captive Greeks, and Assyria
+with people taken from the Syrian land. The list
+of Assyrian and Persian satrapies included all those
+lands which we now call the hinterland of India,
+and which in Alexander's time must have been
+absolutely Persianized. But beyond the historical
+evidence which can be collected to prove the
+early, the constant, traffic which ensued between
+Mesopotamia, or Asia Minor, and India, after the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span>
+consolidation of those two great empires, there is
+the tradition which certain Greek writers (notably
+Arrian) treat rather scornfully, of the conquest of
+Upper India by the mythical hero Bacchus. It is
+never wise to treat any tradition scornfully, and
+Arrian is himself obliged to admit the difficulty
+of explaining certain records connected with
+Alexander's history, without assuming that the
+tradition was not groundless.</p>
+
+<p>Writing of the city of Nysa, Arrian says that
+"it was built by Dionysos or Bacchus, when he
+conquered the Indians; but who this Bacchus was,
+or at what time or from whence he conquered the
+Indians is hard to determine, whether he was that
+Theban who from Thebes, or he who from Timolus,
+a mountain of Lydia, undertook that famous expedition
+into India is very uncertain." There is a
+Greek epic poem in hexameter verse, called the
+"Dionysiaka," or "Bassarika," which tells of the
+conquest of India by Bacchus, the greatest of all his
+achievements. The author is Nonnus of Panopolis
+in Egypt, who wrote about the beginning of the
+fifth century of our era. Bacchus is said to have
+received a command from Zeus to turn back the
+Indians, who had extended their conquests to the
+Mediterranean, and in the execution of this command
+he marched through Syria and Assyria. In
+Assyria he was entertained with magnificent hospitality.
+Nothing further is said of the route he took
+to reach India. The first battle which took place
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>
+in India was on the banks of the Hydaspes, where
+the Indians were routed. Then followed as an
+incident in the war the destruction of the Indian
+fleet in a naval battle, which is instructive. It
+took the assistance of the goddess of war, Pallas
+Athene, to bring the campaign to a conclusion,
+which terminated with the death of the Indian
+leader Deriades. Here, then, is crystallized
+in verse the tradition to which Arrian refers,
+and remembering that we are indebted to two
+great epics of India, the "Ramayana" and the
+"Mahabharata," for such glimmering of the ancient
+history of the Aryan occupation of India as we
+possess, we may very well conceive that the germs
+of real historical fact lie half-concealed in this poem
+of Nonnus. However that may be, it is tolerably
+certain that Alexander found a people in Northern
+India who claimed a Greek origin when he arrived
+there, quite apart from the colonists of Baktria who
+had been transported there by Darius Hydaspes,
+and that he recognized their claim to distant
+relationship.</p>
+
+<p>When Alexander, then, mustered his army in
+the sunny fields of Macedon he was preparing
+for an expedition over no uncertain ways between
+Greece and Baktria or Arachosia (Northern and
+Western Afghanistan). He knew what lay before
+him if he could once break through the Persian
+barrier; and the strength of that barrier he must
+have been well aware lay as much in the stern
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span>
+fighting qualities of the mercenary Greek legions
+in the pay of Persia as in the hosts of Persian and
+Indian troops which the Persian monarch could
+array against him. We have lists of the component
+forces on both sides. The Macedonian
+legions were homogeneous and patriotic. The
+Persian army was partly European, but chiefly
+Asiatic, with a mixed company of Asiatic troops
+such as has probably never taken the field since.
+The opposing forces, indeed, partook of the nature
+of the two armies which fought out the issue of
+the Russo-Japanese campaign, and the result was
+much the same. There was no tie of national
+sentiment to bind together the unwieldy cohorts
+of Persia. They fought for their pay, and they
+fought well; but when big battalions are divided
+in religious sentiment and unswayed by patriotism,
+they are no match for Macedonian cohesion,
+Mahomedan Jehad, or Japanese Bushido.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite interesting to examine the details of
+Alexander's army. The main body consisted of
+six brigades of 3000 men, each united to form an
+irresistible phalanx. Heavily armoured, with a
+long shield, a long sword, and a four-and-twenty
+foot spear (sarina), the infantryman of the phalanx
+must have possessed a powerful physique to enable
+him to carry himself and his weapons in the field.
+The depth of the phalanx was sixteen ranks, and
+the first six ranks were so placed that they could
+all bring their spears into action at once. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>
+bulk of the phalanx consisted of Macedonians only.
+The light infantry, bowmen, and dartsmen numbered
+about 6000. A third corps of 6000 men
+more lightly armed, but with longer swords than
+the phalangists (called Hypaspists), were intermediate.
+The cavalry consisted of three classes,
+light, heavy, and medium, 3000 Macedonian and
+Thessalian horsemen, heavily armoured, forming its
+main strength. The light cavalry were Thracian
+lancers. The Royal Horse Guard included eight
+Macedonian squadrons of horsemen picked from
+the best families in Greece. It is useful to note
+that there were mounted infantry and artillery
+(<i>i.e.</i> balistai and katapeltai) with the force. More
+useful still to note that none of Alexander's victories
+were won by the solid strength of his phalanx;
+it was the sweeping and resistless force of his
+cavalry charges (often led by himself) that gained
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most notable feature about this
+Greek expedition to India was the fact that it was
+the first military expedition of which there is any
+record which included scientific inquiry as one of
+its objects. Alexander had on his personal staff
+men of literary if not of scientific acquirements,
+and it is to them doubtless that we owe a comparatively
+clear account of the expedition, although
+unfortunately their records have only been transmitted
+to us by later authors. If we could but
+recover originals what a host of doubtful points
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>
+might be cleared up! It is true that previous
+to the date of Alexander one man of genius,
+Xenophon, had kept a record of a magnificent
+military achievement, and had proved himself to be
+master of literature as he was of the science of
+leading; but Xenophon stands alone, and it may
+be doubted whether, during the many centuries
+which have passed away since the era of Greek
+supremacy, any practical leader of men has ever
+attained such a splendid position in the ranks of
+writers of military history. Alexander appears, at
+any rate, to have been no historian, but his staff
+of cultivated literary assistants and men of letters
+included many notable Greek names.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander crossed the Hellespont in the spring
+of the year 334 <span class="s08">B.C.</span>, and first encountered the
+Persians near the Granikos River. The battle was
+decisive although the losses on either side do not
+appear to have been heavy. It was but the augury
+of what was to follow. The subsequent advance
+of the Macedonian troops southward through the
+lovely land of Iona, and the reduction of Miletus
+and Helikarnassos, brought the first year's campaign
+to a close. The second year opened with
+the conquest of Pamphyllia and Phrygia, the passage
+of the Tauros ranges being made in winter. On
+the return of spring he recrossed the Tauros and
+reduced the western hill-tribes of Kilikia. Part of
+his force, meanwhile, had occupied the passes into
+Syria known as the Syrian gates. Within two
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>
+days march of the Syrian gates the Persian hosts
+again were massed in an open plain under Darius,
+who had advanced from the east, waiting to fall
+upon the Macedonian troops and crush them as
+they debouched from the defile. Tired of waiting,
+however, Darius moved forward into Kilikia by the
+Amanian passes to look for Alexander, and thus it
+happened that when Alexander finally emerged
+from the Syrian gates into the plains of Syria he
+found his enemy behind him. He partially retraced
+his steps and regained the pass by midnight, and
+there from one of the adjoining summits he "beheld
+the Persian watch-fires gleaming far and wide over
+the plain of Issos." The rapidity of Alexander's
+movements was only equalled by the fierce energy
+of his onslaught when he led his cavalry against
+the unwieldy formations of his Persian enemy.
+It was his own hand that gained the victory both
+then and afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>There is no more stirring story in all history
+than this progress of the Macedonian force. Step
+by step it has been traced out from Granikos to
+Issos and from Issos to Arbela; but this is not
+the place to recapitulate that part of the story
+which applies only to Western Asia. It is not
+until after the final decisive battle at Arbela, when
+Darius fled in hot haste along the south-eastern
+road to Ecbatana, the former capital of Media,
+and thence in the spring of 330 <span class="s08">B.C.</span> retreated
+with a disorganized force and an intriguing court
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>
+towards Baktria, where he hoped to find a refuge
+with his kinsman Bessos the satrap of that province,
+that we really touch on the subject with which we
+wish to deal in this book, viz. the high-roads to
+Afghanistan in those long past days. Alexander,
+meanwhile, had received the submission of Babylon
+and restored the temple of Belus, and made himself
+master of a more spacious empire than the world
+had yet seen. It was then that the amazing results
+of his military success began to turn his head.
+From this point the severe simplicity of the
+Macedonian soldier is exchanged for the luxury,
+arrogance, and intolerance of the despot and
+conqueror. As Alexander advanced in material
+strength so did he slide down the easy descent
+of moral retrogression, and whilst we can still
+admire his magnificence as a military leader we
+find little else left to admire about him. From
+Babylon to the lovely valley wherein lies Susa, and
+from Susa to Persepolis, was more or less of a
+triumphal march in spite of the fierce opposition
+of the satrap Artobaizanes. Of Persepolis we are
+taught to believe that Alexander left nothing behind
+him but blackened ruins&mdash;the result of a drunken
+orgy. During the winter, amidst snow and ice, he
+subdued the Mardians in their mountain fastnesses
+(for he never left an active foe on the flank or rear),
+and with the return of the sweet Persian spring he
+renewed his hunt after Darius, turning his face to
+the north and east.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are two high-roads through Persia to the
+East&mdash;one leading to Northern Afghanistan and the
+Oxus regions over Mashad, the other to Kirman,
+Seistan, and Kandahar. Along both of them there
+now runs a telegraph line connecting with the
+Russian system <i>via</i> Mashad, and the Indian system
+<i>via</i> Kirman. They must always have been high-roads&mdash;the
+great trade routes to Central Asia and
+India. Where the orderly line of telegraph poles
+now stretches in unending regularity to mark the
+dusty highway, there, through more ages than we
+can count, the padded foot of the camel must have
+worn the road into ridges and ruts as he plodded
+his weary way with loads of merchandise and
+fodder. No geological evolution can have disturbed
+those tracks since the Assyrian kings first
+drew riches from the East and started colonies on
+the Baktrian highlands; they are now as they
+were 1000 years before Christ, and it is only
+natural that in the ordinary course of the same
+unresting spirit of enterprise the telegraph posts
+will sooner or later cast long shadows over a passing
+railway. The desert regions of Persia separate
+these two roads: the wide flat spaces of sand or
+"Kavir"; an unending procession of sand-hills on
+the glittering fields of salt-bound swamp. The
+desert is crossable&mdash;it has been fairly well exploited&mdash;but
+nothing so far has been found in it to justify
+the expectation of great discoveries of dead and
+buried cities, or traces of a former civilization
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span>
+such as once occupied the deserts of Chinese
+Turkistan.</p>
+
+<p>We may well believe that the central deserts of
+Persia were the same in Alexander's time as they
+are in ours. Consequently any large company of
+people would have been more or less forced into
+one or other of the well-known routes which the
+geographical configuration of the country presented
+to them. In his pursuit of Darius Alexander
+followed the northern route to Baktria which
+strikes a little north of east from Ecbatana (Hamadan),
+and in these days leads direct to Tehran the
+modern capital of Persia. The tragical fate of
+Darius, and Alexander's crocodile grief thereat,
+belongs to another story. It is only when he
+touches the regions beyond Mashad that he figures
+as one of the earliest explorers of Afghanistan, and
+certainly the earliest of whom we have any certain
+record. Unfortunately these records say very little
+of the nature of those cities and centres of human
+life which he found on the Afghan border; nor is
+there any definite allusion to be found in the
+writings of Alexander's historians to the colonial
+occupation of Afghanistan which must have preceded
+the Persian conquests. We have seen that
+Assyrian influence was strongly and continuously
+felt in India for many centuries after the consolidation
+of the Second Assyrian Empire, and
+the probability that between the Tigris and the
+Oxus there must have been intercommunication
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span>
+from the earliest days of the rise of Assyrian
+power.</p>
+
+<p>There is one ragged and time-worn city in
+Afghan Turkistan which certainly belongs to the
+centuries preceding the era of Alexander&mdash;it was
+the capital of Baktria, the city of Bessos, and it
+has been a great centre of commerce, a city of
+pilgrimage, Buddhist and Mahomedan, for many
+a century since. This is Balkh, traditionally known
+as the "Mother of cities," whose foundation is
+variously ascribed to Nimrud, or to "Karomurs
+the Persian Romulus," Assyrian or Persian as the
+fancy strikes the narrator. Of its extreme antiquity
+there can be no doubt. It is certain that at a very
+early date it was the rival of Ecbatana, of Nineveh,
+and of Babylon. Bricks with inscriptions are said
+to have been found there some seventy years ago,
+and similar bricks should certainly be there still.
+Officers of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission
+passed through modern Balkh in 1884, but no such
+bricks were found during the very cursory and
+entirely superficial examination which was all that
+could be made of the place; square bricks, without
+inscription, of the size and quality of those which
+may any day be dug out of the Birs Nimrud at
+Babylon were certainly found, and point to a
+similarity of construction in a part of the ancient
+walls, which is surely not accidental. Modern
+Balkh consists of about 500 houses of Afghan
+settlers, a colony of Jews, and a small bazaar set
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span>
+in the midst of a waste of ruins and many acres
+of debris. The walls of the city are 6½ or 7 miles
+in perimeter; in some places they are supported
+by a rampart like the walls of Herat. These, of
+course, are modern, as is the fort and citadel, or
+Bala Hissar, which stands on a mound to the north-east.
+The green cupola of the Masjid Sabz and
+the arched entrance to the ruined Madrasa testify
+to modern Mahomedan occupation, as do the
+Top-i-Rustam and the Takht-i-Rustam (two ancient
+topes) to the fervour of religious zeal with which
+its Buddhist inhabitants invested it in the early
+centuries of our era. Balkh awaits its Layard, and
+not only Balkh, for there are mounds and ruins
+innumerable scattered through the breadth of the
+Balkh plain.</p>
+
+<p>As one approaches Balkh by the Akcha road
+from the west, one looks anxiously around for some
+outward signs of its extreme antiquity. They are
+not altogether wanting, but time and the mellowing
+hand of Nature have rounded off the edges of
+the mounds of debris which lie scattered over miles
+of the surrounding country, brushing them over
+with the fresh green of vegetation, and leaving no
+sign by which to judge of the age of them. It is
+difficult in this part of Asia to get back farther than
+the age of the great destroyer Chenghiz Khan.
+His time has passed by long enough to leave but
+little evidence that the hand of the destroyer was
+his hand; but probably nothing visible on the surface
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span>
+dates back further than the six centuries which have
+come and gone since his Mongol hordes were set
+loose. Beyond these surface ruins and below them
+there must be cities arranged, as it were, in underground
+flats, one piled on another, strata below strata,
+till we reach the debris of the pre-Semitic days
+of Western and Central Asia, when the Turanian
+races who supplied Arcadian civilization to Mesopotamia
+peopled the land. Just as we cannot tell
+exactly when Babylon first became a city, so are
+we confounded by the age of Balkh. Babylon
+belongs to the time when myths were grouped
+around the adventures of a solar hero. Ultimately,
+however, the Ca-dimissa of the Accad became the
+Bab-ili (the "gate of God") of the Semite. It
+was always the "gate of God," but whether the
+presiding deity was always the Accadian Merodach
+seems doubtful. Fourteen or fifteen centuries
+before Christ there was probably a Balkh as there
+was a Babylon; and from time immemorial and a
+date unreckoned Balkh and Babylon must have
+been the two great commercial centres of Asia.
+What a history to dig out when its time shall
+come!</p>
+
+<p>As the Akcha road leads into the city it passes
+the outer wall, which is about 30 feet high, by a
+gateway which is frankly nothing more than a gap
+in the partially destroyed wall. It then skirts along,
+past a ziarat gay with red flags, to a gateway in
+the second wall under the citadel leading to an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span>
+avenue of poplars ending with a garden. Here is
+a pretentious and fairly comfortable caravanserai,
+facing a court which is shaded by magnificent
+plane trees. At first sight Balkh appears to consist
+of nothing but ruins, but ascending the mound,
+which is surrounded by the dilapidated fort walls,
+one can see from this vantage of about 70 feet how
+many new buildings are grouped round the remnants
+of the old Mahomedan mosque, of which the dome
+and one great gateway are all that is left.</p>
+
+<p>The plain of the ancient Baktria, of which Balkh
+represents the capital, lies south of the Oxus River,
+extending east and west for some 200 miles parallel
+to the river after its debouchment from the mountains
+of Badakshan. It is flat, with a scattering of
+prominences and mounds at intervals denoting the
+site of some village or fortress of sufficient antiquity
+to account for its gradual rise on the accumulations
+of its own debris, probably assisted in the first
+instance by some topographical feature. Looking
+south it appears to be flanked by a flat blue wall
+of hills, presenting no opportunity for escalade or
+passage through them, a blue level line of counterscarp,
+which is locally known as the Elburz. This
+great flanking wall is in reality very nearly what
+it appears to be&mdash;an unassailable rampart; but
+there are narrow ways intersecting it not easily
+discernible, and through these ways the rivers of
+the highlands make a rough passage to the plains.
+Wherever they tumble through the mountain gateways
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>
+and make placid tracks in the flats below,
+they are utilized for irrigation purposes, and so
+there exists a narrow fringe of cultivation under the
+hills, which extends here and there along the banks of
+the rivers out into the open Balkh plain. But these
+rivers never reach the Oxus. This is not merely
+because the waters of them are absorbed in irrigation,
+but because there is a well-ascertained tectonic
+action at work which is slowly raising the level of
+the plain. Thus it happens that whilst big affluents
+from the north bring rushing streams of much silt-stained
+water to the great river, no such affluents
+exist on the south. The waters of the Elburz
+streams are all lost in the Oxus plain ere they
+reach the river. Nevertheless there are abundant
+evidences of the former existence of a vast irrigation
+system drawn from the Oxus. The same lines
+of level mounds which break the horizon of the
+plains of Babylon are to be seen here, and they
+denote the same thing. They are the containing
+walls of canals which carried the Oxus waters
+through hundreds of square miles of flat plain,
+where they never can be carried again because of
+the alteration in the respective levels of plain and
+river. Ten centuries before Christ, at least, were the
+plains of Babylon thus irrigated, and just as the arts
+of Greece and India rose on the ashes of the arts of
+Nineveh, so doubtless was the science of irrigation
+carried into the colonial field of Baktria from
+Assyria, and thus was the city of "Nimrud" surrounded
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>
+with a wealth of cultivation which rendered
+it famous through Asia for more centuries than we
+can tell. Whether or no the science of irrigation
+drifted eastwards from the west it seems more than
+probable that the ruined and decayed water-ways
+which intersect the Balkh plain were primarily due
+to the introduction of Syrian labour, and account
+for the presence in that historic region of a people
+amongst others who claim descent from captive
+Israelites. There are no practical irrigation
+engineers in the world (excepting perhaps the
+Chinese) who can rival the Afghans in their knowledge
+of how to make water flow where water never
+flowed before. It is of course impossible, on such
+evidence as we possess as yet, to claim more than
+the appearance of a probability based on such an
+undeniable possibility as this.</p>
+
+<p>After the death of Darius his kinsman Bessos
+escaped into his own satrapy (probably to Balkh),
+and there assumed the upright tiara, the emblem
+of Persian royalty, taking at the same time the
+name of Artaxerxes.</p>
+
+<p>True to his invariable principle of leaving no
+unbeaten enemy on the flank of his advance,
+Alexander proceeded to subjugate Hyrkania, from
+which country he was separated by the Elburz
+(Persian) mountains. He crossed those mountains
+in three divisions by separate passes, and effected
+his purpose with his usual thoroughness and without
+much difficulty. Having crushed the Mardians he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>
+shaped a straight course eastward to Herat on his
+way to Baktria, marching by the great highway
+which connects Tehran with Mashad. The country
+around Mashad (part of Khorasan) was a satrapy
+of Persia under Satibarzanes, who submitted without
+apparent opposition and was confirmed in his
+government. The capital of this province was
+Artakoana, described as a city situated in a plain of
+exceptional fertility where the main roads from north
+to south and from west to east crossed each other.
+To no place does such a description apply so closely
+as Herat, and it has consequently been assumed
+that Herat indicates more or less closely the site of
+the ancient city Artakoana, which, indeed, is most
+probable. But Alexander had not long passed that
+city in his march towards Baktria when the news
+of the revolt of Satibarzanes reached him with the
+story of the loss of the Macedonian escort which
+had been left with that satrap and had been
+massacred to a man. He immediately turned on
+his tracks, captured Artakoana, routed the satrap,
+and by way of leaving a permanent monument of
+his victory founded a new city in the neighbourhood
+which he called Alexandreia. This is probably
+the actual origin of the modern Herat, and it is a
+tribute to the sagacity of the Macedonian King that
+from that time to this it has abundantly proved
+its importance as a strategical and commercial
+centre.</p>
+
+<p>The forward march to Baktria would have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span>
+taken the Greek army via Kushk, Maruchak, and
+Maimana along the route which is practically the
+easiest and safest for a large body of troops. It
+is the route followed by the Afghan Boundary
+Commission in 1885. Alexander, however, instead
+of resuming his march on Baktria, elected to crush
+another of the Persian satraps who was concerned
+in the murder of Darius and who ruled a province
+to the south of Herat. Crossing the Hari Rud he
+therefore marched straight on Farah (Prophthasia),
+then the capital of Seistan (Drangiana). Farah is
+considerably to the north of any part of the Afghan
+province of Seistan at present, but it was undoubtedly
+Alexander's objective, and the Drangiana of those
+times was considerably more extensive than the
+Seistan of to-day&mdash;a fact which will go some way
+to account for the exaggerated reports of the ancient
+wealth and fertility of that province. Farah is a
+great agricultural centre still, and would add
+enormously to the restricted cultivable area of
+Seistan, even if one allows for the effects of sand
+encroachment in that unpleasant region. Then
+occurred the plot against Alexander's life which
+was detected at Prophthasia, and the consequent
+torture and death of Philotas, who probably had
+no part in it. It is one of the many actions of
+Alexander's life which reveals the ferocity of the
+barbarian beneath the genius of the soldier. It
+was but the barbarity of his age&mdash;a barbarity for
+the matter of that which lasted in England till the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span>
+time of the Georges, and which still survives in
+Afghanistan. After a halt in Seistan, probably
+whilst waiting for reinforcements, he struck north-eastwards
+again for Baktria. As it is generally
+assumed that the Macedonian force now followed
+the Helmund valley route to the Paropamisos, <i>i.e.</i>
+the Hindu Kush and its extension westwards, it is
+as well to consider what sort of a country it is that
+forms the basin of Helmund.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth remarking in the first place that
+the Ariaspian inhabitants of the Helmund valley
+had received from Cyrus the name of Euergetai,
+or benefactors, because they had assisted him at
+a time when he had been in great difficulties.
+This is enough to satisfy us that the district
+was known and had been traversed by a military
+force long before Alexander entered it, and
+that he was making no venturesome advance in
+ignorance of what lay before him. The valley
+of the Helmund (or Etymander) could not have
+differed greatly in its geographical features 300
+years before Christ from its present characteristics.
+The Helmund of the Seistan basin then occupied
+a different channel to its present outlets into the
+Seistan swamps. How different it is difficult
+to tell, for it has frequently changed its course
+within historic times, silting up its bed and striking
+out a new channel for itself, splitting into a number
+of streams and wandering uncontrolled in loops or
+curves over the face of the flat alluvial plains to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span>
+which it brought fertility and wealth. It has been
+a perpetual source of political discussion as a
+boundary between Afghanistan and Persia, and it
+has altered the face of the land so extensively and
+so often that there is nothing in ancient history
+referring to the vast extent of agricultural wealth
+and the immensity of its population which can be
+proved to be impossible, although it seems likely
+enough that false inferences have been drawn from
+the widespread area of ruined and deserted towns
+and villages which are still to be seen and may
+almost be counted. It is not only that the water-supply
+and facilities for irrigation, by shifting their
+geographical position, have carried with them the
+potentialities for cultivation. Other forces of Nature
+which seem to be set loose on Seistan with peculiar
+virulence and activity have also been at work.
+The sweeping blasts of the north-west wind, which
+rage through this part of Asia with a strength and
+persistence unknown in regions more protected by
+topographical features, carrying with them vast
+volumes of sand and surface detritus, piling up
+smooth slopes to the windward side of every obstruction,
+smoothing off the rough angles of the
+gaunt bones of departed buildings, and sometimes
+positively wearing them away by the force of attrition,
+play an important part in the kaleidoscopic
+changes of Seistan landscape. Villages that are
+flourishing one year may be sand-buried the next.
+Channels that now run free with crop-raising water
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span>
+may be choked in a month, and all the while the
+great Helmund, curving northward in its course,
+pours down its steady volume of silt from the highlands,
+carrying tons of detritus into open plains
+where it is spread out, sun-baked, dried, wind-blown,
+and swirled back again to the southward in everlasting
+movement. Thus it is that the evidence
+of hundreds of square miles of ruins is no direct
+evidence of an immense population at any one
+period. Nor can we say of this great alluvial basin,
+which is by turns a smiling oasis, a pestilential
+swamp, a huge spread of populous villages, or a
+howling desert smitten with a wind which becomes
+a curse and afflicted with many of the pests and
+plagues of ancient Egypt, that at any one period
+of its history more than another it deserved the
+appellation of the "granary of Asia." The Helmund
+of Seistan, however, is quite a different Helmund
+from the same river nearer its source. Its character
+changes from the point where it makes its great
+bend northward towards its final exit into the
+lagoons and swamps of the Hamún. At Chaharburjak,
+where the high-road to Seistan from the
+south crosses the river into Afghan territory, the
+Helmund is a wide rippling stream (when not in
+flood), distinguished, if anything, for the clearness
+of its waters. From this point eastwards it parts
+two deserts. To the north the great, flat, windswept
+Dasht-i-Margo, about as desolate and arid
+a region as fancy could depict. To the south the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span>
+desert of Baluchistan, by no means so absolutely
+devoid of interest, with its marshalled sand-dunes
+answering to the processes of the winds, its isolated
+but picturesque peaks like islands in a sand sea,
+a few green spots here and there showing where
+water oozes out from the buried feet of the rocky
+hills, decorated with bunches of flowering tamarisk
+and perchance a palm or two&mdash;a modified desert,
+but still a desert. Between the two deserts is the
+Helmund, running in a cliff-sided trough which is
+never more than a mile or two wide, intensely
+green and bright in the grass and crop season, with
+flourishing villages at reasonable intervals and a
+high-road connecting them from which can be
+counted that strange multitude of departed cities
+of the old Kaiani Kingdom, which are marked by a
+ragged crop of ruins still upstanding in a weird sort
+of procession. Sometimes the high-road sweeps
+right into the midst of a roofless palace, through
+the very walls of the ancient building, and outside
+may be found spaces brushed clean by the wind
+leaving masses of pottery, glass, and other common
+debris exposed.</p>
+
+<p>One constant surprise to modern explorers is
+the extraordinary quantity of domestic crockery
+the remains of which surround old eastern cities;
+and almost yet more of a surprise it is how far
+and how widespread are certain easily recognized
+specialities, such, for instance, as the so-called
+"celadon." Chips and fragments of celadon are to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span>
+be found from Babylon to Seistan, from Seistan
+to India, in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Siam.
+In Siam are all that remains of what were probably
+the original furnaces. Every shower of rain
+that falls in this extended cemetery of crumbling
+monuments reveals small treasures in the way
+of rings, coins, seals, etc. Much of the cultivation
+and of the extent of population indicated by
+the ruins in this narrow valley must have existed
+in the times of Alexander of Macedon and the
+Ariaspians, and we find no difficulty in accepting
+the Helmund (or Etymander) as the line of
+route which he followed for a certain distance.
+Indeed, there is much more than a passing probability
+that he followed the line which gave him
+water and supplies as far as the junction of the
+Argandab and Helmund, for the problem of crossing
+the desert from the Helmund valley to Nushki
+and the cultivated districts of Kalat is a serious one&mdash;one,
+indeed, which gave the Russo-Afghan Boundary
+Commissioners much anxious thought. But beyond
+the Argandab junction it is extremely improbable
+that Alexander followed the Helmund. The
+Helmund and its surroundings have been carefully
+surveyed from this point through the turbulent
+districts of Zamindawar for 100 miles or more,
+and again from its source near Kabul for some fifty
+miles of its downward flow. The Zamindawar
+section of the river affords an open road, although
+the river, as we follow it upward, gradually becomes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>
+enclosed in comparatively narrow (yet still fertile)
+valleys, and rapidly assumes the character of a
+mountain stream. North of Zamindawar and south
+of its exit from the Koh-i-Baba mountain system to
+the west of Kabul, no modern explorer has ever
+seen the Helmund. It there passes through the
+Hazara highlands, and although we have not penetrated
+that rugged plateau we know very well its
+character by repute, and we have seen similar
+country to the west where dwell cognate tribes&mdash;the
+Taimani and the Firozkohi. This upland basin
+of the Helmund to the west of Kabul and Ghazni,
+this cradle of a hundred affluents pouring down ice-cold
+water to the river, is but a huge extension
+southwards of the Hindu Kush, and from it emerge
+many of the great rivers of Afghanistan. To the
+north the rivers of Balkh and Khulm take a hurried
+start for the Oxus plains. Westward the Hari Rud
+streams off to Herat. South-westward extends the
+long curving line of the Helmund, and eastward
+flow the young branches of the Kabul. A rugged
+mountain mass called the Koh-i-Baba, the lineal
+continuation of the Hindu Kush, dominates the
+rolling plateau from the north and continues westward
+in an almost unbroken wall to the Band-i-Baian
+looking down into the narrow Hari Rud
+valley. It is a part of the continental divide of
+Asia, high, rugged, desolate, and almost pathless.</p>
+
+<p>No matter from which side the toiler of the
+mountains approaches this elevated and desolate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span>
+region, whether emerging from the Herat drainage
+he essays to reach Kabul, or from the small affluents
+of the Helmund he strikes for the one gap which
+exists between the Hindu Kush and the Koh-i-Baba
+which will lead him to Balkh and Afghan Turkistan,
+he will have enormous difficulties to encounter. It
+can be done, truly, but only with the pains and
+penalties of high mountaineering attached. Taken
+as a whole, the highest uplands above the sources
+of the minor rivers which water the bright and
+fertile valleys of Ghur, Zamindawar, and Farah
+may be described much as one would describe Tibet&mdash;a
+rolling, heaving, desolate tableland, wrinkled
+and intersected by narrow mountain ranges, whose
+peaks run to 13,000 and 14,000 feet in altitude,
+enclosing between them restricted spaces of pasture
+land. The Mongol population, who claim to have
+been introduced as military settlers by Chenghiz
+Khan, live a life of hard privation. They leave
+their barren wastes which the wind wipes clear of
+any tree growth, for the lower valleys in the winter
+months, merely resorting to them in the time of
+summer pasturage. The winter is long and severe.
+It is not the altitude alone which is accountable for
+its severity; it is the geographical position of this
+Central Afghan upheaval which exposes it to the
+full blast of the ice-borne northern winds which,
+sweeping across Turkistan with destructive energy,
+reduce the atmosphere of Seistan to a sand-laden
+fog, and penetrate even to the valley of the Indus
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>
+where for days together they wrap the whole landscape
+in a dusty haze. For many months the
+Hazara highlands are buried under successive
+sheets of snowdrift. In summer, like the Pamirs,
+they emerge from their winter's sleep and become
+a succession of grass-covered downs. There are
+then open ways across them, and travellers may
+pass by many recognizable tracks. But in winter
+they are impassable to man and beast. Yet we
+are asked to believe that Alexander, who had the
+best of guides in his pay, and who knew the highways
+and byways of Asia as well, if not better,
+than they are known now to any military authorities,
+took his army <i>in winter</i> up the Helmund valley till
+it struck its sources somewhere under the Koh-i-Baba!</p>
+
+<p>There was no madness in Alexander's methods.
+His withdrawal from India through the defiles and
+deserts of Makran was most venturesome and
+most disastrous, but he had a distinct object to
+gain by the attempt to pass into Persia that
+way. Here there was no object. The Helmund
+route does not, and did not, lead directly
+to his objective, Baktria, and there was another
+high-road always open, which must have been as
+well known then as, indeed, it is well known to-day.
+There can be very little doubt that he followed the
+Argandab to the neighbourhood of the modern
+Kandahar (in Arachosia), and from Kandahar to
+Kabul he took the same historic straight high-road
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>
+which was followed by a later General (Lord Roberts)
+when he marched from Kabul to Kandahar. This
+would give him quite difficulties enough in winter
+to account for Arrian's story of cold and privations.
+It would lead him direct to the plains of the
+Kohistan north of Kabul, where there must have
+ever been the opportunity of collecting supplies
+for his force, and where, separated from him by the
+ridges of the Hindu Kush, were planted those
+Greek colonies of Darius Hystaspes whose assistance
+might prove invaluable to his onward movement.
+It was here, at any rate, not far from the
+picturesque village of Charikar, that he founded
+that city of Alexandreia, the remains of which
+appear to have been recently disturbed by the
+Amir, and to which we shall make further reference.
+Military text-books still speak of the Unai, or Bamian,
+as a pass which was traversed by the Greeks. It is
+most improbable that they ever crossed the Hindu
+Kush that way, and the question obviously arises
+in connection with this theory of his march&mdash;How
+was it possible for Alexander to spend the rest of
+the winter near the sources of the Helmund? It
+was not possible. His next step was to cross the
+Hindu Kush. This he attempted with difficulty
+in the spring, and reached a fertile country in fifteen
+days. He might have crossed by the Kaoshan
+Pass (which local tradition assigns as the pass which
+he really selected), or by the Panjshir, which is longer,
+but in some respects easier. The Panjshir is the pass
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>
+usually adopted for the passage of large bodies of
+troops by the Afghans themselves, and there is
+reported to be, in these days, a well-engineered
+Khafila road, which is kept open by forced labour
+in snow-time, connecting Kabul with Andarab by
+this route. The pass of the Panjshir is about 11,600
+feet high, whereas the Kaoshan, though straighter,
+is 14,300. Considering the slow rate of movement
+(fifteen days) it is more probable that he took the
+easier route <i>via</i> Panjshir. In either case he would
+reach the beautiful and fertile valley of Andarab, and
+from that base he could move freely into Baktria.
+The country had been ravaged and wasted by
+Bessos, but that did not delay Alexander. The
+chief cities of Baktria surrendered without opposition,
+and he pushed forward to the Oxus in his pursuit
+of Bessos.</p>
+
+<p>All this would be more interesting if we could
+trace the route more closely which was followed to
+the Oxus. We know, however, that for previous
+centuries Balkh had been the capital city, the
+great trade emporium of all that region. There
+is therefore no difficulty in accepting Balkh as the
+Greek Baktria. Between Balkh and the Oxus
+the plains are strewn with ruins, some of them
+of vast extent, whilst other evidences of former
+townships are to be found about Khulm and Tashkurghan
+farther to the east, and on the direct route
+from Andarab to the Oxus. Bessos had retreated
+to Sogdiana of which Marakanda was capital, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span>
+the straight road to Marakanda (Samarkand) crosses
+the Oxus at Kilif. The description of the river
+Oxus at that point tallies fairly well with Arrian's
+account of it. It is deep and rapid, and the hill
+fortress of Kilif on the right bank, and of Dev Kala
+and other isolated rocky hills on the left, hedges
+in the river to a channel which cannot have
+changed through long ages. Elsewhere the Oxus
+is peculiarly liable to shift its channel, and has
+done so from time to time, forming new islands,
+taking fresh curves, and actually changing its
+destination from the Caspian to the Aral Sea; but
+at Kilif it must have ever been deep and rapid,
+covering a breadth of about three-quarters of a
+mile. Across the breadth nowadays is about
+as peculiar a ferry as was ever devised. Long,
+shallow, flat-bottomed boats, square as to bow and
+stern, are towed from side to side of the river by
+swimming horses. This would not be a matter of
+so much surprise if the horses employed for the
+purpose were powerful animals from fourteen to
+fifteen hands in height, but the remarkable feature
+about the Kilif stud is the diminutive and ragged
+crew of underfed ponies which it produces. And
+yet two, or even one, of these inefficient-looking
+little animals will tow across a barge of twenty feet
+or so in length, crowded with weighty bales of
+Bokhara merchandise, and filled as to interstices
+with its owners and their servants. The ponies
+are attached to outriggers with a strap from a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span>
+surcingle or belly-band buckled to their backs, thus
+supporting their weight in the water at the same
+time that it takes the haulage. With their heads
+just above stream, snorting and blowing, they
+swim with measured strokes and tow the boat
+(advancing diagonally in crab-like fashion to meet
+the current) straight across the river. The
+inadequacy of the means to the end is the first
+thing which strikes the beholder, but he is, however,
+rapidly convinced of the extraordinary hauling
+capacity of a swimming horse when properly
+trained. Alexander crossed on rafts supported on
+skins stuffed with straw, and it took him five days
+to cross his force in this primitive fashion.</p>
+
+<p>On the right bank of the river, Bessos was given
+up by traitors in his camp and was sent south to
+"Zariaspa" to await his doom. Zariaspa is identified
+with Balkh by some authorities, but the name
+is probably a variant on Adraspa which almost
+certainly was Andarab. Andarab was the fertile
+and promising district into which Alexander descended
+from the slopes of the Hindu Kush, by
+whichever route (Kaoshan or Panjshir) he crossed
+those mountains. Directly on the route between
+Andarab and Balkh is a minor province called
+Baglan, and a little less than half-way (after crossing
+a local pass of no great significance called Kotal
+Murgh) is a village or township, nowadays called
+Zardaspan, which is sufficiently like Zariaspa to
+suggest an identity which is at least plausible
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>
+though it may be deceptive. But it is the fact
+that the town of Baraki which lies farther on the
+same route is on the outskirts of Baglan; and in
+this connection a reference to the theory put
+forward by Dr. Bellew in his <i>Ethnography of
+Afghanistan</i> (<i>Asiatic Quarterly</i>, October 1891) is
+at least interesting. He points out that the
+captive Greeks who were transported in the sixth
+century <span class="s08">B.C.</span> by Darius Hystaspes from the Lybian
+Barké to Baktrian territory were still occupying a
+village called Barké in the time of Herodotus.
+A century later again during the Macedonian
+campaign, Kyrenes, or Kyreneans, existed in that
+region according to Arrian, and it is difficult to
+account for them in that part of Asia unless they
+were the descendants of those same exiles from
+Barké, a colony of Kyrene whom Darius originally
+transported to Baktria. They were in possession
+of the Kaoshan Pass too, and might have rendered
+very effective aid to Alexander during his passage
+across the mountains. Another body of Greek
+colonists are recorded to have been settled in this
+same part of Baktria by Xerxes after his flight
+from Greece, namely, the Brankhidai, whose original
+settlement appears to have been in Andarab. As
+we shall see later, people from Greece or from
+Grecian colonies undoubtedly drifted across Asia
+to Northern Afghanistan in even earlier times than
+those of the Persian Empire. There can, indeed,
+be very little doubt that Ariaspa, or Andarab, was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span>
+an important position for the Greeks to occupy
+from its strategic value as commanding the most
+practicable of the Hindu Kush passes.</p>
+
+<p>When Bessos, therefore, was deported across the
+Oxus to Zariaspa it is probable that he was sent
+to Andarab; and here too Alexander returned to
+winter towards the close of the year 329 <span class="s08">B.C.</span> after
+his extraordinary success in Sogdia (Bokhara).
+With his trans-Oxus campaign we have nothing to
+do; it is another history, and deeply interesting as
+it would be to follow it in detail we must return to
+Afghanistan. Nothing in all his Eastern campaign
+is more remarkable than the facility with which
+Alexander recruited his army from Greece during
+its progress. Gaps in the ranks were constantly
+filled up, and the fighting strength of his force
+maintained at a high level. His army was reorganized
+during the winter, and with the returning
+spring he again started expeditions across the
+Oxus, in the course of which he captured Roxana,
+the most beautiful woman in Asia (after the wife of
+Darius) and married her. The particular fortress
+which held this charming lady was perched on the
+top of an isolated craggy hill, and the story of its
+capture is as thrilling as that of Aornos subsequently.
+But, like Aornos, it is difficult to locate it.
+It might have been Dev Kala, or Kilif, or any of
+a dozen such rock-crowned hills which border the
+Oxus River. It is about this period that we read
+first of his encounters with the Skythic races of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span>
+Central Asia, who gave him great trouble at the
+time and who subsequently subverted the Greek
+power in Baktria altogether. In the spring of
+327 <span class="s08">B.C.</span> he moved out to invade a mountain
+district to the "East of Baktria" (probably modern
+Badakshan), and subdued the hill-tribes under
+Khorienes whom he confirmed in the government
+of his own country. It was summer ere he set out
+finally from Baktria on his Indian expedition. He
+recrossed the Paropamisos in ten days and halted
+at Alexandreia near Charikar. Then commences
+the first recorded expedition of the Kabul River
+basin.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p class="center">GREEK EXPLORATION&mdash;ALEXANDER&mdash;THE KABUL
+VALLEY TO THE INDUS</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Alexander passed the next winter at the city of
+his own founding, Alexandreia, in the Koh Daman
+to the north of Kabul. And from thence in two
+divisions he started for the Indus, sending the main
+body of his troops by the most direct route, with
+Taxila (the capital of the Upper Punjab) for its
+objective, and himself with lighter brigades specially
+organized to subdue certain tribes on the northern
+flank of the route who certainly would imperil the
+security of his line of communication if left alone.
+This was his invariable custom, and it was greatly
+owing to the completeness with which these
+flanking expeditions were carried out that he was
+able to keep open his connection with Greece.
+There have been discussions as to the route which
+he followed. Hyphæstion, in command of the
+main body, undoubtedly followed the main route
+which would take him most directly to the plains of
+the Punjab, which route is sufficiently well indicated
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>
+in these days as the "Khaibar." We hear very
+little about his march eastwards.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="i112" id="i112"></a>
+<img src="images/i_112.jpg" width="550" height="334" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">SKETCH MAP
+OF
+ALEXANDER'S ROUTE<br />
+<br />
+<a href="images/i_112fs.jpg">View larger image</a></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the days preceding the use of fire-arms
+the march of a body of troops through defiles
+such as the Khurd Kabul or the Jagdallak was
+comparatively simple. So far from such defiles
+serving as traps wherein to catch an enemy
+unawares and destroy him from the cliffs and
+hills on either side, these same cliffs and hills
+served rather as a protection. The mere rolling
+down of stones would not do much mischief, even if
+they could be rolled down effectively, which is not
+usually the case; and in hand-to-hand encounters
+the tribespeople were no match for the armoured
+Greeks. Alexander's operations would preserve
+his force from molestation on its northern flank, and
+the rugged ridges and spread of desolate hill-slopes
+presented by the Safed Koh and other ranges on
+the south has never afforded suitable ground for
+the collection of fighting bodies of men in any great
+strength. General Stewart marched his force from
+Kabul to Peshawur in 1880 with his southern flank
+similarly unprotected with the same successful
+result, his movements being so timed as to give no
+opportunity for a gathering of the Ghilzai clans.
+On the northern flank of the Khaibar route,
+however, there had been large tribal settlements
+from the very beginning of things, and it was most
+important that these outliers should feel the weight
+of Alexander's mailed fist if the road between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span>
+Kabul and the Indus were ever to be made secure.
+He accordingly directed his attention to a more
+northerly route to India which would bring him
+into contact with the Aspasians, Gauraians, and
+Assakenians.</p>
+
+<p>We need not follow the ethnologists who
+identify these people with certain tribes now
+existing with analogous names. There may very
+possibly be remnants of them still, but they are not
+to be identified. They obviously occupied the open
+cultivable valleys and alluvial spaces which are
+interspersed amongst the mountains of the Kabul
+River basin, the Kohistan and Kafiristan of modern
+maps. The Gauraians certainly were the people of
+the Panjkora valley, and there is no difficulty in
+assigning to the Aspasians the first great fertile
+tract of open valley which would be encountered on
+the way eastwards. This is Laghman (or Lamghan)
+with its noble reach of the Kabul River meeting a
+snow-fed affluent, the Alingar, from the Kafir hills.
+There is, indeed, no geographical alternative.
+Similarly with even a cursory knowledge of the
+actual geographical conformation of the country,
+it is impossible to imagine that Alexander would
+choose any other route from Alexandreia towards
+Laghman than that which carries him past Kabul.
+The Koh Daman (the skirts of the hills) which
+intervene between Alexandreia (or Bagram) and
+Kabul is one of the gardens of Afghanistan. There
+one may wander in the sweet springtide amidst the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span>
+curves and folds of an undulating land, neither hill
+nor plain, with the scent of the flowering willow in
+the air, and the rankness of a spring growth of
+flower and grass bordering narrow runlets and
+irrigation channels; an unwinking blue above and
+a varied carpet beneath, whilst the song of the
+labourer rises from fields and orchards. Westward
+are the craggy outlines of Paghman (a noble offshoot
+of the Hindu Kush hiding the loveliness of the
+Ghorband valley behind it), down whose scarred
+and wrinkled ribs slide waterfalls and streams to
+gladden the plain. Piled up on steep and broken
+banks from the very foot of the mountains are
+scattered white-walled villages, and it is here that
+you may find later in the year the best fruit in
+Afghanistan.</p>
+
+<p>In November a gentle haze rests in soft
+indecision upon the dust-coloured landscape&mdash;heavier
+and bluer over the low-lying fields from
+which all vegetation has been lifted, lighter and
+edged with filmy skirts where it rises from the
+sun-warmed brow of the hills. It is a different
+world from the world of spring&mdash;all utterly sad-coloured
+and dust-laden; but it is then that the
+troops and strings of fruit-laden donkeys take their
+leisurely way towards the city, where are open
+shops facing the narrow shadowed streets with
+golden bulwarks of fruit piled from floor to roof.
+A narrow band of rugged hills shuts off this lovely
+plain on the east from the only valley route which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>
+could possibly present itself to an inexperienced eye
+as an outlet from the Charikar region to the Kabul
+River bed, ere it is lost in the dark defiles leading
+to the Laghman valley. The hills are red in the
+waning light, and when the snow first lays its
+lacework shroud over them in network patches
+they are inexpressibly beautiful. But they are also
+inexpressibly rough and impracticable, and the
+valley beyond is but a walled-in boulder-strewn
+trough, which no general in his senses would select
+for a military high-road. Alexander certainly did
+not march that way; he went to where Kabul is,
+and there, at the city of Nikaia, he made sacrifice
+to the goddess Athena. If Nikaia was not the
+modern Kabul it must have been very near it.
+Does not Nonnus tell us that it was a stone city
+near a lake? There is but one lake in the Kabul
+valley, and it is that at Wazirabad close to the city.
+It is usual to regard Nonnus as a most untrustworthy
+authority, but here for once he seems to have
+wandered into the straight and narrow path of truth.
+So far there can be no reasonable doubt about the
+direction of this great Pioneer's explorations in
+Afghanistan. Beyond this, once again, we prefer
+to trust to the known geographical distribution of
+hill and valley, and the opportunities presented by
+physical features of the country, rather than to any
+doubtful resemblance between ancient and modern
+place, or tribal, names, for determining the successive
+actions of the expedition. After the summons to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>
+Taxiles, chief of Taxila (itself the chief city of the
+Upper Punjab), and the satisfactory reply thereto,
+there was nothing to disturb the even course of
+Alexander's onward movements but the activity of
+the mountain tribespeople who flanked the line of
+route.</p>
+
+<p>The valley of Laghman must always have been
+a populous valley. From the north the snow-capped
+peaks of Kafiristan look down upon it, and
+from among the forest-clad valleys at the foot of
+these peaks two important river systems take their
+rise, the Alingar and the Alishang, which, uniting,
+join the Kabul River in the flat plain, where villages
+now crowd in and dispute each acre of productive
+soil. It is difficult to reach the Laghman valley
+from the west. The defiles of the Kabul River
+are here impassable, but they can be turned by
+mountain routes, and Alexander's force, which
+included the Hyspaspists, who were comparatively
+lightly armed, with the archers, the "companion"
+cavalry and the lancers, was evidently picked for
+mountain warfare. The heavier brigades were with
+Hyphæstion who struck out by the straightest route
+for Peukelaotis, which has been identified with an
+ancient site about 17 miles to the north-east
+of Peshawur on the eastern bank of the Swat
+River, and was then the capital of the ancient
+Gandhara. We are told that Alexander's route
+was rugged and hilly, and lay along the course
+of the river called Khoes. Rugged and hilly it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span>
+certainly was, but the Khoes presents a difficulty.
+He could not actually follow the course of the
+Kabul River (Kophen) from the Kabul plain
+because of the defiles, but he could have followed
+that river below Butkak to the western entrance
+of the Laghman valley where it unites with the
+Alingar, or Kao, River. It is impossible to admit
+that he reached the Kao River after crossing the
+Kohistan and Kafiristan, and then descended that
+river to its junction with the Kabul. No cavalry
+could have performed such a feat. Geographical
+conditions compel us to assume that he followed the
+Kabul River, which is sometimes called Kao above
+the junction of the Kao River.</p>
+
+<p>It is far more impossible to identify the actual
+sites of Alexander's first military engagements than
+it is to say, for instance, at this period of history,
+where Cæsar landed in Great Britain, as we have
+no means of making exhaustive local inquiries; but
+subsequent history clearly indicates that his next
+step after settling the Laghman tribes was to push
+on to the valley of the Choaspes, or Kunar. It was
+in the Kunar valley that he found and defeated the
+chief of the Aspasians. The Kunar River is by far
+the most important of the northern tributaries of the
+Kabul. It rises under the Pamirs and is otherwise
+known as the Chitral River. The Kunar valley is
+amongst the most lovely of the many lovely valleys
+of Afghanistan. Flanked by the snowy-capped
+mountains of Kashmund on the west, and the long
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span>
+level water parting which divides it from Bajaor and
+the Panjkora drainage on the east, it appears, as one
+enters it from Jalalabad, to be hemmed in and
+constricted. The gates of it are indeed somewhat
+narrow, but it widens out northward, where the
+ridges of the lofty Kashmund tail off into low
+altitudes of sweeping foothills a few miles above
+the entrance, and here offer opportunity for an easy
+pass across the divide from the west into the valley.
+This is a link in the oldest and probably the best
+trodden route from Kabul to the Punjab, and it has
+no part with the Khaibar. It links together these
+northern valleys of Laghman, Kunar, and Lundai
+(<i>i.e.</i> the Panjkora and Swat united) by a road north
+of the Kabul, finally passing southwards into the
+plains chequered by the river network above
+Peshawur.</p>
+
+<p>The lower Kunar valley in the early autumn
+is passing beautiful. Down the tawny plain
+and backed by purple hills the river winds its
+way, reflecting the azure sky with pure turquoise
+colour&mdash;the opaque blue of silted water&mdash;blinking
+and winking with tiny sun shafts, and running
+emerald green at the edges. Sharp perpendicular
+columns of black break the landscape in ordered
+groups. These are the cypresses which still adorn
+in stately rows the archaic gardens of townlets
+which once were townships. The clustering
+villages are thick in some parts&mdash;so thick that they
+jostle each other continuously. There is nothing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>
+of the drab Punjab about these villages. They
+are white-walled and outwardly clean, and in at least
+one ancient garden there is a fair imitation of a
+Kashmir pavilion set at the end of a white eye-blinding
+pathway, leading straight and stiff between
+rows of cypress, and blotched in spring with inky
+splashes of fallen mulberries. The scent of orange
+blossoms was around when we were there, luscious
+and overpowering. It was the oppressive atmosphere
+of the typical, sensuous East, and the free,
+fresh air from the river outside the mud walls of
+that jealously-guarded estate was greatly refreshing
+when we climbed out of the gardens. All this part
+of the river must have been attractive to settlers
+even in Alexander's time, and it requires no effort
+of imagination to suppose that it was here that his
+second series of actions took place. Higher up the
+river the valley closes, until, long before Chitral is
+reached, it narrows exceedingly. Here, in the north,
+the northern winds rage down the funnel with
+bitter fury and make life burdensome. The villages
+take to the hill-slopes or cluster in patches on the
+flat terraces at their foot. The revetted wall of
+small hillside fields outline the spurs in continuous
+bands of pasture, and at intervals quaint colonies of
+huts cling to the hills and seem ready to slither
+down into the wild rush of the river below. Such
+as a whole is the Kunar valley, which, centuries
+after Alexander had passed across it, was occupied
+by Kafir tribes who may have succeeded the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span>
+Aspasian peoples, or who may indeed represent
+them. All the wild mountain districts west of the
+Kunar are held by Kafirs still, and there is nothing
+remarkable in the fact (which we shall see later on)
+that just to the east of the Kunar valley Alexander
+found a people claiming the same origin there that
+the Kafirs of Kashmund and Bashgol claim now.</p>
+
+<p>It was during the fighting in the Kunar valley
+that we hear so much of that brilliant young leader
+Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, who was then shaping
+his career for a Royal destiny in Egypt. With all
+the thrilling incidents of the actual combat we have
+no space to deal, and much as they would serve to
+lighten the prosaic tale of the progress of Alexander's
+explorations, we must reluctantly leave them to Arrian
+and the Greek historians. We are told that after
+the Kunar valley action Alexander crossed the mountains
+and came to a city at their base called Arigaion.
+Assuming that he crossed the Kunar watershed by
+the Spinasuka Pass, which leads direct from Pashat
+(the present capital of Kunar) into Bajaor, he would
+be close to Nawagai, the present chief town of
+Bajaor. Arigaion would therefore be not far
+from Nawagai. The place was burnt down; but
+recognizing the strategic importance of the position,
+he left Krateros to fortify it and make it the
+residence not only of such tribespeople as chose to
+return to their houses, but also of such of his own
+soldiers as were unfit for further service. This
+seems to have been his invariable custom, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span>
+accounts for the traditions of Greek origin which
+we still find so common in the north-western
+borderland of India. The story of this part of his
+expedition reads almost as if it were journalistic.
+Then, as now, the tribesmen took to the hills.
+Then, as now, their position and approximate
+numbers could be ascertained by their camp-fires
+at night. Ptolemy was intelligence officer and
+conducted the reconnaissance, and on his report the
+plan of attack was arranged. This was probably
+the most considerable action fought by Alexander
+in the hills north of India. The conflict was sharp
+but decisive, and the Aspasians, who had taken
+up their position on a hill, were utterly routed.
+According to Ptolemy 40,000 prisoners and 230,000
+oxen were taken, and the fact that the pick of the
+oxen were sent to Macedonia to improve the breed
+there shows how complete was the line of communication
+between Greece and Upper India. The
+next tribe to be dealt with were the Assakenians,
+and to reach them it was necessary to cross the
+Gauraios, or Panjkora, which was deep, swift as to
+current, and full of boulders. As we find no
+mention in Arrian's history of the passage of the
+Suastos (Swat River) following on that of the
+Gauraios, we must conclude that Alexander crossed
+the Panjkora <i>below</i> its junction with the Swat,
+where the river being much enclosed by hills would
+certainly afford a most difficult passage. There are
+other reasons which tend to confirm this view.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The next important action which took place was
+the siege and capture of the city called Massaga,
+which was only taken after four days' severe fighting,
+during which Alexander was wounded in the foot
+by an arrow. M'Crindle<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> quotes the various names
+given in Sanscrit and Latin literature, and agrees
+with Rennel in adopting the site of Mashanagar,
+mentioned by the Emperor Baber in his memoirs as
+lying two marches from Bajaor on the river Swat,
+as representing Massaga. M. Court heard from
+the Yasufzais of Swat that there was a place called
+by the double name of Mashkine and Massanagar
+24 miles from Bajaor. It is not to be found
+now, but there is in the survey maps a place on
+the Swat River about that distance from Nawagai
+(the chief town in Bajaor) called Matkanai, close
+to the Malakand Pass, and this is no doubt the
+place referred to. It is very difficult even in
+these days to get a really authoritative spelling
+for place-names beyond, or even within, the British
+Indian border; and as these surveys were made
+during the progress of the Tirah expedition when
+the whole country was armed, such information as
+could be obtained was often unusually sketchy.
+If this is the site of Massaga it would be
+directly on the line of Alexander's route from
+Nawagai eastwards, as he rounded the spurs of
+the Koh-i-Mor which he left to the north of him,
+and struck the Panjkora some miles below its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span>
+junction with the Swat. There can be little
+doubt that it was near this spot that the historic
+siege took place. His next objective were two
+cities called Ora and Bazira, which were obviously
+close together and interdependent. Cunningham
+places the position of Bazira, at the town of Rustam
+(on the Kalapani River), which is itself built on a
+very extensive old mound and represents the
+former site of a town called Bazar. Rustam
+stands midway between the Swat and Indus, and
+must always have been an important trade centre
+between the rich valley of Swat and the towns of the
+Indus. Ora may possibly be represented by the
+modern Bazar which is close by. Geographically
+this is the most probable solution of the problem of
+Alexander's movements, there being direct connection
+with the Swat valley through Rustam which
+is not to be found farther north. Alexander would
+have to cross the Malakand from the Swat valley
+to the Indus plains, but would encounter no further
+obstacles if he moved on this route. Bazira made
+a fair show of resistance, but the usual Greek
+tactics of drawing the enemy out into the plains
+was resorted to by Koenos with a certain amount
+of success; and when Ora fell before Alexander,
+the full military strength of Bazira dispersed and
+fled for refuge to the rock Aornos.</p>
+
+<p>So far we have followed this Greek expedition
+into regions which are beyond the limits of modern
+Afghanistan, but the new geographical detail acquired
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span>
+during the most recent of our frontier
+campaigns enables new arguments to be adduced
+in favour of old theories (or the reverse), and this
+departure from the strict political boundaries of
+our subject leads us to regions which are at any
+rate historically and strategically connected with it.
+With Aornos, however, our excursion into Indian
+fields will terminate. Round about Aornos historical
+controversy has ebbed and flowed for nearly a
+century, and it is not my intention to add much
+to the literature which already concerns itself with
+that doubtful locality. I believe, however, that it
+will be some time yet before the last word is said
+about Aornos. Of all the positions assigned to
+that marvellous feat of arms performed by the Greek
+force, that which was advanced by the late General
+Sir James Abbott in 1854 is the most attractive&mdash;so
+attractive, indeed, that it is hard to surrender it.
+The discrepant accounts of the capture of the
+famous "rock" given by Arrian (from the accounts
+of Ptolemy, one of the chief actors in the scene),
+Curtius, Diodoros, and Strabo obviously deal with
+a mountain position of considerable extent, where
+was a flattish summit on which cavalry could act,
+and the base of it was washed by the Indus. All,
+however, write as if it were an isolated mountain
+with a definite circuit of, according to Arrian,
+23 miles and a height of 6200 feet (according to
+Diodoros of 12 miles and over 9000 feet). The
+"rock" was situated near the city of Embolina,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span>
+which we know to have been on the Indus and
+which is probably to be identified more or less
+with the modern town of Amb. The mountain
+was forest-covered, with good soil and water
+springs. It was precipitous towards the Indus,
+yet "not so steep but that 220 horse and war
+engines were taken up to the summit," all of
+which Sir James Abbott finds compatible with the
+hill Mahaban which is close to Amb, and answers
+all descriptions excepting that of isolation, for it is
+but a lofty spur of the dividing ridge between the
+Chumla, an affluent of the Buner River, and the
+lower Mada Khel hills, culminating in a peak
+overlooking the Indus from a height of 7320 feet.
+The geographical situation is precisely such as we
+should expect under the circumstances. The tribespeople
+driven from Bazira (assuming Bazira to be
+near Rustam) following the usual methods of the
+mountaineers of the Indian frontier, would retreat
+to higher and more inaccessible fastnesses in their
+rugged hills. There is but one way open from
+Rustam towards the Indus offering them the
+chance of safety from pursuit, and undoubtedly
+they followed that track. It leads up to the great
+divide north of them and then descends into the
+Chumla valley leading to that of Buner, and the
+hills which were to prove their salvation might well
+be those flanking the Chumla on the south, rising
+as they do to ever higher altitudes as they approach
+the Indus. This, in fact, is Mahaban. By all the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>
+rules of Native strategy in Northern India this is
+precisely the position which they would take up.</p>
+
+<p>Aornos appears to have been a kind of generic
+name with the Greeks, applied to mountain positions
+of a certain class, for we hear of another
+Aornos in Central Asia, and the word translated
+"rock" seems to mean anything from a mountain
+(as in the present case) to a sand-bank (as in the
+case of the voyage of Nearkos). No isolated hill
+such as would exactly fit in with Arrian's description
+exists in that part of the Indus valley, and no
+physical changes such as alteration in the course
+of the Indus, or such as might be effected by
+the tectonic forces of Nature, are likely to have
+removed such a mountain. Abbott's identification
+has therefore been generally accepted for many
+years, and it has remained for our latest authority
+to question it seriously.</p>
+
+<p>The latest investigator into the archæological
+interests of the Indian trans-frontier is Dr. M. A.
+Stein, the Inspector-General of Education in India.
+The marvellous results of his researches in Chinese
+Turkistan have rendered his name famous all over
+the archæological world, and it is to him that we
+owe an entirely new conception of the civilization of
+Indo-China during the Buddhist period. Dr. Stein's
+methods are thorough. He leaves nothing to speculation,
+and indulges in no romance, whatever may be
+the temptation. He takes with him on his archæological
+excursions a trained native surveyor of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>
+Indian survey, and he thus not only secures an
+exact illustration of his own special area of
+investigation, but incidentally he adds immensely
+to our topographical knowledge of little known
+regions. This is specially necessary in those wild
+districts which are more immediately contiguous
+to the Indian border, for it is seldom that the
+original surveys of these districts can be anything
+more than topographical sketches acquired, sometimes
+from a distance, sometimes on the spot,
+but generally under all the disadvantages and
+disabilities of active campaigning, when the limited
+area within which survey operations can be carried
+on in safety is often very restricted. Thus we have
+very presentable geographical maps of the regions
+of Alexander's exploits in the north, but we have
+not had the opportunity of examining special sites in
+detail, and there are doubtless certain irregularities in
+the map compilation. This is very much the case
+as regards those hill districts on the right bank of
+the Indus immediately adjoining the Buner valley
+both north and south of it. Mahaban, the
+mountain which in Abbott's opinion best represents
+what is to be gathered from classical history
+of the general characteristics of Aornos, is south of
+Buner, overlooking the lower valley close to the
+Indus River. Dr. Stein formed the bold project
+of visiting Mahaban personally, and taking a
+surveyor with him. It was a bold project, for
+there were many difficulties both political and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>
+physical. The tribespeople immediately connected
+with Mahaban are the Gaduns&mdash;a most
+unruly people, constantly fighting amongst themselves;
+and it was only by seizing on the exact
+psychological moment when for a brief space our
+political representative had secured a lull in these
+fratricidal feuds, that Stein was enabled to act. He
+actually reached Mahaban under most trying conditions
+of wind and weather, and he made his
+survey. Incidentally he effected some most remarkable
+Buddhist identifications; but so far as the
+identification of Mahaban with Aornos is concerned
+he came to the conclusion that such identification
+could not possibly be maintained. This opinion is
+practically based on the impossibility of fitting the
+details of the story of Aornos to the physical
+features of Mahaban. It is unfortunate (but
+perhaps inevitable) that even in those incidents
+and operations of Alexander's expedition where his
+footsteps can be distinctly traced from point to
+point, where geographical conformation absolutely
+debars us from alternative selection of lines of
+action, the details of the story never do fit the
+physical conditions which must have obtained in
+his time.</p>
+
+<p>As the history of Alexander is in the main a
+true history, there is absolutely no justification for
+cutting out the thrilling incident of Aornos from it.
+There was undoubtedly an Aornos somewhere near
+the Indus, and there was a singularly interesting
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+fight for its possession, the story of which includes
+so many of the methods and tactics familiar to every
+modern north-west frontiersman, that we decline to
+believe it to be all invention. But the story was
+written a century after Alexander's time, compiled
+from contemporary records it is true, but leaving
+no margin for inquiry amongst survivors as to
+details. If, instead of ancient history, we were to
+turn to the century-old records of our own frontier
+expeditions and rewrite them with no practical
+knowledge of the geography of the country, and no
+witness of the actual scene to give us an <i>ex parte</i>
+statement of what happened (for no single participator
+in an action is ever able to give a correct
+account of all the incidents of it), what should we
+expect? Some furtive investigator might study
+the story of the ascent of the famous frontier mountain,
+the Takht-i-Suliman (a veritable Aornos!),
+during the expedition of 1882-83, and find it impossible
+to recognize the account of its steep and
+narrow ascent, requiring men to climb on their
+hands and knees, with the fact that a very considerable
+force did finally ascend by comparatively
+easy slopes and almost dropped on to the heads of
+the defenders. Such incidents require explanation
+to render them intelligible, and at this distance of
+time it is only possible to balance probabilities as
+regards Aornos.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander's objective being India, eventually,
+and the Indus (of India, not of the Himalayas)
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span>
+immediately, he would take the road which led
+straightest from Massaga to the Indus; it is inconceivable
+that he would deliberately involve himself
+and his army in the maze of pathless mountains
+which enclose the head of Buner. He would
+certainly take the road which leads from Malakand
+to the Indus, on which lies Rustam. It has always
+been a great high-road. One of the most interesting
+discoveries in connection with the Tirah campaign
+was the old Buddhist road, well engineered and
+well graded, which leads from Malakand to the
+plains of the Punjab&mdash;those northern plains which
+abound with Buddhist relics. If we identify Bazar,
+or Rustam, with Bazireh we may assume with
+certainty that a retreating tribe, driven from any
+field of defeat on the straight high-road which links
+Panjkora with the Indus, would inevitably retire to
+the nearest and the highest mountain ridge that
+was within reach. This is certainly the ridge
+terminating with Mahaban and flanking the Buner
+valley on the south, a refuge in time of trouble for
+many a lawless people. Probability, then, would
+seem to favour Mahaban, or some mountain position
+near it. The modern name of this peak is Shah
+Kot, and it is occupied by a mixed and irregular
+folk. Here Dr. Stein spent an unhappy night in a
+whirling snow-storm, but he succeeded in examining
+the mountain thoroughly. He decided that that
+position of Mahaban could not possibly represent
+Aornos, for the following reasons:&mdash;The hill-top is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>
+too narrow for military action; the ascent, instead
+of being difficult, is easy from every side; and there
+is no spring of water on the summit, which summit
+must have been a very considerable plateau to
+admit of the action described; finally, there is no
+great ravine, and therefore no opportunity for the
+erection of the mound described by Arrian, which
+enabled the Greeks to fusilade the enemy's camp
+with darts and stones. Can we reconcile these
+discrepancies with the text of history?</p>
+
+<p>After the reduction of Bazira Alexander marched
+towards the Indus and received the submission of
+Peukelaotis, which was then the capital of what
+is now, roughly speaking, the Peshawur district.
+The site of this ancient capital appears to be
+ascertained beyond doubt, and we must regard it
+as fixed near Charsadda, about 17 miles north-east
+(not north-west as M'Crindle has it) from
+Peshawur. From this place Alexander marched
+to Embolina, which is said to be a city close adjoining
+the rock of Aornos. On the route thither he is
+said by Arrian to have taken "many other small
+towns seated upon that river," <i>i.e</i>. the Indus; two
+princes of that province, Cophæus and Assagetes,
+accompanying him. This sufficiently indicates that
+his march must have been up the right bank of the
+Indus, which would be the natural route for him to
+follow. Arrived at Embolina, he arranged for a
+base of supplies at that point, and then, with
+"Archers, Agrians, Cænus' Troop" and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span>
+choicest, best armed, and most expeditious foot
+out of the whole army, besides 200 auxiliary horse
+and 100 equestrian archers, he marched towards
+the "rock" (8 miles distant), and on the first
+day chose a place convenient for an encampment.
+The day after, he pitched his tents much higher.
+The ancient Embolina may not be the modern
+Amb, but Amb undoubtedly is an extremely probable
+site for such a base of supplies to be formed,
+whether the final objective were Mahaban or any
+place (as suggested by Stein) higher up the river.
+The fact that there is a similarity in the names
+Amb and Embolina need not militate against the
+adoption of the site of Amb as by far the most
+probable that any sagacious military commander
+would select. A mere resemblance between the
+ancient and modern names of places may, of course,
+be most deceptive. On the other hand it is often
+a most valuable indication, and one certainly not to
+be neglected. Place-names last with traditional
+tenacity in the East, and obscured as they certainly
+would be by Greek transliteration (after all, not
+worse than British transliteration), they still
+offer a chance of identifying old positions such as
+nothing else can offer excepting accurate topographical
+description. Once again, if Embolina
+were not Amb it certainly ought to have been.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander's next movements from Embolina
+most clearly indicate that he had to deal with a
+mountain position. There is no getting away
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span>
+from it, nor from the fact that the road to it was
+passable for horsemen, and therefore not insuperably
+difficult. At the same time he had to move as
+slowly as any modern force would move, for he was
+traversing the rough spurs of a hill which ran to
+7800 feet in altitude. Further, the mountain was
+high enough to render signalling by fire useful.
+The "rock" was obviously either a mountain itself
+or it was perched on the summit of a mountain.
+Ptolemy as usual had conducted the reconnaissance.
+He established himself unobserved in a temporary
+position on the crest, within reach of the enemy,
+who attempted to dispossess him and failed; and
+it was he who (according to the story) signalled to
+Alexander. Ptolemy had followed a route, with
+guides, which proved rough and difficult, and
+Alexander's attempt to join him next day was
+prevented by the fierce activity of the mountaineers,
+who were plainly fighting from the
+mountain spurs. Then, it is said, Alexander communicated
+with Ptolemy by night and arranged a
+combined plan of attack. When it "was almost
+night" of the following day Alexander succeeded
+in joining Ptolemy, but only after severe fighting
+during the ascent. Then the combined forces
+attacked the "rock" and failed. All this so far is
+plain unvarnished mountain warfare, and the incidents
+follow each other as naturally as in any
+modern campaign. It becomes clear that the
+"rock" was a position on the crest of a high
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span>
+mountain, the ascent of which was rendered doubly
+difficult by fierce opposition. But it was practicable.
+Nothing is said about cavalry ascending.
+Why, then, did Alexander take cavalry? This
+question leads to another. Why do our frontier
+generals always burden themselves with cavalry on
+these frontier expeditions? They cannot act on
+the mountain-sides, and they are useless for
+purposes of pursuit. The answer is that they
+are most valuable for preserving the line of communication.
+Without the cavalry Alexander had
+no overwhelming force at his disposal, and it would
+not be very hazardous if we assumed that the force
+which actually reached the crest of the mountain
+was a comparatively small one&mdash;much of the
+original brigade being dispersed on the route.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Stein found the ascent too easy to reconcile
+with history. This might possibly be the effect of
+long weather action of the slopes of mountains
+subject to severe snow-falls. Twenty-three centuries
+of wind and weather have beaten on those
+scarred and broken slopes since Alexander's day.
+Those twenty-three centuries have had such effect
+on the physical outlines of land conformation elsewhere
+as absolutely to obliterate the tracks over
+which the Greek force most undoubtedly passed.
+What may have been the exact effect of them on
+Mahaban, whether (as usual) they rounded off
+sharp edges, cut out new channels, obliterated
+some water springs and gave rise to others,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>
+smoothing down the ruggedness of spurs and
+shaping the drainage, we cannot say. Only it is
+certain that the slopes of Mahaban&mdash;and its crest
+for that matter&mdash;are not what they were twenty-three
+centuries ago. We shall never recognize
+Aornos by its superficial features. Then, in the
+Greek story, follows the episode of filling up the
+great ravine which yawned between the Greek
+position and the "rock" on which the tribespeople
+were massed, and the final abandonment of
+the latter when, after three days' incessant toil, a
+mound had been raised from which it could be
+assailed by the darts and missiles of the Greeks.
+Arrian tells the story with a certain amount of
+detail. He states that a "huge rampart" was
+raised "from the level of that part of the hill
+where their entrenchment was" by means of
+"poles and stakes," the whole being "perfected in
+three days." On the fourth day the Greeks began
+to build a "mound opposite the rock," and
+Alexander decided to extend the "Rampart" to
+the mound. It was then that the "Barbarians"
+decided to surrender.</p>
+
+<p>In the particular translation from which I have
+quoted (Rookes, 1829) there is nothing said about
+the "great ravine" of which Stein writes that it is
+clearly referred to by "all texts," and a very little
+consideration will show that it could never have
+existed. No matter what might have been the
+strength of Alexander's force it could only have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>
+been numbered by hundreds and not by thousands,
+when it reached the summit of the mountain. We
+might refer to the modern analogy of the expedition
+to the summit of the Takht-i-Suliman, where
+it was found quite impossible to maintain a few
+companies of infantry for more than two or three
+days. Numbers engaged in action are proverbially
+exaggerated, especially in the East; but the
+physical impossibility of keeping a large force on
+the top of a mountain must certainly be acknowledged.
+Even supposing there were a thousand
+men, and that no guards were required, and no
+reliefs, and that the whole force could apply themselves
+to filling up a "large ravine" with such
+"stakes and poles" as they could carry or drag
+from the mountain-slopes, it would take three
+months rather than three days to fill up any ravine
+which could possibly be called "large." General
+Abbott, as a scientific officer, was probably quite
+correct in his estimate of the "Rampart" as some
+sort of a "trench of approach with a parapet."
+There could not possibly have been a "great
+mound built of stakes and poles for crossing a
+ravine." It may be noted that Ptolemy's defensive
+work on his first arrival on the summit is called
+(or translated) "Rampart," and yet we know that
+it could only have been a palisade or an abattis.
+The story told by Arrian (and possibly maltreated
+by translators) is doubtless full of inaccuracies and
+exaggerations, but we decline to believe that it is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span>
+pure invention. There is nothing in it, so far,
+which absolutely militates against the Mahaban of
+to-day (that refuge for Hindustani fanatics at one
+time, and for the discontented tribesfolk of the
+whole countryside through all time) being the
+Aornos of Arrian. No appearance of "precipices"
+is, however, to be found in the survey of the summit
+which accompanied Dr. Stein's report, and no
+opportunity for the defeated tribesmen to fall into
+the river. The story runs that the defeated mountaineers
+retreating from the victorious Greeks fell
+over the precipices in their hot haste, and that
+many of them were drowned in the Indus. This
+is indeed an incident which might be added as an
+effective addition to any tall story of a fight which
+took place on hills in the immediate neighbourhood
+of a river; but under no conceivable circumstances
+could it be adjusted to the formation of the
+Mahaban hill, even if it were admitted that
+armoured Greeks were any match in the hills for
+the fleet-footed and light-clad Indians. Probably
+the incident is purely decorative, but we need not
+therefore assume that the whole story is fiction.
+It has been pointed out by Sir Bindon Blood, who
+commanded the latest expedition to the Buner
+valley, that failing Mahaban there is north of the
+Buner River, immediately overlooking the Indus, a
+peak called Baio with precipitous flanks on the
+river side, which would fit in with the tale of Aornos
+better even than Mahaban. The Buner River joins
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>
+the Indus through an impassable gorge steeply
+entrenched on either side, and a mile or two above
+it is the peak of Baio. So far as the Indus is
+concerned, that river presents no difficulties, for
+boats can be hauled up it far beyond Baio&mdash;even to
+Thakot. Looking northward or westward from
+above Kotkai one sees the river winding round the
+foot of the lower spurs of the Black Mountain on
+its left or eastern bank. Beyond is Baio on its
+right bank, towering (with a clumsy fort on its
+summit) over the Indus and forming part of a
+continuous ridge, beyond which again in the blue
+distance is the line of hills over which is the
+Ambela Pass at the head of the Chumla valley. (It
+is curious how the nomenclature hereabouts echoes
+faintly the Greek Embolina.) Above Baio is the
+ford of Chakesar, from which runs an old-time road
+westward to Manglaor, once the Buddhist capital
+of Swat. It would be all within reach of either
+Indians or Greeks, so we need not quite give up
+the thrilling tale of Aornos yet, even if Dr. Stein
+defeats us on Mahaban.</p>
+
+<p>Then follows the narrative of an excursion into
+the country of the Assakenoi and the capture of the
+elephants, which had been taken for safety into
+the hills. The scene of this short expedition must
+have been near the Indus, and was probably the
+valley of the Chumla or Buner immediately under
+Mahaban, to the north. There was in those far-off
+days a different class of vegetation on the Indus
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>
+banks to any which exists at present. We know
+that a good deal of the Indus plain below its debouchment
+from the hills was a reedy swamp in
+Alexander's time, and it was certainly the haunt
+of the rhinoceros for centuries subsequently, and
+consequently quite suitable for elephants, and it
+is probable that for some little distance above its
+debouchment the same sort of pasturage was obtainable.
+Most interesting perhaps of all the incidents
+in Arrian's history is that which now follows.
+We are told that "Alexander then entered that
+part of the country which lies between the Kophen
+and the Indus, where Nysa is said to be situate."
+Other authorities, however, Curtius (viii. 10),
+Strabo (xv. 697), and Justin (xii. 7), make him a
+visitor to Nysa before he crossed the Choaspes
+and took Massaga. All this is very vague; the
+river he crossed immediately before taking Massaga
+was certainly the Gauraios or Panjkora.</p>
+
+<p>There is a certain element of confusion in
+classical writings in dealing with river names which
+we need not wait to investigate; nor is it a matter
+of great importance whether Alexander retraced
+his steps all the way to the country of Nysa (for
+no particular reason), or whether he visited Nysa
+as he passed from the Kunar valley to the Panjkora.
+The latter is far more probable, as Nysa (if we
+have succeeded in identifying that interesting relic
+of pre-Alexandrian Greek occupation) would be
+right in his path. Various authorities have placed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span>
+Nysa in different parts of the wide area indicated
+as lying between the Kophen (Kabul) and the
+Indus, but none, before the Asmar Boundary Commission
+surveyed the Kunar valley in the year 1894,
+had the opportunity of studying the question <i>in
+loco</i>. Even then there was no possibility of reaching
+the actual site which was indicated as the site of
+Nysa; and when subsequently in 1898 geographical
+surveys of Swat were pushed forward wherever it
+was possible for surveyors to obtain a footing, they
+never approached that isolated band of hills at
+the foot of which Nysa once lay. The result of
+inquiries instituted during the progress of demarcating
+the boundary between Afghanistan and the
+independent districts of the east from Asmar have
+been given in the <i>R.G.S. Journal</i>, vol. vii., and
+no subsequent information has been obtained which
+might lead me to modify the views therein expressed,
+excepting perhaps in the doubtful point as
+to <i>when</i>, in the course of his expedition, Alexander
+visited Nysa. In the first engraved Atlas sheet of
+the Indian Survey dealing with the regions east
+of the Kunar River, the name of Nysa, or Nyssa,
+is recorded as one of the most important places in
+that neighbourhood, and it is placed just south of
+the Koh-i-Mor, a spur, or extension, from the
+eastern ridges of the Kunar valley. From what
+source of information this addition to the map was
+made it is difficult to say, now that the first compiler
+of those maps (General Walker) has passed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span>
+away. But it was undoubtedly a native source.
+Similarly the information obtained at Asmar, that
+a large and scattered village named <i>Nusa</i> was to
+be found in that position, was also from a native
+(Yusufzai) source. No possible cause can be suggested
+for this agreement between the two native
+authorities, and it is unlikely that the name could
+have been invented by both. At the same time
+Nysa, or Nusa, is not now generally known to the
+borderland people near the Indian frontier, and it
+is certainly no longer an important village. It is
+probably no more than scattered and hidden ruins.
+Above it towers the three-peaked hill called the
+Koh-i-Mor, whose outlines can be clearly distinguished
+from Peshawur on any clear day, and on
+that hill grows the wild vine and the ivy, even as
+they grow in glorious trailing and exuberant masses
+on the scarped slopes of the Kafiristan hills to
+the west.</p>
+
+<p>We may repeat here what Arrian has to say
+about Nysa. "The city was built by Dionysos or
+Bacchus when he conquered the Indians, but who
+this Bacchus was, or at what time or from whence
+he conquered the Indians is hard to determine.
+Whether he was that Theban who from Thebes
+or he who from Tmolus, a mountain of Lydia,
+undertook that famous expedition into India ... is
+very uncertain." So here we have a clear reference
+to previous invasions of India from Greece, which
+were regarded as historical in Arrian's time. However,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span>
+as soon as Alexander arrived at Nysa a
+deputation of Nysæans, headed by one Akulphis,
+waited on him, and, after recovering from the
+astonishment that his extraordinary appearance inspired,
+they presented a petition. "The Nysæans
+entreat thee O King, for the reverence thou bearest
+to Dionysos, their God, to leave their city untouched
+... for Bacchus ... built this city for an
+habitation for such of his soldiers as age or accident
+had rendered unfit for military service.... He
+called this city Nysa (Nuson) after the name of
+his nurse ... and the mountain also, which is so
+near us, he would have denominated Meros (or
+the thigh) alluding to his birth from that of Jupiter
+... and as an undoubted token that the place was
+founded by Bacchus, the ivy which is to be found
+nowhere else throughout all India, flourishes in our
+territories." Alexander was pleased to grant the
+petition, and ordered that a hundred of the chief
+citizens should join his camp and accompany him.
+It was then that Akulphis, with much native shrewdness,
+suggested that if he really had the good of
+the city at heart he should take two hundred of the
+worst citizens instead of one hundred of the best&mdash;a
+suggestion which appealed at once to Alexander's
+good sense, and the demand was withdrawn.
+Alexander then visited the mountain and sacrificed
+to Bacchus, his troops meanwhile making garlands
+of ivy "wherewith they crowned their heads, singing
+and calling loudly upon the god, not only by the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span>
+name of Dionysos, but by all his other names."
+A sort of Bacchic orgy!</p>
+
+<p>But who were the Nysæans, and what became
+of them? In Arrian's <i>Indika</i> he says: "The Assakenoi"
+(who inhabited the Swat valley east of
+Nysa) "are not men of great stature like the
+Indians ... not so brave nor yet so swarthy as
+most Indians. They were in old times subject to
+the Assyrians; then after a period of Median rule
+submitted to the Persians ... the Nysaioi, however,
+are not an Indian race, but descendants of
+those who came to India with Dionysos"; he adds
+that the mountain "in the lower slopes of which
+Nysa is built" is designated Meros, and he clearly
+distinguishes between Assakenoi and Nysaioi. M.
+de St. Martin says that the name Nysa is of Persian
+or Median origin; but although we know that
+Assyrians, Persians, and Medes all overran this
+part of India before Alexander, and all must have
+left, as was the invariable custom of those days,
+representatives of their nationality behind them who
+have divided with subsequent Skyths the ethnographical
+origin of many of the Upper Indian valley
+tribes of to-day, there seems no sound reason for
+disputing the origin of this particular name.</p>
+
+<p>Ptolemy barely mentions Nysa, but we learn
+something about the Nysæans from fragments of
+the <i>Indika</i> of Megasthenes, which have been collected
+by Dr. Schwanbeck and translated by
+M'Crindle. We learn that this pre-Alexandrian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span>
+Greek Dionysos was a most beneficent conqueror.
+He taught the Indians how to make wine and
+cultivate the fields; he introduced the system of
+retiring to the slopes of Meros (the first "hill
+station" in India) in the hot weather, where "the
+army recruited by the cold breezes and the water
+which flowed fresh from the fountains, recovered
+from sickness.... Having achieved altogether
+many great and noble works, he was regarded as
+a deity, and obtained immortal honours."</p>
+
+<p>Again we read, in a fragment quoted by Strabo,
+that the reason of calling the mountain above Nysa
+by the name of Meron was that "ivy grows there,
+and also the vine, although its fruit does not come
+to perfection, as the clusters, on account of the
+heaviness of the rains, fall off the trees before
+ripening. They" (the Greeks) "further call the
+Oxydrakai descendants of Dionysos, because the
+vine grew in their country, and their processions
+were conducted with great pomp, and their kings,
+on going forth to war, and on other occasions,
+marched in Bacchic fashion with drums beating,"
+etc.</p>
+
+<p>Again we find, in a fragment quoted by Polyænus,
+that Dionysos, "in his expedition against the
+Indians, in order that the cities might receive
+him willingly, disguised the arms with which he
+had equipped his troops, and made them wear soft
+raiment and fawn-skins. The spears were wrapped
+round with ivy, and the thyrsus had a sharp point.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>
+He gave the signal for battle by cymbals and drums
+instead of the trumpet; and, by regaling the enemy
+with wine, diverted their thoughts from war to
+dancing. These and all other Bacchic orgies were
+employed in the system of warfare by which he
+subjugated the Indians and the rest of Asia."</p>
+
+<p>All these lively legends point to a very early
+subjugation of India by a Western race (who may
+have been of Greek origin) before the invasions of
+Assyrian, Mede, or Persian. It could not well have
+been later than the sixth century <span class="s08">B.C.</span>, and might
+have been earlier by many centuries. The Nysæans,
+whose city Alexander spared, were the descendants
+of those conquerors who, coming from the West,
+were probably deterred by the heat of the plains of
+India from carrying their conquests south of the
+Punjab. They settled on the cool and well-watered
+slopes of those mountains which crown the uplands
+of Swat and Bajaur, where they cultivated the vine
+for generations, and after the course of centuries,
+through which they preserved the tradition of their
+Western origin, they welcomed the Macedonian
+conqueror as a man of their own faith and nation.
+It seems possible that they may have extended their
+habitat as far eastward as the upper Swat valley
+and the mountain region of the Indus, and at one
+time may have occupied the site of the ancient
+capital of the Assakenoi, Massaga, which there is
+reason to suppose stood near the position now
+occupied by the town of Matakanai; but they were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>
+clearly no longer there in the days of Alexander,
+and must be distinguished as a separate race altogether
+from the Assakenoi. As the centuries rolled
+on, this district of Swat, together with the valley
+of Dir, became a great headquarters of Buddhism.
+It is from this part of the trans-frontier that some
+of the most remarkable of those sculptures have been
+taken which exhibit so strong a Greek and Roman
+influence in their design. They are the undoubted
+relics of stupas, dagobas, and monasteries belonging
+to a period of a Buddhist occupation of the country,
+which was established after Alexander's time.
+Buddhism did not become a State religion till the
+reign of Asoka, grandson of that Sandrakottos
+(Chandragupta) to whom Megasthenes was sent as
+ambassador; and it is improbable that any of these
+buildings existed in the time of the Greek invasion,
+or we should certainly have heard of them.</p>
+
+<p>But along with these Buddhist relics there have
+been lately unearthed certain strange inscriptions,
+which have been submitted by their discoverer,
+Major Deane,<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> to a congress of Orientalists, who can
+only pronounce them to be in an unknown tongue.
+They have been found in the Indus valley east of
+Swat, most of them being engraved on stone slabs
+which have been built into towers, now in ruins.
+The towers are comparatively modern, but it by
+no means follows that these inscriptions are so.
+It is the common practice of Pathan builders to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span>
+preserve any engraved or sculptured relic that they
+may find, by utilizing them as ornamental features
+in their buildings. It has probably been a custom
+from time immemorial. In 1895 I observed evidences
+of this propensity in the graveyard at
+Chagan Sarai, in the Kunar valley, where many
+elaborately carved Buddhist fragments were let into
+the sides of their roughly built "chabutras," or
+sepulchres, with the obvious purpose of gaining
+effect thereby. No one would say where those
+Buddhist fragments came from. The Kunar valley
+appears at first sight to be absolutely free from
+Buddhist remains, although it would naturally be
+selected as a most likely field for research. These
+undeciphered inscriptions may possibly be found to
+be vastly more ancient than the towers they adorned.
+It is, at any rate, a notable fact about them that
+some of them "recall a Greek alphabet of archaic
+type." So great an authority as M. Senart inclines
+to the opinion that their authors must be referred
+to the Skythic or Mongolian invaders of India;
+but he refers at the same time to a sculptured and
+inscribed monument in the Louvre, of unknown
+origin, the characters on which resemble those of
+the new script. "The subject of this sculpture
+seems to be a Bacchic procession." What if it
+really is a Bacchic procession, and the characters
+thereon inscribed prove to be an archaic form of
+Greek&mdash;the forgotten forms of the Nysæan alphabet?</p>
+
+<p>Whilst surveying in the Kunar valley along
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span>
+the Kafiristan borderland, I made the acquaintance
+of two Kafirs of Kamdesh, who stayed some little
+time in the Afghan camp, in which my own tent
+was pitched, and who were objects of much interest
+to the members of the Boundary Commission there
+assembled. They submitted gracefully enough to
+much cross-examination, and amongst other things
+they sang a war-hymn to their god Gish, and
+executed a religious dance. Gish is not supreme
+in their mythology, but he is the god who receives
+by far the greatest amount of attention, for the
+Kafir of the lower Bashgol is ever on the raid,
+always on the watch for the chance of a Mahomedan
+life. It is, indeed, curious that whilst tolerant
+enough to allow of the existence of Mahomedan
+communities in their midst, they yet rank the life
+of a Mussulman as the one great object of attainment;
+so that a Kafir's social position is dependent
+on the activity he displays in searching out the
+common enemy, and his very right to sing hymns
+of adoration to his war-god is strictly limited by the
+number of lives he has taken. The hymn which
+these Kafirs recited, or sang, was translated word
+by word, with the aid of a Chitrali interpreter, by a
+Munshi, who has the reputation of being a most
+careful interpreter, and the following is almost a
+literal transcript, for which I am indebted to Dr.
+MacNab, of the Q.O. Corps of Guides:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p>O thou who from Gir-Nysa's (lofty heights) was born</p>
+<p>Who from its sevenfold portals didst emerge,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span></p>
+<p>On Katan Chirak thou hast set thine eyes,</p>
+<p>Towards (the depths of) Sum Bughal dost go,</p>
+<p>In Sum Baral assembled you have been.</p>
+<p>Sanji from the heights you see; Sanji you consult?</p>
+<p>The council sits. O mad one, whither goest thou?</p>
+<p>Say, Sanji, why dost thou go forth?</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The words within brackets are introduced, otherwise
+the translation is literal. Gir-Nysa means the
+mountain of Nysa, Gir being a common prefix
+denoting a peak or hill. Katan Chirak is explained
+to be an ancient town in the Minjan valley of
+Badakshan, now in ruins; but it was the first large
+place that the Kafirs captured, and is apparently
+held to be symbolical of victory. This reference
+connects the Kamdesh Kafirs with Badakshan, and
+shows these people to have been more widespread
+than they are at present. Sum Bughal is a deep
+ravine leading down to the plain of Sum Baral,
+where armies are assembled for war. Sanji appears
+to be the oracle consulted before war is undertaken.
+The chief interest of this verse (for I believe it is
+only one verse of many, but it was all that our
+friends were entitled to repeat) is the obvious reference
+in the first line to the mountain of Bacchus,
+the Meros from which he was born, on the slopes
+of which stood the ancient Nysa. It is, indeed, a
+Bacchic hymn (slightly incoherent, perhaps, as is
+natural), and only wants the accessories of vine-leaves
+and ivy to make it entirely classical.</p>
+
+<p>That eminent linguistic authority, Dr. Grierson,
+thinks that the language in which the hymn was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span>
+recited is derived from what Sanscrit writers said
+was the language of the Pisacas, a people whom
+they dubbed "demons" and "eaters of raw flesh,"
+and who may be represented by the "Pashai"
+dwellers in Laghman and its vicinity to-day. Possibly
+the name of the chief village of the Kunar valley
+Pashat may claim the same origin, for Laghman
+and Kunar both spread their plains to the foot of
+the mountains of Kafiristan.</p>
+
+<p>The vine and the ivy are not far to seek. In
+making slow progress through one of the deep
+"darras," or ravines, of the western Kunar basin,
+leading to the snow-bound ridges that overlook
+Bashgol, I was astonished at the free growth of the
+wild vine, and the thick masses of ivy which here
+and there clung to the buttresses of the rugged
+mountain spurs as ivy clings to less solid ruins in
+England. The Kafirs have long been celebrated
+for their wine-making. Early in the nineteenth
+century, when the adventurer Baber, on his way to
+found the most magnificent dynasty that India has
+ever seen at Delhi, first captured the ancient city
+of Bajaor, and then moved on to the valley of
+Jandoul&mdash;now made historic by another adventurer,
+Umra Khan&mdash;he was perpetually indulging in
+drinking-parties; and he used to ride in from Jandoul
+to Bajaor to join his cronies in a real good Bacchic
+orgy more frequently than was good for him. He
+has a good deal to say about the Kafir wine in
+that inimitable Diary of his, and his appreciation of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span>
+it was not great. It was, however, much better
+than nothing, and he drank a good deal of it.
+Through the kindness of the Sipah Salar, the Amir's
+commander-in-chief, I have had the opportunity of
+tasting the best brand of this classical liquor, and
+I agree with Baber&mdash;it is not of a high class. It
+reminded me of badly corked and muddy Chablis,
+which it much resembled in appearance.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="i155" id="i155"></a>
+<img src="images/i_155.jpg" width="550" height="288" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">Greek Retreat from India<br />
+<br />
+<a href="images/i_155fs.jpg">View larger image</a></p>
+</div>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p class="center">GREEK EXPLORATION&mdash;THE WESTERN GATES OF INDIA</p>
+
+<p class="p2">South of the Khaibar route from Peshawur to
+Kabul and separated from it by the remarkable
+straight-backed range of Sufed Koh, is an alternative
+route <i>via</i> the Kuram valley, at the head of
+which is the historic Peiwar Pass. From the crest
+of the rigid line of the Sufed Koh one may look
+down on either valley, the Kabul to the north or
+the Kuram to the south; and but for the lack of
+any convenient lateral communications between
+them, the two might be regarded as a twin system,
+with Kabul as the common objective. But there
+is no practicable pass across the Sufed Koh, so
+that no force moving along either line could
+depend on direct support from the other side of
+the mountains. It will be convenient here to
+regard the Kuram as an alternative to the Kabul
+route, and to consider the two together as forming
+a distinct group.</p>
+
+<p>The next important link between Afghanistan
+and the Indian frontier south of the Kuram, is the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span>
+open ramp of the Tochi valley. The Tochi does
+not figure largely in history, but it has been
+utilized in the past for sudden raids from Ghazni
+in spite of the difficulties which Nature has strewn
+about its head. The Tochi, and the Gomul River
+south of it, must be regarded as highways to
+Ghazni, but there is no comparison between the
+two as regards their facilities or the amount of
+traffic which they carry. All the carrying trade of
+the Ghazni province is condensed into the narrow
+ways of the Gomul. Trade in the Tochi hardly
+extends farther than the villages at its head.
+About the Gomul there hangs many a tale of
+adventure, albeit adventure of rather ancient date,
+for it is exceedingly doubtful if any living European
+has ever trod more than the lower steps of that
+ancient staircase. Then, south of the Gomul, there
+follows a whole series of minor passes and byways
+wriggling through the clefts of the mountains,
+scrambling occasionally over the sharp ridges, but
+generally adhering closely to the line of some fierce
+little stream, which has either split its way through
+the successive walls of rock offered by the parallel
+uptilted ridges, or else was there, flowing gently
+down from the highlands, before these ridges were
+tilted into their present position. There are many
+such streams, and the history of their exploration
+is to be found in the modern Archives of the
+Survey of India. They may have been used for
+centuries by roving bands of frontier raiders, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span>
+they have no history to speak of. South of the
+Gomul, they all connect Baluchistan with India,
+for Baluchistan begins, politically, from the Gomul;
+and they are of minor importance because, by grace
+of the determined policy of the great maker of the
+Baluch frontier, Sir Robert Sandeman, their back
+doors and small beginnings in the Baluch highlands
+are all linked up by a line of posts which runs from
+Quetta to the Gomul <i>via</i> the Zhob valley. Whoever
+holds the two ends of the Zhob holds the key
+of all these back doors. There is not much to be
+said about them. No great halo of historical
+romance hangs around them; and yet the stern
+grandeur of some of these waterways of the frontier
+hills is well worth a better descriptive pen than
+mine. I know of one, in the depths of a fathomless
+abyss, whose waters rage in wild fury over
+fantastic piles of boulders, tossing up feathers of
+white spray to make glints of light on the smooth
+apron of the limestone walls which enclose and
+overshadow it, which is matchless in its weird
+beauty. From rounded sun-kissed uplands, where
+olive groves shelve down long spurs, the waters
+come, and with a gradually deepening and
+strengthening rush they swirl into the embrace of
+the echoing hills, passing with swift transition from
+a sunny stream to a boiling fury of turgid water
+under the rugged cliffs of the pine-clad Takht-i-Suliman.
+Then the stream sets out again, babbling
+sweetly as it goes, into the open, just a dimpled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>
+stream, leaving lonely pools in silent places on its
+way, and breaking up into a hundred streamlets to
+gladden the mountain people with the gift of
+irrigation.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to describe these frontier waterways.
+There is nothing like them to be found
+amidst scenes less wild and less fantastic than their
+frontier cradles. But full of local light and colour
+(and local tragedy too) as they surely are, they are
+unimportant in the military economy of the frontier,
+and their very wildness and impassability have saved
+them from the steps of the great horde of Indian
+immigrants. When, however, we reach still farther
+southward to the straight passes leading to Quetta,
+we are once again in a land of history. It is there
+we find by far the most open gates and those most
+difficult to shut, although the value of them as
+military approaches is very largely discounted by
+the geographical conditions of Western India at
+the point where they open on to the Indus frontier.</p>
+
+<p>Quetta, Kalat, and Las Bela, standing nearly in
+line from north to south, are the watch-towers of
+the western marches. Quetta and Kalat stand
+high, surrounded by wild hill country. Magnificent
+cliff-crowned mountains overlooking a wilderness
+of stone-strewed spurs embrace the little flat plain
+on which Quetta lies crumpled. Here and there
+on the plain an isolated smooth excrescence denotes
+an extinct volcano. Such is the Miri, now converted
+into the protecting fort of Quetta. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>
+road from Quetta to the north-west, <i>i.e.</i> to
+Kandahar and Herat, has to pass through a
+narrow hill-enclosed space some eight miles from
+Quetta; and this physical gateway is strengthened
+and protected by all the devices of which military
+engineering skill is capable, whilst midway between
+Quetta and Kandahar is the formidable Khojak
+range which must always have been a trouble to
+buccaneers from the north-west. From Quetta to
+the south-east extends that road and that railway
+which, intersecting the complicated rampart of
+frontier hills, finally debouches into the desert plains
+round Jacobabad in Sind. Kalat is somewhat
+similarly situated. High amongst the mountains,
+Kalat also commands the approaches to an
+important pass to the plains, <i>i.e.</i> the Mula, a pass
+which in times gone by was a commercial high-road,
+but which has long been superseded by the Quetta
+passes of Harnai and Bolan (or Mashkaf). Las
+Bela is an insignificant Baluch town in the valley
+of the Purali, and at present commands nothing of
+value. But it was not always insignificant, as we
+shall see, and if its military value is not great at
+present, Las Bela must have stood full in the tide
+of human immigration to India for centuries in the
+past. It is a true gateway, and the story of it
+belongs to a period more ancient than any.</p>
+
+<p>Owing to the peculiar geographical conformation
+of the country, Quetta holds in her keeping all
+the approaches from the west, thus safeguarding
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span>
+Kalat. The Kalat fortress is only of minor importance
+as the guardian of the Mula stairway to the
+plains of India. It is the extraordinary conformation
+of ridge and valley which forms the great
+defensive wall of the southern frontier. Only
+where this wall is traversed by streams which break
+through the successive ridges gathering countless
+affluents from left and right in their course&mdash;affluents
+which are often as straight and rectangular
+to the main stream as the branches of a pear-tree
+trained on a wall are to the parent stem&mdash;is it
+possible to find an open road from the plains to the
+plateau.</p>
+
+<p>For very many miles north of Karachi the plains
+of Sind are faced by a solid wall of rock, so rigid,
+so straight and unscalable (this is the Kirthar
+range) as to form a veritably impracticable barrier.
+There is but one crack in it. For a short space at
+its southern end, however, it subsides into a series
+of minor ridges, and it is here that the connection
+between Karachi and Las Bela is to be found.
+These southern Las Bela approaches (about which
+there is more to be said) are not only the oldest,
+but they have been the most persistently trodden
+of any in the frontier, and they would be just as
+important in future as they have been in the past
+but for their geographical position. They are
+commanded from the sea. No one making for the
+Indus plains can again utilize these approaches who
+does not hold command of the Arabian Sea. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>
+this way, and to this extent, the command of the
+Arabian Sea and of the Persian Gulf beyond it
+becomes vitally important to the security of India.
+Omitting for the present the Gomul gateway (the
+story of the exploration of which belongs to a later
+chapter), and in order to preserve something of
+chronological sequence in this book, it is these
+most southern of the Baluchistan passes which now
+claim our attention.</p>
+
+<p>Until quite lately these seaboard approaches to
+India have been almost ignored by historians and
+military strategists (doubtless because so little was
+known about them), and the pages of recent text-books
+are silent concerning them. They lead outwards
+from the lower Indus valleys through Makran,
+either into Persia or to the coast ports of the
+Arabian Sea. From extreme Western Persia to
+the frontiers of India at Quetta, or indeed to the
+Indus delta, it is possible for a laden camel to
+take its way with care and comfort, never meeting
+a formidable pass, never dragging its weary limbs
+up any too steep incline, with regular stages and
+more or less good pasturage through all the 1400
+or 1500 miles which intervene between Western
+Persia and Las Bela. From the pleasant palm
+groves of Panjgur in Makran to India, it might
+indeed be well to have an efficient local guide, and
+indeed from Las Bela to Karachi the road is not
+to be taken quite haphazard; nevertheless, if the
+camel-driver knew his way, he could not only lead
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>
+his charge comfortably along a well-trodden route,
+but he might turn chauffeur at the end of his long
+march and drive an exploring party back in a
+motor.</p>
+
+<p>In the illimitable past it was this way that
+Dravidian peoples flocked down from Asiatic highlands
+to the borderland of India. Some of them
+remained for centuries either on the coast-line,
+where they built strange dwellings and buried each
+other in earthen pots, or they were entangled in
+the mass of frontier hills which back the solid
+Kirthar ridge, and stayed there till a Turco-Mongol
+race, the Brahuis (or Barohis, <i>i.e.</i> "men of the
+hills"), overlaid them, and intermixing with them
+preserved the Dravidian language, but lost the
+Dravidian characteristics. According to their own
+traditions a large number of these Brahuis were
+implanted in their wild and almost inaccessible hills
+by the conqueror Chenghiz Khan, and some of
+them call themselves Mingals, or Mongols, to this
+day. This seems likely to be true. It is always
+best to assume in the first instance that a local
+tradition firmly held and strongly asserted has a
+basis of fact to support it. Here are a people who
+have been an ethnological puzzle for many years,
+talking the language of Southern Indian tribes, but
+protesting that they are Mongols. Like the degenerate
+descendants of the Greeks in the extreme
+north-west, or like the mixed Arab peoples of the
+Makran coast and Baluchistan, these half-bred
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span>
+Mongols have preserved the traditions of their
+fathers and adopted the tongue of their mothers.
+It is strange how soon a language may be lost that
+is not preserved by the women! What we learn
+from the Brahuis is that a Dravidian race must
+once have been where they are now, and this
+supports the theory now generally admitted, that
+the Dravidian peoples of India entered India by
+these western gateways.</p>
+
+<p>No more interesting ethnographical inquiry
+could be found in relation to the people of India
+than how these races, having got thus far on their
+way, ever succeeded in getting to the south of
+the peninsula. It could only have been the
+earliest arrivals on the frontier who passed on.
+Later arrivals from Western Persia (amongst
+whom we may reckon the Medes or Meds) remained
+in the Indus valley. The bar to frontier
+progress lies in the desert which stretches east of
+the Indus from the coast to the land of the five
+rivers. This is indeed India's second line of defence,
+and it covers a large extent of her frontier.
+Conquerors of the lower Indus valley have been
+obliged to follow up the Indus to the Punjab before
+striking eastwards for the great cities of the plains.
+Thus it is not only the Indus, but the desert
+behind it, which has barred the progress of immigration
+and conquest from time immemorial, and it
+is this, combined with the command given by the
+sea, which differentiates these southern gates of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span>
+India from the northern, which lead on by open
+roads to Lahore, Delhi, and the heart of India.</p>
+
+<p>The answer to the problem of immigration is
+probably simple. There was a time when the great
+rivers of India did not follow their courses as they
+do now. This was most recently the case as regards
+the Indus and the rivers of Central India. In the
+days when there was no Indus delta and the Indus
+emptied itself into the great sandy depression of
+the Rann of Katch, another great lost river from
+the north-east, the Saraswati, fed the Indus, and
+between them the desert area was immensely reduced
+if it did not altogether disappear. Then,
+possibly, could the cairn-erecting stone-monument
+building Dravidian sneak his way along the west
+coast within sight of the sea, and there indeed has
+he left his monuments behind him. Otherwise the
+Dravidian element of Central Southern India could
+only have been gathered from beyond the seas; a
+proposition which it is difficult to believe. However,
+never since that desert strip was formed which
+now flanks the Indus to the east can there have
+been a right-of-way to the heart of India by the
+gateways of the west. The earliest exploration of
+these western roads, of which we can trace any
+distinct record, was once again due to the enterprise
+of the Greeks. We need not follow Alexander's
+victorious footsteps through India, nor concern ourselves
+with the voyage of his fleet down the Indus,
+and from the mouth of the Indus to Karachi.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span>
+General Haig, in his pamphlet on the Indus delta,
+has traced out his route<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> with patient care, demonstrating
+from observations taken during the course
+of his surveys the probable position of the coast-line
+in those early days.</p>
+
+<p>From Karachi to the Persian Gulf, a voyage
+undertaken 300 years <span class="s08">B.C.</span>, of which a log has
+been kept from day to day, is necessarily of
+exceeding interest, if only as an indication of a
+few of the changes which have altered the form
+of that coast-line in the course of twenty-two
+centuries. This old route from Arabia to the
+west coast of India can hardly be left unnoticed,
+for it illustrates the earliest beginning of those sea
+ways to India which were destined finally to supplant
+the land ways altogether. I have already pointed
+out that, judged by the standard of geographical
+aptitude only, there is no great difficulty in reaching
+Persia from Karachi. But geographical distribution
+of mountain, river, and plain is not all that
+is necessary to take into account in planning an
+expedition into new territory. There is also the
+question of supplies. This was the rock on which
+Alexander's enterprise split. In moving out of
+India towards Persia he adopted the same principle
+which had stood him in good stead on the Indus,
+viz. the maintenance of communication between
+army and fleet. Naturally he elected to retire from
+India by a route which as far as possible touched
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>
+the sea. This was his fatal mistake, and it cost
+him half his force.</p>
+
+<p>We need not trouble ourselves further with the
+ethnographical conditions of that extraordinary
+country, Makran, in Alexander's time; nor need
+we follow in detail the changes which have taken
+place in the general configuration of the coast-line
+between India and the Persian Gulf during
+the last 2000 years, references to which will be
+found in the <i>Journal of the Royal Society of Arts</i>
+for April 1901. Apart from the enormous extension
+of the Indus delta, and in spite of the disappearance
+of many small islands off the coast, the general
+result has been a material gain by the land on the
+sea in all this part of the Asiatic coast-line.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander left Patala about the beginning of
+September 326 <span class="s08">B.C.</span> to push his way through the
+country of the Arabii and Oritæ to Gadrosia (or
+Makran) and Persia. The Arabii occupied the
+country between Karachi and the Purali (or river
+of Las Bela), and the Oritæ and Gadrosii apparently
+combined with other tribes to hold the country that
+lay beyond the Purali (or Arabius). He had previously
+done all that a good general can do to ensure
+the success of his movements by personally reconnoitring
+all the approaches to the sea by the
+various branches of the Indus; by pacifying the
+people and consolidating his sovereignty at Patala
+so as to leave a strong position behind him entirely
+subject to Greek authority; and by dividing his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span>
+force so as to utilize the various arms with the best
+possible effect. This force was comprised in three
+divisions; one under Krateros included the heavy
+transport and invalids, and this was despatched to
+Persia by a route which was evidently as well
+known in that day as it is at present. It is never
+contended by any historian that Alexander did not
+know his way out of India. On the contrary,
+Arrian distinctly insinuates that it was the perversity
+of pride, the "ambition to be doing something
+new and astonishing" which "prevailed over
+all his scruples" and decided him to send his crank
+Indus-built galleys to the Euphrates by sea, and
+himself to prove that such an army led by "such a
+general" could force a passage through the Makran
+wilderness where the only previous records were
+those of disaster. He had heard that Cyrus and
+Semiramis had failed, and that decided him to make
+the attempt.</p>
+
+<p>We can follow Krateros no farther than to point
+out that his route was by the Mulla (and not the
+Bolan) Pass to Kalat and Quetta. Thence he must
+have taken the Kandahar route to the Helmund,
+and following that river down to the fertile and
+well-populated plains of lower Seistan (or Drangia)
+he crossed the Kirman desert by a well-known
+modern caravan route, and joined Alexander at or
+near Kirman; for Alexander was "on his way to
+Karmania" at the time that Krateros joined him,
+and not at Pura (the capital of the Gadrosii) as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span>
+suggested by St. John. One interesting little relic
+of this march was dug up by Captain Mackenzie,
+R.E., during the construction of the fort on the
+Miri at Quetta. A small bronze figure of Hercules
+was brought to light, and it now rests in the Asiatic
+Society's Museum at Calcutta.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander, as we have said, left Patala about
+the beginning of September. But where was
+Patala? Probably it was neither Hyderabad (as
+suggested by General Cunningham) nor Tatta (as
+upheld by other authorities), but about 30 miles
+S.E. of the former and 60 miles E.N.E. of the
+latter, in which locality, indeed, there are ruins
+enough to satisfy any theory. From Patala we
+are told by Arrian that he marched with a sufficient
+force to the Arabius; and that is all. But from
+Quintus Curtius we learn that it was nine marches
+to Krokala (a point easier of identification than
+most, from the preservation of the name which survived
+through mediæval ages in the Karak&mdash;the
+much-dreaded pirate of the coast&mdash;and can now be
+recognized in Karachi) and five marches thence to
+the Arabius. He started in cool monsoon weather.
+His route, after leaving Krokala, is determined by
+the natural features of the country as then existing.
+There was no shore route in these days. Alexander
+followed the subsequent mediæval route which
+connected Makran with Sind in the days of Arab
+ascendancy, a route that has been used as a highway
+into India for nearly eight centuries. It is not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span>
+the route which now connects Karachi and Las
+Bela, but belongs to the later mediæval phase of
+history. As the sea then extended at least to
+Liari, in the basin of the Purali or Arabius, we
+are obliged to locate the position of his crossing
+that river as being not far south of Las Bela;
+where in Alexander's time it was "neither wide
+nor deep," and in these days is almost entirely
+absorbed in irrigation. This does not, I admit,
+altogether tally with the five marches of Quintus
+Curtius. It would amount to over a hundred miles
+of marching, some of which would be heavy, though
+not very much of it; but the discrepancy is not a
+serious one. The Arabius may have been far to
+the east of its present channel&mdash;indeed, there are
+old channels which indicate that it was so, and it
+does not follow that the river was crossed at the
+point at which it was struck. The reason for
+placing this crossing so far north is that room is
+required for subsequent operations. After crossing,
+we are told that Alexander "turned to his left
+towards the sea" (from which he was evidently
+distant some space), and with a picked force he
+made a sudden descent on the Oritæ. He marched
+one night only through desert country and in the
+morning came to a well-inhabited district. Pushing
+on with cavalry only, he defeated the Oritæ, and
+then later joining hands with the rest of his forces,
+he penetrated to their capital city. For these
+operations he must necessarily have been hedged
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span>
+in between the Purali and Hala range, which he
+clearly had not crossed as yet. Now we are
+expressly told by Arrian that the capital city of
+the Oritæ was but a village that did duty for the
+capital, and that the name of it was Rambakia.
+The care of it was committed to Hephæstion
+that he might colonize it after the fashion of the
+Greeks. But we find that Hephæstion certainly
+did not stay long there, and could only have left
+the native village as he found it, with no very
+extensive improvements.</p>
+
+<p>It would be most interesting to decide the position
+of Rambakia. What we want to find is an ancient
+site, somewhere approaching the sea-coast, say 30 or
+40 miles from the crossing of the Purali, in a district
+that might once have been cultivated and populous.
+We have found two such sites&mdash;one now called
+Khair Kot, to the north-west of Liari, commanding
+the Hala Pass; and another called Kotawari,
+south-west of Liari, and very near the sea. The
+latter has but recently been uncovered from the
+sand, but an existing mud wall and its position
+on the coast indicate that it is not old enough for
+our purpose. The other, Khair Kot, is an undoubted
+relic of mediæval Arab supremacy. It
+is the Kambali of Idrisi on the high-road from
+Armail (now Bela) to the great Sind port of
+Debal, and the record of it belongs to another
+history. Nevertheless, Khair Kot is exactly where
+we should expect Rambakia to be, and quite possibly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span>
+where Rambakia was. Amongst the coins and relics
+collected there, there is, however, no trace of Greek
+inscription; but that this corner of the Bela district
+was once flourishing and populous there is ample
+evidence.</p>
+
+<p>From Rambakia Alexander proceeded with half
+his targeteers and part of his cavalry to force the
+pass which the Gadrosii and Oritæ had conjointly
+seized "with the design of stopping his progress."
+This pass might either have been the turning pass
+at the northern end of the Hala, or it might have
+been on the water-parting from which the Phur
+River springs farther on. I should think it was
+probably the former, where there is better room for
+cavalry to act.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after defeating the Oritæ (who
+apparently made little resistance) Alexander appointed
+Leonatus, with a picked force, to support
+the new Governor of Rambakia (Hephæstion having
+rejoined the army), and left him to make arrangements
+for victualling the fleet when it arrived,
+whilst he pushed on through desert country into
+the territory of the Gadrosii by "a road very
+dangerous," and drawing down towards the coast.
+He must then have followed the valley of the Phur
+to the coast, and pushed on along the track of the
+modern telegraph line till he reached the neighbourhood
+of the Hingol River. We are indebted
+to Aristobulus for an account of this track in
+Alexander's time. It was here that the Ph&oelig;nician
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span>
+followers of the army gathered their myrrh from
+the tamarisk trees; here were the mangrove
+swamps, and the euphorbias, which still dot the
+plains with their impenetrable clumps of prickly
+"shoots or stems, so thick set that if a horseman
+should happen to be entangled therewith he
+would sooner be pulled off his horse than freed
+from the stem," as Aristobulus tells us. Here,
+too, were found the roots of spikenard, so precious
+to the greedy Ph&oelig;nician followers. These same
+products formed part of the coast trade in the
+days when the Periplus was written, 400 years
+later, though there is little demand for them now.</p>
+
+<p>It was somewhere near the Hingol River that
+Alexander made a considerable halt to collect
+food and supplies for his fleet. His exertions and
+his want of success are all fully described by Arrian,
+as well as the rude class of fishing villages inhabited
+by Ichthyophagi, all the latter of which might well
+be cut out of the pages of Greek history and entered
+in a survey report as modern narrative. After this
+we have but slight indications in Arrian's history of
+Alexander's route to Pura, the capital of Gadrosia.
+Three chapters are full of most graphic and lively
+descriptions of the difficulties and horrors of that
+march. We only hear that he reached Pura sixty
+days after leaving the country of the Oritæ, and
+there is no record of the number of troops that
+survived. Luckily, however, the log kept by the
+admiral of the fleet, Nearkhos, comes into our
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span>
+assistance here, and though it is still Arrian's
+history, it is Nearkhos who speaks.</p>
+
+<p>We must now turn back to follow the ships. I
+cannot enter in detail into the reasons given by
+General Haig, in his interesting pamphlet on the
+Indus Delta Country, for selecting the Gharo creek
+as the particular arm of the Indus which was finally
+selected for the passage of the fleet seaward. I
+can only remark that whilst the nature of the half-formed
+delta of that period is still open to conjecture,
+so that I see no reason why the island of
+Krokala, for instance, should not have been represented
+by a district which bears a very similar
+name nowadays, I fully agree that the description
+of the coast as given by Nearkhos can only possibly
+apply to that section of it which is embraced
+between the Gharo creek and Karachi.</p>
+
+<p>It is only within very recent times that the
+Gharo has ceased to be an arm of the Indus. For
+the present, at any rate, we cannot do better than
+follow so careful an observer as General Haig in
+his conclusions. There can be little doubt that
+Alexander's haven, into which the fleet put till the
+monsoon should moderate, and where it was detained
+for twenty days, was <i>somewhere near</i> Karachi. That
+it was the modern Karachi harbour seems improbable.
+Of all parts of the western coast of India, that
+about Karachi has probably changed its configuration
+most rapidly, and there is ample room for conjecture
+as to where that haven of refuge of 2000
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span>
+years ago might actually have been. Let us accept
+the fleet of river-built galleys, manned with oars,
+and open to every phase of wind and weather, as
+having emerged from it about the beginning of
+October, and as having reached the island of
+Domai, which I am inclined to identify with Manora.</p>
+
+<p>Much difficulty has been found in making
+the estimate of each day's run, as given in
+stadia, tally with the actual length of coast. I
+think the difficulty disappears a good deal if we
+consider what means there were of making such
+estimates. Short runs in the river between known
+landmarks are very fairly consistent in the Greek
+accounts. On the basis of such short runs, and
+with a very vague idea of the effect of wind and
+tide, the length of each day's run at sea was probably
+reckoned at so much per hour. There could hardly
+have been any other way of reckoning open to the
+Greeks. They recognized no landmarks after leaving
+Karachi. Even had they been able to use a
+log-line it would have told them but little. Wind
+and current (for the currents on this part of the sea
+mostly follow the monsoon wind) were either against
+them or on their beam all the way to the Hingol,
+and they encountered more than one severe storm
+which must have broken on them with the full force
+of a monsoon head wind. From the point where
+the fleet rounded Cape Monze and followed the
+windings of the coast to the harbour of Morontobara
+the estimates, though excessive, are fairly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span>
+consistent; but from this point westward, when
+the full force of monsoon wind and current set
+against them, the estimates of distance are very
+largely in excess of the truth, and continue so till
+the pilot was shipped at Mosarna who guided them
+up the coast of Persia. Thenceforward there is
+much more consistency in their log. It must not
+be supposed that Nearkhos was making a voyage
+of discovery. He was following a track that had
+often been followed before. It was clear that
+Alexander knew the way by sea to the coasts of
+Persia before he started his fleet, and it is a matter
+of surprise rather than otherwise that he did not
+find a pilot amongst the Malli, who, if they are to
+be identified with the Meds, were one of the foremost
+sea-going peoples of Asia. His Ph&oelig;nician
+and Greek sailors evidently were strangers to the
+coast, and some of his mixed crew of soldiers and
+sailors had subsequently to be changed for drafts
+from the land forces.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot now follow the voyage in detail, nor
+could we, even if we would, indicate the precise
+position of those islands of which Arrian writes
+between Cape Monze and Sonmiani; some of them
+may now be represented by shoals known to the
+coasting vessels, whilst others may be connected
+with the mainland. I have no doubt myself that
+Morontobara (the "woman's haven") is represented
+by the great depression of the Sirondha
+lake. Between Morontobara and Krokala (which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span>
+about answers to Ras Kachari) they touched at the
+mouth of the Purali, or Arabius, not far from Liari,
+having an island which sheltered them from the sea
+to windward, which is now part of the mainland.
+Near by the mouth of the Arabius was another
+island "high and bare" with a channel between it
+and the mainland. This, too, has been linked up
+with the shore formation, and the channel no longer
+exists, but there is ample evidence of the ancient
+character of this corner of the coast. Between
+the Arabius and Krokala (three days' sail) very bad
+weather was made, and two galleys and a transport
+were lost. It was at Krokala that they joined hands
+with the army again. Here Nearkhos formed a
+camp, and it was "in this part of the country" that
+Leonatus defeated the Oritæ and their allies in a
+great battle wherein 6000 were slain. Arrian adds
+that a full account of the action and its sequel, the
+crowning of Leonatus with a golden crown by
+Alexander, is given in his other work, but as a
+matter of fact the other account is so entirely
+different (representing the Oritæ as submitting
+quietly) that we can only suppose this to have been
+a separate and distinct action from the cavalry
+skirmish mentioned before.</p>
+
+<p>It must be noted that the coast hereabouts has
+probably largely changed. A little farther west it
+is changing rapidly even now, and it is idle to look
+for the names given by the Greeks as marking any
+positive locality known at present. Hereabouts at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span>
+any rate was the spot where Alexander with such
+difficulty had collected ten days' supplies for the
+fleet. This was now put on board, and the bad
+or indifferent sailors exchanged for better seamen.
+From Krokala, a course of 500 stadia (largely over-estimated)
+brought them to the estuary of the Hingol
+River (which is described a winter torrent under the
+name of Tomeros), and from this point all connection
+between the fleet and the army appears to have
+been lost. It was at the mouth of the Hingol that
+a skirmish took place with the natives which is so
+vividly described by Nearkhos, when the Greeks
+leapt into the sea and charged home through the
+surf. Of all the little episodes described in the
+progress of the voyage this is one of the most
+interesting; for there is a very close description
+given of certain barbarians clothed in the skins of
+fish or animals, covered with long hair, and using
+their nails as we use fish-knives, armed with wooden
+pikes hardened in the fire, and fighting more like
+monkeys than men. Here we have the real
+aboriginal inhabitants of India. Not so very many
+years ago, in the woods of Western India, a specimen
+almost literally answering to the description of
+Nearkhos was caught whilst we were in the process
+of surveying those jungles, and he furnished a
+useful contribution to ethnographical science at
+the time. Probably these barbarians of Nearkhos
+were incomparably older even than the Turanian
+races which we can recognize, and which succeeded
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span>
+them, and which, like them, have been gradually
+driven south into the fastnesses of Central
+and Southern India.</p>
+
+<p>Makran is full of Turanian relics connecting it
+with the Dravidian races of the south; but there is
+no time to follow these interesting glimpses into prehistoric
+ethnography opened up by the log of Nearkhos.
+Nor, indeed, can we follow the voyage in detail
+much farther, for we have to take up the route of
+Alexander, about which very much less has hitherto
+been known than can be told about the voyage of
+Nearkhos. We may, however, trace the track of
+Nearkhos past the great rocky headland of Malan,
+still bearing the same name that the Greeks gave
+it, to the commodious harbour of Bagisara, which is
+likely enough the Damizar, or eastern bay, of the
+Urmara headland. The Padizar, or western bay,
+corresponds more nearly with the name Bagisara,
+but as they doubled a headland next day it is
+clear they were on the eastern side of the Isthmus.
+The Pasiris whom he mentions have left frequent
+traces of their existence along the coast. Kalama,
+reached on the second day from Bagisara, is easily
+recognizable in the Khor Khalmat of modern
+surveys, and it is here again that we can trace a
+very considerable extension of the land seawards
+that would completely have altered the course of the
+fleet from the coasting track of modern days. The
+island of Karabine, from which they procured sheep,
+may very well have been the projecting headland
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span>
+of Giaban, now connected by a low sandy waste
+with the mainland. It could never have been the
+island of Astola, as conjectured by M'Crindle and
+others. From Kalama to Kissa (now disappeared)
+and Mosarna, along the coast called Karbis (now
+Gazban), the course would again be longer than at
+present, for there is much recent sand formation
+here; and when we come to Mosarna itself, after
+doubling the headland of Jebel Zarain, we find the
+harbour completely silted up. It may be noted
+that this western bay of Pasni was probably exactly
+similar to the Padizar of Urmara or of Gwadur, and
+that there is a general (but not universal) tendency
+to shallowing on the western sides of all the Makran
+headlands. Here they took the pilot on board, and
+after this there was little difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>In three more days they made Barna (or Badara),
+which answers to Gwadur, where were palm trees
+and myrtles, and we need follow them for the
+present no farther. Colonel Mockler, who was well
+acquainted with the Makran coast, but hardly,
+perhaps, appreciated all the changes which the
+coast-line has undergone (neither, indeed, did I till
+the surveys were complete), has traced the course
+of that historic fleet with great care. He has
+pointed out correctly that two islands (Pola and
+Karabia) have disappeared from the eastern
+neighbourhood of the Gwadur headland and one
+(Derenbrosa) from its western extremity; and he
+might have added that yet another is breaking
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>
+up, and rapidly disappearing off the headland
+of Passabandar, near Gwadur. He has identified
+Kyiza (or Knidza), the small town built on an
+eminence not far from the shore, which was
+captured by stratagem, beyond doubt, and has
+traced the fleet from point to point with a careful
+analysis of all existing records that I cannot pretend
+to imitate. We cannot, however, leave Nearkhos
+without a passing reference to that island on the
+coast of the Ichthyophagi, and which was sacred
+to the sun, and which was, even in those days,
+enveloped in such a halo of mystery and tradition
+that even Arrian holds Nearkhos up to contempt
+for expending "time and ingenuity in the not very
+difficult task of proving the falsehood" of these
+"antiquated fables." I have been to that island,
+the island of Astola, and the tales that were told to
+Nearkhos are told of it still. There, off the southern
+face of it, is the "sail rock," the legendary relic of
+a lost ship which may well have been the transport
+which Nearkhos did undoubtedly lose off its rocky
+shores. There, indeed, I did not find the Nereid of
+such fascinating manners and questionable customs
+as Nearkhos describes on the authority of the
+inhabitants of the coast, but sea-urchins and sea-snakes
+abounded in such numbers as to make the
+process of exploration quite sufficiently exciting;
+and there were not wanting indications of those
+later days when the Meds (now an insignificant
+fish-eating people scattered in the coast hamlets)
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span>
+were the dreaded pirates of the Arabian Sea, and
+used to convey the crews of the ships they captured
+to that island, where they were murdered wholesale.
+It is curious that the name given by Nearkhos is
+Nosala, or Nuhsala. In these days it is Astola, or
+more properly Hashtala, sometimes even called
+Haftala. I am unable to determine the meaning
+of the termination to which the numerals are
+prefixed. Another name for it is Sangadip, which
+is also the mediæval name for Ceylon. There can
+be no doubt about the identity of this island of sun
+worship and historic fable.</p>
+
+<p>We must now turn to Alexander. We left him
+near the mouth of the Hingol, then probably four
+or five miles north of its present position, and
+nearer the modern telegraph line. So far he had
+almost step by step followed out the subsequent
+line of the Indo-Persian telegraph, and at the
+Hingol he was not very far south of it. Near here
+Leonatus had had his fight with the Oritæ, and
+Alexander had spent much time (for it must be
+remembered that he started a month before his fleet,
+and that the fleet and Leonatus at least joined hands
+at this point) in collecting supplies of grain from the
+more cultivated districts north, and was prepared
+to resume his march along the coast, true to his
+general tactical principle of keeping touch with his
+ships. But an obstacle presented itself that possibly
+he had not reckoned on. The huge barrier of the
+Malan range, abutting direct on the sea, stopped
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span>
+his way. There was no "Buzi" pass (or goat
+track) in those days, such as finally and after infinite
+difficulty helped the telegraph line over, though
+there was indeed an ancient stronghold at the top,
+which must have been in existence before his time,
+and was likely enough the original city of Malan.
+He was consequently forced into the interior, and
+here his difficulties began.</p>
+
+<p>We should be at a loss to follow him here, but
+for the fact that there is only one possible route.
+He followed up the Hingol till he could turn the
+Malan by an available pass westward. Nothing
+here has altered since his days. Those magnificent
+peaks and mountains which surround the sacred
+shrine of Hinglaz are, indeed, "everlasting hills,"
+and it was through them that he proceeded to make
+his way. It would be a matter of immense interest
+could one trace any record of the Hinglaz shrine in
+classical writings, but there is none that I know of.
+And yet I believe that shrine which, next possibly
+to Juggernath, draws the largest crowds of pilgrims
+(Hindu and Mussulman alike) of any in India, was
+in existence before the days of Alexander. For
+the shrine is sacred to the goddess Nana (now
+identified with Siva by Hindus), and the Assyrian
+or Persian goddess Nana is of such immense
+antiquity that she has furnished to us the key to an
+older chronology even than that of Egypt. The
+famous cylinder of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria,
+tells us that in the year 645 <span class="s08">B.C.</span> he destroyed Susa,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span>
+the capital of Elam, and from its temple he carried
+back the Chaldean goddess Nana, and by the
+express command of the goddess herself, took her
+from whence she had dwelt in Elam, "a place not
+appointed her," and reinstated her in her own
+sanctuary at Urukh (now Warka in Mesopotamia),
+whence she had originally been taken 1635 years
+before by a conquering king of Elam, who had
+invaded Accad territory. Thus she was clearly a
+well-established deity in Mesopotamia 2280 years
+<span class="s08">B.C.</span> Alexander, however, would have left that
+Ziarat hidden away in the folds of the Hinglaz
+mountain on his left, and followed the windings of
+the Hingol River some forty miles to its junction
+with a stream from the west, which would again
+give him the chance of striking out parallel to the
+coast.</p>
+
+<p>We should be in some doubt at what particular
+point Alexander left the Hingol, but for the
+survival of names given in history as those of a
+people with whom he had to contend, viz. the
+Parikanoi, the Sagittæ, and the Sakæ, names
+not mentioned by Arrian. Now, Herodotus gives
+the Parikanoi and Asiatic Ethiopians as being the
+inhabitants of the seventeenth satrapy of the Persian
+Empire, and Bellew suggests that the Greek
+Parikanoi is a Greek transcript of the Persian form
+of Parikan, the plural of the Sanscrit Parvá-ka&mdash;or,
+in other words, the <i>Ba-rohi</i>&mdash;or men of the hills.
+However this may be, there is the bed of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>
+stream called Parkan skirting the north of the Taloi
+range and leading westwards from the Hingol, and
+we need look no farther for the Parikanoi. In
+support of Bellew's theory it may be stated that it
+is not only in the heart of the Brahui country, but
+the Sajidi are still a tribe of Jalawan Brahuis, of
+which the chief family is called Sakæ, and that they
+occupy territory in Makran a little to the north of
+the Parkan. There is every reason why Alexander
+should have selected this route. It was his first
+chance of turning the Malan block, and it led most
+directly westwards with a trend towards the sea.
+But at the time of the year that he was pushing his
+way through this low valley flanked by the Taloi
+hills, which rose to a height of 2000 feet above him
+on his left, there would not be a drop of water to
+be had, and the surrounding wilderness of sandy
+hillocks and scanty grass-covered waste would
+afford his troops no supplies and no shelter from
+the fierce autumn heat. All the miseries of his
+retreat were concentrated into the distance (about
+200 miles) between the Hingol and the coast.</p>
+
+<p>The story of that march is well told by Arrian.
+It was here that occurred that gallant episode when
+Alexander proudly refused to drink the small
+amount of water that was offered him in a helmet,
+because his army was perishing with thirst. It
+must have been near the harbour of Pasni, once
+again almost on the line of the present telegraph,
+that Alexander emerged from the sand-storm with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span>
+but four horsemen on to the sea-coast at last, and
+instantly set to work to dig wells for his perishing
+troops. Thenceforward Arrian tells us only that
+he marched for seven days along the coast till he
+reached the well-known highway to Karmania,
+when he turned inland, and his difficulties were
+at an end. Now, that well-known highway was
+almost better known then than it is now. He
+could only leave the coast near the Dasht River
+at Gwadur, and strike across into the valley of the
+Bahu, which would lead him through a country
+subsequently great in Arabic history, over the yet
+unsuspected sites of many famous cities, to Bampur,
+the capital of Gadrosia. From leaving the coast to
+Bampur the duration of his march with an exhausted
+force would be little less than a month. Working
+backward again from that same point (which may
+be regarded as an obligatory one in his route) the
+seven days' weary drag through the sand of the
+coast would carry him no farther than from the
+neighbourhood of Pasni, and that is why I have
+selected that point for the historic episode of his
+guiding his army by chance and emerging on to the
+shore unexpectedly, rather than the neighbourhood
+of the Basol River, to which the Parkan route should
+naturally have led him. He clearly lost his way,
+as Arrian says he did, or else the estimated number
+of marches is wrong. We are told by Arrian that
+he reached Pura, the capital of Gadrosia, on the
+sixtieth day after leaving the country of the Oritæ.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span>
+This is a little indefinite, as he may be considered
+to have left the country of the Oritæ when he
+started to collect supplies from the northern district,
+and we do not know how long he was on this
+reconnaissance. Probably, however, the date of
+leaving the coast and striking inland up the Hingol
+River is the date referred to by Arrian, in which
+case we may estimate that he spent about
+twenty-four days negotiating the fearful country
+opened up to him on the Parkan route ere he
+touched the seashore again. This is by no means
+an exaggerated estimate if we consider the distance
+(something short of 200 miles) and the nature of his
+army. A half-armed mob, which included women
+and children, and of which the transport consisted
+of horses and mules and wooden carts dragged by
+men, cannot move with the facilities of a modern
+brigade. Nor would a modern brigade move along
+that line with the rapidity that has distinguished
+some of our late man&oelig;uvres in South Africa. On
+the whole, I think the estimate a probable one, and it
+brings us to Bampur, the ancient capital of Gadrosia.</p>
+
+<p>We have now followed Alexander out of India
+into Persia. Thenceforward there are no great
+geographical questions to decipher, or knots to
+be untied. His progress was a progress of triumph,
+and the story of his retreat well ends with the
+thrilling tale of his meeting again with Nearkhos,
+after the latter had harboured his fleet at the mouth
+of the Minab River and set out on the search for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span>
+Alexander, guided by a Greek who had strayed
+from Alexander's army. Blackened by exposure
+and clothed in rags, Nearkhos was unrecognized
+till he announced himself to the messenger sent to
+look for him. Even Alexander himself at first
+failed to recognize his admiral in the extraordinary
+apparition that was presented to him in his camp,
+and could only believe that his fleet must have
+perished and that Nearkhos and Arkias were sole
+survivors. We can imagine what followed. Those
+were days of ready recognition of service and no
+despatches, and all Persia was open to the conquerors
+to choose their reward.</p>
+
+<p>After Alexander's time many centuries elapsed
+before we get another clear historic view into
+Makran, and then what do we find? A country
+of great and flourishing cities, of high-roads connecting
+them with well-known and well-marked
+stages; armies passing and re-passing, and a trade
+which represented to those that held it the dominant
+commercial power in the world, flowing steadily
+century after century through that country which
+was fatal to Alexander, and which we are rather
+apt now to consider the fag-end of the Baluchistan
+wilderness. The history of Makran is bound up
+with the history of India from time immemorial.
+Not all the passes of all the frontiers of India put
+together have seen such traffic into the broad plains
+of Hindustan as for certainly three, and possibly
+for eight, centuries passed through the gateways of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>
+Makran. As one by one we can now lay our finger
+on the sites of those historic cities, and first begin
+faintly to measure the importance of Makran to
+India ere Vasco da Gama first claimed the honour
+of doubling the Cape and opened up the ocean
+highway, we can only be astonished that for four
+centuries more Makran remained a blank on the
+map of the world.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p class="center">CHINESE EXPLORATIONS&mdash;THE GATES OF THE
+FAR NORTH</p>
+
+<p class="p2">There are many gateways into India, gateways on
+the north as well as the north-west and west, and
+although these far northern ways are so rugged, so
+difficult, and so elevated that they can hardly be
+regarded as of political or strategic importance, yet
+they are many of them well trodden and some were
+once far better known than they are now. Opinions
+may perhaps differ as to their practical value as
+military or commercial approaches under new conditions
+of road-making, but they never have, so far,
+been utilized in either sense, and the interest of
+them is purely historical. These are the ways of
+the pilgrims, and we are almost as much indebted
+to Chinese records for our knowledge of them as
+we are to the researches of modern explorers.</p>
+
+<p>For many a century after Alexander had left the
+scene of his Eastern conquests historical darkness
+envelopes the rugged hills and plains which
+witnessed the passing of the Greeks. The faith
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span>
+of Buddha was strong before their day, but
+the building age of Buddhism was later. No
+mention is to be found in the pages of Greek
+history of the magnificent monuments of the creed
+which are an everlasting wonder of the plains of
+Upper India. Such majestic testimony to the
+living force of Buddhism could hardly have passed
+unnoticed by observers so keen as those early
+Greeks; and when next we are dimly lighted on
+our way to identify the lines of movement and the
+trend of commerce on the Indian frontier, we find
+a new race of explorers treading their way with
+pious footsteps from shrine to shrine, and the
+sacred books and philosophic teaching of a widespreading
+faith the objects of their quest. The
+Chinese pilgrim Fa Hian was the first to leave a
+permanent record of his travels. His date is about
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 400, and he was only one of a large number of
+Chinese pilgrims who knew the road between India
+and China far better than any one knew it twenty-five
+years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Although the northern approaches to India from
+the direction of China are rather far afield, yet
+recent revelations resulting from the researches
+of such enterprising travellers as Sven Hedin
+and Stein, confirming the older records, require
+some short reference to the nature of those communications
+between the outside world of Asia
+and India which distinguished the early centuries
+of our era. In those early centuries there was to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span>
+be found in that western extension of the Gobi
+desert which we call Chinese Turkistan, in the
+low-lying country, mostly sand-covered, which
+stretches to a yellow horizon northward beneath
+the shimmering haze of an almost perpetual dust
+veil, very different conditions of human existence
+to those which now prevail. The zone of cultivation
+fed by the streams of the Kuen Lun was
+wider, stretching farther into the desert. Rivers ran
+fuller of water, carrying fertility farther afield; great
+lakes spread themselves where now there are but
+marshes and reeds, and cities flourished which have
+been covered over and buried under accumulating
+shifting sand for centuries. A great central desert
+there always has been within historic period, but it
+was a desert much modified by bordering oases of
+green fertility, and a spread of irrigated cultivation
+which is not to be found there now.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the most interesting relics recovered
+from some of these unearthed cities are certain
+writings in Karosthi and Brahmi (Indian) script,
+which testify to the existence of roads and posts
+and a regular system of communication between
+these cities of the plain, which must have been
+in existence in those early years of the Christian
+era when Karosthi was a spoken language in
+Northern India. All this now sand-buried
+country was Buddhist then, and a great city overlooked
+the wide expanse of the Lop Lake, and
+the rivers of the southern hills carried fertility
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span>
+far into the central plain. When the pilgrim Fa
+Hian trod the weary road from Western China to
+Chinese Turkistan by way of Turfan and the
+Buddhist city of Lop, he followed in a groove deep
+furrowed by the feet of many a pilgrim before him,
+and a highway for devotees for many a century
+after.</p>
+
+<p>Strange as it may seem, the ancient people
+of this desert waste&mdash;the people who now occupy
+the cultivated strip of land at the foot of the Kuen
+Lun mountains which shut them off from Tibet&mdash;are
+an Indian race, or rather a race of Indian extraction,
+far more allied to the Indo-European than
+to any Mongol, Chinese, Tibetan, or Turk race
+with which they may have been recently admixed.
+Did they spread northward from India through
+the rugged passes of Northern Kashmir, taking
+with them the faith of their ancestors? We do not
+know; but there can be little doubt that the Chanto
+of the Lop basin and of Turfan is the lineal
+successor of the people who welcomed the Chinese
+pilgrims in their search after truth. Buddhist then
+and Mahomedan now, they seem to have lost
+little of their genial spirit of hospitality to strangers.</p>
+
+<p>Khotan (Ilchi) was the central attraction of
+Western Turkistan, one at least of the most blessed
+wayside fountains of faith, the ultimate sources of
+which were only to be found in India. Those
+ultimate sources have long left India. They are
+concentrated in Lhasa now, which city is still the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span>
+sanctuary of Buddhism to the thousands of pilgrims
+who make their way from China on the east and
+Mongolia on the north as full of devout aspiration
+and of patient searching after spiritual knowledge
+as was ever a Chinese pilgrim of past ages. Not
+only was Western Turkistan full of the monuments
+and temples of Buddhism scattered through the
+length of the green strips of territory which bordered
+the dry steppe of the central depression watered
+on the north by the Tarim River, and on the south
+by the many mountain streams which rushed through
+the gorges of the Kuen Lun, but there was an
+evident extension of outward and visible signs of
+the faith to the northward, embracing the Turfan
+basin, which in many of its physical characteristics
+is but a minor repetition of that of Lop, and possibly
+even as far west as the great Lake Issyk Kul.
+Thus the old pilgrim route to India from Western
+China, which was chosen by the devotee so as to
+include as many sacred shrines as could possibly
+be made to assist in adding grace to his pilgrimage,
+was a very different route to that now followed
+by the pious Mongolian or Western Chinaman to
+Lhasa.</p>
+
+<p>Avoiding the penalties of the Nan Shan system
+of mountains which guards the Tibetan plateau
+on the north-east, these early pilgrims held on
+their journey almost due west, and, skirting the
+Mongolian steppe within sight of the Tibetan
+frontier hills, they reached Turfan; then turning
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span>
+southward, they passed on to the Lop Nor lake
+region by a well-ascertained route, which at that
+time intersected the well-watered and fertile land
+of Lulan. There is water still in the lower Tarim
+and in the Konche River beds, but it has proved
+in these late years to be useless for agricultural
+development owing to the increasing salinity of
+the soil. Several recent attempts at recolonizing
+this area have resulted in total failure. From the
+Lop Lake to Khotan <i>via</i> Cherchen the old-world
+route was much the same as now, but the width
+of fertility stretched farther north from the Kuen
+Lun foothills, and the temples of Buddhism were
+rich and frequent, and thus were pious pilgrims
+refreshed and elevated every step of the way through
+this Turkistan region. Khotan appears to have
+been the local centre of the faith. No lake spread
+out its blue waters to catch the sky reflections here,
+but from the cold wastes of Tibet, through the
+gorges of the great Kuen Lun range, the waters
+of a river flowed down past the temples and stupas
+of Ilchi to find their way northward across the
+sands to the Tarim.</p>
+
+<p>The high ritual of Buddhism in its ancient
+form was strange and imposing. When we
+read Fa Hian's account of the great car procession,
+we are no longer surprised at the effect
+which Buddhist symbolism exercised on its disciples.
+Fa Hian and his fellow-travellers were
+lodged in a sanghârâma, or temple of the "Great
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span>
+Vehicle," where were three thousand priests "who
+assemble to eat at the sound of the <i>ghantâ</i>. On
+entering the dining hall their carriage is grave and
+demure, and they take their seats in regular order.
+All of them keep silence; there is no noise with
+their eating bowls; when the attendants give more
+food they are not allowed to speak to one another
+but only to make signs with the hand." "In this
+country," says Fa Hian, "there are fourteen great
+sanghârâmas. From the first day of the fourth
+month they sweep and water the thoroughfares
+within the city and decorate the streets. Above
+the city gate they stretch an awning and use every
+kind of adornment. This is when the King and
+Queen and Court ladies take their place. The
+Gomâti priests first of all take their images in the
+procession. About three or four li from the city
+they make a four-wheeled image car about 30 feet
+high, in appearance like a moving palace adorned
+with the seven precious substances. They fix upon
+it streamers of silk and canopy curtains. The
+figure is placed in the car with two Bodhisatevas
+as companions, while the Devas attend on them;
+all kinds of polished ornaments made of gold and
+silver hang suspended in the air. When the image
+is 100 paces from the gate the King takes off his
+royal cap, and changing his clothes for new ones
+proceeds barefooted, with flowers and incense in
+his hand, from the city, followed by his attendants.
+On meeting the image he bows down his head and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span>
+worships at its feet, scattering the flowers and
+burning the incense. On entering the city the
+Queen and Court ladies scatter about all kinds of
+flowers and throw them down in wild profusion. So
+splendid are the arrangements for worship!"<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Thus
+writes Fa Hian, and it is sufficient to testify to the
+strength of Buddhism and the magnificence of its
+ritual in the third century of our era, when India
+still held the chief fountains of inspiration ere the
+holy of holies was transferred to Lhasa and the
+pilgrim route was changed.</p>
+
+<p>So far, then, we need not look for the influence
+exercised by the most recent climatic
+pulsation of Central Asia which has dried up the
+water-springs and allowed the sand-drifts to
+accumulate above many of the minor townships
+of the Lop basin, in order to account for the trend
+of Asiatic religious history towards Tibet. It
+was the gradual decay of the faith, and its final
+departure from its birthplace in the plains of India
+in later centuries, which sent pilgrims on another
+track, and left many of the northern routes to be
+rediscovered by European explorers in the nineteenth
+century. Most of the Chinese pilgrims
+visited Khotan, but from Khotan onward their
+steps were bent in several directions. Some of
+them visited Ki-pin, which has been identified with
+the upper Kabul River basin. Here, indeed, were
+scattered a wealth of Buddhist records to be studied,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span>
+shrines to be visited, and temples to be seen. The
+road from Balkh to Kabul and from Kabul to the
+Punjab was pre-eminently a Buddhist route. Balkh,
+Haibak, and Bamian all testify, as does the neighbourhood
+of Kabul itself, to the existence of a
+lively Buddhist history before the Mahomedan
+Conquest, and between Kabul and India there are
+Buddhist remains near Jalalabad which rival in
+splendour those of the Swat valley and the Upper
+Punjab. All these places were objects of devout
+attention undoubtedly, but to reach Kabul <i>via</i>
+Balkh from Khotan it would be necessary to cross
+the Pamirs and Badakshan. It is not easy to
+follow in detail the footsteps of these devotees, but
+it is obvious that until they entered the "Tsungling"
+mountains they remained north of the great trans-Himalayan
+ranges and of the Hindu Kush. The
+Tsungling was the dreaded barrier between China
+and India, and the wild tales of the horrors which
+attended the crossing of the mountains testify to
+the fact that they were not much easier of access
+or transit at the beginning of the Christian era than
+they are now.</p>
+
+<p>The direct distance between Khotan and Balkh
+is not less than 700 miles, and 700 miles of such a
+mountain wilderness as would be involved by the
+passing of the Pamirs into the valley of the Oxus
+and the plains of Badakshan would represent 900
+to 1000 of any ordinary travelling. And yet there
+appear to be indications of a close connection
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span>
+between these two centres of Buddhism. The great
+temple a mile or two to the west of Khotan, called
+the Nava Sanghârâma, or royal new temple, is the
+same as that to the south-west of Balkh, according
+to a later traveller, Hiuen Tsiang, while the kings
+of Khotan were said to be descended from Vaisravana,
+the protector of the Balkh convent. No
+modern traveller has crossed Badakshan from the
+Pamirs to Balkh, but the general conformation of
+the country is fairly well ascertained, and there can
+be no doubt that the journey would occupy any
+pilgrim, no matter how devout and enthusiastic, at
+least two and a half months, and another month
+would be required to traverse the road from
+Balkh <i>via</i> Hiabak, or Baiman, over the Hindu
+Kush to Kabul.</p>
+
+<p>Now we are told that Fa Hian journeyed twenty-five
+days to the Tsen-ho country, from whence,
+by marching four days southward, he entered
+the Tsungling mountains. Another twenty-five
+days' rugged marching took him to the Kie-sha
+country, a country "hilly and cold" in "the midst
+of the Tsungling mountains," where he rejoined
+his companions who had started for Ki-pin. It
+is therefore clear that he did not rejoin them at
+Kabul, nor could they have gone there; and the
+question arises&mdash;Where is Kie-sha? The continuation
+of Fa Hian's story gives the solution
+to the riddle. Another month's wandering from
+Kie-sha across the Tsungling mountains took him
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span>
+to North India. It was a perilous journey. The
+terrors of it remained engraved on the memory of
+the saint after his return to his home in China. Great
+"poison dragons" lived in those mountains, who
+spat poison and gravel-stones at passing pilgrims,
+and few there were who survived the encounter.
+The impression conveyed of furious blasts of
+mountain-bred winds is vivid, and many travellers
+since Fa Hian's time have suffered therefrom.
+"On entering the borders" of India he came to
+a little country called To-li. To-li seems to be
+identified beyond dispute with Darel, and with
+this to guide us we begin to see where our pilgrims
+must have passed. Fifteen days more of
+Tsungling mountain-climbing southwards took him
+to Wuchung (Udyana), where he remained during
+the rains. Thence he went "south" to Sin-ho-to
+(Swat), and finally "descended" into Gandara, or
+the Upper Punjab.</p>
+
+<p>From these final stages of his journey India-ward
+there is little difficulty in recognizing that
+Kie-sha must be Kashmir. In the first place,
+Kashmir lies on the most direct route between
+Chinese Turkistan and India. Nor is it possible
+to believe that the wealth of Buddhist remains
+which now appeal to the antiquarian in that
+delightful garden of the Himalayas were not
+more or less due to the first impulse of the
+devotees of the early faith to plant the seeds of
+Buddhism where the passing to and fro of innumerable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span>
+bands of pilgrims would of necessity occur.
+Through Kashmir lay the high-road to High Asia,
+at that time included in the Buddhist fold, where
+Indian language had crystallized and corroborated
+the faith that was born in India. Thus it was that
+glorious temples arose amidst the groves and on
+the slopes of Kashmir hills, and even in the days of
+Fa Hian, when Buddhism was already nine centuries
+old, there must have been much to beguile the
+pilgrim to devotional study. In short, Kashmir
+could not be overlooked by any devotee, and
+whether the direct route thither was taken from
+Khotan, or whether Kashmir was visited in due
+course from Northern India, we may be certain
+that it was one of the chief objectives of Chinese
+pilgrimage.</p>
+
+<p>Fa Hian says so little about the kingdom of
+Kie-sha which can be made use of to assist us,
+that it is not easy to identify the part of Kashmir
+to which he refers. Twenty-five days after
+entering the Tsungling mountains would enable
+him to reach the valley of Kashmir by the Karakoram
+Pass, Leh, and the Zoji-la at the head of the
+Sind valley. It is not a matter of much consequence
+for our purposes which route he took, as it
+is quite clear that all these northern routes were
+open to Chinese pilgrim traffic from the very earliest
+times. The alternative route would be to the head
+of the Tagdumbash Pamir, over the Killik Pass,
+and by Hunza to Gilgit and Astor. The Hunza
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span>
+country (Kunjut) has always had an attraction for
+the Chinese. It has been conquered and held by
+China, and is still reckoned by its inhabitants as
+part of the Chinese Empire. Hunza and Nagar
+pay tribute to China to this day.</p>
+
+<p>If we remember that the pains and penalties of
+a pilgrimage over any of the Hindu Kush passes,
+or by the Karakoram (the chief trade route through
+all time), to India, is as nothing to the trials which
+modern Mongolian pilgrims undergo between China
+and Lhasa, over the terrible altitudes of the Tibetan
+plateau, there will be little to surprise us in these
+earlier achievements. Pioneers of exploration in
+the true sense they were not, for the Himalayan
+byways must have been as well known to them as
+were the Asiatic highways to Alexander ere he
+attempted to reach India. We may assume, however,
+that Fa Hian entered the central valley of
+Kashmir from Leh, for it gives a reasonable pretext
+for his choice of a route out of it. It is not likely
+that he would go twice over the same ground. He
+witnessed the pomp and pageantry of Buddhist
+ritual in Kie-sha. The King of the country had
+kept the great five-yearly assembly. He had
+"summoned Sramanas from the four quarters, who
+came together like clouds." Silken canopies and
+flags with gold and silver lotus-flowers figure
+amongst the ritualistic properties, and form part
+of the processional arrangements which end with
+the invariable offerings to the priests. "The King,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span>
+taking from the chief officer of the Embassy the
+horse he rides, with its saddle and bridle, mounts
+it, and then, taking white taffeta, jewels of various
+kinds, and things required by the Sramanas, in
+union with his ministers, he vows to give them all
+to the priests. Having thus given them, they are
+redeemed at a price from the priests." No mention
+is made of the price, but as the Kashmiri of the
+past has been excellently well described by another
+pilgrim as a true prototype of the Kashmiri of the
+present, it is unlikely that the King lost much by
+the deal.</p>
+
+<p>The description of Kie-sha as "in the middle
+of the Tsungling range" would hardly apply to
+any country but Kashmir, and the fact is noted
+that from Kie-sha towards India the vegetation
+changes in character. Having crossed Tsungling,
+we arrive at North India, says Fa Hian, but to
+reach the "little country called To-li" (Darel) he
+would have to cross by the Burzil Pass into the
+basin of the Indus, and then follow the Gilgit River
+to a point under the shadow of the Hindu Koh
+range, opposite the head-waters of the Darel.
+Crossing the Hindu Koh, he would then drop
+straight into this "little country." Remembering
+something of the nature of the road to Gilgit ere
+our military engineers fashioned a sound highway
+out of the rocky hill-sides, one can sympathize with
+the pious Fa Hian when recalling in after years the
+frightful experiences of that journey.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A few miles beyond Gilgit the rough evidences
+of a ruined stupa, and a still rougher outline of a
+Buddhist figure cut on the rocks which guard a
+narrow gorge leading up the Hindu Koh slopes,
+points to the take-off for Darel. No modern
+explorer has followed that route, except one of
+the native explorers of the Indian survey who
+travelled under the soubriquet of "the Mullah."
+The Mullah made his way through the Darel valley
+to the Indus, and describes it as a difficult route.
+There is little variation in the tale of troubled
+progress, but "the Mullah" makes no mention
+of Buddhist relics, nor is it likely that they would
+have appealed to him had he seen them. There
+can be little doubt, however, that Darel holds some
+hidden secrets for future enterprise to disclose.
+"Keeping along Tsungling, they journeyed southward
+for fifteen days," says Fa Hian. "The road is
+difficult and broken with steep crags and precipices
+in the way. The mountain-side is simply a stone
+wall standing up 10,000 feet. Looking down, the
+sight is confused and there is no sure foothold.
+Below is a river called Sintu-ho (Indus). In old
+days men bored through the walls to make a way,
+and spread out side ladders, of which there are
+seven hundred in all to pass. Having passed the
+ladders, we proceed by a hanging rope bridge to
+cross the river." All this agrees fairly well with
+the Mullah's account of ladders and precipices, and
+locates the route without much doubt. The Darel
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span>
+stream joins the Indus some 30 to 35 miles below
+Chilas, where the course of the latter river is
+practically unsurveyed. Crossing the Indus, Fa
+Hian came to Wuchung, which is identified with
+Udyana, or Upper Swat, and there he remained
+during the rains. The Indus below the Darel
+junction is confined within a narrow steep-sided
+gorge with hills running high on either side, those
+on the east approaching 15,000 and 16,000 feet.
+There are villages, groups of flat-roofed shanties,
+clinging like limpets to the rocks, but there is little
+space for cultivation, and no record of Buddhist
+remains north of Buner. No systematic search has
+been possible.</p>
+
+<p>Investigations such as led to the remarkable
+discovery by Dr. Stein of the site of that famous
+Buddhist sanctuary marking the spot where Buddha,
+in a former birth, offered his body to the starving
+tigress on Mount Banj, south of Buner, have never
+been possible farther north, on account of the
+dangerous character of the hill-people of those
+regions. Other Chinese pilgrims, Song Yun (<span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+520) and Huec Sheng, have recorded that after
+leaving the capital of ancient Udyana (near Manglaor,
+in Upper Swat) they journeyed for eight days
+south-east, and reached the place where Buddha
+made his body offering. "There high mountains
+rose with steep slopes and dizzy peaks reaching to
+the clouds," etc. "There stood on the mountain
+the temple of the collected bones which counted
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span>
+300 priests." But there is no mention of other
+Buddhist sites of importance in the valley of the
+Indus. Leaving Udyana, Fa Hian and his companions
+went south to the country of Su-ho-to
+(Lower Swat), and finally ("descending eastward")
+in five days found themselves in Gandhara&mdash;or the
+Upper Punjab. Nine days' journey eastward from
+the point where they reached Gandhara they came
+to the place of Buddha's body-offering, or Mount
+Banj. Such, in brief outline, is the story of one
+pilgrim's journey across the Himalayas to India.
+Other pilgrims undoubtedly entered India <i>via</i> the
+Kabul River valley, but we need hardly follow them.
+There were hundreds of them, possibly thousands,
+and the pains and penalties of the pilgrimage but
+served to add merit to their devotion.</p>
+
+<p>The point of the story lies in its revelation
+as regards connection between Central Asia and
+India in the early centuries <span class="s08">A.D.</span> Clearly there
+was no pass unknown or unvisited by the Chinese.
+Not merely the direct routes, but all the connecting
+ways which linked up one Buddhist centre with
+another were equally well known. What has required
+from us a weary process of investigation to
+overcome the difficulties of map-making, was to
+them, if not exactly an open book, certainly a
+geographical record which could be turned to
+practical use, and it is instructive to note the
+use that was made of it. As a pious duty, bristling
+with difficulty and danger, travel over the wandering
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span>
+tracks which pass through the northern gates of
+the Himalayas was regarded with fervour; but it
+may be taken for granted that less pious-minded
+adventurers than the Chinese pilgrims would most
+certainly have made good use of that geographical
+knowledge to exploit the riches of India had such a
+proceeding been possible. We know that attempts
+have been made. From the earliest times the
+Mongol hordes of China and Central Asia have
+been directed on India, and no gateway which
+could offer any possible hope of admittance has
+been neglected. Baktria (Badakshan), lying beyond
+the mountain barrier, had been at their
+mercy. The successors to Alexander's legions
+in that country were swamped and dispersed within
+a century or two of the foundation of the Greek
+kingdom; and the Kabul River way to India has let
+in army after army. But these northern passes
+have not only barred migratory Asiatic hordes
+through all ages, but have proved too much even
+for small organized Mongol military expeditions.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese hosts, who apparently thought little
+of crossing the Tibetan frontier over a succession
+of Alpine passes such as no Western general in the
+world's history has ever encountered, failed to
+penetrate farther than Kunjut. The Mongol invasion
+of Tibet early in the sixteenth century
+(which is so graphically described in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi
+by Mirza Haidar) was tentatively pushed
+into Kashmir <i>via</i> Ladakh, and was defeated by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span>
+the natural difficulties of the country&mdash;not by
+the resistance of the weak-kneed Kashmiri&mdash;much,
+indeed, as a similar expedition to Lhasa was defeated
+by cold and starvation. No modern ingenuity
+has as yet contrived a method of dealing
+with the passive resistance of serrated bands of
+mountains of such altitude as the Himalayas. No
+railway could be carried over such a series of snow-capped
+ramparts; no force that was not composed
+of Asiatic mountaineers could attempt to pass them
+with any chance of success; and these northern
+lines, these eternal defences of Nature's making
+may well be left, a vast silent wilderness of peaks,
+undisturbed by man's puny efforts to improve their
+strength. Certainly the making of highways in the
+midst of them is not the surest means of adding to
+their natural powers of passive obstruction, although
+such public works may possibly be deemed necessary
+in the interests of peace and order preservation
+amongst the "snowy mountain men."</p>
+
+<p>Chinese pilgrims no longer tread those rocky
+mountain-paths (except in the pages of Rudyard
+Kipling's entrancing work), and the tides of devotion
+have set in other directions&mdash;to Mecca or to
+Lhasa; but the fact that thousands of Buddhist
+worshippers yearly undertake a journey which, for
+the hardships entailed by cold and starvation
+between the western borders of China and Lhasa,
+should surely secure for them a reserve of merit
+equal to that gathered by their forefathers from the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span>
+"Tsungling" mountains, might possibly lead to
+the question whether the plateau of Eastern Tibet
+does not afford the open way which is not to be
+found farther west. If a Chinese force of 70,000
+men could advance into the heart of Tibet, and
+finally administer a severe defeat on the Gurkhas
+(which surely occurred in 1792) in Nepal, it is clear
+that such a force could equally well reach Lhasa.
+It is also certain that the stupendous mountain-chains
+and the elevated passes, which are the ruling
+features of the eastern entrance into Tibet from
+China, far exceed in natural strength and difficulty
+those which intervene between the plains of India
+and Lhasa. We are therefore bound to admit that
+it might be possible for an unopposed Chinese
+force to invade India by Eastern Tibet; possibly
+even by the valley of Assam. There is, however,
+no record that such an attempt has ever been
+made. The savage and untamable disposition of
+the eastern Himalayan tribes, and their intense
+hostility to strangers may have been, through all
+time, a strong deterrent to any active exploitation
+of their country; and the density of the forests
+which close down on the narrow ways which
+intersect their hills, give them an advantage in
+savage tactics such as was not possessed by the
+fighting Gurkha tribe in Nepal. But whatever the
+reason may be, there is apparently no record of any
+Chinese force descending through the Himalayas
+into the eastern plains of India by any of the many
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span>
+ways afforded by the affluents of the Brahmaputra.
+We may, I think, rest very well assured that no
+such attempt could possibly be made by any force
+other than Chinese, and that it is not likely that
+it ever will be made by them. We do not (at
+present) look to the north-east (to China) for the
+shadows of coming events in India. We look to
+the north, and looking in that direction we are
+quite content to write down the approach to India
+by any serious military force across Tibet or
+through the northern gateways of Kashmir to be
+an impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>The footsteps of the Buddhist pilgrim point no
+road for the tread of armies. In the interests of
+geographical research it is well to follow their
+tracks, and to learn how much wiser geographically
+they were in their day than we are now. It is well
+to remember that as modern explorers we are as
+hopelessly behind them in the spirit of enterprise,
+which reaches after an ethical ideal, as we are ahead
+of them in the process of attaining exact knowledge
+of the world's physiography, and recording it.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<p class="center">MEDIÆVAL GEOGRAPHY&mdash;SEISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN</p>
+
+<p class="p2">It was about eight centuries before Buddhism,
+debased and corrupted, tainted with Siva worship
+and loaded with all the ghastly paraphernalia of a
+savage demonology, had been driven from India
+across the Himalayas, that the Star of Bethlehem
+had guided men from the East to the cradle of the
+Christian faith&mdash;a faith so like Buddhism in its
+ethical teaching and so unlike in its spiritual
+conceptions,&mdash;and during those eight centuries
+Christianity had already been spread by Apostles
+and missionaries through the broad extent of High
+Asia. Thereupon arose a new propaganda which,
+spreading outwards from a centre in south-west
+Arabia, finally set all humanity into movement,
+impelling men to call the wide world to a recognition
+of Allah and his one Prophet by methods
+which eventually included the use of fire and sword.
+The rise of the faith of Islam was nearly coincident
+(so far as India was concerned) with the fall of
+Buddhism. Thenceforward the gentle life-saving
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>
+precepts of Gautama were to be taught in the
+south, and east, and north; in Ceylon, Burma,
+China, and Mongolia after being first firmly rooted
+in Tibet and Turkistan, but never again in the
+sacred groves of the land of their birth. And this
+raging religious hurricane of Islam swept all before
+it for century after century until, checked at last in
+Western Europe, it left the world ennobled by
+many a magnificent monument, and, by adding to
+the enlightenment of the dark places of the earth,
+fulfilled a mission in the development of mankind.
+With it there arose a new race of explorers who
+travelled into India from the west and north-west,
+searching out new ways for their commerce, and it
+is with them now and their marvellous records of
+restless commercial activity that we have to deal.
+Masters of the sea, even as of the land, no military
+and naval supremacy which has ever directed the
+destinies of nations was so widespread in its
+geographical field of enterprise as that of the Arabs.
+The whole world was theirs to explore. Their
+ships furrowed new paths across the seas, even as
+their khafilas trod out new highways over the land;
+and at the root of all their movement was the commercial
+instinct of the Semite. After all it was the
+eternal question of what would pay. Their progenitors
+had been builders of cities, of roads, of
+huge dams for water storage and irrigation, and
+directors for public works in Europe, Asia, and
+Africa. The might of the sword of Islam but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>
+carved the way for the slave-owner and the
+merchant to follow. Thus it is that mediæval
+records of exploration in Afghanistan and Baluchistan
+are mostly Arab records; and it is from
+them that we learn the "open sesame" of India's
+landward gates, long ere the seaports of her coasts
+were visited by European ships.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing in the history of the world is more surprising
+than the rapid spread of Arab conquests in
+Asia, Africa, and Western Europe at the close of
+the seventh century of our era, excepting, perhaps,
+the thoroughness of the subsequent disappearance
+of Arab influence, and the absolute effacement of
+the Arabic language in those countries which Arabs
+ruled and robbed. In Persia, Makran, Central
+Asia, or the Indus valley, hardly a word of Arabic
+is now to be recognized. Geographical terms
+may here and there be found near the coast, surviving
+only because Arab ships still skirt those shores
+and the sailor calls the landmarks by old-world
+names. Even in the English language the sea
+terms of the Arab sailor still live. What is our
+"Admiral" but the "Al mir ul bahr" of the
+Arabian Sea, or our "Barge" but his "Barija," or
+warship! But in Sind, where Arab supremacy lasted
+for at least three centuries, there is nothing left to
+indicate that the Arab ever was there.</p>
+
+<p>The effacement of the Arab in India is chiefly
+due to the Afghan, the Turk, and the Mongol.
+Mahmud of Ghazni put the finishing blow to Arab
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span>
+supremacy in the Indus valley, when he sacked
+Multan about the beginning of the eleventh
+century; and subsequently the destroying hordes
+of Chenghiz Khan and Tamerlane completed the
+final downfall of the Empire of the Khalifs.</p>
+
+<p>Between the beginning of the eighth century
+and that of the eleventh the whole world of the
+Indian north-west frontier and its broad hinterland,
+extending to the Tigris and the Oxus, was much
+traversed and thoroughly well known to the Arab
+trader. In Makran we have seen how they shaped
+out for themselves overland routes to India, establishing
+big trade centres in flourishing towns, burying
+their dead in layers on the hill-sides, cultivating
+their national fruit, the date, in Makran valleys, and
+surrounding themselves with the wealth and beauty
+of irrigated agriculture. The chief impulse to Arab
+exploration emanated from the seat of the Khalifs in
+Mesopotamia, and the schools of Western Persia
+and Bagdad appear to have educated the best of
+those practical geographers who have left us their
+records of travel in the East; but there are indications
+of an occasional influx of Arabs from the
+coasts of Southern Arabia about whom we learn
+nothing whatever from mediæval histories. It will
+be at any rate interesting to discuss the general
+trend of exploration and travel, associated either
+with pilgrimage or commerce, which distinguished
+the days of Arab supremacy, and which throws
+considerable light on the geography of the Indian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span>
+borderland before its political features were rearranged
+by the hand of Chenghiz Khan and his
+successors. This has never yet been attempted by
+the light of recent investigations, and even now it
+can only be done partially and indifferently from
+the want of completed maps. The borderland
+which touches the Arabian Sea&mdash;Southern Baluchistan&mdash;has
+been completely explored and mapped,
+and the more obvious inferences to be derived from
+that mapping have already been made. But
+Seistan, Karmania, the highways and cities of
+Turkistan (Tocharistan) and Badakshan have not,
+so far as I know, been outlined in any modern
+work based on Arab writings and collated with
+the geographical surveys of the Russo-Afghan
+Boundary Commission and their reports. It was
+after all but a cursory examination of a huge area
+of most interesting country that was possible within
+the limited time devoted to boundary demarcation
+labours in 1883-85; but the physical features of this
+part of Asia being now fairly well defined, there is
+a good deal to be inferred with reasonable probability
+from the circumstance that highways and
+cities must ever be dependent for their location on
+the distributions of topography.</p>
+
+<p>The first impression produced by the general
+overlook of all the historic area which lies between
+Eastern Persia and the sources on the Oxus, is one
+of surprise. There is so little left of this great
+busy world of Arab commerce. It seems to have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>
+dropped out of the world's economy, and certain
+regions to have reverted to a phase of pristine
+freedom from sordid competition, which argues
+much for a decreased population and a desiccated
+area of once flourishing lands.</p>
+
+<p>There are no forests and jungles in Western
+Afghanistan, or at least only in restricted spaces
+on the mountain-slopes, so that there is no wild
+undergrowth uprooting and covering the evidences
+of man's busy habitation such as we find in Ceylon
+and the Nepal Tarai; where may be seen strange
+staring stone witnesses of the faith of former
+centuries, half hidden amidst the wild beauty and
+luxuriance of tropical forest growth. There is
+nothing indeed quite so interesting. Nature has
+spread out smooth grass slopes carpeted with
+sweet flowers in summer, but frozen and windswept
+in winter; and beneath the surface we know
+for a surety that the buried remains of centuries of
+busy traffic and marketing lie hidden, but there is
+frequently no sign whatever above ground. It is
+difficult to account for the utter want of visible
+evidence. In the processes of clearing a field for
+military action, when it becomes essential to remove
+some obstructive mud-built village and trace
+a clear and free zone for artillery fire, it is often
+found that the work of destruction is exceedingly
+difficult. Only with the most careful management
+can the debris be so dispersed that it affords no
+better cover to the enemy than the village which it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span>
+once represented. As for effacing it altogether, only
+time, with the assistance of wind and weather, can
+accomplish that. But it is remarkable with what
+completeness time succeeds. I have stood on the
+site of a buried city in Sind&mdash;a city, too, of the
+mediæval era of Arab ascendency&mdash;and have recognized
+no trace of it but what appeared to be the
+turbaned effigies of a multitude of faithful mourners
+in various expressive attitudes of grief and despair,
+who represented the ancient cemetery of the city.
+The city had been wiped off the land as clean as if
+it had been swept into the sea, but the burying
+places remained, and the stone mourners continue
+mourning through the centuries.</p>
+
+<p>The architectural order of these Khalmat tombs
+is quite Saracenic, and the vestiges of geometrical
+design which relieve the plain surface of the stone
+work and accentuate the lines of arch and moulding,
+are all clean cut and clear. At the end of each
+tomb, set up on a pedestal, the folded turban testifies
+in hard stone to the faith of the occupant beneath.
+The sharp edges of the slabs and the clearness of
+the ornamental carving are sufficient to prove that
+the age of these tombs and monuments cannot be
+so very remote, although remote enough to have
+led to the effacement of the township to which they
+belong. Sometimes a mound, where no mound
+would naturally occur, indicates the base of one
+of the larger buildings. Sometimes in the slanting
+rays of the evening sun certain shadows, unobserved
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span>
+before, take shape and pattern themselves
+into the form of a basement; and almost always
+after heavy rain strange little ornaments, beads,
+and coins, glass bangles, rings, etc., are washed out
+on the surface which tell their own tale as surely as
+does the widespread and infinitely varied remnants
+of household crockery. This last feature is sometimes
+quite amazing in its variety and extent, and
+the quality of the local finds is not a bad indication
+of the quality of the local household which made
+use of it. "Celadon" ware is abundant from
+Karachi to Babylon, and some of it is of extraordinary
+fineness and beauty of glaze. Pale sage
+green is invariably the colour of it, and the tradition
+of luck which attaches to it is common from
+China to Arabia.</p>
+
+<p>In places where vanished towns were in existence
+as late as the eighteenth century (for instance,
+in the Helmund valley below Rudbar), debris of
+pottery may be found literally in tons. In other
+places, still living, where generations of cities
+have gradually waxed and waned in successive
+stages, each in turn forming the foundation of a
+new growth, it is very difficult to derive any true
+historical indication from the debris which is to be
+found near the surface. Nothing but systematic
+and extensive excavation will suffice to prove that
+the existing conglomeration of rubbishy bazaars
+and ruined mosques is only the last and most unworthy
+phase of the existence of a city the glory of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>
+whose history is to be found in the world-wide
+tradition of past centuries. And so it happens
+that, moving in the footsteps of these old mediæval
+commercial travellers, with the story of their travels
+in one's hand, and the indications of hill and plain
+and river to testify to the way they went, and a
+fair possibility of estimating distances according to
+their slipshod reckoning of a "day's journey," one
+may possess the moral certainty that one has
+reached a position where once there stood a
+flourishing market-town without the faintest outward
+indication of it. Without facilities for
+digging and delving, and the time for careful examination,
+there must necessarily be a certain
+amount of conjecture about the exact locality of
+some even of the most famous towns which were
+centres of Arab trade through High Asia. Some
+indeed are to be found still under their ancient
+names, but others (and amongst them many of
+great importance) are no longer recognizable in
+the place where once they palpitated with vigorous
+Eastern life.</p>
+
+<p>The area of Asia which for three or four centuries
+witnessed the monopoly of Arab trade
+included very nearly the whole continent. Asia
+Minor may be omitted from that area, and the
+remoter parts of China; but all the Indian borderland
+was literally at their feet; and we can now
+proceed to trace out some of their principal lines
+of route and their chief halting-places in those
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>
+districts of which the mediæval geography has
+lately become known.</p>
+
+<p>It is not at all necessary, even if it were possible,
+to follow the records of all the eminent Arab
+travellers who at intervals trod these weary roads.
+In the first place they often copied their records
+from one another, so that there is much vain repetition
+in them. In the second place they are not all
+equally trustworthy, and their writing and spelling,
+especially in place-names, wants that attention to
+diacritical marks which in Eastern orthography is
+essential to correct transliteration. It is perhaps
+unfortunate that the most eminent geographer
+amongst them should not have been a traveller,
+but simply a compiler.</p>
+
+<p>Abu Abdulla Mohamed was born at Ceuta in
+Morocco towards the end of the eleventh century.
+Being descended from a family named Idris, he
+came to be known as Al Idrisi. The branch of the
+family from which Idrisi sprang ruled over the city
+of Magala. He travelled in Europe and eventually
+settled at the Court of Roger II. in Sicily. Here
+he wrote his book on geography. He quotes the
+various authors whom he consulted in its compilation,
+and derived further information from travellers
+whose accounts he compared and tested. The title
+of his work is <i>The Delight of those who seek to
+wander through the Regions of the World</i>, and it
+is from the French translation of this work by
+Jaubert that the following notes on the countries
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span>
+lying beyond the western borders of India are
+taken. This account may be accepted as representing
+the condition of political and commercial
+geography throughout those regions at the end of
+the eleventh century, some eighty years or so after
+the borders of India had been periodically harried
+by Mahmud of Ghazni, and not very long before
+the Mongol host appeared on the horizon and made
+a clean sweep of Asiatic civilization.</p>
+
+<p>To the west of the Indian frontier in those
+early days lay the Persian provinces of Makran
+and Sejistan (Seistan), which two provinces between
+them appear to represent a great part of modern
+Baluchistan. The "Belous" were not yet in
+Baluchistan; they lived north of the mountains
+occupied by the "Kufs," with whom they are
+invariably associated in Arab geography. "The
+Kufs," says Idrisi, "are the only people who do
+not speak Persian in the province of Kerman.
+Their mountains reach to the Persian Gulf,
+being bordered on the north by the country
+of Najirman (?Nakirman), on the south and east
+by the sea and the Makran deserts, on the
+west by the sea and the 'Belous' country and the
+districts of Matiban and Hormuz." These are
+doubtless the "Bashkird" mountains, and the
+"species of Kurd, brave and savage" which
+inhabited them under the name of Kufs probably
+represent the progenitors of the present inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>The "Bolous" or "Belous" lived in the plains
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span>
+to the north "right up to the foot of the mountains,"
+and these are the people (according to Mr.
+Longworth Dames) who, hailing originally from
+the Caspian provinces, are the typical Baluch
+tribespeople of to-day.</p>
+
+<p>These mountains, which Idrisi calls the "cold
+mountains," extend to the north-west of Jirift and
+are "fertile, productive, and wooded." "It is
+a country where snow falls every year," and of
+which "the inhabitants are virtuous and innocent."
+There have been changes since Idrisi's time,
+both moral and physical, but here is a strong
+item of evidence in favour of the theory of the
+gradual desiccation which has enveloped Southern
+Baluchistan and dried up the water-springs of
+Makran. What Idrisi called the "Great Desert"
+is comprehensive. All the great central wastes of
+Persia, including the Kerman desert as well as the
+basin of the Helmund south of the hills, the frontier
+hills of the Sind border up to Multan, were a part
+of it, and they were inhabited by nomadic tribes of
+"thieves and brigands."</p>
+
+<p>Modern Seistan is a flat, unwholesome country,
+distributed geographically on either side of the
+Helmund between Persia and Afghanistan. It
+owes its place in history and its reputation for
+enormous productiveness to the fact that it is
+the great central basin of Afghanistan, where
+the Helmund and other Afghan rivers run to a
+finish in vast swamps, or lagoons. Surrounded by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span>
+deserts, Seistan is never waterless, and there was,
+in days which can hardly be called ancient, a really
+fine system of irrigation, which fertilized a fairly
+large tract of now unproductive land on the Persian
+side of the river. The amount of land thus brought
+under cultivation was considerable, but not considerable
+enough to justify the historic reputation
+which Seistan has always enjoyed as the "Granary
+of Asia." This traditional wealth was no doubt
+exaggerated from the fact that the fertility of
+Seistan (like that of the Herat valley, which is after
+all but an insignificant item in Afghan territory)
+was in direct contrast to the vast expanse of profitless
+desert with which it was surrounded&mdash;a green
+oasis in the midst of an Asiatic wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>The Helmund has taken to itself many channels
+in the course of measurable time. Its ancient beds
+have been traced and mapped, and with them have
+been found evidences of closely-packed townships
+and villages, where the shifting waters and consequent
+encroachment of sand-waves leave no sign
+of life at present.</p>
+
+<p>Century after century the same eternal process
+of obliteration and renovation has proceeded.
+Millions of tons of silt have been deposited in this
+great alluvial basin. Levels have changed and the
+waters have wandered irresponsibly into a network
+of channels westward. Then the howling, desiccating
+winds of the north-west have carried back
+sand-waves and silt, burying villages and filling the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>
+atmosphere for hundreds of miles southward with
+impalpable dust, crossing the Helmund deserts
+even to the frontier of India. There is no measurable
+scale for the force of the Seistan winds. They
+scoop up the sand and sweep clean the surface of
+the earth, polishing the rounded edges of the ragged
+walls of the Helmund valley ruins. It is a notable
+fact that no part of these ruins face the wind. All
+that is left of palaces and citadels stands "end on"
+to the north-west. For a few short months in the
+year the wind is modified, and then there instantly
+arises the plague of insects which render life a
+burden to every living thing. And yet Seistan has
+played a most important part in the history of Asia,
+and may play an important rôle again.</p>
+
+<p>Arab records are very full of Seistan. The
+earliest of them that give any serious geographical
+information are the records of Ibn Haukel, but
+there are certainly indications in his account which
+engender a suspicion that he never really visited
+the country. He mentions the capital Zarinje (of
+which the ruins cover an enormous area to the east
+of Nasratabad, the present capital) and writes of it
+as a very large town with five gates, one of which
+"leads to Bist." There were extensive fortifications,
+and a bazaar of which he reckons the annual
+revenue to be 1000 direms.</p>
+
+<p>There were canals innumerable, and always the
+wind and the windmills. It is curious that he
+traces the Helmund as running to Seistan first and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span>
+then to the Darya-i-Zarah. This is in fact correct,
+only the Darya-i-Zarah (or Gaod-i-Zireh, as we
+know it) receives no water from the Helmund until
+the great Hamún (lagoons) to the north of Nasratabad
+are filled to overflow. He also mentions
+two rivers as flowing into the Zarah&mdash;one from
+Farah (an important place in his time), which is
+impossible, as it would have to cross the Helmund;
+and one from Ghur. This indicates almost certainly
+that the name Zarah was not confined, as it
+is now, to the great salt swamp south of Rudbar on
+the Helmund, but it included the Hamúns north
+of Nasratabad, into which the Farah River and
+the Ghur River do actually empty themselves. At
+present these two great lake systems are separated
+by about 120 miles of Helmund River basin, and are
+only connected occasionally in flood time by means
+of the overflow (called Shelag) already referred to.
+The mention of Bist, and of the bridge of boats
+across the river at that point, is important, for it is
+clear that about the year <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 950 one high-road
+for trade eastward was across the desert, <i>i.e.</i> <i>via</i>
+the Khash Rud valley from Zarinje to about the
+meridian of 63 E.L. and then straight over the
+desert to Bist (Kala Bist of modern mapping).
+The further mention of robats (or resting-places)
+<i>en route</i>, indicates that it was well kept up and a
+much traversed high-road. Subsequently Girishk
+appears to have become the popular crossing-place
+of the river, but it is well to remember that the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span>
+earlier route still exists, and could readily be made
+available for a flank march on Kandahar.</p>
+
+<p>From Idrisi's writings we learn that a century
+later, <i>i.e.</i> about the end of the eleventh century, the
+Seistan province extended far beyond its present
+limits. Bamian and Ghur (<i>i.e.</i> the central hills of
+Afghanistan) were <i>vis-à-vis</i> to that province; Farah
+was included; and probably the whole line of the
+frontier hills from the Sulimanis, opposite Multan,
+to Sibi and Kalat. It was an enormous province,
+and a new light breaks on its traditional wealth in
+grain and agricultural produce when we understand
+its vast extent.</p>
+
+<p>The regions of Ghur and Dawar bordered it to
+the north, and there is a word or two to be said
+about both hereafter. Ghur in the eleventh century
+included the valley of Herat and all the wedge of
+mountainous country south of it to Dawar, but how
+far Seistan extended into the heart of the mountain
+system which culminates to the south-west of Kabul
+it is difficult to say. It is difficult to understand
+the statement that Bamian, for instance, bordered
+Seistan, with Ghur in between, unless, indeed, in
+these early days of Ghur's history (for Ghur was
+only conquered by the Arabs in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1020, and was
+still far from intertwining its history with that of
+Ghazni when Idrisi wrote) the greatness of Bamian
+overshadowed the light of the lesser valleys of
+Ghur, and Bamian was the ruling province of
+Central Afghanistan. This, indeed, seems possible.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span>
+The district of Dawar to the south of Ghur has
+always been something of a mystery to geographers.
+Described by Idrisi as "vast, rich, and fertile," and
+"the line of defence on the side of Ghur, Baghnein,
+and Khilkh," it would be impossible to place it without
+a knowledge of the towns mentioned, were it
+not that we are told that Derthel, one of the chief
+towns of Dawar, is on the Helmund, and that one
+crosses the river there "in order to reach Sarwan."
+This at once indicates the traditional ford at Girishk
+as the crossing-place, and Zamindawar as the Dawar
+of Idrisi. Khilkh then becomes intelligible also
+as a town of the Khilkhi (the people who then
+occupied Dawar, described as Turkish by Idrisi,
+and probably identified with the modern Ghilzai),
+and finds its modern representative in the Kalat-i-Ghilzai
+which crowns the well-known rock on the
+road from Kandahar to Kabul. "The country is
+inhabited by a people called Khilkh," says Idrisi.
+"The Khilkhs are of a Turkish race, who from a
+remote period have inhabited this country, and
+whose habitations are spread to the north of India
+on the flank of Ghur and in western Seistan."
+Thus the position of the Ghilzai in the ethnography
+of Central Afghanistan appears to have been established
+long before the days of Mongol irruption.
+Then as now they formed a very important tribal
+community.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, sometimes difficult to reconcile
+Idrisi's account of the routes followed by his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span>
+countrymen in this part of Asia with existing
+geographical features. Deserts and mountains
+must have been much the same as they are now,
+and the best, if not the only, way to unravel the
+geographical tangle is to take his itinerary and see
+where it leads us. Of Baghnein on the southern
+borders of Seistan, he says it is an "agreeable
+country, fertile and abundant in fruits." From
+there (<i>i.e</i>. the country, not the town) to Derthel one
+reckons one day's journey through the nomad tribes
+of Bechinks, Derthel being "situated on the banks
+of the Helmund and one of the chief towns of
+Dawar."</p>
+
+<p>So we have to cross an open uncultivated region
+for 40 miles or so from Baghnein to reach Derthel,
+on the Helmund. Again, "one crosses the Helmund
+at Derthel to reach Sarwan&mdash;a town
+situated about one day's journey off," on which
+depends a territory which produces everything in
+abundance. "Sarwan is bigger than Fars, and
+more rich in fruit and all sorts of productions.
+Grapes are transported to Bost (or Bist), a town
+two days distant passing by Firozand, which
+possesses a big market, and is on the traveller's
+right as he travels to Benjawai, which is <i>vis-à-vis</i>
+to Derthel." "Rudhan (?Rudbar) is a small town
+south of the Helmund."</p>
+
+<p>The Helmund valley has been surveyed from
+Zamindawar to its final exit into the Seistan
+lagoons, and we know that at Girishk there is a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>
+very ancient ford, which now marks, and has always
+marked, the great highway from Kandahar to Herat.
+South of Girishk, at the junction of the Arghandab
+with the Helmund, we find extensive and ancient
+ruins at Kala Bist; and south of that again there
+are many ruins at intervals in the Helmund valley;
+but these latter are comparatively recent, dating
+from the time of the Kaiani Maliks of the eighteenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>Assuming that the Helmund fords have remained
+constant, and placing Derthel on one side of the
+river at Girishk and Benjawai on the other, we find
+on our modern maps that from the ford it is a
+possible day's journey to Kala Sarwan, higher up
+the Helmund, where "fruit and grapes are to be
+had in abundance," and from whence they might
+certainly have been sent to Bist, where grapes do
+not grow. Baghnein, separated from Derthel by a
+strip of nomad country, one day's journey wide,
+might thus be on either side the Helmund; but its
+contiguity to Ghur seems to favour a position to the
+west, rather than to the east, of the river, somewhere
+east of the plains of Bukwa about Washir.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is certain that no Arab traveller, crossing
+the Helmund desert from the west by the direct
+route recently exploited in British Indian interests
+below Kala Bist and south of the river, could by
+any possibility have reached a grape-growing and
+highly-cultivated country in one day's journey. The
+inference, then, is tolerably clear. Arab traders
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span>
+and travellers never made use of this southern
+route. Nor should we ourselves make use of such
+a route as that <i>via</i> Nushki and the Koh-i-Malik
+Siah, were we not forced into it by Afghan policy.
+The natural high-road from the east of Persia and
+Herat to India is <i>via</i> the plains of Kandahar
+and the ford of Girishk, and the Arabs, with all
+Khorasan at their feet, were not likely to travel
+any other way.</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly the system of approach to the Indus
+valley, open to Arab traffic from Syria and Bagdad,
+most generally used and most widely recognized
+was that through the Makran valleys to Karachi
+and Sind, whilst the inland route, <i>via</i> Persia and
+Seistan, made the well-known ford of the Helmund
+at Girishk, or the boat bridge at Kala Bist, its objective,
+and passed over the river to the plains about
+Kandahar. But it is a very remarkable, and possibly
+a significant, fact that the continuation of the
+route to Sind and the Indus valley from the plains
+about Kandahar is not mentioned by any Arab
+writer. Did the Arabs descend through any of the
+well-known passes of the frontier&mdash;the Mulla, Bolan,
+Saki-Sarwar, or Gomul&mdash;into the plains of India?
+Possibly they did so; but in that case it is difficult
+to account for so important a geographical feature
+as the frontier passes of Sind being ignored by the
+greatest geographer of his day.</p>
+
+<p>Following Idrisi's description of the Helmund
+province we have a brief itinerary from the Helmund
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>
+ford (Derthel or Benjawai) to Ghazni, said to
+be nine days' journey inland. None of the places
+mentioned are to be identified in modern maps
+except Cariat, which is more than probably Kariut,
+a rich and fertile district in the Arghandab valley
+in the direct line to Kalat-i-Ghilzai. This route
+passes well to the north-east of Kandahar, which
+was apparently of little account in Idrisi's days.
+Although there are extensive ruins at Kushk-i-Nakhud,
+indicated by a huge artificial mound half-way
+between Girishk and Kandahar, there is
+nothing in Idrisi's writings by which they can be
+identified.</p>
+
+<p>Ghazni was then a large town "surrounded by
+mud walls and a ditch. There are many houses
+and permanent markets in Ghazni; much business
+is done there. It is one of the 'entrepots' of
+India. Kabul is nine days' journey from it." This
+is not much to say of the city which had been
+enriched by the spoils carried away from Muttra
+and Somnath, and by the treasures amassed during
+seventeen fierce raids of that Mahmud who, by
+repeated conquests, made all Northern and Western
+India contribute to his treasury.</p>
+
+<p>Later, in 1332, the Arab traveller, Ibn Batuta,
+writes of Ghazni as a small town set in a waste
+of ruins&mdash;a description which fits it not inaptly at
+the present day; but in Idrisi's time, before the
+wars with Ghur led to its destruction, whilst still
+the wealth of a great part of India supported its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span>
+magnificence, and whilst it was still the theme of
+glowing panegyric by contemporary historians, one
+would expect a rather more enthusiastic notice.
+But even Kabul (nine days' journey distant from
+Ghazni) is only recognized as "<i>L'une des grandes
+villes de l'Inde, entourée de murs</i>," with a "<i>bonne
+citadelle et au dehors divers faubourgs</i>."<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>There is little to interest us, however, in tracing
+out the routes that linked up Ghazni and Kabul
+with the Helmund. They have been the same
+through all time, with just the difference of place-names.
+Towns and villages, caravanserais and
+posts, have come and gone, but that historic road
+has been marked out by Nature as one of the
+grandest high-roads in Asia, from the days of
+Alexander to those of Roberts. Two minars tapering
+to the sky on the plain before Ghazni are all
+that are left of its ancient glories, and one cannot
+but contrast the scattered debris of that once so
+famous city with the solid endurance of the far
+greater and older architectural efforts in Egypt and
+Assyria. Southern Afghanistan is indeed singularly
+poor and empty of historic monuments. Even now
+were Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat, its three great
+cities, to be flattened out by a widespread earthquake
+there would be little that was not of Buddhist origin
+left for the future archæologist to make a stir about.</p>
+
+<p>Idrisi writes of the Kingdom of Ghur as apart
+from Herat, although a great part of the long Herat
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span>
+valley was certainly included. He calls it a country
+"mountainous and well inhabited, where one finds
+springs, rivers, and gardens&mdash;easy to defend and
+very fertile. There are many cultivated fields and
+flocks. The inhabitants speak a language which
+is not that of the people of Khorasan, and they
+are not Mohammedans." Who were they? The
+Khilkhis or Ghilzais we know at that time overspread
+the southern hills of Dawar; but who were
+the people speaking a strange language in the
+land of the Chahar Aimak where now dwell the
+Taimanis, unless they were the Taimanis themselves
+whose traditions date from the time of
+Moses?</p>
+
+<p>More recently the Ghilzais have left Zamindawar,
+and the Taimanis have been pressed backward and
+upward into the central hills by the Afghan Durani
+clans, who circle round westward, forming a fringe
+on the foothills between Herat and Kandahar, and
+who have now completely monopolized Zamindawar.
+Here, indeed, the truculent Nurzai and Achakzai,
+and other elements of the Durani section of Afghan
+ethnography, flourish exceedingly, and it is in this
+corner of Afghanistan, bordering on the Herat highway
+to India, that nearly all the fanatics and ghazis
+of the country are bred. They presented so turbulent
+and uncompromising a front to strangers in
+1882 that there was great difficulty in getting a
+fair survey of the land of the Chahar Aimak or
+of Zamindawar.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The mediæval provinces of Ghur and Bamain
+figure so largely in the records of Arab geography,
+and appear to have been so fully open to commerce
+during the centuries succeeding the Arab conquests,
+that one naturally wonders whether there can have
+been any remarkable change in the physical configuration
+of those regions which, in these later
+days, has rendered them more inaccessible and
+unapproachable. The Arab accounts of trade routes
+flit easily from point to point, taking little reckoning
+of long distances and gigantic ice-bound passes, or
+the perils of a treacherous climate. An itinerary
+which deals with stupendous mountains and extreme
+altitudes has little more of descriptive illustration
+in these Arab records than such as would
+apply to camel tracks across the sandy desert or over
+the flat plain. Nor is the distance which figures as
+a "day's journey" sensibly changed to suit the
+route. Forty miles or so across the backbone of
+the Hindu Kush is written of in much the same
+terms as if it were forty miles over the plains.
+Giving the Arab travellers all credit for far greater
+powers of endurance and determination than we
+moderns possess, we must still believe that there
+is a great deal of exaggeration (or forgetfulness) in
+these heroic records of the past. It is unlikely that
+the physical conditions of the country have materially
+changed.</p>
+
+<p>So little has been written of this central region
+of modern Afghanistan (within which lie the ruins
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span>
+of more than one kingdom), so little has it been
+traversed by modern explorers, that it may be
+useful to give some slight general description of
+the country with which these records deal, including
+Bamain and Kabul and the mountain system occupied
+by the Taimani and Hazara tribes as well as
+the prolific region of Zamindawar with the routes
+which traverse it.</p>
+
+<p>No part of Afghanistan has been subject to more
+speculative theories, or requires more practical
+elucidation, than this mountain region in which so
+large a share of the drama of Afghan history has
+been played. Before the days of the Anglo-Russian
+agreement on the subject of the northern boundaries
+of Afghanistan nothing was known of its geography,
+beyond what might be gathered from the doubtful
+records of Ferrier's journey&mdash;and that was very
+little. The geography of a country shapes its
+history just as surely in the East as in the West,
+and we have consequently much new light thrown
+on the interesting story of the rise and fall of the
+Ghur dynasties by the fairly comprehensive surveys
+of the region of their turbulent activities which were
+carried out in 1882-83.</p>
+
+<p>From these sources we obtain a very fair idea
+of the general conformation of Central Afghanistan,
+<i>i.e.</i> that part of Afghanistan which is occupied by
+the tribes known as the Chahar Aimak, <i>i.e.</i> the Jamshidis,
+the Hazaras, Firozkohis, and Taimanis. It
+consists in the first place of a huge irregular tableland&mdash;or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span>
+uplift&mdash;which has been deeply scored and
+eroded by centuries of river action, the rivers
+radiating from the central mass of the Koh-i-Babar
+to the west of Kabul and flowing in deep valleys
+either directly northward towards the Oxus, due
+west towards Herat (eventually to turn northward),
+or south-west in irregular but more or less parallel
+lines to the Helmund lagoons in Seistan.</p>
+
+<p>The Kabul River basin also finds its head near the
+same group of river sources. The central mountain
+mass, the Koh-i-Babar, is high, rocky, generally
+snow-capped and impassable. To the north it
+sends down long, barren, and comparatively gentle
+spurs to the main plateau level, which is deeply cut
+into by the northern system of rivers, including the
+Murghab and the Balkh Ab. But the strangest
+feature in this network of hydrography is the long,
+deep, narrow valley (almost ditch-like in its regularity)
+which has been eroded by the Hari Rud
+River as it makes its way due west, cutting off the
+sources of the northern group from those of the
+Helmund or south-western group. It is a most
+remarkable valley, depressed to a depth of 1000 to
+2000 feet below the general plateau level, bounded
+on the north by a comparatively level line of red-faced
+cliffs, and on the south by another straight
+flat-backed range called the Band-i-Baian (or
+farther west, the Sufed Koh), which has been carved
+into the semblance of a range by the parallel valleys
+of the Hari Rud on the north and the Tagao
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span>
+Ishlan on the south, which hug the range between
+them.</p>
+
+<p>No affluents of any consequence join either
+stream. Either separate or together they make
+their way with straight determination westward
+towards Herat. South of this curious ditch rise
+the many streamlets which work their way, sometimes
+through comparatively open valleys where
+the floor level has been raised by the centuries of
+detritus, sometimes through steep and narrow gorges
+where the harder rock of the plateau formation
+presents more difficulties to erosion, into the great
+Helmund basin. These are affluents of the Adraskand,
+the Farah Rud, and the Helmund, all of
+which have the same bourne in the Seistan depression.
+High up between the Farah Rud and the
+Helmund affluents isolated rugged peaks and short
+ranges crease and crumple the surface of the inhospitable
+land of the Hazaras, who occupy all the
+highest of the uplands and all the sources of the
+streams, a hardy, handy race of Mongols, living in
+wild seclusion, but proving themselves to be one
+of the most useful communities amongst the many
+in Afghanistan. We have some of them as sepoys
+in the Indian Army. Lower down in the same
+river basins, where the gentle grass-covered valleys
+sweep up to the crests of the hills, cultivation
+becomes possible. Here flocks of sheep dot the
+hill-sides, and the land is open and free; but there
+are still isolated and detached ribs of rocky eminence
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span>
+rising to 11,000 and 12,000 feet, maintaining the
+mountainous character of the scenery, and rivers are
+still locked in the embrace of occasional gorges
+which admit of no passing by. This is the land of
+that very ancient people, the Taimanis.</p>
+
+<p>The fierce and lawless Firozkohis live in the
+Murghab basin on the plateau north of the Hari
+Rud, the Jamshidis to the west of them in the
+milder climate of the lower hills, into which the
+plateau subsides.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst we are chiefly concerned in tracing out
+the mediæval commercial routes of Afghanistan, we
+may briefly summarize the events which prove that
+those traversed between Herat and the central
+kingdoms were important routes, worn smooth by
+the feet of armies as well as by the tread of pack-laden
+khafilas. They are still very rough and they
+present solid difficulties here and there, but in the
+main they are passable commercial roads, although
+little commerce wends its way about them now.</p>
+
+<p>In the Middle Ages the Kingdom of Ghur included
+the Herat valley as far as Khwaja Chist
+above Obeh in the valley of the Hari Rud, as well
+as all the hill country to the south-east. About the
+earliest mention of Ghur by any traveller is that of
+Ibn Haukel, who speaks of Jebel al Ghur, and
+talks of plains, ring-fenced with mountains, fruitful
+in cattle and crops, and inhabited by infidels (<i>i.e.</i>
+non-Mussulmans). The later history of Ghur is
+inextricably intertwined with that of Ghazni.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mahmud of Ghazni frequently invaded the hills
+of Ghur which lay to the west of him, but never
+made any practical impression on the Ghuri tribespeople.
+In 1020, however, Mahomedans conquered
+Ghur effectually from Herat. About a
+century later (this is after the time of Idrisi, whose
+records we are following) a member of the ruling
+Ghuri family (Shansabi) was recognized as lord of
+Ghur, and it was one of his sons (Alauddin) who
+inflicted such terrible reprisals on Ghazni when he
+sacked and destroyed that city and its people. It
+was about this time (according to some authorities)
+that the kingdom of Bamian was founded by another
+member of the same family; but we find Bamian
+distinctly recognized as a separate kingdom by
+Idrisi a century or so earlier. From 1174 to 1214
+Bamian was the seat of government of a branch of
+this family ruling all Tokharistan (Turkistan), during
+which period Seistan and Herat were certainly
+tributary to Ghur. Ghur then became so powerful,
+that it was said that prayers in the name of the
+Ghuri were read from uttermost India to Persia, and
+from the Oxus to Hormuz.</p>
+
+<p>In 1214 Ghur was reduced first by Mahomedans
+from Khwarezm (Khiva), and shortly afterwards by
+Chenghis Khan and his Mongol hosts. About the
+middle of the thirteenth century, however, a recrudescence
+of power appeared under the Kurt (or
+Tajik) dynasty subject to the supreme government
+of the Mongols. Seistan, Kabul, and Tirah were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>
+then ruled from Herat as the capital of Ghur.
+Timur finally broke up Herat and Ghur in 1383,
+since which time its history has been as obscure as
+the geography of the region which surrounded it.
+Such in brief is the stormy tale of Ghur, and it
+leads to one or two interesting deductions. There
+was evidently constant and ready communication
+with Herat, Bamian, and Ghazni. The capital of
+Ghur must have been an important town, situated
+in a fertile and fairly populous district, which,
+although it was mountainous, yet enjoyed an excellent
+climate. It must have been a military centre
+too, with fortresses and places of defence. During
+its later history it is clear that Ghur was often
+governed from Herat, but in earlier mediæval days
+Ghur possessed a distinct capital and a separate
+entity amongst Afghan kingdoms, and was able to
+hold its own against even so powerful an adversary
+as Mahmud of Ghazni, whilst its communications
+were with Bamian on the north-east rather than
+with Kabul, which was then regarded as an "Indian"
+city. We can at any rate trace no record of a
+direct route between Ghur and Kabul.</p>
+
+<p>In the twelfth century we read that the capital
+of Ghur was known as Firozkohi, which name (says
+Yule) was probably appropriated by the nomad
+Aimak tribe now called Firozkohi; but within the
+limits of what is now recognized as the habitat of
+the Firozkohi (<i>i.e.</i> the plateau which forms the basin
+of the Upper Murghab), it is impossible to find any
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>
+place which would answer to what we know of the
+general condition of the surroundings and climate
+of the capital of Ghur, and which would justify a
+claim to be considered a position of commanding
+eminence. The altitude of the Upper Murghab
+branches is not more than 6000 to 7000 feet above
+sea-level, at which height the climate certainly
+admits of agriculture, but no place that has been
+visited, nor indeed any position in the valleys of
+the Upper Murghab affluents, corresponds in any
+way to what we are told of this capital.</p>
+
+<p>If we look for the best modern lines of communication
+through Central Afghanistan we shall certainly
+find that they correspond with mediæval routes,
+fitting themselves to the conformation of the country.
+Central Afghanistan is open to invasion from the
+north, west, and south, but not directly from the
+east. The invasion of Ghur from Ghazni, for instance,
+must have been directed by Kalat-i-Gilzai,
+Kariut, and Musa Kila (in Zamindawar), to Yaman,
+which lies a little to the east of Ghur (or Taiwara).
+So far as we know there are no passes leading due
+west from Ghazni to the heart of the Taimani
+country.</p>
+
+<p>From the south the Helmund and its affluents
+offer several openings into the heart of the Hazara
+highlands to the east of Taimani land, amidst the
+great rocky peaks of which the positions were fixed
+from stations on the Band-i-Baian. But there is
+no certain information about the inhabited centres
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span>
+of Hazara population; and from what we know of
+that desolate region of winter snow and wind, there
+never could have been anything to tempt an invader,
+nor would any sound commercial traveller have
+dreamt of passing that way from Seistan to Bamian
+and Kabul. The idea that Alexander ever took an
+army up the Helmund valley, and over the Bamian
+passes, must be regarded as most improbable in
+spite of the description of Quintus Curtius, who
+undoubtedly describes a route which presented more
+difficulties than are quite appropriate to the regular
+Kandahar to Kabul road. On the other hand, from
+Seistan by the Farah Rud there is a route which
+is open to wheeled traffic all the way to Daolatyar
+on the upper Hari Rud. Daolatyar may be regarded
+as the focus of several routes trending north-eastward
+from Seistan, with the ultimate objective of Bamian
+and the populous valleys of Ghur.</p>
+
+<p>One of the chief affluents of the Farah Rud is now
+known as the Ghur, and we need look no farther than
+this valley for the central interest of the Ghur kingdom,
+although the exact position of the capital may
+still be open to discussion. Between the Tagao
+Ghur and the Farah Rud are the Park Mountains,
+which are almost Himalayan in general characteristics
+and beauty, with delightful valleys and open
+spaces, terraced fields, well-built two-storied wooden
+houses, pretty villages, orchards with an abundance of
+walnuts and vines trailing over the trees; the Ghur
+valley itself being broad and open with a clear river
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>
+of sweet water in its midst. This is near its junction
+with the Farah Rud. Above this, for a space, the
+valley narrows to a gorge and there is no passing
+along it, whilst above the gorge again it becomes
+wide, cultivated, and well populated, and this is
+where the Taimani headquarters of Taiwara are
+found. Taiwara is locally known as Ghur, and may
+be absolutely on the site of the ancient capital, for
+there are ruins enough to support the theory.
+Beyond an intervening band of hills to the south
+are two valleys full of cultivation and trees, wherein
+are two important places, Nili and Zarni, which likewise
+boast of extensive ruins, whilst at Jam Kala,
+hard by, there is perched on a high spur above the
+road with only one approach, a remarkable stone-built
+fort. Yaman, to the east of Taiwara, in the
+Helmund drainage, is a permanent Taimani village.
+Here also are very ancient ruins, and the people
+say that they date from the time of Moses. At that
+time they say that cups were buried with the dead,
+one at the head and one at the foot of the corpse.
+Our native surveyor Imám Sharif saw one of these
+cups with an inscription on it, but was unable to
+secure the relic.</p>
+
+<p>Nili and Zarni are in direct connection with
+Farah, with no inconvenient break in the comparatively
+easy line of communication; and they all
+(including Taiwara) are in direct communication
+with Herat, by a good khafila route (<i>i.e.</i> good for
+camels). But the routes differ widely, that from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span>
+Herat to Taiwara by Farsi being more direct,
+whilst the route from Herat to Zarni by Parjuman
+(which is well kept up between these two places)
+passes well to the south. All these places, again,
+are connected with the Hari Rud valley at Khwaja
+Chist (the Ghur frontier) by a good passable high-road,
+which first crosses the hills between Zarni
+and Taiwara, then passes under the shadow of a
+remarkable mountain called Chalapdalan, or Chahil
+Abdal (12,700 feet high&mdash;about which many mysterious
+traditions still hover), over the Burma Pass
+into the Farah Rud drainage, thence over another
+pass into the valleys of the Tagao Ishlan, and
+finally over the Band-i-Baian into the Hari Rud
+valley at Khwaja Chist.</p>
+
+<p>This is the route described by Idrisi as connecting
+Ghur with Herat, as we shall see. The Ghur
+district is linked up with Daolatyar and Bamian
+by the Farah Rud line of approach, or by a route,
+described as good, which runs east into the Hazara
+highlands, and then follows the Helmund. The
+latter is very high. There is therefore absolutely
+no difficulty in traversing these Taimani mountain
+regions in almost any direction, and the facility for
+movement, combined with the beauty and fertility
+of the country, all point unmistakably to Taiwara
+and its neighbourhood as the seat of the Ghuri
+dynasty of the Afghan kings.</p>
+
+<p>The picturesque characteristics of Ghur extend
+southward to Zamindawar on its southern frontier,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span>
+the valleys of the Helmund, the Arghandab, the
+Tarnak, and Arghastan&mdash;this is a land of open,
+rolling watersheds, treeless, but covered with grass
+and flowers in spring, and crowned with rocky
+peaks and ridges of rugged grandeur alternating
+with the rich beauty of pastoral fields. The
+summer of their existence is in curious contrast
+to the stern winter of the storm-swept highlands
+above them, or the dreary expanse of drab sand-dusted
+desert below. The route upstream to the
+backbone of the mountains, and so over the divide
+to the kingdom of Bamian, was once a well-trodden
+route.</p>
+
+<p>Since so many routes converge on Daolatyar
+at the head of the Hari Rud valley, one would
+naturally look for Daolatyar to figure in mediæval
+geography as an important centre. It is not easy,
+however, to identify any of the places mentioned
+by Idrisi as representing this particular focus of
+highland routes. Between Ghur and Herat, or
+between Ghur and Ghazni, the difficulty lies
+in the number and extent of populous towns,
+any one of which may represent an ancient site,
+to say nothing of ruins innumerable. Between
+Taiwara and Herat we get no information from
+Idrisi till we reach Khwaja Chist on the frontier.
+He merely mentions the existence of a khafila
+road, and then he counts seven days' journey
+between Khwaja Chist and Herat, reckoning the
+first as "short."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The names of the halting-places between Khwaja
+Chist and Herat are Housab, Auca, Marabad,
+Astarabad, Bajitan (or Najitan), and Nachan. Auca
+I have no hesitation in identifying with Obeh. There
+is a large village at Marwa which might possibly
+represent Marabad, and Naisan would correspond in
+distance with Nachan, but this is mere guesswork;
+to identify the others is impossible, without further
+examination than was undertaken when surveying
+the ground.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the commerce of Central Asia,
+which centred itself in Herat in the days of Arab
+supremacy, has a strong claim on the student of
+Eastern geography, for it is only through the
+itineraries of these wandering Semetic merchants
+and travellers that we can arrive at any estimation
+of the peculiar phase of civilization which existed in
+Asia in the mediæval centuries of our era; a period
+at which there is good reason to suppose that civilization
+was as much advanced in the East as in the
+West. It is not the professional explorers, nor yet
+the missionaries (great as are their services to geography),
+who have opened up to us a knowledge of
+the world's highways and byways sufficient to lead
+to general map illustration of its ancient continents,
+so much as the everlasting pushing out of trade
+investigations in order to obtain the mastery of the
+road to wealth.</p>
+
+<p>India and its glittering fame has much to answer
+for, but India (that is to say, the India we know,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span>
+the peninsula of India) was so much more get-at-able
+by sea than by land even in the early days of
+navigation, that we do not learn so much about the
+passes through the mountains into India as the
+way of the ships at sea, and the coast ports which
+they visited. According to certain Arab writers
+large companies of Arabs settled in the borderland
+and coasts of India from the very earliest days.
+Indeed, there are evidences of their existence in
+Makran long before the days of Alexander; but
+there is very little evidence of any overland
+approach to India across the Indus. Hindustan,
+to the mediæval Arab, commenced at the Hindu
+Kush, and Kabul and Ghazni were "Indian"
+frontier towns; and the invasions and conquests
+of India dating back to Assyrian times include no
+more than the Indus basin, and were not concerned
+with anything farther south. The Indus, with its
+flanking line of waterless desert, was ever a most
+effectual geographical barrier.</p>
+
+<p>The Arabs entered India and occupied the
+Indus valley through Makran, and throughout their
+writings we find, strangely, little reference to any
+of the Indian frontier passes which we now know
+so well. But in the north and north-west of
+Afghanistan, in the Seistan and the Oxus regions,
+they were thoroughly at home both as traders and
+travellers; and with the assistance of their records
+we can make out a very fair idea of the general
+network of traffic which covered High Asia. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span>
+destroying hordes of the subsequent Mongol invasions,
+and the everlasting raids of Turkmans
+and Persians on the border, have clean wiped
+out the greater number of the towns and cities
+mentioned by them, and the map is now full of
+comparatively modern Turkish and Persian names
+which give no indication whatever of ancient occupation.
+There are, nevertheless, some points of
+unmistakable identity, and from these we can work
+round to conclusions which justify us in piecing
+together the old route-map of Northern Afghanistan
+to a certain extent. This is not unimportant even
+to modern geographers. The roads of the old
+khafila travellers may again be the roads of
+modern progress. We know, at any rate, that the
+Arabs of 1000 years ago were much the same as
+the Arabs of to-day in their manners and methods.
+Their routes were camel routes, not horse routes,
+and their day's journey was as far as a camel could
+go in a day, which was far in the wider and more
+waterless spaces of desert or uninhabited country,
+and very much shorter when convenient halting-places
+occurred. These Arab itineraries are bare
+enumeration of place-names and approximate distances.
+As for any description of the nature of the
+road or the scenery, or any indication of altitude
+(which they possibly had no means of judging),
+there is not a trace of it; and the difficulties of
+transliteration in place-names are so great as to leave
+identification generally a matter of mere guesswork.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of the most interesting geographical centres
+from which to take off is Herat, and it may be
+instructive to note what is said about Herat itself
+and its connections with the Oxus and Seistan.
+Herat, says Idrisi, is "great and flourishing, it
+is defended inside by a citadel, and is surrounded
+outside by 'faubourgs.' It has many gates of
+wood clamped with iron, with the exception of the
+Babsari gate, which is entirely of iron. The Grand
+Mosque of the town is in the midst of the bazaars....
+Herat is the central point between Khorasan,
+Seistan, and Fars." Ibn Haukel (tenth century)
+mentions a gate called the Darwaza Kushk, which
+is evidence that Kushk was of importance in those
+days, though no separate mention is made of that
+place; and he adds that the iron gate was the
+Balkh gate, and was in the midst of the city.
+The strategical value of the position was clearly
+recognized.</p>
+
+<p>That grand edifice, the Mosalla, with its mosques
+and minars, which stood outside the walls of Herat
+and was the glory of the town in 1883 (when it was
+destroyed in the interests of military defence), had
+no previous existence in any other form than that
+which was given it when it was built in the twelfth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>Both Ibn Haukel and Idrisi mention a mountain
+about six miles from Herat, from which stone was
+taken for paving (or mill-stones), where there was
+neither grass nor wood, but where was a place (in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span>
+Ibn Haukel's time, but not mentioned by Idrisi)
+"inhabited, called Sakah, with a temple or Church
+of Christians." Idrisi says this mountain was "on
+the road to Balkh, in the direction of Asfaran."
+This would seem to indicate that Asfaran, "on the
+road to Balkh," must be Parana (or Parwana), an
+important position about a day's march north of
+Herat. Ibn Haukel says nothing about the road
+to Balkh, which can only be northward from Herat,
+but merely mentions that the mountain was on the
+desert or uncultivated side of Herat, where was a
+river which had to be crossed by a bridge. This
+could only be <i>south</i> of Herat. Asfaran is also
+stated to be on the road to <i>Seistan</i> and to have
+had four places dependent on it, one of which was
+Adraskand; and the route to Asfaran from Herat
+is further described as three days' journey (Idrisi).
+Ibn Haukel also describes Asfaran as possessing
+four dependent towns, and places it between Farah
+and Herat, or <i>south</i> of Herat. As Adraskand<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> is a
+well-known place between Herat and Farah, we
+must assume that this is either another Asfaran, or
+that Idrisi has made a mistake in copying Ibn
+Haukel. It might possibly be represented by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>
+Parah, twenty-five miles south-west of Herat, although
+the limited area of cultivable ground around
+renders this unlikely. Subzawar would indicate a
+far more promising position for an important trade
+centre such as Asfaran must have been, and would
+accord better with the three days' journey from
+Herat of Idrisi, or the itinerary from Farah given
+by Ibn Haukel, while the extensive ruins around
+testify to its antiquity. Asfaran was almost certainly
+Subzawar.</p>
+
+<p>Considering the interest which may once again
+surround the question of communications from
+Herat to India, it may be useful to point out
+that the route connecting Farah with Herat 1000
+years ago remains apparently unchanged. The
+bridge called the Pul-i-Malun, over the Hari Rud,
+must have been in existence then, and there was
+another bridge over the Farah River one day's
+march below Farah, on the highway between
+Herat and Seistan. To the west of Herat, on
+the ruin-strewn road to Sarakhs, we have one or
+two interesting geographical propositions.</p>
+
+<p>Idrisi mentions a place possessing considerable
+local importance "before Herat had become what
+it is now," about 9 miles west of Herat, called
+Kharachanabad. This can easily be recognized
+in the modern Khardozan, a walled but very
+ancient town, which is about 8½ miles distant.
+Between it and the walls of the city there is
+now no place of importance, nor does it appear
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span>
+likely, for local reasons, that there ever could
+have been any. Another place, called Bousik, or
+Boushinj (Pousheng, according to Ibn Haukel), is
+said to be half the size of Sarakhs, built on the
+flat plain 6 miles distant from the mountains,
+surrounded with walls and a ditch, with brick
+houses, and inhabitants who were commercial, rich,
+and prosperous, and "who drink the water of the
+river that runs to Sarakhs." This indicates a site
+on the banks of the Hari Rud. The only modern
+place of importance which answers this description
+is the ancient town of Zindajan, which is about
+6 miles from the mountains, and which (according
+to Ferrier) still bears the name of Foosheng. This
+name, however, was not recognized by the Afghan
+Boundary Commission. "To the west of Bousik
+are Kharkerde and Jerkere. One reckons two
+days' journey to this last town, which is well populated,
+smaller than Kuseri, but where there is
+plenty of water and cultivation. From Jerkere
+to Kharkerde is two days' journey." These two
+places are obviously on the road to Nishapur.
+There is an ancient "haoz," or tank, below the
+isolated hill of Sangiduktar, near the Persian
+frontier, which might well represent what is left
+of Jerkere, and Kharkerde lies beyond it, on the
+road to Rue Khaf (itself a very ancient site, probably
+representing Rudan), near Karat. Another
+place which has a very ancient and troubled history
+is Ghurian, about thirteen miles west of Zindajan.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span>
+This is readily identified as the Koure of Idrisi,
+which is described as twelve miles from Bousik,
+on the left of the high-road westward, and about
+three miles from it.</p>
+
+<p>This corresponds exactly with Ghurian, and
+proves that the high-road has retained its position
+through ages. Koure is described as an important
+town, but there is no mention of walls or defences.
+Another place, second only in importance to Bousik,
+is Kouseri. It is in fact said to be equal to Bousik,
+and to possess "running water and gardens." There
+can be little doubt that this is Kuhsan (or Kusan),
+one of the most important towns of the Herat
+valley.</p>
+
+<p>This great high-road, intersecting the plain from
+the north-west gate of the city, is a pleasant enough
+road in the spring and summer months. For a
+space it runs singularly free from crowded villages
+and close cultivation, and the tread of a horse's
+hoof is amongst low-growing flowers of the plain,
+a dwarf yellow rose with maroon centre being the
+most prominent. Then, as one skirts the Kaibar
+River as it runs to a junction with the Hari Rud
+from the northern hills, cultivation thickens and
+villages increase.</p>
+
+<p>The road next hugs the Hari Rud, and, passing
+the high-walled town of Zindajan to the south,
+runs, white and even and hard, with the scarlet
+and purple of poppies and thistles fringing it,
+between long gravel slopes of open dasht and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span>
+the twin-peaked ridge of Doshak, to Rozanak and
+Kuhsan. Kuhsan is a little to the south of the
+Kaman-i-Bihist. It was here that the British
+Commission of the Russo-Afghan Boundary
+gathered in the late autumn of 1884, one half
+from England and the other half from India. The
+drab squares of the cultivated plain were bare then,
+in November, and the poplars on the banks of the
+river were scattering yellow leaves to the blasts of
+the bitter north-west winds of autumn which sweep
+through Khorasan and Seistan, making of life a
+daily burden. But there came a marvellous change
+in the spring-time, when the world was scarlet and
+green below and blue above; when the sand-grouse
+began to chatter through the clear sky; then
+Kaman-i-Bihist (the bow of Paradise) justified its
+name. The old Arab of the trading days who
+wandered northward to Sarakhs must have loved
+this place.</p>
+
+<p>Stretching Sarakhs-ward are the hills, rocky and
+broken along the river edge, but gradually giving
+place eastward to easy rounded slopes, softened by
+rain and snow, and washed into smooth spurs with
+treacherous waterways between which become quagmires
+under the influence of a north-western "shamshir."
+The extraordinary effect of denudation which
+yearly results from the heavy rain-storms which are
+so frequent in spring and early summer in these
+hills must have absolutely changed their outlines
+during the centuries which have elapsed since the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span>
+Semitic trader trod them. A summer storm-cloud
+charged with electricity may burst on their summits,
+and the whole surface of the slopes at once
+becomes soft and pulpy. Mud avalanches start on
+the steeper grades and carry down thousands of
+tons of slimy detritus in a crawling mass, and
+spread it out in fans at their feet. It is not safe
+to say that the modern passes of the Paropamisus
+north of Herat&mdash;the Ardewan and the Babar&mdash;were
+the passes of mediæval commerce, although the
+Ardewan is marked by certain wells and ruined
+caravanserais which show that it has long been
+used. It seems possible that these passes may
+have shifted their positions more than once. There
+was undoubtedly a well-trodden route from Bousik,
+which carried the traveller more directly to Sarakhs
+than would the Ardewan or even the Chashma
+Sabz Pass. This road followed the river more
+closely than any railway ever will. It turned the
+river gorge to the east, and probably passed
+through the hills by the Karez Ilias route, which
+runs almost due north to Sarakhs. The only
+certain indication which we can find in Idrisi is
+the statement that the "silver hill" (<i>i.e.</i> the hill of
+the silver mine) is on the road from Herat to
+Sarakhs. The Simkoh (silver hill) is still a
+well-known feature in the broken range of the
+Paropamisus, near that route. But it is difficult
+after centuries of disturbing forces, natural and
+artificial, to identify the sites of many of the towns
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>
+and markets mentioned by Idrisi, who places
+Badghis to the west of Bousik, and gives the
+"silver hill" as one of its "dependencies." There
+were two considerable towns, Kua (or Kau) and
+Kawakir, said to have been near the silver hill,
+and there is mention of a place called Kilrin in
+this neighbourhood. Probably the ruins at Gulran
+represent the latter, but Kua and Kawakir are
+not identified. Gulran was one of the most
+fascinating camps of the Afghan Boundary Commission.
+On the open grass slopes stretching in
+gentle grades northward, bordered by the line of
+red Paropamisan cliffs to the south and west and by
+the open desert stretching to Merv on the north, it
+was, during one or two early months of the year,
+quite an ideal camping-ground.</p>
+
+<p>It was here that the wild asses of the mountains
+made a raid on the humble four-footed followers of
+the Commission, and signified their extreme disgust
+at the free use which was made of their feeding-grounds;
+thus witnessing to the condition of
+primeval simplicity into which that once populous
+district had subsided after centuries of border raid
+and insecurity. The remains of an old karez, or
+underground irrigation channel, not far north of
+Gulran, testified to a former condition of cultivation
+and prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>From Gulran (which is connected with the Herat
+plains directly by the pass called Chashma Sabz)
+roads stretch northwards and north-eastwards,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span>
+without obstacle, to the open Turkistan plains,
+where ancient sites abound. Idrisi's indications,
+however, are but a very uncertain foundation for
+identifying most of them. The "dependencies"
+of Badghis are said to be Kua, Kughanabad, Bast,
+Jadwa, Kalawun, and Dehertan, the last place
+being built on a hill having neither vegetation
+nor gardens; but "lead is found there, and a small
+stream."</p>
+
+<p>The great trade centres of Turkistan, north
+of the Paropamisus, in mediæval days were undoubtedly
+near Panjdeh, at the confluence of the
+Kushk and Murghab rivers, and at Merv-el-Rud,
+or Maruchak. Two or three obvious routes lead
+from the passes above Kaman-i-Bihist, or above
+Herat, to Panjdeh and Maruchak. One is indicated
+by the drainage of the Kushk River, and the
+other by that of the Kashan, which is more or less
+parallel to the Kushk to the east of it, with desolate
+Chol country in between. From Herat the most
+direct route to Panjdeh and Merv is by the Babar
+Pass, or by Korokh, the Zirmast Pass, and Naratu.
+Korokh (Karuj) is mentioned both by Ibn Haukel
+and Idrisi as being situated three marches from
+Herat, surrounded by entrenchments, and in the
+"gorge of mountains," with gardens and orchards and
+vines. The Korokh of to-day is between the mountains,
+but only some twenty-five miles from Herat.
+This modern Korokh has, however, many evidences
+of great antiquity, and it is on the high-road to an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>
+important group of passes leading past Naratu to
+Bala Murghab and Maruchak. The most remarkable
+feature about Korokh is a grove of pine trees
+closely resembling the "stone" pine of Italy, which
+mass themselves into a dark blotch on the landscape
+and mark Korokh in this treeless country
+most conspicuously. There are no other trees of
+the same sort to be found now in this part of Asia,
+but I was told that they once were abundant in the
+Herat valley, which renders it possible that the
+"arar" trees, mentioned by Ibn Haukel as a
+peculiar source of revenue to Bousik, may have
+been of this species. Naratu, again, is very
+ancient, and its position among the hills (for it is
+a hill-fortress) seems to identify it with Dahertan.
+Undoubtedly this was one of the most important
+of the old routes northward, and it is a route of
+which account should be taken to-day.</p>
+
+<p>In the Kuskh River more than one ancient site
+was observed, Kila Maur being obviously one of
+the most important, whilst in the Kashan stream
+there were evidences of former occupation at Torashekh
+and at Robat-i-Kashan. Whilst there is a
+general vague resemblance between the names of
+certain old Arab towns and places yet to be found
+in the Herat valley and Badghis, it is only here
+and there that it has been possible to identify
+the precise position of a mediæval site. The
+dependencies of Badghis, enumerated by Idrisi,
+require the patient and careful researches of a Stein
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span>
+to place them accurately on the basis of such
+vague definitions as are given. We are merely
+told that Kanowar and Kalawun are situated at a
+distance of three miles one from the other, and that
+between them there is neither running water nor
+gardens. "The people drink from wells and from
+rain-water. They possess cultivated fields, sheep,
+and cattle." Such a description would apply excellently
+well to any two contiguous villages in the
+Chol country anywhere between the Kushk and the
+Kashan. Those rolling, wave-like hills, with their
+marvellous spread of grass and flowers in summer,
+and their dreary, wind-scoured bareness in winter,
+are excellent for sheep and cattle at certain seasons
+of the year; but water is only to be found at intervals,
+and there are much wider distances than three
+miles where not even wells are to be found.</p>
+
+<p>Writing again of Herat, Idrisi says that, starting
+towards the east in the direction of Balkh, one
+encounters three towns in the district of Kenef:
+Tir, Kenef, and Lakshur; and that they are all
+about equally distant, it being one day's journey
+to Tir, one more to Kenef, and another to Lakshur
+(Lacschour). Tir is a rich town where the
+"prince of the country" resides, larger than Bousik,
+full of commerce and people, with brick-built
+houses, etc. Kenef is as large, but more visited
+by foreigners; and Lakshur is equal to either.
+They are all of them big towns of commercial
+importance, Lakshur being bounded on the west
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span>
+by the Merv-el-Rud province, of which the capital
+is Merv-el-Rud.</p>
+
+<p>Assuming for the present that Maruchak, on the
+Murghab, represents Merv-el-Rud (Merv of the
+River), where are we to place these three important
+sites, so that the last shall be east of the Maruchak
+province and only three days' journey from Herat?
+The distance from Herat to Maruchak is not less
+than 150 miles, and it is called by Idrisi a six days'
+journey. Starting towards the east can only refer
+to the Balkh route already referred to, <i>i.e.</i> <i>via</i>
+Korokh and the Zirmast Pass. It cannot mean
+the Hari Rud valley, for that leads to Bamian
+rather than Balkh. By the Korokh route, however,
+it is possible to follow a more direct line to
+Balkh than any which would pass by Maruchak or
+Bamian. There is on this route, east of Naratu
+and south-east of Maruchak, a place called Langar
+which might possibly correspond to Lakshur, and it
+is not more than 70 to 80 miles from Herat. From
+Langar there is an easy pass leading over the
+Band-i-Turkistan more or less directly to Maimana
+and Balkh, and it seems probable that this
+was a recognized khafila route. Tir is an oft-repeated
+name in the Herat district. The river
+itself was called Tir west of Herat, and there is
+the bridge of Tir (Tir-pul) just above Kuhsan.
+The mountains, again, to the north-east are known
+as Tir Band-i-Turkistan, and the Tir mentioned as
+on the road to Balkh must certainly have been east
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>
+of Herat. Of Kenef I can trace no evidence. It
+must have been close to Korokh.</p>
+
+<p>That this route, through the Korokh valley and
+across the water-parting by the Zirmast Pass to
+Naratu, was the high road between Herat and
+Balkh I have very little doubt. It was the route
+selected for mail service during the winter when
+the Afghan Boundary Commission camp was at
+Bala Murghab, on the Murghab River, and it was
+seldom closed by snow, although the Zirmast
+heights rise to over 7000 feet, and the Tir Band-i-Turkistan
+(which represents the northern <i>rebord</i> or
+revetment of the uplands which contain the Murghab
+drainage) cannot be much less. The intense
+bitterness of a Northern Afghan winter is more or
+less spasmodic. It is only the dreaded shamshir (the
+"scimitar" of the north-west) which is dangerous,
+and travelling is possible at almost every season of
+the year. The condition of the mountain ways and
+passes immediately above Bala Murghab is not that
+of steep and difficult tracks across a rugged and
+rocky divide. In most cases it is possible to ride
+over them, or, indeed, off them, in almost any
+direction; but as these mountains extend eastward
+they alter the character of their crests.
+From Herat to Maruchak this is not, however,
+the direct road; the Kushk River, or the Kashan,
+offering a much easier line of approach.</p>
+
+<p>All our investigations in 1884 tended to prove
+beyond dispute that Maruchak represents the famous
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>
+old city of Merv-el-Rud, the "Merv of the River,"
+to which every Arab geographer refers. Sir Henry
+Rawlinson sums up the position in the Royal
+Geographical Society's <i>Proceedings</i> (vol. viii.), when
+he points out that there were two Mervs known to
+the ancient geographer. One is the well-known
+Russian capital in trans-Caspia, the "Merv of the
+Oasis," a city which, in conjunction with Herat
+and Balkh, formed the tripolis of primitive Aryan
+civilization. It was to this place that Orodis,
+the Parthian king, transported the Roman soldiers
+whom he had taken prisoners in his victory over
+Crassus, and here they seemed to have formed a
+flourishing colony.</p>
+
+<p>Merv was in early ages a Christian city, and
+Christian congregations, both Jacobite and Nestorian,
+flourished at Merv from about <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 200
+till the conquest of Persia by the Mahomedans.
+Merv the greater has as stirring a history as any in
+Asia, but Merv-el-Rud, which was 140 miles south
+of the older Merv, is altogether of later date. This
+city is said to have been built by architects from
+Babylonia in the fifth century <span class="s08">A.D.</span>, and was flourishing
+at the time of the Arab invasion. All this
+Oxus region (Tokharistan) was then held by a race
+of Skytho-Aryans (white Huns) called Tokhari or
+Kushan, and their capital, Talikhan, was not far
+from Maruchak. Now, Merv-el-Rud is the only
+great city named in history on the Upper Murghab,
+above Panjdeh, before the end of the fourteenth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span>
+century <span class="s08">A.D.</span> After that date, in the time of
+Shah Rokh (Timur's son), the name Merv-el-Rud
+disappears, and Maruchak takes its place in
+all geographical works, the inference being that,
+Merv-el-Rud being destroyed in Timur's wars,
+Maruchak was built in its immediate neighbourhood.
+This surmise of Rawlinson's is confirmed
+by the appearance of Maruchak, which is but an
+insignificant collection of inferior buildings surrounded
+by a mud wall, with a labyrinth of deep
+canal cuttings in front of it and a rough irregular
+stretch of untilled country around. Merv-el-Rud
+must have been a much greater place.</p>
+
+<p>There are, however, abundant evidences of grass-covered
+ruins, both near Maruchak and at the junction
+of the Chaharshamba River with the Murghab
+some 10 miles above Maruchak. Sir Henry Rawlinson
+points out the strategic value of this point,
+as the Chaharshamba route leads nearly straight
+into the Oxus plains and to Balkh. At the point
+of the junction of the two rivers the valley of
+the Murghab hardly affords room enough for a
+town of such importance as we are led to believe
+Merv-el-Rud to have been, even after making
+all due allowance for Oriental exaggeration. It
+is only about Maruchak that the valley widens
+out sufficiently to admit of a large town. It seems
+probable, therefore, that the site of Maruchak
+must be near the site of Merv-el-Rud, although
+it does not actually command the entrance to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>
+the Chaharshamba valley and the road to Afghan
+Turkistan.</p>
+
+<p>On this road, some 30 miles from the junction
+of the rivers, there is to be seen on the slopes
+which flank the southern hills, the jagged tooth-edged
+remains of a very old town (long deserted)
+which goes by the name of Kila Wali. It is here,
+or close by, that the Tochari planted their capital
+Talikan, at one time the seat of government of a
+vast area of the Oxus basin. There is, however,
+another Talikan<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> in Badakshan to the east of Balkh,
+and there are symptoms that some confusion existed
+between the two in the minds of our mediæval
+geographers. Ibn Haukel writes of Talikan as
+possessing more wholesome air than Merv-el-Rud,
+and he refers to the river running between the
+two. This is evidently in reference to the capital
+of Tocharistan at Kila Wali. Again when he writes
+of Talikan as the largest city in Tocharistan,
+"situated on a plain, near mountains," he is correct
+enough as applied to Kila Wali, but this has
+nothing to do with Andarab and Badakshan with
+which we find it directly associated in the context.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand the Talikan in Badakshan
+was one of a group of important cities whose connection
+with India lay through Andarab and the
+northern passes of the Hindu Kush. Between
+Maruchak and Panjdeh, along the banks of the
+Murghab, are ruins innumerable, the sites of other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span>
+towns which it is impossible to identify with precision.
+There can be little doubt, however, that
+the remains of the bridge which once spanned the
+river at a point between Maruchak and Panjdeh
+marked the site of Dizek (or Derak, according to
+Idrisi), which we know to have been built on both
+sides of the river, and that Khuzan existed near
+where Aktapa now is (<i>i.e.</i> near Panjdeh). The
+name Dizek is still to be recognized, but it is
+applied to a curious sequence of ancient Buddhist
+caves which have been carved out of the cliffs at
+Panjdeh, and not to any site on the river banks.</p>
+
+<p>The confusion which occasionally exists between
+places bearing the same name in mediæval geographical
+annals is very obvious in Idrisi's description
+of Merv. The greater Merv (the Russian
+provincial capital) is clearly mixed up in his mind
+with the lesser Merv when, in describing the latter,
+he says that Merv-el-Rud is situated in a plain
+at a great distance from mountains, and that its
+territory is fertile but sandy; three grand mosques
+and a citadel adorn an eminence and water is
+brought to it by innumerable canals, all of which
+is applicable to Merv but not to Merv-el-Rud. He
+then continues with a description of the greater
+Merv, which is quite apropos to that locality, and
+makes it clear incidentally that Khiva (not Merv)
+represents the ancient Khwarezm. Again, he
+enumerates towns and places of Mahomedan origin
+which are "dependent" on "Merv." Amongst
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span>
+them we find Mesiha, a pretty, well-cultivated place
+one day's journey to the west of Merv; Jirena
+(Behvana), a market-town 9 miles from Merv,
+and 3 from Dorak (? Dizek), a place situated on
+the banks of the river; then Dendalkan, an
+important town two days from Merv on the road
+to Sarakhs; Sarmakan, a large town to the left
+of Dorak and 3 miles farther, Dorak being situated
+on the banks of the river at 12 miles from Merv in
+the direction of Sarakhs; Kasr Akhif (or Ahnef),
+a little town at one day's distance from Merv on
+the road to Balkh; Derah, a small town 12 miles
+from Kasr Ahnef where grapes were abundant.
+Here, says Idrisi, the river divides the town in two
+parts which are connected by a bridge. It is quite
+impossible to straighten out this geographical
+enumeration, unless we assume that it refers to
+Merv-el-Rud and not to Merv. Then Mesiha
+becomes a possibility, and might be looked for
+among the ruined sites on the Kushk River&mdash;possibly
+at Kila Maur. Dorak, at 12 miles from Merv in
+the direction of Sarakhs, and Dendalkan at two
+days' journey in the same direction, would still be
+on the river banks. Kasr Ahnef we know to have
+been built after the Arab invasion in the valley
+of the Murghab, about 12 miles from Khuzan
+(identified by Rawlinson with Ak Tepe) and 15
+from Merv-el-Rud, and must have been situated
+near the Band-i-Nadir, where the desert road to
+Balkh enters the hills. Ak Tepe must once have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span>
+been a place of great importance, both strategically
+(as it commands the position of the two important
+highways southward to Herat, the Kushk and the
+Murghab valleys) and commercially. But apparently
+its importance did not survive to Arab
+times. Dendalkan was certainly near Ak Tepe.</p>
+
+<p>In making our surveys of this historic district
+it was exceedingly difficult to associate the drab
+and dreary landscape of this Chol (loess) country
+and its intersecting rivers with such a scene of
+busy commercial life as the valleys must have presented
+in Arab times. The Kushk is at best a
+"dry" river, as its name betokens, an unsatisfactory
+driblet in a world of sandy desolation. Reeds and
+thickets hide its narrow ways, and it is only where
+its low banks recede on either hand as it emerges
+into the flat plains above Panjdeh that there is
+room for anything that could by courtesy be called a
+town. The Murghab River shows better promise.</p>
+
+<p>Below Maruchak, where towns once crowded,
+it widens into green spaces, and the multiplicity and
+depth of the astonishing system of canals which
+distribute the waters of the river on its left bank
+leave no room to doubt the strength of the former
+population that constructed them. Where the
+pheasants breed now in myriads, in reedy swamps
+and scrubby thickets, there may lie hidden the
+foundations of many an old town with its caravanserais,
+its mosques, and its baths. The economic
+value of the Murghab River is still great in Northern
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span>
+Afghanistan. No one watching the sullen flood
+pouring past Bala Murghab in the winter time and
+looking up to the dark doors of the mountains from
+whence it seems to emerge, could have any idea of
+the wealth and fertility and the spread of its usefulness
+which is to be found on the far side of those
+doors. From its many cradles in the Firozkohi
+uplands to its many streamlets reaching out round
+Merv and turning the desert into a glorious field of
+fertility, the Murghab does its duty bravely in the
+world of rivers, and well deserves all that has ever
+been written in its praise by past generations of
+geographers.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the many high-roads of Northern
+Afghanistan which are mentioned by the Arab
+writers, none is more frequently referred to than
+the road from Herat to Balkh, <i>i.e.</i> to Afghan
+Turkistan. Intervening between Herat and Afghan
+Turkistan there is immediately north the easy
+round-backed range called by various names which
+have been lumped under the term Paropamisus,
+down the northern slopes of which the Kushk and
+Kashan made a fairly straight way through the sea
+of rounded slopes and smooth steep-sided hills which
+constitute the Chol. But this range is but an
+extension of the southern rampart of the Firozkohi
+upland, which forms the upper basin of the Murghab
+and overlooks the narrow valley of the Hari Rud.</p>
+
+<p>The northern rampart or buttress of that upland
+is the Tir Band-i-Turkistan, the western flank of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span>
+which is turned by the Murghab River as it makes
+its way northward. So that there are several ways
+by which Afghan Turkistan may be reached from
+Herat. Setting aside the Hari Rud route to Bamian
+or Kabul, which would be a difficult and lengthy
+detour for the purpose of reaching Balkh, there is
+the route we have already mentioned <i>via</i> Korokh,
+Naratu, and Langar, and thence over the Band-i-Turkistan,
+or down the Murghab. But there is
+another and probably the most trodden way, <i>via</i>
+the Kashan to the Murghab valley at the junction
+of the Chaharshamba River, and up that river to
+the divide at its head, passing over into the Kaisar
+drainage, and so, either to Andkhui and the Oxus,
+or to Maimana and Balkh. This was the route made
+use of generally by the Russo-Afghan Boundary
+Commission, and the existence of ancient tanks
+(called "Haoz") and of "robats" (or halting-places)
+at regular intervals in the Kashan valley, testifies
+to its use at no very ancient date.</p>
+
+<p>The entrance to the Chaharshamba valley is
+very narrow, so narrow as to preclude the possibility
+of any large town ever having occupied this
+position; but it opens out as one passes the old
+Kila Wali ruins where there is ample space for the
+old capital of Tocharistan to have existed. On the
+north, trailing streams descend from the Kara Bel
+plateau (a magnificent grass country in summer
+and a cold scene of windy desolation in winter), and
+their descent is frequently through treacherous
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span>
+marshes and shining salt pitfalls, making it exceedingly
+difficult to follow them to the plateau edge.
+To the south are the harder features of the Band-i-Turkistan
+foothills, the crest of the long black ridge
+of this Band being featureless and flat, as is generally
+the case with the boundary ridges and revetments of
+a plateau country. Over the Chaharshamba divide
+(at about 2800 feet) and into the Kaisar drainage
+is an introduction to a country that is beautiful with
+the varied beauty of low hill-tops and gentle slopes,
+until one either by turning north, debouches into
+the flat desert plains of the Oxus at Daolatabad, or
+continuing more easterly, arrives at Maimana, the
+capital of the little province of Almar, the centre
+of a small world of highly cultivated and populous
+country, and a town which must from its position
+represent one or other of the ancient trade centres
+mentioned by Idrisi. Here we leave behind the
+long lines of Turkman kibitkas looking like rows
+of black bee-hives in the snow-spread distance, and
+find the flat-roofed substantial houses of a settled
+Uzbek population, with flourishing bazaars and a
+general appearance of well-being inside the mud
+walls of the town.</p>
+
+<p>Idrisi writes that Talikan is built at the foot of
+a mountain which is part of the Jurkan range
+(Band-i-Turkistan), and that it is on the "paved"
+route between Merv and Balkh. This at once
+indicates that route as an important one compared
+with other routes (there being a desert route
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>
+across the Karabel plateau from near Panjdeh in
+addition to those already mentioned), although there
+is no sign of any serious road-making to be detected
+at present. Sixty miles from Talikan, on the road
+to Balkh, Idrisi places Karbat, a town not so large
+as Talikan but more flourishing and better populated.
+The distance reckoned along the one possible
+route here points to Maimana, which is just 60
+miles from Talikan, but there is no other indication
+of identity. Karbat was a dependency of the
+province of Juzjan (or Jurkan, probably Guzwan),
+and 54 miles to the east of it was the town of
+Aspurkan, a small town, itself 54 miles from Balkh.
+Now Balkh, by any possible route, is at least 130 to
+140 miles from Maimana, but if we assume Aspurkan
+to have been just half-way (as Idrisi makes it)
+between Maimana and Balkh, we find Sar-i-pul
+(a small place indifferently supplied with water, and
+thus answering Idrisi's description of Aspurkan)
+almost exactly in that position. In support of this
+identification of Aspurkan with Sar-i-pul there is
+the name Aspardeh close to Sar-i-pul. Other places
+are mentioned by Idrisi as flourishing centres of
+trade and industry in this singularly favoured part
+of Afghanistan, where the low spurs and offshoots
+of the Band-i-Turkistan break gently into the Oxus
+plains. He says that Anbar, one day's march to
+the south-west of Aspurkan, was a larger place than
+Merv-el-Rud, with vineyards and gardens surrounding
+it and a fair trade in cloth. There, both in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span>
+summer and winter, the chief of the country resided.
+Two days from Aspurkan, and one from Karbat,
+was the Jewish colony of Yahudia, a walled town
+with a good commercial business. This colony is
+also mentioned by Ibn Haukel as situated in the
+district of Jurkan. From Yahudia to Shar (a small
+town in the hills) was one day's march. The main
+road south-west from Sar-i-pul has probably remained
+unchanged through the centuries. It runs
+to Balangur (? Bala Angur) and Kurchi, the former
+being 10 miles and the latter 30 from Sar-i-pul.
+Either might represent the site of Anbar. Twenty
+miles from Kurchi is Belchirag, and Belchirag is
+about 25 from Maimana. It would thus represent
+the site of the ancient Yahudia fairly well, whilst
+25 to 30 miles from Belchirag we find Kala Shahar,
+a small town in the mountains, still existing. Jurkan
+is described as a town by Idrisi (and as a district
+by Ibn Haukel), built between two mountains, three
+short marches from Aspurkan, and Zakar is another
+commercial town two marches to the south-east.
+I should identify Jirghan of our maps with Jurkan,
+and Takzar with Zakar.</p>
+
+<p>All this part of Afghan Turkistan is rich in
+agricultural possibilities. The Uzbek population
+of the towns and the Ersari Turkmans of the
+deserts beyond Shibarghan are all agriculturists,
+and the land is great in fruit. They are a peaceful
+people, hating the Afghan rule and praying for
+British or any other alternative. Shibarghan is an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span>
+insignificant walled town with a small garrison of
+Afghan Kasidars; always in straits for water in the
+dry season. The road between Shibarghan and
+Sar-i-pul is flat, skirting the edge of the rolling
+Chol to the east of it. Sar-i-pul itself is but a
+small walled town in rotten repair, sheltering a few
+Kasidars and two guns, but no regular Afghan
+troops. There are a few Jews there who make and
+sell wine, and a few Peshawur bunniahs (shopkeepers).</p>
+
+<p>From Sar-i-pul a direct road runs to Bamian and
+Kabul <i>via</i> Takzar to the south-east, and strikes the
+hill country almost at once after leaving Sar-i-pul.
+It surmounts a high divide (about 11,000 feet), and
+crosses the Balkh Ab valley to reach Bamian.
+There is another route up the Astarab stream
+leading to Chiras at the head of the Murghab River
+and into the Hazara highlands; but these were
+never trade routes except for local purposes. The
+Hazaras send down to the plain their camel hair-cloth
+and receive many of the necessities of life in
+exchange, but there is no through traffic.</p>
+
+<p>The characteristics of the Astarab road are
+typical of this part of Afghanistan. After passing
+Jirghan the valley is shut in by magnificent cliffs
+from 700 to 1000 feet high. The vista is closed
+by snow peaks to the south, which, with the
+brilliancy of up-springing crops on the banks of
+the river, form a picture of almost Alpine beauty.
+There is, curiously enough, an entire absence
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span>
+of forest in the valley, but blocks of a soft white
+clay mixed with mica lend a weird whiteness to
+its walls, dazzling the eye, and making patchwork
+of Nature's colouring. Snakes abound in great
+numbers, mostly harmless, but the deadly "asp-i-mar"
+is amongst them. There is a yellow variety
+which is freely handled by the Uzbeks, who call
+this snake Kamchin-i-Shah-i-Murdan. About eight
+miles beyond Jirghan the Uzbek population ceases.
+From this point there are only Firozkohis and some
+few Taimanis who have been ejected from the Hari
+Rud valley for their misdeeds. They are all robbers
+by profession, supporting existence by slave trading.
+They kidnap girls and boys from the Hazara villages
+of the highlands and trade them to the Uzbeks in
+exchange for guns, ammunition, and horses. These
+Taimani robbers are by no means the only slave
+dealers. Nearly every well-to-do establishment in
+Afghan Turkistan has one or two Hazara slaves.
+The prices paid, of course, vary, but 300 krans each
+was paid for two girls bought in 1883. Expert
+native authorities have a very high opinion of the
+handiness of Hazara slave girls. They are good at
+needlework, turning out most exquisite embroidery,
+and they are never idle.</p>
+
+<p>The narrowness of the Astarab gorge renders it
+impossible to follow the river along the whole of
+its course. The road finally leaves the valley
+and strikes up to the plateau on its left bank.
+One remarkably persistent feature in these valley
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span>
+formations is the existence of two plateau levels,
+or terraces; that immediately overlooking the valley
+being sometimes 100 feet lower than the second
+platform which is thrown back for a considerable
+distance, leaving a broad terrace formation between
+the line of its cliff edge and that bordering the
+stream. Occasionally there is more than one such
+terrace indicating former geologic floors of the
+valley.</p>
+
+<p>On gaining the plateau level a very remarkable
+scene opens out&mdash;a broad green dasht, or plain, slopes
+away to a sharp line westwards bordered by glittering
+cliffs and intersected by the white line of the
+road. In the midst of this setting of white and
+green are the remains of what must once have been
+a town of considerable importance, which goes by the
+name locally of the Shahar-i-Wairan, or ancient
+city. Such buildings as remain are of sun-dried
+brick; there appears to be no indication of the
+usual wall or moat surrounding this city, and nothing
+suggestive of a canal or "karez"; nothing,
+in short, but scattered ruins covering about one and
+a half square miles. The kabristan (or graveyard)
+was easily recognizable, and its vast size furnished
+some clue to the size of the city. All history, all
+tradition even, about this remarkable place seems
+lost in oblivion; but a city of such pretensions must
+have had a fair place in geography from very early
+times. It seems improbable, however, that it could
+have been more than a summer residence in its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span>
+palmy days, for winter at this elevation (nearly 7000
+feet) and in such an exposed locality would be very
+severe indeed. The only indication which can be
+derived from Idrisi's writings is the reference to the
+small town in the mountains called Shah (Shahar)
+one day's march from the Jewish colony of Yahudia.
+As already explained there is a Kila Shahar some
+25 to 30 miles from Yahudia (if we accept the
+position of Belchirag as more or less representing
+that place), but the Shahar-i-Wairan is nearer by
+some 10 miles, and fits better into the geographical
+scheme. I should be inclined to identify the
+Shahar-i-Wairan with the ancient Shahar (or Shah)
+and the Kila Shahar as a later development of the
+same place. The point, however, to be specially
+noted about this geographical theory is that there
+is no route by which camels can pass either over
+the Band-i-Turkistan or the mountains enclosing
+the Balkh Ab from the district of Sangcharak
+southward. The province of Sangcharak, which
+corresponds roughly to the ancient district of Jurkan
+(or Gurkan), is rich throughout, with highly cultivated
+valleys and a dense population, but it is a sort
+of geographical cul-de-sac.</p>
+
+<p>Communication with the plains of the Oxus and
+with Balkh (by the lower reaches of the Balkh Ab)
+is easy and frequent, but there never could have
+been a khafila road over the rugged plateau land
+and mountains which divide it from the basin of the
+Helmund.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From time immemorial efforts have been made
+to reach Kabul by the direct route from Herat
+which is indicated by the remarkable lie of the Hari
+Rud valley. It was never recognized as a trade
+route, although military expeditions have passed
+that way; and it has always presented a geographical
+problem of great interest. From Herat eastwards,
+past Obeh as far as Daolatyar, there is no great
+difficulty to be overcome by the traveller, although
+the route diverges from the main valley for a space.
+Between Daolatyar and the head of Sar-i-jangal
+stream (which is the source and easternmost affluent
+of the Hari Rud) the valley is well populated and
+well cultivated, with abundant pasturage on the hills.
+But the winter here is severe. From the middle of
+November to the middle of February snow closes all
+the roads, and even after its disappearance the deep
+clayey tracks are impassable even for foot travellers.
+In the neighbourhood of a small fort called Kila
+Sofarak, about 40 miles from Daolatyar, there is a
+parting of the ways. Over the water-parting at the
+head of the stream by the Bakkak Pass a route
+leads into the Yakulang valley, a continuation of
+the Band-i-Amir, or river of Balkh, which, in the
+course of its passage through the gorges of the
+mountains, here forms a series of natural aqueducts
+uniting seven narrow and deep lakes. Inexpressibly
+wild and impressive is the character of the scenery
+surrounding those deep-set lakes in the depths of
+the Afghan hills.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Near the lakes are the ruins of two important
+towns or fortresses, Chahilburj, and Khana Yahudi.
+On a high rock between them are the ruins of
+Shahr-i-Babar the capital of kings who ruled over
+a country most of which must have been included
+in the Hazara highlands, and was probably more
+or less conterminous with the Bamian of Idrisi.
+Between the Yakulang and the Bamian valley is
+a high flat watershed. Looking north-west a vast
+broken plateau, wrinkled and corrugated by minor
+ranges, and scored by deep valleys and ravines, fills
+up the whole space from the mountains standing
+about the source of the Murghab and Hari Rud
+to the Kunduz River of Badakshan.</p>
+
+<p>So little is this part of modern Afghanistan
+known, that it may be as well to give a short
+description of the existing lines of communication
+connecting the Oxus plains and Herat with Bamian
+and Kabul, before attempting to follow out their
+mediæval adaptation to commercial intercourse.</p>
+
+<p>From Balkh, or Mazar-i-Sharif, or from Deh
+Dadi (the new fortified position near Mazar) the
+most direct routes southward either follow the
+Balkh Ab valley to Kupruk and the Zari affluent,
+and then crossing the Alakah ridge pass into the
+river valley again, and so reach the Band-i-Amir
+and the head of the river at Yakulang; or passing
+by the Darra Yusuf (a most important affluent of
+the Balkh River) attain more directly to Bamian.
+Balkh and Mazar lie close together on the open
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span>
+plain, and about 10 miles to the south of them rises
+the northern wall of the plateau called Elburz,
+through which the Balkh River, and other drainage
+of the plateau, forces its passage. Thus the whole
+course of the Balkh River, from its head to within
+a mile or two of Balkh, lies within a deep and
+narrow ditch cut out from the plateau which fills
+up the space from the Elburz to the great divide
+of Central Afghanistan. East and west of the
+Balkh River the plateau increases in elevation as it
+reaches southward, culminating in knolls or peaks
+12,000 and 13,000 feet high about the latitude 35°
+30', and falling gently where it encloses the actual
+sources of the river. It is this plateau, or uplift,
+which forms the dominant topographical feature
+of Northern Afghanistan.</p>
+
+<p>West of the Balkh Ab it is represented by the
+Firozkohi uplands, which contain the head valleys
+of the Murghab, bordered on the north by the
+Tirband-i-Turkistan from the foot of which stretch
+away towards the Oxus the endless sand-waves
+of the Chol, and by the highlands of Maimana and
+Sangcharak, and which trend northward to within
+a few miles of Balkh. At Balkh its northern edge
+is well defined by the Elburz, but between Balkh
+and Maimana it is more or less merged into the
+great loess sand sea, and its limitations become
+indefinite. East of the longitude of Balkh it is
+lost in a distance whither our surveyors have not
+traced its outlines, but where without doubt it fills
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span>
+a wide area north of the Hindu Kush, determining
+the nature of the Badakshan River sources and
+shaping itself into a vast upland region of mountain
+and deep sunk gully, and generally preserving the
+same characteristics throughout, till it overlooks
+the valley of the Oxus. That part of it which
+embraces the affluents of the Balkh Ab and the
+Kunduz is described as intensely wild and dreary,
+traversed by irregular folds and ridges which rise
+in more or less rounded slopes to great altitudes,
+hiding amongst them deep-seated valleys and
+gulches, wherein is to be found all that there is of
+cultivation and beauty. From above it presents
+the aspect of a huge drab-coloured, hill-encumbered
+desert where man's habitation is not, and Nature
+has sunk her brightest efforts out of sight. These
+efforts are to be found in the valleys, which are
+excavated by ages of erosion, steep sided, with
+precipitous cliffs overhanging, and a narrow green
+ribbon of fertility winding through the flat floor
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>Across those dreary uplands, or else wandering
+blindfold along the bottom of the river troughs,
+run the roads and tracks of the country; some of
+them being the roads of centuries of busy traffic.
+A little apart from the obvious route supplied by
+the lower course of the Balkh Ab, and more
+important as leading more directly to the crest of
+the main divide, is the road from Mazar to the
+Band-i-Amir district which is practically the best
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span>
+road to Kabul. This strikes on to the plateau and
+crosses several minor passes over spurs dividing
+the heads of certain eastern affluents of the Balkh
+Ab before it drops into the trough of the Darra
+Yusuf. Following the course of this river, and
+skirting the towns of Kala Sarkari and Sadmurda, it
+strikes off from its head over a pass called Dandan
+Shikan (the "tooth-breaker") into the Kamard
+valley which runs eastwards into the big river of
+Badakshan&mdash;the Kunduz. From Kamard over
+three passes into the Saigan&mdash;another valley draining
+deeply eastwards into the Kunduz. From this
+again, two parallel routes and passes southward
+connect Saigan with the Bamian depression. Here
+the river of Bamian also runs east, parallel to Saigan
+and Kamard (the three forming three parallel
+depressions in the general plateau land), but meeting
+an affluent draining from the east, the two join
+and curve northward into the Kunduz.</p>
+
+<p>This new affluent from the east is important, for
+it leads over the easy Shibar Pass into the head
+of the Ghorband valley and to Charikar. Finally,
+there is the well-travelled route from Bamian, leading
+southward over the Hajigak Pass into the
+Helmund valley at Gardandiwal, where it crosses
+the river and then proceeds <i>via</i> the Unai Pass and
+Maidan to Kabul. Such is the general system of
+the Balkh communications with Kabul.</p>
+
+<p>From Tashkurghan, east of Mazar, there are
+other routes equally important. There is a direct
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span>
+road southward, which starts through an extraordinary
+defile, where perpendicular walls of slippery
+rock enclose a narrow cleft which hardly admits the
+passing of a loaded mule to Ghaznigak and Haibak.
+From Haibak you may follow up the Tashkurgan
+River to its head and then drop over the Kara Pass
+into Kamard at Bajgah, and so to Bamian again; or
+you may avoid Bamian altogether and striking off
+south-east from Haibak over the plateau, slip down
+into the Kunduz drainage at Baghlan, and then
+follow it to its junction with the Andarab at Dosh.
+This position at Dosh gives practical command of
+all the passes over the Hindu Kush into the Kabul
+basin, for the Andarab drains along the northern
+foot of the Hindu Kush, and commands the back
+doors of all passes between the Chapdara (or
+Chahardar) and the Khawak.</p>
+
+<p>The most trodden route to-day is that which is
+the most direct between Kabul and Mazar, <i>i.e.</i> the
+route <i>via</i> Bamian and the Darra Yusuf. This is
+the route taken by the late Amir when he met his
+cousin Ishak Khan in the field of Afghan Turkistan
+and defeated him. It is not the route taken by the
+Afghan Boundary Commission in returning from
+the same field in 1885. They returned by Haibak
+and Dosh and deploying along the northern foot of
+the Hindu Kush, crossed by nearly every available
+pass either into the Ghorband valley or that of the
+Panjshir.</p>
+
+<p>It would almost appear from mediæval geographical
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span>
+record that there was no way between
+Herat and Kabul that did not lead to the Bamian
+valley. This is very far from accurately representing
+the actual position, for Bamian lies obviously to the
+north of the direct line of communication. Bamian
+was undoubtedly a place of great significance,
+probably more important as a Buddhist centre than
+Kabul, more valuable as a centre trade-market subsequently
+than the Indian city, as Kabul was called.
+But its significance has disappeared, and it is now
+far more important for us to know how to reach
+Kabul directly from the west than how to pass
+through Bamian. The route to Bamian and Kabul
+from Herat diverges at the small deserted fort of
+Sofarak, and follows the Lal and the Kerman valleys
+at the head of the Hari Rud. Crossing the Ak
+Zarat Pass southward there is little difficulty in
+traversing the Besud route to the Helmund, from
+whence the road to Kabul over the Unai Pass
+is open. The Bakkak Pass northward is the only
+real difficulty between Herat and Bamian; much
+worse, indeed, than anything on the route between
+Herat and Kabul direct; so that we have determined
+the existence of a fairly easy route by
+the Hari Rud from Herat to Kabul, and another
+route, with but one severe pass, between Herat
+and Bamian. We must, however, remember that
+we are dealing with Alpine altitudes. Overlooking
+the Yakulang head of the Balkh River are magnificent
+peaks of 13,000 and 14,000 feet, and the passes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>
+are but a few thousand feet lower. The valley of
+the Bamian, deep sunk in the great plateau level, is
+between 8000 and 9000 feet above sea-level, and
+the passes leading out of it are over 10,000 feet.
+To the south is the magnificent snow-capped array
+of the Koh-i-Baba (or probably Babar, from the
+name of the ancient people who occupied Bamian),
+the culminating group of the central water-parting
+of Afghanistan running to 16,000 and 17,000 feet.
+It is altitude, nothing but sheer altitude, which is
+the effectual barrier to approach through the
+mountains which divide the Oxus and Kabul basins.
+Rocky and "tooth-breaking" as may be the passes
+of these northern hills they are all practicable at
+certain times and seasons, but for months they are
+closed by the depth of winter snows and the fierce
+terror of the Asiatic blizzard. The deep valleys
+traversing the storm-ridden plateau are often beautiful
+exceedingly, and form a strange contrast to the
+dull grey expanse of rocky ridge and treeless plain
+of the weird plateau land; but in order to reach
+them, or to pass from one to the other, high altitudes
+and rugged pathways must always be negotiated.</p>
+
+<p>In the days before the Mahomedan conquest,
+the pilgrim days of devout Chinese searchers after
+truth, the footsteps of the Buddhist devotees can be
+very plainly traced. Balkh was a specially sacred
+centre; and the magnificence of the Bamian relics
+are also celebrated. We should not have known
+precisely the route followed by the pilgrims had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span>
+they not left their traces half-way between Balkh
+and Bamian at Haibak. Here in the heart of this
+stony and rugged wilderness is an open cultivated
+plain, green with summer crops and streaked with
+the dark lines of orchard foliage. Little white
+houses peep out from amongst the greenery, and
+there is a kind of Swiss summer holiday air encompassing
+this mountain oasis which must have enchanted
+the votaries of Buddha in their time. The
+Buddhist architects of old were unsurpassed, even
+by the Roman Catholic Monks of later ages in the
+selection of sites for their monasteries and temples.
+The sweet seductions which Nature has to offer in
+her mountain retreats were as a thanksgiving to
+the pilgrim, weary footed and sore with the terrible
+experiences of travel which was far rougher than
+anything which even the most devoted Hajji can
+place to the credit of his account with the recording
+angel of the present day, and they were appreciated
+accordingly. Haibak, although not quite on the
+straight line to Bamian, was not to be overlooked as
+a resting-place, and here one of the quaintest of all
+these northern religious relics was literally unearthed
+by Captain Talbot<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> during the progress of
+the Russo-Afghan surveys. A small circular stupa
+was discovered cut out of solid rock below the
+ground level. It was surrounded by a ditch, and
+crowned by a small square-built chamber which was
+also cut out of the rock <i>in situ</i>. There was nothing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span>
+to indicate the origin or meaning of a stupa in such
+a position, and time was wanting for anything more
+than a superficial examination; but here we had
+the evidence of Buddhist occupation and Buddhist
+worship forming a distinct link between Balkh and
+Bamian, and marking one resting-place for the
+weary pilgrim. As for caves, the country round
+Haibak appears to be studded with them.</p>
+
+<p>So long must this strange region of ditch-like
+valleys, carved out of the wrinkled central highlands
+of Afghanistan, have existed as the focus of devout
+pilgrimage, if not of commercial activity, under the
+Bamian kings, that the absence of any record
+descriptive of the routes across it is rather surprising.
+Above the surface of the plateau the
+long grey folds of the hills follow each other
+in monotonous succession, with little relief from
+vegetation and unmarked by forest growth. It is
+generally a scene of weary, stony desolation through
+which narrow, white worn tracks thread their way.
+In the valleys it is different. Cut squarely out of
+the plateau these intersecting valleys, cliff bound
+on either side with reddish walls such as border
+the valley of Bamian, offer fair opportunity for
+colonization. Where the valleys open out there
+is space enough for cultivation, which in early
+summer makes pretty contrast with the ruddy
+hills that hedge it. Where it spreads out from the
+mouth of the gorges nourished by hundreds of small
+channels which carry the water far afield, it is in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>
+most charming contrast to the gaunt ruggedness
+of the hills from whence it emerges. Such is the
+general outlook from the Firozkohi plateau, looking
+northward into the Oxus plains when the yellow
+dust haze, driven southward by the north-western
+winds, lifts sufficiently from athwart the plains to
+render it possible to see towards Maimana or into
+the valley of Astarab.</p>
+
+<p>The valley of Bamian stands at a level of about
+8500 feet; the passes out of it northward to Balkh
+or southward to Kabul rise to 11,000 and 12,000
+feet. It is the mystery of its unrecorded history
+and the local evidences of the departed glory of
+Buddhism, which render Bamian the most interesting
+valley in Afghanistan. Massive ruins still look
+down from the bordering cliffs, and for six or seven
+miles these cliffs are pierced by an infinity of cave
+dwellings. Little is left of the ancient city but its
+acropolis (known as Ghulghula), which crowns an
+isolated rock in the middle of the valley. Enormous
+figures (170 and 120 feet high) are carved out of
+the conglomerate rock on the sides of the Bamian
+gorge. Once coated with cement, and possibly
+coloured, or gilt, these images must have appealed
+strongly to the imagination of the weary pilgrim
+who prostrated himself at their feet. "Their
+golden lines sparkle on every side," says Huen
+Tsang, who saw them in the year <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 630, when he
+counted ten convents and 1000 monks of the
+"Little Vehicle" in the valley of Bamian.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Twelve hundred and fifty years later the great
+idols were measured by theodolite and tape, and
+duly catalogued as curiosities of the world's museum.
+We know very little of the later history of Bamian.
+The city was swept off the face of the valley by
+Chengiz Khan; and Nadir Shah, in later times,
+left the marks of his artillery on the face of cliffs
+and images. Moslem destroyers and iconoclasts
+have worked their wicked will on these ancient
+monuments, but they witness to the strength and
+tenacity of a faith that still survives to sway a third
+of the human race.</p>
+
+<p>Chahilburj and Shahr-i-Babar (31 miles above
+Chahilburj at the junction of the Sarikoh stream
+with the Band-i-Amir) with the ruined fortresses of
+Gawargar and Zohak, wonderful for the multiplicity
+of its lines of defence, all attest to the former
+position of Bamian in Afghan history and explain its
+prominence in mediæval annals. And yet there is
+not much said about the road thither from Balkh, or
+onward to the "Indian city" of Kabul.</p>
+
+<p>Idrisi just mentions the road connecting Balkh
+with Bamian, which he describes as follows: "From
+Balkh to Meder (a small town in a plain not far
+from mountains) three days' journey. From Meder
+to Kah (well-populated town with bazaar and
+mosque) one day's journey. From Kah to Bamian
+three days." Bamian he describes as of about the
+same extent as Balkh, built on the summit of a
+mountain called Bamian, from which issue several
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span>
+rivers which join the Andarab, possessing a palace,
+a grand mosque, and a vast "faubourg"; and he
+enumerates Kabul, Ghazni, and Karwan (which we
+find elsewhere to be near Charikar) amongst others
+as dependencies of Bamian.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to identify Meder and Kah. The
+total distance from Balkh to Bamian is at least 200
+miles by the most direct route <i>via</i> the Darra Yusuf.
+Forty miles a day through such a country must be
+regarded as a fine performance, even for Arab
+travellers who would think little of 50 or 60 miles
+over the flats of Turkistan. However, we must take
+the record as we find it, and assume that the camels
+of those days (for the Arabs never rode horses on
+their journeys) were better adapted for work in the
+hills than they are at present.</p>
+
+<p>The inference, however, is strong that not very
+much was really known about this mountain region
+south of the Balkh plain. To the pilgrim it offered
+no terrors; but to the merchant, with his heavily
+laden caravan, it is difficult to conceive that 800 or
+900 years ago it could have been much easier to
+negotiate than it is to the Bokhara merchants of
+to-day, who take a much longer route between the
+Oxus and Kabul than that which carries them past
+Bamian.</p>
+
+<p>The province of Badakshan to the east (the
+ancient Baktria) is still but indifferently explored.
+It is true that certain native explorers of the Indian
+Survey have made tracks through the country,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span>
+passing from the Pamir region to the Oxus plains;
+but no English traveller has recently done more
+than touch the fringe of that section of the Hindu
+Kush system which includes Kafiristan and its
+extension northwards, encircled by the great bend
+of the Oxus River. Kafiristan has ever been an
+unexplored region&mdash;a mountain wilderness into
+which no call of Buddhism ever lured the pilgrim,
+no Moslem conqueror (excepting perhaps Timur)
+ever set his foot, until the late Amir Abdurrahmon
+essayed to reduce that region and make it part of
+civilized Afghanistan. Even he was content to leave
+it alone after a year or two of vain hammering at
+its southern gates. Kafiristan formed part of the
+mediæval province, or kingdom, of Bolor; but it is
+always written of as the home of an uncouth and
+savage race of people, with whom it was difficult to
+establish intercourse. Kafiristan is, however, in
+these modern days very much curtailed as the home
+of the Kafir. Undoubtedly many of the border
+tribes fringing the country (Dehgans, Nimchas, etc.),
+who are now to be numbered amongst the most
+fanatical of Moslem clans, are comparatively new
+recruits to the faith, and therefore handle the new
+broom with traditional ardour; but they were not so
+long ago members of the great mixed community
+of Kafirs who, driven from many directions into
+the most inaccessible fastnesses of the hills by
+the advance of stronger races north and south,
+have occupied remote valleys, preserving their own
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span>
+dialects, mixing up in strange confusion Brahman,
+Zoroastian, and Buddhist tenets with classical
+mythology, each valley with apparently a law and
+a language of its own, until it is impossible to
+unravel the threads of their complicated relationship.
+Here we should expect to find (and we do find) the
+last relics of the Greek occupation of Baktria, and
+here are certainly remnants of a yet more ancient
+Persian stock, with all the flotsam and jetsam of
+High Asia intermingled. They are, from the point
+of view of the Kabul Court, all lumped together
+as Kafirs under two denominations, Siahposh and
+Lalposh; and not till scientific investigation, such
+as has not yet reached Afghanistan, can touch
+them shall we know more than we do now. No
+commercial road ever ran through the heart of
+Kafiristan, but there were two routes touching its
+eastern and western limits, viz. that on the east
+passing by Jirm, and that on the west by Anjuman,
+both joining the Kokcha River, which are vaguely
+referred to by our Arab authorities. That by Jirm
+is certainly impracticable for any but travellers on
+foot.</p>
+
+<p>Badakshan (<i>i.e.</i> the province) was apparently full
+of well-populated and flourishing towns 1000 years
+ago. The names of many of them are given by
+Idrisi, but it is not possible to identify more than
+a few. The ancient Khulm (50 miles east of Balkh)
+was included in Badakshan. In Idrisi's day it was
+a place "of which the productions and resources
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span>
+were very abundant: there is running water,
+cultivated fields, and all sorts of vegetable productions."
+From thence to Semenjan "a pretty town,
+in every way comparable to Khulm, commercial,
+populated, and encircled with mud walls," two days'
+journey. Then we have "from Balkh to Warwalin"
+(a town agreeable and commercial with others
+dependent on it), two days. From Warwalin to
+Talekan, two days. Talekan is described as only
+one-fourth the size of Balkh, on the banks of a big
+river in a plain where there are vineyards. And
+then, strangely enough, we find "from Balkh to
+Khulm west of Warwalin is a two-days' journey.
+From Semenjan to Talekan, two days."</p>
+
+<p>This is a puzzle which requires some adjustment.
+From Balkh to Khulm is about 50 miles and may
+well pass as two days' journey. But from Balkh to
+Warwalin is also said to be a two-days' journey, and
+from Warwalin to Talekan two days, whilst Khulm
+is two days <i>west</i> of Warwalin. The difficulty lies
+in the fact that all these places must be on a line
+running almost due <i>east</i> from Balkh. It was and
+is the great high-road of Badakshan in the Oxus
+plains. Moreover, Talekan has been fixed by native
+surveyors at a point about 150 miles east of Balkh
+which fully corresponds in its physical features to
+the description given of that place above. If, however,
+we assume 150 miles to represent six days'
+journey instead of four, the difficulty vanishes. We
+then have Balkh to Khulm, two days; Khulm to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span>
+Warwalin, two days; and Warwalin to Talekan, two
+days. This would place Warwalin somewhere about
+Kunduz, which is, indeed, a very probable position
+for it.</p>
+
+<p>Semenjan is important. Two days from Talekan;
+two days from Khulm; five days from Andarab.</p>
+
+<p>Andarab is fortunately a fixed position. The
+description given of it by Idrisi places it at the
+junction of the Kaisan (or Kasan) stream with the
+Andarab, both of which retain their ancient names.
+Andarab is a very old and a very important position
+in all itineraries, from Greek times till now, and it
+may be important again. But seeing that Khulm
+is separated from Talekan by four days, it is difficult
+to distinguish between Semenjan and Warwalin
+which is also two days from each of those places.
+This illustrates the problems which beset the unravelling
+of Arab itineraries. Seeing, however, that
+Talekan and Warwalin have already been confused
+once, it is, I think, justifiable to assume that the
+same mistake has occurred again. Such an assumption
+would place Semenjan about where Haibak is,
+and where some central town of importance must
+have always been, judging from its important geographical
+position. Haibak is rather more than a
+hundred miles from Andarab by the only practicable
+khafila route, which is a very fair five-days' journey.
+This would indicate that the route followed by the
+English Commission for the settlement of the
+Russo-Afghan frontier from Balkh to Kabul was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span>
+one of those recognized as trade routes in the tenth
+and eleventh centuries. The location of one other
+town in Badakshan is of interest, and that is a town
+called by Idrisi "Badakshan," which gave its name
+to the province. The first assumption to make is
+that the modern capital Faizabad is on or near the
+site of the ancient one. Let us see how it fits
+Idrisi's itinerary. The information is most meagre.
+From Talekan to Badakshan, seven days. From
+Andarab to the same town (going east), four days.
+Badakshan is described as a town "not very large
+but possessing many dependencies and a most fertile
+soil. The vine and other trees grow freely, and the
+country is watered by running streams. The town
+is defended by strong walls, and it possesses markets,
+caravanserais, and baths. It is a commercial centre.
+It is built on the west bank of the Khariab, the largest
+river of those which flow to the Oxus." It is elsewhere
+stated that the Khariab is another name for
+the Oxus or Jihun. It is added that horses are bred
+there and mules; and rubies and lapis lazuli found
+in the neighbourhood and distributed through the
+world. Musk from Wakhan is brought to Badakshan.
+Also Badakshan adjoins Canouj, a dependency
+of India. The two provinces which are found
+immediately beyond the Oxus (under one government)
+are Djil and Waksh, which lie between the
+Khariab (? Oxus) and Wakshab rivers, of which the
+first bathes the eastern part of Djil and the other
+the country of Waksh. The Waksh joins the Oxus
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span>
+from the north near the junction of the latter with
+the Kunduz. Then follow the names of places
+dependent on Waksh, of which Helawerd and
+Menk seem to be the chief.</p>
+
+<p>Now Faizabad is about 70 miles from Talekan,
+and about 160 at least from Andarab. From
+Andarab the route strikes east at first, but after
+crossing the Nawak Pass, over a spur of the Hindu
+Kush (which is itself crossed near this point by the
+Khawak), it turns and passes down the valley of
+Anjuman to Jirm and Faizabad. Jirm is on the
+left bank of the Kokcha or Khariab&mdash;Faizabad
+being on the right,&mdash;and its altitude (4800 feet)
+would certainly admit of vine-growing and may be
+suitable for horse-breeding; but it must be admitted
+that in both these particulars Faizabad has the
+advantage, although Jirm is the centre of the mining
+industry in lapis lazuli, if not in rubies. Jirm is
+about 130 miles from Andarab, and 80 (with a well-marked
+road between) to Talekan. To fit Idrisi's
+itinerary we should have to select a spot in the
+Anjuman valley some sixty miles south of Jirm.
+This would involve an impossible altitude for either
+wine or horses (in that latitude), so we are forced
+to conclude that the itinerary is wrong. If it were
+exactly reversed and made seven days from Andarab
+and four from Talekan, Jirm would represent the
+site of the ancient capital exactly. Some such
+adjustment as this is necessary in order to meet the
+requirements, and Idrisi's indications of the climate.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span>
+On the whole, I am inclined to believe that Jirm
+represents the ancient capital. However that may
+be, it is important to note that the Anjuman route
+from the pass at the head of the Panjshir valley
+was a recognized route in the Middle Ages, and
+emphasizes the importance of the Andarab position
+in Afghanistan. We have seen that from the very
+earliest times, prior to the Greek invasion of India,
+this was probably the region of western settlements
+in Baktria. It is about here that we find the
+greatest number of indications (if place-names are
+to be trusted) of Greek colonization. It is one of
+the districts which are to be recognized as distinctly
+the theatres of Alexander's military movements
+during his famous expedition. It commands four,
+if not five, of the most important passes across the
+Hindu Kush. The surveyor who carried his traverse
+up to the head of the Andarab and over the Khawak
+Pass into the Panjshir found a depression in the
+Hindu Kush range which admitted of two crossings
+(the Til and Khawak) at an elevation of about
+11,650 feet, neither of which presented any great
+physical difficulty apart from that of altitude, both
+leading by comparatively easy grades into the upper
+Panjshir valley.</p>
+
+<p>It is reported that since the Russo-Afghan Commission
+surveyors passed that way, the late Amir
+has constructed a passable road for commercial
+purposes, which can be kept open by the employment
+of coolie labour in removing the snow, and that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span>
+khafilas pass freely between Kabul and Badakshan
+all the year round. In the tenth century there is
+ample evidence that it was a well-trodden route,
+for we find it stated that from Andarab to Hariana
+(travelling southward) is three days' journey.
+"Hariana is a small town built at the foot of a
+mountain and on the banks of a river, which, taking
+its source near Panjshir (Banjohir) traverses that
+town without being utilized for irrigation until,
+reaching Karwan, it enters into the territory of
+India and joins its waters to the Nahrwara (Kabul)
+River. The inhabitants of Hariana possess neither
+trees nor orchards. They only cultivate vegetables,
+but they live by mining. It is impossible to see
+anything more perfect than the metal which is
+extracted from the mines of Panjshir, a small town
+built on a hill at one day's distance from Hariana
+and of which the inhabitants are remarkable for
+violence and wickedness (mechanceté) of their
+character. The river, which issues from Panjshir,
+runs to Hariana as we have said." ... "From
+there (? Hariana) to Karwan, southward, two days'
+journey." "The town of Karwan is small but
+pretty, its environs are agreeable, bazaars frequent,
+inhabitants well-off. The houses are built of mud
+and bricks. Situated on the banks of a river which
+comes from Panjshir, this town is one of the principal
+markets of India."</p>
+
+<p>From this account it is clear that the village
+of Panjshir must have been somewhere near the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span>
+modern Khawak, and Hariana about 20 miles lower
+down the stream. But the site is not identified.
+Karwan was obviously near the site of the modern
+Charikar, and might possibly be Parwan, a very
+ancient site. It is worthy of note that in the tenth
+century all the Kabul province was "India." Of
+all the passes traversing the Hindu Kush we have
+mention only of this, the Khawak, and (indirectly)
+of the group which connect Kabul with Bamian;
+and it may be doubted whether in the Middle Ages
+any use was made of the Shibar, Chapdara, or others
+that lie between the Kaoshan and Irak for commercial
+purposes.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, strong inference that the
+Greeks made use of the Kaoshan, or Parwan, which
+is also commanded from Andarab. The excellent
+military road constructed by the late Amir from
+Charikar, up the Ghorband valley and over the
+Chapdara Pass, is a modern development.</p>
+
+<p>Here, however, we must take leave of the routes
+to India, which are sufficiently dealt with elsewhere,
+and returning to Badakshan see if we can unravel
+some of the mediæval geography of the region
+which stretches eastward to the Oxus affluents and
+the Pamirs. We know that between Khotan and
+Balkh there was a very well-trodden pilgrim route
+in the earlier days of our era (from the first century
+to the tenth), when both these places were full of
+the high-priests of Buddhism. Was it also a commercial
+route? The shortest way to determine
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span>
+its position is to examine the map and see which way
+it must have run at a time when (if we are to believe
+Mr. Ellsworthy Huntington's theories of periodic
+fluctuations of climate in High Asia) all that vastly
+elevated region was colder, less desiccated, and
+possibly more fertile than now, whilst its glaciers
+and lakes were larger and more extensive.</p>
+
+<p>Before turning eastward into the highlands and
+plateau of Asia it is interesting to note that north of
+the Oxus the districts of Jil (which was the region
+of mountains) and Waksh were both well known,
+and boasted many important commercial centres.
+The two districts (under one government) lay
+between the Wakshab which joins the Oxus from
+the north to the north-east of Khulm, and the
+Khariab, which is clearly another river than the
+Khariab (now the Kokcha) of Badakshan, and which
+is probably the Oxus itself (see preceding note).
+These trans-Oxus regions take us afield into the
+Khanates of Central Asia beyond Afghanistan, and
+we can only note in passing that 1000 years ago
+Termez was the most important town on the Oxus,
+commanding as it did the main river crossing from
+Bokhara to Khulm and Balkh; Kabadian also being
+very ancient. Termez may yet again become significant
+in history.</p>
+
+<p>References to the Pamir region are very scanty,
+and indicate that not much was known about them.
+The most direct road from Khotan in Chinese
+Turkistan to Balkh, a well-worn pilgrim route of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>
+the early centuries of our era, is that which first
+strikes north-west to Yarkand, and then passing by
+the stone fort of Tashkurghan (one of the ancient
+landmarks of Central Asian travel) follows the
+Tashkurghan River to its head, passes over the
+Wakhjir Pass from the Tagdumbash Pamir into
+the valley of the Wakhab (or Panja) River and
+follows that river to Zebak in Badakshan. So far
+it is a long, difficult, and toilsome route rising to an
+altitude of 15,000 to 16,000 feet, but after passing
+Zebak to Faizabad and so on through Badakshan
+to Balkh, it is a delightful road, full of picturesque
+beauty and incident. At certain seasons of the
+year no part of it would appear formidable to such
+earnest and determined devotees as the Chinese
+Buddhist pilgrims. From Huen Tsang's account,
+however, it would seem that a still more northerly
+route was usually preferred, one which involved
+crossing the Oxus at Termez or Kilif. It is a
+curious feature in connection with Buddhist records
+of travel (even the Arab records) that no account
+whatever seems to be taken of abstract altitude, <i>i.e.</i>
+the altitude of the plains. So long as the mountains
+towered above the pilgrims' heads they were content
+to assume that they were traversing lowlands.
+Never does it seem to have occurred to them that
+on the flat plains they might be at a higher elevation
+than on the summits of the Chinese or Arabian
+hills. The explanation undoubtedly lies in the fact
+that they had no means of determining elevation.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span>
+Hypsometers and aneroids were not for them. The
+gradual ascents leading to the Pamir valleys did not
+impress them, and so long as they ascended one
+side of a range to descend on the other, the fact
+that the descent did not balance the ascent was
+more or less unobserved. Wandering over the
+varied face of the earth they were content to accept
+it as God made it, and ask no questions. Recent
+investigations would lead us to suppose that in the
+palmy days of Buddhist occupation of Chinese
+Turkistan, when Lop Nor spread out its wide lake
+expanse to reflect a vista of towns and villages on
+its banks, refreshing the earth by a thousand rivulets
+not then impregnated with noxious salts; when high-roads
+traversed that which is now but a moving
+procession of sand-waves following each other in
+silent order at the bidding of the eternal wind;
+when men made their arrangements for posting from
+point to point, and forgot to pay their bills made
+out in the Karosthi language, the climate was very
+different from what it is now.</p>
+
+<p>It was colder, moister, and the zones of cultivation
+far more extensive, but it may also be that
+these regions were not so highly elevated; indeed,
+there is good reason for believing that the eternal
+processes of expansion and contraction of the earth's
+crust, never altogether quiescent, is more marked
+in Central Asia than elsewhere, and that the gradual
+elevation, which is undoubtedly in operation now,
+may have also affected the levels of river-beds and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span>
+intervening divides, and thrown out of gear much
+of the original natural possibilities for irrigation.
+However that may be, it is fairly certain that no
+great amount of trade ever crossed the Pamirs.
+Marco Polo crossed them, passing by Tashkurghan
+and making his way eastwards to Cathay, and has
+very little to say about them except in admiration
+of the magnificent pasturage which is just as
+abundant and as nutritious now as it was in his
+time. Idrisi's information beyond the regions of
+the Central Asian Khanates and the Oxus was very
+vague. He says that on the borders of Waksh and
+of Jil are Wakhan and Sacnia, dependencies of the
+country of the Turks. From Wakhan to Tibet is
+eighteen journeys. "Wakhan possesses silver mines,
+and gold is taken from the rivers. Musk and
+slaves are also taken from this country. Sacnia
+town, which belongs to the Khizilji Turks, is five
+days from Wakhan, and its territory adjoins China."
+Wakhan probably included the province of the
+same name that now forms the extreme north-eastern
+extension of Afghanistan, but the Tibet,
+which was eighteen days' journey distant, in nowise
+corresponds with the modern Tibet. Assuming
+that it was "Little Tibet" (or Ladakh), which
+might perhaps correspond in the matter of distance,
+we should still have some difficulty in reconciling
+Idrisi's description of the "Ville de Tibet" with any
+place in Ladakh. He says "the town of Tibet is
+large, and the country of which it is the capital carries
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span>
+the name." This country belongs to the "Turks
+Tibetians." Its inhabitants entertain relations with
+Ferghana, Botm,<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> and with the subjects of the
+Wakhan; they travel over most of these countries,
+and they take from them their iron, silver, precious
+stones, leopard skins, and Tibetan musk. This town
+is built on a hill, at the foot of which runs a river
+which discharges into the lake Berwan, situated
+towards the east. It is surrounded with walls, and
+serves as the residence of a prince, who has many
+troops and much cavalry, who wear coats of mail
+and are armed <i>de pied en cap</i>. They make
+many things there, and export robes and stuff
+of which the tissue is thick, rough, and durable.
+These robes cost much, and one gets slaves and
+musk destined for Ferghana and India. There
+does not exist in the world creatures endowed with
+more beautiful complexions, with more charming
+figures, more perfect features, and more agreeable
+shape than these Turk slaves. They are disrobed
+and sold to merchants, and it is this class of girl
+who fetches 300 dinars. The country of Bagnarghar
+lies between Tibet and China, bounded on the north
+by the country of the Kirkhirs (Kiziljis in another
+MS.), possibly Kirghiz.</p>
+
+<p>The course of the river on which the town is
+built, no less than the name of the lake into which
+that river falls and the description of the Turk
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span>
+slave girls (as of the cavalry), is quite inapplicable
+to anything to be found in modern Tibet. I have
+little doubt that the Tibet of Idrisi was a town on
+the high-road to China, which followed the Tarim
+River eastward to its bourne in Lake Burhan. Lake
+Burhan is now a swamp distinct from Lob, but
+1000 years ago it may have been a part of the
+Lob system, and Bagnarghar a part of Mongolia.
+The description of the slave girls would apply
+equally well to the Turkman women or to the
+Kirghiz, but certainly not to the flat-featured, squat-shaped
+Tibetan, although there are not wanting
+good looks amongst them. Then follows, in Idrisi's
+account, a list of the dependencies of Tibet and
+some travellers' tales about the musk-deer. It is
+impossible to place the ancient town of Tibet
+accurately. There are ruined sites in numbers on
+the Tarim banks, and amongst them a place called
+Tippak, but it would be dangerous to assume a
+connection between Tibet and Tippak. This is
+interesting (and the interest must be the excuse for
+the digression from Afghanistan), because it indicates
+that modern Chinese Turkistan was included in
+Tibet a thousand years ago, and it further throws
+a certain amount of light on the origin of the
+remarkable concentration of Buddhist centres in
+the Takla Makan.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<p class="center">ARAB EXPLORATION&mdash;MAKRAN</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Between Arabia and India is the strange land of
+Makran, in the southern defiles and deserts of
+which country Alexander lost his way. Had he
+by chance separated himself from the coast and
+abandoned connection with his fleet he might have
+passed through Makran by more northerly routes
+to Persia, and have made one of those open
+ways which Arab occupation opened up to traffic
+1000 years later. Makran is not an attractive
+country for the modern explorer. It is not yet a
+popular field for enterprise in research (though it
+well may become so), and a few words of further
+description are necessary to explain how it was that
+the death-trap of Alexander proved to be the road
+to wealth and power of the subsequent Arab.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="i306" id="i306"></a>
+<img src="images/i_306.jpg" width="550" height="241" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">SKETCH MAP
+of
+ANCIENT &amp; MEDIÆVAL MAKRAN<br />
+to illustrate paper by
+COL. T. H. HOLDICH.<br />
+<br />
+<a href="images/i_306fs.jpg">View larger image</a></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>From the sun-swept Arabian Sea a long line of
+white shore, with a ceaseless surf breaking on it,
+appears to edge it on the north. This is backed by
+other long lines of level-topped hills, seldom rising
+to conspicuous peaks or altitudes, but just stretched
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span>
+out in long grey and purple lines with a prominent
+feature here and there to serve as a useful landmark
+to mariners. Now and then when the shoreline
+is indented, the hills actually face the sea and
+there are clean-cut scarped cliffs presenting a
+square face to the waves. At such points the deep
+rifted mountains of the interior either extend an arm
+to the ocean, as at Malan, or it may be that a
+narrow band of ancient ridge leaves jagged sections
+of its length above sea-level, parallel to the coast-line,
+and that between it and the hills of the interior
+is a sandy isthmus with sea indentation forming
+harbours on either side. This country, for a width
+of about 100 miles, is called Makran. It is the
+southernmost region of Southern Baluchistan, a
+country geologically of recent formation, with a
+coastal uplift from the sea-bottom of soft white
+sand strata capped here and there by laterite. Such
+a formation lends itself to quaint curiosities in hill
+structure. A protecting cap may preserve a
+pinnacle of soft rock, whilst all around it the persistence
+of weather action has cut away the soil.
+Gigantic cap-crowned pillars and pedestals are
+balanced in fantastic array about the mountain
+slopes; deep cuttings and gorges are formed by
+denudation, and from the gullies so fashioned
+amongst these hills there may tower up a scarped
+cliff edge for thousands of feet, with successive
+strata so well defined that it possesses all the
+appearance of massive masonry construction.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sea which beats with unceasing surf on the
+shores of Makran is full of the wonders of the deep.
+From the dead silent flat surface, such as comes with
+an autumn calm, monstrous fish suddenly shoot out
+for 15 or 20 feet into the air and fall with a resounding
+slap almost amounting to a detonation. Whales
+still disport themselves close inshore, and frighten
+no one. It is easy, however, to understand the
+terror with which they inspired the Greek sailors
+of Nearkhos in their open Indian-built boats as they
+wormed their way along the coast. Occasionally
+a whale becomes involved with the cable of the
+Indo-Persian telegraph line and loops himself into
+it, with fatal results. There are islands off the
+shore, cut out from the mainland. Some of them
+are in process of disappearance, when they will add
+their quota to the bar which makes approach to the
+Makran shores so generally difficult; others, more
+remote, bid fair to last as the final remnants of a
+long-ago submerged ridge through ages yet to come;
+and one regrets that the day of their enchantment
+has passed. Of such is that island of Haftala,
+Hashtala, Nuhsala (it is difficult to account for the
+variety of Persian numerals which are associated
+with its name), which is called Nosala by Nearkhos
+and said by him to be sacred to the sun. In the
+days of the Greeks it was enveloped in a haze of
+mystery and tradition. The Karaks who made of
+this island a base for their depredations, finally
+drew down upon themselves the wrath of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span>
+Arabs, and this led incidentally to one of the most
+successful invasions of India that have ever been
+conducted by sea and land.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not only the historical and legendary
+interest of this remarkable coast which renders it
+a fascinating subject for exploration and romance.
+The physical conditions of it, the bubbling mud
+volcanoes which occasionally fill the sea with yellow
+silt from below, and always remain in a perpetual
+simmer of boiling activity; the weird and fantastic
+forms assumed by the mud strata of recent sea-making,
+which are the basis of the whole structure
+of ridge and furrow which constitute Makran conformation,
+no less than the extraordinary prevalence
+of electric phenomena,&mdash;all these offered the
+Arabian Sea as a promising gift to the inventive
+faculty of such Arab genius as revelled in stories
+of miraculous enterprise. On a still, warm night
+when the stars are all ablaze overhead the sea
+will, of a sudden, spread around in a sheet of
+milky white, and the sky become black by contrast
+with the blackness of ink. Then again will there
+be a transformation to a bright scintillating floor,
+with each little wavelet dropping sparks of light
+upon it; and from the wake of the vessel will
+stretch out to the horizon a shining way, like a
+silver path into the great unknown. Meanwhile,
+the ship herself will be lit up by the electric genii.
+Each iron rod or stanchion will gleam with a weird
+white light; each spar will carry a little bunch of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span>
+blue flame at its point; the mast-head will be
+aflame, and softly through the wonders of this
+strange Eastern sea the ship will stalk on in solemn
+silence and most "excellent loneliness." Small
+wonder that Arab mariners were stirring storytellers,
+living as they did amidst the uncounted
+wonders of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly less strange is the land formation of this
+southern edge of Baluchistan. It is an old, old
+country, replete with the evidences of unwritten
+history, the ultimate bourne of much of the flotsam
+and jetsam of Asiatic humanity; a cul-de-sac
+where northern intruders meet and get no farther.
+Yet geologically it is very new&mdash;so new that one
+might think that the piles of sea-born shells which
+are to be found here and there drifted into heaps
+on the soft mud flats amongst the bristling ridges,
+were things of yesterday; so new, in fact, that it
+has not yet done changing its outline. There is
+little difficulty in marking the changes in the coast-line
+which must have occurred since the third
+century <span class="s08">B.C.</span> One may even count up the island
+formations and disappearances which have occurred
+within a generation; so incomplete that the changing
+conditions of its water-supply have left their
+marks everywhere over it. Desiccated forests are
+to be found with the trees still standing, as they
+will continue to stand in this dry climate for
+centuries. Huge masonry constructions, built as
+dams for the retention of water in the inland hills,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span>
+testify to the existence of an abundant water-supply
+within historic periods; as also do the terraced
+slopes which reach down in orderly steps to the
+foot of the ridges, each step representing a formerly
+irrigated field. The water has failed; whether, as
+is most probable, from the same desiccating processes
+which are drying up lakes and dwindling
+glaciers in both northern and southern hemispheres,
+or whether there has been special interference
+with the routine of Nature and man has contributed
+to his own undoing, it is impossible at present to
+say, but the result is that Makran is now, and has
+been for centuries, a forgotten and almost a forsaken
+country. In order to understand the remarkable
+peculiarity of its geographical formation one requires
+a good map. Ridges, rather than ranges, are the
+predominant feature of its orography. Ridges of
+all degrees of altitude, extension, and rockiness,
+running in long lines of parallel flexure on a system
+of curves which sweeps them round gradually from
+the run of Indus frontier hills to an east and west
+strike through Makran, and a final trend to the
+north-west, where they guard the Persian coasts
+of the Gulf. As a rule they throw off no spurs,
+standing stiff, jagged, naked, and uncompromising,
+like the parallel walls of some gigantic system of
+defences, and varying in height above the plain
+from 5000 feet to 50. The higher ranges have
+been scored by weather and wet, with deep gorges
+and drainage lines, and their scarred sides present
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span>
+various degrees of angle and declivity, according to
+the dip of the strata that forms them. Some of
+the smaller ridges have their rocky backbone set
+up straight, forming a knife-like edge along which
+nothing but a squirrel could run. Across them,
+breaking through the axis almost at right angles
+run some of the main arteries of the general
+drainage system; but the most important features
+of the country are the long lateral valleys between
+the ridges, the streams of which feed the main
+rivers. These are often 8 or 10 miles in width,
+with a flat alluvial bottom, and one may ride for
+mile after mile along the open plain with clay or
+sand spread out on either hand, and nothing but
+the distant wall of the hills flanking the long and
+endless route. Some of these valleys are filled
+with a luxuriance of palm growth (the dates of
+Panjgur, for instance, being famous), and it is this
+remarkable feature of long, lateral valleys which,
+through all the ages, has made of Makran an
+avenue of approach to India from the west. The
+more important ranges lie to the north, facing the
+deserts of Central Baluchistan. It is in the solid
+phalanx of the coastal band of hills that the most
+marked adherence to the gridiron, or ridge and
+furrow formation, is to be found.</p>
+
+<p>Exceptionally, out of this banded system arises
+some great mountain block forming a separate
+feature, such as is the massive crag-crowned cliff-lined
+block of Malan, west of one of the most
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span>
+important rivers of Makran (the Hingol), to which
+reference has already been made. From it an arm
+stretches southwards to the sea, and forms a square-headed
+obstruction to traffic along the coast, which
+almost defeated the efforts of the Indo-Persian
+telegraph constructors when they essayed to carry
+a line across it, and did entirely defeat the intentions
+of Alexander the Great to conduct his army
+within sight of his Indus-built fleet. It is within
+the folds of this mountain group that lies hidden
+that most ancient shrine of Indo-Persian worship,
+to which we have already referred in the story of
+Alexander's retreat.</p>
+
+<p>It is the possibilities of Makran as an intervening
+link in the route from Europe to India which
+renders that country interesting at the present
+time, and it is therefore with a practical as well
+as historical interest that we take up the story of
+frontier exploration from the time when we first
+recognize the great commercial movements of the
+Arab races, centuries after the disappearance of the
+last remnants of ancient explorations by Assyrians,
+Persians, and Greeks. It is extraordinary how
+deep a veil of forgetfulness was drawn over Southern
+Baluchistan during this unrecorded interval. For
+a thousand years, from the withdrawal of Alexander's
+attenuated force to the rise and spread of Islam, we
+hear nothing of Makran, and we are left to the
+traditions of the Baluch tribes to fill up the gap in
+history. What the Arabs made of mediæval Makran
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span>
+as a gate of India may be briefly told. Recent
+surveys have revealed their tracks, although we
+have no clear record of their earliest movements.
+We know, however, that there was an Arab governor
+of Makran long previous to the historical invasion
+of India in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 712, and that there must have been
+strong commercial interest and considerable traffic
+before his time. Arabia, indeed, had always been
+interested in Makran, and amongst other relics of
+a long dead past are those huge stone constructions
+for water-storage purposes to which we have referred,
+and which must have been of very early
+Arab (possibly Himyaritic) building, as well as a
+host of legends and traditions, all pointing to
+successive waves of early tribal emigration, extending
+from the Persian frontier to the lower Arabius&mdash;the
+Purali of our time.</p>
+
+<p>Hajjaj, the governor of Irak, under the Kalif
+Walid I., projected three simultaneous expeditions
+into Asia for the advancement of the true faith.
+One was directed towards Samarkand, one against
+the King of Kabul, and the third was to operate
+directly on India through the heart of Makran.
+The Makran field force was organised in the first
+instance for the purpose of punishing certain Karak
+and Med pirates, who had plundered a valuable
+convoy sent by the ruler of Ceylon to Hajjaj and
+to the Kalif. These Karaks probably gave their
+names to the Krokala of Nearkhos, and the Karachi
+of to-day, and have disappeared. The Meds still
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span>
+exist. The expedition, which was placed under the
+command of an enterprising young general aged
+seventeen, named Mahomed Kasim, not only swept
+through Makran easily and successfully, but ended
+by establishing Mahomedan supremacy in the Indus
+valley, and originated a form of government which,
+under various phases, lasted till Mahmud of Ghazni
+put an end to a degenerated form of it by ousting
+the Karmatian rulers of Multan in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1005. The
+original force which invaded Sind under Mahomed
+Kasim, and which was drawn chiefly from Syria
+and Irak, consisted of 6000 camel-riders and 3000
+infantry. In Makran the Arab governor (it is
+important to note that there was an Arab governor
+of Makran before that country became the high-road
+to India) added further reinforcements, and there
+was also a naval squadron, which conveyed catapults
+and ammunition by sea to the Indus valley port of
+Debal. It was with this small force that one of
+the most surprising invasions of India ever attempted
+was successfully carried through Makran&mdash;a
+country hitherto deemed impracticable, and associated
+in previous history with nothing but tales of
+disaster. For long, however, we find that Mahomed
+Kasim had both the piratical Meds, and the hardly
+less tractable Jats (a Skythic people still existing
+in the Indus valley) in his train, and the news of
+his successes carried to Damascus brought crowds
+of Arab adventurers to follow his fortunes. When
+he left Multan for the north, he is said to have had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span>
+50,000 men under his command. His subsequent
+career and tragic end are all matters of
+history.</p>
+
+<p>The points chiefly to note in this remarkable invasion
+are that the Arab soldiers first engaged were
+chiefly recruited from Syria; that, contrary to their
+usual custom, they brought none of their women
+with them; and that none of them probably ever
+returned to their country again. Elliott tells us
+of the message sent them by the savage Kalif
+Suliman: "Sow and sweat, for none of you will
+ever see Syria again." What, then, became of all
+these first Arab conquerors of Western India?
+They must have taken Persian-speaking wives of
+the stock of Makran and Baluchistan, and their
+children, speaking their mother-tongue, lost all
+knowledge of their fathers' language in the course
+of a few generations. There are many such instances
+of the rapid disappearance of a language
+in the East. For three centuries, then, whilst a
+people of Arab descent ruled in Sind, there existed
+through Makran one of the great highways of the
+world, a link between West and East such as has
+never existed elsewhere on the Indian border, save,
+perhaps, through the valley of the Kabul River and
+its affluents. Along this highway flowed the greater
+part of the mighty trade of India, a trade which
+has never failed to give commercial predominance
+to that country which held the golden key to it,
+whether that key has been in the hands of Arab,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span>
+Turk, Venetian, Portuguese, or Englishman. And
+though there are traces of a rapid decline in the
+mediæval prosperity of Makran after the commencement
+of the eleventh century, yet its comparative
+remoteness in geographical position saved it subsequently
+from the ruthless destruction inflicted by
+Turk and Tartar in more accessible regions, and
+left to it cities worth despoiling even in the days
+of Portuguese supremacy.</p>
+
+<p>It is only lately that Makran has lapsed again
+into a mere geographical expression. Twenty years
+ago our maps told us nothing about it. It might
+have been, and was, for all practical purposes, as
+unexplored and unknown as the forests of Africa.
+Now, however, we have found that Makran is a
+country of great topographical interest as well as of
+stirring history. And when we come to the days
+of Arab ascendency, when Arab merchants settled
+in the country; when good roads with well-marked
+stages were established; when, fortunately for geography,
+certain Western commercial travellers, following,
+<i>longo intervallo</i>, the example of the Chinese
+pilgrims&mdash;men such as Ibn Haukal of Baghdad, or
+Istakhri of Persepolis&mdash;first set to work to reduce
+geographical discovery to systematic compilation,
+we can take their books and maps in our hands,
+and verify their statements as we read. It is true
+that they copied a good deal from each other, and
+that their manner of writing geographical names
+was obscure, and leaves a good deal to be desired&mdash;a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span>
+fault, by the way, from which the maps of
+to-day are not entirely free&mdash;yet they are on the
+whole as much more accurate than the early Greek
+geographers as the area of their observations is
+more restricted. We may say that Makran and
+Sind are perhaps more fully treated of by Arab
+geographers than any other portion of the globe
+by the geographers who preceded them; and as
+their details are more perfect, so, for the most part,
+is the identification of those details rendered comparatively
+easy by the nature of the country and
+its physical characteristics. With the exception of
+the coast-line the topography of Makran to-day is
+the topography of Makran in Alexandrian days.
+This is very different indeed from the uncertain
+character of the Indus valley mediæval geography.
+There the extraordinary hydrographical changes
+that have taken place; the shifting of the great
+river itself from east to west, dependent on certain
+recognized natural laws; the drying up and total
+disappearance of ancient channels and river-beds;
+the formation of a delta, and the ever-varying alterations
+in the coast-line (due greatly to monsoon
+influences), leave large tracts almost unrecognizable
+as described in mediæval literature. Makran is, for
+the most part, a country of hills. Its valleys are
+narrow and sharply defined; its mountains only
+passable at certain well-known points, which must
+have been as definite before the Christian era as
+they are to-day; and it is consequently comparatively
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span>
+easy to follow up a clue to any main route
+passing through that country.</p>
+
+<p>Makran is, in short, a country full of long narrow
+valleys running east and west, the longest and most
+important being the valley of Kej. The main
+drainage of the country reaches the sea by a series
+of main channels running south, which, inasmuch as
+they are driven almost at right angles across the
+general run of the watersheds, necessarily pass
+through a series of gorges of most magnificent
+proportions, which are far more impressive as
+spectacles than they are convenient for practical
+road-making. Thus Makran is very much easier
+to traverse from east to west than it is from north
+to south.</p>
+
+<p>I have, perhaps, said enough to indicate that the
+old highways through Makran, however much they
+may have assisted trade and traffic between East
+and West, could only have been confined to very
+narrow limits indeed. It is, in fact, almost a one-road
+country. Given the key, then, to open the
+gates of such channels of communication as exist,
+there is no difficulty in following them up, and the
+identification of successive stages becomes merely
+a matter of local search. We know where the old
+Arab cities <i>must</i> have been, and we have but to
+look about to find their ruins. The best key,
+perhaps, to this mediæval system is to be found
+in a map given by the Baghdad traveller, Ibn
+Haukal, who wrote his account of Makran early in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span>
+the tenth century, and though this map leaves much
+to be desired in clearness and accuracy, it is quite
+sufficient to give us the clue we require at first
+starting. In the written geographical accounts of
+the country, we labour under the disadvantage of
+possessing no comparative standard of distance.
+The Arab of mediæval days described the distance
+to be traversed between one point and another
+much as the Bedou describes it now. It is so
+many days' journey. Occasionally, indeed, we find
+a compiler of more than usual precision modifying
+his description of a stage as a long day's journey,
+or a short one. But such instances are rare, and a
+day's journey appears to be literally just so much
+as could conveniently be included in a day's work,
+with due regard to the character of the route
+traversed. Across an open desert a day's journey
+may be as much as 80 miles. Between the cities
+of a well-populated district it may be much less.
+Taking an average from all known distances, it is
+between 40 and 50 miles. Nor is it always explained
+whether the day's journey is by land or
+sea, the unit "a day's journey" being the distance
+traversed independent of the means of transit.</p>
+
+<p>In Ibn Haukal's map, although we have very
+little indication of comparative distance, we have
+a rough idea of bearings, and the invaluable datum
+of a fixed starting-point that can be identified
+beyond doubt. The great Arab port on the
+Makran coast, sometimes even called the capital of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span>
+Makran, was Tiz; and Tiz is a well-known coast
+village to this day. About 100 miles west of the
+port of Gwadur there is a convenient and sheltered
+harbour for coast shipping, and on the shores of it
+there was a telegraph station of the Persian Gulf
+line called Charbar. The telegraph station occupied
+the extremity of the eastern horn of the bay, and was
+separated inland by some few miles of sandy waste
+from a low band of coarse conglomerate hills, which
+conceal amongst them a narrow valley, containing
+all that is left of the ancient port of Tiz. If you
+take a boat from Charbar point, and, coasting up
+the bay, land at the mouth of this valley, you will
+first of all be confronted by a picturesque little
+Persian fort perched on the rocks on either hand,
+and absolutely blocking the entrance to the valley.
+This fort was built, or at least renewed, in the
+days of General Sir F. Goldsmid's Seistan mission,
+to emphasize the fact that the Persian Government
+claimed that valley for its own. About a mile
+above the fort there exists a squalid little fishing
+village, the inhabitants of which spend their spare
+moments (and they have many of them) in making
+those palm mats which enter so largely into the
+house architecture of the coast villages, as they sit
+beneath the shade of one or two remarkably fine
+"banian" trees. The valley is narrow and close,
+and the ruins of Tiz, extending on both sides the
+village, are packed close together in enormous
+heaps of debris, so covered with broken pottery as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span>
+to suggest the idea that the inhabitants of old Tiz
+must have once devoted themselves entirely to the
+production of ceramic art ware. Every heavy
+shower of rain washes out fragments of new
+curiosities in glass and china. Here may be found
+large quantities of an antique form of glass, the
+secret of the manufacture of which has (according
+to Venetian experts) long passed away, only to be
+lately rediscovered. It takes the shape of bangles
+chiefly, and in this form may be dug up in almost
+any of the recognized sites of ancient coast
+towns along the Makran and Persian coasts. It is
+apparently of Egyptian origin, and was brought to
+the coast in Arab ships. Here also is to be found
+much of a special class of pottery, of very fine
+texture, and usually finished with a light sage-green
+glaze, which appears to me to be peculiarly
+Arabic, but of which I have yet to learn the full
+history. It is well known in Afghanistan, where it
+is said to possess the property of detecting poison
+by cracking under it, but even there it is no modern
+importation. This is the celadon to which reference
+has already been made. The rocky cliffs on
+either side the valley are honey-combed with
+Mahomedan tombs, and the face of every flat-spaced
+eminence is scarred with them. A hundred
+generations of Moslems are buried there. The
+rocky declivities which hedge in this remarkable
+site may give some clue to the yet more ancient
+name of Talara which this place once bore. Talar
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span>
+in Baluchi bears the signification of a rocky band
+of cliffs or hills.</p>
+
+<p>The obvious reason why the port of Tiz was
+chosen for the point of debarkation for India is that,
+in addition to the general convenience of the harbour,
+the monsoon winds do not affect the coast so far
+west. At seasons when the Indus delta and the
+port of Debal were rendered unapproachable, Tiz
+was an easy port to gain. There must have been
+a considerable local trade, too, between the coast
+and the highly cultivated, if restricted, valleys of
+Northern Makran, and it is more than probable
+that Tiz was the port for the commerce of Seistan
+in its most palmy days.</p>
+
+<p>From Tiz to Kiz (or Kej, which is reckoned as
+the first big city on the road to India in mediæval
+geography) was, according to Istakhri and Idrisi,
+a five-days' journey. Kiz is doubtless synonymous
+with Kej, but the long straight valley of that name
+which leads eastwards towards India has no town
+now which exactly corresponds to the name of the
+valley. The distance between Tiz and the Kej
+district is from 160 to 170 miles. No actual ruined
+site can be pointed out as yet marking the position
+of Kiz, or (as Idrisi writes it) Kirusi, but it must
+have been in the close neighbourhood of Kalatak,
+where, indeed, there is ample room for further close
+investigation amongst surrounding ruins. About
+the city, we may note from Idrisi that it was nearly
+as large as Multan, and was the largest city in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span>
+Makran. "Palm trees are plentiful, and there is a
+large trade," says our author, who adds that it is
+two long days' journey west of the city of Firabuz.
+From all the varied forms which Arab geographical
+names can assume owing to omission of diacritical
+marks in writing, this place, Firabuz, has
+perhaps suffered most. The most correct reading
+of it would probably be Kanazbun, and this is the
+form adopted by Elliott, who conjectures that
+Kanazbun was situated near the modern Panjgur.
+From Kej to Panjgur is not less than 110 miles, a
+very long two-days' journey. Yet Istakhri supports
+Idrisi (if, indeed, he is not the original author
+of the statement) that it is two days' journey from
+Kiz to Kanazbun. This would lead one to place
+Kanazbun elsewhere than in the Panjgur district,
+more especially as that district lies well to the north
+of the direct road to India, were it not for local
+evidence that the fertile and flourishing Panjgur
+valley must certainly be included somehow in the
+mediæval geographical system, and that the conditions
+of khafila traffic in mediæval times were
+such as to preclude the possibility of the more
+direct route being utilized. To explain this fully
+would demand a full explanation also of the physical
+geography of Eastern Makran. I have no doubt
+whatever that Sir H. Elliott is right in his conjecture,
+and that amongst the many relics of ancient
+civilization which are to be found in Panjgur is the
+site of Kanazbun. Kanazbun was in existence
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span>
+long before the Arab invasion of Sind. The
+modern fort of Kudabandan probably represents
+the site of that more ancient fort which was built
+by the usurper Chach of Sind, when he marched
+through Makran to fix its further boundaries about
+the beginning of the Mahomedan era. Kanazbun
+was a very large city indeed. "It is a town," says
+Idrisi, "of which the inhabitants are rich. They
+carry on a great trade. They are men of their
+word, enemies of fraud, and they are generous and
+hospitable." Panjgur, I may add, is a delightfully
+green spot amongst many other green spots in
+Makran. It is not long ago that we had a small
+force cantoned there to preserve law and order in
+that lawless land. There appeared to be but one
+verdict on the part of the officers who lived there,
+and that verdict was all in its favour. In this
+particular, Panjgur is probably unique amongst
+frontier outposts.</p>
+
+<p>The next important city on the road to Sind was
+Armail, Armabel, or Karabel, now, without doubt,
+Las Bela. From Kudabandan to Las Bela is from
+170 to 180 miles, and there is considerable variety
+of opinion as to the number of days that were to be
+occupied in traversing the distance. Istakhri says
+that from Kiz to Armail is six days' journey. Deduct
+the two from Kiz to Kanazbun, and the distance
+between Kanazbun and Armail is four days. Ibn
+Haukal makes it fourteen marches from Kanazbun
+to the port of Debal, and as he reckons Armail to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span>
+be six from Debal on the Kanazbun road, we get a
+second estimate of eight days' journey. Idrisi says
+that from Manhabari to Firabuz is six marches, and
+we know otherwise that from Manhabari to Armail
+was four, so the third estimate gives us two days'
+journey. Istakhri's estimate is more in accordance
+with the average that we find elsewhere, and he is
+the probable author of the original statements.
+But doubtless the number of days occupied varied
+with the season and the amount of supplies procurable.
+There were villages <i>en route</i>, and many
+halting-places. The <i>Ashkalu l' Bilad</i> of Ibn
+Haukal says: "Villages of Dahuk and Kalwan are
+contiguous, and are between Labi and Armail";
+from which Elliott conjectures that Labi was
+synonymous with Kiz. Idrisi states that "between
+Kiz and Armail two districts touch each other,
+Rahun and Kalwan." I should be inclined to
+suggest that the districts of Dashtak and Kolwah
+are those referred to. They are contiguous, and
+they may be said to be between Kiz and Armail,
+though it would be more exact to place them between
+Kanazbun and Armail. Kolwah is a well-cultivated
+district lying to the south of the river,
+which in its upper course is known as the Lob. I
+should conjecture that this may be the Labi referred
+to by Ibn Haukal.</p>
+
+<p>The city of Armail, Armabel (sometimes Karabel),
+or Las Bela, is of great historic interest.
+From the very earliest days of historical record
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span>
+Armail, by right of its position commanding the
+high-road to India, must have been of great
+importance. Las Bela is but the modern name
+derived from the influx of the Las or Lumri tribe
+of Rajputs. It is at present but an insignificant
+little town, picturesquely perched on the banks of
+the Purali River, but in its immediate neighbourhood
+is a veritable <i>embarras de richesse</i> in ancient sites.
+Eleven miles north-west of Las Bela, at Gondakahar,
+are the ruins of a very ancient city, which at
+first sight appear to carry us back to the pre-Mahomedan
+era of Arab occupation, when the
+country was peopled by Arabii, and the Arab flag
+was paramount on the high seas. Not far from
+them are the caves of Gondrani, about which there
+is no room for conjecture, for they are clearly
+Buddhist, as can be told from their construction.
+We know from the Chachnama of Sind that in
+the middle of the eighth century the province of
+Las Bela was part of a Buddhist kingdom, which
+extended from Armabel to the modern province of
+Gandava in Sind. The great trade mart for the
+Buddhists on the frontier was a place called Kandabel,
+which Elliott identifies with Gandava, the
+capital of the province of Kach Gandava. It is,
+however, associated in the Chachnama with Kandahar,
+the expression "Kandabel, that is, Kandahar"
+being used, an expression which Elliott condemns
+for its inaccuracy, as he recognizes but the one
+Kandahar, which is in Afghanistan. It happens
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span>
+that there is a Kandahar, or Gandahar, in Kach
+Gandava, and there are ruins enough in the neighbourhood
+to justify the suspicion that this was after
+all the original Kandabel rather than the modern
+town of Gandava.</p>
+
+<p>The capital of this ancient Buddha&mdash;or Buddhiya&mdash;kingdom
+I believe to have been Armabel rather
+than Kandabel, it being at Armabel that Chach
+found a Buddhist priest reigning in the year <span class="s08">A.H.</span> 2,
+when he passed through. The curious association
+of names, and the undoubted Buddhist character
+of the Gondrani caves, would lead one to assign
+a Buddhist origin also to the neighbouring ruins
+of Gondakahar (or Gandakahar) only that direct
+evidence from the ruins themselves is at present
+wanting to confirm this conjecture. They require
+far closer investigation than has been found possible
+in the course of ordinary survey operations.
+The country lying between Las Bela and Kach
+Gandava is occupied at present by a most troublesome
+section of the Dravidian Brahuis, who call
+themselves Mingals, or Mongols, and who possibly
+may be a Mongolian graft on the Dravidian
+stock. They may prove to be modern representatives
+of the old Buddhist population of this land,
+but their objection to political control has hitherto
+debarred us from even exploring their country,
+although it is immediately on our own borders.
+About 8 miles north of Las Bela are the ruins of a
+comparatively recent Arab settlement, but they do
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span>
+not appear to be important. It is probable that
+certain other ruins, about 1½ miles east of the town,
+called Karia Pir, represent the latest mediæval site,
+the site which was adopted after the destruction of
+the older city by Mahomed Kasim on his way to
+invade Sind. Karia Pir is full of Arabic coins and
+pottery. So many invasions of India have been
+planned with varied success by the Kalifs of Baghdad
+since the first invasion in the days of Omar I.
+in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 644, till the time of the final occupation of
+Sind in the time of the sixth Kalif Walid, about
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 712, that there is no difficulty in accounting
+for the varied sites and fortunes of any city occupying
+so important a strategical position as Bela.</p>
+
+<p>From Armail we have a two-days' march assigned
+by Istakhri and Idrisi as the distance to the town
+of Kambali, or Yusli, towards India. These two
+places have, in consequence of their similarity in
+position, become much confused, and it has been
+assumed by some scholars that they are identical.
+But they are clearly separated in Ibn Haukal's
+map, and it is, in fact, the question only of which
+of two routes towards India is selected that will
+decide which of the two cities will be found on the
+road. There is (and always must have been) a
+choice of routes to the ancient port of Debal after
+passing the city of Armail. That route which led
+through Yusli in all probability passed by the
+modern site of Uthal. Close to this village the
+unmistakable ruins of a considerable Arab town
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span>
+have been found, and I have no hesitation in identifying
+them as those of Yusli. About Kambali, too,
+there can be very little doubt. There are certain
+well-known ruins called Khairokot not far to the
+west of the village of Liari. We know from
+mediæval description that Kambali was close
+to the sea, and the sea shaped its coast-line in
+mediæval days so as nearly to touch the site
+called Khairokot. Even now, under certain conditions
+of tide, it is possible to reach Liari in a
+coast fishing-boat, although the process of land
+formation at the head of the Sonmiani bay is
+proceeding so fast that, on the other hand, it is
+occasionally impossible even to reach the fishing
+village of Sonmiani itself. The ruins of Khairokot
+are so extensive, and yield such large evidences of
+Arab occupation that a place must certainly be
+found for them in the mediæval system. Kambali
+appears to be the only possible solution to the
+problem, although it was somewhat off the direct
+road between Armail and Debal.</p>
+
+<p>From either of these towns we have a six-days'
+journey to Debal, passing two other cities <i>en route</i>,
+viz. Manabari and the "small but populous town of
+Khur."</p>
+
+<p>The Manhanari of Istakhri, Manbatara of Ibn
+Haukal, or Manabari of Idrisi, again confronts us
+with the oft-repeated difficulty of two places with
+similar names, there being no one individual site
+which will answer all the descriptions given.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span>
+General Haig has shown that there was in all
+probability a Manjabari on the old channel of the
+Indus, nearly opposite the famous city of Mansura,
+some 40 miles north-east of the modern Hyderabad,
+which will answer certain points of Arabic
+description; but he shows conclusively that this
+could not be the Manhabari of Ibn Haukal and
+Idrisi, which was two days' journey from Debal on
+the road to Armail. As we have now decided what
+direction that road must have taken, after accepting
+General Haig's position for Debal, and bearing in
+mind Idrisi's description of the town as "built in a
+hollow," with fountains, springs, and gardens around
+it, there seems to me but little doubt that the site
+of the ancient Manhabari is to be found near that
+resort of all Karachi holiday-makers called Mugger
+Pir. Here the sacred alligators are kept, and hence
+the recognized name; but the real name of the place,
+divested of its vulgar attributes, is Manga, or Manja
+Pir. The affix Pir is common throughout the Bela
+district, and is a modern introduction. The position
+of Mugger Pir, with its encircling walls of hills, its
+adjacent hot springs and gardens (so rare as to be
+almost unique in this part of the country), its convenient
+position with respect to the coast, and,
+above all, its interesting architectural remains, mark
+it unmistakably as that Manhabari of Idrisi which
+was two days' march from Debal.</p>
+
+<p>Whether Manhabari can be identified with that
+ancient capital of Indo-Skythia spoken of by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span>
+Ptolemy and the author of the <i>Periplus</i> as Minagar,
+or Binagar, may be open to question, though
+there are a good many points about it which appear
+to meet the description given by more ancient
+geographers. The question is too large to enter
+on now, but there is certainly reason to think that
+such identification may be found possible. The
+small but populous town of Khur has left some
+apparent records of its existence near the Malir
+waterworks of Karachi, where there is a very fine
+group of Arab tombs in a good state of preservation.
+There is a village called Khair marked on
+the map not far from this position, and the actual
+site of the old town cannot be far from it, although
+I have not had the opportunity of identifying it.
+It is directly on the road connecting Debal with
+Manhabari. With Manhabari and Khur our tale of
+buried cities closes in this direction. We have but
+to add that General Haig identifies Debal with
+a ruin-covered site 20 miles south-west of Thatta,
+and about 45 miles east-south-east of Karachi.</p>
+
+<p>All these ancient cities eastwards from Makran
+are associated with one very interesting feature.
+Somewhat apart from the deserted and hardly
+recognizable ruins of the cities are groups of
+remarkable tombs, constructed of stone, and carved
+with a most minute beauty of design, which is so
+well preserved as to appear almost fresh from the
+hands of the sculptor. These tombs are locally
+known as "Khalmati."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Invariably placed on rising ground, with a fair
+command of the surrounding landscape, they are
+the most conspicuous witnesses yet remaining of
+the nature of the Saracenic style of decorative art
+which must have beautified those early cities. The
+cities themselves have long since passed away, but
+these stone records of dead citizens still remain to
+illustrate, if but with a feeble light, one of the
+darkest periods in the history of Indian architecture.
+These remains are most likely Khalmati (<i>not</i> Karmati)
+and belong to an Arab race who were once
+strong in Sind and who came from the Makran
+coast at Khalmat. The Karmatians were not
+builders.</p>
+
+<p>We have so far only dealt with that route to
+India which combined a coasting voyage in Arab
+ships with an overland journey which was obviously
+performed on a camel, or the days' stages could
+never have been accomplished. But the number
+of cities in Western Makran and Kirman which still
+exist under their mediæval names, and which are
+thickly surrounded with evidences of their former
+wealth and greatness, certifies to a former trade
+through Persia to India which could have been
+nowise inferior to that from the shores of Arabia
+or Egypt. Indeed, the overland route to India
+through Persia and Makran was probably one of
+the best trodden trade routes that the world has
+ever seen. It is almost unnecessary to enumerate
+such names as Darak, Bih, Band, Kasrkand,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span>
+Asfaka, and Fahalfahra (all of which are to be found
+in Ibn Haukal's map), and to point out that they
+are represented in modern geography by Dizak,
+Geh, Binth, Kasrkand, Asfaka, and Bahu Kalat.
+Degenerated and narrowed as they now are, there
+are still evidences written large enough in surrounding
+ruins to satisfy the investigator of the
+reality and greatness of their past; whilst the
+present nature of the routes which connect them
+by river and mountain is enough to prove that they
+never could have been of small account in the Arab
+geographical system. One city in this part of Makran
+is, I confess, something of a riddle to me still.
+Rasak is ever spoken of by Arab geographers as
+the city of "schismatics." There is, indeed, a Rasak
+on the Sarbaz River road to Bampur, which might
+be strained to fit the position assigned it in Arab
+geography; but it is now a small and insignificant
+village, and apparently could never have been otherwise.
+There is no room there for a city of such
+world-wide fame as the ancient headquarters of
+heresy must have been&mdash;a city which served usefully
+as a link between the heretics of Persia and
+those of Sind.</p>
+
+<p>Istakhri says that Rasak is two days' journey
+from Fahalfahra (which there is good reason for
+believing to be Bahu Kalat), but Idrisi makes it
+a three-days' journey from that place, and three
+days from Darak, so that it should be about half-way
+between them. Now, Darak can hardly be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span>
+other than Dizak, which is described by the same
+authority as three days' journey from Firabuz
+(<i>i.e.</i> Kanazbun). It is also said to have been a
+populous town, and south-west of it was "a high
+mountain called the Mountain of Salt." South-west
+of Dizak are the highest mountains in Makran,
+called the Bampusht Koh, and there is enough
+salt in the neighbourhood to justify the geographer's
+description. It may also be said to be three days'
+journey from Kanazbun. Somewhere about half-way
+between Dizak and Bahu Kalat is the important
+town of Sarbaz, and from a description of
+contiguous ruins which has been given by Mr.
+E. A. Wainwright, of the Survey Department (to
+whom I am indebted for most of the Makran
+identifications), I am inclined to place the ancient
+Rasak at Sarbaz rather than in the position which
+the modern name would apply to it. It is rather
+significant that Ibn Haukal omits Rasak altogether
+from his map. Its importance may be estimated
+from Idrisi's description of it taken from the translation
+given by Elliott in the first volume of his
+History of India: "The inhabitants of Rasak are
+schismatics. Their territory is divided into two
+districts, one called Al Kharij, and the other
+Kir" (or Kiz) "Kaian. Sugar-cane is much
+cultivated, and a considerable trade is carried
+on in a sweetmeat called 'faniz,' which is made
+here.... The territory of Maskan joins that of
+Kirman." Maskan is probably represented by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span>
+Mashkel at the present day, Mashkel being the best
+date-growing district in Southern Baluchistan. It
+adjoins Kirman, and produces dates of such excellent
+quality that they compare favourably with the best
+products of the Euphrates. Idrisi's description of
+this part of Western Makran continues thus: "The
+inhabitants have a great reputation for courage.
+They have date-trees, camels, cereals, and the
+fruit of cold countries." He then gives a table
+of distances, from which we can roughly estimate
+the meaning of "a day's journey." After stating
+that Fahalfahra, Asfaka, Band, and Kasrkand are
+dependencies of Makran which resemble each other
+in point of size and extent of their trade, he goes
+on to say, "Fahalfahra to Rasak two days." (Istakhri
+makes it three days, the distance from Bahu
+Kalat to Sarbaz being about 80 miles.) "From
+Fahalfahra to Asfaka two days." (This is almost
+impossible, the distance being about 160 miles, and
+the route passing through several large towns.)
+"From Asfaka to Band one day towards the west."
+(This is about 45 miles south-west rather than
+west.) "From Asfaka to Darak three days."
+(150 to 160 miles according to the route taken.)
+"From Band to Kasrkand one day." (About 70
+miles, passing through Bih or Geh, which is not
+mentioned.) "From Kasrkand to Kiz four days."
+This is not much over 150 miles, and is the most
+probable estimate of them all. It is possible, of
+course, that from 70 to 80 miles may have been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span>
+covered on a good camel within the limits of twenty-four
+hours. Such distances in Arabia are not uncommon,
+but we are not here dealing with an
+absolutely desert district, devoid of water. On the
+contrary, halting-places must have always been
+frequent and convenient.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot leave this corner of Makran without a
+short reference to what lay beyond to the north-west,
+on the Kirman border, as it appears to me
+that one or two geographical riddles of mediæval
+days have recently been cleared up by the results
+of our explorations. Idrisi says that "Tubaran is
+near Fahraj, which belongs to Kirman. It is a
+well-fortified town, and is situated on the banks of
+a river of the same name, which are cultivated and
+fertile. From hence to Fardan, a commercial town,
+the environs of which are well populated, four days.
+Kir Kaian lies to the west of Fardan, on the road
+to Tubaran. The country is well populated and
+very fertile. The vine grows here and various
+sorts of fruit trees, but the palm is not to be
+found." Elsewhere he states that "from Mansuria
+to Tubaran about fifteen days"; and again,
+"from Tubaran to Multan, on the borders of Sind,
+ten days." Here there is clearly the confusion
+which so constantly arises from the repetition of
+place-names in different localities. Multan and
+Mansuria are well-known or well-identified localities,
+and Turan was an equally well-recognized district
+of Lower Sind, of which Khozdar was the capital.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span>
+Turan may well be reckoned as ten days from
+Multan, or fifteen from Mansuria, but hardly the
+Tubaran, about which such a detailed and precise
+description is given. There are two places called
+indifferently Fahraj, Pahrag, Pahra, or Pahura,
+both of which are in the Kirman district; one,
+which is shown in St. John's map of Persia, is not
+very far from Regan, in the Narmashir province,
+and is surrounded far and wide with ruins. It
+has been identified by St. John as the Pahra of
+Arrian, the capital of Gadrosia, where Alexander
+rested after his retreat through Makran. The
+other is some 16 miles east of Bampur, to the
+north-west of Sarbaz. Both are on the banks
+of a river, "cultivated and fertile"; both are
+the centres of an area of ruins extending for
+miles; both must find a place in mediæval geography.
+For many reasons, into which I cannot
+fully enter, I am inclined to place the Pahra of
+Arrian in the site near Bampur. It suits the
+narrative in many particulars better than does
+the Pahra identified with Fahraj by St. John.
+The latter, I have very little doubt, is the Fahraj
+of Idrisi, and the town of Tubaran was not far
+from it. Fardan may well have been either
+Bampur itself (a very ancient town) or Pahra,
+16 miles to the east of it; and between Fardan
+and Fahraj lay the district of Kir (or Kiz) Kaian,
+which has been stated to be a district of Rasak.
+"On Tubaran," says Idrisi, "are dependent
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span>
+Mahyak, Kir Kaian, Sura" (? Suza), "Fardan"
+(? Bampur or Pahra), "Kashran" (? Khasrin),
+"and Masurjan. Masurjan is a well-peopled
+commercial town surrounded with villages on the
+banks of the Tubaran, from which town it is
+42 miles distant. Masurjan to Darak Yamuna
+141 miles, Darak Yamuna to Firabuz 175 miles."
+If we take Regan to represent the old city of
+Masurjan, and Yakmina as the modern representative
+of Darak Yamuna, we shall find Idrisi's
+distances most surprisingly in accordance with
+modern mapping. Regan is about 40 miles from
+Fahraj, and the other distances, though not accurate
+of course, are much more approximately correct
+than could possibly have been expected from the
+generality of Idrisi's compilation.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot, however, now open up a fresh chapter
+on mediæval geography in Persia. It is Makran
+itself to which I wish to draw attention. In our
+thirst for trans-frontier knowledge farther north and
+farther west, we have somewhat overlooked this
+very remarkable country. Idrisi commences his
+description with the assertion that "Makran is a
+vast country, mostly desert." We have not altogether
+found it so. It is true that the voyager who
+might be condemned to coast his way from the
+Gulf of Oman to the port of Karachi in the hot
+weather, might wonder what of beauty, wealth, or
+even interest, could possibly lie beyond that brazen
+coast washed by that molten sea; might well recall
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span>
+the agonies of thirst endured during the Greek
+retreat; might think of the lost armies of Cyrus
+and Simiramis; and whilst his eye could not fail
+to be impressed with the grand outlines of those
+bold headlands which guard the coast, his nose
+would be far more rudely reminded of the unpleasant
+proximity of Ichthyophagi than delighted
+by soft odours of spikenard or myrrh. And yet,
+for century after century, the key to the golden
+gate of Indian commerce lay behind those Makran
+hills. Beyond those square-headed bluffs and
+precipices, hidden amongst the serrated lines of
+jagged ridges, was the high-road to wealth and
+fame, where passed along not only many a rich
+khafila loaded with precious merchandise, but many
+a stout array of troops besides. Those citizens of
+Makran who "loved fair dealing, who were men
+of their word, and enemies to fraud," who welcomed
+the lagging khafila, or sped on their way the swift
+camel-mounted soldiers of Arabia, could have little
+dreamed that for centuries in the undeveloped
+future, when trade should pass over the high seas
+round the southern coast of Africa, and the Western
+infidel should set his hated foot on Eastern shores,
+Makran should sink out of sight and into such forgetfulness
+by the world, that eventually this ancient
+land of the sun should become something less well
+known than those mountains of the moon in which
+lay the far-off sources of the Egyptian Nile.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it is not at all impossible that Makran may
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span>
+once again rise to significance in Indian Councils.
+Men's eyes have been so much turned to the proximity
+of Russia and Russian railways to the Indian
+frontier that they have hardly taken into serious
+consideration the problems of the future, which deal
+with the direct connection overland between India
+and Europe other than those which touch Seistan
+or Herat. That such connection will finally eventuate
+either through Seistan or Herat (or through
+both) no one who has any appreciation of the power
+of commercial interests to overcome purely military
+or political objections will doubt; but meanwhile
+it may be more than interesting to prove that a
+line through Persia is quite a practicable scheme,
+although it would not be practicable on any alignment
+that has as yet been suggested. It would
+not be practicable by following the coast, for
+instance. It would be useless to link up Teheran
+with Mashad, unless the Seistan line were adopted
+in extension; and the proposal to join Ispahan to
+Seistan through Central Persia would involve such
+a lengthening of the route to India as would
+seriously discount its value. The only solution
+of the difficulty is through Makran to Karachi.
+Military nervousness would thus be met by the
+fact that Russia could make no use of such a
+line for purposes of invasion, inasmuch as it
+would be commanded and protected from the sea.
+Political difficulties with Afghanistan would be
+absolutely avoided by a Persian line. Whether
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span>
+that would be better than a final agreement with
+Russia based on mutual interest, which would
+certainly make strongly for the peace of our borders,
+is another question. I am only concerned just
+now in illustrating the geography of Makran and
+pointing out its facilities as a land of possible
+routes to India, and in showing how the exploration
+of Baluchistan and of Western India was secured
+in mediæval times by means of these routes.</p>
+
+<p>It will, then, be interesting to note that at the
+eastern extremity of Makran, dovetailed between
+the Makran hills as they sweep off with a curve
+westward and our Sind frontier hills as they continue
+their general strike southwards, is the little
+state of Las Bela. The mountain conformation
+which encloses it makes the flat alluvial portion of
+the state triangular in shape, and from the apex of
+the triangle to the sea runs a river now known as
+the Purali, which in ancient times was called the
+Arabis from the early Arab occupation of the
+region. There are relics of apparent Arabic origin
+which, independently of Greek records, testify to
+a very early interest in this corner of the Indian
+borderland. Las Bela has a history which is not
+without interest. It has been a Buddhist centre,
+and the caves of Gondakahar near by testify to the
+ascetic fervour of the Buddhist priesthood. The
+grave of one of the greatest of frontier political
+leaders, Sir Robert Sandeman, lies near this little
+capital. Already it forms an object of devotional
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span>
+pilgrimage through all the Sind countryside. Possibly
+once again it may happen that Las Bela will be
+a wayside resting-place on the road to India, as it
+has undoubtedly been in the centuries of the past.
+It is not difficult to reach Las Bela from Karachi
+by following the modern telegraph line. There
+are no great physical obstacles interposed to make
+the way thorny for the slow-moving train of a
+khafila, and where camels can take their stately
+way there the more lively locomotive can follow.
+Should the railway from Central Persia (let us say
+Ispahan) ever extend its iron lines to Las Bela,
+it will make little of the rest of its extension to
+Karachi. It is the actual physical arrangement of
+Makran topography only which really matters;
+and here we are but treading in the footsteps of
+the ubiquitous Arab when first he made his way
+south-eastward from Arabia, or from Syria, to the
+Indian frontier. He could, and he did, pass from
+the plateau of Persia into the very heart of Makran
+without encountering the impediment of a single
+difficult pass.</p>
+
+<p>Although the chief trade route of the Arabs
+to India was not through Persia, but by way of
+the sea in coasting vessels, it is probable that
+both Arabs and Persians before them made good
+use of the geographical opportunities offered for
+an approach to the Indus valley and Northern
+India, and that the central line of Persian approach
+through Makran had been a world-old route for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span>
+centuries. It is really a delightful route to follow,
+full of the interest of magnificent scenery and of
+varied human existence, and it is the telegraph
+route from Ispahan to Panjgur in Makran. With
+the initial process of reaching Ispahan, whether
+through the Kurdistan hills from Baghdad by way of
+Kermanshah and the ancient town of Hamadan to
+Kum (the mountain road selected for the telegraph
+line), or whether from Teheran to Kum and thence
+by Kashan (a line not so replete with hills), we have
+no concern. This part of Persia now falls by
+agreement under the influence of Russia, and it is
+only by further agreement with Russia that this
+link in any European connection could be forged.
+But from Ispahan to Karachi one may still look
+over the wide uplands of the Persian plateau and
+imagine, if we please, that it is for England to take
+her share in the development of these ancient highways
+into a modern railway. Ispahan is 5300 feet
+above sea-level, and from Ispahan one never descends
+to a lower level than 3000 feet till one
+enters Makran.</p>
+
+<p>As Ispahan lies in a wide valley separated by a
+continuous line of flanking hills from the main high
+road of Central Persia, which connects Teheran
+and Kashan with Kirman, passing through Yezd,
+it is necessary to cross this intervening divide in
+order to reach Yezd. There is a waterway through
+the hills, near Taft, a little to the south-west of Yezd
+which meets this difficulty. From Yezd onwards to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span>
+the south-west of Kirman, Bam, and the populous
+plains of Narmashir and Regan, the road is never out
+of sight of mountains, the long lines of the Persian
+ranges flanking it north and south culminating in the
+magnificent peak of the Koh-i-Basman, but leaving
+a wide space between unhindered by passes or
+rivers. From Narmashir the modern telegraph
+passes off north-eastward to Seistan, and from there
+follows the new trade route to Nushki and Quetta.
+It is probable that through all ages this palpable
+method of circumventing the Dasht-i-Lut (the
+Kirman desert) by skirting it on the south was
+adopted by travellers seeking Seistan and Kandahar.
+There is, however, the difficulty of a formidable
+band of mountains skirting the desert Seistan,
+which would be a difficulty to railway construction.
+From Regan to Bampur and Panjgur the normal and
+most convenient mountain conformation (although
+the ranges close in and the valleys narrow) points
+an open way, with no obstacle to bar the passage
+even of a motor; but after leaving Bampur on the
+east there is a divide (of about 4000 to 5000 feet)
+to be crossed before dropping into the final system
+of Mashkhel drainage, which leads straight on to
+Panjgur, Kalat, and Quetta. Early Arab commercial
+explorers did not usually make this detour
+to Quetta in order to reach the Indus delta country,
+nor should we, if we wished to take the shortest
+line and the easiest through Persia to Karachi or
+Bombay. Much depends on the objective in India.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span>
+Calcutta may be reached from the Indus valley
+by the north-western lines on the normal Indian
+gauge, or it may be reached through the Rajputana
+system on the metre gauge. But for the
+latter system and for Bombay, Karachi becomes
+our objective. To reach Karachi <i>via</i> Seistan and
+Quetta would add at least 500 unnecessary miles
+to our route from Central Persia, an amount which
+equals the total distance between the present
+Russian terminus of the Transcaspian line at
+Kushk and our own Indian terminus at New
+Chaman. A direct through line from Panjgur to
+Karachi by the old Arab caravan route, within
+striking distance from the sea, would apparently
+outflank not only all political objections, but would
+satisfy those military objectors who can only see in
+a railway the opportunity for invasion of India.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<p class="center">EARLIEST ENGLISH EXPLORATION&mdash;CHRISTIE
+AND POTTINGER</p>
+
+<p class="p2">The Arabs of the Mediæval period, whose footsteps
+we have been endeavouring to trace, were after
+their fashion true geographers and explorers. True
+that with them the process of empire-making was
+usually a savage process in the first instance,
+followed by the peaceable extension of commercial
+interests. Trade with them (as with us) followed
+the flag, and the Semitic instinct for making the
+most of a newly-acquired property was ever the
+motive for wider exploration. With the Chinese,
+during the Buddhist period, the ecstatic bliss of
+pilgrimage, and the acquirement of special sanctity,
+were the motive power of extraordinary energies;
+but with this difference of impulse the result was
+much the same. Arab trader and Chinese pilgrim
+alike gave to the world a new record, a record of
+geographical fact which, simple and unscientific as
+it might be, was yet a true revelation for the time
+being. But when Buddhism had become a memory,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">326</a></span>
+and Arab domination had ceased to regulate the
+affairs of the Indus valley; when the devastating
+hordes of the Mongol swept through Afghanistan
+to the plains of India, geographical record no longer
+formed part of the programme, and exploration
+found no place in the scheme of conquest. The
+Mongol and the Turk were not geographers, such
+as were the Chinese pilgrim and the Arab, and one
+gets little or nothing from either of geographical
+record, in spite of the abundance of their historical
+literature and the really high standard of literary
+attainment enjoyed by many of the Turk leaders.
+That truly delightful historical personage Babar,
+for instance, "the adventurer," the founder of the
+Turk dynasty in India, good-looking, intellectual,
+possessed of great ability as a soldier, endowed
+with true artistic temperament as painter, poet, and
+author, the man who has left to all subsequent ages
+an autobiography which is almost unique in its
+power of presenting to the mind of its reader the
+impression of a "whole, real, live, human being,"
+with all his faults and his fancies, his affections and
+aspirations, was apparently unimpressed with the
+value of dull details of geography. He can say
+much about the human interests of the scenes of
+his wanderings; he can describe landscape and
+climate, flowers and fruits (especially melons); but
+though he doubtless possessed the true bandit's
+instinct for local topography (which must, indeed,
+have been very necessary in many of the episodes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">327</a></span>
+of his remarkable career) he makes no systematic
+attempt to place before us a clear notion of the
+geographical conditions of Afghanistan as they
+existed in his time. His literary cousin Haidar
+is far more useful as a geographer. To him we
+owe something more than a vague outline of the
+elusive kingdom of Bolar and the limits of Kafiristan,
+but he merely touches on Afghanistan in its connection
+with Tibet, and says little of the country
+with which we are now immediately concerned.</p>
+
+<p>The one pre-eminent European traveller of the
+thirteenth century (1272-73), the immortal Marco
+Polo, hardly touched Afghanistan. He and his
+kinsmen passed by the high valleys of Vardos and
+Wakhan on their way to Kashgar and Cathay, but
+his geographical information is so vague as to
+render it difficult (until the surveys of these regions
+were completed) to trace his footsteps. The raid
+of Taimur into Kafiristan early in the fifteenth
+century, when it is said that he reached Najil from
+the Khawak Pass over the Hindu Kush, will be
+referred to again in dealing with Masson's narrative;
+but even to this day it is doubtful how far he
+succeeded in penetrating into Kafiristan, although the
+geographical inference of a practicable military line
+of communication between Andarab and the head
+of the Alingar River is certain. Three hundred
+and thirty years after Polo's journey another
+European traveller passed through Badakshan and
+across the Pamirs. This was the lay Jesuit,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span>
+Benedict Goës, a true geographer, bent on the
+exploration of Cathay and the reconnaissance of
+its capabilities as a mission field. He crossed the
+Parwan Pass of the Hindu Kush from Kabul to
+Badakshan and journeyed thence to Yarkand; but
+he did not survive to tell his story in sufficient
+detail to leave intelligible geography. We find
+practically no useful geographical records of
+Afghanistan during many centuries of its turbulent
+history, so that from the time of Arab commercial
+enterprise to the days of our forefathers in India,
+when Afghanistan began to loom large on the
+political horizon as a factor in our relations with
+Russia and it became all important to know of
+what Afghanistan consisted, there is little to collect
+from the pages of its turbid history which can fairly
+rank as a record of geographical exploration. It
+took a long time to awaken an intelligent interest
+in trans-Indus geography in the minds of India's
+British administrators. But for Russia it is possible
+that it would have remained unawakened still; but
+early in the nineteenth century the shadow of
+Russia began to loom over the north-western
+horizon, and it became unpleasantly obvious that
+if we did not concern ourselves with Afghan politics,
+and secure some knowledge of Afghan territory, our
+northern neighbours would not fail to secure the
+advantages of early action.</p>
+
+<p>It is strange to recall the fact that we are
+indebted to the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span>
+the first exploration made by British officers into
+the trans-frontier regions of Afghanistan and
+Baluchistan in British political interests. Nearly
+a century ago (in 1810) the uneasiness created by
+the ambitious schemes of that most irrepressible
+military freebooter resulted in the nomination of
+two officers of Bombay Infantry to investigate the
+countries lying to the west of what was then
+British India, with a view to ascertaining the
+possibilities of invasion. The Punjab and Sind
+intervened between British India and the hinterland
+of the frontier, and their independence and jealous
+suspicion of the expansive tendency of the British
+Raj added greatly to the difficulties and the risks
+of any such trans-frontier enterprise. The Bombay
+Infantry has ever been a sort of nursery for
+explorers of the best and most famous type, and
+the two young gentlemen selected for this remarkable
+exploit were worthy forerunners of Burton and
+Speke. The traditions of intelligence service may
+almost be said to have been founded by them.
+The rule of exploration a century ago admitted
+of no elaborate preparation: a knowledge of the
+languages to be encountered was the one acquisition
+which was deemed indispensable; and there can
+be little doubt that the knowledge of Oriental
+tongues was an advantage which in those days
+very rapidly led to distinction. It was probably
+less widespread but much more thorough than
+it is at present. Captain Christie and Lieutenant
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">330</a></span>
+Pottinger started fair in the characters which they
+meant to assume during their travels. They embarked
+as natives in a native ship, and from the
+very outset they found it necessary to play up to
+their disguise. The port of Sonmiani on the north-eastern
+shores of the Arabian Sea was the objective
+in the first instance, and the rôle of horse-dealers
+in the service of a Bombay firm was the part they
+elected to play. How far it really imposed on
+Baluch or Afghan it is difficult to say. One
+cannot but recollect that when another gallant officer
+in later years assumed this disguise on the Persian
+frontier, he was regarded as a harmless but eccentric
+European, who injured nobody by the assumption
+of an expert knowledge which he did not possess.
+He was known locally for years after his travels
+had ceased as the English officer who "called himself"
+a horse-dealer.</p>
+
+<p>Sonmiani was a more important port a century
+ago than it is now that Karachi has absorbed the
+trade of the Indus coast; but even then the mud
+flats which render the village so unapproachable
+from the coast were in process of formation, and
+it was only with favourable conditions of tide that
+this wretched and long overlooked little seaport
+could be reached. Sonmiani, however, may yet
+again rise to distinction, for it is a notable fact that
+the facility for reaching the interior of Baluchistan
+and the Afghan frontier by this route, which facility
+decided its selection by Christie and Pottinger, is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span>
+no less nowadays than it was then. The explanation
+of it lies in the fact that the route practically
+turns the frontier hills. It follows the extraordinary
+alignment of their innumerable folds,
+passing between them from valley to valley instead
+of breaking crudely across the backbone of the
+system, and slips gently into the flat places of the
+plateau land which stretch from Kharan to Kandahar.
+The more obvious reason which presented
+itself to these early explorers was doubtless the
+avoidance of the independent buffer land of Sind.
+They experienced little difficulty, in spite of many
+warnings of the dangers in front of them, when they
+left Sonmiani for Bela. At Bela they interviewed
+an interesting and picturesque personality in the
+person of the Jam, and were closely questioned
+about the English and their proceedings. Apparently
+the Jam was prepared to accept their description of
+things European generally, until they ventured to
+describe a 100-gun warship and its equipment.
+Such an astounding creation he was unable to
+believe in, and he frankly said so. From Bela the
+great northern high-road led to the old capital,
+Khozdar, through a district infested with Brahui
+robbers; but there was no better alternative, and
+the two officers followed it. On the whole, the
+Brahui tribespeople treated them well, and there
+was no serious collision. Khozdar was an important
+centre in those days, with eight hundred
+houses, and certain Hindu merchants from Shikarpur
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">332</a></span>
+drove a thriving business there. Nothing was
+more extraordinary in the palmy days of Sind than
+the widespread commercial interests of Shikarpur.
+Credit could be obtained at almost all the chief
+towns of Central Asia through the Shikarpur
+merchants, and it was by draft, or "hundi," on
+Hindu bankers far and wide that travellers were
+able to keep themselves supplied with cash as
+they journeyed through these long stages.</p>
+
+<p>The route to Kalat passed by Sohrab and
+Rodinjo, and the two wayfarers reached Kalat on
+February 9, 1810. The cold was intense; they
+were quite unprepared for it, and suffered accordingly.
+Living with the natives and putting up at
+the Mehman Khana (the guest house) of such
+principal villages or towns as possessed one, they
+naturally were thrown very closely into contact with
+native life, and learned native opinions. The views
+of such travellers when dealing with the social
+details of native existence are especially valuable,
+and the opinions expressed by them of the character
+and disposition of the people amongst whom they
+lived, and with whom they daily conversed on every
+conceivable subject, are infinitely to be preferred
+to those of the state officials of that time who
+lived in an artificial atmosphere. Thus we find very
+considerable divergence in the opinions expressed
+regarding Baluch and Afghan character between
+such close observers as Pottinger or Masson and
+such eminent authorities as Burnes and Elphinstone.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">333</a></span>
+The splendid hospitality and the affectation
+of frankness which is common to all these varied
+types of frontier humanity, combined with their
+magnificent presence, and very often with a determined
+adherence to certain rules of guardianship
+and the faithful discharge of the duties which it
+entails, are all of them easily recognizable virtues
+which are much in the minds and mouths of official
+travellers with a mission. The counteracting vices,
+the spirit of fanatical hatred, of thievish malevolence,
+and the utter social demoralization which usually
+(but not always) distinguishes their domestic life
+and disgusts the stranger, is not so much <i>en
+evidence</i>, and is only to be discerned by those who
+mix freely with ordinary natives of the jungle and
+bazaar. As an instance, take Pottinger's estimate
+of Persian character; it is really worth recording
+as the impression of one of the earliest of English
+soldier travellers. "Among themselves, with their
+equals, the Persians are affable and polite; to their
+superiors, servile and obsequious; towards their
+inferiors, haughty and domineering. All ranks are
+equally avaricious, sordid, and dishonest.... Falsehood
+they look on ... as highly commendable, and
+good faith, generosity, and gratitude are alike unknown
+to them. In debauchery none can exceed
+them, and some of their propensities are too
+execrable and infamous to admit of mention.... I
+feel inclined to look upon Persia, at the present
+day, to be the very fountainhead of every species
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">334</a></span>
+of tyranny, cruelty, meanness, injustice, extortion,
+and infamy that can disgrace or pollute human
+nature, and have ever been found in any age or
+nation." These are strong terms to use about a
+people of whom we have been assured that the
+basis of their youthful education is to "ride, to
+shoot, and to speak the truth!" and yet who is it
+who knows Persia who will say even now that they
+are undeserved? May the Persian parliament
+mend their morals and reform their methods&mdash;if,
+indeed, such a "silk purse" as a parliament can be
+made out of such crude material as the Persian
+plebs!</p>
+
+<p>In spite of endless vexations and much spiteful
+malevolence, which included endless attempts
+to trip up Pottinger in his assumed disguise (and
+which, it must be admitted, were met by a not too
+strict adherence to the actual truth on Pottinger's
+part), he does not condemn the Baluchi and the
+Afghan in such terms as he applies to the Persian;
+but he illustrates most forcibly the dangers arising
+from habitual lawlessness due to the semi-feudal
+system of the Baluch federation, and consequent
+want of administrative responsibility. In spite,
+however, of endless difficulties, he finally got
+through, and so did Christie; and for the getting
+through they were both largely indebted to the
+vicarious hospitality of village chiefs and heads of
+independent clans.</p>
+
+<p>At Kalat they found it far easier to get into the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">335</a></span>
+timber and mud fortress than to get out again, and
+this difficulty repeated itself at Nushki. At Nushki
+begins the real interest of their adventures. Christie
+(after the usual wrangling and procrastination which
+attended all arrangements for onward movement)
+took his way to Herat on almost the exact line of
+route (<i>via</i> Chagai, the Helmund, and Seistan)
+which was followed seventy-three years later by
+the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission. Pottinger
+made what was really a far more venturesome
+journey <i>via</i> Kharan to Jalk and Persia. The
+meeting of these two officers eventually at Ispahan
+in the darkness of night, and their gradual recognition
+of each other, is as dramatic a story as the
+meeting of Nearkhos with Alexander in Makran, or
+of Nansen with Jackson amongst the ice-floes of
+the Far North.</p>
+
+<p>Christie gives us but small detail of his adventures.
+He necessarily suffered much from thirst,
+but met with no serious encounters. Beyond a
+well-deserved tribute to the sweet beauty of that
+picturesque wayside town of Anardara in his careful
+record of his progress northward from Seistan,
+where he made Jalalabad (which he calls Doshak)
+his base for further exploration, he says very little
+about the country he passed through. Incidentally
+he mentions Pulaki (Poolki) as a very remarkable
+relic of past ages. He describes the ruins of
+this place as covering an area of 16 square miles.
+Ferrier mentions the same place subsequently, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">336</a></span>
+locates it about a day's march to the north of
+Kala-i-Fath (which Christie did not visit), and
+it must have been one of the most famous of
+mediæval towns in Seistan. But as collective
+ruins covering an area of 500 square miles have
+been noted by Mr. Tate, the surveyor of the late
+Seistan mission, who camped in their midst to
+the north of Kala-i-Fath, the exact site of Pulaki
+may yet require careful research before it is
+identified. Seistan is the land of half-buried
+ruins. No such extent of ruins exists anywhere
+else in the world. It seems probable, therefore,
+that, like the sites of many another ancient city
+of Seistan, Pulaki has been either partially or
+absolutely absorbed in the boundless sea of desert
+sand, which envelops and hides away each trace
+of the past as its waves move forward in irresistible
+sequence before the howling blasts of the
+north-west.</p>
+
+<p>Christie's route through Seistan followed the
+track connecting Jalalabad on the Helmund with
+Peshawaran on the Farah Rud in dry seasons,
+but which disappears in seasons of flood, when
+the two hamúns or lakes of Seistan become
+one. Pushing on to Jawani he passed Anardara
+on April 4, and reached Herat on the 18th.
+His description of Herat is of a very general
+character, but is sufficient to indicate that no very
+great change took place between the time of his
+visit and that of the 1883 Commission. He was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span>
+fairly well received, and remained a month without
+any incident worthy of note, leaving on May 18 for
+Persia.</p>
+
+<p>This century-old visit of a British officer to
+Herat is chiefly notable for its revelations as to
+the attitude of the Afghan Government and people
+towards the English at the time it was made.
+With the exception of the risk inseparable from
+travel in a lawless country infested with organised
+bands of professional robbers, there appears to have
+been no hostility bred by fanaticism or suspicion
+of the trend of British policy. Afghanistan was
+socially in about the same stage of development
+that France was in the days of Louis XI.&mdash;or
+England a little earlier; and it is only the solidity
+conferred on Afghan administration by the moral
+support of the British Government which has
+effected any real change. Were England to
+abandon India to-morrow there would be nothing
+to prevent a lapse into the same condition of social
+anarchy which prevailed a century ago. India
+would become the bait for ceaseless activity on
+the part of every Afghan border chief who thought
+he had following sufficient to make a raid effective.
+A thin veneer of civilization has crept into Afghanistan
+with motors and telegraphs, but with it also
+has arisen new incentives to hostility from dread of
+a possible loss of independence, and (in the western
+parts of Afghanistan) from real fanatical hatred to
+the infidel. Thus Afghanistan is actually more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span>
+dangerous as a field of exploration to the individual
+European at the present moment than it was in
+the days of Christie and Pottinger. At the same
+time, British military assistance would not only be
+welcome nowadays in case of a conflict with a
+foreign enemy, but it would be claimed as the
+fulfilment of a political engagement and expected
+as a right.</p>
+
+<p>Christie's stay at Herat seems to have been
+quite uneventful, and when he left for Persia no
+one barred his way. The Persian frontier then
+seems to have been rather more than 20 miles
+distant from Herat&mdash;Christie places it a mile
+beyond the village of "Sekhwan," 22 miles from the
+city. The only place which appears to correspond
+with the position of Sekhwan now is Shakiban,
+which probably represents another village. Making
+rapid progress westward through Persia, he eventually
+reached Ispahan, where he rejoined Pottinger
+on June 30. It must have been a hot and trying
+experience!</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Pottinger's adventures after leaving
+Nushki (from which place he had considerable
+difficulty in effecting his departure) were more
+exciting and apparently more risky than those of
+Christie. He selected a route which no European
+has subsequently attempted, and which it would be
+difficult to follow from his description of it were
+it not that this region has now been completely
+surveyed. He struck southwards down the Bado
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">339</a></span>
+river, which leads almost directly to Kharan and
+the desert beyond it stretching to the Mashkhel
+"hamún" or swamp. He did not visit Kharan
+itself, and he apparently misplaces its position by
+at least 50 miles, unless, indeed (which is quite
+possible), the present site of the Naoshirwani
+capital is far removed from that of a century ago.
+I am unaware, however, that any evidence exists to
+that effect.</p>
+
+<p>Until the desert was encountered there was
+no great difficulty on this route, but the horror
+of that desert crossing fully atoned for any lack of
+unpleasant incident previously. It would even now
+be regarded as a formidable undertaking, and we
+can easily understand the deadly feelings that beset
+this pioneer explorer as he made his way in the
+month of April from Kharan on a south-westerly
+track to the border of Persia at Jalk. His description
+of this desert, like the rest of his narrative, is
+full of instructive suggestion. The scope of his
+observation generally, and the accuracy of the
+information which he collected about the infinitely
+complex nationality of the Baluch tribes, renders
+his evidence valuable as regards the natural
+phenomena which he encountered; and no part
+of this evidence is more interesting than his story
+of the Kharan desert, especially as no one since
+his time has made anything like a scientific examination
+of its construction and peculiarities. He
+describes it as a sea of red sand, "the particles of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">340</a></span>
+which were so light that when taken in the hand
+they were scarcely more than palpable; the whole
+is thrown into an irregular mass of waves, principally
+running from east to west, and varying in height
+from 10 to 20 feet. Most of them rise perpendicularly
+on the opposite side to that from which the
+prevailing wind blows (north-west), and might
+readily be fancied at a distance to resemble a
+new brick wall. The side facing the wind slopes
+off with a gradual declivity to the base (or near it)
+of the next windward wave." He further describes
+a phenomenon which he observed in the midst of
+this sand sea, which I think has not been described
+by any later traveller or surveyor. He says "the
+desert seemed at a distance of half a mile or less
+to have an elevated or flat surface from 6 to 12
+inches higher than the summits of the waves. This
+vapour appeared to recede as we advanced, and
+once or twice completely encircled us, limiting the
+horizon to a very confined space, and conveying a
+most gloomy and unnatural sensation to the mind
+of the beholder; at the same moment we were
+imperceptibly covered with innumerable atoms of
+small sand, which, getting into our eyes, mouths
+and nostrils, caused excessive irritation, attended
+with extreme thirst that was increased in no small
+degree by the intense heat of the sun." This was
+only visible during the hottest part of the day.
+Pottinger's explanation of this curious phenomenon
+is that the fine particles of this dust-sand, which are
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">341</a></span>
+swept into the air almost daily by the force of the
+north-west winds, fail to settle down at once when
+those winds cease, but float in the air by reason of
+some change in their specific gravity due to rarefaction
+from intense heat; and he adds that he has
+seen this condition of sand-haze at the same time
+that, in an opposite quarter, he has observed the
+mirage or luminous appearance of water which is
+common to all deserts. Crossing the bed of the
+Budu (the Mashkhel nullah&mdash;dry in April), he
+makes a curious mistake about the direction of its
+waters, which he says run in a south-easterly direction
+towards the coast. It actually runs north-west
+and empties itself (when there is water in it) into
+the Mashkhel swamps. I must admit, however,
+that, from personal observation, it is often exceedingly
+difficult to decide from a casual inspection in
+which direction the water of these abnormally flat
+nullahs runs. Shortly after passing the Mashkhel,
+he encountered an ordinary dust-storm, followed by
+heavy rain, which much modified the terrors of the
+awful heat.</p>
+
+<p>Pottinger has something to say about the hot
+winds that occur between June and September
+in these regions, known as the Bad-i-Simun,
+or pestilential winds, which kill men exposed to
+them and destroy vegetation, but his information
+was not derived from actual observation, and it is
+difficult to get any really authentic account of these
+winds. Parts of the Sind desert are equally subject
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">342</a></span>
+to them. After losing his way (which was inexcusable
+on the part of his guide with the hills in sight),
+he arrived finally at the delightful little valley of
+Kalagan, near Jalk, where the terrors of nature
+were exchanged for those of his human surroundings.
+Kalagan is one of the sweetest and greenest
+spots of the Baluch frontier, and it is easy to realize
+Pottinger's intense joy in its palm groves and
+orchards. He was now in Persia, and his subsequent
+proceedings do not concern our present
+purpose. He travelled by Sib and Magas to
+Pahra and Bampur, maintaining his disguise as a
+Pirzada, or wandering religious student, with some
+difficulty, as he was insufficiently versed in the
+tenets of Islam. However, he acted up to his
+Moslem professions with a certain amount of
+success till he reached Pahra, where he was at
+once recognized as an Englishman by a boy who
+had previously met an English officer exploring in
+Southern Persia. But he was excellently well
+treated at Pahra, in strange contrast to his subsequent
+treatment at Bampur, close by. He
+eventually reached Kirman, and passed on by
+the regular trade route to Ispahan.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to take leave of these two
+gallant young officers without a tribute of admiration
+for their magnificent pluck, the tenacity with
+which they held to their original purpose, the
+forbearance and cleverness with which they met
+the persistent and worrying difficulties which were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">343</a></span>
+set in their way by truculent native officials, and
+the accuracy of their final statements. Pottinger
+really left little to be discovered about the distribution
+of Baluch tribes, and if his mapping exhibits
+some curious eccentricities, we must remember that
+it was practically a compilation from memory, with
+but the vaguest means at his disposal for the
+measurement of distances. It was a first map,
+and by the light of it the success of the subsequent
+explorations of Masson (which covered
+a good deal of the same ground in Baluchistan)
+is fairly accounted for. Christie died a soldier's
+death early in his career, but Pottinger lived to
+transmit an honoured name to yet later adventurers
+in the field of geography.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">344</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<p class="center">AMERICAN EXPLORATION&mdash;MASSON</p>
+
+<p class="p2">In 1832 Lord William Bentinck, then Governor-General
+of India, found Shah Sujah, the deposed
+Amir of Kabul, living as a pensioner at Ludhiana
+when he visited the Punjab for an interview with
+its ruler Ranjit Singh. At that interview the
+question of aiding Shah Sujah to regain his throne
+from the usurper Dost Mahomed, who was suspected
+of Russian proclivities, was mooted; and it was then,
+probably, that the seeds of active interference in
+Afghan politics were sown, although the idea of
+aiding Shah Sujah was negatived for the time being.
+The result was the mission of Alexander Burnes to
+Kabul, which formed a new era in Central Asian
+geography. From this time forward the map of
+Afghanistan commenced to grow. The story of
+Burnes' first journey to Kabul was published by
+Murray in 1834, and his example as a geographical
+observer stimulated his assistants Leech, Lord, and
+Wood to further enterprise during a second journey
+to the same capital. Indeed the geographical work
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">345</a></span>
+of some of these explorers still remains as our
+standard reference for a knowledge of the configuration
+of Northern Badakshan. This was the
+beginning of official recognition of the value of
+trans-Indian geographical knowledge to Indian
+administration; but then, as now, information
+obtained through recognized official agents was
+apt to be regarded as the only information worth
+having; and far too little effort was made to secure
+the results of travellers' work, who, in a private
+capacity and unhindered by official red tape, were
+able to acquire a direct personal knowledge of
+Afghan geography such as was absolutely impossible
+to political agents or their assistants.</p>
+
+<p>Before Indian administrators had seriously turned
+their attention to the Afghan buffer-land and set to
+work to fill up "intelligence" material at second
+hand, there was at least one active European agent
+in the field who was in direct touch with the chief
+political actors in that strange land of everlasting
+unrest, and who has left behind him a record which
+is unsurpassed on the Indian frontier for the width
+of its scope of inquiry into matters political, social,
+economic, and scientific, and the general accuracy of
+his conclusions. This was the American, Masson.
+It must be remembered that the Punjab and Sind
+were almost as much <i>terra incognita</i> to us in 1830
+as was Afghanistan. The approach to the latter
+country was through foreign territory. The Sikh
+chiefs of the Punjab and the Amirs of Sind were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">346</a></span>
+not then necessarily hostile to British interests.
+They watched, no doubt, the gradual extension of
+the red line of our maps towards the north-west
+and west, and were fully alive to the probability
+that, so far as regarded their own countries, they
+would all soon be "painted red." But there was
+no official discourtesy or intoleration shown towards
+European travellers, and in the Sikh-governed
+Punjab, at any rate, much of the military control of
+that most military nationality was in the hands of
+European leaders. Nor do we find much of the
+spirit of fanatical hatred to the Feringhi even in
+Afghanistan at that time. The European came
+and went, and it was only due to the disturbed state
+of the country and the local absence of law and
+order that he ran any risk of serious misadventure.</p>
+
+<p>In these days it would be impossible for any
+European to travel as Masson or Ferrier travelled
+in Afghanistan, but in those days there was something
+to be gained by friendship with England, and
+the weakness of our support was hardly suspected
+until it was disclosed by the results of the first
+Afghan war. So Masson and Ferrier assumed the
+rôle of Afghan travellers, clothed in Afghan
+garments, but more or less ignorant of the Afghan
+language, living with the people, partaking of their
+hospitality, studying their ways, joining their
+pursuits, discussing their politics, and placing themselves
+on terms of familiarity, if not of intimacy,
+with their many hosts in a way which has never
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">347</a></span>
+been imitated since. No one now ever assumes
+the dress of the Afghan and lives with him. No
+one joins a caravan and sits over the nightly fire
+discussing bazaar prices or the character of a chief.
+A hurried rush to Kabul, a few brief and badly conducted
+interviews with the Amir, and the official representative
+of India's foreign policy returns to India
+as an Afghan oracle, but with no more knowledge
+of the real inwardness of Afghan political aspiration,
+or of the trend of national thought and feeling, than
+is acquired during a six months' trip of a travelling
+M.P. in India. Consequently there is a peculiar
+value in the records of such a traveller as Masson.
+They are in many ways as valuable now as they
+were eighty years ago, for the character of the
+Afghan has not changed with his history or his
+politics. To some extent they are even more
+valuable, for it is inevitable that the story of a long
+travel through an unknown and unimagined world
+should be received with a certain amount of reservation
+until later experience confirms the tale and
+verifies localities.</p>
+
+<p>Fifty years elapsed before the footsteps of Masson
+could be traced with certainty. Not till the conclusion
+of the last Afghan war, and the final reshaping
+of the surveys of Baluchistan, could it be
+said exactly where he wandered during those
+strenuous years of unremitting travel. And now
+that we can take his story in detail, and follow him
+stage by stage through the Indian borderlands, we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">348</a></span>
+can only say that, considering the circumstances
+under which his observations were taken and recorded,
+it is marvellously accurate in geographical
+detail. Were his long past history of those stirring
+times as accurate as his geography or as his antiquarian
+information there would be little indeed
+left for subsequent investigators to add.</p>
+
+<p>Masson was in the field before Burnes. In the
+month of September 1830 the Resident in the
+Persian Gulf writes to the Chief Secretary to the
+Government of India<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> that "an American gentleman
+of the name of Masson" arrived at Bushire
+from Bassadore on the "13th June last," and that
+he described himself as belonging to the state of
+Kentucky, having been absent for ten years from his
+country, "which he must consequently have left
+when he was young, as he is now only about two-and-thirty
+years of age." The same letter says
+that previous to the breaking out of the war between
+Russia and Persia in 1826 Masson "appears to
+have visited Khorasan from Tiflis by way of Mashed
+and Herat, making no effort to conceal his European
+origin," and that from Herat he went to Kandahar,
+Shikarpur, and Sind.</p>
+
+<p>Masson appears to have furnished some valuable
+information to the Indian Government regarding
+the Durani occupation of Herat and the political
+situation in Kabul and Kandahar, which, according
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">349</a></span>
+to his own account, he subsequently regretted, as
+he obviously regarded the British attitude towards
+Afghanistan at that time in much the same light
+as certain continental nations regarded the British
+attitude towards the Transvaal previous to the last
+Boer war. "About the same time," says the same
+letter from the Resident at Bushire, Masson was
+much in the Bahawalpur country (Sind), after which
+he proceeded to Peshawar, Kabul, Ghazni, etc.
+Extracts from his reports of his journeys are
+forwarded with other information. In his book
+(<i>Travels in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, the Punjab,
+and Kalat</i>, published in 1842) Masson opens his
+story with the autumn of 1826, when he was in
+Bahawalpur and Sind, which he had approached
+through Rajputana, and not from Afghanistan. He
+has much to say about Bahawalpur which, however
+interesting and valuable as first-hand information
+about a foreign state in 1826, no longer concerns
+this story. From Bahawalpur he passed on to
+Peshawar and Kabul, from Kabul to Kandahar,
+and thence to Shikarpur. As the incidents of his
+remarkable journey between Kandahar and Shikarpur,
+described in the letter of the Bushire Resident,
+are obviously the same as those in his book, the
+inference is strong that the journey from Tiflis to
+Herat and Kandahar (which is not mentioned in
+the book) has been somehow misplaced in the
+Resident's record.</p>
+
+<p>When Masson entered Afghanistan from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">350</a></span>
+Peshawar there is certain indirect evidence that this
+was the first time that he crossed the Afghan border.
+He knew nothing of the Pashto language, which
+would be remarkable in the case of a man like
+Masson, who always lived with the people and not
+with the chiefs, and there is not the remotest
+reference to any previous visit to Herat in his
+subsequent history. We will at any rate follow the
+text of his own narrative, and surely no narrative of
+adventure that has ever appeared before or since in
+connection with Afghan exploration can rival it for
+interest. Peshawar was at that time held by four
+Pathan Sirdars, brothers, who were hardly independent,
+as they held their country (a small space
+extending to about 25 miles round Peshawar, and
+which included Kohat and Hangu) entirely at the
+pleasure of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Chief of the
+Punjab. Some show of making a strike for independence
+had been made in connection with the
+Yusufzai rising led by Saiad Ahmad Shah, but it
+had been suppressed, and during the temporary
+occupation of Peshawar by the Sikhs the city had
+been despoiled and devastated. Masson estimated
+that there were about fifty or sixty thousand inhabitants
+in Peshawar, where he was exceedingly well
+treated. "People of all classes were most civil and
+desirous to oblige." He was an honoured guest at
+all entertainments.</p>
+
+<p>How long Masson remained at Peshawar it is
+difficult to say, for there is a most lamentable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">351</a></span>
+absence of dates from his records, and Peshawar
+appears to have been the base from which he
+started on a good many excursions. Finally he
+made acquaintance with a Pathan who offered to
+accompany him to Kabul, and he left Peshawar for
+Afghanistan by the Khaibar route. He mentions
+two other routes as being popular in those days, <i>i.e.</i>
+those of Abkhana and Karapa, and he asserts that
+they were far more secure for traders than the
+Khaibar, but not so level nor so direct. Masson
+started with his companion, dressed as a Pathan,
+but taking nothing but a few pais (copper coins)
+and a book. His companion, however, possessed a
+knife tied up in a corner of his pyjamas. After
+cautiously crossing the plains and some intervening
+hills, they struck the high road of the Khaibar
+apparently not far from Ali Masjid, and here they
+fell in with the first people they had met <i>en route</i>&mdash;about
+twenty men sitting in the shade of a rock,
+"elderly, respectable, and venerable." They were
+hospitably received and entertained, and news of
+the arrival of a European quickly spread. Every
+European was expected to be a doctor in those
+days, and Masson had to assume the rôle and make
+the most of his limited medical knowledge. He
+either prescribed local remedies, or healed the sick
+on Christian Science principles with a certain
+amount of success&mdash;enough to ensure him a welcome
+wherever he went. It is a curious story for any one
+who has traversed the Khaibar in these later days to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">352</a></span>
+read. A European with a most limited knowledge
+of Pushto tramping the road in company with a
+Pathan, living the simple life of the people, picking
+up information every yard of the way, keenly
+interested in his rough surroundings, taking count
+of the ragged groups of stone-built huts clinging to
+the hill-sides or massed around a central citadel in
+the open plain, with here and there a disintegrating
+monument crowning the hill-top with a cupola or
+dome, the like of which he had never seen before.</p>
+
+<p>Masson had hardly realized in these early days
+that he was on one of the routes most sacred to
+pilgrimage of all those known to the disciples of
+Buddha, and it was not till later years that he set
+about a systematic exploration of the extraordinary
+wealth of Buddhist relics which lie about Jalalabad
+and the valleys adjoining the Khaibar route to
+Kabul. On his journey he made his way with the
+varied incidents of adventure common to the time&mdash;robbed
+at one place, treated with hospitality at
+another; sitting under the mulberry trees discussing
+politics with all the energy of the true
+Afghan (who is never deficient in the power of
+expressing his political sentiments), and, taking it
+altogether, enjoying a close, if not an absolutely
+friendly, intimacy with the half-savage people of
+those wholly savage hills. An intimacy, such as no
+other educated European has ever attained, and
+which tells a tale of a totally different attitude on
+the part of the Afghan towards the European then,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">353</a></span>
+to that which has existed since. The fact that
+Masson was American and not English counted
+for nothing. The difference was not recognized by
+the Afghans, although it was explained by him
+sometimes with careful elaboration. It was the
+time when Dost Mahomed ruled in Kabul, but
+with the claims of Shah Sujah (possibly backed by
+both Sikh and British) on the political horizon. It
+was a time of political intrigue amongst Afghan
+Sirdars and chiefs so complicated and so widespread
+as to be almost unintelligible at this distance of
+time, and not even Masson, with all his advantages
+of intimate association and great powers of intuition,
+seems to have fathomed the position satisfactorily.
+Consequently it was to the interests of the Afghan
+Government to stand well with the British, even if
+it were equally their aim to keep on good terms
+with Russia&mdash;in short, to play the same game that
+has lasted during the rest of the century, and which
+threatens to last for many another decade yet.
+But this was before the mission of Burnes, and
+before the events of the subsequent Afghan war
+had taught the Afghan that British arms were not
+necessarily invincible, nor British promises always
+trustworthy.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the ordinary chances of disaster on
+the roads arising from the lack of law and order,
+any European would have met with a hospitable
+reception at that time, and Masson himself relates
+how, in Kabul, during some of the friendly gatherings
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">354</a></span>
+which he attended, the respective probabilities
+of British or Russian intervention in Kabul affairs
+was a common subject of discussion. It is easy for
+one who knows the country to picture him sitting
+under the shade of the mulberry trees, with the soft
+lush of the Afghan summer in grass and flowers
+about him, the scent of the willow in the air, and,
+across the sliding blue of the Kabul River, a dim
+haze shadowing the rounded outlines of some
+ancient stupa, whilst trying to unriddle the tangle
+of Afghan politics or taking notes of weird stories
+and ancient legends. Nothing seems to have
+come amiss to his inquiring mind. Archæology,
+numismatics, botany, geology, and history&mdash;it was
+all new to him, and an inexhaustible opportunity
+lay before him. He certainly made good
+use of it. He busied himself, amongst other
+things, with an inquiry into the origin of the
+Siahposh Kafirs, and, although his speculations
+regarding them have long been discounted by the
+results of subsequent investigation from nearer
+points of view, it is interesting to note how these
+savages were then regarded by the nearest
+Mahomedan communities. Masson admits that
+the history of a Greek origin is supported by all
+natural and historical indications, but he declines to
+accept "so bold and welcome an inference." Why
+he should call it "bold and welcome" and then
+reject it, is not explained, but it is probable that he
+accepted the claim to a Greek origin on the part of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">355</a></span>
+the Kafirs as indicating that they claimed to be
+Greek and nothing but Greek. When we consider
+the number and extent of the Greek colonies which
+once existed beyond the Hindu Kush it would
+indeed be surprising if there were no survival of
+Greek blood in the veins of the people who, in the
+last stronghold of a conquered and hunted race,
+represent the debris of the once powerful Baktrian
+kingdom. Incidentally he discussed the interesting
+episode of Timur's invasion of Kafiristan, a subject
+on which no recent investigations have thrown any
+further light. The story, as told by Timur's historian,
+Sharifudin, says that in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1399, when Timur was
+at Andarab, complaints were made to him of outrage
+and oppression by the exaction of tribute, or
+"Karaj," against the idolaters of Katawar and the
+Siahposh. It appears that Katawar was then the
+general name for the northern regions of Kafiristan,
+although no reference to that name had been recorded
+lately.</p>
+
+<p>Timur is said to have taken a third part of the
+army of the Andarab against the infidels, and to
+have reached Perjan (probably Parwan), from
+whence he detached a part of his force to act to the
+north of that place, whilst he himself proceeded to
+Kawak, which is certainly Khawak at the head of
+the Panjshir valley. If Perjan is Parwan (which I
+think most probable) this distribution of his force
+would indicate that he held the Panjshir valley
+at both ends, and thus secured his flank whilst
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">356</a></span>
+operating in Kafiristan. From Khawak he "made
+the ascent" of the mountains of "Ketnev" (<i>i.e.</i> he
+crossed the intervening snow-covered divide between
+the Panjshir and the head of the Alishang) and
+descended upon the fortress of Najil. This was
+abandoned by the Siahposh Kafirs, who held a
+high hill on the left bank of the river. After an
+obstinate fight the hill was carried, and the male
+infidels, "whose souls were blacker than their
+garments," were killed, and their women and
+children carried away. Timur set up a marble
+pillar with an inscription recording the event, and
+it would be exceedingly interesting if that pillar
+could be identified. Masson thinks that a structure
+which he ascertained to have been in existence in
+his time a little to the north of Najil, known as the
+Timur Hissar (Timur's Fort), may be the fort which
+Timur destroyed after it had been abandoned by
+the Kafirs, and that the record of his victory would
+be found near by. The chief of Najil in Masson's
+time claimed descent from Timur, and there was
+(and is still) so much of Tartar tradition enveloping
+the valley of Najil (or the upper Alishang) as to
+make it fairly certain that Tartar, or Mongol, troops
+did actually invade that valley from the Panjshir,
+and that there is consequently a practicable pass
+from the Panjshir into the upper Alishang.</p>
+
+<p>If we are correct in our assumption of the position
+of Farajghan and Najil in the modern maps of
+Afghanistan, as determined from native sources of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">357</a></span>
+information (for no surveyor has ever laid down the
+course of the upper affluents of the Alishang) this
+Mongol force must have crossed from about the
+centre of the Panjshir valley. It is a matter of
+interest to observe that, historically, between Afghan
+Turkistan and the Kabul plain the fashionable pass
+over the Hindu Kush until quite recently was the
+Parwan, and this, no doubt, was due to the fact that
+its altitude (12,300 feet) is less by quite 2000 feet
+than that of the Kaoshan which closely adjoins it,
+although the Kaoshan is in some other important
+respects the easier pass of the two. The Khawak,
+at the head of the Panjshir, is lower still (11,650
+feet), but it offers a more circuitous route; whilst
+the Chahardar, the pass selected by the Amir
+Abdurrahmon for the construction of a high-road
+into Afghan Turkistan from the Kabul plain, is as
+high as the Kaoshan. All these routes converge
+on the important strategical position of Charikar,
+adjoining the junction of the Ghorband and Panjshir
+rivers; and they all lead from that ancient strategical
+centre of Baktria, the Andarab basin. Undoubtedly
+through all time the passage over the Khawak (now
+a well-trodden khafila route, said to be open to
+traffic all the year round) must have been the most
+attractive to the freebooters and adventurers of the
+north; but there appears to have been a reputation
+for ferocity and strength attached to the inhabitants
+of the Panjshir valley, which was remarkable even
+in the days when the only recognized right was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">358</a></span>
+might, and half Asia was peopled by barbarians.
+They were spoken of with the respect due to a
+condition of savage independence by the Arab
+writers who detail the geography of these regions,
+and it is probable that they shared the historical
+lawlessness of their Kafir neighbours (the Siahposh),
+even if in those days they did not share a race
+affinity. At the beginning of the sixteenth century
+the Emperor Babar notes that the Panjshir people
+paid tribute to their neighbours the Kafirs.</p>
+
+<p>Masson's observations on this troublous corner
+of Asiatic geography are shrewd and interesting,
+and as much to the purpose to-day as they were
+when they were written. The explorations of
+McNair and Robertson over the Kafiristan border
+from Chitral, and the march of Lockhart's party
+through the Arnawai valley, added much to the
+geographical knowledge of the eastern fringe of
+Kafiristan, whilst the identification of the Koh-i-Mor
+with the classic Meros, and of certain sections of
+the eastern Kafirs as representative of the ancient
+Nysæans, clearly establishes the Greek connection
+about which Masson was so sceptical. But the
+Kafirs of Central and Western Kafiristan, the inhabitants
+of the upper basins of the Alishang and
+Alingar about the centre of the Hindu Kush and
+of the Badakshan rivers to the north, are just as
+unknown to us as they were to him. The only
+certain inference that we can draw from the total
+absence of history about these valleys of the Hindu
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">359</a></span>
+Kush is that between the Khawak Pass at the
+head of the Panjshir valley on the west, and the
+Minjan Pass leading to Chitral on the east, there
+is not, and never has been, a practicable route
+connecting the Kabul basin with Badakshan. No
+Arab khafilas ever passed that way; no hordes of
+raiding robbers from Central Asian fields ever forced
+a passage southward through those Kafir defiles;
+they are still dark and impenetrable, the home of
+distinct and separate valley communities, differing as
+widely in form of speech as in superstitious ritual,
+the very flotsam and jetsam of High Asia, as wild
+as the eagles above them or the markhor on their
+craggy hill-sides.</p>
+
+<p>We will not follow Masson into the mazes
+of Afghan political history. It is all a story of
+the past, but a story with a moral to it. Had
+the Government of India in those days but
+troubled itself to obtain information from existing
+practical sources within its reach, instead of improvising
+a most imperfect political intelligence
+system, the subsequent war with Afghanistan would
+have been conducted on very different lines to those
+which were adopted, if it ever took place at all.</p>
+
+<p>Masson made his way steadily to Kabul after
+meeting with adventures and vicissitudes enough
+for a two-volume novel, and passed on to Ghazni,
+where the army of Dost Mahomed Khan was then
+encamped, and with which he took up his quarters.
+Here he was well received, and he interviewed the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">360</a></span>
+great Afghan Chief (who settled his quarrel with
+his brothers from Kandahar without fighting), and
+thus records his opinion of a remarkable personage
+in history: "Dost Mahomed Khan has distinguished
+himself on various occasions by acts of
+personal intrepidity ... has proved himself an able
+Commander, equally well skilled in stratagem and
+polity, and only employs the sword when other
+means fail. He is remarkably plain in attire....
+I should not have conjectured him a man of ability
+either from his conversation or his appearance"; but
+"a stranger must be cautious in estimating the
+character of a Durani from his appearance," which
+caution he also found it necessary to exercise in
+the case of Dost Mahomed's corpulent brother,
+Mahomed Khan, the Governor of Ghazni. From
+Ghazni, Masson continued his journey to Kandahar,
+still trudging the weary road on foot in the doubtful
+company of casual Pathan wayfarers; and he accepts
+the savage treatment which he experienced at the
+hands of certain Lohanis near Ghazni as all in the
+day's work, never complaining of his want of luck
+so long as he got off with his life, and always ready
+to accept the chances of the most unsafe road rather
+than remain inactive. At Kandahar he again set
+himself to acquire a store of useful political information,
+though with what object it is difficult to
+say. He certainly did not mean it for the Indian
+Government, for he regrets later on in his career
+that he ever gave any of it away, and as a record
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">361</a></span>
+of almost unintelligible Afghan intrigue it could
+hardly have interested his own. He was a wide
+observer, however, and must have been the possessor
+of a most remarkable memory. He was indeed a
+whole intelligence department in himself. After
+some weird and gruesome experiences in Kandahar
+(where, however, he was personally made welcome)
+he left for Shikarpur by the Quetta and Bolan
+route, and it was on this journey that he nearly lost
+his life. He committed the error of allowing the
+caravan with which he was to travel to precede him,
+trusting to his being able to catch it up <i>en route</i>.
+He fell amongst the Achakzai thieves of those ugly
+plains, and being everywhere known and recognised
+as a Feringhi, he passed a very rough time with
+them. They stripped him of his clothing after
+beating him and robbing him of his money, and left
+him "destitute, a stranger in the centre of Asia,
+unacquainted with the language&mdash;which would have
+been useful to me&mdash;and from my colour exposed on
+all occasions to notice, inquiry, ridicule, and insult."
+However, "it was some consolation to find the
+khafila was not far off," and eventually he joined
+it; but he nearly died of cold and exposure, and it
+took him years to recover from the rheumatism set
+up by crouching naked over the embers of the fire
+at night.</p>
+
+<p>There are several points about this remarkable
+journey which might lead one to suspect that
+romance was not altogether a stranger to it, were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">362</a></span>
+it not that the route itself is described with surprising
+accuracy. It has only lately been possible to verify
+step by step the road described by Masson. He
+could hardly have carried about volumes of notes
+with him under such conditions as his story depicts,
+and it might very well have happened that he dislocated
+his topography or his ethnography from
+lapse of memory. But he does neither; and the
+most amazing feature of Masson's tales of travel is
+that in all essential features we knew little more
+about the country of the Afghans after the last war
+with Afghanistan than he could have told us before
+the first. Shall (or Quetta as we know it now) is
+described as a town of about 300 houses, surrounded
+by a slight crenelated wall. The "huge mound"
+(now the fort) is noted as supporting a ruinous
+citadel, the residence of the Governor. Fruit was
+plentiful then, and he adds that "Shall is proverbially
+celebrated for the excellence of its lambs."
+By the desolate plain of Dasht-i-bedoulat and the
+Bolan Pass, Masson trod the well-known route to
+Dadar and Shikarpur. He lived a strange life in
+those days. No one since his time has rubbed
+shoulders with Afghan and Baluch, intimately
+associating himself with all their simple and savage
+ways; reckoning every man he met on the road as
+a robber till he proved a friend; absolutely penniless,
+yet still meeting with rough hospitality and
+real kindness now and then, and ever absorbing with
+a most marvellous power of digestion all that was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">363</a></span>
+useful in the way of information, whether it concerned
+the red-hot sand-strewn plains, or the vermin-covered
+thieves and outcasts that disgraced them. It was
+quite as often with the lowest of the gang as with
+the leaders that he found himself most intimately
+associated.</p>
+
+<p>In those days Sind was a country as unknown to
+us geographically as Afghanistan. The Indus and
+its capacity for navigation was a matter of supreme
+interest, but the deserts of Sind were eyed askance,
+and across those deserts came little call for exploration.
+The government of the country under the
+Sind Amirs was decrepit and loose, leaving district
+municipalities to look after themselves, and promoting
+no general scheme for the public good.
+Shikarpur had been a great centre of trade under
+the Duranis, and its financial credit extended far
+into Central Asia. But in Masson's time much of
+that credit had disappeared with the capitalists who
+supported it&mdash;chiefly Hindu bankers&mdash;who migrated
+to the cities of Multan and Amritsar as the Sikh
+power in the Punjab became a more and more
+powerful factor in frontier politics. Whether Masson
+is correct in his estimate of the mischief done by
+the reckless supply of funds from Shikarpur to
+the restless nobles of Afghanistan, who were thus
+enabled to set on foot raids and inroads into each
+other's territories, is, I think, doubtful. The want
+of money never stayed an Afghan raid&mdash;on the contrary
+it is more apt to instigate it. From Shikarpur
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">364</a></span>
+he bent his steps towards the Punjab. No
+modern traveller, racing down the Indus valley by
+a north-western train, can well appreciate the amount
+of human interest and activity which lies hidden
+beyond the wide flat plains of tamarisk jungle that
+stretch between him and the frontier hills. This
+same Indus valley was Arabic India for centuries,
+and there were Greek settlements centuries earlier
+than the Arabs; none of this escaped Masson.</p>
+
+<p>The vicissitudes of this weary walk were many.
+Masson was put to curious expedients in order to
+keep himself even decently clothed. From under
+one hospitable roof he stole out in the evening, when
+the ragged retinue of his host were all in a state
+of stupefaction from drink, in order to be spared
+their too familiar adieux. It is a remarkable fact
+that he found himself able to pass muster as a
+Mongol on his journey, there being a tradition in
+Sind that some Mongols were as fair as Englishmen.
+From Rohri on the Indus he made his way
+almost exactly along the line of the present railway,
+through Bhawalpur to Uch, continually losing his
+way in the narrow tracks that intersected the intricate
+jungle, with but a rupee or two in his pocket,
+and nothing but the saving grace of the village
+masjid as a refuge for the night. His experiences
+with wayfarers like himself, the lies that he heard
+(and I am afraid also told), the hospitality which
+he received both from men and women, and the
+variety of incident generally which adorns this part
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">365</a></span>
+of Masson's tale is a refreshing contrast to the
+dreary monotony of the modern traveller's tale of
+Indian travel, the bare record of a dusty railway
+experience, with here and there a new impression
+of old and worn-out themes. He was impressed
+with the "contented, orderly, and hospitable" character
+of the people of Northern Sind, whose condition
+was "very respectable" notwithstanding an
+oppressive government. Saiads and fakirs, pirs
+and spiritual guides of all sorts were an abomination
+to him, but it is somewhat new to hear of Saiads
+that "they may commit any crime with impunity."
+At Fazilpur (in Bhawalpur) he found an old friend,
+one Rahmat Khan, and was once again in the lap
+of native luxury. Clean clothes, a bed to lie on,
+and good food, kept him idle for a month ere he
+started again northward for Lahore. Rahmat Khan
+was almost too generous. He spent his last rupee
+recklessly on a nautch, and had to borrow from the
+Hindus of his bazaar in order to find two rupees
+to present to his guest for the cost of his journey
+to Lahore. Of this large sum it is interesting to
+note that Masson had still eight annas left in his
+pocket on his arrival at that city. Alas for the
+good old days! What a modern tramp might
+achieve in India if he were allowed free play it is
+difficult to guess, but never again will any European
+travel 360 miles in India and feed himself for two
+months on a rupee and a half.</p>
+
+<p>Masson notes the extraordinary extent of ancient
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">366</a></span>
+ruins around Uch, and correctly infers the importance
+of that city in the days of Arab ascendency.
+He has much to say that is still interesting about
+Multan and its surroundings. It must have been
+new to historians to hear that the heat of Multan
+is due to the maledictions of the Saint Shams
+Tabieri, who was flayed alive by the progenitors
+of the people who now venerate his shrine. Multan
+was in the hands of the Sikhs when Masson was
+there. From Multan Masson ceased to follow the
+modern line of railway, and adopted a route north
+of the Ravi River until near the city, when he recrossed
+to the southern bank. Lost in admiration
+of the luxuriance of the cultivation of this part of
+the Punjab, and full of the interest aroused by the
+fact that he was on classical ground, the ground of
+ancient history, he wandered into Lahore. Lahore
+and the Sikh administration, the character of Ranjit
+Singh and his policy towards British and Afghan
+neighbours, are all part of Indian history, but it is
+interesting to recall the prominence of French and
+Italians in the Punjab 100 years ago. General
+Allard was encountered quite accidentally by Masson,
+who was at once recognized as a European, and
+found himself able to talk French fluently. This
+naturally led to his entertainment by the General
+at his own splendid establishments. The beautiful
+tomb of Jehangir, the Shahdera, was occupied as
+a residence by the French general, Amise, who
+died, so they said, in expiation of his impiety in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">367</a></span>
+cleaning it up and making it tidy&mdash;which was
+probably very necessary. The tomb of Anarkalli,
+south of the city, was used as a harem by M.
+Ventura, the Italian general, whilst the well-known
+Avitabile lived in a house decorated after the fashion
+of Neapolitan art in cantonments to the east of
+the city. The lovely gardens of Shalimar had
+already been robbed of much of their beauty by the
+transfer of marble and stone from their pavilions
+for the building of Amritsar, the new religious
+capital of the Sikhs. Lahore is "a dull city in the
+commercial sense," says Masson, and Amritsar "has
+become the great mart of the Punjab." We need
+not follow Masson's explorations in the Punjab and
+Sind, further than to relate that he finally left
+Lahore during the rainy season (he was riding now,
+and in fairly easy circumstances) and made his way
+south again <i>via</i> Multan, Haidarabad, and Tatta, to
+Karachi. There is a lamentable want of dates
+about this narrative, and it is almost impossible to
+fix the month, or even the year, in which Masson
+visited any particular part of the frontier.</p>
+
+<p>His next exploits and explorations conducted
+from Karachi are sufficiently remarkable in themselves
+to place Masson quite at the head of the
+list of frontier explorers. He stands, indeed, in
+the same relation to the Indian borderland as
+Livingstone does to Africa. He first made a sea
+trip in Arab crafts up the Persian Gulf, visiting
+Muskat and obtaining a passage in a cruiser of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">368</a></span>
+H.E.I. Company to Bushire. This we know from
+Major David Wilson's report to have been in 1830.
+It was then that he gave up the record of his
+previous travels, to which we have referred, and
+which he subsequently thought he had reason to
+regret. A month or two was passed at Tabriz, and
+a trip up the Tigris to Bagdad and Basrah. From
+Basrah he returned in a merchant vessel to Muskat,
+and finally made Karachi again in an Arab bagala.
+At Karachi he was not permitted to land, owing
+(as he suspected) to another party of Englishmen
+who were then attempting to explore the Indus.
+This turned out to be Captain Burnes' (afterwards
+Sir Alex. Burnes) party. The objection was based
+on a somewhat ridiculous notion of the capacity
+of the English to carry about regiments of soldiers
+concealed in <i>boxes</i>, and Masson subsequently learned
+that having no boxes with him, the opposition in
+his case had been withdrawn by the Amirs of Sind
+as tantamount to a breach of hospitality. However,
+for the time he was forced to return to Urmara
+on the Makran coast, from which place he hoped
+to reach Kalat. In this he was disappointed, but
+he found his way back to Sonmiani in an Arab
+dunghi (or bagala), which, with the monsoon wind
+at her back, was run in gallant style straight over
+the shallow bar into the harbour with hardly a foot
+of water below her. The practice of medicine was
+what sustained Masson at this period, but his reputation
+was slightly impaired by a crude prescription
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">369</a></span>
+of sea water. A lady, too, who suffered from a
+disposition of her face to break out into white
+blotches, and who appealed for a remedy, was told
+that she would look much better all white. This
+again led to a lively controversy; but on the whole
+the practice of medicine was as useful to Masson
+as it has proved through all ages to explorers in
+all regions of the world.</p>
+
+<p>The story of Masson's next journey through Las
+Bela and Eastern Baluchistan to Kalat and the
+neighbourhood of Quetta, must have been an almost
+unintelligible record for half a century after it was
+written. It is almost useless to repeat the names
+of the places he visited. Five-and-twenty years ago
+these names were absolutely unfamiliar, an empty
+sound signifying nothing to the dwellers on the
+British side of the Baluch frontier. Gradually they
+have emerged from the regions of the vague unknown
+into the ordered series of completed maps;
+and nothing testifies more surely to the general
+accuracy of Masson's narrative than the possibility
+which now exists of tracing his steps from point
+to point through these wild and desolate regions
+of rocky ridge and salt-edged jungle in Eastern
+Baluchistan. It is certainly significant that in the
+year 1830 more should have been known of the
+regions that lie between Karachi and Quetta or
+Kandahar, than was known fifty years later when
+plans were elaborated for bringing Quetta into
+railway communication with India.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">370</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Had Masson's information been properly
+digested, the most direct route to Kalat, Quetta,
+or Kandahar, <i>via</i> the Purali River, would surely
+have been weighed in administrative councils,
+and the advantage of direct communication with
+the seaport by a cheaply constructed line would
+have received due consideration. But Masson's
+work was still unproven and unchecked, and it
+would have been more than any Englishman's
+life was worth to have attempted in 1880 the task
+which he undertook with such light-hearted energy.
+His observations of the country he passed through,
+and the complicated tribal distribution which distinguishes
+it are necessarily superficial, but they are
+shrewd. It was clearly impossible for him to
+attempt any form of survey, and without some map
+evidence of the scene of his wanderings his explorations
+were deprived at the time of their chief
+significance. From Las Bela to Kalat he appears
+to have encountered no more dangerous adventure
+than might befall any Baluch traveller in the same
+regions. From Kalat he wandered at leisure northward
+till he overlooked the Dasht-i-bedaulat from
+the heights of Chahiltan. This well-known Quetta
+peak has probably often been ascended by Englishmen
+in late years, and the misty legend which is
+wreathed around it is familiar to every regimental
+mess in the Quetta garrison. It is perhaps a little
+disappointing to remember that the first white man
+who achieved its ascent and told the story of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">371</a></span>
+forty heaven-sent infants who gambol about its
+summit to the eternal glory of the sainted Hazart
+Ghaos (the patron saint of Baluch children), was an
+American. Masson's interesting record of Chahiltan
+botany, however, would be more useful if he translated
+the native names into botanical language.</p>
+
+<p>From Quetta he returned to Kalat, and, determined
+to see as much of the borderland as possible,
+he made his return journey from Kalat to Sonmiani
+<i>via</i> the Mulla Pass. The pass is still an interesting
+feature in Baluch geography. It was once the
+popular route from the plains to the highlands, when
+trade was more frequent between Kalat and Hindustan,
+and may serve a useful purpose again. Very
+few even of frontier officials know anything of it.
+Masson gives a capital description of the Mulla
+route, "easy and safe, and may be travelled at all
+seasons." From Jhal he went south through Sind
+to Sehwan, the antiquity of which place gives him
+room for much speculation; but from Sehwan to
+Sonmiani his route is not so clear. He started
+backwards on his tracks from Sehwan, then struck
+southward through lower Sind, passing on his way
+many ancient sites (locally known as "gôt," <i>i.e.</i>
+kôt, or fort), the origin of which he was apparently
+unable to determine, but halting at no place with
+a name that is still prominent, unless the modern
+Pokran represents his Pokar. I am not aware
+whether the "gôts" described by Masson in lower
+Sind have as yet been scientifically examined, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">372</a></span>
+his description of them tallies with that of similar
+ruins lately found near Las Bela (especially as
+regards the stone-built circle), which, occurring as
+they do in Makran and the valley of the Purali (the
+ancient Arabis), are possibly relics of the building
+races of Arabs (Sab&oelig;an or Himyaritic) who occupied
+these districts in early ages before they became
+withered and waterless with the gradual alteration
+of their geographical conditions. Other constructions,
+such as the cylindrical heaps on the hills, are
+more certainly Buddhist. Masson was unaware that
+he was traversing a province which figured as Bodh
+in Arab chronicles, and is full of the traces of
+Buddhist occupation. Makran, Las Bela, and the
+Sind borderland still offer a mine of wealth for
+archæological research. The last two or three days'
+march was in company with a Bulfut (Lumri)
+camel-man, whose mount was shared by Masson.
+As the Lumri sowar was in the habit not only of
+taking opium himself but of giving it to his camel,
+the morning's ride was sometimes perilously lively.</p>
+
+<p>One would have thought that after so extensive
+an exploration, filled, as it was, with daily risk from
+the hostility of fanatics, or the more common (in
+those days) assaults of robbers, Masson would have
+had enough of adventure to last him some years.
+It was not so. He appears to have been an irreclaimable
+nomadic vagabond, and his only thought,
+now that he had reached the West, was to be off
+again to Afghanistan. Kalat again was his first
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">373</a></span>
+objective, and to reach that place he followed very
+much the same route as before. From Kalat, however,
+to Kandahar and Kabul, he opened up a new
+line which is worth description. There is little to
+record as far as Kalat. Once again he joined a
+mixed Afghan khafila returning from India, and
+followed the route which leads through Las Bela,
+Wad, and Khozdar. It was spring, and the country
+was bright with flowers, the narrow little valleys
+being full of the brilliance of upspringing crops.
+It is a mistake to regard Baluchistan as a waste
+corner of Asia, the dumping ground of the rubbish
+left over from the world's creation. Much of it,
+doubtless, is inexpressibly dreary, and in certain
+dry and sun-baked plains scarred with leprous
+streaks of salt eruption, it is occasionally difficult to
+realize the beauty of the spring and summer time
+in valleys where water is still fairly abundant, and
+the green things of the earth seem mostly to congregate.
+A bed of scarlet tulips, or the yellow
+sheen of the flowering shrub which spreads across
+the plain of Wad would make any landscape gay,
+and the long jagged lines of purple hills with
+chequered shadows patching their rugged spurs
+would be a fascinating background to any picture.
+"Only man is vile,"&mdash;but this is not true either.</p>
+
+<p>The character of the mixed inhabitants of these
+valleys of Eastern Baluchistan (we have no room
+for ethnological disquisitions) is as rugged as their
+hills, and as varied with patches of brightness as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">374</a></span>
+their plains. Masson knew them as no one knows
+them now, and he evidently loved them. His life
+was never safe from day to day, but that did not
+prevent much good comradeship, some genuine
+friendship, and a shrewd appreciation of the straight
+uprightness of those who, like the patriarchs and
+prophets of old, seemed to be the righteous few
+who leaven the whole lump. Masson was not a
+missionary, he was only a well-educated and most
+observant vagabond, but what he has to say of
+Baluch (or Brahui) character is just what Sandeman
+said half a century later, and what Barnes or
+MacMahon<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> would say to-day.</p>
+
+<p>What Masson never seemed to appreciate (any
+more than the Arab traders who trod the same roads
+in mediæval centuries) was the change of altitude
+that accrued after long travelling over apparently
+flat roads. The natural change in the character of
+vegetation with the increase of altitude appears,
+therefore, to surprise him. He reached Kalat
+without much incident. Here he parted with
+the Peshin Saiads and the Brahuis of the caravan,
+and proceeded with the Afghan contingent to
+Kandahar. The direct road from Kalat to
+Kandahar runs through the Mangachar valley
+and thence crosses the Khwaja Amran, or Kojak
+range, by the Kotal-i-bed into Shorawak, and runs
+northward to Kandahar through the eastern part
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">375</a></span>
+of the Registan, without touching the main road
+from Quetta till within a march or two of Kandahar
+itself. It is worth noting that there was no want
+of water on this route, and no great difficulties were
+experienced in passing through the hills. Irrigation
+canals and the intricacies of natural ravines in
+Shorawak seem to have been the chief obstacles.
+It is a route which was never made use of during
+the last Afghan war, nor, so far as I can discover,
+during the previous one. The Achakzai tribespeople
+(some of whom were with the khafila returning
+to their country from Bombay) behaved
+with remarkable modesty and good faith, and
+altogether belied their natural characteristics of
+truculence and treachery. The journey was made
+on camel-back in a kajáwa, a method of travelling
+which ensures a good overlook of the proceedings
+of the khafila and the country traversed by it, but
+which can have few other recommendations. Kandahar,
+however, was not Masson's objective on this
+trip. Afghanistan was in its usual state of distracted
+politics, and Kabul was the centre of distraction.
+To Kabul, therefore, Masson felt himself
+impelled; like the stormy petrel he preferred a
+troubled horizon and plenty of incident to the calmer
+seas of oriental existence in the flat plains of
+Kandahar. His journey with an Afghan khafila
+by the well-trodden road which leads to Ghazni
+was quite sufficiently full of incident, and the extraordinary
+rapacity of the Ghilzai tribes, who occupy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">376</a></span>
+the road as far as that city, leaves one astonished
+that enough was left of the khafila for useful
+business purposes in Kabul. Masson was impressed
+with the desolation and degradation of Ghazni. He
+can hardly believe that this waste wilderness of
+mounds around an insignificant town, with its two
+dreary sentinel minars standing out on the plain,
+and a dilapidated tomb where rests all that is left
+of the great conqueror Mahmud, can be the city
+of such former magnificence as is described in
+Afghan history. Every traveller to Ghazni has
+been touched with the same feeling of incredulity,
+but it only testifies to the remarkable power possessed
+by the destroying hordes of Chenghiz Khan and
+his successors of making a clean sweep of the cities
+which fell into their hands.</p>
+
+<p>A few days before Masson's arrival in Kabul
+(this is one of the rare dates which we find recorded
+in his story) in June 1832, three Englishmen had
+visited the city. These were Lieutenant Burnes,
+Dr. Gerard, and the Rev. Joseph Wolff. He does
+not appear to have actually met them. Mr. Wolff
+had been fortunate enough to distinguish himself
+as a prophet, and had acquired considerable reputation.
+An earthquake preceding certain local disturbances
+between the Sunis and the Shiahs, which
+he foretold, had established his position, and imitators
+had begun to arise amongst the people. No
+better account of the city of Kabul, the beauty of
+its surroundings, its fruit and its trade, and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">377</a></span>
+social customs of its people, is to be found than
+that of Masson. What he observed of the city and
+suburbs in 1832 might almost have been written of
+the Kabul of fifty years later; but the last twenty-five
+years have introduced many radical changes,
+and good roads for wheeled vehicles (not to mention
+motors) and a small local railway have done more
+even than the stucco palaces and fantastic halls of
+the late Amir Abdurrahmon to change the character
+of the place. The curious spirit of tolerance and
+liberality which still pervades Kabul and distinguishes
+it from other Afghan towns, which makes
+the life of an individual European far more secure
+there than it would be in Kandahar, the absence
+of Ghazidom and fanaticism, was even more marked
+then than it is now. Armenian Christians were
+treated with more than toleration, they intermarried
+with Mahomedans; the fact that Masson was
+known to be a Feringhi never interfered with the
+spirit of hospitality with which he was received and
+treated. Only on one occasion was he insulted in
+the streets, and that was when he wore a Persian
+cap instead of the usual lunghi. But the Jews
+were as much anathema as they are now, and
+Masson tells a curious tale of one Jew who was
+stoned to death by Mahomedans for denying the
+divinity of Jesus Christ, after the Christian community
+of Armenians had declined to carry out the
+punishment. To this day nothing arouses Afghan
+hatred like the cry of Yahudi (Jew), and it may
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">378</a></span>
+very possibly be partly due to their firm conviction
+in their origin as Ben-i-Israel.</p>
+
+<p>The summer of 1832 at Kabul must have been
+a delightful experience, but with the coming autumn
+the restlessness of the nomad again seized on Masson
+and he made that journey to Bamian in company
+with an Afghan friend, one Haji Khan, chief of
+Bamian, which followed the mission of Burnes to
+Kunduz, and proved the possibilities of the route
+to Afghan Turkestan by the southern passes of
+the Hindu Kush. Bamian was then separated from
+Kabul by the width of the Besud territory, which
+was practically controlled by a semi-independent
+Hazara chief, Yezdambaksh. Beyond Bamian the
+pass of Ak Robat defined the northern frontier of
+Afghanistan, beyond which again were more semi-independent
+chiefs, of whom by far the most powerful,
+south of the Oxus, was Mir Murad Beg of Kunduz.
+Amongst them all political intrigue was in a state
+of boiling effervescence. Haji Khan (a Kakar
+soldier of fortune) from Western Afghanistan knew
+himself to be unpopular with the Amir Dost
+Mahomed Khan, and had shrewd suspicions that
+spite of a long-tried friendship, he was regarded
+as a dangerous factor in Kabul politics. Yezdambaksh,
+influenced doubtless by his gallant wife, who
+rode and fought by his side and was ever at his
+elbow in council, trimmed his course to patch up a
+temporary alliance with Haji Khan under the pretext
+of suffocating the ambition of the local chief of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">379</a></span>
+Saighan; whilst Murad Beg about that time was
+strong enough to preserve his own position unassisted
+and aloof. Into the seething welter of
+intrigue arising from the conflicting interests of
+these many candidates for distinction in the Afghan
+border field Masson plunged when he accepted
+Haji Khan's invitation to join him at Bamian.
+Across the lovely plain of Chardeh, bright with the
+orange blossoms of the safflower, Masson followed
+the well-known route to Argandi and over the Safed
+Khak Pass to the foot of the divide which is crossed
+by the Unai (called Honai by Masson), meeting
+with the usual demands for "karij," or duty, from
+the Hazaras at their border, with the usual altercations
+and violence on both sides. Well known
+as is this route, it may be doubted whether any
+better description of it has ever been written than
+that of Masson. Instead of striking straight across
+the Helmund at Gardandiwal by the direct route to
+Bamian, the party followed the course of the Helmund,
+then fringed with rose bushes and willows,
+passing through a delightfully picturesque country
+till they fell in with the Afghan camp, after much
+wandering in unknown parts on the banks of the
+Helmund, at a point which it is difficult to identify.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the daily progress of the oriental
+military camp, and the daily discussions with Haji
+Khan, who appeared to be as frank and childlike
+in his disclosures of his methods as any chattering
+booby, is excellent. There is no doubt that Masson
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">380</a></span>
+at this time exercised very considerable influence
+over his Afghan and Hazara acquaintances, and he
+is probably justified in his claim to have prevented
+more than one serious row over the everlasting
+demands for karij. It is to be noted that two
+guns were dragged along with this expedition by
+forced Hazara labour, eighty men being required
+for one, and two hundred for the other, assisted by
+an elephant. The calibre of the guns is not mentioned.
+At a place called Shaitana they were still
+south of the Helmund, and in the course of their
+progress through Besud visited the sources of the
+Logar. Near these sources is the Azdha of Besud,
+the petrified dragon slain by Hazrat Ali (not to be
+confused with Azdha of Bamian), a volcanic formation
+stretching its white length through about 170
+yards, exhaling sulphurous odours. The red rock
+found about its head is supposed to be tinged with
+blood. The Azdha afterwards seen and described
+at Bamian is of "more imposing size."</p>
+
+<p>Another long march (apparently on the road to
+Ghazni) brought the expedition to the frontier of
+Besud, at a point reckoned by Masson as three
+marches from the Ghazni district. From here they
+retraced their steps and crossed the Helmund at
+Ghoweh Kol (? Pai Kol), making for Bamian. This
+closed the Besud expedition, which, regarded as a
+geographical exploration, is still authoritative, no
+complete survey of that district having ever been
+made. From the Helmund they reached Bamian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">381</a></span>
+by the Siah Reg Pass, thus proving the possibility
+of traversing that district by comparatively unknown
+routes which were "not on the whole difficult to
+cavalry, though impracticable to wheeled carriages."
+The guns were left in Besud, to be dragged
+through by Hazaras. It must be remembered that
+this was early winter, and the frozen snow rendered
+the passes slippery and difficult. The aspect of the
+Koh-i-Baba (? Babar) mountains, and their "craggy
+pinnacles" (which, by reason of their similarity of
+outline, gave much trouble to our surveyors in 1882-83)
+seems to have impressed Masson greatly.
+The descent into the Bamian valley was "perfectly
+easy, and the road excellent throughout." Masson's
+contributions to the Asiatic Society on the subject
+of Bamian and its "idols" are well known. His
+observations were acute, and on the whole accurate.
+He rightly conjectured these wonderful relics to be
+Buddhist, although he never grasped the full extent
+of Buddhist influence, nor the extraordinary width
+of their occupation in Northern Afghanistan. His
+conjectures and impressions need not be repeated,
+but his somewhat crude sketches of Bamian and
+the citadel of Gulgula intensify the regret which I
+always feel that a thoroughly competent photographer
+was not attached to the long subsequent
+Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission.</p>
+
+<p>Masson's wanderings in the company of the
+Afghan chief Haji Khan and his redoubtable
+army through the valleys and over the passes of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">382</a></span>
+the Hindu Kush and its western spurs is full of
+interest to the military reader. The Afghan force
+consisted largely of cavalry, as did that of the
+gallant Hazara chief, Yezdambaksh. Nothing is
+said about infantry, but it was probably little
+better than a badly armed mob chiefly concerned
+in guarding the guns which reached the valley
+of Bamian, but, as already stated, they could not
+follow the cavalry over the Siah Reg Pass from
+Besud. They were sent round by the "Karza"
+Pass, which is probably the one known as Kafza
+on our maps, which indicates the most direct route
+from Kabul to Bamian.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary to follow the ostensible policy of
+these military movements in order to render Masson's
+account of them intelligible. Haji Khan was acting
+in concert with Yezdambaksh and his Hazara troops,
+with the presumed object of crushing first Mahomed
+Ali, the chief of Saighan (north of Bamian), and
+ultimately repeating the process on Rahmatulla
+Khan, the chief of Kamard (north of Saighan). In
+order to effect this he had to pass up the Bamian
+valley to its northern head, marked by the Ak
+Robat Pass (10,200 feet high), and thence descend
+into the Saighan valley by the route formed by one
+of its southern tributaries. It was early winter (or
+late autumn), but still the passes seemed to have
+been more or less free from snow, and the Ak
+Robat Pass in particular appears to have given
+little trouble, although the valley contracts almost
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">383</a></span>
+to a gorge in the descent. Masson noted evidences
+of the former existence of a considerable town near
+this route on the descent from Ak Robat. Much
+to his astonishment, instead of smashing the Saighan
+opposition with his superior force, Haji Khan proceeded
+to patch up an alliance with Mahomed Ali,
+which was cemented by his marrying one of the
+daughters of that wily chief. Here, however, he
+experienced a cruel disappointment. Instead of the
+lovely bride whom he had been led to expect, he
+received a squat and snub-nosed Hazara girl, who
+was, indeed, of very doubtful parentage. This little
+swindle, however, was not permitted to interfere
+with his politics. The alliance ought to have
+aroused the suspicion of Yezdambaksh, but the
+latter seems to have trusted to the strength of his
+following to meet any possible contingency.</p>
+
+<p>The next step was to proceed to Kamard and
+repeat the process of occupation. Here, however, an
+unexpected difficulty arose. The easy-going, hard-drinking
+Tajik chief of Kamard was far too wily to
+put himself into Haji Khan's power, and with some
+of the Uzbek chiefs who owed their allegiance to
+that fine old border bandit Murad Khan of Kunduz
+(of whom we shall hear again), positively declined
+to permit Haji Khan to come farther. Meanwhile,
+however, a force had advanced over the divide
+between Saighan and Kamard by a pass which
+Masson calls the Nalpach (or horseshoe-breaking
+pass), which can hardly be the same as the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">384</a></span>
+well-known Dandan Shikan (or tooth-breaking
+pass), but is probably to the east of it, leading more
+directly to Bajgah. Before ascending the pass,
+Masson noted the remains of an ancient town or
+fort built of immense stones, and here they halted.
+Here also snow fell. Next day a reconnaissance
+in force was made over the Nalpach Pass ("long,
+but not difficult"), and apparently part of the force
+descended into Kamard and commenced hostile
+operations against the Kamard chieftain. Haji
+Khan, however, returned to camp. He had now
+succeeded in breaking up the Hazara force which
+was with him into two or three detached bodies, so
+the opportunity was ripe for one of the blackest acts
+of treachery that ever disgraced Afghan history&mdash;which
+is saying a good deal. He entrapped and
+seized the fine old Hazara chief, Yezdambaksh,
+and, after dragging him about with him under
+circumstances of great indignity, he finally executed
+him. The Hazara troops seem to have scattered
+without striking a concerted blow; their camp was
+looted, whilst such wretched refugees as were
+caught were stripped and enslaved.</p>
+
+<p>The savage barbarity of these proceedings,
+especially of the method of the execution of Yezdambaksh
+(a rope being looped round the wretched
+victim's neck, the two ends of which were hauled
+tight by a mixed company of relatives and enemies),
+disgusted Masson deeply, and there is a very obvious
+disposition evinced hereafter to part company with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">385</a></span>
+his treacherous host, although he makes some
+attempt to excuse these proceedings by pointing
+out that Haji Khan, after meeting with an unexpected
+rebuff from Kamard (which he dare not
+resent so long as the redoubtable Murad Beg
+loomed in the distance as the protector of the
+frontier chiefs of Badakshan), would have been
+unable to keep and feed his troops in the winter
+without scattering the Hazara contingent and
+possessing himself of the resources of Besud.</p>
+
+<p>Winter had already set in, and the subsequent
+story is instructive in illustration of the difficulties
+which beset the road between Kabul and Bamian
+during the winter season. The resources of Bamian
+were insufficient even for his diminished force (now
+reduced to about its original strength of eight
+hundred), and the Ghulam Khana contingent grew
+restive and impatient, demanding to go back to
+Kabul. The passes, however, were not only closed
+by snow, but the position at Karzar was held by
+Hazaras, who, however much they were demoralised
+by the execution of their chief, might well be
+expected to make reprisals. The Ghulam Khana
+men, about two hundred and twenty strong, therefore
+moved in force from Bamian, with the hope of
+being able to influence the Hazaras to let them pass
+through Besud. Apparently they did not rank as
+true Afghans. No great resistance was made at
+Karzar, although they were not admitted to shelter.
+They were freely looted, and eventually allowed to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">386</a></span>
+pass after three days' detention, exposed to the
+terrific blasts of a winter shamal (north-west wind)
+in snow which was then breast high. Many of
+them perished before reaching Kabul, and many
+more were permanently disabled from frostbites.</p>
+
+<p>Haji Khan, meanwhile, settled down as the
+uninvited guest of the people of Bamian, and
+ensconced himself and his wives in the fort of
+Saidabad, a strongly built construction of burnt
+bricks of immense size, which Masson believed to
+have been built by the Arabs. Saidabad is hard
+by the detached position of Gulgula; it is described
+by Masson in considerable detail. Here, at an
+altitude of about 8500 feet, a winter in Bamian is
+endurable, and Haji Khan avowed his intention
+of remaining. It is interesting to note that a
+khafila from Bokhara for Kabul arrived about this
+time, and was duly looted. Even in winter the
+route (as a commercial route) was open.</p>
+
+<p>Masson's efforts were now directed towards
+getting back to Kabul. His first essay was in
+company of two brothers of Haji Khan, who vowed
+to get to Kabul somehow, even if, as Afghans,
+they had to fight their way through Besud. The
+party followed up the Topchi valley from Bamian,
+and crossing by the Shutar Gardan Pass, they
+reached Karzar. Here again Masson noted extensive
+ruins <i>en route</i>. The road was bad and the
+difficulties great, "leading over precipices," but
+they did, nevertheless, succeed in crossing the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">387</a></span>
+main divide. Here Masson experienced a very
+bad time, and to his disgust found that he must
+retrace his steps to Bamian, owing to counter
+orders from Haji Khan recalling the escort. There
+appeared, however, a prospect of getting out of
+Bamian by the Shibar Pass (an easy pass), leading
+to the head of the Ghorband valley; and trusting
+to certain arrangements made by a Paghmani chief,
+Masson made a fresh attempt, passing eastward the
+ancient remains of Zohak, and ascending by a fairly
+easy open track to the valley or plain of Irak.
+Probably this pass is the one known as Khashka in
+our maps. The wind was terrific, but the comparative
+freedom from snow was an unexpected
+advantage.</p>
+
+<p>Passing eastwards from Irak (still on the
+northern slopes of the Hindu Kush) the party
+made comparatively easy progress by a valley which
+Masson calls Bubulak (where he observed tobacco
+to be growing). They gradually ascended until
+once again they found themselves in snow, but
+instead of making direct for the Shibar they inclined
+to a more northerly pass called Bitchilik, which is
+separated from the Shibar by a slight kotal (or
+divide). Here they found the Paghmani chief whom
+they expected to join, but they found also that the
+section of Hazaras who held these passes then were
+determined to bar their passage. Once again
+Masson had to abandon the attempt (albeit the
+Shibar route to Kabul would have been a very
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">388</a></span>
+devious and dangerous one), and returned to
+Bamian.</p>
+
+<p>There are one or two circumstances about this
+exploration of the western Hindu Kush passes
+which deserve attention. For once Masson is
+slightly inaccurate in his geography when he states
+that the Irak stream drains into the Bamian valley.
+It joins the Bamian River after it has left the valley
+and turned northward. So slight an error is only
+a useful proof of his general accuracy. Another
+remarkable fact was that he, a Feringhi, was elected
+by the Afghan gang with which he was temporarily
+associated as their Khan, or chief! He was a little
+better dressed than most of them in European
+chintzes. He found himself utterly unable to restrain
+their looting propensities, but he made himself
+quite popular by his civility and his small
+presents to the wretched Hazaras on whom they
+were quartered. Incidentally he gives us a most
+valuable impression of the nature of an important
+group of Afghan passes, and I doubt if his information
+has ever been much improved upon.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the surrender of the Karzar position
+by the Hazaras reopened the road to Kabul,
+and Masson was enabled to reach that capital
+by the Topchi, Shutar Gardan, Kalu, Hajigak
+routes to Gardandiwal on the Helmund. The
+Hajigak route he describes as easy of ascent, but
+"steep and very troublesome" in the south. The
+Shutar Gardan (called Panjpilan now) was "intricate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">389</a></span>
+and dangerous," but the passing of it was
+done at night. This is, and always has been, the
+main khafila route between Kabul, Bamian, and
+Bokhara. The journey from the Helmund across
+the Unai (which pass was itself "difficult") was not
+accomplished without great distress. A winter
+shumal caught Masson on the road, and but for
+the timely shelter at Zaimuni would have terminated
+his career there and then. Masson describes the
+terrific effect of the wind with great vigour, but
+those who have experienced it will not accuse him
+of exaggeration.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">390</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<p class="center">AMERICAN EXPLORATION&mdash;MASSON (<i>continued</i>)</p>
+
+<p class="p2">On Masson's return to Kabul he observed the first
+symptoms of active interest in Afghan politics on
+the part of the Indian Government, in the person
+of an accredited native agent (Saiad Karamat Ali)
+who had travelled with Lieut. Conolly to Herat.
+Colonel Stoddart was at that time detained in
+Bokhara, and was apparently under the impression
+that he was befriended by a "profligate adventurer,"
+one Samad Khan, who had succeeded in establishing
+himself there as a pillar of the State after imposing
+on so astute a politician as the Amir Dost Mahomed
+Khan and on many of the leading Afghan Sirdars.
+Masson seems to have been better aware of the
+character of this Khan than the Indian Government,
+for he notes that "to be befriended by such a
+man is in itself calamitous."</p>
+
+<p>It is quite comprehensible that the Indian Government
+should not duly appreciate the position of an
+adventurer like Masson and his intimate acquaintance
+with Afghanistan and its riotous rulers; but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">391</a></span>
+it was unfortunate; for it is not too much to say
+that Indian Government officials at that time were
+but amateurs in their knowledge of Afghan politics
+compared to Masson; and much of the horrors of
+subsequent events might have been avoided could
+Masson have been admitted freely and fully to
+their counsels. However, for a time he employed
+himself in collecting historical and scientific notes
+on Afghanistan, which we still regard as standard
+works for reference. No one has succeeded better
+in giving us an impression of the leading characteristics
+of the Afghan chiefs of his time, and
+probably there is not much improvement effected
+by a century of moral development. Steeped up
+to the eyes in treachery towards each other,
+debauchees, drunkards, liars, and murderers, one
+cannot but admire their extraordinary virility. It
+was truly a case of the survival of the fittest, and
+the fittest were certainly remarkable men.</p>
+
+<p>The Amir Dost Mahomed Khan was one of the
+worst, and one of the best. One of the twenty-two
+sons of Sirafraz Khan, he worked his way
+upwards by truly Afghan methods; methods which
+in the early days of his career were utterly detestable,
+but which attained some sort of reflected
+dignity later, when there were not wanting signs
+that in a different environment he might have been
+truly great. He was illiterate and uneducated, but
+appreciated the advantages of elementary schooling
+in others. Into the strange welter of political
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">392</a></span>
+intrigue which forms Afghan history during the
+period of his rise to power we need not enter; but
+it is necessary to note the extraordinary difference
+with which the stranger in the land, a Feringhi, was
+regarded throughout Afghanistan, then, as compared
+with his reception at present. It is even possible
+that the life of a Feringhi was then safer (<i>i.e.</i> deemed
+of more importance) than that of any ordinary Afghan
+chief. It is certain that there was a strong feeling
+that it was well to be on good terms with the representatives
+of a powerful neighbouring state. This
+feeling was greatly weakened by the results of the
+first Afghan war, and has never again been completely
+restored.</p>
+
+<p>Although we are only dealing with Masson
+as an explorer, it is impossible not to express
+sympathy with his whole-hearted admiration for
+the country of the Afghan. His description of
+the beauties of the land, especially in early spring
+with the awakening of the season of flowers, the
+irresistible charm of the mountain scenery of the
+Kohistan as the gradual burst of summer bloom
+crept upwards over the hills&mdash;all this finds an echo
+in the heart of every one who has ever seen this
+"God granted" land; where, after all, the seething
+scum of Afghan politics is very much confined to
+a class, although it undoubtedly sinks deeper and
+reaches the mass of the people with more of the
+force of self-interest than is the case in India, where
+the historical pageant of kings and dynasties has
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">393</a></span>
+passed over the great mass of India's self-absorbed
+people and left them profoundly unconscious of its
+progress.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1833 Masson resumed his researches
+in the neighbourhood of Kabul, commencing in the
+plains about 25 miles north-east from Kabul, and
+8 or 10 from Charikar. These researches were
+continued for some years, until the failure of the
+mission to Kabul in 1838 obliged him to leave the
+country; and in his proposal to resume them again
+in 1840 he was opposed by "a miserable fraction
+of the Calcutta clique," who had recourse to "acts
+as unprecedented, base, and illegal as perhaps were
+ever perpetrated under the sanction of authority
+against a subject of the British Crown." So that
+apparently he claimed British nationality before
+he left Afghanistan. However that may be, it is
+certain that no subsequent explorer has added much
+that is of value to the extraordinary evidences of
+ancient occupation collected by Masson. Here,
+he maintains, once existed the city of Alexandria
+founded by Alexander on the Kabul plain; and
+a recent announcement from Kabul that the site
+of an ancient city has been discovered obviously
+refers to the same position at Begram near Charikar,
+and is a useful commentary on the rapidity with
+which the fame and name of an original explorer
+can disappear.</p>
+
+<p>The Masson collection of coins, which totalled
+between 15,000 and 20,000 in 1837, and which was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">394</a></span>
+presented to the East India Company, proved
+a veritable revelation of unknown kings and
+dynasties, and contributed enormously to our positive
+knowledge of Central Asian history. The
+vast number of Cufic coins found at Begram show
+that the city must have existed for some centuries
+after the Mahomedan invasion. Chinese
+travellers tell of a city called Hupian in this neighbourhood,
+but Masson is inclined to place the site
+of Hupian near Charikar, where there was, in his
+time, a village called Malek Hupian. He thinks
+that Begram had certainly ceased to exist at the
+time of Timur's expedition to India; or that
+conqueror would not have found it necessary to
+construct a canal from the Ghorband stream in
+order to colonize this favoured corner of the Kabul
+plain. The canal still exists as the Mahighir, and
+the people of the neighbourhood talked Turki in
+Masson's time. Three miles east of Kabul there
+is another ancient site known as Begram. This
+was probably the precursor of Kabul itself, and
+other "Begrams" are known in India. The term
+appears to be generic and to denote a famous site.
+Buddhist relics lie thickly round about the Afghan
+Begrams, groups of them being very abundant
+throughout the Kabul valley.</p>
+
+<p>It was after his first visit to Begram that Masson
+became acquainted with M. Honigberger, whom
+he describes as a gentleman from Lahore bent
+on archaeological research; and at the close of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">395</a></span>
+autumn Dr. Gerard, the companion of Lieut. Burnes,
+appeared at Kabul. Honigberger's researches, like
+those of Gerard, appear to have been confined to
+archæology, and the results of them form an interesting
+story which was given to the world by Eugene
+Jacquet; but as neither of these gentlemen can be
+said to have contributed to the early geographical
+knowledge of the country, no further reference
+need be made to them, beyond remarking that
+Honigberger very narrowly escaped being murdered
+on his subsequent journey to Bokhara.</p>
+
+<p>Masson's extraordinary capability of dealing with
+every class of people with whom he came in contact,
+and his consequent apparent immunity from the
+dangers which beset the ordinary unaccredited
+traveller, should not lead to the assumption that
+Afghanistan was a safe country to travel in at the
+time of our first political negotiations, in spite of
+there being less fanaticism at that time; whilst the
+trans-Oxus states were then almost unapproachable.
+There, at least, the gradual encroachment
+of Russian civilization has absolutely altered the
+conditions of European existence, and Bokhara
+has become quite a favourite resort for tourists.</p>
+
+<p>Masson's story of Afghan intrigue, which is the
+substance of Afghan history at this period, is as
+interesting as are his archæological investigations,
+for it affords us a view of events which occurred
+behind the scenes, shut off from India by the
+curtain of the frontier hills; but whilst he thus
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">396</a></span>
+occupied his busy mind with the past and the
+present policy of Afghanistan, he did not lose
+sight of the opportunity for making fresh excursions
+into Afghan territory. His visits to the
+Kabul valley and Peshawar can hardly claim to
+be original explorations, though he undoubtedly
+acquired by them a local geographical knowledge
+far in advance of anything then existing on the
+Indian side of the border, and some of it ranks as
+authoritative even now. It must not be supposed
+that these visits and investigations were carried on
+without grave risk and constant difficulty, but by this
+time Masson had so wide and so varied a personal
+acquaintance with the leading chiefs and tribespeople
+of the country that he usually succeeded in
+distinguishing friend from foe, and extricated himself
+from positions which would have been fatal to any
+one less knowledgeable than himself.</p>
+
+<p>During the year 1835 we learn that Masson
+was in Northern Afghanistan, chiefly at Kabul,
+gathering information; but there appears to be
+hardly a place which now figures in our maps
+with any prominence in the Kabul province which
+he did not succeed in visiting; and as regards
+some of them (Kunar, for instance) there was
+nothing added to his record for at least sixty
+years. He penetrated the Alishang valley to within
+12 miles of Najil, a point which no European has
+succeeded in reaching since; but his sphere of
+observation was always too restricted to enable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">397</a></span>
+him to make much of his geographical opportunities.
+Najil is now somewhat doubtfully placed on our
+maps from native information gathered during the
+surveys executed with the Afghan campaign of
+1878-80.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this period in Masson's career (in 1835)
+that English political interest in Kabul began to
+take an active shape. About this time Masson
+accepted a proposal from the Indian Government
+(which reached him through Captain Wade, the
+political officer on the Punjab frontier) to act as
+British agent and keep the Government informed as
+to the progress of affairs in Kabul. It is rather
+surprising that Masson, who never misses an
+opportunity of asserting that he was not an Englishman,
+and was by no means in sympathy with the
+policy of the Indian Government towards Afghanistan,
+should have accepted this responsibility.
+However, he did so, for a time at least, though he
+subsequently requested that he might be relieved
+from the duties entailed by such an equivocal
+position. He negotiated the foundation of a
+commercial treaty between India and Kabul, but
+with scant success. This period of seething
+intrigue at Kabul (as also between Dost Mahomed
+Khan and the Sikhs) was hardly favourable to its
+inception. His efforts were duly acknowledged by
+the Government, but his position as agent became
+untenable when he found that it led to interference
+with the great object of his residence in Afghanistan,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">398</a></span>
+<i>i.e.</i> antiquarian research. We can only touch upon
+the political events of 1836-37 cursorily, in spite of
+their absorbing interest, in order to follow the
+sequence of Masson's career.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of 1836 the Sikhs under
+Ranjit Singh were consolidating their position on the
+Western Punjab frontier, whilst Dost Mahomed
+Khan was working all he knew to secure men and
+money for military purposes. This led to a half-hearted
+renewal of correspondence between Masson
+and Wade. The commencement of the year 1837
+was marked by active preparations on the part of
+Dost Mahomed for a campaign against the Sikhs,
+resulting in an equivocal victory for the Afghans
+near Jamrud under Akbar Khan, but no essential
+change in the relative position as regards the
+Peshawar frontier. Various were the projects set
+on foot at this time for the assassination of the
+Amir, and in the general network of bloody intrigue
+Masson was not overlooked; but he was discreetly
+absent from Kabul during the winter of 1836-37,
+having previously found it necessary to keep his
+house full of armed men. He returned to Kabul in
+the spring.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of September 1837 Captain
+Burnes arrived in Kabul on that historical commercial
+mission which was to result in a disastrous
+misunderstanding between the Indian
+Government and the Amir. If we are to believe
+Masson, it would be difficult to conceive a more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">399</a></span>
+mismanaged and hopelessly bungled political function
+than this mission proved to be; but we must
+remember that in experience of the Afghan character
+and knowledge of intrigue the Indian Government
+and Council were by no means experts. It is
+difficult to believe that the mere fact of inadequate
+recognition of his services and consequent disappointment
+could have so affected a man of
+Masson's independence of character, natural ability,
+and clear sense of justice, as to lead him to misrepresent
+the position absolutely. As a commercial
+mission he regarded it as unnecessary.</p>
+
+<p>Burnes was instructed to proceed first to Haidarabad
+(in Sind) for the purpose of opening up the
+Indus to commercial navigation, and thence to
+journey <i>via</i> Attok to Peshawar (held by the
+Sikhs), Kabul, and Kandahar, back again to Haidarabad,
+all in the interest of a trade which was
+already flourishing between Afghanistan and ports
+on the Indus already established. "The Governments
+of India and of England," says Masson,
+"as well as the public at large were never amused
+and deceived by a greater fallacy than that of opening
+the Indus as regards commercial objects."</p>
+
+<p>The keynote of Masson's policy was non-interference,
+so long as interference either in trade or
+politics was not forced on the British Government.
+At that time such views were undoubtedly sound;
+but even then there was a stir in the political
+atmosphere which betokened much nervousness in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">400</a></span>
+high quarters on the subject of Persian and
+Russian intrigues with Afghanistan. So far, however,
+as Masson observes, "there was little notion
+entertained at this time of convulsing Central Asia,
+of deposing and setting up Kings, of carrying on
+wars, of lavishing treasure, and of the commission
+of a long train of crimes and follies." But with
+the arrival of Burnes at Kabul trade interests
+seem to have faded and those of a more active
+policy to have taken their place. The weak point
+in this change of policy appears to have been the
+want of definite instructions from the Government
+of India to their agent.</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of a Russian officer (Lieut.
+Vektavitch) at Kabul from the Russian camp at
+Herat in December (he had, according to Masson,
+no real authority to support him, and could only
+have been acting as a spy on Burnes) was a source
+of much agitation; but nothing whatever appears to
+have eventuated from his residence in Kabul, except
+grave risk to himself. Masson never believed in
+the dangers arising from either Persian or Russian
+intrigue (and he was certainly in a position to judge),
+and he remarks about Vektavitch "that such a man
+could have been expected to defeat a British mission
+is too ridiculous a notion to be entertained; nor would
+his mere appearance have produced such a result
+had not the mission itself been set forth without
+instructions for its guidance, and had it not been
+conducted recklessly, and in defiance of all common
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">401</a></span>
+sense and decorum." This, indeed, is the attitude
+assumed by Masson throughout towards the mission,
+although he was still in the service of the Indian
+Government and acting under Burnes.</p>
+
+<p>Burnes certainly seems to have behaved with
+great want of dignity in the presence of the Amir
+and his Sirdars; making obeisance, and addressing
+the Amir as if he were a dependant. Nor can
+his private arrangements and his method of living
+in Kabul be commended as those of a dignified
+agent. European manners and customs were looser
+in those days in India than they are now, but
+with all latitude for the <i>autres temps autres m&oelig;urs</i>
+excuse for his conduct, his ideas of Eastern life
+seem to have been almost too oriental even for
+the approval of the dissolute Afghan. Certain
+it is that no proposal made by him on his own
+responsibility to the Amir (especially as regards
+the cession of Peshawar on the death of Ranjit
+Singh) was supported by his Government, and time
+after time he enjoyed the humiliation of being
+obliged to eat his own words. On these occasions
+it would appear that Masson seldom omitted the
+opportunity of saying "I told you so."</p>
+
+<p>In the interests of geographical explorations,
+this mission of Burnes was important. Whatever
+else he was, there is no question that he was as
+keen a geographical observer as Masson himself,
+and even if the wisdom of the despatch of his
+assistants (Lieut. Leech to Kandahar, and Dr.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">402</a></span>
+Lord with Lieut. Wood to Badakshan) may be
+questioned on political grounds, it led to a series of
+remarkable explorations, some of which even now
+furnish authority for Afghan map-making.</p>
+
+<p>In May 1837, Lieut. Eldred Pottinger arrived on
+leave from India (with the interest of his father Sir
+Henry Pottinger to back him), and immediately
+made secret preparations for his adventurous journey
+through the Hazarajat from Kabul to Herat, which
+terminated in his participation in the defence of
+Herat against the Persians. Thus was the first
+authentic account received of the nature of that
+difficult mountain region which has subsequently
+been so thoroughly exploited. Afghanistan was
+just beginning to be known.</p>
+
+<p>Masson naturally disapproved of Pottinger's
+exploit, for he found himself in hot water owing
+to the suspicion that he connived at it. He says:
+"I have always thought that however fortunate
+for Lieut. Pottinger himself, his trip to Herat
+was an unlucky one for his country; the place
+would have been fought as well without him; and
+his presence, which would scarcely be thought
+accidental, although truly it was so, must not only
+have irritated the Persian King, but have served
+as a pretext for the more prominent exertions of
+the Russian staff. It is certain that when he started
+from Kabul he had no idea that the city would be
+invested by a Persian army." Colonel Stoddart
+was then the British agent in the Persian Camp.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">403</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Incidentally it may be useful to note the results
+of the occupation of Seistan about this time by
+an Afghan army under Shah Kamran, Governor
+of Herat and brother to Dost Mahomed; the one
+brother, in fact, whom he feared the most. Kamran's
+army had threatened Kandahar in the early spring
+and had spread into Seistan. Here the cavalry
+horses perished from disease, and the finest force
+which had marched from Herat for years was placed
+absolutely <i>hors de combat</i>. Unable to obtain the
+assistance of the army in the field, the frontier
+fortress of Ghorian surrendered, and thus reduced
+Kamran to the necessity of retirement on Herat
+and sustaining a siege. The destructive climate of
+Seistan has evidently not greatly changed during
+the last century.</p>
+
+<p>Masson's view of the policy best adapted to the
+tangled situation was the surrender of Peshawur to
+Sultan Mahomed Khan (the Amir's brother), who
+already enjoyed half its revenues, which would have
+been an acceptable proposition to the Sikh chief,
+Ranjit Singh (who found the occupation of
+Peshawar a most profitless undertaking), and would
+at the same time have reconciled the chiefs at
+Kandahar. The Amir Dost Mahomed would have
+reconciled himself to a situation which he could not
+avoid and the Indian Government would have
+enjoyed the credit of establishing order on their
+frontiers on a tolerably sure basis without committing
+themselves to any alliance, for (he writes)
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">404</a></span>
+"my experience has brought me to the decided
+opinion that any strict alliance with powers so
+constituted would prove only productive of mischief
+and embarrassment, while I still thought that British
+influence might be usefully exerted in preserving
+the integrity of the several states and putting their
+rulers on their good behaviour." Subsequent events
+proved the soundness of these views, but we must
+remember that Masson wrote "after the event."
+That he did, however, strongly counsel Burnes to
+make no promise in the name of his Government of
+the cession of Peshawar to the Amir on the death
+of Ranjit Singh, is clear, and it is impossible to say
+how far the disappointment felt by the Amir at the
+refusal of the Indian Government to ratify this
+promise may have affected his subsequent actions.
+Masson thinks that Burnes should have been
+recalled, but he admits the difficulty that beset
+him owing to want of instructions. "The folly of
+sending such a man as Captain Burnes without the
+fullest and clearest instructions was now shown,"
+etc. etc. It is surprising that with his confidence in
+the ability of his immediate Chief so absolutely
+destroyed, he should have continued to serve under
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, on April 26, Burnes and Masson left
+Kabul together in a hurry and were subsequently
+joined by Lord and Wood, and "thus closed a
+mission, one of the most extraordinary ever sent
+forth by a Government, whether as to the singular
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">405</a></span>
+manner in which it was conducted, or as to the
+results." Shortly after Masson resigned an appointment
+under the Government of India which he
+stigmatises as "disagreeable and dishonourable."
+It was a pity that he held it so long.</p>
+
+<p>When Masson reached India he found that the
+Government had already decided to restore the refugee
+Shah Sujah to the throne of Kabul, and that a
+military expedition to Kandahar had been arranged.
+What he has to say about the manner of this
+arrangement and the nature of the influence brought
+to bear on Lord Auckland to bring it about is not
+more pleasant reading than is his story of the Kabul
+Mission. This tale, indeed, does not belong to the
+history of exploration any further than to indicate
+under what conditions the first military geographical
+knowledge of Farther Afghanistan was gained by
+such true explorers as Pottinger, Lord, and Wood;
+and what amount of actually new information was
+attained by Burnes' mission. This was very considerable,
+as we shall see when we follow Burnes'
+assistants into the field. Meanwhile we have not
+quite done with Masson.</p>
+
+<p>The closing incidents of the career of this remarkable
+man, as an explorer, call for little more comment.
+Once again, in the year preceding the disastrous
+termination to our first occupation of Kabul, did he
+make Karachi and Sonmiani his base of departure
+for a fresh venture in behalf of archæological
+research in Afghanistan. It was his intention to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">406</a></span>
+proceed to Kandahar and Kabul, but his plans were
+frustrated by as remarkable a series of incidents as
+could well have barred the progress of any traveller.
+The Government of India, instigated by reports
+which (according to Masson) were the results of
+local intrigue and were palpably false, considered
+itself justified in an expedition to Kalat and the
+deposition of its Brahui chief, Mehrab Khan. This
+expedition was successfully carried out by General
+Wiltshire, and Mehrab Khan was killed in the
+defence of his citadel. Subsequently a British
+agent, Lieut. Loveday, was appointed to Kalat,
+and Masson found him there on his arrival from
+Sonmiani. Masson's description of him and of his
+crude political methods is not flattering, and his
+weak surrender of Kalat to the badly armed Brahui
+rabble who attacked the place in the interests of the
+late Khan's son was certainly disgraceful. That
+surrender, which was only wiped out by Nott's
+advance on Kalat, and the final suppression of the
+Brahui revolt, cost Loveday his life, and placed
+Masson in deadly peril. He, however, succeeded in
+reaching Quetta, where Captain Bean was in political
+charge; but this officer not only put him into confinement
+but treated him with positive barbarity.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to understand the political view of
+Masson's existence in Baluchistan. If any man was
+capable of unriddling the network of intrigue that
+occupied all the Baluch chiefs at this time, or could
+bring anything of personal influence to bear on them,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">407</a></span>
+it was undoubtedly Masson, and something of his
+history was at any rate known. But he had resigned
+service under the Indian Government as "disagreeable
+and dishonourable," and his reappearance at a
+time when all Baluchistan was in the ferment of
+seething revolt was perhaps regarded with suspicion.
+It is also quite conceivable that the local political
+officer regarded him simply as an interloping loafer,
+and, until he became better acquainted with Masson's
+character and ability, would be no more likely to
+pay him attention than would any political officer on
+the frontier to-day who suddenly found himself
+confronted with a European in native dress with
+no valid explanation of his appearance under very
+ambiguous circumstances. The days were not long
+past when European loafers of any nationality
+whatsoever could, and did, find not only service, but
+distinction, in the courts and armies of native chiefs
+who were hostile to British interests. One can only
+gather from Masson's strange story that there was
+no officer in the British political service at that time
+with intuition sufficient to enable him to appraise
+the situation correctly, or make use of other
+experience than his own.</p>
+
+<p>Here, however, we must leave Masson. As an
+explorer in Afghanistan he stands alone. His
+work has never been equalled; but owing to the
+very unsatisfactory methods adopted by all explorers
+in those days for the recording of geographical
+observations it cannot be said that his contribution
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">408</a></span>
+to exact geographical knowledge was commensurate
+with his extraordinary capacity as an observant
+traveller, or his remarkable industry.</p>
+
+<p>It is as a critic on the political methods of the
+Government of India that Masson's records are chiefly
+instructive. Hostile critics of Indian administrative
+methods usually belong to one of two classes. They
+are either uninformed, notoriety-seeking demagogues
+playing to a certain party gallery at home, or they
+are disappointed servants of the Government, by
+whom they consider that their merits have been
+overlooked. To this latter class it must be conceded
+that Masson belonged, in spite of his expressed
+contempt for government service. Thus the virulence
+of his attacks on the ignorance and fatuity of the
+political officials with whom he was brought in
+contact must be freely discounted, because of the
+obvious animus which pervades them. Still it is to
+be feared there is too much reason to believe that
+private interest was the recommendation which
+carried most weight in the appointment of unfledged
+officers, both civil and military, to political duty on
+the Indian frontier. These gentlemen took the field
+without experience, and without that which might
+to a certain extent take the place of experience, viz.
+an education in the main principles both social and
+economical which govern the conditions of existence
+of the people with whom they had to deal. A
+knowledge of political economy, law, and languages
+is not enough to enable the young administrator to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">409</a></span>
+take his place on the frontier, if he knows not enough
+of the characteristics of the frontier tribes-people to
+enable him to maintain the dignity of his position.
+Even physically there are qualifications which are
+not always regarded as useful, which make for
+strong influence and good government. A man may
+be physically powerful enough to use his strength
+in fair contest to the immense enhancement of his
+personal prestige, but he must not strike a blow
+where the blow cannot be returned; and above all
+he must not endeavour to conciliate by a silly display
+of obsequious attention, unless he is prepared to
+sacrifice all his personal influence and destroy the
+respect due to his office.</p>
+
+<p>Setting aside Masson's sentiments of disgust and
+horror (which he really felt) that the fate of men
+should have been placed at the mercy of the
+political officers in whom, at that time, Lord
+Auckland was pleased to repose confidence, and his
+assertions that "on me developed the task to obtain
+satisfaction for the insults some of these shallow and
+misguided men thought fit to practise," his own
+account of the extraordinary complexity of intrigue,
+and the unfathomable abyss of deceit and crime
+which distinguished the political field of native
+Baluchistan, is quite enough to account for much of
+their failure to deal with the situation. At the same
+time, it is a strong indication of the necessity for a
+sounder system of political education than any which
+now exists. Possibly a time may come when we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">410</a></span>
+shall cease to see systems of administration suitable
+to the plains applied to frontier mountaineers, or, for
+that matter, the foreign methods of India hammered
+into the nomadic pastoral peoples of other continents
+than Asia, where they are wholly inapplicable.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">411</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<p class="center">ENGLISH OFFICIAL EXPLORATION&mdash;LORD AND WOOD</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Then followed the Afghan Campaign of 1839-40,
+a campaign which was in many ways disastrous to
+our credit in Afghanistan both as diplomats and
+soldiers, but which undoubtedly opened out an
+opportunity for acquiring a general knowledge of
+the conformation of the country which was not
+altogether neglected. With the political methods
+attending the inception of the campaign (treated
+with such scathing scorn by Masson), and the
+strange bungling of an overweighted and unwieldy
+force armed with antique weapons we have nothing
+to do. The question is whether, apart from the
+acquisition of route sketches and intelligence reports
+dependent on the movements of the army in the
+field, was there anything that could rank as original
+exploration in new geographical fields? Lieut.
+North's excellent traverse and report of the route
+to Kandahar, which still supplies data for an integral
+part of our maps, was distinguished for more
+accuracy of detail and observation than most efforts
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">412</a></span>
+of a similar character made at that time; but it can
+hardly be regarded as an illustration of new and
+original exploration, the route itself being well
+enough known to British Missions, although never
+before surveyed. It is undoubtedly one of the
+best map contributions of the period.</p>
+
+<p>The adventures of Dr. Lord and Lieut. Wood in
+Badakshan, and the remarkable journey of Broadfoot
+across Central Afghanistan, however, belong
+to another category. These explorations covered
+new ground, much of which has never since been
+visited by European travellers, and they are
+authoritative records still. There were missed
+opportunities in abundance. Also opportunities
+which were not missed, but of which our records
+are so incomplete and obscure that the modern
+map-maker can extract but little useful information
+from them.</p>
+
+<p>When Burnes was in Kabul on his first commercial
+mission, Dr. Lord and Lieut. Leech of
+the Bombay Engineers were attached to his staff,
+and both these gentlemen, with Lieut. Wood
+of the Indian Navy, distinguished themselves
+by much original research, and have left records
+the value of which has been proved by subsequent
+observations. In the middle of October 1837 Dr.
+Lord left Kabul on an expedition into the plains of
+the Koh Daman, to the north of that city, which
+was to be extended to the passes of the Hindu
+Kush leading into Badakshan, when he was subsequently
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">413</a></span>
+invited to attend the court of Murad
+Beg, the chief of Kunduz, in his professional
+capacity. Murad Beg was one of the strongest
+chiefs of that time. As a bold and astute freebooter
+and successful warrior he had made his name great
+amongst the Uzbeks south of the Oxus, and had
+consolidated their scattered clans for the time being
+into a formidable cohesion, the strength of which
+made itself felt and respected at Kabul. Where
+Dost Mahomed's influence ceased on the north
+there commenced that of Murad Beg, and the line
+of division may be said to have extended from Ak
+Robat at the head of the Bamian valley on the
+west, to the passes and foot-hills of the Hindu Kush
+above Andarab on the east. It was late in the
+year for Lord to attempt the passing of the Hindu
+Kush, and he appears to have lingered too long
+amongst the delightful autumn scenes of that land
+of enchantment, the Koh Daman. He selected the
+passes which strike off from Charikar, near the
+junction of the Ghorband with the Panjshir rivers.
+There has always been a slight confusion in the
+naming of this group of passes, owing to the
+universal habit in Afghanistan of bestowing the
+name of some possibly insignificant village site on
+rivers, passes, and roads, without attaching any distinct
+and definite name to these features themselves.</p>
+
+<p>From that break in the hills which gives
+passage to the Ghorband from the south-west and
+the Panjshir from the north-east there strikes off
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">414</a></span>
+one well-known route across the backbone of the
+Hindu Kush, which is marked near the southern
+foot of the mountains by the ancient town of
+Parwan&mdash;a commercial site more ancient than that
+of Kabul&mdash;the headquarters of Sabaktagin, the
+Ghuri conqueror, when he wrested Kabul from the
+Hindu kings, and of Timur the Tartar in later
+ages. Consequently, the pass which bears north
+from that point is often called the Parwan. It was,
+according to Lord, the chief khafila route from
+Badakshan (although it may be doubted whether
+it was ever as popular as the Khawak when the
+Panjshir route was not closed by tribal hostility),
+notwithstanding that far less traffic passed that way
+than by Bamian and the Unai. The head of the
+pass was known as Sar Alang, so that it figures in
+geographical records frequently under this name also,
+whilst the local name acquired for it in the course
+of surveying in 1883 was Bajgah. To the west of
+this is the Kaoshan Pass, which is also known <i>par
+excellence</i> as the pass of "Hindu Kush"; and
+farther west again is the Gwalian (or Walian), an
+alternative to the Kaoshan when the latter is in
+flood. Lord selected the Parwan or Sar Alang
+Pass, narrow, rocky, and uneven, with a fall of
+about 200 feet per mile, and was fairly defeated
+in his attempt to cross, on October 19, by snow.
+This is about the closing time of the passes generally,
+the Parwan being only 12,300 feet in altitude,
+although Lord estimated it at 15,000. It is worth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">415</a></span>
+noting here that the Russo-Afghan Boundary
+Commission party crossed by the Chahardar Pass
+(a pass to the west again of the Walian) in the
+same month of October without encountering any
+insuperable difficulty from snow, although the
+Chahardar is more than 1000 feet higher than the
+Parwan. The fact that Lord met a khafila snow-bound
+near the top of the pass indicates that it was
+closed rather unexpectedly. Valuable observations
+were, however, the result of this reconnaissance. It
+revealed the fact that snow lies lower and deeper on
+the northern side of the Hindu Kush than on the
+southern, a fact which is in direct opposition to the
+general characteristics of the Himalayas. The
+explanation is, however, simple. In both cases the
+snow lies lowest on that side which reaches down
+to low humid plains and much precipitation of
+moisture. Where the barrier of the mountains
+breaks the upward sweep of vapour-bearing currents,
+there snowfall is arrested, and the highlands become
+desiccated. Lord's observation as a geologist also
+determined the constitution of these mountains.
+He noted the rugged uplift (beautiful from the
+admixture of pure white felspar and glossy black
+hornblende) of the central granite peaks through
+the overlying gneiss, schists, and slate, which thus
+revealed the extension of one of the great primeval
+folds of Himalayan conformation.</p>
+
+<p>Returning from his attempt to cross the pass,
+Lord had the good fortune to be able to extend his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">416</a></span>
+researches for a day's march up the Ghorband valley,
+and to explore the ancient lead mines of Ferengal,
+which have been sunk in the Ghorband conglomerates,
+but had long been abandoned by the Afghans.
+These he found to have been worked on "knowledge
+and principle, not on blind chance,"&mdash;as might
+have been expected in a country which still possesses
+some of the best practical mining and irrigation
+engineers in the world; and he testifies, <i>inter alia</i>,
+to the extraordinary effect of the exceeding dryness
+of the interior, as evidenced by the preservation
+from decay of dead animals. Similar phenomena
+have been observed in many parts of the world
+both before and since, and it would appear that a
+satisfactory scientific explanation is still wanting for
+this preservative tendency of caves and mines; the
+atmosphere, in some cases where well-preserved
+remains are found, being subject to exactly the
+same conditions of humidity as the outer air.</p>
+
+<p>It was during this interesting exploratory trip
+that Dr. Lord received a welcome invitation to visit
+Murad Beg in the Uzbek capital of Kunduz, where
+his professional advice was in urgent demand.
+Although the northern passes of the Hindu Kush
+were closed, the route to Badakshan was still open
+<i>via</i> Bamian and Khulm, and it was by this route
+that for the first (and apparently the last) time the
+journey from Kabul to Kunduz was made by
+European officers. Lord was accompanied by
+Lieut. Wood, and it is to Wood's summary of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">417</a></span>
+the conditions of the route that we now refer.
+As far as Bamian it was already beginning to
+be a well-known road (well known, that is, to
+European travellers); but beyond that point it was
+a new venture then, nor can any record be traced
+of subsequent investigations on it.</p>
+
+<p>Wood summarises the route by first enumerating
+the seven passes which have to be negotiated before
+reaching Kunduz (or Khulm), and gives us a slight
+description of them all. Four of these passes were
+in Afghan territory, and three beyond. Of the
+passes of Ispahak and Unai he merely remarks that
+a mail-coach might be driven over them. The
+Hajigak group he regards as the "Key-guide to
+the Bamian line," the Hajigak being the highest
+pass encountered (about 11,000 feet). A little to
+the north is the Irak, and to the south is the
+Pushti Hajigak (Kafzur in modern maps); the
+Hajigak, or Irak, being open to khafilas for ten
+months of the year, but for a considerably less
+period to the passage of troops. The next pass
+Wood calls Kalloo (Panjpilan in our maps), which
+he regards as being lower than Hajigak. Then
+follows the descent into Bamian. Next is the Ak
+Robat Pass (10,200 feet), between the valleys of
+Bamian and Saighan, of which Wood reports that
+"it is open to wheeled traffic of all description."
+As far as this (the then frontier of Afghanistan)
+Wood refers to the fact, already recorded, that the
+Amir's Lieutenant&mdash;Haji Khan&mdash;was able to take
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">418</a></span>
+field-pieces "of a size between 12- and 18-pounders."
+We already know the conditions under which this
+passage of artillery was effected. It is also on
+record that Nadir Shah took guns as far as Saighan.
+What is not so generally known is that the Uzbek
+chief, Murad Beg, took an 18-pounder over the
+rest of the route from Saighan to Kunduz. The
+three remaining passes are (1) the Dandan Shikan,
+between Saighan and Kamard, of which Wood
+reports the north face to be exceedingly difficult,
+and where he would never have believed that a
+gun could pass, had it not been actually traversed by
+the 18-pounder of Murad Beg. It may be mentioned
+here that it took 1100 men to drag that gun
+up the northern face of the pass, so that Wood is
+quite justified in classing it as only fit for camels.
+Then follows (2) the Kara Pass, leading from Kamard
+into the valley of the Tashkurghan River, about
+which the only remark made by Wood is that it
+may be turned by the pass of Surkh Kila (which
+involves a considerable detour). As Wood does
+not definitely state which is (3) the seventh pass, we
+may assume that it is the Shamsuddin, which is
+merely a detour to avoid an awkward reach of the
+Tashkurghan valley.</p>
+
+<p>This is probably the first clear exposition which
+has ever been made of the general nature of the
+route connecting Kabul with Afghan Turkistan,
+and for it we must give Lieut. Wood all the credit
+that is fully due; for no subsequent surveys and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">419</a></span>
+investigations have materially altered his opinion.
+It must not be forgotten that in dealing with the
+story of Afghan exploration we are touching on
+past records. The far-sighted policy of public
+works development, which distinguished the late
+Amir Abdurrahmon, led to the extension of roads
+for facilitating commerce between the Oxus and
+Kabul, the full effect of which we have yet to
+learn. To the north of Kabul the roads opened
+to khafila traffic, <i>via</i> the Chahardar Pass and the
+Khawak, have introduced a new and important
+feature into the system of Afghan communications;
+and it is more than probable that the
+facilities for wheeled traffic between Kabul and
+Tashkurghan have lately been largely increased.<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>
+It is well also to remember that it is not the
+physical difficulties of rough roads and narrow
+passes which form the chief obstacle to the movement
+of large bodies of troops. Roads can be
+made, and crooked places straightened with comparative
+ease, but altitude, sheer altitude, still
+remains a formidable barrier, which no modern
+ingenuity has taught us to overcome. Deep impassable
+snow-drifts, and the fierce killing blasts of
+the north-westers of Afghanistan close these highland
+fields for months together; and neither roads
+nor railways (still less air-ships) can prevail against
+them.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">420</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When Wood and Lord turned eastward from
+Khulm, and passed on to Kunduz and Badakshan,
+they were treading ground which was absolutely
+new to the European explorer, and which
+has seldom been reached even by the ubiquitous
+native surveyor. Lord gives us but a scanty
+account of Kunduz and northern Badakshan in
+his report, and we must turn to the immortal Wood
+(the discoverer of one of the Oxus' sources) for
+fuller and more picturesque detail. Wood left
+Kunduz for the upper Oxus in the early spring of
+1838, and it is somewhat remarkable that he should
+have effected an important exploration successfully
+in regions so highly elevated at the worst season
+of the year. Before following Wood to the Oxus,
+we may add a few further details of that important
+march from Kabul to Kunduz.</p>
+
+<p>It was in November 1837 that Wood and Lord
+were again in Kabul after their unsuccessful attempt
+to cross the Parwan Pass, and losing no time they
+started on the 15th for Badakshan by the Bamian
+route, crossing the Unai Pass and the elevated plain
+which separates it from the Helmund without
+difficulty. They encountered large parties of half-starved
+Hazaras seeking the plains on their annual
+pilgrimage to warm quarters for the winter. They
+crossed the Hajigak Pass on the 19th "with great
+ease," then passing the divide between the Afghan
+and Turkistan drainage; but they had to make
+a considerable detour to avoid the direct Kalu Pass,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">421</a></span>
+and entered Bamian by the precipitous Pimuri defile
+and the volcanic valley of Zohak. The Ak Robat
+Pass presented no difficulty. In Saighan they
+encountered the slave-gang of wretched Hazara
+people who were being then conducted to Kunduz
+as yearly contribution. Not much is said about the
+Dandan Shikan Pass dividing Saighan from Kamurd,
+where they were welcomed by the drunken old
+chief Rahmatulla Khan, whose character for reckless
+hospitality seems to have been a well-known feature
+in Badakshan. He is mentioned by every traveller
+who passed that way since Burnes' mission in 1832.
+On the 28th they reached Kuram, where they found
+another slave-gang being conducted by Afghans
+from Kabul, who had the grace to appear much
+ashamed of being caught red-handed in a traffic
+which has never commended itself to Afghan public
+opinion. Amongst Uzbeks it is different, the custom
+of man-stealing appears to have smothered every
+better feeling, and the traffic in human beings extends
+even into their domestic arrangements. Their
+wives are just as much "property" as their slaves.
+A little below Kuram they struck off to the right
+by a direct route to Kunduz, and passing over a
+district which had "a wavy surface," "affording
+excellent pasturage," which involved the crossing
+of the pass of Archa, they finally crossed the
+Kunduz River, and making their way through the
+swampy district of Baglan and Aliabad, reached
+Kunduz on December 4.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">422</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Wood is not enthusiastic about Kunduz. He calls
+it one of the most wretched towns in Murad Beg's
+dominions. "The appearance of Kunduz accords
+with the habits of an Uzbek; and by its manner,
+poverty and filth, may be estimated the moral worth
+of its inhabitants." He thought a good deal of
+Murad Beg all the same, and could not deny his great
+abilities. "But with all his high qualifications Murad
+Beg is but the head of an organised banditti, a nation
+of plunderers, whom, however, none of the neighbouring
+states can exterminate." Murad Beg has joined
+his fathers long ago, but no recent account of Kunduz
+much alters Wood's opinion of it. The wretched
+Badakshanis whom Murad Beg conquered, and
+whom he set to live or die in the dank pestilential
+marshes which fill up the space between the Badakshan
+highlands and the Oxus, have since then been
+restored to their own country; and of Badakshan
+we heard enough from the Amir's officials connected
+with the Pamir Boundary Commission to lead us
+to believe in it as a veritable land of promise, a
+land whose natural beauty and fertility may be
+compared to that of Kashmir&mdash;but this was told
+of the mountain regions, not of the Oxus flats.</p>
+
+<p>When Wood got away from Kunduz and
+travelled eastwards to Faizabad and Jirm he does
+rise to enthusiasm, and tells us of scenes of natural
+beauty which no European eye has seen since he
+passed that way. On December 11, in mid-winter,
+Wood started from Kunduz with the permission of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">423</a></span>
+Murad Beg to trace the "Jihun" to its source,
+and the story of this historical exploration will
+always be most excellent reading.</p>
+
+<p>First crossing an open plain with a southern background
+of mountains, a plain of jungle grass, moist
+and unfavourable to human life, with stifling mists
+of vapour flitting uneasily before them, the party
+reached higher ground and the town of Khanabad.
+Behind Khanabad rises the isolated peak of Koh
+Umbar, 2500 feet above the plain, which appears
+to be a remarkable landmark in this region. It
+has never yet been fixed geographically. Passing
+through the low foot-hills surrounding this mountain,
+Wood emerged into the plain of Talikhan, and
+reached the ancient town of that name in a heavy
+downpour of winter rain. Here at once he encountered
+reminiscences of Greek occupation and
+claimants to the lineage of Alexander the Great.
+The trail of the Greek occupation of Baktria clings
+to Badakshan as does that of Nysa to the valleys
+of Kafiristan. The impression of Talikhan is
+summed up by Wood in the statement that it is
+a most disagreeable place in rainy weather. He
+might say the same of every town in Afghan
+Turkistan. He has much to say of Uzbek character
+and idiosyncrasies. In one respect he says that
+the habits of Uzbek children are superior to those
+of young Britons. They do not rob sparrows' nests!
+Here, too, Wood found himself on the track of
+Moorcroft. Striking eastward he crossed the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">424</a></span>
+Lataband Pass (since fixed at 5650 feet in height)
+and first encountered snow. From the pass he
+describes the surrounding view as glorious: "In
+every quarter snowclad peaks shot up into the sky,"
+and he gives the name Khoja Mahomed to the
+range (unnamed in our maps) which crosses
+Badakshan from north-east to south-west and
+forms the chief water-parting of the country.
+Before him the Kokcha "rolled its green waters
+through the rugged valley of Duvanah." The
+summit of Lataband is wide and level and the
+descent eastwards comparatively easy.</p>
+
+<p>Through the pretty vale of Mashad (where
+Wood's party crossed the Varsach River) to Teshkhan
+the road led generally over hilly country covered
+with snow; but leaving Teshkhan it rises over the
+pass of Junasdara (fixed by Wood at 6600 feet), crossing
+one of the great spurs of the Khoja Mahomed
+system, and descended to Daraim, "a valley scarce a
+bowshot across, but watered, as all the valleys in
+Badakshan are, by a beautiful stream of the purest
+water, and bordered, wherever there is soil, by a
+soft velvet turf." To Daraim succeeded the plain
+of Argu and the "wavy" district of Reishkhan,
+which reached to the valley of the Kokcha. So
+far, since leaving Talikhan, they had met with "no
+sign of man or beast," but the latter were occasionally
+in close proximity, for the path was made easy by
+hog tracks, and Wood has some grisly tales to tell
+about the ferocity of the wolves of the country.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">425</a></span>
+Junasdara he describes as a difficult or steep pass,
+but he notes the fact that Murad Beg had crossed
+it with artillery which left evidence in wheel
+tracks.</p>
+
+<p>Of Faizabad, when Wood was there, "scarcely
+a vestige was left," and Jirm had become the capital
+of the country. But Faizabad has risen to importance
+since, and according to the reports of
+subsequent native explorers, has regained a good
+deal of its commercial importance. "Behind the
+site of the town the mountains are in successive
+ridges to a height of at least 2000 feet" (<i>i.e.</i> above
+the plain); "before it rolls the Kokcha in a rocky
+trench-like bed sufficiently deep to preclude all
+danger of inundation. Looking up the valley, the
+ruined and uncultivated gardens are seen to fringe
+the stream for a distance of two miles above the
+town." Faizabad is about 3950 feet above sea-level.
+Wood makes it about 500 feet lower, and his
+original observations were probably of more than
+equal value with those of subsequent native explorers.
+But certain recent improvements in
+exploring instruments, and certain refinements in
+computing the value of such observations, render the
+balance of probability in favour of the later records.
+Wood (as a sailor) was a professional observer,
+and where observations alone are concerned his
+own are excellent.</p>
+
+<p>From Faizabad Wood went to Jirm, which
+he regarded as a more important position than
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">426</a></span>
+Faizabad. Elsewhere an opinion has been expressed
+that Jirm was the ancient capital of the
+country. Wood took the shortest road to Jirm
+which leaves the Kokcha valley and passes over
+the Kasur spur, winding by a high and slippery
+path for some distance along the face of the hill.
+It was a two days' march. The fort at Jirm he
+describes as the most important in Murad Beg's
+dominions. His stay at Jirm gave him the opportunity
+of visiting the lapis-lazuli mines near the
+head of the Kokcha River under the shadow of the
+Hindu Kush just bordering Kafiristan. This experience
+was useful, for Wood not only contributes a
+most interesting account of the working of the mines,
+but places on record the impracticable nature of the
+route which follows the Kokcha River from its source
+above the mines to Jirm. Near the assumed source,
+and not far south of the mines, there are two passes
+across the Hindu Kush, viz. the Minjan, which
+connects with the well-known Dorah and leads
+to Chitral, and the Mandal, which unites the head
+of the Bashgol valley of Kafiristan with the Minjan
+sources of the Kokcha. The upper reaches of the
+Kokcha River form the Minjan valley. Sir George
+Robertson crossed the Mandal in 1889 and fixed
+its height at over 15,000 feet, and he places the
+head of the Minjan (or Kokcha) much farther south
+than it appears in our maps. As the Mandal Pass
+connects Kafiristan with the Minjan valley of the
+Kokcha (pronounced by Wood to be almost impracticable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">427</a></span>
+above Jirm), it is of no great geographical
+importance; nor, owing to the same impracticability,
+is the Minjan Pass itself of any great consequence,
+although it connects with Chitral. The Dorah
+(14,800 feet), on the other hand, links up Chitral
+with another branch of the Kokcha, passing by the
+populous commercial town of Zebak, and is consequently
+a pass to be reckoned with in spite of its
+altitude. It is, in short, the chief pass over the Hindu
+Kush directly connecting India with Badakshan;
+but a pass which is nearly as high as Mont Blanc
+affords no royal gateway through the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Wood had sufficiently indicated the nature of the
+Kokcha valley between Jirm and Minjan. At the
+point where the mines occur it is about 200 yards
+wide. On both sides the mountains are "high and
+naked," and the river flows in a trough 70 feet below
+the bed of the valley. We know that it is not a
+practicable route. It is, however, much to be
+regretted that no modern explorer has touched the
+valley of Anjuman to the west of Minjan, which,
+whilst it is perhaps the main contributor to the
+waters of the Kokcha, also appears to have contained
+a recognised route in mediæval times. "If you
+wish not to go to destruction, avoid the narrow
+valley of Koran," is a native warning quoted by
+Wood, which seems to apply to the upper Kokcha.
+As a passable khafila route, Idrisi writes that from
+Andarab to Badakshan <i>towards the east</i> is a four
+days' journey. Andarab (the ancient site) being
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">428</a></span>
+fixed at the junction of the Kasan stream with the
+Andarab River, the only possible route eastwards
+would be to the head of the Andarab at Khawak,
+and thence over the Nawak Pass into the Anjuman
+valley. Nor can the Nawak (which is as well known
+a pass as the Khawak) have any <i>raison d'être</i> unless
+it connects with that valley. There is, however, the
+possibility of a wrong inference from Idrisi's vague
+statement. "Badakshan" (which was represented by
+either Jirm or Faizabad) is actually east of Andarab,
+but to reach it by the obvious route of the lowlands,
+following the Kunduz River and ultimately striking
+eastwards, would involve starting from Andarab to
+the west of north. But just as the Mandal leading
+into the Minjan valley opens up no useful route
+in spite of being a well-known pass, so may the
+Nawak lead to nothing really practicable in Anjuman.
+This, indeed, is probably the case, but Anjuman
+remains to be explored.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to Jirm, Wood awaited the opportunity
+for his historic exploration of the Oxus. This
+occurred at the end of January 1838, when news came
+to Jirm that the Oxus was frozen above Darwaz.
+The only route open to travellers in the snow time
+of that region is the bed of the frozen river, and
+Wood determined to make the best use of the
+opportunity. He was anxious to visit the ruby
+mines of the Oxus valley, but in this he did not
+succeed, owing to the extreme difficulties of the
+route following the river from its great bend northward
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">429</a></span>
+to the district of Gharan, in which these mines
+are situated. He met the remnants of a party
+returning from Gharan which had lost nearly half
+its numbers from an avalanche when he reached
+Zebak, and wisely determined to expend his efforts
+in following up the course of the river to its source,
+rather than tempt Providence by a dangerous detour.
+To reach Zebak from Jirm it was necessary to
+follow the Kokcha to its junction with the Wardoj
+and then turn up that valley to Zebak. This journey
+in winter, with the biting blasts of the glacier-bred
+winds of the Hindu Kush in their teeth, was
+sufficiently trying. These devastated regions seem
+to be never free from the plague of wind. It is bad
+enough in the Pamirs in summer, but in winter when
+superadded to the effects of a cold registering 6°
+below zero it must have been maddening. There
+was no great difficulty in crossing the divide between
+Zebak (a small but not unimportant town) and the
+elbow of the Oxus River at Ishkashm.</p>
+
+<p>Once again since the days of Wood a party
+of Europeans, which included two well-known
+geographers (Lockhart and Woodthorpe, both of
+whom have since gone to their rest), reached
+Ishkashm in 1886, and they were treated there with
+anything but hospitality. Wood seemed to have
+fared better. With the authority of Murad Beg to
+back him, and his own tact and determination to
+carry him through, he succeeded in overcoming all
+obstacles, and from point to point he made his way
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">430</a></span>
+to where the Oxus forks at Kila Panja. From
+Ishkashm to Kila Panja the valley was fairly wide
+and open, and here for the first time he met those
+interesting nomadic folk the Kirghiz.</p>
+
+<p>Wood's observations on the people he met are
+always acute and interesting, but he seems rather
+to have been influenced (as he admits that he may
+have been) by his Badakshani guides in framing his
+estimate of Kirghiz character. Thieves and liars
+they may be. These characteristics are common
+in High Asia, but even in these particulars they
+compare favourably with Uzbeks and Afghans
+generally. At any rate he trusted them, and it was
+with their assistance that he reached the source of
+the Oxus. Without them in a world of snow-covered
+hills and depressions, with every halting-place buried
+deep and not a trace of a track to be seen, he would
+have fared badly. At Kila Panja he was faced with
+a difficulty which gave him anxious consideration.
+Could he have guessed what issues would thereafter
+hang on a decision to that momentous question&mdash;which
+branch of the Oxus led to its real source&mdash;it
+would have caused him even greater anxiety.
+Ultimately he followed the northern branch which
+waters the Great Pamir, and after almost incredible
+exertion in floundering through snowdrifts and
+scratching his way along the ice road of the river
+surface, on February 19, 1838, he overlooked that
+long narrow expanse of frozen water which is now
+known as Victoria Lake.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">431</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We may discuss the question of the source, or
+sources, of the Oxus still, and trace them to the
+great glaciers from which the lakes north and south
+of the Nicolas range are fed, or to the ice caverns
+of the Hindu Kush as we please&mdash;there are many
+sources, and it is not in the power of mortal man
+to measure their relative profundity&mdash;but Wood
+still lives in geographical history as the first explorer
+of the upper Oxus, and will rank with Speke
+and Grant as the author of a solution to one
+of the great riddles of the world's hydrography.
+With infinite labour he dug a hole through the
+ice and found the depth of the lake at its centre
+to be only 9 feet. Were he to plumb it again
+in these days he would find it even less, for
+the lake (like all Central Asian lakes) is growing
+smaller and shallower year by year. The information
+which he absorbed about the high regions of
+Asia, the Pamirs (the Bam-i-dunya), was wonderfully
+correct on the whole, and is strong evidence of his
+ability in sifting the mass of miscellaneous matter
+with which the Asiatic usually conceals a geographical
+truth. He is incorrect only in the matter of altitude,
+which he fixes too high by more than a thousand
+feet, and he makes rather a strange mistake in
+recording that the Kunar (the Chitral River) rises
+north of the Hindu Kush and breaks through that
+range. Otherwise it would be difficult to add to or
+to correct his information by the light of subsequent
+surveys. With his return journey surrounded by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">432</a></span>
+all the enchantment of bursting spring in those
+regions we need not concern ourselves. After a
+three months' absence he rejoined Dr. Lord at
+Kunduz.</p>
+
+<p>Wood's return to Kunduz was but the prelude to
+another journey of exploration into the northern
+regions of Badakshan which, in some respects, was
+the most important of all his investigations, for it is
+to the information obtained on this journey that we
+are still indebted for what little knowledge we
+possess of the general characteristics of the Oxus
+valley above Termez. Dr. Lord was summoned in
+his medical capacity to visit a chief at Hazrat Imam
+on the Oxus River, and Wood seized the opportunity
+to explore the Oxus basin from Hazrat Imam
+upwards through Darwaz.</p>
+
+<p>Kunduz itself has been described by both
+authorities as a miserable swamp-bound town, with
+pestilential low-lying flats stretching beyond it
+towards the Oxus. This low country is, however,
+productive, and is probably by this time largely
+reclaimed from the grass and reed beds which
+covered it. Into this poisonous swamp country the
+Uzbek chief had imported the wretched Badakshani
+Tajiks whom he had captured during his extensive
+raids, for the purpose of colonizing. Wood reckons
+that 100,000 people must have originally been
+dumped into this swamp land, of whom barely 6000
+were left when he was at Kunduz. Between the
+swamp and the Oxus was a splendid stretch of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">433</a></span>
+prairie or pasture land, reaching to the tangled
+jungle which immediately fringed the river below
+the Darwaz mountains, and this naturally excited
+his admiration. "Eastward" of Khulm "to the
+rocky barriers of Darwaz all the high-lying portion
+of the valley is at this season (March) a wild prairie
+of sweets, a verdant carpet enamelled with flowers";
+and he describes the "low swelling" hills fringing
+these plains as "soft to the eye as the verdant sod
+which carpets them is to the foot." This is very
+pretty, and quite accords with the general description
+of country which forms part of the Oxus valley
+much farther west. The Oxus jungles, however, only
+occur at intervals. In Wood's time (1838) they
+were a thick tangle of low-growing scrub, which
+formed the haunts of wild beasts which were a
+terror to the dwellers in the plains. Tigers are
+found in those patches of Oxus jungle still. Hazrat
+Imam then ranked with Zebak and Jirm as one of
+the most important towns of Badakshan. East of
+Hazrat Imam were the traces of a gigantic canal
+system with its head about Sherwan, from which
+point to the foot-hills of Darwaz the river is (or was)
+fordable in almost any part. Wood forded it at
+a point near Yang Kila, opposite Saib in Kolab,
+in March, and found the river running in three
+channels, only one of which was really difficult. In
+this one, however, the current was running 4
+miles an hour and the width of the channel was
+about 200 yards. It was only by uniting the forces
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">434</a></span>
+of the party to oppose the stream that they were
+able to effect the passage. Thus was Wood probably
+the first European to set his foot in Kolab north of
+the Oxus. The river-bottom in this part of its
+course is generally pebbly, and at the Sherwan ford
+guns had been taken across. Near the mouth of the
+Kokcha (here a sluggish muddy stream) Wood found
+the site of an ancient city which he calls Barbarra,
+and which I think is probably the Mabara of Idrisi.</p>
+
+<p>Wood's next excursion from Kunduz was by the
+direct high road westward to Mazar, where he and
+Lord hoped to find relics of Moorcroft (in which
+quest they were successful), and back again. This
+only confirmed what was previously known of the
+facility of that route, one of the most ancient in the
+world, and the attention which had been paid to it
+by the construction of covered tanks (they would be
+called Haoz farther west) at intervals for the
+convenience of travellers. The final recall of these
+two explorers to Kabul afforded them the opportunity
+for investigating the route which runs
+directly south from Kunduz by the river valley of
+that name to the junction with the Baghlan.
+Thence, following the Baghlan to its head, they
+crossed by the Murgh Pass into the valley of
+Andarab, and diverging eastward they adopted the
+Khawak Pass to reach the Panjshir valley, and so
+to Kabul. No great difficulties were encountered
+on this route (which has only been partially
+explored since), involving only two passes between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">435</a></span>
+the Oxus and Kabul, <i>i.e.</i> the Murgh (7400 feet)
+which is barely mentioned by Wood, and the
+Khawak (11,650 feet&mdash;Wood makes it 1500 feet
+higher), and it undoubtedly possesses many
+advantages as the modern popular route between
+Kabul and Badakshan. It is not the high-road to
+Mazar (the capital of Afghan Turkistan), which will
+always be represented by the Bamian route, but
+it must be recognised as a fairly easy means of
+communication in summer between the chief fords
+of the Oxus and the Kabul valley. The Greek
+settlements were about Baghlan and Andarab,
+and undoubtedly this was the road best known to
+them across the Hindu Kush, and probably as
+much used as the Kaoshan or Parwan passes, which
+were more direct. For many centuries, however, in
+mediæval history the Panjshir valley possessed such
+an evil reputation as the home of the worst robbers
+in Asia, that a wide berth was given to it by
+casual travellers. Timur Shah made good use of it
+for military purposes, as we have seen, and latterly it
+has been improved into a fair commercial high-road
+under Afghan engineers. The Panjshir inhabitants
+(once Kafirs&mdash;now truculent Mohamedans) have
+been reduced to reason, and it will be in the future
+what it has been in the ancient past&mdash;one of the
+great khafila routes of Asia. When Wood crossed
+it in May it was not really practicable for horses, and
+the party made their way across with considerable
+difficulty. It is the altitude, and the altitude alone,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">436</a></span>
+which renders it a formidable military barrier, and thus
+will it remain as part of that great Hindu Kush wall
+which forms the central obstruction of a buffer state.</p>
+
+<p>Before taking leave of these two most successful
+(and most trustworthy) explorers of Afghanistan, it
+may be useful to sum up their views on that little-known
+region, Badakshan. The plains, the useful
+and beautiful valleys of Badakshan, lie in the embrace
+of a kind of mountain horse-shoe, which shuts them
+off from the Oxus on the north-east and east and
+winds round to the Hindu Kush on the south. The
+weak point of the semicircular barrier occurs at the
+junction with the Hindu Kush, where the pass
+between Zebak and Ishkashm is only 8700 feet high.
+From the slopes of the Hindu Kush mountain
+torrents drain down through the valleys of Zebak
+(called the Wardoj by Wood), the Minjan (or
+Kokcha) and the Anjuman into the great central
+river of Kokcha. Of these valleys, so far as we
+know, only the Wardoj is really practicable as
+a northerly route to the Oxus. Shutting off the
+head of the Kokcha system, a lateral range called
+Khoja Mahomed by Wood (a name which ought to
+be preserved), in which are many magnificent
+peaks, sends down its contributions north-west to
+the Kunduz. We know nothing about these valleys,
+and Wood tells us nothing, but the geographical
+inference is strong that all this part of upper
+Badakshan, including the heads of the Kokcha and
+Kunduz affluents, is but a wide inhospitable upland
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">437</a></span>
+plateau of a conformation similar to that which lies
+east and west of it, cut into deep furrows and
+impassable gorges by the mountain streams which
+run thousands of feet below the plateau level.
+Within it will almost certainly be traced in due
+course of time the evidences of those primeval
+parallel folds, or wrinkles, which form the basis
+of Himalayan construction. Probably the Khoja
+Mahomed represents one of them, and the heads of
+the streams which feed the Kokcha and the eastern
+affluents of the Kunduz will be found (as already
+indicated in the Wardoj, or Zebak, stream) to take
+their source in deep, lateral, ditch-like valleys, which,
+closely underlying these folds, have been reshaped
+and altered by ages of denudation and seismic
+destruction.</p>
+
+<p>The few inhabitants who are hidden away in
+remote villages and hamlets belong to the great
+Kafir community. This is a part of unexplored
+Kafiristan rather than Badakshan, and he will be a
+bold man indeed who undertakes its investigation.
+No Asiatic secret now held back from view will
+command so much vivid interest in its unfolding as
+will the ethnographical conditions of these people
+when we can really get at them. This mountain
+region occupies a large share of Badakshan. The
+rest of the plateau land to the west we know fairly
+well and have sufficiently described. The wonder
+of the world is that the deeply recessed valleys
+of it, the Bamian, Saighan, Kamard, Baghlan, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">438</a></span>
+Andarab depressions should have figured so largely
+in the world's history. That a confined narrow
+ribbon of space such as Bamian, difficult of access,
+placed by nature in the heart of a wilderness, should
+have been the centre not only of a great kingdom
+but the focus of a great religion, would be inexplicable
+if we did not remember that through it runs
+the connecting link between the wealth of India and
+the great cities of the Oxus plains and Central Asia.</p>
+
+<p>The northern slopes and plains of Badakshan,
+between the mountains and the Oxus, form part of
+a region which once represented the wealth of
+civilization in Asia. The whole region was dotted
+with towns of importance in mediæval times, and
+the fame of its beauty and wealth had passed down
+the ages from the days of Assyria and Greece to
+those of the destroying Mongol hordes. From
+prehistoric times nations of the west had planted
+colonies in Baktria, and here are to be gathered
+together the threads of so many ethnographical
+survivals as may be represented by the successive
+Empires of the West. Baktria is the cradle of a
+marvellously mixed ethnography, and to all who
+have seen the weird beauty of that strange land, the
+fascination which it has ever possessed for the
+explorer and pilgrims is no matter of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>A word or two must be added here about that
+previous explorer (Moorcroft) in Northern Afghanistan
+whose fate was ascertained by Lord. It is
+most unfortunate that some of the most important
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">439</a></span>
+manuscripts of this unfortunate Asiatic traveller
+were never recovered, but his story has been
+written and will be referred to in further detail.
+We have direct testimony to the fate which finally
+overtook him in Dr. Lord's report of his visit to
+Mazar-i-Sharif, which was made with the express
+purpose of recovering all the records that might be
+traced of Moorcroft's travels in Afghan Turkistan.</p>
+
+<p>A previous story of Moorcroft is highly interesting.
+An early Tibetan explorer (the celebrated
+Abbé Huc) told a tale of a certain Englishman
+named Moorcroft, who was reported to have lived
+in Lhasa for twelve years previous to the year 1838
+and who was supposed to have been assassinated on
+his way back to India <i>via</i> Ladak. The story was
+circumstantial and attracted considerable attention.
+We know now from a memorandum of Dr. Lord
+written in May 1838, that in the early spring of that
+year when he and Lieut. Wood visited Mazar-i-Sharif
+they discovered that the German companion
+of Moorcroft (Trebeck) had died in that city, leaving
+amongst many loose records a slip of paper, with
+the date September 6, 1825, thereon, noting the fact
+that "Mr. M." (Moorcroft) "died on August 27th."
+Dr. Lord's investigations led him to the conclusion
+that Moorcroft died at Andkhui, a victim "not more
+to the baneful effects of the climate than to the web
+of treachery and intrigue with which he found himself
+surrounded and his return cut off." Trebeck,
+who seems to have been held in great estimation by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">440</a></span>
+the Afghans, died soon after; neither traveller leaving
+any substantial account of his adventures. Moorcroft's
+books (thirty volumes) were recovered, and
+the list of them would surprise any modern traveller
+who believes in a light and handy equipment. Dr.
+Lord's inquiries, in my opinion, effectually dispose
+of the venerable Abbé's story of Moorcroft's
+residence at Lhasa; although, of course, the record
+of his visit to Western Tibet and the Manasarawar
+Lakes earlier in the century must have been well
+enough known; and the Tibetans may possibly
+have believed in a reincarnation of their one and
+only European visitor in their own capital.</p>
+
+<p>This chapter cannot be closed without a tribute
+of respect to those most able and enterprising
+geographers who (chiefly as assistants to Burnes)
+were the means of first giving to the world a
+reasonable knowledge of the geography of
+Afghanistan. The names of Leech, Lord, and
+Wood will always remain great in geographical
+story, and although none of them individually (nor,
+indeed, all of them collectively) covered anything
+like as wide an area as the American Masson, they
+effected a far greater change in the maps of the
+period&mdash;for Masson was no map-maker. As
+regards Sir Alexander Burnes, his initiative in all
+that pertained to geographical exploration was great
+and valuable, but he was individually more connected
+with the exploitation of Central Asian and Persian
+geography than with that of Afghanistan. Previous
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">441</a></span>
+to the year 1836, when he undertook his political
+mission to Kabul (and when he was travelling over
+comparatively old ground), he had already extended
+his journeys across the Hindu Kush to the Oxus,
+Bokhara, and Persia; and the book which he
+published in 1834 was a revelation in Central Asian
+physiography and policy. But as an explorer in
+Afghanistan he owed his information chiefly to his
+assistants, and undoubtedly he was splendidly well
+served. The ridiculous and costly impedimenta
+which seemed to be recognised as a necessary
+accompaniment to a campaign or "an occupation"
+in those days&mdash;the magnificent tents, the elephants,
+wives and nurseries and retinue of military officers&mdash;found
+no place whatever in the explorers' camps.
+Men were content to make their way from point to
+point and take their chance of native hospitality.
+They lived with the people amongst whom they
+moved, and they gradually became almost as much
+of them as with them. Perhaps their views,
+political and social, became somewhat too warmly
+tinted with local colour by these methods, but
+undoubtedly they learned more and they saw more,
+and they acquired a wider, deeper sympathy with
+native aspirations and native character than is
+possible to travellers who move <i>en prince</i> amongst
+a people who only interest them as races dominating
+a certain section of the mountains and plains of a
+strange world. All honour to the names of Leech,
+Lord, and Wood&mdash;especially Wood.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">442</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<p class="center">ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA&mdash;MOORCROFT</p>
+
+<p class="p2">One of the most disappointing of the early British
+explorers of our Indian trans-frontier was Moorcroft.
+Disappointing, because he got so little geographical
+information out of so large an area of adventure.
+Moorcroft was a veterinary surgeon blessed with an
+unusually good education and all the impulse of a
+nomadic wanderer. He was Superintendent of
+the H.E.I. Company's stud at Calcutta, and his
+views on agricultural subjects generally, especially
+the improvement of stock, were certainly in advance
+of his time, although it seems extraordinary that
+he should have sought further inspiration in the
+wilds of the then unexplored trans-Himalayas or
+in Central Asia. The Government of India were
+evidently sceptical as to the value of such researches,
+and he received but cold comfort from their grudging
+spirit of support, which ended in a threat to cut off his
+pay altogether after a few years' sojourn in Ladak
+whilst studying the elementary principles of Tibetan
+farming. Neither would they supply him with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">443</a></span>
+ample stock of merchandise which he asked for as
+a means of opening up trade with those chilly
+countries; and when, finally, he assumed the position
+of a high political functionary, and became the
+vehicle of an offer to the Government of India of
+the sovereignty of Ladak (which certainly might
+have led to complications with the Sikh Government
+of the Punjab) he was rather curtly told to
+mind his own business.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, it is tolerably clear that the Government
+represented by old John Company was not
+much more favourable to irresponsible travelling
+over the border and political intermeddling than is
+our modern Imperial institution. However, the fact
+remains that Moorcroft showed a spirit of daring
+enterprise, which led to the acquirement of a vast
+amount of most important information about countries
+and peoples contiguous to India of whom the Government
+of the time must have been in utter ignorance.
+When he first exploited Ladak, Leh was the <i>ultima
+thule</i> of geographical investigation. What lay beyond
+it was almost blank conjecture, and a residence
+of two years must have ended in the amassing of a
+vast fund of useful information. Unfortunately,
+much of that information was lost at his death, and
+the correspondence and notes which came into the
+hands of his biographer were of such a character&mdash;so
+extraordinarily discursive and frequently so little
+relevant to the subject of his investigation&mdash;as to
+leave an impression that Moorcroft was certainly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">444</a></span>
+eccentric in his correspondence if not in more material
+ways. We get very little original geographical
+suggestion from him; but his constant and faithful
+companion Trebeck is much more consistent and
+careful in such detail as we find due to his personal
+observation, and it is to Trebeck rather than Moorcroft
+that the thanks of the Asiatic map-maker are
+due. With the Ladak episodes of Moorcroft's
+career we have nothing to do here, beyond noting
+that there is ample evidence that he never reached
+Lhasa, and never resided there, in spite of the
+persistent rumours which prevailed (even in Tibet)
+that a traveller of his name had lived in the city.
+It is exceedingly difficult to account for this rumour,
+unless indeed we credit the authors of it with a confusion
+of ideas between Lhasa, the capital of Tibet
+proper, and Leh, the capital of little Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>The interest of Moorcroft's adventures so far as
+we are now concerned commences with his journey
+from Peshawar to Kabul, Badakshan and Bokhara
+in 1824, when he was undoubtedly the first in the
+field of British Central Asiatic exploration. He
+owed his safe conduct from Peshawar (which
+place he reached only after some most unpleasant
+experiences in passing through the Sikh dominions
+of the Punjab) to a political crisis. Dost Mahomed
+Khan was consolidating his power at Kabul, but he
+had not then squared accounts with Habibullah the
+son of the former governor, his deceased elder
+brother Mahomed Azim Khan; and certain other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">445</a></span>
+members of his family (his brothers, Yar Mahomed,
+Pir Mahomed, and Sultan Mahomed), who were
+governors in the Indus provinces, thought it as
+well to step in and effect an arrangement. It was
+their stately march to Kabul which was Moorcroft's
+opportunity. Those were days when an Englishman
+was yet of interest to the Afghan potentate,
+who knew not what turn of fortune's wheel might
+necessitate an appeal for the intervention of the
+English.</p>
+
+<p>Moorcroft did not love the Afghans, and between
+the unauthorised robbers of the Kabul road
+and the official despoilers of the city he paid dearly
+for the right of transit through Afghanistan of himself
+and his merchandise. It was this assumed rôle
+of merchant (if indeed it was assumed) that hampered
+Moorcroft from first to last in his journeys beyond
+the frontier of British India. There was something
+to be made out of him, either by fair means or foul,
+and the rapacious exactions to which he was
+subjected were probably not in the least modified
+by his obstinate refusals to meet what he considered
+unjust demands. Invariably he had to pay in the
+end. His account of the road to Kabul is interesting
+from the keen observation which he brought to
+bear on his surroundings. He has much to say
+about the groups of Buddhist buildings which are so
+marked a feature at various points of the route, and
+his previous experiences in Tibet left him little room
+for doubt as to the nature of them. It is strange
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">446</a></span>
+that locally there was not a tale to be told, not
+even a legend about them, which even indefinitely
+maintained their Buddhist origin.</p>
+
+<p>From Kabul Moorcroft succeeded in getting free
+with surprisingly little difficulty, though several
+members of his party declined to go farther. He
+gradually made his way by the Unai and Hajigak
+passes to Bamian, and thence to Haibak and Balkh.
+He was not slow to recognize the connection
+between the obvious Buddhist relics of Bamian and
+those which he had seen on the Kabul road; and
+at Haibak he visited a tope called Takht-i-Rustam
+(a generic name for these topes in Central Asia) of
+which his description tallies more or less with that
+of Captain Talbot, R.E., who unearthed what is
+probably the same relic some sixty years later.
+To Moorcroft we owe the identification of Haibak
+with the old mediæval town of Semenjan, and he
+states that he was told on the spot that this was its
+ancient name. No such name was recognised sixty
+years later, but the evidence of Idrisi's records confirms
+the fact beyond dispute.</p>
+
+<p>We need not enter into details of this well-worn
+and often described route. Moorcroft's best efforts
+were not directed to gazetteering, and we have much
+abler and more complete accounts of it than his.
+After passing the Ak Robat divide, Moorcroft found
+himself beyond Afghan jurisdiction and within the
+reach of that historic Uzbek chieftain, Murad Beg
+of Kunduz. Although Murad Beg was little better
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">447</a></span>
+than a successful freebooter, he is a personage who
+has left his own definite mark on the history of
+days when British interest was just dawning on the
+Oxus banks. Moorcroft fell into his hands, and in
+spite of introductions he fared exceedingly badly.
+Indeed there can be little doubt that the cupidity
+excited by the possibility of so much plunder would
+have ended fatally for him, but for a happy inspiration
+which occurred to him when his affairs appeared
+to be <i>in extremis</i>. With great difficulty and at
+the peril of his life he made his way eastward to
+Talikhan, where resided a saintly Pirzada, uncle of
+Murad Beg, the one righteous man whose upright
+and dignified character redeemed his people from
+the taint of utter barbarism and treachery. He had
+discrimination enough to read Moorcroft aright, and
+at once discountenanced the tales that had been
+assiduously set abroad of his being a British spy
+upon the land; and he had firmness and authority
+sufficient to deliver him from the rapacity of his
+truculent nephew, and procure him freedom to
+depart after months of delay in the pestilential
+atmosphere of Kunduz. Yet this grand old
+Mahomedan saint patronised the institution of
+slavery, and was not above making a profit out of
+it, though at the same time he firmly declined to
+receive presents or have bribes for his good offices.</p>
+
+<p>As other travellers following in Moorcroft's footsteps
+at no great distance of time fell also into the
+hands of Murad Beg, and experienced very different
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">448</a></span>
+treatment, it is useful just to note Moorcroft's description
+of him. He says: "I scarcely ever beheld a
+more forbidding countenance. His extremely high
+cheekbones gave the appearance to the skin of the
+face of its being unnaturally stretched, whilst the
+narrowness of the lower jaw left scarcely room for
+the teeth which were standing in all directions; he was
+extremely near-sighted." Not an attractive description!
+The spring had well advanced, and it was
+not till the middle of February 1825 that Moorcroft
+was able to resume his journey to the Oxus. He
+travelled from Kunduz to Tashkurghan and Mazar,
+and from the latter place he followed the most direct
+route to Bokhara <i>via</i> the Khwaja Salar ferry across
+the Oxus, reaching Bokhara on February 25.
+Here his narrative ends, and we only know from
+Dr. Lord and Wood that he returned from Bokhara
+to Andkhui, and died there apparently of fever contracted
+in Kunduz. He was buried near Balkh.
+Trebeck died soon after, and was buried at Mazar-i-Sharif.
+Burnes visited and described the tombs
+of both travellers, but they have long since disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>As a geographer there is much that is wanting
+in the methods of this most enterprising traveller,
+who at least pioneered the way to High Asia from
+British India but who never made geographical
+exploration a primary object of his labours. He
+was true to the last to his trade as a student of
+agriculture, and it is in this particular, rather than in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">449</a></span>
+the regions of geography or history, that the value
+of his studies chiefly lies. He was the first to point
+out the general character of that disastrous road
+to Kabul which has cost England so dear, and he is
+still, with Burnes and Lord and Wood, our chief
+authority for the general characteristics of Badakshan
+and of the Oxus valley east of Balkh. He
+did not, however, touch the Oxus east of Khwaja
+Salar, and consequently did not see or appreciate
+the great spread of splendid pastoral country which
+lies between the pestilential marsh lands of Kunduz
+and the river.</p>
+
+<p>One would be apt to gather a pessimistic idea
+of lower Badakshan from the pages of Moorcroft's
+story, which are undoubtedly tinted strongly with
+the gloomy and grey colouring of his own unhappy
+experiences. Of Balkh he has very little to say;
+he noted no antiquities about Balkh, but he calls
+attention to the wide spaces covered with ruins
+which are to be found at intervals scattered over
+the plains between Balkh and the Oxus. It is
+a little difficult to follow his exact route across
+the Oxus plains by the light of modern maps, but
+his Feruckabad is probably our Feruk, and I
+gather that his Akbarabad is Akcha or Akchaabad.
+The condition of Balkh, of Akcha, and of
+the ruin-studded plains of the Oxus were evidently
+much the same in 1824 as they were in 1884.
+Khwaja Salar (where Moorcroft crossed the Oxus
+in ferry-boats drawn by horses) has since become
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">450</a></span>
+historical. It was accepted in the Anglo-Russian
+protocols defining the Afghan boundary as an
+important point in the Russo-Afghan boundary
+delimitation, but it was not to be found. Moorcroft
+gives a very good reason for its disappearance, by
+stating that the place was razed to the ground just
+the day before he arrived there. Since then the
+ruins of the old village have been devoured by the
+shifting Oxus, and nothing but a ziarat at some
+distance from the river remains as a record of the
+distinguished saint who gave it its name.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">451</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<p class="center">BURNES</p>
+
+<p class="p2">No traveller who ever returned to his country
+with tales of stirring adventure ever attracted more
+interest, or even astonishment, than Lieut. Alexander
+Burnes. He published his story in 1835, when
+the Oxus regions of Asia were but vaguely outlined
+and shadowy geography. It did not matter that
+they had been the scene of classical history for
+more than 2000 years, and that the whole network
+of Oxus roads and rivers had been written about
+and traversed by European hosts for centuries
+before our era. That story belonged to a buried
+past, and the British occupation of India had come
+about in modern history by way of the sea. England
+and Russia were then searching forward into Central
+Asia like two blind wrestlers in the dark, feeling
+their ground before them ere they came to grips.
+A veil of mystery hung over these highlands, a
+geographical fog that had thickened up, with just
+a thinner space in it here and there, where a gleam
+of light had penetrated, but never dispersed it,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">452</a></span>
+since the days when Assyrian and Persian, Skyth,
+Greek, and Mongul wandered through the highest
+of Asiatic highways at their own sweet will.</p>
+
+<p>In the present year of grace and of red tape
+bindings to most books of Asiatic travels, when the
+best of the geographical information accumulated by
+the few who bear with them the seal of officialdom
+is pigeon-holed for a use that never will be made of
+it, it is quite refreshing to fall back on these most
+entertaining records of men who (whether official
+or otherwise) all travelled under the same conditions
+of association with the natives of the country they
+traversed, accepting their hospitality, speaking their
+language, assuming their manners and dress, and
+passing with the crowd (and with the crowd only)
+as casual wayfarers. The fact of their European
+origin was almost always suspected, if not known,
+to certain of the better informed of their Asiatic
+hosts, but they were seldom given away. It was
+nobody's business to quarrel with England then.
+A hundred years ago the military credit of England
+stood high, and the irrepressible advance of the red
+line of the British India-border impressed the mind
+of the Asiatic of the highlands beyond the plains
+as evidence of an irresistible power. Russia then
+made no such impression. She was still far off,
+and the ties of commerce bound the Oxus Khanates
+to India, even when Russian goods were in Asiatic
+markets. The bankers of the country were Hindus&mdash;traders
+from the great commercial centre of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">453</a></span>
+Shikarpur. It is strange to read of this constant
+contact with Hindus in every part of Central Asia
+in those days, when the <i>hundi</i> (or bill) of a
+Shikarpur banker was as good as a letter of credit
+in any bazaar as far as the Russian border. The
+power of England in India undoubtedly loomed
+much larger in Asiatic eyes before the disasters of
+the first Afghan war, and Englishmen of the type
+of Burnes, Christie, Pottinger, Vigne, and Broadfoot
+were able to carry out prolonged journeys through
+districts that are certainly not open to English
+exploration now. Even were English officers to-day
+free under existing political conditions to travel
+beyond the British border at all, it is doubtful
+whether any disguise would serve as a protection.</p>
+
+<p>The day has passed for such ventures as those
+of Burnes, and we must turn back a page or two in
+geographical history if we wish to appreciate the
+full value of British enterprise in exploring Afghanistan.
+Undoubtedly Burnes ranks high as a geographer
+and original pioneer. The fact that there
+is little or nothing left of the scene of his travels
+in 1830-32 and 1833 which has not been reduced
+to scientific mapping now, does not in any way
+detract from the merit of his early work; although
+it must be confessed that the perils of disguise
+prevented the use of any but the very crudest
+methods of ascertaining position and distance, and
+his map results would, in these days, be regarded
+as disappointing. Sind and the Punjab being
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">454</a></span>
+trans-border lands, there were always useful and
+handy opportunities for teaching the enterprising
+subaltern of Bombay Infantry how to travel intelligently;
+with the natural result that no corps in
+the world possessed a more splendid record of
+geographical achievement than the Bombay N.I.</p>
+
+<p>Burnes began well in the Quartermaster-General's
+department, and was soon entrusted with
+political power. Full early in his career he was
+despatched with an enterprising sailor, Lieut. Wood,
+on a voyage up the Indus which was to determine
+the commercial possibilities of its navigation, and
+which did in fact lead to the formation of the Indus
+flotilla&mdash;some fragments of which possibly exist still.
+It is most interesting to read the able reports
+compiled by these young officers; and one might
+speculate idly as to the feelings with which they
+would now learn that within half a century their
+flotilla had come and gone, superseded by one of
+the best paying of Indian railways. Their feelings
+would probably be much the same as ours could we
+see fifty years hence a well-established electric train
+service between Kabul and Peshawar, and a double
+or treble line of rails linking up Russia with India
+<i>via</i> Herat. We shall not see it. It will be left to
+another generation to write of its accomplishment.</p>
+
+<p>Searching the archives of the Royal Geographical
+Society for the story of Burnes the traveller (apart
+from the voluminous records of Burnes the diplomat),
+I came across a book with this simple inscription
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">455</a></span>
+on the title-page: "To the Royal Geographical
+Society of London, with the best wishes for its
+prosperity by the Author." This is Vol. I. of
+Burnes' Travels. It is written in the attenuated,
+pointed, and ladylike style which was the style of
+the very early Victorian era. It hardly leads to an
+impression of forceful and enterprising character.</p>
+
+<p>On January 2, 1831, Burnes made his first
+plunge into the wilderness which lay between him
+and Lahore, the capital of the Sikh kingdom, and
+he entered that city on the 17th. There he was
+most hospitably received by the French officers in
+the service of Ranjit Singh, Messieurs Allard and
+Court, and was welcomed by the Maharaja Ranjit
+Singh, who treated him with "marked affability."
+Burnes was accompanied by Dr. Gerard, and the
+two travellers were taken by Ranjit Singh to a
+hunting party in the Punjab, a description of which
+serves as a forcible illustration of the changes which
+less than one century of British administration has
+effected in the plains of India. Never will its like
+be seen again in the Land of the Five Rivers. The
+guests' tents were made of Kashmir shawls, and
+were about 14 feet square. One tent was red
+and the other white, and they were connected
+by tent-walls of the same material, shaded by
+a <i>Shamiana</i> supported on silver-mounted poles.
+In each tent stood a camp-bed with Kashmir shawl
+curtains. It was, as Burnes remarks, not an encampment
+suited to the Punjab jungles; and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">456</a></span>
+hunting procession headed by the Maharaja, dressed
+in a tunic of green shawls, lined with fur, his dagger
+studded with the richest brilliants, and a light metal
+shield, the gift of the ex-king of Kabul (Shah Sujah,
+who, it will be remembered, also surrendered the
+Koh-i-Nor diamond to Ranjit Singh about this time),
+as the finishing touch to his equipment, must have
+been quite melodramatic in its effects of colour and
+movement. It was, as a matter of fact, a pig-sticking
+expedition, but the game fell to the sword rather
+than to the spear; such of it, that is to say, as was
+not caught in traps. The party was terminated by
+a hog-baiting exhibition, in which dogs were used
+to worry the captive pigs, after the latter were
+tied by one leg to a stake. When the pigs were
+sufficiently infuriated, the entertainment concluded
+with letting them loose through the camp, in
+order, as Ranjit said, "that men might praise his
+humanity."</p>
+
+<p>Such episodes, however they might beguile the
+journey to the Afghan frontier, belong to other
+histories than that of Afghan exploration, and little
+more need be said of Burnes' experiences before
+reaching the Afghan city of Peshawar, than that he
+experienced very different treatment <i>en route</i> to
+that which made Moorcroft's journey both perilous
+and disheartening. In Peshawar the two brothers
+of Dost Mahomed Khan (Sultan Mahomed and
+Pir Mahomed) seem to have rivalled each other
+in courtly attentions to their guests, and Burnes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">457</a></span>
+was as much enchanted with this garden of the
+North-West as any traveller of to-day would be,
+provided that his visit were suitably timed. Burnes
+thus sums up his impression of Ranjit Singh: "I
+never quitted the presence of a native of Asia with
+such impressions as I left this man; without education,
+and without a guide, he conducts all the affairs
+of his kingdom with surpassing energy and vigour,
+and yet he wields his power with a moderation
+quite unprecedented in an Eastern prince."</p>
+
+<p>On leaving Lahore Burnes received this salutary
+advice from M. Court, packed in a French proverb,
+"Si tu veux vivre en paix en voyageant, fais en
+sorte de hurler comme les loups avec qui tu te
+trouves." And he set himself to conform to this
+text (and to the excellent sermon which accompanied
+it) with a determination which undoubtedly served
+as the foundation of his remarkable success as a
+traveller. It cannot be too often insisted that the
+experiences of intelligent and cultivated Europeans
+in the days of close association with the Asiatic led
+to an appreciation of native character and to an
+intimacy with native methods, which is only to be
+found in India now amongst missionaries and police
+officers, if it is to be found at all. But even with
+all the advantages possessed by such experiences as
+those of Burnes and of the intrepid school of Asiatic
+travellers of his time, it required an intuitive discernment
+almost amounting to genius to detect the
+motive springs of Eastern political action.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">458</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It may be doubted (as Masson doubted) whether
+to the day of his death Burnes himself quite understood
+either the Afghan or the Sikh. But he
+vigorously conformed to native usages in all outward
+show: "We threw away all our European clothes
+and adopted without reserve the costume of the
+Asiatic. We gave away our tents, beds, and boxes,
+and broke our tables and chairs&mdash;a blanket serves
+to cover the saddle and to sleep under.... The
+greater portion of my now limited wardrobe found
+a place in the 'kurjin.' A single mule carried the
+whole of the baggage." Armed with letters of
+introduction from a holy man (Fazl Haq), who
+boasted a horde of disciples in Bokhara, and with
+all the graceful good wishes which an Afghan potentate
+knows how to bestow, Burnes left Peshawar
+and the two Afghan sirdars, and started for Kabul.
+It is instructive to note that he avoided the Khaibar
+route, which had an evil reputation.</p>
+
+<p>It would be interesting to trace Burnes' route
+from Peshawar to Bokhara, <i>via</i> Kabul and Bamian,
+were it not that we are dealing with ground already
+sufficiently well discussed in these pages. Moreover,
+Burnes travelled to Kabul in company which
+permitted him to make little or no use of his
+opportunities for original geographical research.
+After he left Kabul the vicissitudes and difficulties
+that beset him were only such as might be experienced
+by any recognised official political mission,
+and he experienced none of the vexatious opposition
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">459</a></span>
+and delay which was so fatal to Moorcroft. <i>En
+route</i> he passed through Bamian, Haibak, Khulm,
+and Balkh; he visited Kunduz, and identified the
+tomb of Trebeck at Mazar; and by the light of a
+brilliant moon he stood by the grave of Moorcroft,
+which he found under a wall outside the city, apart
+from the Mussulman cemeteries. The three days
+passed at Balkh were assiduously employed in local
+investigation and the collection of coins and relics.
+He found coins, or tokens, dating from early Persian
+occupation to the Mogul dynasties, and he notes the
+size of the bricks and their shape, which he describes
+as oblong approaching to square; but he mentions
+no inscriptions.</p>
+
+<p>At this time Balkh was in the hands of the
+Bokhara chief, and Burnes was already in Bokhara
+territory. The journey across the plains to the
+Oxus was made on camels, Burnes being seated
+in a kajawa, and balancing his servant on the other
+side. It was slow, but it gave him the opportunity
+of overlooking the broad Oxus plain and noting
+the general accuracy of the description given of
+it by Quintus Curtius. As they approached the
+Oxus it was found necessary to employ a Turkman
+guard. Burnes does not say from what
+Turkman tribe his guard was taken, but from his
+description of them, their dress, equipment, and
+steeds, they were clearly men of the same Ersari
+tribe that was found fifty years later in the same
+neighbourhood by the Russo-Afghan Boundary
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">460</a></span>
+Commission. "They rode good horses and were
+armed with a sword and long spear. They were
+not encumbered with shields and powder-horns like
+other Asiatics, and only a few had matchlocks....
+They never use more than a single rein, which sets
+off their horses to advantage."</p>
+
+<p>On the banks of the river they halted near
+the small village of Khwaja Salar. This was the
+same place evidently that Moorcroft visited, and
+which he described as destroyed in a raid; and
+it was here that Burnes made use of the peculiar
+horse-drawn ferry which has already been described.
+Fifty years later the ferry was at Kilif, and nothing
+was to be found of the "village" of Khwaja
+Salar. Burnes' astonishment at the quaint, but
+most efficient, method of utilizing the power of
+swimming horses to haul the great ferry-boats has
+been shared by every one who has seen them
+since; but he noted a fact which has not been
+observed by other travellers, viz. that <i>any</i> horse
+was taken for the purpose, no matter whether
+trained or not; and he states that the horses
+were yoked to the boat by a rope fixed to the
+hair of the mane. If so, this method was improved
+on during the next half-century, for the rope is
+now attached to a surcingle. "One of the boats
+was dragged over by two of our jaded ponies; and
+the vessel which attempted to follow us without
+them was carried so far down the stream as to
+detain us a whole day on the banks till it could be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">461</a></span>
+brought up to the camp of our caravan." The
+river at this point is about 800 yards wide, and
+runs at the rate of three to four miles an hour.
+The crossing was effected in fifteen minutes. Burnes
+adds: "I see nothing to prevent the general adoption
+of this expeditious mode of crossing a river.... I
+had never before seen the horse converted to such
+a use; and in my travels through India I had always
+considered that noble animal as a great encumbrance
+in crossing a river." And yet after two centuries of
+military training in the plains of India, we English
+have not yet arrived at this economical use of this
+great motive power always at our command in a
+campaign!</p>
+
+<p>After passing the Oxus the chief interest of
+Burnes' story commences. His life at Bokhara
+and his subsequent journey through the Turkman
+deserts to Persia form a record which, combined
+with his own physical capability, his energy, and
+his unfailing tact, good humour, and modesty,
+stamp him as one of the greatest of English
+travellers. His name has its own high place in
+geographical annals. We shall never cease to
+admire the traveller, whatever we may think of
+the diplomat. But once over the Oxus his story
+hardly concerns the gates of India. He was beyond
+them, he had passed through, and was now on the
+far landward side, still on a road to India; but it
+is a road over which it no longer concerns us to
+follow him.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">462</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<p class="center">THE GATES OF GHAZNI&mdash;VIGNE</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Amongst original explorers of Afghanistan place
+must be found for G. T. Vigne, who made in 1836
+a venturesome, and, as it proved, a most successful
+exploration of the Gomul route from the Indus to
+Ghazni. Vigne was not a professional geographer
+so much as a botanist and geologist, and the value
+of his work lies chiefly in the results of his
+researches in those two branches of science,
+although he has left on record a map of his journey
+which quite sufficiently illustrates his route. He
+had previously visited Ladak (Little Tibet) and
+Kashmir, and had made passing acquaintance with
+the Chief of the Punjab, Ranjit Singh, in whose
+service foreigners found honourable employment.
+Masson was in the field at the same time as Vigne,
+and the success of his antiquarian researches in
+Northern Afghanistan, as well as those of Honigberger
+and other archæologists during the time
+that Dost Mahomed ruled in Kabul, and whilst
+the Amir's brother, Jabar Khan, befriended
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">463</a></span>
+Europeans, indicated a very different political atmosphere
+from that which has subsequently clouded
+the Afghan horizon, so far as European travellers
+are concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Vigne found no difficulty whatever in passing
+through Punjab territory to the Indus Valley near
+Dera Ismail Khan, where he joined a Lohani
+khafila which was making its annual journey to
+Ghazni with a valuable stock of merchandise consisting
+chiefly of English goods. In the genial
+month of May the khafila left Draband and took
+the world-old Gomul route through the frontier hills
+to the central uplands of Afghanistan. The heat
+must have been awful, and as Vigne lived the life
+of the Lohani merchants, and shared their primitive
+shelter from day to day, it is not surprising that
+we find him complaining gently of the climate.
+The Lohanis treated him with the utmost kindness
+and consideration from first to last; and the story
+of his travels is in pleasing contrast to the tale told
+by Masson about the same time, of his adventures
+on the Kandahar side. This was due chiefly, no
+doubt, to Vigne's success as a doctor. It is always
+the doctors who make the best way amongst
+uncivilized peoples, and India especially (or rather
+the British Raj in India) owes almost as much to
+doctors as to politicians. There is also a fellow-feeling
+which binds together travellers of all sorts
+and conditions when bound for the same bourne,
+taking together the same risks, experiencing the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">464</a></span>
+same trials and difficulties, and enjoying unrestrained
+intercourse. This kind of fellowship is
+world wide. One can trace a genial spirit of
+<i>camaraderie</i> pervading the wanderings of Chinese
+pilgrims, the tracks of mediæval Arab merchants,
+the ways of modern missionaries, or the ocean paths
+of sailors. Once on the move, with the sweet influences
+of primitive nature pervading earth and air
+around, we may find, even in these days, that the
+Afghan becomes quite a sociable companion, and
+that he is to be trusted so far as he gives his word.</p>
+
+<p>Vigne seems to have had no trouble whatever
+except such as arose from the persistent neglect
+of his medical instructions in cases of severe illness.
+As the khafila followed the Gomul River closely, it
+was, of course, subject to attack from the irrepressible
+Waziris on its flank, and had to pay heavy
+duties to the Suliman Khel Ghilzais as soon as it
+touched their country. There is little change in
+these respects since 1836, except that the Gomul
+route has been made plain and easy through
+the first bands of frontier hills till it reaches the
+plateau, and the Waziris are under better control.
+The interest of the journey lies in that section of
+it which connects Domandi (the junction of the
+Gomul and the Kundar Rivers) with Ghazni. This
+central part of Afghanistan has never yet been
+surveyed. From the Takht-i-Suliman a few peaks
+have been indifferently fixed on the ridges which
+form the divide between the Gomul and the Ghazni
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">465</a></span>
+drainage, but the hilly country beyond, stretching
+to the Ghazni plain, is absolutely unreconnoitred.
+We have still to appeal to Broadfoot and Vigne for
+geographical authority in these regions, although
+native information (but not native surveyors) has
+furnished details of a route which sufficiently
+corresponds with that of both these enterprising
+travellers.</p>
+
+<p>There is some confusion about dates in Vigne's
+account, but it appears that the khafila reached
+the Sarwandi Pass (which he calls Sir-i-koll&mdash;7200
+feet) over the central divide on the 12th June,
+and thence descended into the Kattawaz country
+on the Ghazni side of this central water-parting.
+About this region we have no accurate geographical
+knowledge. Beyond the Sarwandi ridge, and
+intervening between it and Ghazni, is a secondary
+pass, called Gazdarra in our maps, crossing a ridge
+near the northern foot of which is Dihsai (the
+nearest approach to Vigne's Dshara), which was
+reached by Vigne on the 16th June. Probably the
+two names represent the same place.</p>
+
+<p>Vigne's description of the central Sarwandi ridge
+corresponds generally with what we know in other
+parts of the nature of those long sweeping folds
+which traverse the central plateau from north-east
+to south-west, preserving more or less a direction
+parallel to the frontier. He writes of it as a
+broken and tumbled mass of sandstone, but about
+"Dshara" he speaks of gently undulating hills
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">466</a></span>
+exhibiting small peaks of limestone and denuded
+patches of shingle. Between the Sarwandi and
+the Dshara ridge the plain was covered with
+glittering sand and was sweet with the scent of
+wild thyme. Somewhere on the "level-topped"
+Sarwandi ridge there was said to be the ruins of an
+ancient city called Zohaka, with gates of burnt brick,
+which Vigne did not see, but in his map he
+indicates a position for it a long way to the east
+of the ridge. It is quite probable that the ruins
+of more than one ancient city are to be found in
+the neighbourhood of this very ancient highway.
+Ancient as it is, however, it formed no part of the
+mediæval commercial system of the Arabs&mdash;a
+system which apparently did not include the frontier
+passes into India; and I have failed to identify
+Vigne's Zohaka with any previous indications.
+These uplands to the south of Ghazni evidently
+partake of the general characteristics of the
+Wardak and Logar Valleys beyond them, intervening
+between Ghazni and Kabul. Vigne was
+enchanted with the prospect around him, and with
+the clear sweet atmosphere filled with the aroma of
+wild thyme, wormwood, and the scented willow.
+It has charmed many a weary soldier since his
+time.</p>
+
+<p>At Dshara, finding that the Lohani khafila was
+not going to Ghazni but intended to follow a
+straighter route to Kabul, whilst at the same time a
+very ready and profitable business was being done in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">467</a></span>
+the well-populated valleys around, Vigne set off by
+himself with one Kizzilbash guide for Ghazni. He
+says many hard things of the Lohanis for breaking
+their promise of escort to Ghazni, remarks which
+seem scarcely to accord with his free acknowledgments
+of their great kindness to him elsewhere.
+As the opinion of so observant a traveller, sharing the
+trials of the road with a band of native merchants,
+is always interesting when it concerns the company
+with which he was associated, I will quote his
+opinion of the Lohanis. "Taking them altogether,
+I look on the Lohanis as the most respectable of
+the Mahomedans and the most worthy of the
+notice and assistance of our countrymen. The
+Turkish gentleman is said to be a man of his word;
+he must be an enviable exception; but I otherwise
+solemnly believe that there is not a Mahomedan&mdash;Sunni
+or Shiah&mdash;between Constantinople and
+Yarkand who would hesitate to cheat a Feringi,
+Frank or European, and who would not lie and
+scheme and try to deceive when the temptation was
+worth his doing so," etc. This, of course, includes
+the Lohanis.</p>
+
+<p>At Ghazni, Vigne found a servant of Moorcroft's,
+who gave him interesting information about the
+travels of that unfortunate explorer; and he takes
+some useful notes of the present military position
+and former condition of that city before its utter
+destruction by Allah-u-din, Ghuri. He determined
+to depart somewhat from the regular route to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">468</a></span>
+Kabul, and diverged from the straight road which
+runs to the Sher-i-dahan in order to visit the "bund-i-sultan,"
+or reservoir, which had been constructed
+by Mahmud on the Ghazni River for the proper
+water-supply of the town in its palmy days. As
+his last day's travel took him to Lungar and Maidan
+before reaching Kabul he evidently made a considerable
+detour westward. He inspected a copper
+mine (with which he was greatly disappointed) at
+a place called Shibar <i>en route</i>. To reach Shibar
+he made a long day's march from Ser-ab (? Sar-i-ab),
+near the head of the Logar River. It is difficult
+to trace this part of his route by the light of the
+map which he borrowed from Honigberger. He
+clearly followed up the Ghazni River nearly to its
+source, and then struck across to the head of the
+Logar, where he correctly places Ser-ab, and where
+he found an agent of Masson's engaged in excavating
+a tope. He next visited Shibar, and finally
+marched by Lungar to Maidan and Kabul. He
+must, therefore, have crossed the divide between the
+Ghazni River and the Logar, but we fail to follow
+him to the Shibar copper mine.</p>
+
+<p>Shibar is the name of the pass which divides the
+Turkistan drainage from the Ghorband, or Kabul,
+system; but it would be totally impracticable to
+reach that point in a day's excursion from Ser-ab.
+We must, therefore, conclude that there is another
+Shibar somewhere, undetected by our surveyors.</p>
+
+<p>At Kabul he received a hospitable welcome from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">469</a></span>
+the Nawab Jabar Khan, brother of the Amir Dost
+Mahomed, and here he fell in with Masson. We
+need not trace his journey farther, for his subsequent
+footsteps only followed the well-worn tracks
+to the Punjab. To Vigne we owe a vague
+reference to a yet earlier English traveller in
+Afghanistan, one Hicks, who died and was buried
+near the Peshawar gate of the old city. The
+inscription on his tomb in English was&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<span class="smcap">Hicks, son of William and Elizabeth Hicks,</span></p>
+
+<p>and Vigne adds that "by its date he must have
+lived a hundred and fifty years ago." This is the
+earliest record we have of an English traveller
+reaching Kabul, and it is strange that nothing is
+known about Hicks, who certainly could not have
+inscribed his own epitaph! The remarkable feature
+about the tomb is that such a memorial of a
+Christian burial should have remained so long
+unmolested in a Moslem country. No vestige of
+the tomb was discovered during the occupation of
+Kabul in 1879-80.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">470</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<p class="center">ENGLISH OFFICIAL EXPLORATION&mdash;BROADFOOT</p>
+
+<p class="p2">In the year 1839 and in the month of October
+Lieut. J. S. Broadfoot of the Indian Engineers
+made a memorable excursion across Central Afghanistan,
+intervening between Ghazni and the Indus
+Valley, which resulted in the acquisition of much
+information about one of the gates of India which
+is too little known. No one has followed his tracks
+since with any means of making a better reconnaissance,
+nor has any one added much to the information
+obtained by him. It is true that Vigne had
+been over the ground before him, but there is no
+comparison between the use which Broadfoot made
+of his opportunities and the geography which Vigne
+secured. Both took their lives in their hands, but
+Vigne passed along with his Lohani khafila in days
+preceding the British occupation of Afghanistan.
+There was no fanatical hostility displayed towards
+him. On the contrary, his medical profession was a
+recommendation which won him friends and good
+fellowship all along the line. A few years had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">471</a></span>
+much changed the national (if one can use such a
+word with regard to Afghanistan) feeling towards
+the European. From day to day, and almost from
+hour to hour, Broadfoot felt that his life hung on
+the chances of the moment. He was told by friends
+and enemies alike that he would most certainly be
+killed. Yet he survived to do good service in
+other fields, and to maintain the reputation of that
+most distinguished branch of the military service,
+the Indian Engineers. Broadfoot was but typical of
+his corps, even in the scientific ability displayed in
+his researches, the clearness and the soundness of
+the views he expresses, the determined pluck of his
+enterprise, and his knowledge of native life and
+character. Durand, North, Leach, and Broadfoot
+were Lieutenants of Engineers at the same time,
+and their reports and their work are all historical
+records.</p>
+
+<p>Previously to his start on the Gomul reconnaissance
+Broadfoot had the opportunity of reconnoitring
+much of the country to the south of Ghazni bordering
+the Kandahar-Ghazni route. He had, therefore,
+a very fair acquaintance with the people with
+whom he had to deal, and a fairly well fixed point
+of departure for his work. His methods were the
+time-honoured methods of many past generations
+of explorers. He took his bearings with the
+prismatic compass, and he reckoned his distance by
+the mean values obtained from three men pacing.
+Consequently, he could not pretend, in such
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">472</a></span>
+circumstances as he was placed (being hardly able to
+leave his tent in spite of his disguise), to complete
+much in the way of topography; but his clear
+description of the ground he passed over, and the
+people he passed amongst, furnishes nearly all that
+is necessary to enable us to realise the practical
+value and the political difficulty of that important
+line of communication with Central Afghanistan.</p>
+
+<p>From Ghazni southwards to Pannah there is
+nothing but open plain. From near Pannah to the
+Sarwandi Pass, which crosses the main divide (the
+Kohnak range) between the Helmund and the
+Indus basins, there is much of the ridge and furrow
+formation which distinguishes the north-western
+frontier, the alignment of the ridges being from
+N.E. to S.W., but the Gazdarra Pass over the
+Kattawaz ridge is not formidable, and the road
+along the plain of Kattawaz is open. In Kattawaz
+were groups of villages, denoting a settled population,
+and as much cultivation as might be possible
+amidst a lawless, crop-destroying, and raiding generation
+of Ghilzais.</p>
+
+<p>"Kattasang, as viewed from Dand" (on the
+northern side) "appears a mass of undulating hills,
+and as bare as a desert; it is the resort in summer
+of some pastoral families of Suliman Khels."
+Approaching the main divide of Sarwandi by the
+Sargo Pass two forts are passed near Sargo, which
+sufficiently well illustrate the characteristics of perpetual
+feud common to clans or families of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">473</a></span>
+Ghilzai fraternity. The forts are close to each other;
+one of them is known as Ghlo kala (thieves' fort),
+but they are probably both equally worthy of the
+name. The inhabitants of these forts absolutely
+destroyed each other in a family feud, so that
+nothing now remains. Their very waters have
+dried up.</p>
+
+<p>Near the Sargo, on the Ghazni side of the
+Sarwandi Pass, is Schintza, at which place Vigne
+also halted, and from Schintza commences the
+real ascent to the Sarwandi. The ascent, and
+indeed the crossing altogether, are described by
+Broadfoot as easy. Vigne does not say much about
+this. From the foot of the Sarwandi one branch of
+the Gomul takes off, and from that point to the
+Indus the great trade route practically follows the
+Gomul on a gradually descending grade. It is a
+stony, rough, and broken hill route, now expanding
+into a broad track of river-bed, now contracting into
+a cliff-bordered gully, occasionally leaving the river
+and running parallel over adjoining cliffs, but more
+often involving the worry of perpetual crossing and
+re-crossing of the stream. Here and there is an
+expansion (such as the "flower-bed," Gulkatz) into
+a reed-covered flat, and occasionally there occurs a
+level open border space which the blackened stones
+of previous khafilas denote as a camping-ground.
+Wild and dreary, carving its way beneath the heat-cracked
+and rain-seared foot-hills of Waziristan,
+strewn with stones and boulders, and disfigured by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">474</a></span>
+leprous outbreaks of streaky white efflorescence, the
+Gomul in the hot weather is not an attractive river.
+In flood-time it is dangerous, and it is in the hottest
+of the hot weather months that the route is fullest
+of the moving khafila crowds.</p>
+
+<p>In Broadfoot's time the worst part of the route
+was between the plateau and the Indus plains.
+This is no longer so, for a trade-developing and
+road-making Government has made the rough
+places plain, and engineered a first-class high-road
+thus far. And there is this to be noted
+about that section of it which still lies beyond the
+ken of the frontier officer and which as yet the
+surveyor has not mapped. Not a single camel-load
+in Broadfoot's khafila had to be shifted on account
+of the roughness of the route between Ghazni and
+the Indus, and not a space of any great length
+occurred over which guns might not easily pass.
+The drawback to the route as a high-road for trade
+has ever been the blackmailing propensities of
+Waziris and cognate tribes who flank the route on
+either side. Broadfoot's khafila lost no less than
+100 men in transit; but this was at a time when
+the country was generally disturbed. In more
+peaceful days previously Vigne refers to constant
+losses both of men and property, but to nothing
+like so great an extent.</p>
+
+<p>Broadfoot still stands for our authority in all
+that pertains to the central Afghan tribes-people&mdash;chiefly
+the Suliman Khel clan of Ghilzais&mdash;who
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">475</a></span>
+occupy the Highlands between Waziristan
+and Ghazni. Under the iron heel of the late
+Amir of Afghanistan no doubt much of their
+turbulent and feud-loving propensities has been
+repressed, and with its repression has followed a
+development of agriculture, and a general improvement
+throughout the favoured districts of Kattawaz
+and the Ghazni plain. Here the climate is exceptionally
+invigorating, and much of the sweet
+landscape beauty of the adjoining districts of Wardak
+and Logar (two of the loveliest valleys of Afghanistan)
+is evidently repeated. Several fine rivers
+traverse these uplands, the Jilgu and the Dwa
+Gomul (both rising from the central divide near to
+the sources of the Tochi) having much local reputation,
+and claiming a crude sort of reverence from
+the wild tribes of the plateau which is only accorded
+to the gifts of Allah. The Suliman Khel are not
+nomads&mdash;though like all Afghans they love tents&mdash;and
+their villages, clinging to wall-sides or clustering
+round a central tower, are well built and often
+exceedingly picturesque. The Ghilzai skill at the
+construction of these underground irrigation channels
+called karez is famous throughout Afghanistan. It
+is, however, the more westerly clans who especially
+excel in the development of water-supply. The
+Suliman Khel and the Nasirs take more kindly to
+the khafila and "povindah" form of life, and this
+Gomul route is the very backbone of their existence.
+It is a pity that we know so little about it.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">476</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<p class="center">FRENCH EXPLORATION&mdash;FERRIER</p>
+
+<p class="p2">Amongst modern explorers of Afghanistan who
+have earned distinction by their capacity for single-handed
+geographical research and ability in recording
+their experiences, the French officer M.
+Ferrier is one of the most interesting and one of
+the most disappointing. He is interesting in all
+that relates to the historical and political aspects of
+Afghanistan at a date when England was specially
+concerned with that country, and so far and so long
+as his footsteps can now be traced with certainty
+on our recent maps, he is clearly to be credited
+with powers of accurate observation and a fairly
+retentive memory. It is just where, as a geographer,
+he leaves the known for the unknown, and makes
+a plunge into a part of the country which no
+European has actually traversed before or since,
+that he becomes disappointing. He is the only
+known wanderer from the west who has traversed
+the uplands of the Firozkohi plateau from north to
+south; and it is just that region of the Upper
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">477</a></span>
+Murghab basin which our surveyors were unable to
+reach during the progress of the Russo-Afghan
+Boundary mapping. The rapidity of the movements
+of the Commission when once it got to work
+precluded the possibility, with only a weak staff of
+topographers, of detailing native assistants to map
+every corner of that most interesting district, and
+naturally the more important section of the country
+received the first attention. But they closed round
+it so nearly as to leave but little room for pure
+conjecture, and it is quite possible to verify by
+local evidence the facts stated by Ferrier, if not
+actually to trace out his route and map it.</p>
+
+<p>M. Ferrier's career was a sufficiently remarkable
+one. He served with the French army in Africa,
+and was delegated with other officers to organise
+the Persian army. Here he was regarded by the
+Russian Ambassador as hostile to Russian interests,
+and the result was his return to France in 1843,
+where he obtained no satisfaction for his grievances.
+Deciding to take service with the Punjab Government
+under the Regency which succeeded Ranjit
+Singh, he left France for Bagdad and set out from
+that city in 1845 for a journey through Persia and
+Afghanistan to India.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrier reached Herat seven years after the siege
+of that place by the Persians, and four years after the
+British evacuation of Afghanistan, and his story of
+interviews with that wily politician, Yar Mahomed
+Khan, are most entertaining. It is satisfactory to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">478</a></span>
+note that the English left on the whole a good
+reputation behind them. His attempt to reach
+Lahore <i>via</i> Balkh and Kabul was frustrated, and he
+was forced off the line of route connecting Balkh
+with Kabul at what was then the Afghan frontier.
+It was at this period of his travels that his records
+become most interesting, as he was compelled to
+pass through the Hazara country to the west of
+Kabul by an unknown route not exactly recognisable,
+crossing the Firozkohi plateau and descending
+through the Taimani country to Ghur. From Ghur
+he was sent back to Herat, and so ended a very
+remarkable tour through an absolutely unexplored
+part of Afghanistan. His final effort to reach the
+Punjab by the already well-worn roads which lead
+by Kandahar and Shikarpur was unsuccessful. Considering
+the risks of the journey, it was a surprising
+attempt. It was in the course of this adventure that
+he came across some of the ill-starred remnants of
+the disasters which attended the British arms during
+the evacuation of Afghanistan. There were apparently
+Englishmen in captivity in other parts of
+Afghanistan than the north, and the fate of those
+unfortunate victims to the extraordinary combination
+of political and military blundering which marked
+those eventful years is left to conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>Such in brief outline was the story of Afghan
+exploration as it concerned this gallant French
+officer, and from it we obtain some useful geographical
+and antiquarian suggestions. The province
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">479</a></span>
+of Herat he regards as coincident with the Aria
+of the Greek historians, and the Aria metropolis
+(or Artakoana) he considers might be represented
+either by Kuhsan or by Herat itself. He expends
+a little useless argument in refuting the common
+Afghan tradition that any part of modern Herat
+was built by Alexander. Between the twelfth
+century and the commencement of the seventeenth
+Herat has been sacked and rebuilt at least seven
+times, and its previous history must have involved
+many other radical changes since the days of Alexander.
+It is, however, probable that the city has
+been built time after time on the site which it now
+occupies, or very near it. The vast extent of
+mounds and other evidences of ancient occupation
+to the north of it, together with its very obvious
+strategic importance, give this position a precedence
+in the district which could never have been overlooked
+by any conqueror; but the other cities of
+Greek geography, Sousa and Candace, are not so
+easy to place. Ferrier may be right in his suggestion
+that Tous (north-west of Mashad) represents
+the Greek Sousa, but he is unable to place Candace.
+To the west of Herat are three very ancient sites,
+Kardozan, Zindajan (which Ferrier rightly identified
+with the Arab city of Bouchinj), and Kuhsan, and
+Candace might have stood where any of them now
+stand.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrier's description of Herat and its environment
+fully sustains Sir Henry Rawlinson's opinion
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">480</a></span>
+of him as an observant traveller. For a simple
+soldier of fortune he displays remarkable erudition,
+as well as careful observation, and there is hardly a
+suggestion which he makes about the Herat of
+1845 which subsequent examination did not justify
+in 1885. It was the custom during the residence of
+the English Mission under Major d'Arcy Todd in
+Herat for some, at least, of the leading Afghan chiefs
+to accept invitations to dinner with the English
+officers, a custom which promoted a certain amount
+of mutual good-fellowship between Afghans and
+English, of which the effects had not worn off when
+Ferrier was there. When, finally, Yar Mahomed was
+convinced that Ferrier had no ulterior political
+motive for his visit, and was persuaded to let him
+proceed on his journey, a final dinner was arranged,
+at which Ferrier was the principal guest. It appears
+to have been a success. "At the close of the repast
+the guests were incapable of sitting upright, and at
+two in the morning I left these worthy Mussulmans
+rolling on the carpet! The following day I prepared
+for my departure." In 1885 manners and methods
+had changed for the better. The English officers
+employed on the reorganisation of the defences of
+the city were occasionally entertained at modest
+tea-parties by the Afghan military commandant, but
+no such rollicking proceedings as those recounted
+by Ferrier would ever have been countenanced;
+and it must be confessed that Ferrier's accounts,
+both here and elsewhere, of the social manners and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">481</a></span>
+customs of the Afghan people are a little difficult
+to accept without reservation. We must, however,
+make allowances for the times and the loose quality
+of Afghan government. He left Herat by the
+northerly route, passing Parwana, the Baba Pass,
+and the Kashan valley to Bala Murghab and
+Maimana.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrier has much to say that is interesting
+about the tribal communities through which he
+passed, especially about the Chahar Aimak, or
+wandering tent-living tribes, which include the
+Hazaras, Jamshidis, Taimanis, and Firozkohis.
+He is, I think, the first to draw attention to the
+fact that the Firozkohis are of Persian origin, a
+people whose forefathers were driven by Tamerlane
+into the mountains south of Mazanderan, and were
+eventually transported into the Herat district.
+They spring from several different Persian tribes,
+and take the name Firozkohi from "a village in the
+neighbourhood of which they were surrounded and
+captured." The origin of the name Ferozkohi has
+always been something of a geographical puzzle,
+and it is doubtful whether there was ever a city
+originally of that name in Afghanistan, although it
+may have been applied to the chief habitat of this
+agglomeration of Persian refugees and colonists.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrier's account of his progress includes no
+geographical data worthy of remark. Politically,
+this part of Afghan Turkistan has remained much
+the same during the last seventy years, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">482</a></span>
+geographically one can only say that his account of
+the route is generally correct, although it indicates
+that it is compiled from memory. For instance,
+there is a steep watershed to be crossed between
+Torashekh and Mingal, but it is not of the nature
+of a "rugged mountain," nor could there have ever
+been space enough for the extent of cultivation
+which he describes in the Murghab valley. He is
+very much at fault in his description of the road
+from Nimlik (which he calls Meilik) to Balkh. The
+hills are on the right (not left) of the road, and
+are much higher than those previously described
+as rugged mountains. No water from these hills
+could possibly reach the road, for there is a canal
+between them, the overflow of which, however,
+might possibly swamp the road. Balkh hardly
+responds to his description of it. There is no
+mosque to the north of Balkh, nor is the citadel
+square.</p>
+
+<p>The road from Khulm to Bamian passes through
+Tashkurghan (which is due east of Mazar&mdash;not
+south) and Haibak, and changes very much in character
+before reaching Haibak. From Haibak to
+Kuram the description of the road is fairly correct,
+but no amount of research on the part of later
+surveyors has revealed the position of "Kartchoo"
+(which apparently means locally a market); nor
+could Ferrier possibly have encountered snow in
+July on any part of this route, even if he saw any.
+We must, however, consider the conditions under
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">483</a></span>
+which he was travelling, and make allowances
+for the impossibility of keeping anything of the
+nature of a systematic record. At Kuram, a well-known
+point above Haibak on the road to Kabul,
+he reached the Uzbek frontier. Beyond this point&mdash;into
+Afghanistan&mdash;no Uzbek would venture, and
+it was impossible to proceed farther on the direct
+route to Kabul. Yielding to the pressure of friendly
+advice, he made a retrograde detour to Saripul,
+through districts occupied by Hazaras, and "Kartchoo"
+was but a nomadic camp that he encountered
+during his first day out from Kuram. Clearly he
+was making for the Yusuf Darra route to Saripul;
+and his next camp, Dehao, marks the river. It may
+possibly be the point marked Dehi on modern maps.
+At Saripul he was not only well received by the
+Uzbek Governor, Mahomed Khan, but the extraordinary
+influence which this man possessed with
+the Hazaras, Firozkohis, and other Aimak tribes of
+northern Afghanistan enabled Ferrier to procure
+food and horses at irregular stages which carried
+him to Ghur in the Taimani land.</p>
+
+<p>It is this part of Ferrier's journey which is so
+tantalizing and so difficult to follow. He must have
+travelled both far and fast. Leaving Saripul on
+July 11, he rode "ten parasangs," over country
+very varied in character, to Boodhi. Now this
+country has been surveyed, and there can be no
+reasonable doubt about the route he took southwards.
+But no such place as Boodhi has ever
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">484</a></span>
+been identified, nor have the remarkable sculptures
+which were observed <i>en route</i>, fashioned on an
+"enormous block of rock," been found again,
+although careful inquiries were made about them.
+They may, of course, have been missed, and information
+may have been purposely withheld, for
+geographical surveys do not permit of lengthy halts
+for inquiry on any line of route. Ferrier's description
+of them is so full of detail that it is difficult
+to believe that it is imaginary. He mentions that
+on the plain on which Boodhi stood, "two parasangs
+to the right," there were the "ruins of a
+large town," which might very possibly be the
+ruins identified by Imam Sharif (a surveyor of the
+Afghan Boundary Commission), and which would
+fix the position of "Boodhi" somewhere near
+Belchirag on the main route southward to Ghur.
+Belchirag is about 55 miles from Saripul. The
+next day's ride must have carried him into the
+valley of the Upper Murghab on the Firozkohi
+plateau, crossing the Band-i-Turkistan <i>en route</i>,
+and it was here that he met with such a remarkable
+welcome at the fortress of Dev Hissar.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrier describes the valley of the Upper
+Murghab in terms of rapture which appear to be
+a trifle extravagant to those who know that country.
+No systematic survey of it, however, has ever
+been possible, and to this day the position of Dev
+Hissar is a matter of conjecture, and the charming
+manners of its inhabitants (so unlike the ordinary
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">485</a></span>
+rough hospitality of the men and the unobtrusive
+character of the women of the Firozkohi Aimak)
+are experiences such as our surveyors sighed for
+in vain! As a mere guess, I should be inclined
+to place Dev Hissar near Kila Gaohar, or to
+identify it with that fort. At any rate, I prefer
+this solution of the puzzle to the suggestion that
+Dev Hissar and its delightful inhabitants, like the
+previous sculptures, were but an effort of imagination
+on the part of this volatile and fascinating
+Frenchman.</p>
+
+<p>There is always an element of suspicion as to
+the value of Ferrier's information when he deals
+with the feminine side of Hazara human nature.
+For instance, he asserts that the Hazara women
+fight in their tribal battles side by side with their
+husbands. This is a feature in their character for
+independence which the Hazara men absolutely
+deny, and it is hardly necessary to add that no
+confirmation could be obtained anywhere of the
+remarkable familiarity with which the ladies of
+Hissar are said by Ferrier customarily to treat
+their guests.</p>
+
+<p>The next long day's ride terminated at Singlak
+(another unknown place), which was found deserted
+owing to a feud between the Hazaras and Firozkohis.
+It was evidently within the Murghab basin and
+short of the crest of the line of watershed bordering
+the Hari Rud valley on the north, for the
+following day Ferrier crossed these hills, and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">486</a></span>
+Hari Rud valley beneath them (avoiding Daolatyar),
+at a point which he fixes as "six parasangs S.W.
+of Sheherek." Again it is impossible to locate the
+position. Kila Safarak is at the head of the Hari
+Rud, and Kila Shaharak is in another valley (that
+of the Tagao Ishlan), so that it will perhaps be
+safe to assume that it was nowhere near either of
+these places, but at a point some 10 miles west of
+Daolatyar, which marks the regular route for Ghur
+from the north.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrier's description of this part of his journey
+is vague and unsatisfactory. No such place as
+Kohistani, "situated on a high plain in the midst
+of the Siah Koh," is known any more than is
+Singlak. The divide, or ridge, which he crossed
+in passing from the Murghab valley to the narrow
+trough of the Hari Rud is lower than the hills on
+the south of the river. He could not possibly
+have crossed snow nor overlooked the landscape
+to Saripul. It is doubtful if Chalapdalan, the
+mountain which impressed him so mightily, is
+visible from any part of the broken watershed
+north of the Hari Rud. Chalapdalan is only
+13,600 feet high, and there would have been no
+snow on it in July. As we proceed farther we
+fail to identify Ferrier's Tingelab River, unless he
+means the Ab-i-lal. The Hari Rud does not flow
+through Shaharak, and no one has found a village
+called Jaor in the Hari Rud valley. Continuing to
+cross the Band-i-Baian (which he calls Siah Koh)
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">487</a></span>
+from Kohistani Baba, a very long day's ride brought
+him to Deria-dereh, also called "Dereh Mustapha
+Khan," which was evidently a place of importance
+and the headquarters of a powerful section of either
+Hazaras or Taimanis under a Chief, Mustapha Khan.
+Here, in a small oblong valley entirely closed by
+mountains, was a little lake of azure colour and
+transparent clearness which lay like a vast gem
+embedded in surrounding verdure ... "around
+which were somewhat irregularly pitched a number
+of Taimani tents, separated from each other by little
+patches of cultivation and gardens enclosed by stone
+walls breast high.... The luxuriance of the vegetation
+in this valley might compare with any that I
+had ever seen in Europe. On the summits of the
+surrounding mountains were several ruins, etc. etc."
+Ash and oak trees were there. Fishermen were
+dragging the lake, women were leading flocks to
+the water, and young girls sat outside the tents
+weaving bereks (barak, or camel-hair cloth), and
+contentment was depicted on every face.</p>
+
+<p>From Deria-dereh another long day's ride
+brought him to Zirni, which he describes as the
+ancient capital of Ghur. From the Band-i-Baian (or
+Koh Siah, as he calls it) to Zirni is at least 100
+miles by the very straightest road, and that would
+pass by Taiwara. It is clear that he did not take
+that road, or he could hardly have ignored so important
+a position as Taiwara. If he made a detour
+eastward he would pass through Hazara country&mdash;very
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">488</a></span>
+mountainous, very high and difficult, and the
+length of the two days' journey would be nearer
+150 miles than 100. To the first day's journey (as
+far as Deria-dereh) he gives ten hours on horseback,
+which in that country might represent 60 miles;
+but no such place as he describes, no lake with
+Arcadian surroundings, has been either seen or
+heard of by subsequent surveyors within the recognized
+limits of Taimani country. If it exists at
+all, it is to the east of the great watershed from
+which spring the Ghur River and the Farah Rud,
+hidden within the spurs of the Hazara mountains.
+This is just possible, for this wild and weatherbeaten
+country has not been so fully reconnoitred as that
+farther west; but it makes Ferrier's journey extraordinary
+for the distances covered, and fully accounts
+for the fact that he has preserved so little detail of
+this eventful ride that, practically, there is nothing
+of geographical interest to be learnt from it.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrier's description of the ruins which are to be
+found in the neighbourhood of Zirni and Taiwara,
+especially his reference to a "paved" road leading
+towards Ghazni, is very interesting. He is fully
+impressed with the beauty of the surrounding
+country, and what he has to say about this centre
+of an historical Afghan kingdom has been more
+or less confirmed by subsequent explorers. Only
+the "Ghebers" have disappeared; and the magnificent
+altitude of the "Chalap Dalan" mountain,
+described by him as one of the "highest in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">489</a></span>
+world," has been reduced to comparatively humble
+proportions. Its isolated position, however, undoubtedly
+entitles it to rank as a remarkable
+geographical feature.</p>
+
+<p>At Zirni Ferrier found that his further progress
+towards Kandahar was arrested, and from that
+point, to his bitter disgust, he was compelled to
+return to Herat. From Zirni to Herat was, in
+his day, an unmapped region, and he is the first
+European to give us even a glimpse of that
+once well-trodden highway. His conjectures
+about the origin of the Aimak tribes which
+people Central Afghanistan are worthy of study,
+as they are based on original inquiry from the
+people themselves; but it is very clear that
+either time has modified the manners of these
+people, or that popular sources of information are
+not always to be trusted. He repeats the story of
+the fighting propensities of Hazara women when
+dealing with the Taimanis, and adds, as regards
+the latter, that "a girl does not marry until she has
+performed some feat of arms." It may be that
+"feats of arms" are not so easy of achievement in
+these days, but it is certain that such an inducement
+to marry would fail to be effective now. It
+might even prove detrimental to a girl's chances.</p>
+
+<p>Once again we can only regard with astonishment
+Ferrier's record of a ride from "Tarsi" (Parsi) to
+Herat, at least 90 miles, in one night. A district
+Chief told Captain (now Colonel) the Hon. M. G.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">490</a></span>
+Talbot, who conducted the surveys of the country
+in 1883, that "a good Taimani on a good horse"
+might accomplish the feat, but that nobody else
+could. Ferrier, with his considerable escort, seemed
+to have found no difficulty, but undoubtedly he was
+in excellent training. His general description of
+the country that he passed through accords with the
+pace at which he swept through it, and nothing is
+to be gained by criticising his hasty observations.
+At Herat he was fortunate in securing the consent
+of Yar Mahomed Khan to his project for reaching
+the Punjab <i>via</i> Kandahar and Kabul; and with
+letters from that wily potentate to the Amir Dost
+Mahomed Khan and his son-in-law Mahomed Akbar
+Khan this "Lord of the Kingdom of France,
+General Ferrier" set out on another attempt to reach
+India. In this he was unsuccessful, and his path
+was a thorny one. He travelled by the road which
+had been adopted as the post-road between Herat
+and Kandahar, during the residence of the English
+Mission at Herat&mdash;a route which, leaving Farah
+to the west, approaches Kandahar by Washir and
+Girishk, and which is still undoubtedly the most
+direct road between the two capitals. But the
+particularly truculent character of the Durani Afghan
+tribes of Western Afghanistan rendered this journey
+most dangerous for a single European moving
+without an armed escort, and he was robbed and
+maltreated with fiendish persistency. It was a well-known
+and much-trodden old road, but it has always
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">491</a></span>
+been, and it is still, about the worst road in all
+Afghanistan for the fanatical unpleasantness of its
+Achakzai and Nurzai environment.</p>
+
+<p>After leaving Washir Ferrier was imprisoned at
+Mahmudabad, and again when he reached Girishk,
+and the story of the treatment he received at both
+places says much for the natural soundness of his
+constitution. Luckily he fell in with a friendly
+Munshi who had been in English service, who,
+whilst warning Ferrier that he might consider the
+position of his head on his shoulders as "wonderfully
+shaky," did a good deal to dissipate the
+notion that he was an English spy, and helped him
+through what was indeed a very tight place. It
+was at this point of his journey that Ferrier heard
+of an English prisoner in Zamindawar,&mdash;a traveller
+with "green eyes and red hair,"&mdash;and the fact that
+he actually received a note from this man (which
+he could not read as it was written in English)
+seems to confirm that fact. He could do nothing
+to help him, and no one knows what may have been
+the ultimate fate of this unfortunate captive.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrier is naturally indignant with Sir Alexander
+Burnes for describing the Afghans as "a sober,
+simple steady people" (Burnes' <i>Travels in Bokhara</i>,
+vol. i. pp. 143, 144). How Burnes could ever
+have arrived at such an extraordinary estimate of
+Afghan character is hard to imagine, and it says
+little for those perceptive faculties for which Masson
+has such contempt. But it not inaptly points the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">492</a></span>
+great contrast that does really exist between the
+Kabuli and the Kandahari to this day. When the
+English officers of the Afghan Boundary Commission
+in 1883 were occupied in putting Herat
+into a state of defence, their personal escort was
+carefully chosen from soldiers of the northern
+province, who, by no means either "sober or
+simple," were at any rate far less fanatical and
+truculent than the men of the west, and they were,
+on the whole, a pleasant and friendly contingent to
+deal with.</p>
+
+<p>At Girishk, and subsequently, Ferrier has certain
+geographical facts of interest to record. Some
+of them still want verification, but they are valuable
+indications. He notes the immense ruins and
+mounds on both sides the Helmund at Girishk.
+He was in confinement at Girishk for eight days,
+where he suffered much from "the vermin which I
+could not prevent from getting into my clothes, and
+the rattling of my inside from the scantiness of my
+daily ration." However, his trials came to an end
+at last, and he left Girishk "with a heart full of
+hatred for its inhabitants and a lively joy at his
+departure," fording the Helmund at some little
+distance from the town. He remarks on the vast
+ruins at Kushk-i-Nakhud, where there is a huge
+artificial mound. A similar one exists at Sangusar,
+about 3 miles south-east of Kushk-i-Nakhud. At
+Kandahar the final result of a short residence that
+was certainly full of lively incident, and an interview
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">493</a></span>
+with the Governor Kohendil Khan (brother of the
+Amir Dost Mahomed), was a return to Girishk.
+This must have been sickening; but it resulted in
+a series of excursions into Baluch territory which
+are not uninstructive. The ill-treatment (amounting
+to the actual infliction of torture) which Ferrier endured
+at the hands of the Girishk Governor (Sadik
+Khan, a son of Kohendil Khan) on this second
+visit to Girishk, was even worse than the first, and
+it was only by signing away his veracity and giving
+a false certificate of friendship with the brute that
+he finally got free again. He was to follow the
+Helmund to Lash Jowain in Seistan, but the attempt
+was frustrated by a local disturbance at Binadur, on
+the Helmund. So far, however, this abortive excursion
+was of certain geographical interest as
+covering new ground. The places mentioned by
+Ferrier <i>en route</i> are all still in existence, but he
+gives no detailed account of them.</p>
+
+<p>Once more a start was made from Girishk, and
+this time our explorer succeeded in reaching Farah
+by the direct route through Washir. It was in the
+month of October, and the fiery heat of the Bakwa
+plain was sufficiently trying even to this case-hardened
+Frenchman. About Farah he has much
+to say that still requires confirmation. Of the
+exceeding antiquity of this place there is ample
+evidence; but no one since Ferrier has identified
+the site of the second and later town of Farah
+"an hour" farther north or "half an hour" from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">494</a></span>
+the Farah Rud (river), where bricks were seen
+"three feet long and four inches thick," with inscriptions
+on them in cuneiform character, amidst the
+ruins. This town was abandoned in favour of the
+older (and present) site when Shah Abbas the Great
+besieged and destroyed it, but there can be no
+doubt that the bricks seen by Ferrier must have
+possessed an origin long anterior to the town, which
+only dates from the time of Chenghiz Khan. The
+existence of such evidence of the ancient and long-continued
+connection between Assyria and Western
+Afghanistan would be exceedingly interesting were
+it confirmed by modern observation. Farah is by
+all accounts a most remarkable town, and it undoubtedly
+contains secrets of the past which for
+interest could only be surpassed by those of Balkh.
+At Farah Ferrier was lodged in a "hole over the
+north gate of the town, open to the violent winds
+of Seistan, which rushed in at eight enormous holes,
+through which also came the rays of the sun."
+Here wasps, scorpions, and mice were his companions,
+and it must be admitted that Ferrier's
+account of the horrors of Farah residence have been
+more or less confirmed by all subsequent travellers
+to Seistan. But he finally succeeded in obtaining,
+through the not inhospitable governor, the necessary
+permission from Yar Mahomed Khan of Herat
+(whose policy in his dealings with Ferrier it is quite
+impossible to decipher) to pass on to Shikarpur and
+Sind; and the permission is couched in such pious
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">495</a></span>
+and affectionate terms, that the "very noble, very
+exalted, the companion of honour, of fortune, and
+of happiness, my kind friend, General Ferrier,"
+really thought there was a chance of escaping from
+his clutches. He was, by the way, invited back
+again to Herat, but he was told that he might please
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Here follows a most interesting exploration into
+a stretch of territory then utterly unreconnoitred
+and unknown, and it is unfortunate that this most
+trying route through the flats and wastes which
+stretch away eastwards of the Helmund lagoons
+should still be but sketchily indicated in our maps.
+It is, however, from Farah to Khash (where the
+Khash Rud is crossed), and from Khash to the
+Helmund, but a track through a straight region of
+desolation and heat, relieved, however (like the
+desert region to the south of the Helmund), by
+strips of occasional tamarisk vegetation, where grass
+is to be found in the spring and nomads collect
+with their flocks. Watering-places might be developed
+here by digging wells, and the route rendered
+practicable across the Dasht-i-Margo as it has
+been between Nushki and Seistan, but when Ferrier
+crossed it it was a dangerous route to attempt on
+tired and ill-fed horses. The existence of troops of
+wild asses was sufficient evidence of its life-supporting
+capabilities if properly developed. Ferrier struck
+the Helmund about Khan Nashin. Here a most
+ill-timed and ill-advised fight with a Baluch clan
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">496</a></span>
+ended in a disastrous flight of the whole party down
+the Helmund to Rudbar, and it would perhaps be
+unkind to criticise too closely the heroics of this
+part of Ferrier's story.</p>
+
+<p>At Rudbar Ferrier again noticed bricks a yard
+square in an old dyke, whilst hiding. Rudbar
+was well known to the Arab geographers, but
+this record of Ferrier's carries it back (and with
+it the course of the Helmund) to very ancient
+times indeed. Continuing to follow the river, they
+passed Kala-i-Fath and reached "Poolka"&mdash;a
+place which no longer exists under that name.
+This is all surveyed country; but no investigator
+since Ferrier has observed the same ancient bricks
+at Kala-i-Fath which Ferrier noted there as at
+Farah and Rudbar. There is every probability,
+however, of their existence. All this part of the
+Helmund valley abounds in antiquities which are
+as old as Asiatic civilization, but nothing short
+of systematic antiquarian exploration will lead to
+further discoveries of any value.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrier was now in Seistan, and we may pass
+over his record of interesting observations on the
+wealth of antiquarian remains which surrounded
+him. It is enough to point out that he was
+one of the first to call public attention to them
+from the point of view of actual contact. It
+must be accepted as much to the credit of Ferrier's
+narrative that the latest surveys of Seistan (<i>i.e.</i>
+those completed during the work of the Commission
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">497</a></span>
+under Sir H. MacMahon in 1903-5)
+entirely support the account given in his <i>Caravan
+Journeys</i> as he wandered through that historic
+land. By the light of the older maps, completed
+during the Afghan Boundary Commission some
+twenty years previously, it would have been difficult
+to have traced his steps. We know now that the
+lake of Seistan should, with all due regard to its
+extraordinary capacity for expansion and contraction,
+be represented as in MacMahon's map,
+extending southwards to a level with the great
+bend of the Helmund. Ferrier's narrative very
+conclusively illustrates this position of it, and proves
+that such an expansion must be regarded as normal.
+We can no longer accurately locate the positions of
+Pulaki and Galjin, but from his own statements it
+seems more than probable that the first place is
+already sand-buried. They were not far north of
+Kala-i-Fath. From there he went northward to
+Jahanabad, and north-west (not south-west) to
+Jalalabad. It was at Jahanabad that he nearly fell
+into the hands of Ali Khan, the chief of Chakhansur
+(Sheikh Nassoor of Ferrier), the scoundrel who had
+previously murdered Dr. Forbes and hung his body
+up to be carefully watered and watched till it fell
+to pieces in gold ducats. There was an unfortunate
+superstition current in Baluchistan to the effect that
+this was the normal end of European existence!
+Luckily it has passed away. Escaping such a
+calamity, he turned the lake at its southern extremity,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">498</a></span>
+passing through Sekoha, and travelled up its western
+banks till, after crossing the Harat Rud, he reached
+Lash Jowain. From here to Farah and from Farah
+once again to Herat, his road was made straight for
+him, and we need only note what he has to say
+about the extent of the ruins near Sabzawar to be
+convinced that here was the mediæval provincial
+capital of Parwana. At Herat he was enabled
+to do what would have saved him a most adventurous
+journey (and lost us the pleasure of recording
+his work as that of a notable explorer of
+Afghanistan), <i>i.e.</i> take the straight road back to
+Teheran from whence he came.</p>
+
+<p>With this we may bid adieu to Ferrier, but it
+is only fair to do tardy justice to his remarkable
+work. I confess that after the regions of Central
+Afghanistan had been fairly well reconnoitred by
+the surveyors of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission,
+considerable doubt remained in my mind
+as to the veracity of Ferrier's statements. I still
+think he was imposed upon now and then by what
+he <i>heard</i>, but I have little doubt that he adhered
+on the whole (and the conditions under which he
+travelled must be remembered) to a truthful description
+of what he <i>saw</i>. It is true that there
+still remains wanting an explanation of his experiences
+at that restful island in the sea of difficulty
+and danger which surrounded him&mdash;Dev Hissar&mdash;but
+I have already pointed out that it may exist
+beyond the limits of actual subsequent observation;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">499</a></span>
+and as regards the stupendous bricks with
+cuneiform inscription, it can only be said that their
+existence in the localities which he mentions has
+been rendered so probable by recent investigation,
+that nothing short of serious and systematic excavation,
+conducted in the spirit which animated the
+discovery of Nineveh, will finally disprove this most
+interesting evidence of the extreme antiquity of
+the cities of Afghanistan, and their relation to the
+cities of Mesopotamia.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">500</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<p class="center">SUMMARY</p>
+
+<p class="p2">The close of the Afghan war of 1839-40 left a
+great deal to be desired in the matter of practical
+geography. It was not the men but the methods
+that were wanting. The commencement of the
+second and last Afghan war in 1878 saw the initiation
+of a system of field survey of a practical
+geographical nature, which combined the accuracy
+of mathematical deduction with the rapidity of plane
+table topography. It was the perfecting of the
+smaller class of triangulating instruments that made
+this system possible, quite as much as the unique
+opportunity afforded to a survey department in such
+a country as India for training topographers. It
+worked well from the very first, and wherever a
+force could march or a political mission be launched
+into such a region of open hill and valley as the
+Indian trans-frontier, there could the surveyors
+hold their own (no matter what the nature of the
+movement might be) and make a "square" survey
+in fairly accurate detail, with the certainty that it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">501</a></span>
+would take its final place without squeezing or
+distortion in the general map of Asia. This was
+of course very different from the plodding traverse
+work of former days, and it rapidly placed quite a
+new complexion on our trans-frontier maps. Since
+then regular systematic surveys in extension of
+those of India have been carried far afield, and it
+may safely be said now that no country in the world
+is better provided with military maps of its frontiers
+than India. In Baluchistan, indeed, there is little
+left to the imagination. A country which forty
+years ago was an ugly blank in our maps, with a
+doubtful locality indicated here and there, is now
+almost as well surveyed as Scotland. Afghanistan,
+however, is beyond our line, "out of bounds," and
+the result is that there are serious gaps in our
+map knowledge of the country of the Amir, gaps
+which there seems little probability of investigating
+under the present closure of the frontier to explorers.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="i524" id="i524"></a>
+<img src="images/i_524.jpg" width="550" height="340" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">SKETCH MAP
+OF
+HINDU KUSH PASSES<br />
+<br />
+<a href="images/i_524fs.jpg">View larger image</a></p>
+</div>
+<p>By far the most important of these gaps are the
+uplands of Badakshan, stretching from the Oxus
+plains to the Hindu Kush. The plains of Balkh,
+as far east as Khulm and Tashkurghan, from whence
+the high-road leads to Haibak, Bamian, and the
+Hindu Kush passes, are fairly well mapped. The
+Oxus, to the north of Balkh, is well known, and the
+fords and passages of that river have been reckoned
+up with fair accuracy. From time immemorial every
+horde of Skythic origin, Nagas, Sakas, or Jatas,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">502</a></span>
+must have passed these fords from the hills and
+valleys of the Central Asian divide on their way to
+India. The Oxus fords have seen men in millions
+making south for the valleys of Badakshan and the
+Golden Gates of Central Asiatic ideal which lay yet
+farther south beyond the grim line of Hindu Kush.
+Balkh (the city) must have stood like a rock in the
+human tide which flowed from north to south.
+From the west, too, from Asia Minor and the Persian
+provinces, as well as from the Caspian steppes to
+the north-west, must have come many a weary band
+of tear-stained captives, transported across half a
+continent by their conquerors to colonize, build
+cities, and gradually amalgamate with the indigenous
+people, and so to disappear from history. From
+the west came Parthians, Medes, Assyrians, and
+Greeks, who did not altogether disappear. But no
+such human tide ever flowed into Badakshan from
+the east nor yet from the south. To the east are
+the barrier heights of the Pamirs. No crowd of
+fugitives or captives ever faced those bleak, inhospitable,
+wind-torn valleys that we know of. Nor
+can we find any trace of emigration from India.
+Yet routes were known across the Pamirs, and in
+due time, as we have seen, small parties of pilgrims
+from China made use of these routes, seeking for
+religious truth in Balkh when, as a Buddhist centre,
+Balkh was in direct connection with the Buddhist
+cities of Eastern Turkistan. And Buddhism
+itself, when it left India, went northward and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">503</a></span>
+flourished exceedingly in those same cities of the
+sandy plain, where the people talked and wrote a
+language of India for centuries after the birth of
+Christ. Balkh, however, never stayed the tide
+which overlapped it and, passing on, lost itself in
+the valleys under the Hindu Kush, or else, surmounting
+that range, streamed over into the Kabul
+basin. Whether the tide set in from north or west,
+the overflow was forced by purely geographical conditions
+into precisely the same channels, and in
+many cases it drifted into the hills and stayed there.
+What we should expect to find in Balkh, then
+(whenever Dr. Stein can get there), are records in
+brick, records in writing, and records in coin, of
+nearly every great Asiatic movement which has
+influenced the destinies of India from the days of
+Assyria to those of Mohamed. What a history to
+unfold!</p>
+
+<p>Of the Badakshan uplands south and south-east
+of Balkh, we have but most unsatisfying geographical
+record. In the days preceding the first Afghan
+war when Burnes, Moorcroft, Lord, and Wood were
+in the field, we certainly acquired much useful information
+which is still all that we have for scientific
+reference. Moorcroft, as we have seen, made
+several hurried journeys between Balkh and Kunduz
+under most perilous conditions, when endeavouring
+to escape from the clutches of the border chief,
+Murad Beg. But Moorcroft's opportunities of
+scientific observation were small, and his means of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">504</a></span>
+ascertaining his geographical position were crude,
+and we gain little or nothing from his thrilling story
+of adventure, beyond a general description of a
+desolate region of swamp and upland which forms
+the main features of Northern Badakshan.</p>
+
+<p>Lord and Wood, who followed Moorcroft at no
+great interval, and who were also in direct personal
+touch with Murad Beg under much the same political
+circumstances, have furnished much more
+useful information of the routes and passes between
+Haibak and Kunduz, and given us a very fair idea
+of the physical configuration of that desolate district.
+Lord's memoir on the <i>Uzbek State of Kundooz</i>
+(published at Simla in July 1838) is indeed the
+best, if not the only, authoritative document concerning
+the history and policy of Badakshan, giving
+us a fair idea of the conditions under which Murad
+Beg established and consolidated his position as the
+paramount chief of that country, and the guardian
+of the great commercial route between Kabul and
+Bokhara; but there is little geographical information
+in the memoir. The four fortified towns of the
+Kunduz state, Kunduz, Rustak, Talikhan, and
+Hazrat Imam, are described rather as depositories for
+plunder than as positions of any great importance,
+and the real strength of Murad Beg's military force
+lay in the quality of his hordes of irregular Uzbek
+horsemen and the extraordinary hardiness and
+endurance of the Kataghani horses. So highly
+esteemed is this particular breed that the late Amir
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">505</a></span>
+of Afghanistan would permit of no export of horses
+from Kataghan, reserving them especially for the
+purpose of mounting his own cavalry.</p>
+
+<p>We learn incidentally of the waste and desolation
+caused by the poisonous climate of the fens and
+marshes between Hazrat Imam and Kunduin, to
+which Murad Beg had transported 20,000 Badakshani
+families for purposes of colonization, and where
+Dr. Lord was told that barely 1000 individuals had
+survived; but Wood tells us much more than this in
+his charming book on the Oxus. From the point
+where he left the main road from Kabul to Bokhara
+(a little below Kuram north of the Saighan valley)
+till he reached Kunduz, he was passing over country
+and by-ways which have never been revisited by any
+European geographer. He tells us that "the plain
+between the streams that water Kunduz and Kuram
+has a wavy surface, and though unsuited to agriculture
+has an excellent pasturage. The only village
+on the road is Hazrat Baba Kamur. On the eastern
+side the plain is supported by a ridge of hills sloping
+down from the mountains to the south. We crossed
+it by the pass of Archa (so called from the fir trees
+which cover its crest), from the top of which we had
+a noble view of the snowy mountains to the east, the
+outliers of Hindu Kush. Next day we forded the
+river of Kunduz, and continuing to journey along its
+right bank, through the swampy district of Baghlan
+and Aliabad, reached the capital of Murad Beg on
+Monday the 4th Dec. (1837)." The story of Wood's
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">506</a></span>
+travels in Badakshan has already been told; the moon-lit
+march from Kunduz through the dense jungle
+grass and swamp, often knee-deep in water; the
+gradual rise to higher ground above; the floating
+vapour screen that hovered over the fens; Khanabad
+and its quaint array of colleges and students, and
+the Koh Umber mountain, isolated and conspicuous,
+dividing the plains of Kunduz and Talikhan&mdash;all
+these are features which will indicate the general
+character of that part of Badakshan but leave us
+no fixed and determined position. The Koh Umber
+in particular must be a remarkable topographical
+landmark, as it towers 2500 feet above the surrounding
+plain with a snow-covered summit. Wood says
+of it that it is central to the districts of Talikhan,
+Kunduz, and Hazrat Imam, and its pasturage is
+common to the flocks of all three plains. But it
+is an undetermined geographical feature, and still
+remains in its solitary grandeur, a position to be
+won by future explorers.</p>
+
+<p>From Khanabad to Talikhan, Faizabad, and Jirm
+(which, it will be recollected, was once the capital
+of Badakshan&mdash;probably the "Badakshan" of Arab
+geography), we have the description of a mountainous
+country supporting the conjectural topography
+of our maps, which indicate that this route borders
+and occasionally crosses a series of gigantic spurs or
+offshoots of a central range (which Wood calls the
+Khoja) which must itself be a north-easterly arm of
+the Hindu Kush, taking off from the latter range
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">507</a></span>
+somewhere near the Khawak Pass. Here, then, is
+one of the most important blanks in the map of our
+frontier. Inconceivably rugged and difficult of
+access, it seems probable that it is more accessible
+from Badakshan than from the south. We know
+from Wood's account of the extraordinary difficulty
+that beset his efforts to reach the lapis-lazuli
+mines above Jirm in the Kokcha River something
+of the general nature of these northern valleys
+and defiles of Kafiristan reaching down to lower
+Badakshan. It would, indeed, be a splendid
+geographical feat to fix the position and illustrate
+the topography of this roughest section of Asia.</p>
+
+<p>Between the Khawak Pass of the Hindu Kush
+which leads to Andarab, and the Mandal, or Minjan,
+passes, some 70 miles to the east, we have never
+solved the problem of the Hindu Kush divide.
+What lies behind Wood's Khoja range, between
+it and the main divide? We have the valley called
+Anjuman, which is believed to lead as directly to
+Jirm from the Khawak Pass as Andarab does to
+Kunduz. It is an important feature in Hindu Kush
+topography, but we know nothing of it. We may,
+however, safely conjecture that the Minjan River,
+reached by Sir George Robertson in one of his
+gallant attempts to explore Kafiristan, is the upper
+Kokcha flowing past the lapis-lazuli mines to Jirm.
+But where does it rise? And where on the southern
+slopes of the Hindu Kush do the small affluents of
+the Alingar and Alishang have their beginning?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">508</a></span>
+These are the hidden secrets of Kafiristan. It is
+here that those turbulent people (who, by the way,
+seem to exhibit the same characteristics from whatever
+valley of Kafiristan they come, and to be much
+more homogeneous than is usually supposed) hide
+themselves in their upland villages, amidst their
+magnificent woods and forests, untroubled by either
+Afghan or European visitors. Here they live their
+primitive lives, enlivened with quaint ceremonies and
+a heathenism equally reminiscent of the mythology
+of Greece, the ritual of Zoroaster, and the beliefs
+of the Hindu. Who will unravel the secrets of this
+inhabited outland, which appears at present to be
+more impracticable to the explorer than either of
+the poles? Yule, in his preface to the last edition
+of Wood's <i>Oxus</i>, remarks that Colonel Walker,
+the late Surveyor-General of India (and one of the
+greatest of Asiatic geographers) repeatedly expressed
+his opinion that there is no well-defined
+range where the Hindu Kush is represented in our
+maps, and he adds that such an expression of opinion
+can only apply to that part of the Hindu Kush
+which lies east of the Khawak Pass. Sir Henry
+Yule refers to Wood's incidental notices of the
+mountains which he saw towering to the south of
+him, "rising to a vast height and bearing far below
+their summits the snow of ages," in refutation of
+such an opinion; and he further quotes the "havildar's"
+(native surveyor) report of the Nuksan and
+Dorah passes in confirmation of Wood.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">509</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Since Yule wrote, Woodthorpe's surveys of the
+Nuksan and Dorah passes during the Lockhart mission
+leave little doubt as to the nature of the Hindu
+Kush as far west as those passes, but it is precisely
+between those passes and the Khawak, along the
+backbone of Kafiristan, that we have yet to learn
+the actual facts of mountain conformation. And
+here possibly there may be something in Walker's
+suggestion. The mountains to which Wood looked
+up from Talikhan or Kishm, towering to the south
+of him and covered with perpetual snow, certainly
+formed no part of the main Hindu Kush divide.
+Between them and the Hindu Kush is either the
+deep valley of Anjuman, or more probably the upper
+drainage of the Minjan, which, rising not far east of
+Khawak, repeats the almost universal Himalayan
+feature of a long, lateral, ditch-like valley in continuation
+of the Andarab depression, marking the base
+of the connecting link in the primeval fold formed
+by the Hindu Kush east and west of it. We should
+expect to find the Kafiristan mountain conformation
+to be an integral part of the now recognised
+Himalayan system of parallel mountain folds, with
+deep lateral valleys fed by a transverse drainage.
+The long valley of the Alingar will prove to be
+another such parallel depression, and we shall find
+when the map is finished that the dominating
+structural feature of all this wild hinterland of
+mountains is the north-east to south-west trend of
+mountain and valley which marks the Kunar (or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">510</a></span>
+Chitral) valley on the one side and the Panjshir on
+the other. The reason why it is more probable
+that the Minjan River takes the direct drainage of
+the northern slopes of this Kafiristan backbone into
+a lateral trough than that the Anjuman spreads its
+head into a fan, is that Sir George Robertson found
+the Minjan, below the pass of Mandal, to be a far
+more considerable river than its assumed origin in
+the official maps would make it. He accordingly
+makes a deep indentation in the Hindu Kush
+divide (on the map which illustrates his captivating
+book, <i>The Kafirs of the Hindu Kush</i>), bringing it
+down southward nearly half a degree to an acute
+angle, so as to afford room for the Minjan to rise
+and follow a course in direct line with its northerly
+run (as the Kokcha) in Badakshan. This is a
+serious disturbance of the laws which govern the
+structure of Asiatic mountain systems, as now recognized,
+and it is indeed far more likely that the
+Minjan (Kokcha) follows those laws which have
+placed the Andarab and the Panjshir (or for that
+matter the Indus and the Brahmaputra) in their
+parallel mountain troughs, than that the primeval
+fold of the Hindu Kush has become disjointed and
+indented by some agency which it would be impossible
+to explain. Who is going to complete the
+map and solve the question?</p>
+
+<p>We are still very far from possessing a satisfactory
+geographical knowledge of even the more
+accessible districts of Badakshan. We still depend
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">511</a></span>
+on Wood for the best that we know of the route
+between Faizabad and Zebak; and of those Eastern
+mountains which border the Oxus as it bends northward
+to Kila Khum we know positively nothing
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>But beyond all contention the hidden jewels to
+be acquired by scientific research in Badakshan are
+archæological and antiquarian rather than geographical.
+Now that Nineveh and Babylon have
+yielded up their secrets, there is no such field out of
+Egypt for the antiquarian and his spade as the
+plains of Balkh. But enough has been said of what
+may be hidden beneath the unsightly bazaars and
+crumbling ruins of modern Balkh. Whilst Badakshan
+literally teems with opportunities for investigation,
+certain features of ancient Baktria
+appear to be especially associated with certain
+sites; such, for instance, as the sites of Semenjan
+(Haibak), Baghlan, Andarab, and particularly the
+junction of the rivers at Kasan. That Andarab
+(Ariaspa) held the capital of the Greek colonies
+there can be as little doubt as that Haibak and its
+neighbourhood formed the great Buddhist centre
+between Balkh and Kabul. Again, who is going
+to make friends with the Amir of Afghanistan and
+try his luck? It must be a foreigner, for no Englishman
+would be permitted by his own government to
+pass that way at present.</p>
+
+<p>The wild and savage altitudes of Badakshan and
+Kafiristan by no means exhaust the unexplored
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">512</a></span>
+tracts of Afghanistan. We have the curious feature
+of a well-surveyed route connecting Ghazni with
+Kandahar, one of the straightest and best of military
+routes trodden by armies uncountable from the days
+of Alexander to those of Roberts, a narrow ribbon
+of well-ascertained topography, dividing the two most
+important of the unexplored regions of Afghanistan.
+North-west of this road lies the great basin of the
+central Helmund. South-east is a broken land of
+plain, ribbed and streaked with sharp ridges of
+frontier formation, about which we ought to know a
+great deal more than we do. Up the frontier staircases
+and on to this plain run many important
+routes from India. The Kuram route strikes it at
+its northern extremity and leaves it to the southward.
+The Tochi valley route, and the great mercantile
+Gomal highway strike into the middle of it,
+and yet no one of our modern frontier explorers has
+ever reached it from one side or the other. We
+still depend on Broadfoot's and Vigne's account of
+what they saw there, although it is only just on the
+far side of the rocky band of hills which face the
+Indus.</p>
+
+<p>About midway between Ghazni and Bannu
+is the water-parting which separates the Indus
+drainage from that of the Helmund, and at this
+point there are some formidable peaks, well over
+12,000 feet in height, to distinguish it. The Tochi
+passage is easy enough as far as the Sheranni group
+of villages near the head of its long cultivated ramp,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">513</a></span>
+but beyond that point the traveller becomes involved
+in the narrow lateral valleys which follow the trend
+of the ridges which traverse his path, where streams
+curl up from the Birmal hills to the south and from
+the high altitudes which shelter the Kharotis on the
+north. It is a perpetual wriggle through steep-sided
+rocky waterways, until one emerges into
+more open country after crossing the main divide
+by the Kotanni Pass. The hills here are called
+Jadran, and it is probable that the Jadran divide
+and that of the Kohnak farther south are one and
+the same. Beyond the Kotanni Pass to Ghazni
+the way is fairly open, but we know very little
+about it beyond the historical fact that the arch-raider,
+Mahmud of Ghazni, used to follow this
+route for his cavalry descents on the Indian frontier
+with most remarkable success. The remains of old
+encampments are to be seen in the plain at the
+foot of the Tochi, and disjointed indications of an
+ancient high-road were found on the hill slopes to
+the north of the stream by our surveyors.</p>
+
+<p>Of the actual physical facts of the Gomul route we
+have only the details gathered by Broadfoot under
+great difficulties, and a traveller's account by Vigne.
+What they found has already been described, and the
+frontier expedition to the Takht-i-Suliman in 1882
+sufficiently well determined the position of the
+Kohnak water-parting to give a fixed geographical
+value to their narratives. But we have no topography
+beyond Domandi and Wana. We know
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">514</a></span>
+that the ever-present repellent band of rocky ridge
+and furrow, the hill and valley distribution which
+is distinctive, has to be encountered and passed;
+but the route does not bristle with the difficulties
+of narrow ways and stony footpaths as does the
+Tochi, and there is no doubt that it could soon be
+reduced to a very practicable artillery road. The
+important point is that we do not know here (any
+more than as regards the upper Tochi) a great deal
+that it concerns us very much to know. We have
+no mapping of the country which lies between the
+Baluch frontier and Lake Abistada, the land of the
+stalwart Suliman Khel tribes-people, and it is a
+country of which the possible resources might be of
+great value to us if ever we are driven again to
+take military stock of Afghanistan.</p>
+
+<p>But the importance of good mapping in this
+part of Afghanistan is due solely to its position
+in geographical relation to the Indian frontier. It
+is different when we turn to the stupendous altitudes
+of the high Hazara plateau land to the north of the
+Ghazni-Kandahar route. With this we are not
+likely to have any future concern, except that which
+may be called academic. In spite of the reputation
+for sterile wind-scoured desolation which the
+uplands hiding the upper Helmund valleys have
+always enjoyed, it is not to be forgotten that there
+are summer ways about them, and strong indications
+that some of these ways are distinctly useful.
+Our knowledge of the Helmund River (such knowledge,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">515</a></span>
+that is to say, as justifies us in mapping the
+course of the river with a firm line) from its sources
+ends almost exactly at the intersection of the parallel
+of 34° of North latitude with the meridian of 67°
+East longitude. For the next 120 miles we really
+know nothing about its course, except that it is said
+to run nearly straight through the heart of the
+Hazara highlands.</p>
+
+<p>Two very considerable, but nameless, rivers run
+more or less parallel to the Helmund to the south
+of it, draining the valleys of Ujaristan and Urusgan,
+the upper part of the latter being called Malistan.
+What these valleys are like, or what may be the
+nature of the dividing water-parting, we do not
+know, nor have we any authentic description of
+the valley of Nawar, which lies under the Gulkoh
+mountain at the head of the Arghandab, but
+apparently unconnected with it. Native information
+on the subject of these highly elevated valleys
+is excessively meagre, nor are they of any special
+interest from either the strategic or economic
+point of view. Far more interesting would it be
+to secure a geographical map of those northern
+branches of the Helmund, the Khud Rud, and the
+Kokhar Ab, which drain the mountain districts
+to the east of Taiwara above the undetermined
+position of Ghizao on the Helmund. These
+mountain streams must rush their waters through
+magnificent gorges, for the peaks which soar
+above them rise to 13,000 feet in altitude, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">516</a></span>
+the country is described as inconceivably rugged
+and wild. This is the real centre and home of the
+Hazara communities, and, in spite of the fact that
+there are certain well-ascertained tracks traversing
+the country and connecting the Helmund with the
+valley of the Hari Rud, we know that for the greater
+part of the year they must be closed to all traffic.
+They are of no importance outside purely local
+interests. The comparatively small area yet unexplored
+which lies to the north of the Hazara
+mountains, shut off from them by the straight trough
+of the Hari Rud and embracing the head of the
+Murghab River of Turkistan, is almost equally
+unimportant, although it would be a matter of
+great interest to investigate a little more closely
+the remarkable statements of Ferrier which bear
+on this region.</p>
+
+<p>When we have finally struck a balance between
+our knowledge and our ignorance of that which
+concerns the landward gates of India, we shall
+recognize the fact that we know all that it is really
+essential that we should know of these uplifted
+approaches. They are inconceivably old&mdash;as old
+as the very mountains which they traverse. What
+use may be made of them has been made long ago.
+We have but to turn back the pages of history and
+we find abundant indications which may enable us
+to gauge their real value as highways from Central
+Asia to India. History says that none of the tracks
+which lead from China and Tibet have ever been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">517</a></span>
+utilized for the passage of large bodies of people
+either as emigrants, troops, commercial travellers,
+or pilgrims into India, although there exists a direct
+connection between China and the Brahmaputra in
+Assam, and although we know that the difficulties
+of the road between Lhasa and India are by no
+means insuperable. Nor by the Kashmir passes
+from Turkistan or the Pamirs is it possible to find
+any record of a formidable passing of large bodies of
+people, although the Karakoram has been a trade
+route through all time, and although the Chinese
+have left their mark below Chitral. Yet we have had
+explorers over the passes connecting the upper Oxus
+affluents with Gilgit and Chitral who have not failed,
+some of them, to sound a solemn note of warning.</p>
+
+<p>Before the settlement of the Oxus extension of
+the northern boundary of Afghanistan, something
+of a scare was started by a demonstration of the
+fact that it is occasionally quite easy to cross the
+Kilik Pass from the Taghdumbash Pamir into the
+Gilgit basin, or to climb over the comparatively
+easy slopes of the flat-backed Hindu Kush by the
+Baroghel Pass and slip down into the valley of the
+Chitral. There was, however, always a certain
+amount of geographical controversy as to the value
+of the Chitral or of the Kilik approach after the
+crossing of the Hindu Kush had been effected.
+Much of the difference of opinion expressed by
+exploring experts was due to the different conditions
+under which those undesirable, troublesome
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">518</a></span>
+approaches to India were viewed. Where one
+explorer might find a protruding glacier blocking
+his path and terminating his excursions, another
+would speak of an open roadway.</p>
+
+<p>From season to season in these high altitudes
+local conditions vary to an extent which makes it
+impossible to forecast the difficulties which may
+obtrude themselves during any one month or even
+for any one summer. In winter, <i>i.e.</i> for at least
+eight months of the year, all are equally ice-bound
+and impracticable, and although the general spirit
+of desiccation, which reigns over High Asia and
+is tending to reduce the glaciers and diminish the
+snowfall, may eventually change the conditions
+of mountain passages to an appreciable extent
+(and for a period), it would be idle to speculate
+on any really important modification of these difficulties
+from such natural climatic causes. We must
+take these mountain passes as we find them now,
+and as the Chinese pilgrim of old found them,
+placed by Nature in positions demanding a stout
+heart and an earnest purpose, determined to wrest
+from inhospitable Nature the merit of a victorious
+encounter with her worst and most detestable
+moods, ere we surmount them. To the pilgrim
+they represented the "strait gate" and "narrow
+way" which ever leads to salvation, and he accepted
+the horrors as a part of the sacrifice. To us they
+represent troublesome breaks in the stern continuity
+of our natural defences which can be made to serve
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">519</a></span>
+no useful purpose, but which may nevertheless afford
+the opportunity to an aggressive and enterprising
+enemy to spy out the land and raise trouble on the
+border. We cannot altogether leave them alone.
+They have to be watched by the official guardians
+of our frontier, and all the gathered threads of them
+converging on Leh or Gilgit must be held by hands
+that are alert and strong. It is just as dangerous
+an error to regard such approaches to India as
+negligible quantities in the military and political
+field of Indian defence, as to take a serious view
+of their practicability for purposes of invasion.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond this scattered series of rugged and
+elevated by-ways of the mountains crossing the
+great Asiatic divide from regions of Tibet and the
+Pamirs, to the west of them, we find on the edge of
+the unsurveyed regions of Kafiristan that group of
+passages, the Mandal and Minjan, the Nuksan and
+the Dorah which converge on Chitral as they pass
+southward over the Hindu Kush from the rugged
+uplands of Badakshan. None of these appear to
+have been pilgrim routes, nor does history help
+us in estimating their value as gateways in the
+mountains. They are practicable at certain seasons,
+and one of them, the Dorah, is a much-trodden
+route, connecting what is probably the best road
+traversing upper Badakshan from Faizabad to the
+Hindu Kush with the Chitral valley, and it enjoys
+the comparatively moderate altitude of about 14,500
+feet above sea-level. A pass of this altitude is a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">520</a></span>
+pass to be reckoned with, and nothing but its
+remote geographical position, and the extreme
+difficulty of its approaches on either side (from
+Badakshan or Chitral), can justify the curious
+absence of any historical evidence proving it to
+have witnessed the crossing of troops or the
+incursions of emigrants. For the latter purpose,
+indeed, it may have served, but we know too little
+about the ethnography or derivation of the Chitral
+valley tribes to be able to indulge in speculation on
+the subject.</p>
+
+<p>What we know of the Dorah is that it is the
+connecting commercial link between Badakshan
+and the Kunar valley during the summer months
+(July to September), when mules and donkeys
+carry over wood and cloth goods to be exchanged
+for firearms and cutlery with other produce of a
+more local nature, including (so it is said) Badakshi
+slaves. It has been crossed in early November
+in face of a bitter blizzard and piercing cold, but
+it is not normally open then. The Nuksan Pass,
+which is not far removed from it, is much higher
+(16,100 feet) and is frequently blocked by glacial
+ice; but the Dorah, which steals its way through
+rugged defiles from the Chitral valley over the
+dip in the Hindu Kush down past the little blue
+lake of Dufferin into the depths of the gorges
+which enclose the upper reaches of the Zebak
+affluent of the great Kokcha River of Badakshan,
+(about which we have heard from Wood), is the one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">521</a></span>
+gateway which is normally open from year to year,
+and its existence renders necessary an advanced
+watch-tower at Chitral. Like the Baroghel and
+other passes to the east of it, it is not the Dorah itself
+but the extreme difficulty of the narrow ways which
+lead to it, the wildness and sterility of the remote
+regions which encompass it on either side, which
+lock this door to anything in the shape of serious
+military enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the Dorah to the westward, following
+the Kafiristan divide of the Hindu Kush, we may
+well leave unassisted Nature to maintain her own
+work of perfect defence, for there is not a track
+that we can discover to exist, nor a by-way that
+we can hear of which passes through that inconceivably
+grand and savage wilderness of untamed
+mountains. Undoubtedly such tracks exist, but
+judging from the remarkable physical constitution
+of the Kafir, they are such as to demand an
+exceptional type of mountaineer to deal with them.
+It is only when we work our way farther westward
+to those passes which lead into the valleys of the
+upper Kabul River affluents, from the Khawak
+Pass at the head of the Panjshir valley to the Unai
+which points the way from Kabul to Bamian, that
+we find material for sober reflection derived from
+the records of the past.</p>
+
+<p>The general characteristics of these passes have
+been described already&mdash;and something of their
+history. We have seen that they have been more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">522</a></span>
+or less open doors to India through the ages. Men
+literally "in nations" have passed through them;
+the dynasties of India have been changed and her
+destinies reshaped time after time by the facilities
+of approach which they have afforded; and if the
+modern conditions of things military were now what
+they were in the days of Alexander or of Baber, there
+would be no reason why her destinies should not
+once again be changed through use of them. We
+must remember that they are not what they have
+been. How far they have been opened up by
+artificial means, or which of them, besides the
+Nuksan and the Chahardar, have been so improved,
+we have no means of knowing, but we may take it
+for granted that the Public Works Department of
+Afghanistan has not been idle; for we know that
+that department was very closely directed by the
+late Amir, and that his staff of engineers is most
+eminent and most practical.<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>The base of all this group of passes lies in
+Badakshan, so that the chief characteristics as gates
+of India are common to all. It has been too often
+pointed out to require repetition that the plains of
+Balkh&mdash;all Afghan Turkistan in short&mdash;lie at the
+mercy of any well-organized force which crosses the
+Oxus southwards; but once that force enters the
+gorges and surmounts the passes of the Badakshan
+ramparts a totally new set of military problems would
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">523</a></span>
+be presented. The narrowness and the isolation of
+its cultivated valleys; the vast spaces of dreary,
+rugged desolation which part them; the roughness
+and the altitude of the intervening ranges&mdash;in short,
+the passive hostility of the uplands and their blank
+sterility would create the necessity for some artificial
+means of importing supplies from the plains before
+any formidable force could be kept alive at the front.
+Modern methods point to military railways, for the
+ancient methods which included the occupation of
+the country by well-planted military colonies are no
+longer available. All military engineers nowadays
+believe in a line, more or less perfect, of railway
+connection between the front of a field force and its
+base of supply. But it would be a long and weary,
+if not absolutely hopeless, task to bring a railway
+across the highlands of Badakshan to the foot of
+the Hindu Kush from the Oxus plains.</p>
+
+<p>We have read what Wood has to say of the
+routes from Kunduz southward to Bamian and
+Kabul. This is the recognized trade route; the
+great highway to Afghan Turkistan. Seven passes
+to be negotiated over as many rough mountain
+divides, plunges innumerable into the deep-rifted
+valleys by ways that are short and sharp, a series of
+physical obstacles to be encountered, to surmount
+any one of which would be a triumph of engineering
+enterprise. Amongst the scientific devices which
+altitude renders absolutely necessary, would be a
+repeated process of tunnelling. No railway yet
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">524</a></span>
+has been carried over a sharp divide of 10,000 or
+11,000 feet altitude, subject to sudden and severe
+climatic conditions, without the protection of a
+tunnel. As a work of peaceful enterprise alone,
+this would be a line probably without a parallel for
+the proportion of difficulty compared to its length
+in the whole wide world. As a military enterprise,
+a rapid construction for the support of a field army,
+it is but a childish chimera. Yet we are writing of
+Badakshan's best road!</p>
+
+<p>It is true that by the Haibak route to Ghori and
+that ancient military base of the Greeks, Andarab,
+the difficulty of the sheer physical altitude of great
+passes is not encountered, and there are spaces which
+might be pointed out where a light line could be
+engineered with comparative facility. Even to
+reach thus far from the Oxus plains would be a
+great advantage to a force that could spend a year
+or two, like a Chinese army, in devising its route,
+but this comparative facility terminates at the base of
+the Hindu Kush foot-hills; and it matters not beyond
+that point whether the way be rough or plain,
+for the wall of the mountains never drops to less than
+12,500 feet, and no railway has ever been carried
+in the open over such altitudes. Tunnelling here
+would be found impossible, owing to the flat-backed
+nature of the wide divide. With what may happen in
+future military developments; whether a fleet of air-ships
+should in the farther future sail over the snow-crested
+mountain tops and settle, replete with all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">525</a></span>
+military devices in gunnery and stores, on the plains
+of the Kohistan of Kabul we need hardly concern
+ourselves. It is at least an eventuality of which
+the risk seems remote at present, and we may rest
+content with the Hindu Kush barrier as a defensive
+line which cannot be violated in the future as it has
+been in the past by any formidable force cutting
+through Badakshan, without years of preparation
+and forewarning.</p>
+
+<p>For any serious menace to the line of India's
+north-western defence we must look farther west&mdash;much
+farther west&mdash;for enough has been said of
+the great swelling highlands of the Firozkohi
+plateau, and of the Hazara regions south of the
+Hari Rud sources, to indicate their impracticable
+nature as the scene of military movement. It is,
+after all, the highways of Herat and Seistan that
+form the only avenues for military approach to the
+Indian frontier that are not barred by difficulties
+of Nature's own providing, or commanded from the
+sea. Once on these western fields we are touching
+on matter which has been so worn threadbare by
+controversy that it might seem almost useless to
+add further opinions. Historically it seems strange
+at first sight that, compared with the northern
+approaches to which Kabul gives the command,
+so very little use has been made of this open way.
+It was not till the eighteenth century saw the
+foundation laid for the Afghan kingdom that the
+more direct routes between Eastern Persia and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">526</a></span>
+the Indus became alive with marching troops.
+The reason is, obviously, geographical. Neither
+trade, nor the flag which preceded it from the west,
+cared to face the dreary wastes of sand to the south
+of the Helmund, backed, as they are, by the terrible
+band of the Sind frontier hills full of untamed and
+untameable tribes, merely for the purpose of dropping
+into the narrow riverain of the lower Indus, beyond
+which, again, the deserts of Rajputana parted them
+from the rich plains of Central India. When the
+Indus delta and Sind were the objective of a military
+expedition, the conquerors came by way of the sea,
+or by approaches within command of the sea&mdash;never
+from Herat. Herat was but the gateway to Kandahar,
+and to Kabul in the days when Kabul was
+"India."</p>
+
+<p>It was not, so far as we can tell, till Nadir Shah,
+after ravaging Seistan and the rich towns of the
+Helmund valley, found a narrow passage across
+the Sind frontier hills that any practical use was
+ever made of the gates of Baluchistan. Although
+there are ethnological evidences that a remnant of
+the Mongol hordes of Chenghis Khan settled in
+those same Sind hills, there is no evidence that
+they crossed them by any of the Baluch passes. It
+seems certain that in prehistoric times, when the
+geographical conditions of Western India were
+different from what they are now, Turanian peoples
+in tribal crowds must have made their way into
+India southwards from Western Asia, but they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">527</a></span>
+drifted by routes that hugged the coast-line. We
+have now, however, replaced the old natural geographical
+conditions by an artificial system which
+totally alters the strategic properties of this part of
+the frontier. We have revolutionised the savage
+wilderness of Baluchistan, and made highways not
+only from the Indus to the Helmund, but from
+Central India to the Indus. The old barriers have
+been broken down and new gateways thrown open.
+We could not help breaking them down, if we were
+to have peace on our borders; but the process has
+been attended with the disadvantage that it obliges
+us to take anxious note of the roads through Eastern
+Persia and Western Afghanistan which lead to them.</p>
+
+<p>For just about one century since the first scare
+arose concerning an Indian invasion by Napoleon
+Bonaparte, have we been alternating between
+periods of intense apprehension and of equally
+foolish apathy concerning these Western Indian
+gateways. The rise and fall of public apprehension
+might be expressed by a series of curves
+of curious regularity. At present we are at the
+bottom of a curve, for reasons which it is hardly
+necessary to enter into; but it is not an inapt
+position for a calm review of the subject. There
+is, then, one great highway after passing through
+Herat (which city is about 60 miles from the
+nearest Russian military post), a highway which
+has been quite sufficiently well described already,
+of about 360 miles in length between Herat and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">528</a></span>
+Kandahar; Kandahar, again, being about 80 miles
+from our frontier&mdash;say 500 miles in all; and the distinguishing
+feature of this highway between Russia
+and India is the comparative ease with which that
+great Asiatic divide which extends all the way from
+the Hindu Kush to the Persian frontier (or beyond)
+can be crossed on the north of Herat. There,
+this great central water-parting, so formidable in
+its altitudes for many hundreds of miles, sinks to
+insignificant levels and the comparatively gentle
+gradients of a debased and disintegrated range.
+This divide is parted and split by the passage of
+the Hari Rud River; but the passage of the river
+is hill-enclosed and narrow, with many a rock-bound
+gorge which would not readily lend itself to railway-making
+(although by no means precluding it), so
+that the ridges of the divide could be better passed
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>We must concede that, taking it for all in all,
+that 500 miles of railway gap which still yawns
+between the Indian and Russian systems is an
+easy gap to fill up, and that it affords a road for
+advance which (apart from the question of supplies)
+can only be regarded as an open highway. Then
+there is also that other parallel road to Seistan from
+the Russian Transcaspian line across the Elburz
+mountains (which here represents the great divide)
+via Mashad&mdash;a route infinitely more difficult, but
+still practicable&mdash;which leads by a longer way to
+the Helmund and Kandahar. Were it not for the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">529</a></span>
+political considerations arising from the respective
+geographical positions of these two routes, one lying
+within Persian territory and the other being Afghan,
+they might be regarded as practically one and the
+same. Neither of them could be used (in the
+aggressive sense) without the occupation of Herat,
+and most assuredly should circumstances arise in
+which either of the two should be used (in the same
+aggressive sense) the other would be utilized at the
+same time.</p>
+
+<p>This is, then, the chief problem of Indian defence
+so far as the shutting of the gate is concerned, and
+there are no two ways of dealing with it. We
+must have men and material sufficient in both
+quantity and quality to guard these gates when
+open, or to close them if we wish them shut. The
+question whether these western gates should remain
+as they are, easily traversable, or should yield (as
+they must do sooner or later) to commercial interests
+and admit of an iron way to link up the Russian and
+Indian railway systems is really immaterial. In the
+latter case they might be the more readily closed,
+for such a connection would serve the purposes of
+a defence better than those for offence; but in any
+case in order to be secure we must be strong.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530"></a></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">531</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+
+<div class="idx">
+
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Abbas the Great, Shah, <a href="#Page_494">494</a></li>
+
+<li>Abbot, General Sir James, cited, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+<li>Abdurrahmon, Amir, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a></li>
+
+<li>Ab-i-lal river, <a href="#Page_486">486</a></li>
+
+<li>Abistada, Lake, <a href="#Page_514">514</a></li>
+
+<li>Abkhana route, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+
+<li>Abu Abdulla Mohammed (Al Idrisi). <i>See</i> <a href="#Idrisi">Idrisi</a></li>
+
+<li>Accadian tradition cited, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+
+<li>Achakzai (Duranis), <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_491">491</a></li>
+
+<li>Adraskand, <a href="#Page_229">229</a> <i>and n.</i>;
+ river, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+<li>Aegospotami, xiii, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li>Afghan, Armenian identification of word, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+<li>Afghan Boundary Commission. <i>See</i> <a href="#Russo-Afghan">Russo-Afghan</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Afghan_Turkistan" id="Afghan_Turkistan"></a>Afghan Turkistan:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Agricultural possibilities of, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+  <li>Ferrier in, <a href="#Page_481">481</a></li>
+  <li>Greek settlements in, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  <li>Kabul, route to:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Modern improvements in, <a href="#Page_419">419</a> <i>and n.</i>, <a href="#Page_522">522</a> <i>n.</i></li>
+    <li>Wood's account of, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>-<a href="#Page_419">19</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Richness of, known to Tiglath Pilesur, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+  <li>Route to, by southern passes of Hindu Kush, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li>
+  <li>Routes to, from Herat, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+  <li>Slavery in, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+  <li>Snakes in, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+  <li>Valley formations in, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>-<a href="#Page_254">4</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Afghanistan:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Arab exploration of, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+  <li>Assyrian colonies in highlands of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li>Barbarity in, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>-<a href="#Page_79">9</a></li>
+  <li>Boundary Commission. <i>See</i> <a href="#Russo-Afghan">Russo-Afghan</a></li>
+  <li>British attitude towards, in early 19th century, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>;
+ Afghan attitude towards British, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>-<a href="#Page_338">8</a></li>
+  <li><a name="British" id="British"></a>British war with (1839-40):
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Conduct of, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a></li>
+    <li>Effects of, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li>
+    <li>Geographical information acquired during, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>-<a href="#Page_412">12</a></li>
+    <li>Remnants of British disasters in, <a href="#Page_478">478</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>British war with (1878-80), surveys in connection with, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>, <a href="#Page_500">500</a></li>
+  <li>Christie's and Pottinger's exploration of, <a href="#Page_329">329</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li>Durani corner of, character of, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+  <li><i>Ethnography of Afghanistan</i> (Bellew) cited, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+  <li>Foreign policy of, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li>
+  <li>Greek names in, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  <li>Helmund boundary of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+  <li>Hinterland of India, viewed as, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+  <li>Indian land gates always held by, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+  <li>Language of, Persian in origin, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  <li>Natural beauty of, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li>
+  <li>Persia:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Colonies of, in, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+    <li>Intrigues of, British nervousness as to, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>-<a href="#Page_400">400</a></li>
+    <li>War with (1837), <a href="#Page_402">402</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Persian Empire including, in antiquity, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  <li>Rain-storms in, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_234">4</a></li>
+  <li>Russian intrigues regarding, British nervousness as to, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>-<a href="#Page_400">400</a></li>
+  <li>Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission. <i>See <a href="#Russo-Afghan">that title</a></i></li>
+  <li>Rulers of (Ben-i-Israel), traditions of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>-<a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+  <li>Social conditions in, past and present, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>-<a href="#Page_338">8</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a></li>
+  <li>Surveying of, gaps in, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>;
+     important unexplored regions, <a href="#Page_514">514</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li>Afghanistan, Central:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Aimak tribes of, <a href="#Page_488">488</a>-<a href="#Page_489">9</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532">532</a></span></li>
+  <li>Broadfoot's exploration of, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>, <a href="#Page_470">470</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li>Conformation of, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+  <li>Hazara highlands, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>-<a href="#Page_86">6</a></li>
+  <li>Records of, scanty, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>-<a href="#Page_214">14</a></li>
+  <li>Routes through, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>-<a href="#Page_223">3</a></li>
+  <li>Survey of (1882-3), <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li>Afghanistan, North (Baktria):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander in, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+  <li>Altitudes of peaks and passes in, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>-<a href="#Page_263">3</a></li>
+  <li>Assyrian estimate of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+  <li>Irrigation works in, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>-<a href="#Page_76">6</a></li>
+  <li>Kafir inhabitants of, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+  <li>Kyreneans in, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+  <li><a name="Milesian_Greeks" id="Milesian_Greeks"></a>Milesian Greeks (Brankhidai) transported to, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;
+     survival of Greek strain in, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>-<a href="#Page_355">5</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+  <li>Murghab river's economic value in, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>-<a href="#Page_247">7</a></li>
+  <li>Plateau of, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+  <li>Route to, from Mesopotamia, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>-<a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_68">8</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+  <li>Winter climate of, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li>Afghanistan, South:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Christie's and Pottinger's exploration of, <a href="#Page_329">329</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li>Firearms imported into, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+  <li>Historic monuments scarce in, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Afghans:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Burnes' estimate of, <a href="#Page_491">491</a></li>
+  <li>Durani. <i>See <a href="#Durani_Afghans">that title</a></i></li>
+  <li>European travellers' intercourse with (unofficial), <a href="#Page_452">452</a>, <a href="#Page_457">457</a>-<a href="#Page_458">8</a></li>
+  <li>Foreigners, attitude towards, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>-<a href="#Page_338">8</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li>
+  <li>Masson's intimacy with, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>-<a href="#Page_347">7</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>-<a href="#Page_363">3</a>;
+     his influence with, <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+  <li>Slavery, attitude towards, <a href="#Page_421">421</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li>Afridi (Aprytae), <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+<li>Aimak tribes of Central Afghanistan, <a href="#Page_488">488</a>-<a href="#Page_489">9</a></li>
+
+<li>Ak Robat, <a href="#Page_446">446</a></li>
+
+<li>Ak Robat pass, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>;
+   Wood's account of, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></li>
+
+<li>Ak Tepe (Khuzan), <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_246">6</a></li>
+
+<li>Ak Zarat pass, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li>Akbar Khan (Afghan general), <a href="#Page_398">398</a></li>
+
+<li>Akcha (Akbarabad), <a href="#Page_449">449</a></li>
+
+<li>Akulphis, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+<li>Al Kharij, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Alakah ridge, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li>Alauddin (Allah-u-din), <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_467">467</a></li>
+
+<li>Alexander the Great:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexandreia (? Herat) founded by, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+  <li>Bakhi obliterated by, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>-<a href="#Page_32">2</a></li>
+  <li>Brankhidai of Milesia exterminated by, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+  <li>Expedition of, to India:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Aornos episode, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>-<a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_121">21</a></li>
+    <li>Army, constituents of, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>-<a href="#Page_65">5</a></li>
+    <li>Course and incidents of, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>-<a href="#Page_68">8</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>-<a href="#Page_79">9</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>-<a href="#Page_88">8</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>-<a href="#Page_94">4</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>-<a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>-<a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>-<a href="#Page_122">22</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+    <li>Darius' flight from, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>-<a href="#Page_48">8</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_68">8</a></li>
+    <li>Geographical information possessed by, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+    <li>Greek influence of, in Indus valley less than supposed, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+    <li>Greeks in Afghanistan welcoming, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+    <li>Knowledge acquired by, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+    <li>Mutiny beyond Indus, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+    <li>Nature of, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+    <li>Recruitment from Greece during, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+    <li>Retreat, route of, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_154">54</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>-<a href="#Page_166">6</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+    <li>Skythic tribes encountered by, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Marriage of Alexander with Roxana, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+  <li>Philotas tortured to death by, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+  <li>Reverential attitude towards, still felt in India, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>-<a href="#Page_59">9</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li>Alexandreia (Bagram, Herat), <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a></li>
+
+<li>Ali Khan, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+
+<li>Ali Masjid, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+
+<li>Aliabad, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Alingar" id="Alingar"></a>Alingar (Kao) river, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-<a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_507">507</a>, <a href="#Page_509">509</a></li>
+
+<li>Alishang river, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>-<a href="#Page_358">8</a>, <a href="#Page_507">507</a></li>
+
+<li>Alishang valley, Masson in, <a href="#Page_396">396</a></li>
+
+<li>Allard, General, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_455">455</a></li>
+
+<li>Almar, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+<li>Altitude:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Abstract, mediæval ignorance of, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+  <li>As a factor in defence, <a href="#Page_419">419</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Amb (Embolina), <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-<a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>-<a href="#Page_115">15</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li>Ambela pass, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li>Amise, General, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li>
+
+<li>Amritsar, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+
+<li>Anardara, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+
+<li>Anbar, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>-<a href="#Page_251">51</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Andarab" id="Andarab"></a>Andarab (Adraspa, Ariaspa, Zariaspa):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alingar river, communication with, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+  <li>Capital of Greek colonies situated in, <a href="#Page_511">511</a></li>
+  <li>Fertility of, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+  <li>Greek settlements about, <a href="#Page_435">435</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533">533</a></span></li>
+  <li>Haibak route to, <a href="#Page_524">524</a></li>
+  <li>Site of, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>-<a href="#Page_428">8</a></li>
+  <li>Strategic importance of, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+  <li>Timur at, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+  <li>otherwise mentioned, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>-<a href="#Page_274">4</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Andarab river, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>;
+   strategic importance of, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li>Andarab valley, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>, <a href="#Page_509">509</a></li>
+
+<li>Andkhui, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>, <a href="#Page_448">448</a></li>
+
+<li>Anjuman, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li>Anjuman valley, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>, <a href="#Page_507">507</a>, <a href="#Page_509">509</a>;
+   importance of route, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;
+   unexplored, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>-<a href="#Page_428">8</a></li>
+
+<li>Aornos, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>-<a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_121">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Aprytae (Afridi), <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+<li>Arabian Sea:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Command of, necessary for safety of southern Baluchistan passes, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>-<a href="#Page_141">41</a></li>
+  <li>Islands in, disappearance of, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+  <li>Phenomena of, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>-<a href="#Page_287">7</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Arabic, derivatives from, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+<li>Arabii, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Arabius river. <i>See</i> <a href="#Purali">Purali</a></li>
+
+<li>Arabs:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Ascendency of, in seventh century, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>-<a href="#Page_192">2</a></li>
+  <li>Himyaritic, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+  <li>Indian invasion by, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>-<a href="#Page_294">4</a></li>
+  <li>Indian route used by, <i>via</i> Girishk, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+  <li>Makran under ascendency of, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>-<a href="#Page_295">5</a></li>
+  <li>Methods of, mediæval and modern, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+  <li>Records of travel by, untrustworthiness of, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+  <li>Sab&oelig;an, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+  <li>Sind under, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li>Arbela, Arbil. <i>See</i> <a href="#Erbil">Erbil</a></li>
+
+<li>Arbela, battle of, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li>Archa pass, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a></li>
+
+<li>Ardewan pass, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+
+<li>Argandi, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></li>
+
+<li>Arghandab river, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+
+<li>Arghastan river, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+<li>Argu plain, <a href="#Page_424">424</a></li>
+
+<li>Aria, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>. <i>See also</i> <a href="#Herat">Herat</a></li>
+
+<li>Ariaspa. <i>See</i> <a href="#Andarab">Andarab</a></li>
+
+<li>Arigaion, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li>Arimaspians, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+<li>Aristobulus cited, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>-<a href="#Page_152">2</a></li>
+
+<li>Armail (Armabel, Karabel, Las Bela), <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>-<a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>;
+   distances to, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>-<a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+
+<li>Armenia, Israelites deported to, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+
+<li>Arnawai valley, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+
+<li>Arrian cited, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_63">3</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_153">3</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>-<a href="#Page_166">6</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li>Artakoana, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>. <i>See also</i> <a href="#Herat">Herat</a></li>
+
+<li>Artobaizanes, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li>Asfaka, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li>Asfaran (? Subzawar), <a href="#Page_229">229</a>-<a href="#Page_230">30</a></li>
+
+<li>Asmar Boundary Commission (1894), <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li>Asoka, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li>Aspardeh, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+<li>Aspasians, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li>Aspurkan (? Sar-i-pul), <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li>Assagetes, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+<li>Assakenians, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li>Assakenoi, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li>Asshur (Assyrian god), <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+<li>Assur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_163">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Assyria:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Afghan colonies of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li>Buildings in, nature of, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>-<a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+  <li>Israelite serfs in, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li>Assyrian Empire, Second:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Afghanistan as viewed by, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+  <li>Art of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>-<a href="#Page_54">4</a></li>
+  <li>Babylonian overthrow of, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+  <li>Golden age of, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>-<a href="#Page_53">3</a></li>
+  <li>Influence of, in India, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+  <li>Israelites deported by, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li>Naval fight of, first, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+  <li>Satrapies, institution of, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li>Astarab stream and route to Bamian, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>-<a href="#Page_254">4</a>;
+   valley, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+<li>Astarabad, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>Astola I. (Haftala), <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+<li>Attok, Carpatyra probably near, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+<li>Auca (Obeh), <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>Auckland, Lord, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a></li>
+
+<li>Avitabile, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+
+<li>Azdha of Bamian, <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+
+<li>Azdha of Besud, <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Babar (Baba) pass, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a></li>
+
+<li>Baber, Emperor, cited, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>;
+   estimate of, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>-<a href="#Page_327">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Babylon:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Antiquities of, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+  <li>Assyria overthrown by, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+  <li>Barrenness of country round, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li><a name="Badakshan" id="Badakshan"></a>Badakshan:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander in, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+  <li>Antiquarian treasures in, <a href="#Page_511">511</a></li>
+  <li>Balkh-Pamirs route across, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_178">8</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534">534</a></span></li>
+  <li>British knowledge of, only recent, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li>
+  <li>Climate of, <a href="#Page_422">422</a></li>
+  <li>Dorah route from, to Kunar valley, <a href="#Page_520">520</a></li>
+  <li>Exploration of, by Indian surveyors, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>-<a href="#Page_269">9</a></li>
+  <li>Geographical knowledge of uplands of, defective, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>, <a href="#Page_503">503</a>, <a href="#Page_510">510</a></li>
+  <li>Greek settlements and remains in, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_423">423</a></li>
+  <li>Kabul, modern all-the-year-round route to, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>-<a href="#Page_276">6</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a> <i>n.</i>, <a href="#Page_522">522</a> <i>n.</i></li>
+  <li>Kafirs anciently in, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+  <li>Lord's and Wood's mission to, <a href="#Page_402">402</a></li>
+  <li>Moorcroft's journey to, <a href="#Page_444">444</a></li>
+  <li>Railway across uplands to, impracticability of, <a href="#Page_523">523</a></li>
+  <li>Routes to, compared, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></li>
+  <li>Wood's views on, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>-<a href="#Page_437">7</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Badakshan (town) (? Jirm), <a href="#Page_273">273</a>-<a href="#Page_275">5</a></li>
+
+<li>Badakshani transported by Murad Beg, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a></li>
+
+<li>Badghis, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li>Bado river, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>-<a href="#Page_339">9</a></li>
+
+<li>Baghdad:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Masson at, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+  <li>Railway from, <i>via</i> Hamadan and Kum, question as to, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Baghlan, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a>, <a href="#Page_511">511</a>;
+   Greek settlements about, <a href="#Page_435">435</a></li>
+
+<li>Baghlan river, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>;
+   valley, <a href="#Page_437">437</a></li>
+
+<li>Baghnein, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>-<a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+<li>Bagisara (? Damizar), <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li>Bagnarghar, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>-<a href="#Page_283">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Bagram (Alexandreia), <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a></li>
+
+<li>Bahawalpur, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li>
+
+<li>Bahrein Is., <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+<li>Bahu Kalat (Fahalfahra), <a href="#Page_312">312</a>-<a href="#Page_314">14</a></li>
+
+<li>Bahu valley, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li>Baio peak, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>-<a href="#Page_121">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Bajaor, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li>Bajaur, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li>Bajgah, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+
+<li>Bajgah (Parwan, Sar Alang) pass, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></li>
+
+<li>Bajitan (Najitan), <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>Bakhi, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>-<a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+<li>Bakhtyari, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+<li>Bakkak pass, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li>Baktra. <i>See</i> <a href="#Balkh">Balkh</a></li>
+
+<li>Baktria. <i>See</i> <a href="#Badakshan">Badakshan</a></li>
+
+<li>Bakwa plain, <a href="#Page_493">493</a></li>
+
+<li>Bala Murghab, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a></li>
+
+<li>Balangur (Bala Angur), <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Balkh" id="Balkh"></a>Balkh:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Antiquity of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+  <li>Approach to, by Akcha road, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+  <li>Buddhism at, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>-<a href="#Page_503">503</a></li>
+  <li>Coins and relics at, <a href="#Page_459">459</a></li>
+  <li>Ferrier's account of, <a href="#Page_482">482</a></li>
+  <li>Importance of, in antiquity, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+  <li>Khotan, distance from, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+  <li>Modern, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>-<a href="#Page_74">4</a></li>
+  <li>Moorcroft at, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>, <a href="#Page_449">449</a></li>
+  <li>Persian satrapy including, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  <li>Routes to, from:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Bamian, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>-<a href="#Page_268">8</a></li>
+    <li>Bokhara, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+    <li>Herat, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>-<a href="#Page_240">40</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>-<a href="#Page_248">8</a></li>
+    <li>Kabul, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>-<a href="#Page_273">3</a></li>
+    <li>Khotan, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>-<a href="#Page_279">9</a></li>
+    <li>Merv, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>-<a href="#Page_250">50</a></li>
+    <li>Punjab, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+    <li>Southward, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Balkh Ab river, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+<li>Balkh Ab valley, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>;
+   route to Kabul, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>-<a href="#Page_260">60</a></li>
+
+<li>Balkh plains:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Antiquarian interest of, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_511">511</a></li>
+  <li>Extent and character of, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+  <li>Mapping of, <a href="#Page_501">501</a></li>
+  <li>Rivers of, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+  <li>Waterway ruins of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li><a name="Balkh_river" id="Balkh_river"></a>Balkh (Band-i-Amir) river:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Course of, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>-<a href="#Page_258">8</a></li>
+  <li>Lakes and aqueducts of, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+  <li>Sarikoh, junction with, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+  <li>Scenery of, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>-<a href="#Page_263">3</a></li>
+  <li>Source of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Baluch Confederation:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Kaiani Maliks at head of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+  <li>Lawlessness of, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Baluchistan:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Arab exploration of, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+  <li>Desert of, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+  <li>Exploration of, modern, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;
+     by Christie and Pottinger, <a href="#Page_329">329</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li>Firearms imported into, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+  <li>Frontier of, the Gomul, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+  <li>Hinterland of India, viewed as, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+  <li>Hot winds of, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+  <li>Language of, Persian in origin, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  <li>Lasonoi emigration to, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+  <li>Makran. <i>See <a href="#Makran">that title</a></i></li>
+  <li>Mediæval geography regarding, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+  <li>Mongol invasion of India through, <a href="#Page_526">526</a></li>
+  <li>Natural features and conditions of, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>-<a href="#Page_33">3</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li>
+  <li>Persian Empire including, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  <li>Political intrigue in, <a href="#Page_409">409</a></li>
+  <li>Southern passes from, into India commanded from the sea, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>-<a href="#Page_141">41</a></li>
+  <li>Surveying of, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535">535</a></span></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Baluchistan, East:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Inhabitants of, character of, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>-<a href="#Page_374">4</a></li>
+  <li>Masson's travels in, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Baluchistan, South:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Brahui of, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+  <li>Configuration of, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Baluchs, Masson's intimacy with, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li>
+
+<li>Bam, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+
+<li>Bamain, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>-<a href="#Page_214">14</a></li>
+
+<li>Bam-i-dunya. <i>See</i> <a href="#Balkh_river">Pamirs</a></li>
+
+<li>Bamian:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Buddhist relics at, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>-<a href="#Page_266">6</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a></li>
+  <li>Founding of kingdom of, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+  <li>Importance of, in Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>-<a href="#Page_262">2</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+  <li>Masson in, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>-<a href="#Page_386">86</a></li>
+  <li>Route through, importance of, <a href="#Page_438">438</a></li>
+  <li>Routes to, from:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Balkh, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>-<a href="#Page_268">8</a></li>
+    <li>Ghur, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+    <li>Kabul (open in winter), <a href="#Page_385">385</a>-<a href="#Page_386">6</a></li>
+    <li>Oxus plains, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+    <li>Sar-i-pul, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li>Bamian (Unai) pass, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+<li>Bamian river, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a></li>
+
+<li>Bamian valley:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Description of, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>-<a href="#Page_266">6</a></li>
+  <li>Importance of, <a href="#Page_437">437</a>-<a href="#Page_438">8</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Bampur:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander at, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+  <li>Mountain conformation of, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+  <li>Pottinger at, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Bampusht Koh mountains, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Band (Binth), <a href="#Page_311">311</a>-<a href="#Page_312">12</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li>Band-i-Amir mountains, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li>Band-i-Amir river. <i>See</i> <a href="#Balkh_river">Balkh river</a></li>
+
+<li>Band-i-Baian (Siah Koh, Sufed Koh) mountains, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_486">486</a>, <a href="#Page_487">487</a></li>
+
+<li>Band-i-Nadir, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li>Band-i-Turkistan, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_484">484</a></li>
+
+<li>Banj mountain, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+<li>Banjohir (Panjshir), <a href="#Page_276">276</a>-<a href="#Page_277">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Bannu, <a href="#Page_512">512</a></li>
+
+<li>Baraki, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li>Barbarra (? Mabara), <a href="#Page_434">434</a></li>
+
+<li>Barna, Badara (Gwadur), <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li>Barnes, Sir Hugh, <a href="#Page_374">374</a> <i>and n.</i></li>
+
+<li>Baroghel pass, <a href="#Page_517">517</a>, <a href="#Page_521">521</a></li>
+
+<li>Barohi, meaning of term, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>. <i>See also</i> <a href="#Brahuis">Brahuis</a></li>
+
+<li>Bashgol valley, <a href="#Page_426">426</a></li>
+
+<li>Bashkird mountains, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li>Basrah, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Bassarika</i> cited, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li>Bast, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+<li>Bazar (ancient) (Rustam, Bazira, Bazireh), <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+<li>Bazar (modern) (? Ora), <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+<li>Bean, Captain, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>-<a href="#Page_407">407</a></li>
+
+<li>Begram, site of ancient city at, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>;
+   Cufic coins at, <a href="#Page_394">394</a></li>
+
+<li>Behistan inscriptions cited, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+<li>Behvana (Jirena), <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li>Bela (in Baluchistan), <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+
+<li>Bela. <i>See</i> <a href="#Las_Bela">Las Bela</a></li>
+
+<li>Belchirag, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_484">484</a></li>
+
+<li>Bellew cited, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>-<a href="#Page_164">4</a>;
+   his <i>Ethnography of Afghanistan</i> cited, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;
+   his <i>Inquiry</i> cited, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Belous (Bolous), <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li>Ben-i-Israel, traditions of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>-<a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li>
+
+<li>Benjawai, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li>Bentinck, Lord Wm., <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+
+<li>Berwan lake, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+
+<li>Bessos (later Artaxerxes), <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li>Besud route to the Helmund, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li>Besud territory, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>-<a href="#Page_381">81</a></li>
+
+<li>Bih (Geh), <a href="#Page_311">311</a>-<a href="#Page_312">12</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li>Binadur, <a href="#Page_493">493</a></li>
+
+<li>Binth (Band), <a href="#Page_311">311</a>-<a href="#Page_312">12</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li>Birdwood, Sir Geo., cited, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+<li>Birmal hills, <a href="#Page_513">513</a></li>
+
+<li>Birs Nimrud, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
+
+<li>Bist (Kala Bist), <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+<li>Bitchilik pass, <a href="#Page_387">387</a></li>
+
+<li>Blood, Sir Bindon, cited, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li>Bodh, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+
+<li>Bokhara (Sogdiæ):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander's success in, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+  <li>Balkh under chief of, <a href="#Page_459">459</a></li>
+  <li>Kabul and Bamian, main route from, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li>
+  <li>Khulm and Balkh route from, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+  <li>Modern popularity of, <a href="#Page_395">395</a></li>
+  <li>Moorcroft's journey to, <a href="#Page_444">444</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Bolan (Mashkaf) pass, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li>
+
+<li>Bolar, kingdom of, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+
+<li>Boledi, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>-<a href="#Page_37">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Bolor, Kafiristan part of, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li>Bolous (Belous), <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li>Bombay N.I., geographical record of, <a href="#Page_454">454</a></li>
+
+<li>Boodhi, <a href="#Page_483">483</a>-<a href="#Page_484">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Botm, <a href="#Page_282">282</a> <i>and n.</i></li>
+
+<li>Bouchinj (Zindajan), <a href="#Page_479">479</a></li>
+
+<li>Bousik (Boushinj, Pousheng), <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li>Brahmi script cited, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Brahuis" id="Brahuis"></a>Brahuis (Barohis):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Baluchistan, in, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+  <li>Masson's estimate of, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li>
+  <li>Mingals, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+  <li>Revolt of, at Kalat, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536">536</a></span></li>
+  <li>Sakæ, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>-<a href="#Page_164">4</a></li>
+  <li>Stock of, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+  <li>Traditions of, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Brankhidai of Milesia, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li>Brick buildings of antiquity, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>-<a href="#Page_43">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Broadfoot, Lieut. J. S., <a href="#Page_513">513</a>;
+   travels of, in Central Afghanistan, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>, <a href="#Page_470">470</a> <i>et seq.</i>;
+   estimate of, <a href="#Page_471">471</a></li>
+
+<li>Bubulak, <a href="#Page_387">387</a></li>
+
+<li>Buddhism:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Balkh, at, in antiquity, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>-<a href="#Page_503">503</a></li>
+  <li>Bamian, relics in, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>-<a href="#Page_266">6</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a></li>
+  <li>Building age of, a later development, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+  <li>Haibak, at, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>-<a href="#Page_265">5</a>, <a href="#Page_511">511</a></li>
+  <li>Jalalabad, relics at, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+  <li>Kashmir, in, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a href="#Page_180">80</a></li>
+  <li>Nava Sanghârâma, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+  <li>Ritual of, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>-<a href="#Page_176">6</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>-<a href="#Page_182">2</a></li>
+  <li>Sind, ruins in, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+  <li>Swat, in, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+  <li>Takla Makan, in the, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li><i>Buddhist Records of the Western World</i>, quoted, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>-<a href="#Page_176">6</a></li>
+
+<li>Buddhiya kingdom, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>-<a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li>Budu river, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+
+<li>Bunbury cited, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+<li>Buner river, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>-<a href="#Page_121">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Buner valley, Blood's expedition to, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li>Bushire, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+<li>Burhan, Lake, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Burnes, Sir Alexander, Indus navigation by, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>;
+   at court of Ranjit Singh, <a href="#Page_455">455</a>-<a href="#Page_457">7</a>;
+   mission of, to Kabul (1832), <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>;
+   to Kunduz, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>;
+   <i>Travels in Bokhara</i> quoted, <a href="#Page_455">455</a>, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>;
+   date of publication, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>;
+   commercial mission of, to Kabul (1837), <a href="#Page_398">398</a>-<a href="#Page_401">401</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>-<a href="#Page_405">405</a>;
+   work of, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>-<a href="#Page_441">41</a>;
+   estimate of, <a href="#Page_453">453</a>, <a href="#Page_461">461</a></li>
+
+<li>Burzil pass, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Candace, <a href="#Page_479">479</a></li>
+
+<li>Canouj, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li>Cariat (Kariut), <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li>Carpatyra, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>-<a href="#Page_29">9</a></li>
+
+<li>Cavalry on frontier expeditions, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li>Celadon ware, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>-<a href="#Page_83">3</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li>Chach of Sind, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li>Chachnama of Sind cited, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Chagai, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li>
+
+<li>Chagan Sarai, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li>Chahar Aimak, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a></li>
+
+<li>Chaharburjak, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Chahardar" id="Chahardar"></a>Chahardar (Chapdara) pass, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>, <a href="#Page_522">522</a></li>
+  <li>Height of, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+  <li>Military road over, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+
+<li>Chaharshamba river and route to Balkh from Herat, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+
+<li>Chahil Abdal (Chalapdalan) mountain, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_486">486</a>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a></li>
+
+<li>Chahilburj, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li>Chahiltan heights, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>-<a href="#Page_371">71</a></li>
+
+<li>Chakesar ford, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li>Chakhansur, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+
+<li>Chalapdalan (Chahil Abdal) mountain, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_486">486</a>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a></li>
+
+<li>Chandragupta (Sandrakottos), <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li>Chapdara pass. <i>See</i> <a href="#Chahardar">Chahardar</a></li>
+
+<li>Charbar, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li>Chardeh plain, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></li>
+
+<li>Charikar:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Military road from, over Chapdara pass, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+  <li>Strategical position of, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Charsadda, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+<li>Chashma Sabz pass, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+
+<li>Chenghiz Khan, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>, <a href="#Page_526">526</a></li>
+
+<li>Cherchen, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+
+<li>China, Buddhist pilgrimage routes from, <a href="#Page_169">169</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>, <a href="#Page_518">518</a></li>
+
+<li>Chinese Turkistan:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Buddhist occupation of, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+  <li>Conditions of life in, in antiquity, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+  <li>Tibet, included in, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Chiras, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li>Chitral, passes converging on, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>-<a href="#Page_427">7</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a></li>
+
+<li>Chitral river. <i>See</i> <a href="#Kunar_river">Kunar river</a></li>
+
+<li>Chitral valley:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Accessibility of, <a href="#Page_517">517</a></li>
+  <li>Dorah route to, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>-<a href="#Page_520">20</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Choaspes. <i>See</i> <a href="#Kunar">Kunar</a></li>
+
+<li>Chol country, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+<li>Christians:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Armenian, in Kabul, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li>
+  <li>Merv, at, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+  <li>Sakah, at, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Christie, Captain, <a href="#Page_329">329</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Chumla river, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;
+   valley, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li>Climate as affecting race distribution, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+
+<li>Conolly, Lieut., <a href="#Page_390">390</a></li>
+
+<li>Cophæus, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+<li>Court, M., <a href="#Page_455">455</a>, <a href="#Page_457">457</a></li>
+
+<li>Crockery debris, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li>Cufic coins, <a href="#Page_394">394</a></li>
+
+<li>Cunningham, General, cited, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Curtius" id="Curtius"></a>Curtius, Quintus, cited, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>-<a href="#Page_149">9</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537">537</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Cyrus, King of Persia, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Dadar, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li>
+
+<li>Dahuk (? Dashtak), <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+
+<li>Dames, Longworth, cited, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li>Damizar (? Bagisara), <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li>Dand, <a href="#Page_472">472</a></li>
+
+<li>Dandan Shikan pass, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>;
+   Wood's account of, <a href="#Page_418">418</a></li>
+
+<li>Daolatabad, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+<li>Daolatyar, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>-<a href="#Page_224">4</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_486">486</a></li>
+
+<li>Daraim valley, <a href="#Page_424">424</a></li>
+
+<li>Darak (Dizak), <a href="#Page_311">311</a>-<a href="#Page_314">14</a></li>
+
+<li>Darak Yamuna (Yakmina), <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li>Dards, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+<li>Darel (To-li), <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>-<a href="#Page_183">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Darel stream, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>-<a href="#Page_184">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Darius, flight of, from Alexander, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;
+   death of, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+<li>Darius Hystaspes, transportation of Greeks by, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li>Darra Yusuf river, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li>Darwaz mountains, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>-<a href="#Page_433">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Darya-i-Zarah (Gaod-i-Zireh), <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li>Dasht river, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li>Dasht-i-bedoulat plain, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li>
+
+<li>Dasht-i-Lut, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+
+<li>Dasht-i-Margo desert, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_495">495</a></li>
+
+<li>Dawar (Zamindawar), <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>-<a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_491">491</a></li>
+
+<li>Deane, Major Sir H., cited, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li>Debal, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li>Deh Dadi, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li>Dehao (? Dehi), <a href="#Page_483">483</a></li>
+
+<li>Dehertan (? Dahertan), <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li>Dehgans, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li>Dehi (? Dehao), <a href="#Page_483">483</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Delight of those who seek to wander through the Regions of the World, The</i> (Idrisi), cited, <a href="#Page_199">199</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Dendalkan, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+<li>Dera Ismail Khan, <a href="#Page_463">463</a></li>
+
+<li>Derah, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li>Derak (Dizek), <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+<li>Dereh Mustapha Khan (Deria-dereh), <a href="#Page_487">487</a></li>
+
+<li>Derenbrosa, I., <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li>Derthel, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>-<a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li>Deserts as barriers, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>-<a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+<li>Dev Hissar fortress, <a href="#Page_484">484</a>-<a href="#Page_485">5</a></li>
+
+<li>Dev Kala, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li>Dihsai (Dshara), <a href="#Page_465">465</a>-<a href="#Page_466">6</a></li>
+
+<li>Diodoros cited, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Dionysiaka</i> cited, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li>Dir valley, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li>Dizak (Darak), <a href="#Page_311">311</a>-<a href="#Page_314">14</a></li>
+
+<li>Dizek (Derak), <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+<li>Djil, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li>Doctors as travellers, <a href="#Page_463">463</a></li>
+
+<li>Domai (Manora), I., <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+
+<li>Domandi, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>, <a href="#Page_513">513</a></li>
+
+<li>Dorah pass, <a href="#Page_508">508</a>-<a href="#Page_509">509</a>;
+   nature and importance of, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>-<a href="#Page_427">7</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>-<a href="#Page_521">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Dorak (? Dizek), <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li>Dosh, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li>Doshak. <i>See</i> <a href="#Jalalabad">Jalalabad</a></li>
+
+<li>Doshak range, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+<li>Dost Mahomed Khan, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>, <a href="#Page_444">444</a>, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>;
+   operations by, against Sikhs, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>-<a href="#Page_398">8</a>;
+   methods and estimate of, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li>
+
+<li>Drangia. <i>See</i> <a href="#Seistan">Seistan</a></li>
+
+<li>Dravidian Brahuis, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li>Dravidian races entering India, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>-<a href="#Page_144">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Dshara (Dihsai), <a href="#Page_465">465</a>-<a href="#Page_466">6</a></li>
+
+<li>Dufferin lake, <a href="#Page_520">520</a></li>
+
+<li>Durand, <a href="#Page_471">471</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Durani_Afghans" id="Durani_Afghans"></a>Durani Afghans:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Districts inhabited by, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+  <li>Herat under occupation of, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+  <li>Shikarpur, at, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li>
+  <li>Truculence of, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_490">490</a></li>
+  <li>Zarangai alleged to be recognisable as, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>-<a href="#Page_34">4</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Duvanah valley, <a href="#Page_424">424</a></li>
+
+<li>Dwa Gomul river, <a href="#Page_475">475</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Eastward migrations, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+
+<li>Ecbatana:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Darius' flight to, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>-<a href="#Page_48">8</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+  <li>Route, direct, to India from, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Egypt, buildings in, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+<li>Elam, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li>Elburz mountains:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander's passage of, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+  <li>Rivers of, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+  <li>Road across, <a href="#Page_528">528</a></li>
+  <li>mentioned, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Elliott, Sir H., cited, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;
+   quoted, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Embolina (Amb), <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-<a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>-<a href="#Page_115">15</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Erbil" id="Erbil"></a>Erbil (Arbil):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Battle of Arbela at, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+  <li>Route from, to Hamadan, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Ersari Turkmans, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>-<a href="#Page_460">60</a></li>
+
+<li>Esar Haddon, King of Assyria, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+<li>Ethiopians, Asiatic, problem regarding, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>-<a href="#Page_36">6</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li>Euxine (Black Sea):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Milesian colonies S. and W. of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+  <li>Skythic nomads N. of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Explorations of Indian trans-frontier, recentness of, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_538" id="Page_538">538</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Fa Hian, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>-<a href="#Page_185">5</a>;
+   quoted, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>-<a href="#Page_176">6</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+<li>Fahalfahra (Bahu Kalat), <a href="#Page_312">312</a>-<a href="#Page_314">14</a></li>
+
+<li>Fahraj (Pahrag, Pahra, Pahura), <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>;
+   two places so named, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li>Faizabad:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Dorah route from, <a href="#Page_519">519</a></li>
+  <li>Situation of, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>-<a href="#Page_274">4</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a></li>
+  <li>Wood's account and estimate of, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a></li>
+  <li>Zebak, route from, <a href="#Page_511">511</a></li>
+  <li>mentioned, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_506">506</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Farah (Prophthasia):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander the Great at, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+  <li>Antiquity of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+  <li>Ferrier at, <a href="#Page_493">493</a>-<a href="#Page_494">4</a></li>
+  <li>Herat, route from, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>-<a href="#Page_234">34</a></li>
+  <li>Situation of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Farah Rud river, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a>, <a href="#Page_494">494</a></li>
+
+<li>Farajghan, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li>
+
+<li>Fardan (? Bampur or Pahra), <a href="#Page_315">315</a>-<a href="#Page_317">17</a></li>
+
+<li>Farsi, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+
+<li>Fazilpur, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li>
+
+<li>Fazl Hag, <a href="#Page_458">458</a></li>
+
+<li>Ferengal, lead mines at, <a href="#Page_416">416</a></li>
+
+<li>Ferghana, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+
+<li>Ferrier, M., career of, <a href="#Page_477">477</a>;
+   at Herat, <a href="#Page_477">477</a>-<a href="#Page_478">8</a>;
+   journey across Firozkohi plateau, <a href="#Page_476">476</a>, <a href="#Page_478">478</a>, <a href="#Page_484">484</a>;
+   route to Ghur, <a href="#Page_485">485</a>-<a href="#Page_487">7</a>;
+   imprisonments of, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>-<a href="#Page_493">3</a>;
+   at Farah, <a href="#Page_493">493</a>-<a href="#Page_494">4</a>;
+   in Seistan, <a href="#Page_496">496</a>-<a href="#Page_497">7</a>;
+   back to Herat, <a href="#Page_498">498</a>;
+   methods of, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>;
+   estimate of, <a href="#Page_476">476</a>, <a href="#Page_480">480</a>, <a href="#Page_498">498</a>;
+   cited, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_516">516</a>;
+   <i>Caravan Journeys</i> cited, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+
+<li>Ferrying by ponies, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>-<a href="#Page_461">61</a></li>
+
+<li>Feruk (Feruckabad), <a href="#Page_449">449</a></li>
+
+<li>Firabuz (Kanazbun), <a href="#Page_302">302</a>-<a href="#Page_303">303</a>;
+   distances from, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li>Firozand, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+
+<li>Firozkohi (mediæval capital of Ghur), <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+<li>Firozkohi plateau:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Ferrier's journey across, <a href="#Page_476">476</a>, <a href="#Page_478">478</a>, <a href="#Page_484">484</a>;
+     route to Ghur, <a href="#Page_485">485</a>-<a href="#Page_487">7</a></li>
+  <li>Impracticability of, for military operations, <a href="#Page_525">525</a></li>
+  <li>Outlook from, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+  <li>mentioned, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Firozkohis:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>District of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+  <li>Origin of, <a href="#Page_481">481</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Foosheng, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li>Forbes, Dr., murder of, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+
+<li>Forrest's <i>Selections from Travels and Journals preserved in the Bombay Secretariat</i> quoted, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <i>and n.</i></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Gadrosia. <i>See</i> <a href="#Makran">Makran</a></li>
+
+<li>Gadrosii, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li>Gaduns, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+<li>Gadurs, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li>Galjin, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+
+<li>Gandhara (Upper Punjab), <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+<li>Gandava (Sind), <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Gaod-i-Zireh (Darya-i-Zarah), <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li>Gardandiwal, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a></li>
+
+<li>Gauraians, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li>Gauraios river. <i>See</i> <a href="#Panjkora">Panjkora</a></li>
+
+<li>Gawargar, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li>Gazban (Karbis), <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li>Gazdarra pass, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_472">472</a></li>
+
+<li>Geh (Bih), <a href="#Page_311">311</a>-<a href="#Page_312">12</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li>Geography:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Ancient records of, absence of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>-<a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+  <li>Distances, difficulties of estimating, by "a day's journey," 298</li>
+  <li>Influence of, on migratory movements, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>-<a href="#Page_46">6</a>;
+     on history, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+  <li>Makran, of, <a href="#Page_295">295</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li>Official <i>v.</i> unofficial, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li>
+  <li>Persian, extent and accuracy of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>-<a href="#Page_26">6</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  <li>Recent advances in, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Gerard, Dr., <a href="#Page_376">376</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a></li>
+
+<li>Germany, firearms from, imported to Persia, Seistan, etc., <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li>Gharan, <a href="#Page_429">429</a></li>
+
+<li>Gharo river, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+
+<li>Ghazni (region):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Raids from, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+  <li>Vigne's exploration of, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Ghazni river, <a href="#Page_468">468</a></li>
+
+<li>Ghazni (town):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alauddin's sack of, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+  <li>Desolation of, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>-<a href="#Page_211">11</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li>
+  <li>Kandahar, route to, <a href="#Page_512">512</a></li>
+  <li>Masson at, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>-<a href="#Page_360">60</a></li>
+  <li>Vigne at, <a href="#Page_467">467</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Ghaznigak, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Ghilzais" id="Ghilzais"></a>Ghilzais (Khilkhis):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Districts of, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>-<a href="#Page_376">6</a></li>
+  <li>Importance of, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+  <li>Suliman Khel. <i>See <a href="#Suliman">that title</a></i></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Ghizao, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+
+<li>Ghorband drainage system, <a href="#Page_468">468</a></li>
+
+<li>Ghorband river, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_539" id="Page_539">539</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Ghorband valley:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Beauty of, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+  <li>Easy pass to, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a></li>
+  <li>Lead mines in, <a href="#Page_416">416</a></li>
+  <li>Military road up, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Ghori, <a href="#Page_524">524</a></li>
+
+<li>Ghoweh Kol (? Pai Kol), <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+
+<li>Ghulam Khana, <a href="#Page_385">385</a></li>
+
+<li>Ghur:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Ferrier at, <a href="#Page_478">478</a></li>
+  <li>Ghazni to, no direct route from, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Ghur, kingdom of:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Description and history of, in mediæval times, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>-<a href="#Page_213">13</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>-<a href="#Page_219">19</a></li>
+  <li>Routes through, in mediæval times, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_224">24</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Ghur river, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a></li>
+
+<li>Ghur valley, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>-<a href="#Page_222">2</a></li>
+
+<li>Ghurian (Koure), <a href="#Page_231">231</a>-<a href="#Page_232">2</a></li>
+
+<li>Giaban headland, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li>Gichki, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+<li>Gilgit basin, <a href="#Page_517">517</a>;
+   river, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+<li>Girishk:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Ferrier's imprisonment at, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>-<a href="#Page_493">3</a></li>
+  <li>Ford at, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>-<a href="#Page_210">10</a></li>
+  <li>Kandahar route by, <a href="#Page_490">490</a></li>
+  <li>Ruins at, <a href="#Page_492">492</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Gish (war god), <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li>Glass, Arabic, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li>Gobi desert, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+<li>Goës, Benedict, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>-<a href="#Page_328">8</a></li>
+
+<li>Goldsmid, General Sir F., <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li>Gomul river, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>, <a href="#Page_473">473</a>-<a href="#Page_474">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Gomul route from the Indus to Ghazni, Vigne's exploration of, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>, <a href="#Page_512">512</a>, <a href="#Page_513">513</a></li>
+
+<li>Gondakahar (Gandakahar, Gondekehar) caves, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li>
+
+<li>Gondrani caves, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li>Granikos river, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+
+<li>Great Britain:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Afghan attitude towards, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>-<a href="#Page_338">8</a>;
+     British attitude towards Afghanistan in early nineteenth century, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li>
+  <li>Afghan war (1839-40). <i>See</i> <a href="#British">Afghanistan, British war with</a></li>
+  <li>Afghan war (1878-80), surveys in connection with, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>, <a href="#Page_500">500</a></li>
+  <li>Sixteenth century, condition of England in, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Greeks:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Baghlan and Andarab, settlements about, <a href="#Page_435">435</a></li>
+  <li>Baktria, deportation to, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;
+     survival of strain in, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>-<a href="#Page_355">5</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_423">423</a></li>
+  <li>Dionysian, migration of, to Indian frontier, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_63">3</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>-<a href="#Page_125">5</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_423">423</a></li>
+  <li>Indian art, influence on, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>-<a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+  <li>Kyrenean, in Baktria, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+  <li>Milesian. <i>See that title</i></li>
+  <li>Persian Empire, relations with, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>-<a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li>Women of, as influencing language in Indus valley, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Grierson, Dr., cited, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li>Gulgula citadel, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li>
+
+<li>Gulkatz, <a href="#Page_473">473</a></li>
+
+<li>Gulkoh mountain, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+
+<li>Gulran (? Kilrin), <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+
+<li>Gurkhas in Nepal, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li>Guzwan (? Gurkan, Juzjan, Jurkan, Jirghan), <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li>Gwadur (Barna, Badara), <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li>Gwalian (Walian) pass, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Habibullah, <a href="#Page_444">444</a></li>
+
+<li>Haftala (Astola, Hashtala, Nuhsala, Nosala) Island, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Haibak" id="Haibak"></a>Haibak (Semenjan):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Andarab, distance from, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>;
+     route to, <a href="#Page_524">524</a></li>
+  <li>Buddhist remains at, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>-<a href="#Page_265">5</a>, <a href="#Page_511">511</a></li>
+  <li>Description of, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+  <li>Moorcroft at, <a href="#Page_446">446</a></li>
+  <li>mentioned, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_482">482</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Haidar, cited, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+
+<li>Haidarabad, <a href="#Page_399">399</a></li>
+
+<li>Haig, General, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;
+   cited, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>-<a href="#Page_310">10</a>;
+   <i>Indus Delta Country</i> by, cited, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+
+<li>Haji Khan, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>-<a href="#Page_387">87</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></li>
+
+<li>Hajigak pass, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>;
+   Masson's account of, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>;
+   Wood's account of, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></li>
+
+<li>Hajjaj, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+
+<li>Hala pass, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+
+<li>Hamadan, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>;
+   telegraph route from, to Teheran, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li>Harat Rud, <a href="#Page_498">498</a></li>
+
+<li>Hari Rud river:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Course of, <a href="#Page_528">528</a></li>
+  <li>Herat-Kabul route by, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+  <li>Pul-i-Malun across, <a href="#Page_229">229</a> <i>n.</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+  <li>Source of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Hari Rud valley, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_485">485</a>-<a href="#Page_486">6</a>, <a href="#Page_528">528</a></li>
+
+<li>Hariana, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>-<a href="#Page_277">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Harnai pass, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+<li>Hazaras:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Characteristics of, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a></li>
+  <li>Country of, nature of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>-<a href="#Page_86">6</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_516">516</a>;
+     British interest in, merely academic, <a href="#Page_514">514</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_540" id="Page_540">540</a></span></li>
+  <li>Forced labour of, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>-<a href="#Page_381">81</a></li>
+  <li>Haji Khan's treachery against, <a href="#Page_384">384</a></li>
+  <li>Kidnapping of, by Taimanis, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+  <li>Masson's relations with, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>-<a href="#Page_388">8</a></li>
+  <li>Slave-gangs of, <a href="#Page_421">421</a></li>
+  <li>Trading of, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+  <li>Women of, Ferrier's account of, <a href="#Page_485">485</a></li>
+  <li>Yezdambaksh, under, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>-<a href="#Page_379">9</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Hazart Ghaos, <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li>
+
+<li>Hazrat Baba Kamur, <a href="#Page_505">505</a></li>
+
+<li>Hazrat Imam, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>-<a href="#Page_433">3</a>, <a href="#Page_504">504</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a>, <a href="#Page_506">506</a></li>
+
+<li>Hedin, Sven, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+<li>Helawerd, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li>Helmund basin, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;
+   central unexplored, <a href="#Page_512">512</a></li>
+
+<li>Helmund river (Etymander):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Course of:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Description of, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>-<a href="#Page_82">2</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>-<a href="#Page_84">4</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></li>
+    <li>Variations in, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Crossing-places on, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>-<a href="#Page_210">10</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+  <li>Detritus borne by, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+  <li>Indus, route to, <a href="#Page_527">527</a></li>
+  <li>Northern branches of, unexplored, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+  <li>Ruins bordering, <a href="#Page_492">492</a></li>
+  <li>Unexplored portion of, <a href="#Page_512">512</a>, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Helmund valley:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Antiquarian treasures in, <a href="#Page_496">496</a></li>
+  <li>Description of, <a href="#Page_79">79</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li>Nadir Shah in, <a href="#Page_526">526</a></li>
+  <li>Pottery débris in, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+  <li>Survey of, thoroughness of, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Hephæstion, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Herat" id="Herat"></a>Herat (Aria):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Ancient cities on or near site of, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+  <li>Balkh, routes to, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>-<a href="#Page_240">40</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>-<a href="#Page_248">8</a></li>
+  <li>Capital of Ghur in mediæval times, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+  <li>Christie at, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>-<a href="#Page_337">7</a></li>
+  <li>Commerce of, during Arab supremacy, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+  <li>Defence of, against the Persians (1837), <a href="#Page_402">402</a></li>
+  <li>Description of, by Idrisi, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+  <li>Durani occupation of, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+  <li>Farah, route to, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>-<a href="#Page_234">34</a></li>
+  <li>Ferrier at, <a href="#Page_477">477</a>;
+     his views as to, <a href="#Page_479">479</a></li>
+  <li>India, military route to, <a href="#Page_525">525</a>-<a href="#Page_526">6</a></li>
+  <li>Kabul, route to, by Hari Rud, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+     other routes, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+  <li>Kandahar, direct route to, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>, <a href="#Page_525">525</a>-<a href="#Page_528">8</a></li>
+  <li>Mosalla, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+  <li>Panjdeh and Merv, route to, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+  <li>Persian satrapy including, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+  <li>Persian siege of, <a href="#Page_477">477</a></li>
+  <li>Tributary to Ghur in mediæval times, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Herat valley, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>-<a href="#Page_212">12</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;
+   route from, to India, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;
+   trees in, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li>Herodotus cited, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>-<a href="#Page_34">4</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li>Hicks, <a href="#Page_469">469</a></li>
+
+<li>Hindu Koh range, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Hindu_Kush" id="Hindu_Kush"></a>Hindu Kush mountains:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Direction of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+  <li>Geographical knowledge of, defective, <a href="#Page_508">508</a>-<a href="#Page_509">9</a></li>
+  <li>Passes over, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>-<a href="#Page_382">2</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>-<a href="#Page_415">15</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>-<a href="#Page_427">7</a>, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>-<a href="#Page_435">5</a>, <a href="#Page_507">507</a>, <a href="#Page_517">517</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>-<a href="#Page_525">25</a></li>
+    <li>Andarab in relation to, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+    <li>Command of, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+    <li>Masson's account of, <a href="#Page_388">388</a></li>
+    <li>Mediæval use of, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+    <li>Wood's account of, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>-<a href="#Page_418">18</a></li>
+  <li>Snow line of, on north and south sides, <a href="#Page_415">415</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Hinglaz mountain and shrine, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_163">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Hingol river, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;
+   Alexander at, on the retreat, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>-<a href="#Page_163">3</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+<li>History, unimportance of, to the ancients, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+<li>Hiuen Tsiang cited, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+<li>Honigberger, M., <a href="#Page_394">394</a>-<a href="#Page_395">5</a>, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>, <a href="#Page_468">468</a></li>
+
+<li>Hormuz, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li>Housab, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>Huc, Abbé, cited, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>, <a href="#Page_440">440</a></li>
+
+<li>Huec Sheng, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+<li>Huen Tsang cited, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li>Huntington, Ellsworthy, cited, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li>Hunza (Kunjut), <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_181">81</a></li>
+
+<li>Hupian, <a href="#Page_394">394</a></li>
+
+<li>Hyperboreans, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Ibn Batuta cited, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li>Ibn Haukel of Baghdad cited, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>-<a href="#Page_231">31</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;
+   <i>Ashkalu l' Bilad</i> of, quoted, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>-<a href="#Page_309">309</a>;
+   map of Makran by, cited, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>-<a href="#Page_298">8</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Ichthyophagi, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Idrisi" id="Idrisi">Idrisi</a> (Abu Abdulla Mohammed) cited,199 <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>-<a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>-<a href="#Page_317">17</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>-<a href="#Page_428">8</a>, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>;
+   quoted, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>-<a href="#Page_317">17</a></li>
+
+<li>Ilchi (Khotan), <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Iliad</i> cited, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+
+<li>Imám Sharif, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+<li>India (<i>for particular districts, rivers, etc., see their names</i>):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Aboriginal inhabitants of, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_541" id="Page_541">541</a></span></li>
+  <li>Afghanistan:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Commercial treaty with, attempted, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>;
+ Burnes' mission, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>-<a href="#Page_401">401</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>-<a href="#Page_405">5</a></li>
+    <li>Land gates of India always in possession of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Arab invasion of, by land and sea, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+  <li>Art of:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Assyrian influence on, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>-<a href="#Page_54">4</a></li>
+    <li>Greek influence on, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>-<a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+    <li>Syrian and Armenian influence on, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Aryan influx to, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li>Assyrian influence in, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;
+     on art, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>-<a href="#Page_54">4</a></li>
+  <li>Bombay N.I., record of, <a href="#Page_454">454</a></li>
+  <li>Defences of, natural:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>North and north-east frontier, on, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+    <li>South frontier, on&mdash;ridge and valley formation, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;
+     Indus to Punjab desert, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>-<a href="#Page_144">4</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_526">526</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Dravidian races entering, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>-<a href="#Page_144">4</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+  <li>Gold-fields of, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+  <li>Government of:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Characteristics of, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>-<a href="#Page_410">10</a></li>
+    <li>Masson's criticisms of, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Greek impression left on, slightness of, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+  <li>History of, ancient, non-existent, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+  <li>Makran route to. <i>See under subheading</i> <a href="#Makran_route">Routes</a></li>
+  <li>N.W. barrier of, true situation of, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+  <li>Population of, not indigenous, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+  <li>Railway systems of, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+  <li>Rajput families of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+  <li><a name="Routes_to_India" id="Routes_to_India"></a>Routes to:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li><a name="Makran_route" id="Makran_route"></a>Makran route:
+      <ul class="none">
+      <li>Arab supremacy, under, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+      <li>Importance of, in antiquity, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_168">8</a></li>
+      <li>Modern ignorance regarding, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;
+ modern possibilities as to, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>-<a href="#Page_324">24</a></li>
+      </ul></li>
+    <li>Northern, from Mongolia, <a href="#Page_169">169</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+    <li>Persian, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>-<a href="#Page_324">4</a></li>
+    <li>Sea-routes to N.W. in antiquity, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Russian designs as to, question of, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>-<a href="#Page_320">20</a></li>
+  <li>Trade of:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Persian, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+    <li>Syrian and Ph&oelig;nician, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+    <li>Wealth of, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Turanian races in, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>-<a href="#Page_158">8</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Indian Survey, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Indus_river" id="Indus_river"></a>Indus river (Sintu ho):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Boundary of early exploration, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+  <li>Burnes' flotilla on, <a href="#Page_454">454</a></li>
+  <li>Course of, variations in, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>-<a href="#Page_27">7</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+  <li>Delta of, area of, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+  <li>Desert flanking, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>-<a href="#Page_144">4</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_526">526</a></li>
+  <li>Gharo, creek of, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+  <li>Gorge of, below the Darel, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>-<a href="#Page_184">4</a></li>
+  <li>Haig's <i>Indus Delta Country</i> cited, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+  <li>Navigability of, near Baio, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+  <li>Opening of, to commercial navigation, Burnes' mission regarding (1837), <a href="#Page_399">399</a></li>
+  <li>Rann of Katch, estuary of, in antiquity, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+  <li>Routes from, to Helmund river and Central India, <a href="#Page_527">527</a></li>
+  <li>Voyage down, by Scylax, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>-<a href="#Page_28">8</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Indus valley:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Climate of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;
+     fog, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>-<a href="#Page_86">6</a></li>
+  <li>Greek and Arabic remains in, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>;
+     Greek language and its disappearance, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+  <li>Inscriptions, undecipherable, found in, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>-<a href="#Page_130">30</a></li>
+  <li>Mahomedan supremacy in, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+  <li>Pathans in, ancient settlement of, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+  <li>Persian satrapy including large part of, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  <li>Routes to, through Makran, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>. <i>See also under</i> <a href="#Routes_to_India">India&mdash;Routes</a></li>
+  <li>Vegetation in, in antiquity, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>-<a href="#Page_122">2</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Inscriptions on stone slabs, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>-<a href="#Page_130">30</a>;
+   on bricks, <a href="#Page_494">494</a>, <a href="#Page_496">496</a>, <a href="#Page_499">499</a></li>
+
+<li>Irak, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;
+   valley, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>;
+   stream, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>;
+   pass, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></li>
+
+<li>Irrigation in Afghanistan, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>-<a href="#Page_76">6</a>, <a href="#Page_475">475</a></li>
+
+<li>Ishak Khan, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li>Ishkashm, <a href="#Page_429">429</a></li>
+
+<li>Islam. <i>See</i> <a href="#Mahomedanism">Mahomedanism</a></li>
+
+<li>Ispahan:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Railway from, question as to, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>-<a href="#Page_322">2</a></li>
+  <li>Telegraph route from, to Panjgur, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Ispahak pass, Wood's description of, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></li>
+
+<li>Israelites:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Assyrian deportation of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li>Disappearance of, as a nation, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_542" id="Page_542">542</a></span></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Issyk Kul lake, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+<li>Istakhri of Persepolis cited, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Jabar Khan, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>, <a href="#Page_469">469</a></li>
+
+<li>Jacobabad, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+<li>Jacquet, Eugene, <a href="#Page_395">395</a></li>
+
+<li>Jadran hills, <a href="#Page_513">513</a></li>
+
+<li>Jadwa, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+<li>Jagdallak defile, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+<li>Jahanabad, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+
+<li>Jhal, <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Jalalabad" id="Jalalabad"></a>Jalalabad (Doshak), <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_497">497</a>;
+   Buddhist relics near, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+
+<li>Jalawan Brahuis, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Jalk, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li>
+
+<li>Jam Kala, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+<li>Jamrud, <a href="#Page_398">398</a></li>
+
+<li>Jamshidis, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a></li>
+
+<li>Jaor, <a href="#Page_486">486</a></li>
+
+<li>Jats, Jatas, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_501">501</a></li>
+
+<li>Jawani, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+
+<li>Jebel al Ghur, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li>Jerkere, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Jews" id="Jews"></a>Jews (Yahudi):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Afghan hatred of, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li>
+  <li>Balkh, at, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
+  <li>Sar-i-pul, at, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+  <li>Transportations of, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+  <li>Yahudia, at 251, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Jihun. <i>See</i> <a href="#Oxus">Oxus</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Jil district, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li>Jilgu river, <a href="#Page_475">475</a></li>
+
+<li>Jirena (Behvana), <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li>Jirghan (? Jurkan, Gurkan, Juzjan, Guzwan), <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;
+   range, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+<li>Jirift, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li>Jirm (? Badakshan), <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_506">506</a></li>
+  <li>Position and importance of, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_275">5</a></li>
+  <li>Wood's estimate of, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>-<a href="#Page_426">6</a></li>
+
+<li>Joubert's translation of Idrisi cited. <i>See</i> <a href="#Idrisi">Idrisi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Journal of the Royal Society of Arts</i> cited, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+<li>Junasdara pass, <a href="#Page_424">424</a>-<a href="#Page_425">5</a></li>
+
+<li>Jurkan (Gurkan, Juzjan, ?Guzwan or Jirghan), <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;
+   range, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+<li>Jutes, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Kabadian, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Kabul" id="Kabul"></a>Kabul:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Arab expedition against, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+  <li>Burnes' mission to (1832), <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>;
+     his commercial mission to (1837-8), <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>-<a href="#Page_401">401</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>-<a href="#Page_405">405</a></li>
+  <li>Hicks' tomb at, <a href="#Page_469">469</a></li>
+  <li>Masson British agent in, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>;
+     his account of, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>-<a href="#Page_377">7</a></li>
+  <li>Mediæval estimate of, as "Indian" town, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+     mediæval description quoted, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+  <li>Modern conditions in, social and material, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li>
+  <li>Moorcroft's journey to, <a href="#Page_444">444</a></li>
+  <li>Routes to and from:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Afghan Turkistan, Wood's account of route to, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>-<a href="#Page_419">19</a>;
+       modern improvements in, <a href="#Page_419">419</a> <i>and n.</i>, <a href="#Page_522">522</a> <i>n.</i></li>
+    <li>Andarab, Khafila road to, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+    <li>Badakshan, all-the-year-round route to, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>-<a href="#Page_276">6</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a> <i>n.</i></li>
+    <li>Balkh, Frontier Commission's route from, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>-<a href="#Page_273">3</a></li>
+    <li>Bamian, route to, open in winter, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>-<a href="#Page_386">6</a></li>
+    <li>Bokhara and Bamian, main route to, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li>
+    <li>Herat, route from, by Hari Rud, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+       other routes, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+    <li>Kunduz, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>, <a href="#Page_523">523</a></li>
+    <li>Mazar and Band-i-Amir, by, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>-<a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+    <li>Peshawar <i>via</i> Kuram valley and Peiwar pass, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+    <li>Punjab, route from:
+      <ul class="none">
+      <li>Buddhist character of, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+      <li>Kunar, Laghman and Lundai valleys, by, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+      </ul></li>
+    <li>Sar-i-pul, from, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Vigne at, <a href="#Page_468">468</a>-<a href="#Page_469">9</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kabul province, India in Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Kabul_river" id="Kabul_river"></a>Kabul (Kophen, Nahrwara) river:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander's probable course along, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+  <li>Source of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+  <li>mentioned, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kabul river basin (Ki-pin), <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+<li>Kabulis, <a href="#Page_492">492</a></li>
+
+<li>Kach (Kaj), meaning of term, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li>Kach Gandava, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>-<a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li>Kafir wine, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>-<a href="#Page_134">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Kafiristan:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Homogeneity of natives of, <a href="#Page_508">508</a></li>
+  <li>Inhabitants of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+  <li>Ivy and vine in, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+  <li>Timur's invasion of, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>-<a href="#Page_356">6</a></li>
+  <li>Unexplored wildness of, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>-<a href="#Page_270">70</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kafirs in Afghanistan:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Badakshan, in, <a href="#Page_437">437</a></li>
+  <li>Ignorance regarding, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>-<a href="#Page_270">70</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_543" id="Page_543">543</a></span></li>
+  <li>Kunar valley, in, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>-<a href="#Page_103">103</a>;
+     two Kafirs of Kamdesh, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>-<a href="#Page_132">2</a></li>
+  <li>Siahposh. <i>See <a href="#Siahposh_Kafirs">that title</a></i></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li><i>Kafirs of the Hindu Kush, The</i> (Robertson), cited, <a href="#Page_510">510</a></li>
+
+<li>Kafzur (Hajigak) pass, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></li>
+
+<li>Kah, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li>Kaiani of Seistan, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+<li>Kaiani kingdom, ruins of, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+<li>Kaiani Maliks, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+<li>Kaibar river, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+<li>Kaisan (Kasan) river, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+
+<li>Kaisar drainage, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>-<a href="#Page_249">9</a></li>
+
+<li>Kala Bist, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+<li>Kala Sarkari, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+<li>Kala Sarwan, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>-<a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+<li>Kala Shahar, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li>Kala-i-Fath, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>, <a href="#Page_496">496</a>, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+
+<li>Kalagan, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+
+<li>Kalah, ruins of, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li>Kalama (Khor Khalmat), <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li>Kalapani river, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+<li>Kalat, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+  <li>British expedition to, <a href="#Page_406">406</a></li>
+  <li>Christie and Pottinger at, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+  <li>Masson at, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>-<a href="#Page_371">71</a></li>
+  <li>Strategic position of, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>-<a href="#Page_139">9</a></li>
+
+<li>Kalat-i-Ghilzai (Khilkh), <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li>Kalatak, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li>Kalawun, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+
+<li>Kalloo (Panjpilan) pass, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></li>
+
+<li>Kalu, <a href="#Page_388">388</a></li>
+
+<li>Kalwan (? Kolwah), <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+
+<li>Kaman-i-Bihist, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+<li>Kamard, Tajik chief of, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_421">421</a></li>
+
+<li>Kamard valley, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_437">437</a></li>
+
+<li>Kambali (? Khairokot), <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>-<a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li>Kamdesh, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li>Kamran, Shah, <a href="#Page_403">403</a></li>
+
+<li>Kanazbun (Firabuz), <a href="#Page_302">302</a>-<a href="#Page_303">303</a>;
+   distances from, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li>Kandabel, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Kandahar:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Flank march on, possibility of, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>-<a href="#Page_205">5</a></li>
+  <li>Indian frontier, distance from, <a href="#Page_528">528</a></li>
+  <li>Kabul compared with, in matter of tolerance, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li>
+  <li>Leech's mission to, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>-<a href="#Page_402">402</a></li>
+  <li>Masson at, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>-<a href="#Page_361">61</a></li>
+  <li>Mediæval insignificance of, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+  <li>Routes from, to:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Ghazni, <a href="#Page_512">512</a></li>
+    <li>Herat, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>;
+       Herat as gateway to, <a href="#Page_525">525</a>-<a href="#Page_528">8</a></li>
+    <li>Kabul, Alexander's, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>-<a href="#Page_87">7</a></li>
+    <li>Kalat, <i>via</i> Mangachar valley, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>-<a href="#Page_375">5</a></li>
+    <li>Sonmiani, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kandahar (in Kach Gandava), <a href="#Page_305">305</a>-<a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li>Kandaharis, <a href="#Page_492">492</a></li>
+
+<li>Kanowar, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+
+<li>Kao river. <i>See</i> <a href="#Alingar">Alingar</a></li>
+
+<li>Kaoshan pass, <a href="#Page_435">435</a>:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander's passage of, tradition as to, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+  <li>Greek control of, before Alexander's expedition, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;
+     Greek use of, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+  <li>Height of, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li>
+  <li>"Hindu Kush," known as the pass of, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kara pass, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a></li>
+
+<li>Karabel (Armail, Armabel, Las Bela), <a href="#Page_304">304</a>-<a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li>
+
+<li>Karabel plateau:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Description of, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+  <li>Route across, from near Panjdeh to Balkh, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Karabia I., <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li>Karabine, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li>Karachi:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Approaches to, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>-<a href="#Page_141">41</a></li>
+  <li>Configuration of, changes in, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+  <li>Makran route to, modern possibilities as to, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>-<a href="#Page_324">24</a></li>
+  <li>Malir waterworks, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+  <li>Masson refused landing at, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+  <li>Voyage from, to Persian Gulf (by Nearkhos), <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_161">61</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Karakoram pass, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+<li>Karakoram trade route, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_517">517</a>;
+   description of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>-<a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Karaks, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+
+<li>Karamat Ali, Saiad, <a href="#Page_390">390</a></li>
+
+<li>Karapa route, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+
+<li>Karat, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li>Karbat, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+<li>Karbis (Gazban), <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li>Kardos, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+
+<li>Kardozan, <a href="#Page_479">479</a></li>
+
+<li>Karez Ilias route to Sarakhs, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+
+<li>Karia Pir, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li>Kariut (Cariat), <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li>Karmania, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li>Karmatians, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+
+<li>Karomurs, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
+
+<li>Karosthi language, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;
+   script cited, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+<li>Kartchoo, <a href="#Page_482">482</a></li>
+
+<li>Karuj (Korokh), <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li>Karwan (? Parwan), <a href="#Page_276">276</a>-<a href="#Page_277">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Karza (? Kafza) pass, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a></li>
+
+<li>Kasan, <a href="#Page_511">511</a>;
+   stream, <a href="#Page_428">428</a></li>
+
+<li>Kashan, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>;
+   river, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;
+   valley, <a href="#Page_481">481</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_544" id="Page_544">544</a></span></li>
+
+<li><a name="Kashmir" id="Kashmir"></a>Kashmir (Kie-sha):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Buddhism in, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a href="#Page_180">80</a></li>
+  <li>Fa Hian in, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>-<a href="#Page_179">9</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+  <li>Persian knowledge of, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kashmir passes, no records of military use of, <a href="#Page_517">517</a></li>
+
+<li>Kashmund mountains, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+<li>Kashran (? Khasrin), <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li>Kaspioi, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+<li>Kaspira (Kasmira), <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+<li>Kasr Akhif (Ahnef), <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li>Kasrkand, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>-<a href="#Page_312">12</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li>Kasur spur, <a href="#Page_426">426</a></li>
+
+<li>Kataghani horses, <a href="#Page_504">504</a>-<a href="#Page_505">505</a></li>
+
+<li>Katan Chirak, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li>Katawar, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+<li>Kattasang, <a href="#Page_472">472</a></li>
+
+<li>Kattawaz plain, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_472">472</a>, <a href="#Page_475">475</a></li>
+
+<li>Kawak (Khawak), <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+<li>Kawakir, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+
+<li>Kej (Kiz, Kirusi, ?Labi), <a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li>Kej valley, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+<li>Kenef, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+
+<li>Kunjut (Hunza), <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li>Kerman desert, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;
+   valley, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li>Kermanshah, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+
+<li>Ketnev, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li>
+
+<li>Khaibar route to India:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Evil reputation of, <a href="#Page_458">458</a></li>
+  <li>Hyphæstion's march by, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+  <li>Masson's journey by, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>-<a href="#Page_352">2</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Khair, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li>Khair Kot (? Kambali), <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>-<a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li>Khalmat tombs, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>-<a href="#Page_311">11</a></li>
+
+<li>Khan Nashin, <a href="#Page_495">495</a></li>
+
+<li>Khana Yahudi, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li>Khanabad, <a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_506">506</a></li>
+
+<li>Kharachanabad (Khardozan), <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li>Kharan, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+
+<li>Kharan desert, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>-<a href="#Page_341">41</a></li>
+
+<li>Khardozan (Kharachanabad), <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li>Khariab river, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li>Khariab (Kokcha) river, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li>Kharkerde, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li>Kharotis, <a href="#Page_513">513</a></li>
+
+<li>Khash, <a href="#Page_495">495</a></li>
+
+<li>Khash Rud valley, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li>Khashka pass, <a href="#Page_387">387</a></li>
+
+<li>Khasrin (? Kashran), <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li>Khawak pass:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Height of, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_435">435</a></li>
+  <li>Importance of, <a href="#Page_521">521</a></li>
+  <li>Popularity of, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></li>
+  <li>Timur at, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>, <a href="#Page_435">435</a></li>
+  <li>otherwise mentioned, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>, <a href="#Page_507">507</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Khawak river, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li>Khazar, <a href="#Page_388">388</a></li>
+
+<li>Khilkh (Kalat-i-Ghilzai), <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+<li>Khilkhis. <i>See</i> <a href="#Ghilzais">Ghilzais</a></li>
+
+<li>Khiva (Khwarezm), <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+<li>Khizilji Turks, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>-<a href="#Page_282">2</a></li>
+
+<li>Khoes river, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-<a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li>Khoja Mahomed range, <a href="#Page_424">424</a>, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>, <a href="#Page_437">437</a>, <a href="#Page_506">506</a>, <a href="#Page_507">507</a></li>
+
+<li>Khojak range, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+<li>Khor Khalmat (Kalama), <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li>Khorasan, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+<li>Khorienes, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+<li>Khotan (Ilchi):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Balkh, distance from, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;
+     route to, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>-<a href="#Page_279">9</a></li>
+  <li>Buddhist centre, as, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Khozdar:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Christie and Pottinger at, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+  <li>Masson at, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li>
+  <li>Turan, capital of, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Khulm, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>-<a href="#Page_272">72</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>;
+   river, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li>Khur, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li>Khurd Kabul defile, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+<li>Khud Rud, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+
+<li>Khuzan (Ak Tepe), <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_246">6</a></li>
+
+<li>Khwaja Amran (Kojak) range, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li>
+
+<li>Khwaja Chist, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+
+<li>Khwaja Salar, <a href="#Page_448">448</a>, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a></li>
+
+<li>Khwarezm (Khiva), <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+<li>Ki-pin (Kabul river basin), <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+<li>Kie-sha. <i>See</i> <a href="#Kashmir">Kashmir</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Kila Adraskand, <a href="#Page_229">229</a> <i>n.</i></li>
+
+<li>Kila Gaohar, <a href="#Page_485">485</a></li>
+
+<li>Kila Khum, <a href="#Page_511">511</a></li>
+
+<li>Kila Maur, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li>Kila Panja, <a href="#Page_430">430</a></li>
+
+<li>Kila Shaharak, <a href="#Page_486">486</a></li>
+
+<li>Kila Sofarak, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li>Kila Wali, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+
+<li>Kilif, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>;
+   pony ferry at, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a></li>
+
+<li>Kilik pass, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_517">517</a></li>
+
+<li>Kilrin (? Gulran), <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+
+<li>Kir (Kiz) Kaian, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>-<a href="#Page_317">17</a></li>
+
+<li>Kirghiz (? Kirkhirs):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Idrisi's account of, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>-<a href="#Page_283">3</a></li>
+  <li>Wood's estimate of, <a href="#Page_430">430</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kirman, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>-<a href="#Page_315">15</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>-<a href="#Page_323">3</a>;
+   telegraph <i>via</i>, to India, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+<li>Kirman desert, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li>Kirthar range, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
+
+<li>Kishm, <a href="#Page_509">509</a></li>
+
+<li>Kiz (Kirusi, Kej, ?Labi), <a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li>Kiz (Kir) Kaian, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>-<a href="#Page_317">17</a></li>
+
+<li>Kizzilbash, <a href="#Page_467">467</a></li>
+
+<li>Knidza (Kyiza), <a href="#Page_160">160</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_545" id="Page_545">545</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Koh Daman:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander at, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+  <li>Description of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>-<a href="#Page_97">7</a></li>
+  <li>Lord's expedition to, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>-<a href="#Page_413">13</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Koh-i-Babar (Baba) mountains:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Altitude of, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+  <li>Nature and direction of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a></li>
+  <li>Rivers starting from, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Koh-i-Basman, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+
+<li>Koh-i-Malik Siah, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+
+<li>Koh-i-Mor (Meros) mountains, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>-<a href="#Page_124">4</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+
+<li>Koh Umber mountain, <a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_506">506</a></li>
+
+<li>Kohendil Khan, <a href="#Page_493">493</a></li>
+
+<li>Kohistan:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Inhabitants of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+  <li>Mountain scenery of, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kohistan plains, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+<li>Kohistani, <a href="#Page_486">486</a></li>
+
+<li>Kohistani Babas, <a href="#Page_487">487</a></li>
+
+<li>Kohnak divide, <a href="#Page_513">513</a></li>
+
+<li>Kojak (Khwaja Amran) range, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Kokcha" id="Kokcha"></a>Kokcha (Khariab, Minjan) river:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Course of, nature of, at Faizabad, <a href="#Page_424">424</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a></li>
+  <li>Mouth of, <a href="#Page_434">434</a></li>
+  <li>Robertson's view regarding, <a href="#Page_510">510</a></li>
+  <li>Route by headwaters of, nature of, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_436">436</a></li>
+  <li>mentioned, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_507">507</a>, <a href="#Page_520">520</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kokcha valley, <a href="#Page_424">424</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a></li>
+
+<li>Kokhar Ab river, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+
+<li>Kolab, <a href="#Page_433">433</a>-<a href="#Page_434">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Kolar gold-fields, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+<li>Kolwah (? Kalwan), <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+
+<li>Konche river, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+
+<li>Kophen river. <i>See</i> <a href="#Kabul_river">Kabul river</a></li>
+
+<li>Korokh (Karuj), <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li>Kotal-i-bed, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li>
+
+<li>Kotal Murgh pass, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li>Kotanni pass, <a href="#Page_513">513</a></li>
+
+<li>Koure (Ghurian), <a href="#Page_231">231</a>-<a href="#Page_232">2</a></li>
+
+<li>Koyunjik mound, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li>Krateros, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li>Krokala, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+<li>Kua (Kau), <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+<li>Kudabandan, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li>Kuen Lun mountains, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+<li>Kufs, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li>Kughanabad, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+<li>Kuhsan, Kusan (? Kuseri, Kouseri), <a href="#Page_232">232</a>-<a href="#Page_233">3</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a></li>
+
+<li>Kum, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Kunar_river" id="Kunar_river"></a>Kunar (Choaspes, Chitral) river, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_431">431</a>;
+   importance of, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Kunar" id="Kunar"></a>Kunar (Choaspes, Chitral) valley:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Description of, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>-<a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+  <li>Direction of, <a href="#Page_509">509</a>-<a href="#Page_510">10</a></li>
+  <li>Dorah route from, <a href="#Page_520">520</a></li>
+  <li>Ivy and vine in, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+  <li>Kafirs in, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>-<a href="#Page_103">103</a>;
+     of Kamdesh, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>-<a href="#Page_132">2</a></li>
+  <li>Masson's investigations as to, <a href="#Page_396">396</a></li>
+  <li>Survey of (1894), <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kundar river, <a href="#Page_464">464</a></li>
+
+<li>Kunduz (town):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Burnes' mission to, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li>
+  <li>Description of, <a href="#Page_504">504</a></li>
+  <li>Lord's invitation to, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>-<a href="#Page_422">422</a></li>
+  <li>Southward routes from, to Bamian and Kabul, <a href="#Page_523">523</a></li>
+  <li>Warwalin near, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+  <li>Wood's estimate of, <a href="#Page_422">422</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kunduz district:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Fortified towns of, <a href="#Page_504">504</a></li>
+  <li>Pestilential climate of, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>-<a href="#Page_449">9</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a></li>
+  <li>Kunduz river, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a>;
+     scenery of, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>-<a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Kunduz valley route to Kabul, <a href="#Page_434">434</a></li>
+
+<li>Kunjut, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li>Kupruk, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li>Kuram, <a href="#Page_482">482</a>-<a href="#Page_483">3</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a></li>
+
+<li>Kuram valley route, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_512">512</a></li>
+
+<li>Kurchi, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li>Kurdistan hills, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+
+<li>Kurt (Tajik) dynasty in Ghur, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+<li>Kuseri, Kouseri (? Kuhsan, Kusan), <a href="#Page_231">231</a>-<a href="#Page_233">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Kushan (Tokhari), <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li>Kushk, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+
+<li>Kushk river, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;
+   description of, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+<li>Kushk-i-Nakhud, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_492">492</a></li>
+
+<li>Kyiza (Knidza), <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Labi (? Kiz, Kirusi, Kej), <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+
+<li>Ladakh ("Little Tibet"):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Idrisi's description of the town of, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+  <li>Mongol invasion <i>via</i>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+  <li>Moorcroft in, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>-<a href="#Page_444">4</a></li>
+  <li>Vigne in, <a href="#Page_462">462</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li><a name="Laghman" id="Laghman"></a>Laghman valley, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-<a href="#Page_101">101</a>;
+   inhabitants of, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li>Lahore:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Burnes at, <a href="#Page_455">455</a></li>
+  <li>Masson at, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>-<a href="#Page_367">7</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Lakshur (? Langar), <a href="#Page_238">238</a>-<a href="#Page_239">9</a></li>
+
+<li>Lalposh, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li>Lamghan. <i>See</i> <a href="#Laghman">Laghman</a></li>
+
+<li>Language, women's preservation of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_546" id="Page_546">546</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Lapis-lazuli mines above Jirm, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>, <a href="#Page_507">507</a></li>
+
+<li>Las (Lumri) tribe of Rajputs, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Las_Bela" id="Las_Bela"></a>Las Bela (Armail, Armabel, Karabel):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Distances to, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>-<a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+  <li>Gadurs of, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+  <li>Historic interest of, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>-<a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li>
+  <li>Masson at, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li>
+  <li>Ruins near, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+  <li>Strategic position of, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>-<a href="#Page_139">9</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Lash Jowain, <a href="#Page_493">493</a>, <a href="#Page_498">498</a></li>
+
+<li>Lasonoi, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+<li>Lataband pass, <a href="#Page_424">424</a></li>
+
+<li>Leach, Lieut., <a href="#Page_471">471</a></li>
+
+<li>Lead mines of Ferengal in Ghorband valley, <a href="#Page_416">416</a></li>
+
+<li>Leech, Lieut., on Burnes' staff, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>-<a href="#Page_402">402</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>;
+   work and methods of, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>-<a href="#Page_441">41</a></li>
+
+<li>Leh, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>, <a href="#Page_444">444</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a></li>
+
+<li>Leonatus, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+<li>Lhasa:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Buddhist centre, as, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>-<a href="#Page_173">3</a></li>
+  <li>Moorcroft's residence at, question as to, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>-<a href="#Page_440">40</a>, <a href="#Page_444">444</a></li>
+  <li>Pilgrimages to, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+  <li>Route from, to India, <a href="#Page_517">517</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Liari, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li>Lockhart mission, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_429">429</a>, <a href="#Page_509">509</a></li>
+
+<li>Logar river, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_468">468</a>;
+   valley, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_475">475</a></li>
+
+<li>Lohanis, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_463">463</a>, <a href="#Page_467">467</a></li>
+
+<li>Lob, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Lop basin, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+<li>Lop Nor, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li>Lord, Dr., mission of, to Badakshan, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>;
+   expedition of, to Koh Daman and Hindu Kush passes, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>-<a href="#Page_415">15</a>;
+   in Ghorband valley, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>;
+   at Kunduz, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>-<a href="#Page_421">21</a>;
+   visit of, to Hazrat Imam, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>;
+   investigations by, regarding Moorcroft, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>;
+   <i>Uzbek State of Kundooz</i> by, <a href="#Page_504">504</a>;
+   cited, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a></li>
+
+<li>Loveday, Lieut., <a href="#Page_406">406</a></li>
+
+<li>Ludhiana, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+
+<li>Ludi (Lydoi), <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+<li>Lulan, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+
+<li>Lumri (Las) tribe of Rajputs, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Lundai valley, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+<li>Lungar, <a href="#Page_468">468</a></li>
+
+<li>Lydoi (Ludi), <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Mabara (? Barbarra), <a href="#Page_434">434</a></li>
+
+<li>Mackenzie, Captain, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+<li>M'Crindle cited, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li>MacMahon, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_374">374</a> <i>and n.</i>, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+
+<li>MacNab, Dr., <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li>McNair, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+
+<li>Mada Khel hills, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+<li>Mahaban (Shah Kot), <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_111">11</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>-<a href="#Page_121">21</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Mahabharata</i> cited, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+<li>Mahighir canal, <a href="#Page_394">394</a></li>
+
+<li>Mahmud of Ghazni, Multan conquered by (1005), <a href="#Page_192">192</a>-<a href="#Page_193">3</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>;
+   raids by, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_513">513</a>;
+   tomb of, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>;
+   mentioned, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_468">468</a></li>
+
+<li>Mahmudabad, <a href="#Page_491">491</a></li>
+
+<li>Mahomed Akbar Khan, <a href="#Page_490">490</a></li>
+
+<li>Mahomed Ali, Chief of Saighan, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>-<a href="#Page_379">9</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>-<a href="#Page_383">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Mahomed Azim Khan, <a href="#Page_444">444</a></li>
+
+<li>Mahomed Kasim, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>-<a href="#Page_294">4</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li>Mahomed Khan, Sultan, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>, <a href="#Page_483">483</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Mahomedanism" id="Mahomedanism"></a>Mahomedanism, rise of, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+<li>Mahomedans:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Balkh, at, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+  <li>Kafir attitude towards, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+  <li>Vigne's estimate of, <a href="#Page_467">467</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Maidan, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_468">468</a></li>
+
+<li>Maimana, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>-<a href="#Page_250">50</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Makran" id="Makran"></a>Makran (Gadrosia). <i>For particular districts, etc., see their names</i></li>
+  <li>Alexander's retreat through, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_154">54</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>-<a href="#Page_166">6</a></li>
+  <li>Ancient relics in, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+  <li>Arabian interest in, prior to <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 712, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;
+     Arab governors of, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+  <li>Baluch traditions as to, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+  <li>Bampur the ancient capital of, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+  <li>Boledi long the ruling tribe in, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>-<a href="#Page_37">7</a></li>
+  <li>Coasting trade of, in antiquity, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+  <li><a name="Configuration" id="Configuration"></a>Configuration, orography, and geological features of, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>-<a href="#Page_33">3</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-<a href="#Page_291">91</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+  <li>Decline of, in eleventh century, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+  <li>Desiccation of, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-<a href="#Page_289">9</a></li>
+  <li>Greek knowledge of, in ancient time scanty, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+  <li>Hots of (? Uxoi), <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+  <li>Islands off, disappearance of, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+  <li>Kaiani Maliks' supremacy in, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+  <li>Kushite race in, question as to, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>-<a href="#Page_35">5</a></li>
+  <li>Negroes in, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+  <li>Persian satrapies including, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+  <li>Physical features of. <i>See subheading</i> <a href="#Configuration">Configuration</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_547" id="Page_547">547</a></span></li>
+  <li>Ports of, for importation of firearms, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+  <li>Route through, to India under Arab supremacy, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+    <li>Ignorance as to, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+    <li>Importance of, in antiquity, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_168">8</a></li>
+    <li>Modern possibilities as to, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>-<a href="#Page_324">24</a></li>
+  <li>Stone-built circles in, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+  <li>Tombs in (Khalmati), <a href="#Page_310">310</a>-<a href="#Page_311">11</a></li>
+  <li>Turanian relics in, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+  <li>View of, from Arabian Sea, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>-<a href="#Page_285">5</a></li>
+
+<li>Malan headland, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;
+   range, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>-<a href="#Page_162">2</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Malek Hupian, <a href="#Page_394">394</a></li>
+
+<li>Malistan valley, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+
+<li>Malli (? Meds), <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>-<a href="#Page_161">61</a></li>
+
+<li>Malun Herat, <a href="#Page_229">229</a> <i>n</i>.</li>
+
+<li>Manabari, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>-<a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li>Manasarawar lakes, <a href="#Page_440">440</a></li>
+
+<li>Manbatara, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li>Mandal pass, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>, <a href="#Page_507">507</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a></li>
+
+<li>Manga (Manja, Mugger) Pir, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li>Mangachar valley, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li>
+
+<li>Manglaor, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li>Manhabari (? Minagar, Binagar), <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>-<a href="#Page_310">10</a></li>
+
+<li>Manjabari, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li>Manora (Domai) Island, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+
+<li>Mansura, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li>Mansuria, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>-<a href="#Page_316">16</a></li>
+
+<li>Mashad:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Russian telegraph <i>via</i>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+  <li>Seistan, route to, <a href="#Page_528">528</a></li>
+  <li>Teheran, objections regarding railway to, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Mashad valley, <a href="#Page_424">424</a></li>
+
+<li>Mashkaf (Bolan) pass, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+<li>Mashkel (? Maskan), <a href="#Page_313">313</a>-<a href="#Page_314">14</a>;
+   swamp, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+
+<li>Massaga:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander's capture of, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;
+     route from, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+  <li>Nysæans at, question as to, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>-<a href="#Page_129">9</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Marabad, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>Marakanda (Samarkand), <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+<li>Mardians, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li>Maruchak. <i>See</i> <a href="#Merv-el-Rud">Merv-el-Rud</a></li>
+
+<li>Marwa, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>Masson, arrival of, at Bushire, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>;
+   in Peshawar, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>;
+   journey to Kabul <i>via</i> Khaibar route, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>-<a href="#Page_354">4</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>;
+   to Ghazni and Kandahar, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>-<a href="#Page_360">60</a>;
+   to Quetta and Shikapur, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>-<a href="#Page_363">3</a>;
+   in the Punjab, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>-<a href="#Page_365">5</a>;
+   at Lahore, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>-<a href="#Page_367">367</a>;
+   to Karachi, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>;
+   trips by water, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>-<a href="#Page_368">8</a>;
+   in E. Baluchistan, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>;
+ at Chahiltan, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>-<a href="#Page_371">71</a>;
+   through Sind, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>-<a href="#Page_372">2</a>;
+   again to Kalat, Kandahar, and Kabul, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>-<a href="#Page_377">7</a>;
+   Besud expedition, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>;
+   to Bamian (1832), <a href="#Page_378">378</a>-<a href="#Page_386">86</a>;
+   to Kabul, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>;
+   researches near Kabul, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>;
+   accepts post as British agent in Kabul, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>;
+   relations with Burnes, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>-<a href="#Page_401">401</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>;
+   resigns office under Indian Government, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>;
+   experiences at Quetta, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>-<a href="#Page_407">7</a>;
+   meeting with Vigne, <a href="#Page_469">469</a>;
+   intimacy with Afghans, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>-<a href="#Page_347">7</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>-<a href="#Page_363">363</a>;
+   influence with them, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>;
+   intimacy with Baluchs, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;
+   coins collected by, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>;
+   criticisms of Indian Government by, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>;
+   value of work of, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>-<a href="#Page_348">8</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>;
+   methods of, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>;
+   estimate of, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>-<a href="#Page_396">6</a>, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>;
+   <i>Travels in Afghanistan</i>, <i>etc.</i>, see <a href="#Travels_in_Afghanistan">that title</a>;
+   otherwise mentioned, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>, <a href="#Page_463">463</a>, <a href="#Page_468">468</a>, <a href="#Page_491">491</a></li>
+
+<li>Masurjan, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li>Matakanai, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li>Matiban, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li>Mazanderan, <a href="#Page_481">481</a></li>
+
+<li>Mazar, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>, <a href="#Page_435">435</a>, <a href="#Page_448">448</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a></li>
+
+<li>Mazar-i-Sharif, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_439">439</a></li>
+
+<li>Meder, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li>Meds (? Malli), <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>-<a href="#Page_161">61</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>-<a href="#Page_293">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Megasthenes, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;
+   his <i>India</i> cited, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>-<a href="#Page_127">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Mehrab Khan, <a href="#Page_406">406</a></li>
+
+<li>Meilik (Nimlik), <a href="#Page_482">482</a></li>
+
+<li>Menk, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li>Mesiha, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li>Mesopotamia:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Earliest immigrants into, question as to origin of, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>-<a href="#Page_35">5</a></li>
+  <li>Irrigation works necessary in, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+  <li>Israelite deportations to, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+  <li>Nana-worship in, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+  <li>Teheran-Mashad route from, to Baktria, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>-<a href="#Page_48">8</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li><a name="Merv-el-Rud" id="Merv-el-Rud"></a>Merv-el-Rud:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Confused with Russian Merv by Idrisi, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>-<a href="#Page_245">5</a></li>
+  <li>Date and destruction of, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>-<a href="#Page_242">2</a></li>
+  <li>otherwise mentioned, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>-<a href="#Page_241">41</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Merv of the Oasis (Russian):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Balkh, routes to, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>-<a href="#Page_250">50</a></li>
+  <li>Confused with Merv-el-Rud by Idrisi, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_548" id="Page_548">548</a></span></li>
+  <li>Herat route from, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+  <li>Historic importance of, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Milesian Greeks:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Brankhidai, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+  <li>Colonies of:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>N. of Euxine, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+    <li>S. and W. of Euxine, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Transportation of, to Baktria region, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Miletus:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander's reduction of (334 <span class="s08">B.C.</span>), <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+  <li>Carpet-making industry of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+  <li>Destruction of, date of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Minab river, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+<li>Minagar, Binagar (? Manhabari), <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>-<a href="#Page_310">10</a></li>
+
+<li>Mingal, <a href="#Page_482">482</a></li>
+
+<li>Mingals, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li>Minjan pass, <a href="#Page_507">507</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>;
+   Chitral route through, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a></li>
+
+<li>Minjan river. <i>See</i> <a href="#Kokcha">Kokcha</a></li>
+
+<li>Minjan valley, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>, <a href="#Page_436">436</a></li>
+
+<li>Miri fort of Quetta, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+<li>Mockler, Col., cited, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>-<a href="#Page_160">60</a></li>
+
+<li>Mongols:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Afghanistan, in central plateau of, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+  <li>Asiatic civilization overrun by, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+  <li>Army of, destroyed on the Karakoram route, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+  <li>Chenghiz Khan, under, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+  <li>Ghur dynasty, subject to, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+  <li>India:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Central Southern, problem of arrival in, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>-<a href="#Page_144">4</a></li>
+    <li>Invasion of, by, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li>
+    <li>Military expeditions to, attempted, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+    <li>Pilgrimages to, <a href="#Page_169">169</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Monze, Cape, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+
+<li>Moorcroft, explorations by, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>;
+       question as to residence at Lhasa, <a href="#Page_444">444</a>;
+       journey from to Kabul, Badakshan, and Bokhara, <a href="#Page_444">444</a>-<a href="#Page_448">8</a>;
+       official attitude towards, <a href="#Page_442">442</a>-<a href="#Page_443">3</a>;
+       records of, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>;
+       fate of, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>-<a href="#Page_439">9</a>;
+       grave of, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;
+       estimate of, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>-<a href="#Page_444">4</a>, <a href="#Page_448">448</a>, <a href="#Page_503">503</a>-<a href="#Page_504">504</a>;
+       otherwise mentioned, <a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>, <a href="#Page_467">467</a></li>
+
+<li>Morontobara, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>-<a href="#Page_155">5</a></li>
+
+<li>Mosarna, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+<li>Mugger (Manga, Manja) Pir, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li>Mugheir (Ur), <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li>Mula (Mulla) pass, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li>
+
+<li>Multan:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Hindu bankers in, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li>
+  <li>Mahmud's conquest of (1005), <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+  <li>Masson's account of, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li>
+  <li>Tubaran, distance from, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Murad Beg, Mir of Kunduz, position of, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>-<a href="#Page_379">9</a>, <a href="#Page_504">504</a>;
+       Badakshani families transported by, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a>;
+       Lord's invitation by, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>;
+       estimate of, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>;
+       Wood's estimate of, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>;
+       Moorcroft's experience and estimate of, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>-<a href="#Page_448">8</a>;
+       otherwise mentioned, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>, <a href="#Page_429">429</a>, <a href="#Page_503">503</a></li>
+
+<li>Murad Khan of Kunduz, <a href="#Page_383">383</a></li>
+
+<li>Murgh pass, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>-<a href="#Page_435">5</a></li>
+
+<li>Murghab basin, Upper, unmapped, <a href="#Page_477">477</a></li>
+
+<li>Murghab river:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Economic value of, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>-<a href="#Page_247">7</a></li>
+  <li>Head of, unexplored, <a href="#Page_516">516</a></li>
+  <li>Head valleys of, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+  <li>Ruins on, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>-<a href="#Page_244">4</a></li>
+  <li>Upper, climate of, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+  <li>otherwise mentioned, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>-<a href="#Page_241">41</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Murghab valley, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+<li>Muskat, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li>Mustapha Khan, <a href="#Page_487">487</a></li>
+
+<li>Muttra, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Nachan, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>Nadir Shah, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>, <a href="#Page_526">526</a></li>
+
+<li>Nagas, <a href="#Page_501">501</a></li>
+
+<li>Nahrwara river. <i>See</i> <a href="#Kabul_river">Kabul river</a></li>
+
+<li>Naisan, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>Najil, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>-<a href="#Page_397">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Najirman (? Nakirman), <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li>Najitan (Bajitan), <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>Nalpach pass, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>-<a href="#Page_384">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Nan Shan mountain system, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+<li>Nana (Chaldean goddess), <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_163">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Naoshirwan, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+
+<li>Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>-<a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+
+<li>Naratu, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+
+<li>Narmashir, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+
+<li>Nasirs, <a href="#Page_475">475</a></li>
+
+<li>Nasratabad, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+<li>Nassoor, Sheikh, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+
+<li>Nava Sanghârâma, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+<li>Navigation, ancient, character of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>-<a href="#Page_57">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Nawagai, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li>Nawak pass, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_428">428</a></li>
+
+<li>Nawar valley, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+
+<li>Nearkhos, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;
+   voyage of, from Karachi to Persian Gulf, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_161">61</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;
+ <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_549" id="Page_549">549</a></span></li>
+  <li>meeting of, with Alexander, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a href="#Page_167">7</a>;
+   cited, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li>Negroes, Asiatic, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+
+<li>New Chaman, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+
+<li>Nicolas range, <a href="#Page_431">431</a></li>
+
+<li>Nikaia (modern Kabul), Alexander at, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>. <i>See also</i> <a href="#Kabul">Kabul</a></li>
+
+<li>Nili, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+<li>Nimchas, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li>Nimlik (Meilik), <a href="#Page_482">482</a></li>
+
+<li>Nimrud, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
+
+<li>Nineveh:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Ruins of, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+  <li>Zenith of, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Nishapur, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li>Nomadic life, conditions of, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>-<a href="#Page_25">5</a></li>
+
+<li>Nonnus of Panopolis cited, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_63">3</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+<li>North, Lieut., value of geographical work by, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>-<a href="#Page_412">12</a>, <a href="#Page_471">471</a></li>
+
+<li>Nott, <a href="#Page_406">406</a></li>
+
+<li>Nuhsala (Nosala, Haftala, Hashtala) island, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li>Nuksan pass, <a href="#Page_508">508</a>-<a href="#Page_509">509</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>, <a href="#Page_520">520</a>, <a href="#Page_522">522</a></li>
+
+<li>Nurzai, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_491">491</a></li>
+
+<li>Nusa. <i>See</i> <a href="#Nysa">Nysa</a></li>
+
+<li>Nushki:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Christie and Pottinger at, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+  <li>Route <i>via</i>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+  <li>Telegraph to, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li><a name="Nysa" id="Nysa"></a>Nysa, Nyssa (Nusa, Nuson):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Tradition regarding, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>-<a href="#Page_126">6</a></li>
+  <li>War-hymn connected with, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>-<a href="#Page_132">2</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Nysæan inscriptions, question as to, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>-<a href="#Page_130">30</a></li>
+
+<li>Nysaioi, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>-<a href="#Page_127">7</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Obeh (Auca), <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Odyssey</i> cited, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+
+<li>Olbia, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li>Omar I., Kalif of Baghdad, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li>Ora (? modern Bazar), <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+<li>Oritæ, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+<li>Orodis, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Oxus" id="Oxus"></a>Oxus district, mediæval geography of, <a href="#Page_277">277</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Oxus jungles, <a href="#Page_433">433</a></li>
+
+<li>Oxus (Jihun, Khariab) river:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Channel of, variations in, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+  <li>Fords of, accurate knowledge of, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>-<a href="#Page_502">502</a></li>
+  <li>Irrigation works connected with, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+  <li>Khariab a name for, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+  <li>Pony ferry over, at Kilif, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>;
+     at Khwaja Salar, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>-<a href="#Page_461">61</a></li>
+  <li>Wood's explorations of, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>-<a href="#Page_435">35</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Oxydrakai, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Pactyans. <i>See</i> <a href="#Pathans">Pathans</a></li>
+
+<li>Padizar bay, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li>Paghman offshoot of Hindu Kush, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li>Paghman, <a href="#Page_387">387</a></li>
+
+<li>Pahrag (Pahra, Pahura, Fahraj), <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>;
+   two places so named, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Pamirs" id="Pamirs"></a>Pamirs:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Climate of, <a href="#Page_429">429</a></li>
+  <li>Mediæval geography of, <a href="#Page_277">277</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li>Routes across, <a href="#Page_502">502</a></li>
+  <li>Taghdumbash, <a href="#Page_517">517</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Panja (Wakhab) river, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li>Panjdeh:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Buddhist caves at, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+  <li>Herat, routes from, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+  <li>Karabel plateau route from near, to Balkh, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Panjgur:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Dates of, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+  <li>Description of, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>-<a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+  <li>Mountain conformation of, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+  <li>Railway from, to Karachi, question as to, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+  <li>Telegraph route to, from Ispahan, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Panjkora river, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Panjkora" id="Panjkora"></a>Panjkora valley, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li>Panjpilan (Kalloo, Shutar Gardan) pass, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></li>
+
+<li>Panjshir (Banjohir), <a href="#Page_276">276</a>-<a href="#Page_277">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Panjshir pass, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>-<a href="#Page_88">8</a></li>
+
+<li>Panjshir route between Kabul and Andarab, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>-<a href="#Page_88">8</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></li>
+
+<li>Panjshir valley:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Mediæval reputation of, <a href="#Page_435">435</a></li>
+  <li>Timur in, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>-<a href="#Page_356">6</a></li>
+  <li>otherwise mentioned, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>-<a href="#Page_357">7</a>, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>, <a href="#Page_510">510</a>, <a href="#Page_521">521</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Pannah, <a href="#Page_472">472</a></li>
+
+<li>Parah, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li>Parana (Parwana), <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a>, <a href="#Page_498">498</a></li>
+
+<li>Parikanoi, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>-<a href="#Page_164">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Parjuman, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+
+<li>Park mountains, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+<li>Parkan stream, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Paropamisos (Hindu Kush), <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>. (<i>See also</i> <a href="#Hindu_Kush">Hindu Kush</a>.)</li>
+
+<li>Parsi (Tarsi), <a href="#Page_489">489</a></li>
+
+<li>Parwan (? Karwan), <a href="#Page_276">276</a>-<a href="#Page_277">7</a></li>
+
+<li>Parwan (Sar Alang, Bajgah) pass, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_435">435</a>;
+   altitude of, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>;
+   description of, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></li>
+
+<li>Parwana (Parana), <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a>, <a href="#Page_498">498</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_550" id="Page_550">550</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Pashai, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li>Pashat, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li>Pasiris, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li>Pasni, bay of, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Patala, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Pathans" id="Pathans"></a>Pathans:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Ancient settlement of, in present situation, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+  <li>Greek names among, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  <li>Inscriptions used by, for decoration, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>-<a href="#Page_130">30</a></li>
+  <li>Persian origin of language of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Peiwar pass, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+<li>Periplus cited, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li>Perjan (? Parwan), <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+<li>Persepolis:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander the Great at, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+  <li>Inscriptions at, cited, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Persia:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Afghanistan:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Colonies in, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+    <li>Intrigues regarding, British nervousness as to, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>-<a href="#Page_400">400</a></li>
+    <li>War with (1837), <a href="#Page_402">402</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Army of, French officers' organisation of, <a href="#Page_477">477</a></li>
+  <li>Charbar point fort built by, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+  <li>Configuration of western, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+  <li>Desert regions of, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;
+     "Great Desert," 201</li>
+  <li>Firearms imported into, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+  <li>Helmund boundary of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+  <li>Routes through, to the East, two, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;
+     routes to India, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>-<a href="#Page_324">4</a></li>
+  <li>Russia:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Sphere of influence of, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+    <li>French organisation of Persian army resented by, <a href="#Page_477">477</a></li>
+    <li>War with (1826), <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Persian Empire:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Extent of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>-<a href="#Page_27">7</a></li>
+  <li>Geographical information possessed by, extent and accuracy of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>-<a href="#Page_26">6</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  <li>Greek permeation of, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>-<a href="#Page_21">21</a>;
+ Greek attitude towards, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+  <li>Indian hinterland under control of, in Alexander's time, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li>Indian trade of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  <li>Nations subject to, lists of, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>-<a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+  <li>Satrapies of, identification of, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>-<a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Persian Gulf:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Command of, necessary for safety of southern Baluchistan passes, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+  <li>Masson's trip up, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+  <li>Voyage to, from Karachi (by Nearkhos), <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_161">61</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li>Persians, Pottinger's estimate of, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>-<a href="#Page_334">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Peshawar:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Cession of, to Afghanistan mooted by Burnes, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a></li>
+  <li>Moorcroft's journey from, to Kabul and Bokhara, <a href="#Page_444">444</a></li>
+  <li>Route to, from Kabul <i>via</i> Kuram valley and Peiwar pass, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+  <li>Sikh occupation of, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li>Peshawaran, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+
+<li>Peukelaotis, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+<li>Philotas, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+<li>Phur river, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li>Physical geography, influence of, on migratory movements, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>-<a href="#Page_46">6</a>;
+   on history, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+<li>Pimuri defile, <a href="#Page_421">421</a></li>
+
+<li>Pir Mahomed, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_456">456</a></li>
+
+<li>Pisacas, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li>Place-names, value of, in identifications, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+<li>Pokran (? Pokar), <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li>
+
+<li>Pola Island, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li>Polo, Marco, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+
+<li>Polyænus quoted, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>-<a href="#Page_128">8</a></li>
+
+<li>Pony-ferries on the Oxus&mdash;at Kilif, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>;
+   at Khwaja Salar, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>-<a href="#Page_461">61</a></li>
+
+<li>Poolka, <a href="#Page_496">496</a></li>
+
+<li>Poolki (Pulaki), <a href="#Page_335">335</a>-<a href="#Page_336">6</a>, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+
+<li>Pottinger, Lieut., explorations by, <a href="#Page_329">329</a> <i>et seq.</i>;
+   at Herat, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>;
+   quoted&mdash;on Persian character, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>-<a href="#Page_334">4</a>;
+   on the Kharan desert, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>-<a href="#Page_340">40</a></li>
+
+<li>Pousheng (Boushinj, Bousik), <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li>Ptolemy (son of Lagos), with Alexander's expedition, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;
+   cited, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li>Pul-i-Malun bridge, <a href="#Page_229">229</a> <i>n.</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li>Pulaki (Poolki), <a href="#Page_335">335</a>-<a href="#Page_336">6</a>, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+
+<li>Punjab:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Alexander's march on, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+  <li>Fa Hian in, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+  <li>French and Italians in, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li>
+  <li>Greek architecture and sculpture in, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+  <li>Ranjit Singh's hunting party in, <a href="#Page_455">455</a>-<a href="#Page_456">6</a></li>
+  <li>Sikh Government, under, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>-<a href="#Page_346">6</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Pura, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Purali" id="Purali"></a>Purali (Arabius) river, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li>
+
+<li>Pushti Hajigak (Kafzur) pass, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></li>
+
+<li>Pushto, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Quetta (Shall):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>British ignorance regarding, in 1880, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_551" id="Page_551">551</a></span></li>
+  <li>Masson and Bean at, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>;
+     Masson's account of, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li>
+  <li>Strategic importance of, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>-<a href="#Page_139">9</a></li>
+  <li>Telegraph to, from Seistan, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Quintus Curtius. <i>See</i> <a href="#Curtius">Curtius</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Ragozin's <i>Chaldea</i> quoted, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li>Rahmat Khan, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li>
+
+<li>Rahmatulla Khan, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_421">421</a></li>
+
+<li>Rahun, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+
+<li>Rajput tribes, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li>Rajputana desert, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+<li>Ramayana cited, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+<li>Rambakia, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+
+<li>Ranjit Singh, Bentinck's interview with (1832), <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;
+   position of, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>;
+   Burnes' entertainment by, <a href="#Page_455">455</a>-<a href="#Page_456">6</a>;
+   Burnes' estimate of, <a href="#Page_457">457</a>;
+   Vigne's acquaintance with, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>;
+   mentioned, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a></li>
+
+<li>Ras Kachari, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+<li>Rasak (? Sarbaz), <a href="#Page_312">312</a>-<a href="#Page_314">14</a></li>
+
+<li>Ravi river, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li>
+
+<li>Rawlinson, Sir Henry, cited, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>;
+   his <i>Five Monarchies</i> quoted, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li>Regan, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+
+<li>Registan, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li>
+
+<li>Reishkhan district, <a href="#Page_424">424</a></li>
+
+<li>Robat-i-Kashan, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li>Roberts, Lord, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+<li>Robertson, Sir George, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>, <a href="#Page_507">507</a>, <a href="#Page_510">510</a></li>
+
+<li>Rohri, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li>
+
+<li>Rokh, Shah, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+
+<li>Rookes cited, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li>Roxana, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li><i>R.G.S. Journal</i> cited, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;
+   <i>Proceedings</i> cited, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li>Rozabagh, <a href="#Page_229">229</a> <i>n.</i></li>
+
+<li>Rozanak, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+<li>Ruby mines of Oxus valley, <a href="#Page_428">428</a></li>
+
+<li>Rudbar (? Rudhan), <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_496">496</a></li>
+
+<li>Rue Khaf (? Rudan), <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li>Russia:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Afghan intrigues of, British nervousness regarding, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>-<a href="#Page_400">400</a></li>
+  <li>India:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Designs on, question as to, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>-<a href="#Page_320">20</a></li>
+    <li>Route to, nature of, <a href="#Page_527">527</a>-<a href="#Page_528">8</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Persia:
+    <ul class="none">
+    <li>Army organisation of, resented by, <a href="#Page_477">477</a></li>
+    <li>Sphere of influence in, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+    <li>War with (1826), <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+    </ul></li>
+  <li>Transcaspian railway terminus, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li><a name="Russo-Afghan" id="Russo-Afghan"></a>Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Camps of, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+  <li>Escort of English officers of, <a href="#Page_492">492</a></li>
+  <li>Geographical surveys in Reports of, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+  <li>Kwaja Salar, disappearance of, <a href="#Page_450">450</a></li>
+  <li>Rapidity of movements of, <a href="#Page_477">477</a></li>
+  <li>Routes of, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>-<a href="#Page_273">3</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a></li>
+  <li>otherwise mentioned, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Rustak, <a href="#Page_504">504</a></li>
+
+<li>Rustam (Bazira), <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Sabaktagin, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></li>
+
+<li>Sacnia, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li>Sadik Khan, <a href="#Page_493">493</a></li>
+
+<li>Sadmurda, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+<li>Safed Khak pass, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></li>
+
+<li>Safed Koh, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+<li>Sagittæ, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li>St. John cited, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li>Saiad Ahmad Shah, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li>
+
+<li>Saib, <a href="#Page_433">433</a></li>
+
+<li>Saidabad fort, <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li>
+
+<li>Saighan valley, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_437">437</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a></li>
+
+<li>Sajidi, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Sakæ, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Sakah, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+
+<li>Sakas, <a href="#Page_501">501</a></li>
+
+<li>Samad Khan, <a href="#Page_390">390</a></li>
+
+<li>Samaria, date of fall of, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li>Sarmakan, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li>Samarkand (Marakanda), <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+
+<li>Sandeman, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>;
+   cited, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li>
+
+<li>Sandrakottos (Chandragupta), <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li>Sangadip Island, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+<li>Sangcharak, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>;
+   mountains, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li>Sangiduktar, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li>Sangusar, <a href="#Page_492">492</a></li>
+
+<li>Sar Alang (Parwan, Bajgah) pass, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></li>
+
+<li>Saraswati river, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+<li>Sarakhs, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+
+<li>Sarbaz (? Rasak), <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>;
+   river, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+
+<li>Sardanapalus (Assur-bani-pal), <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_163">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Sargo pass, <a href="#Page_472">472</a></li>
+
+<li>Sargon, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+
+<li>Sar-i-jangal stream, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li>Sarikoh stream, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li>Sar-i-pul (? Aspurkan), <a href="#Page_250">250</a>-<a href="#Page_252">52</a>, <a href="#Page_483">483</a></li>
+
+<li>Sarwan (Kala Sarwan), <a href="#Page_206">206</a>-<a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+<li>Sarwandi (Sir-i-koll) pass, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_472">472</a>;
+   ridge, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>-<a href="#Page_466">6</a></li>
+
+<li>Satibarzanes, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+<li>Schintza, <a href="#Page_473">473</a></li>
+
+<li>Schwanbeck, Dr., <a href="#Page_126">126</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_552" id="Page_552">552</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Scylax of Caryanda, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>-<a href="#Page_29">9</a></li>
+
+<li>Sehwan, <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Seistan" id="Seistan"></a>Seistan (Sejistan, Drangia, Drangiana):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Afghan army's experience in, <a href="#Page_403">403</a></li>
+  <li>Climate and natural conditions in, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>-<a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>, <a href="#Page_494">494</a></li>
+  <li>Extent of, less than of ancient Drangiana, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;
+     extent in mediæval times, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+  <li>Firearms imported into, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+  <li>Goldsmid's mission to, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+  <li>Inhabitants of, mentioned by Herodotus, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+  <li>Lake of, <a href="#Page_497">497</a></li>
+  <li>Route to Mashad, <a href="#Page_528">528</a></li>
+  <li>Persian satrapy, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+  <li>Ruins in, abundance of, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+  <li>Reputation of, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>-<a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+  <li>Surveys of, <a href="#Page_496">496</a>-<a href="#Page_497">7</a></li>
+  <li>Telegraph to, from Narmashir, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+  <li>Tributary to Ghur in mediæval times, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Sekhwan, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+
+<li>Sekoha, <a href="#Page_498">498</a></li>
+
+<li>Sejistan. <i>See</i> <a href="#Seistan">Seistan</a></li>
+
+<li>Semenjan. <i>See</i> <a href="#Haibak">Haibak</a></li>
+
+<li>Semiramis, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li>Senacherib, King of Assyria, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+<li>Senart, M., cited, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li>Seneca, cited, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Ser-ab (? Sar-i-ab), <a href="#Page_468">468</a></li>
+
+<li>Shah, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li>Shah Kot (Mahaban), <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_111">11</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>-<a href="#Page_121">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Shaharak, <a href="#Page_486">486</a></li>
+
+<li>Shahar-i-Babar, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li>Shahar-i-Wairan (? Shahar, Shah), <a href="#Page_254">254</a>-<a href="#Page_255">5</a></li>
+
+<li>Shaitana, <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li>
+
+<li>Shakiban, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+
+<li>Shams Tabieri, Saint, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li>
+
+<li>Shamshirs, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_234">4</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li>Shamsuddin pass, <a href="#Page_418">418</a></li>
+
+<li>Shansabi, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+<li>Sharif, Imam, <a href="#Page_484">484</a></li>
+
+<li>Sharifudin cited, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li>
+
+<li>Sheherek, <a href="#Page_486">486</a></li>
+
+<li>Sheranni, <a href="#Page_512">512</a></li>
+
+<li>Sher-i-dahan, <a href="#Page_468">468</a></li>
+
+<li>Sherwan, <a href="#Page_433">433</a>-<a href="#Page_434">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Shibar, <a href="#Page_468">468</a></li>
+
+<li>Shibar pass, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a></li>
+
+<li>Shibarghan, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>-<a href="#Page_252">2</a></li>
+
+<li>Shikapur, financial credit of, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>-<a href="#Page_332">2</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_452">452</a>-<a href="#Page_453">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Shorawak, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>-<a href="#Page_375">5</a></li>
+
+<li>Shutar Gardan (Kalloo, Panjpilan) pass, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></li>
+
+<li>Siah Koh (Band-i-Baian), <a href="#Page_486">486</a>, <a href="#Page_487">487</a></li>
+
+<li>Siah Reg pass, <a href="#Page_381">381</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Siahposh_Kafirs" id="Siahposh_Kafirs"></a>Siahposh Kafirs, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>-<a href="#Page_356">6</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li>
+
+<li>Siam, celadon furnaces in, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+<li>Sidonians, deportation of, by Assyria, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+<li>Sikhs, Dost Mahomed's operations against, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>-<a href="#Page_398">8</a></li>
+
+<li>Simkoh, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+
+<li>Sind:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Arab ascendency in, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>;
+     their geography of, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;
+     buried Arab city in, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+  <li>Assyrian art in pottery of, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+  <li>Buddhist ruins in, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+  <li>Frontier passes of, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+  <li>Hot winds in, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+  <li>Independent government, under, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>-<a href="#Page_346">6</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li>
+  <li>Masson in, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>;
+ his account of, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li>
+  <li>Mongols settled in, <a href="#Page_526">526</a></li>
+  <li>Mountain barrier of, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Singlak, <a href="#Page_485">485</a></li>
+
+<li>Sin-ho-to. <i>See</i> <a href="#Swat">Swat</a></li>
+
+<li>Sintu-ho river. <i>See</i> <a href="#Indus_river">Indus</a></li>
+
+<li>Sirafraz Khan, <a href="#Page_391">391</a></li>
+
+<li>Sir-i-koll (Sarwandi) pass, <a href="#Page_465">465</a></li>
+
+<li>Sirondha lake, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+<li>Skytho-Aryans, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li>Skyths:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Caspian, at north and west of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+  <li>Central Asia, of, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;
+     Alexander's encounter with, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>-<a href="#Page_93">3</a></li>
+  <li>Euxine, at north of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+  <li>Westward migration of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Slavery in Badakshan, <a href="#Page_520">520</a></li>
+
+<li>Sofarak, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li>Sogdia (Bokhara), <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li>Sohrab, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+
+<li>Somnath, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li>Song Yun cited, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+<li>Sonmiani, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>;
+   route from, to interior, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>-<a href="#Page_331">31</a></li>
+
+<li>Sousa, <a href="#Page_479">479</a></li>
+
+<li>Spinasuka pass, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li>Stein, Dr. M. A., <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_503">503</a>;
+   Buddhist sanctuary discovered by, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;
+   methods of, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_111">11</a>;
+   cited, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>-<a href="#Page_118">18</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>-<a href="#Page_121">21</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+<li>Stoddart, Colonel, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a></li>
+
+<li>Stone-built circles, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li>
+
+<li>Strabo cited, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;
+   quoted, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+<li>Stewart, General, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+<li>Subzawar, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_498">498</a></li>
+
+<li>Sufed Koh mountains, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+<li>Su-ho-to (Lower Swat), <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+<li>Sujah, Shah, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_456">456</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_553" id="Page_553">553</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Suliman, Kalif, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li>Suliman hills, torrents and passes of, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>-<a href="#Page_37">7</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Suliman" id="Suliman"></a>Suliman Khel Ghilzais:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Broadfoot the authority on, <a href="#Page_474">474</a>-<a href="#Page_475">5</a></li>
+  <li>Duties levied by, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>, <a href="#Page_474">474</a>-<a href="#Page_475">5</a></li>
+  <li>Kattasang, in, <a href="#Page_472">472</a></li>
+  <li>Land of, unexplored, <a href="#Page_514">514</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Sultan Mahomed, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a></li>
+
+<li>Sura (? Suza), <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li>Surkh Kila pass, <a href="#Page_418">418</a></li>
+
+<li>Survey methods, perfecting of, <a href="#Page_500">500</a></li>
+
+<li>Suza (? Sura), <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Swat" id="Swat"></a>Swat (Sin-ho-to, Su-ho-to):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Buddhism in, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+  <li>Fa Hian in, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+  <li>Geographical surveys of, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+  <li>Uplands of, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Tabriz, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+<li>Taft, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+
+<li>Tagao Ghur river, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+<li>Tagao Ishlan river, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>-<a href="#Page_216">16</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;
+   valley, <a href="#Page_486">486</a></li>
+
+<li>Tagdumbash Pamir, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_517">517</a></li>
+
+<li>Taimanis:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Country of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>-<a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_478">478</a>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a></li>
+  <li>Kidnapping by, in Afghan Turkistan, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+  <li>Traditions of, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+  <li>Women of, Ferrier's account of, <a href="#Page_489">489</a></li>
+  <li>mentioned, <a href="#Page_481">481</a>, <a href="#Page_489">489</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Taiwara (Ghur):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Herat, route from, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+  <li>Importance of, <a href="#Page_487">487</a></li>
+  <li>Ruins at, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a></li>
+  <li>mentioned, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Tajik (Kurt), dynasty in Ghur, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+<li>Tajiks, Badakshani, <a href="#Page_432">432</a></li>
+
+<li>Takla Makan, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Takht-i-Rustam (tope at Haibak), <a href="#Page_446">446</a></li>
+
+<li>Takht-i-Suliman mountain:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Expedition to (1882), <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_513">513</a></li>
+  <li>River gorges of, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+  <li>mentioned, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_464">464</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Takzar (Zakar), <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li>Talara, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>-<a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li>Talbot, Colonel the Hon. M. G., R.E., <a href="#Page_264">264</a> <i>and n.</i>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>;
+   cited, <a href="#Page_489">489</a>-<a href="#Page_490">90</a></li>
+
+<li>Talekan, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>-<a href="#Page_274">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Talikan, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_504">504</a>;
+   Mahomedan saint at, <a href="#Page_447">447</a></li>
+
+<li>Talikan (Talikhan), <a href="#Page_243">243</a> <i>and n.</i>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+<li>Talikan plains, <a href="#Page_506">506</a>, <a href="#Page_509">509</a></li>
+
+<li>Talikhan plain, <a href="#Page_423">423</a></li>
+
+<li>Taloi range, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Tamerlane. <i>See</i> <a href="#Timur_Shah">Timur</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Tarikh-i-Rashidi</i> cited, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li>Tarim river, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Tarnak river, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+<li>Tashkurghan:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Fort of, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+  <li>Kabul, routes to, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a></li>
+  <li>Moorcroft at, <a href="#Page_448">448</a></li>
+  <li>otherwise mentioned, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_482">482</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Tashkurghan river, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li>Tarsi (Parsi), <a href="#Page_489">489</a></li>
+
+<li>Tate, Mr. G. P., cited, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+
+<li>Taxila, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li>Taxiles, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li>Teheran:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Hamadan telegraph route to, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+  <li>Kashan, question as to railway <i>via</i>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+  <li>Mashad route from, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;
+     question as to railway by, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Termez, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li>Teshkhan, <a href="#Page_424">424</a></li>
+
+<li>Thakot, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li>Tibet:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Chinese Turkistan formerly included in, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+  <li>Gold-fields of, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+  <li>Gold-digging legends concerning, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  <li>Idrisi's description of, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>-<a href="#Page_283">3</a></li>
+  <li>Invasion of India from, possibility as to, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+  <li>Mongol invasion of, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>-<a href="#Page_187">7</a></li>
+  <li>Moorcroft in, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>-<a href="#Page_440">40</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Tibetans, modern, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Tiglath Pilesur, King of Assyria, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li>Tigris river, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+<li>Til pass, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+
+<li>Timur Hissar, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li>
+
+<li><a name="Timur_Shah" id="Timur_Shah"></a>Timur Shah (Tamerlane):
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Herat and Ghur broken up by, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+  <li>Kafiristan invaded by, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>-<a href="#Page_356">6</a>, <a href="#Page_435">435</a></li>
+  <li>Merv-el-Rud destroyed by, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+  <li>otherwise mentioned, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_394">394</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Tingelab river, <a href="#Page_486">486</a></li>
+
+<li>Tippak, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Tir, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>-<a href="#Page_239">9</a></li>
+
+<li>Tir Band-i-Turkistan mountains, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+<li>Tirah Expedition, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+<li>Tiz (Talara), <a href="#Page_299">299</a>-<a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li>Tochi river, <a href="#Page_475">475</a></li>
+
+<li>Tochi valley, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;
+   route by, <a href="#Page_512">512</a>-<a href="#Page_514">14</a></li>
+
+<li>Todd, Major d'Arcy, <a href="#Page_480">480</a></li>
+
+<li>Tokhari (Kushan), <a href="#Page_241">241</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_554" id="Page_554">554</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Tokharistan (Oxus region), <a href="#Page_241">241</a>;
+   capital of, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+<li>To-li (Darel), <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>-<a href="#Page_183">3</a></li>
+
+<li>Tomeros river, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+<li>Tous, <a href="#Page_479">479</a></li>
+
+<li>Topchi valley, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a></li>
+
+<li>Torashekh, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_482">482</a></li>
+
+<li>Transportation of whole populations, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+<li>Travel, <i>camaraderie</i> of, <a href="#Page_463">463</a>-<a href="#Page_464">4</a></li>
+
+<li><i><a name="Travels_in_Afghanistan" id="Travels_in_Afghanistan"></a>Travels in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, the Punjab, and Kalat</i> (Masson) cited, <a href="#Page_349">349</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+
+<li>Trebeck, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>-<a href="#Page_440">40</a>, <a href="#Page_444">444</a>, <a href="#Page_448">448</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a></li>
+
+<li>Tsungling, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+<li>Tubaran, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>-<a href="#Page_317">17</a></li>
+
+<li>Turan, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>-<a href="#Page_316">16</a></li>
+
+<li>Turfan, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+<li>Turki language, <a href="#Page_394">394</a></li>
+
+<li>Turkistan, Afghan. <i>See</i> <a href="#Afghan_Turkistan">Afghan Turkistan</a></li>
+
+<li>Turkman women, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Turkmans, Ersari, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>-<a href="#Page_460">60</a></li>
+
+<li>Turks, Khizilji, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>-<a href="#Page_282">2</a></li>
+
+<li>Turks Tibetans, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Uch, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li>
+
+<li>Udyana (Wuchung), <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+<li>Ujaristan valley, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+
+<li>Unai (Honai, Bamian) pass, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>;
+   importance of, <a href="#Page_521">521</a>;
+   Wood's description of, <a href="#Page_417">417</a></li>
+
+<li>Ur (Mugheir), <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li>Urmara, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+<li>Urukh (Warka), <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li>Urusgan valley, <a href="#Page_515">515</a></li>
+
+<li>Uthal, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li>Uzbeks:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Agricultural pursuits of, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+  <li>Dwellings of, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+  <li>Kirghiz compared with, <a href="#Page_430">430</a></li>
+  <li>Man-stealing propensities of, <a href="#Page_421">421</a></li>
+  <li>Murad Khan acknowledged liege by, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a></li>
+  <li>Snake-handling by, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+  <li>Wood's estimate of, <a href="#Page_423">423</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Vaisravana, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+<li>Varsach river, <a href="#Page_424">424</a></li>
+
+<li>Vektavitch, Lieut., <a href="#Page_400">400</a></li>
+
+<li>Ventura, General, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li>
+
+<li>Victoria Lake, <a href="#Page_430">430</a>-<a href="#Page_431">31</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Wad, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li>
+
+<li>Wade, Captain, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a></li>
+
+<li>Wainwright, E. A., cited, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Wakhab (Panja) river, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li>Wakhan, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+
+<li>Wakhjir pass, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li>Waksh, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li>Wakshab river, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li>Walian (Gwalian) pass, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></li>
+
+<li>Walid I., Kalif, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li>Walker, General, cited, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_508">508</a></li>
+
+<li>Wana, <a href="#Page_513">513</a></li>
+
+<li>Wardak valley, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_475">475</a></li>
+
+<li>Wardoj river, <a href="#Page_429">429</a>, <a href="#Page_437">437</a></li>
+
+<li>Wardoj (Zebak) valley, <a href="#Page_436">436</a></li>
+
+<li>Warka (Urukh), <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li>Warwalin, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>-<a href="#Page_272">2</a></li>
+
+<li>Washir, <a href="#Page_490">490</a></li>
+
+<li>Wazirabad lake, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+<li>Waziris, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>, <a href="#Page_474">474</a></li>
+
+<li>Waziristan, <a href="#Page_473">473</a></li>
+
+<li>Weather, effects of, on natural features, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>-<a href="#Page_118">18</a></li>
+
+<li>Westward migrations, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+
+<li>Wilson, Major David, cited, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li>
+
+<li>Wiltshire, General, <a href="#Page_406">406</a></li>
+
+<li>Wine made by Kafirs, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>-<a href="#Page_134">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Wood, Lieut., mission of, to Badakshan, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>;
+   with Lord, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>-<a href="#Page_418">18</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>;
+   explorations of the Oxus by, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>-<a href="#Page_435">35</a>;
+   Indus navigation by, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>;
+ cited, <a href="#Page_505">505</a>-<a href="#Page_507">507</a>, <a href="#Page_523">523</a>;
+   estimate of, <a href="#Page_431">431</a>;
+   value of work of, <a href="#Page_418">418</a></li>
+
+<li>Wolff, Rev. Joseph, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li>
+
+<li>Woodthorpe, <a href="#Page_429">429</a>, <a href="#Page_509">509</a></li>
+
+<li>Wuchung (Udyana), <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+<li>Wynaad gold-fields, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Xenophon, retreat of, from Persia, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;
+   appreciation of, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;
+   cited, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li>Xerxes, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Yahudi. <i>See</i> <a href="#Jews">Jews</a></li>
+
+<li>Yahudia, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li>Yakmina (Darak Yamuna), <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li>Yakulang, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+ valley, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li>Yaman, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+<li>Yang Kila, <a href="#Page_433">433</a></li>
+
+<li>Yar Mahomed Khan, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_477">477</a>, <a href="#Page_480">480</a>, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>, <a href="#Page_494">494</a></li>
+
+<li>Yarkand, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li>
+
+<li>Yezd, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+
+<li>Yezdambaksh, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>-<a href="#Page_384">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Yule, Sir Henry, cited, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_508">508</a></li>
+
+<li>Yusli, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>-<a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li>Yusuf Darra route to Sar-i-pul, <a href="#Page_483">483</a></li>
+
+<li>Yusufzai rising, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="none">
+<li>Zaimuni, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li>
+
+<li>Zakar (Takzar), <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_555" id="Page_555">555</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Zal valley, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li>Zamindawar (Dawar), <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>-<a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_491">491</a></li>
+
+<li>Zarah swamp, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li>Zarangai, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>-<a href="#Page_34">4</a></li>
+
+<li>Zardaspan, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li>Zari stream, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li>Zariaspa. <i>See</i> <a href="#Andarab">Andarab</a></li>
+
+<li>Zarinje, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li>Zarni, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+<li>Zebak:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Faizabad, route from, <a href="#Page_511">511</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Zebak:
+  <ul class="none">
+  <li>Importance of, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_429">429</a>, <a href="#Page_433">433</a></li>
+  <li>mentioned, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+
+<li>Zebak river, <a href="#Page_437">437</a>, <a href="#Page_520">520</a></li>
+
+<li>Zebak (Wardoj) valley, <a href="#Page_436">436</a></li>
+
+<li>Zhob valley, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+
+<li>Zindajan (Bouchinj), <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a></li>
+
+<li>Zirmast pass, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li>Zirni, <a href="#Page_487">487</a>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a></li>
+
+<li>Zohak, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>;
+   valley, <a href="#Page_421">421</a></li>
+
+<li>Zohaka, <a href="#Page_466">466</a></li>
+
+<li>Zoji-la, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center p4">THE END</p>
+
+<p class="center p2"><i>Printed by</i> <span class="smcap">R. &amp;
+ R. Clark, Limited</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes p6">
+<h2 class="fntitle">FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Ancient India</i>, "Invasion by Alexander the Great." Appendix.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The late Sir H. Deane.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Indus Delta Country</i>, 1894.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Buddhist Records of the Western World</i>, vol. i. p. 27.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Joubert's translation.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Adraskand is mentioned as "a little place with cultivation, gardens, and
+plenty of sweet water," and as one of the four towns under the domination of
+Asfaran. This corresponds fairly well with the modern town of Kila Adraskand
+of the same name. On the same southern route from Herat, undoubtedly,
+was "Malin Herat, at one day's journey, a town surrounded by gardens."
+The picturesque ruins of the bridge called the Pul-i-Malun, across the Hari
+Rud, on the Kandahar road, is evidence of the former existence of a town of
+Malun, of which no trace remains to-day, but which must have corresponded
+very closely with Rozabagh.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Talikhan in modern maps.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Now Colonel the Hon. M. G. Talbot, R.E.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The name or term Bot is locally applied now to certain Himalayan
+districts as well as to Tibet.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>Selections from Travels and Journals preserved in the Bombay Secretariat</i>,
+Forrest, 1908.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Now Sir Hugh Barnes and Sir Henry MacMahon, one a past, and the
+other the present, Agent for the Governor-General in Baluchistan.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> The latest reports indicate that there is now a road fit for motor traffic
+between Kabul and Afghan Turkistan, as well as between Kabul and
+Badakshan.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Afghan Turkistan and Badakshan are now said to be connected with
+Kabul by good motor roads.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gates of India, by Thomas Holdich
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GATES OF INDIA ***
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gates of India, by Thomas Holdich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Gates of India
+       Being an Historical Narrative
+
+Author: Thomas Holdich
+
+Release Date: June 17, 2013 [EBook #42970]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GATES OF INDIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
+
+  "crank" on page 147 is a possible typo
+  "Bamain" on page 213 is a possible typo
+  "Semetic" on page 225 is a possible typo
+  "Zoroastian" on page 270 is a possible typo
+  "Aegospotami" (in index) not found in text
+  "Kardos" (in index) not found in text
+
+  Spelling differences between the index and the text were resolved
+  in favor of the text.
+
+
+
+
+     MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+     LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
+     MELBOURNE
+
+     THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+     NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
+     ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
+
+     THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+     TORONTO
+
+
+
+
+     THE
+     GATES OF INDIA
+     BEING
+     AN HISTORICAL NARRATIVE
+
+     BY
+     COLONEL SIR THOMAS HOLDICH
+     K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B., D.Sc.
+
+     AUTHOR OF
+     'THE INDIAN BORDERLAND,' 'INDIA,' 'THE COUNTRIES OF
+     THE KING'S AWARD'
+
+     _WITH MAPS_
+
+
+     MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+     ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
+     1910
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+As the world grows older and its composition both physical and human
+becomes subject to ever-increasing scientific investigation, the close
+interdependence of its history and its geography becomes more and more
+definite. It is hardly too much to say that geography has so far
+shaped history that in unravelling some of the more obscure
+entanglements of historical record, we may safely appeal to our modern
+knowledge of the physical environment of the scene of action to decide
+on the actual course of events. Oriental scholars for many years past
+have been deeply interested in reshaping the map of Asia to suit their
+theories of the sequence of historical action in India and on its
+frontiers. They have identified the position of ancient cities in
+India, sometimes with marvellous precision, and have been able to
+assign definite niches in history to historical personages with whose
+story it would have been most difficult to deal were it not
+intertwined with marked features of geographical environment. But on
+the far frontiers of India, beyond the Indus, these geographical
+conditions have only been imperfectly known until recently. It is
+only within the last thirty years that the geography of the hinterland
+of India--Tibet, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan--have been in any sense
+brought under scientific examination, and at the best such examination
+has been partial and incomplete. It is unfortunate that recent years
+have added nothing to our knowledge of Afghanistan, and it seems
+hopeless to wait for detailed information as to some of the more
+remote (and most interesting) districts of that historic country. As,
+therefore, in the course of twenty years of official wanderings I have
+amassed certain notes which may help to throw some light on the
+ancient highways and cities of those trans-frontier regions which
+contain the landward gates of India, I have thought it better to make
+some use of these notes now, and to put together the various theories
+that I may have formed from time to time bearing on the past history
+of that country, whilst the opportunity lasts. I have endeavoured to
+present my own impressions at first hand as far as possible, unbiased
+by the views already expressed by far more eminent writers than
+myself, believing that there is a certain value in originality. I have
+also endeavoured to keep the descriptive geography of such districts
+as form the theatre of historical incidents on a level with the story
+itself, so that the one may illustrate the other.
+
+Whilst investigating the methods of early explorers into the
+hinterland of India it has, of course, been necessary to appeal to
+the original narratives of the explorers themselves so far as
+possible. Consequently I am indebted to the assistance afforded by
+quite a host of authors for the basis of this compilation. And I may
+briefly recount the names of those to whom I am under special
+obligation. First and foremost are Mr. M'Crindle's admirable series of
+handy little volumes dealing with the Greek period of Indian history,
+the perusal of which first prompted an attempt to reconcile some of
+the apparent discrepancies between classical story and practical
+geography, with which may be included Sir A. Cunningham's _Coins of
+Alexander's Successors in Kabul_. For the Arab phase of commercial
+exploration I am indebted to Sir William Ouseley's translation,
+_Oriental Geography of Ibn Haukel_, and the _Geographie d'Edrisi;
+traduite par P. Aimedee Joubert_. For more modern records the official
+reports of Burnes, Lord, and Leech on Afghanistan; Burnes' _Travels
+into Bokhara, etc.; Cabul_, by the same author; _Ferrier's Caravan
+Journeys_; Wood's _Journey to the Sources of the Oxus_; Moorcroft's
+_Travels in the Himalayan Provinces_; Vigne's _Ghazni, Kabul, and
+Afghanistan_; Henry Pottinger's _Travels in Baloochistan and Sinde_;
+and last, but by no means least, Masson's _Travels in Afghanistan,
+Beluchistan, the Panjab, and Kalat_, all of which have been largely
+indented on. To this must be added Mr. Forrest's valuable compilation
+of Bombay records. It has been indeed one of the objects of this book
+to revive the records of past generations of explorers whose stories
+have a deep significance even in this day, but which are apt to be
+overlooked and forgotten as belonging to an ancient and superseded era
+of research. Because these investigators belong to a past generation
+it by no means follows that their work, their opinions, or their
+deductions from original observations are as dead as they are
+themselves. It is far too readily assumed that the work of the latest
+explorer must necessarily supersede that of his predecessors. In the
+difficult art of map compilation perhaps the most difficult problem
+with which the compiler has to deal is the relative value of evidence
+dating from different periods. Here, then, we have introduced a
+variety of opinions and views expressed by men of many minds (but all
+of one type as explorer), which may be balanced one against another
+with a fair prospect of eliminating what mathematicians call the
+"personal equation" and arriving at a sound "mean" value from combined
+evidence. I have said they are all of one type, regarded as explorers.
+There is only one word which fitly describes that type--magnificent.
+We may well ask have we any explorers like them in these days? We know
+well enough that we have the raw material in plenty for fashioning
+them, but alas! opportunity is wanting. Exploration in these days is
+becoming so professional and so scientific that modern methods hardly
+admit of the dare-devil, face-to-face intermixing with savage breeds
+and races that was such a distinctive feature in the work of these
+heroes of an older age. We get geographical results with a rapidity
+and a precision that were undreamt of in the early years (or even in
+the middle) of the last century. Our instruments are incomparably
+better, and our equipment is such that we can deal with the hostility
+of nature in her more savage moods with comparative facility. But we
+no longer live with the people about whom we set out to write
+books--we don't wear their clothes, eat their food, fraternize with
+them in their homes and in the field, learn their language and discuss
+with them their religion and politics. And the result is that we don't
+_know_ them half as well, and the ratio of our knowledge (in India at
+least) is inverse to the official position towards them that we may
+happen to occupy. The missionary and the police officer may know
+something of the people; the high-placed political administrator knows
+less (he cannot help himself), and the parliamentary demagogue knows
+nothing at all. My excuse for giving so large a place to the American
+explorer Masson, for instance, is that he was first in the field at a
+critical period of Indian history. Apart from his extraordinary gifts
+and power of absorbing and collating information, history has proved
+that on the whole his judgment both as regards Afghan character and
+Indian political ineptitude was essentially sound. Of course he was
+not popular. He is as bitter and sarcastic in his unsparing
+criticisms of local political methods in Afghanistan as he is of the
+methods of the Indian Government behind them; and doubtless his
+bitterness and undisguised hostility to some extent discounts the
+value of his opinion. But he knew the Afghan, which we did not: and it
+is most instructive to note the extraordinary divergence of opinion
+that existed between him and Sir Alexander Burnes as regards some of
+the most marked idiosyncrasies of Afghan character. Burnes was as
+great an explorer as Masson, but whilst in Afghanistan he was the
+emissary of the Indian Government, and thus it immediately became
+worth while for the Afghan Sirdar to study his temper and his
+weaknesses and to make the best use of both. Thus arose Burnes'
+whole-hearted belief in the simplicity of Afghan methods, whilst
+Masson, who was more or less behind the scenes, was in no position to
+act as prompter to him. It was just preceding and during the momentous
+period of the first Afghan war (1839-41) that European explorers in
+Afghanistan and Baluchistan were most active. Long before then both
+countries had been an open book to the Ancients, and both may be said
+geographically to be an open book to us now. There are, however,
+certain pages which have not yet been properly read, and something
+will be said later on as to where these pages occur.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+     INTRODUCTION                                                    1
+
+
+     CHAPTER I
+
+     EARLY RELATIONS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST--GREECE AND
+     PERSIA AND EARLY TRIBAL DISTRIBUTIONS ON THE INDIAN
+     FRONTIER                                                       11
+
+
+     CHAPTER II
+
+     ASSYRIA AND AFGHANISTAN--ANCIENT LAND ROUTES--POSSIBLE
+     SEA ROUTES                                                     39
+
+
+     CHAPTER III
+
+     GREEK EXPLORATION--ALEXANDER--MODERN BALKH--THE BALKH
+     PLAIN AND BAKTRIA                                              58
+
+
+     CHAPTER IV
+
+     GREEK EXPLORATION--ALEXANDER--THE KABUL VALLEY GATES           94
+
+
+     CHAPTER V
+
+     GREEK EXPLORATION--THE WESTERN GATES                          135
+
+
+     CHAPTER VI
+
+     CHINESE EXPLORATIONS--THE GATES OF THE NORTH                  169
+
+
+     CHAPTER VII
+
+     MEDIAEVAL GEOGRAPHY--SEISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN                   190
+
+
+     CHAPTER VIII
+
+     ARAB EXPLORATION--THE GATES OF MAKRAN                         284
+
+
+     CHAPTER IX
+
+     EARLIEST ENGLISH EXPLORATION--CHRISTIE AND POTTINGER          325
+
+
+     CHAPTER X
+
+     AMERICAN EXPLORATION--MASSON--THE NEARER GATES,
+     BALUCHISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN                                   344
+
+
+     CHAPTER XI
+
+     AMERICAN EXPLORATION--MASSON (_CONTINUED_)--THE NEARER
+     GATES, BALUCHISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN                            390
+
+
+     CHAPTER XII
+
+     LORD AND WOOD--THE FARTHER GATES, BADAKSHAN AND THE
+     OXUS                                                          411
+
+
+     CHAPTER XIII
+
+     ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA--MOORCROFT                      442
+
+
+     CHAPTER XIV
+
+     ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA--BURNES                         451
+
+
+     CHAPTER XV
+
+     THE GATES OF GHAZNI--VIGNE                                    462
+
+
+     CHAPTER XVI
+
+     THE GATES OF GHAZNI--BROADFOOT                                470
+
+
+     CHAPTER XVII
+
+     FRENCH EXPLORATION--FERRIER                                   476
+
+
+     CHAPTER XVIII
+
+     SUMMARY                                                       500
+
+
+     INDEX                                                         531
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF MAPS
+
+
+                                                             FACE PAGE
+
+     1. General Orographic Map of Afghanistan and Baluchistan,
+     showing Arab trade routes (see page 190 _et seq._)
+                                                   _With Introduction_
+
+     2. Sketch of Alexander's Route through the Kabul Valley to
+     India                                                          94
+
+     3. Greek Retreat from India (_Journal of the Society of Arts_,
+     April 1901)                                                   135
+
+     4. The Gates of Makran (_Journal of the Royal Geographical
+     Society_, April 1906)                                         284
+
+     5. Sketch of the Hindu Kush Passes                            500
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: OROGRAPHICAL MAP OF AFGHANISTAN & BALUCHISTAN
+    COMPILED BY SIR THOMAS H. HOLDICH, K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B.]
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Since the gates of India have become water gates and the way to India
+has been the way of the sea, very little has been known of those other
+landward gates which lie to the north and west of the peninsula,
+through which have poured immigrants from Asia and conquerors from the
+West from time immemorial. It has taken England a long time to
+rediscover them, and she is even now doubtful about their strategic
+value and the possibility of keeping them closed and barred. It is
+only by an examination of the historical records which concern them,
+and the geographical conditions which surround them, that any clear
+appreciation of their value can be attained; and it is only within the
+last century that such examinations have been rendered possible by the
+enterprise and activity of a race of explorers (official and
+otherwise) who have risked their lives in the dangerous field of the
+Indian trans-frontier. In ancient days the very first (and sometimes
+the last) thing that was learned about India was the way thither from
+the North. In our times the process has been reversed, and we seek
+for information with our backs to the South. We have worked our way
+northward, having entered India by the southern water gates, and as we
+have from time to time struggled rather to remain content within
+narrow borders than to push outward and forward, the drift to the
+north has been very slow, and there has never been, right from the
+very beginning, any strenuous haste in the expansion of commercial
+interests, or any spirit of crusade in the advance of Conquest.
+
+So late as the early years of the sixteenth century England was but a
+poor country, with less inhabitants than are now crowded within the
+London area. There was not much to spare, either of money or men, for
+ventures which could only be regarded in those days as sheer gambling
+speculations. The splendid records of a successful voyage must have
+been greatly discounted by the many dismal tales of failure, and
+nothing but an indomitable impulse, bred of international rivalry,
+could have led the royal personages and the few wealthy citizens who
+backed our earliest enterprises to open their purse-strings
+sufficiently wide to find the necessary means for the equipment of a
+modest little fleet of square-sailed merchant ships. National tenacity
+prevailed, however, in the end. The hard-headed Islander finally
+succeeded where the more impetuous Southerner failed, and England came
+out finally with most of the honours of a long commercial contest. It
+was in this way that we reached India, and by degrees we painted
+India our own conventional colour in patches large enough to give us
+the preponderating voice in her general administration. But as we
+progressed northward and north-westward we realized the important fact
+that India--the peninsula India--was insulated and protected by
+geographical conformations which formed a natural barrier against
+outside influences, almost as impassable as the sea barriers of
+England. On the north-east a vast wilderness of forest-covered
+mountain ranges and deep lateral valleys barred the way most
+effectually against irruption from the yellow races of Asia. On the
+north where the curving serrated ramparts of the north-east gave place
+to the Himalayan barrier, the huge uplifted highlands of Tibet were
+equally impassable to the busy pushing hordes of the Mongol; and it
+was only on the extreme north-west about the hinterland of Kashmir,
+and beyond the Himalayan system, that any weakness could be found in
+the chain of defensive works which Nature had sent to the north of
+India. Here, indeed, in the trans-Indus regions of Kashmir, sterile,
+rugged, cold, and crowned with gigantic ice-clad peaks, there is a
+slippery track reaching northward into the depression of Chinese
+Turkestan, which for all time has been a recognised route connecting
+India with High Asia. It is called the Karakoram route. Mile upon mile
+a white thread of a road stretches across the stone-strewn plains,
+bordered by the bones of the innumerable victims to the long fatigue
+of a burdensome and ill-fed existence--the ghastly debris of former
+caravans. It is perhaps the ugliest track to call a trade route in the
+whole wide world. Not a tree, not a shrub, exists, not even the cold
+dead beauty which a snow-sheet imparts to highland scenery, for there
+is no great snowfall in the elevated spaces which back the Himalayas
+and their offshoots. It is marked, too, by many a sordid tragedy of
+murder and robbery, but it is nevertheless one of the northern gates
+of India which we have spent much to preserve, and it does actually
+serve a very important purpose in the commercial economy of India. At
+least one army has traversed this route from the north with the
+prospect before it of conquering Tibet; but it was a Mongol army, and
+it was worsted in a most unequal contest with Nature.
+
+India (if we include Kashmir) runs to a northern apex about the point
+where, from the western extension of the giant Muztagh, the Hindu Kush
+system takes off in continuation of the great Asiatic divide. Here the
+Pamirs border Kashmir, and here there are also mountain ways which
+have aforetime let in the irrepressible Chinaman, probably as far as
+Hunza, but still a very long way from the Indian peninsula. Then the
+Hindu Kush slopes off to the south-westward and becomes the divide
+between Afghanistan and Kashmir for a space, till, from north of
+Chitral, it continues with a sweep right into Central Afghanistan and
+merges into the mountain chain which reaches to Herat. From this
+point, north of Chitral, commences the true north-west barrier of
+India, a barrier which includes nearly the whole width of Afghanistan
+beyond the formidable wall of the trans-Indus mountains. It is here
+that the gates of India are to be found, and it is with this outermost
+region of India, and what lies beyond it, that this book is chiefly
+concerned.
+
+As the history of India under British occupation grew and expanded and
+the painting red process gradually developed, whilst men were ever
+reaching north-westward with their eyes set on these frontier hills,
+the countries which lay beyond came to be regarded as the "ultima
+thule" of Indian exploration, and Afghanistan and Baluchistan were
+reckoned in English as the hinterland of India, only to be reached by
+the efforts of English adventurers from the plains of the peninsula.
+And that is the way in which those countries are still regarded. It is
+Afghanistan in its relations to India, political, commercial, or
+strategic, as the case may be, that fills the minds of our soldiers
+and statesmen of to-day; and the way to Afghanistan is still by the
+way of ships--across the ocean first, and then by climbing upward from
+the plains of India to the continental plateau land of Asia. It was
+not so twenty-five centuries ago. One can imagine the laughter that
+would echo through the courts and palaces of Nineveh at the idea of
+reaching Afghanistan by a sea route! Think of Tiglath Pilesur, the
+founder of the Second Assyrian Empire, seated, curled, and anointed,
+surrounded by his Court and flanked by the sculptured art of his
+period (already losing some of the freshness and vigour of First
+Empire design) in the pillared halls of Nineveh, and counting the
+value of his Eastern satrapies in Sagartia, Ariana, and Arachosia,
+with outlying provinces in Northern India, whilst meditating yet
+further conquests to add to his almost illimitable Empire! No shadow
+of Babylon had stretched northward then. No premonition of a yet
+larger and later Empire overshadowed him or his successors,
+Shalmaneser and Sargon. Northern Afghanistan was to these Assyrian
+kings the dumping ground of unconsidered companies of conquered
+slaves, a bourne from whence no captive was ever likely to return. No
+record is left of the passing of those bands of colonists from West to
+East. We can only gather from the writings of subsequent historians in
+classical times that for centuries they must have drifted eastward
+from Syria, Armenia, and Greece, carrying with them the rudiments of
+the arts and industries of the land they had left for ever, and
+providing India with the germs of an art system entirely imitative in
+design, colour, and relief. The Aryan was before them in India.
+Already the foundations were laid for historic dynasties, and Rajput
+families were dating their origin from the sun and moon, whilst
+somewhere from beneath the shadow of the Himalayas in the foothills of
+Nipal was soon to arise the daystar of a new faith, a "light of Asia"
+for all centuries to come.
+
+It is impossible to set a limit to the number and variety of the
+people who, in these early centuries, either migrated, or were
+deported, from West to East through Persia to Northern Afghanistan, or
+who drifted southwards into Baluchistan. Not until the ethnography of
+these frontier lands of India is exhaustively studied shall we be able
+to unravel the influence of Assyrian, Median, Persian, Arab, or Greek
+migrations in the strange conglomeration of humanity which peoples
+those countries. Baktra (Balkh), in Northern Afghanistan, must have
+been a city of consequence in days when Nineveh was young. Farah, a
+city of Arachosia in Western Afghanistan on the borders of Seistan,
+must have been a centre from whence Assyrian arts and industries were
+passed on to India for ages; for Farah lies directly on the route
+which connects Seistan with the southern passes into the Indus valley.
+The Indus itself seems to have been the boundary which limited the
+efforts of migration and exploration. Beyond the Indus were deserts in
+the south and wide unproductive plains of the Punjab in the north, and
+it is the deserts of the world's geography which, far more than any
+other feature, have always determined the extent of the human tidal
+waves and influenced their direction. They are as the promontories and
+capes of the world's land perimeter to the tides of the ocean. Beyond
+these parched and waterless tracts, where now the maximum temperatures
+of sun-heat in India are registered, were vague uncertainties and
+mythical wonders, the tales of which in ancient literature are in
+strange contrast to the exact information which was obtained of
+geographical conditions and tribal distributions in the basins of the
+Kabul or Swat rivers, or within the narrow valleys of Makran.
+
+A recent writer (Mr. Ellsworth Huntington) has expressed in
+picturesque and convincing language the nature of the relationship
+which has ever existed between man and his physical environments in
+Asia, and has illustrated the effect of certain pulsations of climate
+in the movement of Asiatic history. The changing conditions of the
+climate of High Asia, periods of desiccation and deprivation of
+natural water-supply alternating with periods of cold and rainfall,
+acting in slow progression through centuries and never ceasing in
+their operation, have set "men in nations" moving over the face of
+that continent since the beginning of time, and left a legacy of
+buried history, to be unearthed by explorers of the type of Stein,
+such as will eventually give us the key to many important problems in
+race distribution. But more important even than climatic influence is
+the direct influence of physical geography, the actual shaping of
+mountain and valley, as a factor in directing the footsteps of early
+migration. Nowadays men cross the seas in thousands from continent to
+continent, but in the days of Egyptian and Assyrian empire it was that
+straight high-road which crossed the fewest passes and tapped the best
+natural resources of wood and water which was absolutely the
+determining factor in the direction of the great human processions;
+and although change of climate may have set the nomadic peoples of
+High Asia moving with a purpose more extensive than an annual search
+for pasturage, and have led to the peopling of India with successive
+nations of Central Asiatic origin, it was the knowledge that by
+certain routes between Mesopotamia and Northern Afghanistan lay no
+inhospitable desert, and no impassable mountain barrier, that
+determined the intermittent flow from the west, which received fresh
+impulse with every conquest achieved, with every band of captives
+available for colonizing distant satrapies. To put it shortly, there
+was an easy high-road from Mesopotamia through Persia to Northern
+Afghanistan, or even to Seistan, and not a very difficult one to
+Makran; and so it came about that migratory movements, either
+compulsory or voluntary, continued through centuries, ever extending
+their scope till checked by the deserts of the Indian frontier or the
+highlands of the Pamirs and Tibet, or the cold wild wastes of
+Siberia.
+
+Thus Afghanistan and Baluchistan, the countries with which we are more
+immediately concerned, were probably far better known to Assyrian and
+Persian kings than they were to the British Intelligence Office (or
+its equivalent) of a century ago. The first landward explorations of
+these countries are lost in pre-historic mists, but we find that the
+first scientific mission of which we have any record (that which was
+led by Alexander the Great) was well supplied with fairly accurate
+geographical information regarding the main route to be followed and
+the main objectives to be gained.
+
+In tracing out, therefore, or rather in sketching, the gradual
+progress of exploration in Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and the
+gradual evolution of those countries into a proper appanage of British
+India, we will begin (as history began) from the north and west rather
+than from the south and the plains of Hindustan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EARLY RELATIONS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST. GREECE AND PERSIA AND EARLY
+TRIBAL DISTRIBUTIONS ON THE INDIAN FRONTIER.
+
+
+It is unfortunately most difficult to trace the conditions under which
+Europe was first introduced to Asia, or the gradual ripening of early
+acquaintance into inter-commercial relationship. Although the eastern
+world was possessed of a sound literature in the time of Moses, and
+although long before the days of Solomon there was "no end" to the
+"making of books," it is remarkable how little has been left of these
+archaic records, and it is only by inference gathered from tags and
+ends of oriental script that we gradually realize how unimportant to
+old-world thinkers was the daily course of their own national history.
+India is full of ancient literature, but there is no ancient history.
+To the Brahmans there was no need for it. To them the world and all
+that it contains was "illusion," and it was worse than idle--it was
+impious--to perpetuate the record of its varied phases as they
+appeared to pass in unreal pageantry before their eyes. We know that
+from under the veil of extravagant epic a certain amount of historical
+truth has been dragged into daylight. The "Mahabharata" and the
+"Ramayana" contain in allegorical outline the story of early conflicts
+which ended in the foundation of mighty Rajput houses, or which
+established the distribution of various races of the Indian peninsula.
+Without an intimate knowledge of the language in which these great
+epics are written it is impossible to estimate fully the nature of the
+allegory which overlies an interesting historical record, but it has
+always appeared to be sufficiently vague to warrant some uncertainty
+as to the accuracy of the deductions which have hitherto been evolved
+therefrom. Nevertheless it is from these early poems of the East that
+we derive all that there is to be known about ancient India, and when
+we turn from the East to the West strangely enough we find much the
+same early literary conditions confronting us.
+
+About 950 years before Christ, two of the most perfect epic poems were
+written that ever delighted the world, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ of
+Homer. The first begins with Achilles and ends with the funeral of
+Hector. The second recounts the voyages and adventures of Ulysses
+after the destruction of Troy. With our modern intimate knowledge of
+the coasts of the Mediterranean it is not difficult to detect, amidst
+the fabulous accounts of heroic adventures, many references to
+geographical facts which must have been known generally to the Greeks
+of the Homeric period, dealing chiefly with the coasts and islands of
+the Western sea. There is but little reference to the East, although
+many centuries before Homer's day there was a sea-going trade between
+India and the West which brought ivory, apes, and peacocks to the
+ports of Syria. The obvious inference to be derived from the general
+absence of reference to the mysteries of Eastern geography is that
+there was no through traffic. Ships from the East traded only along
+the coast-lines that they knew, and ventured no farther than the point
+where an interchange of commodities could be established with the slow
+crawling craft of the West, the navigation of the period being
+confined to hugging the coast-line and making for the nearest
+shelter when times were bad. The interchange of commodities between
+the rough sailor people of those days did not tend to an interchange
+of geographical information. Probably the language difficulty stood in
+the way. If there was no end to the making of books it was not the
+illiterate and rough sailor men who made them. Nor do sailors, as a
+rule, make them now. It is left to the intelligent traveller
+uninterested in trade, and the journalistic seeker after sensation, to
+make modern geographical records; and there were no such travellers in
+the days of Homer, even if the art of writing had been a general
+accomplishment. In days much later than Homer we can detect sailors'
+yarns embodied in what purport to be authentic geographical records,
+but none so early. We have a reference to certain Skythic nomads who
+lived on mare's milk, and who had wandered from the Asiatic highlands
+into the regions north of the Euxine, which is in itself deeply
+interesting as it indicates that as early as the ninth century B.C.
+Milesian Greek colonies had started settlements on the shores of the
+Black Sea. As the centuries rolled on these settlements expanded into
+powerful colonies, and with enterprising people such as the early
+Greeks there can be little doubt that there was an intermittent
+interchange of commerce with the tribes beyond the Euxine, and that
+gradually a considerable, if inaccurate, knowledge of Asia, even
+beyond the Taurus, was acquired. The world, for them, was still a flat
+circular disc with a broad tidal ocean flowing around its edge,
+encompassing the habitable portions about the centre.
+
+Africa extended southward to the land of Ethiop and no farther, but
+Asia was a recognised geographical entity, less vague and nebulous
+even than the western isles from whence the Ph[oe]nicians brought
+their tin. There were certain fables current among the Greeks touching
+the one-eyed Arimaspians, the gold-guarding griffins, and the
+Hyperboreans, which in the middle of the sixth century were still
+credited, and almost indicate an indefinite geographical conception of
+northern Asiatic regions. But it is probable that much more was known
+of Asiatic geography in these early years than can be gathered from
+the poems and fables of Greek writers before the days of Herodotus and
+of professional geography. There were no means of recording knowledge
+ready to the hand of the colonist and commercial traveller then; even
+the few literary men who later travelled for the sake of gaining
+knowledge were dependent largely on information obtained scantily and
+with difficulty from others, and the expression of their knowledge is
+crude and imperfect. But what should we expect even in present times
+if we proceeded to compile a geographical treatise from the works of
+Milton and Shakespere? What indeed would be the result of a careful
+analysis of parliamentary utterances on geographical subjects within,
+say, the last half century? Would they present to future generations
+anything approaching to an accurate epitome of the knowledge really
+possessed (though possibly not expressed) by those who have within
+that period almost exhausted the world's store of geographical record?
+The analogy is a perfectly fair one. Geographers and explorers are not
+always writers even in these days, and as we work backwards into the
+archives of history nothing is more astonishing than the indications
+which may be found of vast stores of accurate information of the
+earth's physiography lost to the world for want of expression.
+
+It was between the sixth century B.C. and the days of Herodotus that
+Miletus was destroyed, and captive Greeks were transported by Darius
+Hystaspes from the Lybian Barke to Baktria, where we find traces of
+them again under their original Greek name in the northern regions of
+Afghanistan. It was long ere the days of Darius that the hosts of
+Assyria beat down the walls of Samaria and scattered the remnants of
+Israel through the highlands of Western Asia. Where did they drift to,
+these ten despairing tribes? Possibly we may find something to remind
+us of them also in the northern Afghan hills.
+
+It was probably about the same era that some pre-Hellenic race, led
+(so it is written) by the mythical hero Dionysos, trod the weary route
+from the Euxine to the Caspian, and from the southern shores of the
+Caspian to the borderland of modern Indian frontier, where their
+descendants welcomed Alexander on his arrival as men of his own faith
+and kin, and were recognised as such by the great conqueror. Now all
+this points to an acquaintance with the geographical links between
+East and West which appears nowhere in any written record. Nowhere can
+we find any clear statement of the actual routes by which these
+pilgrims were supposed to have made their long and toilsome journeys.
+Just the bare facts are recorded, and we are left to guess the means
+by which they were accomplished. But it is clear that the old-world
+overland connection between India and the Black Sea is a very old
+connection indeed, and further, it is clear that what the Greeks may
+not have known the Persians certainly did know. When Herodotus first
+set solidly to work on a geographical treatise which was to embrace
+the existing knowledge of the whole world, he undoubtedly derived a
+great deal of that knowledge from official Persian sources; and it may
+be added that the early Persian department for geographical
+intelligence has been proved by this last century's scientific
+investigations to have collected information of which the accuracy is
+certainly astonishing. It is only quite recently, during the process
+of surveys carried on by the Government of India through the highlands
+and coast regions of Baluchistan and Eastern Persia, that anything
+like a modern gazetteer of the tribes occupying those districts has
+been rendered possible. Twenty-five years ago our military information
+concerning ethnographic distributions in districts lying immediately
+beyond the north-western frontier was no better than that which is
+contained in the lists of the Persian satrapies, given to the world by
+Herodotus nearly 500 years before the Christian era. Twenty-five years
+ago we did not know of the existence of some of the tribes and peoples
+mentioned by him, and we were unable to identify others. Now, however,
+we are at last aware that through twenty-four centuries most of them
+have clung to their old habitat in a part of the Eastern world where
+material wealth and climatic attractions have never been sufficient to
+lead to annihilation by conquest. Oppressed and harried by successive
+Persian dynasties, overrun by the floatsam and jetsam of hosts of
+migratory Asiatic peoples from the North, those tribes have mostly
+survived to bear a much more valuable testimony to the knowledge of
+the East entertained by the West in the days of Herodotus than any
+which can be gathered from written documents.
+
+The Milesian colonies founded on the southern and western shores of
+the Euxine in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C., whilst retaining
+their trade connection with the parent city of Miletus (where sprang
+that carpet-making industry for which this corner of Asia has been
+famous ever since), found no open road to the further eastern trade
+through the mountain regions that lie south of the Black Sea. Half a
+century after Herodotus we find Xenophon struggling in almost helpless
+entanglement amongst these wild mountains comparatively close to the
+Greek colonies; and it was there that he encountered the fiercest
+opposition from the native tribes-people that he met with during his
+famous retreat from Persia. It is always so. Our most active opponents
+on the Indian frontier are the mountaineers of the immediate
+borderland--the people who _know_ us best, and therefore fear us most.
+It was chiefly through Miletus and the Cilician gates that Greek
+trade with Persia and Babylon was maintained. There were no Greek
+colonies on the rugged eastern coasts of the Black Sea--sufficient
+indication that no open trade route existed direct to the Caspian by
+any line analogous to that of the modern railway that connects Batum
+with Baku. On the north of the Euxine, however, there were great and
+flourishing colonies (of which Olbia at the mouth of the Borysthenes,
+or Dnieper, was the most famous) which undoubtedly traded with the
+Skythic peoples north and west of the Caspian. From these sources came
+the legends of Hyperboreans and Griffins and other similar tales, all
+flavoured with the glamour of northern mystery, but none of them
+pointing to an eastern origin. Recent investigations into the
+ethnography of certain tribes in Afghanistan, however, seem to prove
+conclusively that even if there was no recognised trade between Greece
+and India before Miletus was destroyed by Darius Hystaspes, and Greek
+settlers were transported by the Persian conqueror to the borders of
+the modern Badakshan, yet there must have been Greek pioneers in
+colonial enterprise who had made their way to the Far East and stayed
+there. For instance, we have that strange record of settlements under
+Dionysos amongst the spurs and foothills of the Hindu Kush, which were
+clearly of Greek origin, although Arrian in his history of Alexander's
+progress through Asia is unable to explain the meaning of them.
+
+There is more to be said about these settlements later. The first
+actual record of settlement of Greeks in Baktria is that of Herodotus,
+to which we have referred as being affected by Darius Hystaspes in the
+sixth century before Christ, and the descendants of these settlers are
+undoubtedly the people referred to by Arrian as "Kyreneans", who could
+be no other than the Greek captives from the Lybian Barke. Their
+existence two centuries later than Herodotus is attested by Arrian,
+and they were apparently in possession of the Kaoshan pass over the
+Hindu Kush at the time of Alexander's expedition. Another body of
+Greeks is recorded by Arrian to have been settled in the Baktrian
+country by Xerxes after his flight from Greece. These were the
+Brankhidai of Milesia, whose posterity are said to have been
+exterminated by Alexander in punishment for the crimes of their
+grandfather Didymus. The name Barang, or Farang, is frequently
+repeated in the mountain districts of Northern Afghanistan and
+Badakshan, and careful inquiry would no doubt reveal the fact that
+surviving Greek affinities are still far more widely spread through
+that part of Asia than is generally known. All these settlements were
+antecedent to Alexander, but beyond these recorded instances of Greek
+occupation there can be little doubt that (as pointed out by Bellew in
+his _Ethnography of Afghanistan_ and supported by later observations)
+the Greek element had been diffused through the wide extent of the
+Persian sovereignty for centuries before the birth of Alexander the
+Great. It is probable that each of the four great divisions of the
+ancient Greeks had contributed for a thousand years before to the
+establishment of colonies in Asia Minor, and from these colonies bands
+of emigrants had penetrated to the far east of the Persian dominions,
+either as free men or captives. Amongst the clans and tribal sections
+of Afghans and Pathans are to be found to this day names that are
+clearly indicative of this pre-historic Greek connection.
+
+Persia at her greatest maintained a considerable overland trade with
+India, and Indian tribute formed a large part of her revenues. All
+Afghanistan was Persian; all Baluchistan, and the Indian frontier to
+the Indus. The underlying Persian element is strong in all these
+regions still, the dominant language of the country, the speech of the
+people, whether Baluch or Pathan, is of Persian stock, whilst the
+polite tongue of Court officials, if not the Persian of Tehran or
+Shiraz, is at least an imitation of it. It is hardly strange that the
+Greek language should have absolutely disappeared. We have the
+statement of Seneca (referred to by Bellew in his _Inquiry_) that the
+Greek language was spoken in the Indus valley as late as the middle of
+the first century after Christ; "if indeed it did not continue to be
+the colloquial in some parts of the valley to a considerably later
+period." As this is nearly two centuries after the overthrow of Greek
+dominion in Afghanistan, it at least indicates that the Greek
+settlements established four centuries earlier must have continued to
+exist, and to be reinforced by Greek women (for children speak their
+mother's tongue) to a comparatively late period; and that the triumph
+of the Jat over the Greek did not by any means efface the influence of
+the Greek in India for centuries after it occurred. It is probable
+that when the importation of Greek women (who were often employed in
+the households of Indian chiefs and nobles at a time when Greek ladies
+married Indian Princes) ceased, then the Greek language ceased to
+exist also. The retinue and followers of Alexander's expedition took
+the women of the country to wife, and it is not, as is so often
+supposed, to the results of that expedition so much as to the long
+existence of Greek colonies and settlements that we must attribute the
+undoubted influence of Greek art on the early art of India.
+
+Thus we have a wide field before us for inquiry into the early history
+of ethnographical movement in Asia, as it affected the relation
+between Europe and Afghanistan. Afghanistan (which is a modern
+political development) has ever held the landward gates of India. We
+cannot understand India without a study of that wide hinterland
+(Afghan, Persian, and Baluch) through which the great restless human
+tide has ever been on the move: now a weeping nation of captives led
+by tear-sodden routes to a land of exile; now a band of merchants
+reaching forward to the land of golden promise; or perchance an army
+of pilgrims marching with their feet treading deep into narrow
+footways to the shrines of forgotten saints; or perchance an armed
+host seeking an uncertain fate; a ceaseless, waveless tide, as
+persistent, as enterprising, and infinitely more complicated in its
+developments than the process of modern emigration, albeit modern
+emigration may spread more widely.
+
+Living as we do in fixed habitations and hedged in not merely by
+narrow seas but by the conventionalities of civilized existence, we
+fail to realize the conditions of nomadic life which were so familiar
+to our Asiatic ancestors. Something of its nature may be gathered
+to-day from the Kalmuk and Kirghiz nomads of Central Asia. A day's
+march is not a day's march to them--it is a day's normal occupation.
+The yearly shift in search of fresh pasture is not a flitting on a
+holiday tour; it is as much a part of the year's life as the change of
+raiment between summer to winter. Everything moves; the home is not
+left behind; every man, woman, and child of the family has a
+recognised share in the general shift. Perhaps that of the Kirghiz man
+is the easiest. He smokes a lazy pipe in the bright sunshine and
+watches his boys strip off the felt covering of his wicker-built
+"kibitka," whilst his wife with floating bands of her white headdress
+fluttering in the breeze, and her quilted coat turned up to give more
+freedom to her booted legs, gets together the household traps in
+compact bundles for the great hairy camel to carry. Her efforts are
+not inartistic; long experience has taught her exactly where every
+household god can be stowed to the best advantage. Meanwhile the
+happy, good-looking Kirghiz girls are racing over the grass country
+after sheep, and ere long the little party is making its slow but sure
+way over the breezy steppes to the passes of the blue mountains, which
+look down from afar on to the warmer plains. And who has the best of
+it? The free-roving, untrammelled child of the plain, quite godless,
+and taking no thought for the morrow, or the carefully cultured and
+tight-fitted product of civilization to whom the motor and the railway
+represent the only thinkable method of progression? That, however, is
+not the point. What we wish to emphasize is the apparent inability on
+the part of many writers on the subject of ancient history and
+geography to realize the essential difference between then and now as
+regards human migratory movement.
+
+There is often an apparent misconception that there is more movement
+in these days of railways and steamers and motors than existed ten
+centuries before Christ. The difference lies not in the comparative
+amount of movement but in the method of it. In one sense only is there
+more movement--there are more people to travel; but in a broader sense
+there is much less movement. Whole nations are no longer shifted at
+the will of the conqueror across a continent, trade seekers no longer
+devote their lives to the personal conduct of caravans; armies swelled
+to prodigious size by a tagrag following no longer (except in China)
+move slowly over the face of the land, devouring, like a swarm of
+locusts, all that comes in their way. Colonial emigration perhaps
+alone works on a larger scale now than in those early times; but
+taking it "bye and large," the circulation of the human race,
+unrestricted by political boundaries, was certainly more constant in
+the unsettled days of nomadic existence than in these later days of
+overgrown cities and electric traffic. If little or nothing is
+recorded of many of the most important migrations which have changed
+the ethnographic conditions of Asia, whilst at the same time we have
+volumes of ancient philosophy and mythology, it is because such
+changes were regarded as normal, and the current of contemporary
+history as an ephemeral phenomenon not worth the labour of close
+inquiry or a manuscript record.
+
+Such a gazetteer as that presented to us by Herodotus would not have
+been possible had there not been free and frequent access to the
+countries and the people with whom it deals. It is impossible to
+conceive that so much accuracy of detail could have been acquired
+without the assistance of personal inquiry on the spot. If this is so,
+then the Persians at any rate knew their way well about Asia as far
+east as Tibet and India, and the Greeks undoubtedly derived their
+knowledge from Persia. When Alexander of Macedon first planned his
+expedition to Central Asia he had probably more certain knowledge of
+the way thither than Lord Napier of Magdala possessed when he set out
+to find the capital of Theodore's kingdom in Abyssinia, and it is most
+interesting to note the information which was possessed by the Greek
+authorities a century and a half before Alexander's time.
+
+One notable occurrence pointing to a fairly comprehensive knowledge of
+geography of the Indian border by the Persians, was the voyage of the
+Greek Scylax of Caryanda down the Indus, and from its mouth to the
+Arabian Gulf, which was regarded by Herodotus as establishing the fact
+of a continuous sea. This voyage, or mission, which was undertaken by
+order of Darius who wished to know where the Indus had its outlet and
+"sent some ships" on a voyage of discovery, is most instructive. It is
+true that the accounts of it are most meagre, but such details as are
+given establish beyond a doubt that the expedition was practical and
+real. The Persian dominions then extended to the Indus, but there is
+no evidence that they ever extended beyond that river into the
+peninsula of India. The Indus of the Persian age was not the Indus of
+to-day, and its outlet to the sea presumably did not differ materially
+from that of the subsequent days of Alexander and Nearkos. Thanks to
+the careful investigations of the Bombay Survey Department, and the
+close attention which has been given to ancient landmarks by General
+Haig during the progress of his surveys, we know pretty certainly
+where the course of the Lower Indus must have been, and where both
+Scylax and Nearkos emerged into the Arabian Sea. The Indus delta of
+to-day covers an area of 10,000 square miles with 125 miles of
+coast-line, and it presents to us a huge alluvial tract which is
+everywhere furrowed by ancient river channels. Some of these are
+continuous through the delta, and can be traced far above it; others
+are traceable for only short distances. Without entering into details
+of the rate of progression in the formation of Delta (which can be
+gathered not only from the abandoned sites of towns once known as
+coast ports, but from actual observation from year to year), it may be
+safely assumed that the Indus of Alexander and Scylax emptied itself
+into the Ran of Kach, far to the south of its present debouchment. The
+volume of its waters was then augmented by at least one important
+river (the Saraswati), which, flowing from the Himalayas through what
+is now known as the Rajputana desert, was the source of widespread
+wealth and fertility to thousands of square miles where now there is
+nothing to be met with but sandy waste. As far as the Indus the
+Persian Empire is known to have extended, but no farther; and it was
+important to the military advisers of Darius that something should be
+known of the character of this boundary river.
+
+Wherever the ships sent by Darius may have gone it is quite clear that
+they did not sail _up_ the Indus, or there would have been no
+objective for an expedition which was organised to determine where the
+Indus met the sea by the process of sailing down that river. Moreover,
+the voyage up the Indus would have been tedious and slow, and could
+only have been undertaken in the cold weather with the assistance of
+native pilots acquainted with the ever-shifting bed of the river,
+which, so far as its liability to change of channel is concerned, must
+have been much the same in the days of Darius as it is at present. The
+possibility, therefore, is that Scylax made his way to the Upper Indus
+overland, for we are told that the expedition _started_ from the city
+of Carpatyra in the Pactyan country. This in itself is exceedingly
+instructive, indicating that the Pactyans, or Pathans, or Pukhtu
+speaking peoples have occupied the districts of the Upper Indus for
+four-and-twenty centuries at least; and coincident with them we learn
+that the Aprytae or Afridi shared the honour of being resident
+landowners. Nor need we suppose that the beginning of this history was
+the beginning of their existence. The Afridi may have rejoiced in his
+native hills ten or twenty centuries before he was written about by
+Herodotus. We need not stay to identify the site of Carpatyra. The
+Upper Indus valley is full of ancient sites. A century and a half
+later Taxilla was the recognized capital of the Upper Punjab, and
+Carpatyra meanwhile may have disappeared. Anyhow we hear of Carpatyra
+no more, nor has the ingenuity of modern research thrown any certain
+light on its position. It is, however, probably near Attok that we
+must look for it. Scylax made his way down the Indus in native craft
+that from long before his day to the present have retained their
+primitive form, a form which was not unlike that of the coast crawling
+"ships" of Darius. He proved the existence of an open water-way from
+the Upper Punjab to the Persian Gulf, and incidentally his expedition
+shows us that the chief lines of communication through the width of
+the Persian Empire were well known, and that the road from Susa to the
+Upper Indus was open. The outlying satrapies of the Persian Empire
+could never have been added one by one to that mighty power without
+definite knowledge of the way to reach them. It was not merely a
+spasmodic expedition, such as that of Scylax, which pointed the way to
+the conquests of the Far East; it was the gathered information of
+years of experience, and it was on the basis of this experience
+(unwritten and unrecorded so far as we know) that Alexander founded
+his plans of campaign.
+
+The detailed list of peoples included in the satrapies of the Persian
+Empire, whilst it is more ethnographical than geographical in its
+character, is sufficient proof in itself of the existence of constant
+movement between Persia and the borderland of Afghanistan, which
+assuredly included commercial traffic. This enumeration has been
+compared with a catalogue of tribal contingents which swelled the
+great army of Xerxes, an independent statement, and therefore a
+valuable test to the general accuracy of Herodotus; and it is still
+further confirmed by the list of nations subject to the Persian king
+found in the inscriptions of Darius at Behistan and Persepolis. We are
+not immediately concerned with the satrapies included in Western Asia
+and Egypt, but when Herodotus makes a sudden departure from his rule
+of geographical sequence and introduces a satrapy on the remotest east
+of the Persian Empire, we immediately recognize that he touches the
+Indian frontier.
+
+The second satrapy most probably corresponds with that part of Central
+Afghanistan south of the Kabul River, which lies west of the Suliman
+Hills and north of the Kwaja Amran or Khojak. Every name mentioned by
+Herodotus certainly has its counterpart in one or other of the tribes
+to be found there to this day, excepting the Lydoi (whose history as
+Ludi is fairly well known) and the Lasonoi, who have emigrated, the
+former into India and the latter to Baluchistan.
+
+The seventh satrapy, again, comprised the Sattagydai, the Gandarioi,
+the Dadikai, and the Aparytai ("joined together"), an association of
+names too remarkable to be mistaken. The Sattag or Khattak, the
+Gandhari, the Dadi, and the Afridi are all trans-Indus people, and
+without insisting too strongly on the exact habitat of each,
+originally there can be little doubt that the seventh satrapy included
+a great part of the Indus valley.
+
+The eleventh satrapy is also probably a district of the Indian
+trans-frontier, although Bunbury associates the name Kaspioi with the
+Caspian Sea. It is far more likely that the Kaspioi of Herodotus are
+to be recognized as the people of the ancient Kaspira or Kasmira, and
+the Daritae as the Daraddesa (Dards) of the contiguous mountains. All
+Kashmir, even to the borders of Tibet (whence came the story of the
+gold-digging ants), was well enough known to the Persians and through
+them to Herodotus.
+
+The twelfth satrapy comprised Balkh and Badakshan--what is now known
+as Afghan Turkistan. It was here that, generations before Alexander's
+campaign, those Greek settlements were founded by Darius and Xerxes
+which have left to this day living traces of their existence in the
+places originally allotted to them. In Afghan Turkistan also was
+founded the centre of Greek dominion in this part of Asia after the
+conquest of Persia, and it is impossible to avoid the conviction that
+there was a connection between these two events. The Greeks took the
+country from the Bakhi; but there are no people of this name left in
+these provinces now. They may (as Bellew suggests) be recognized
+again in the Bakhtyari of Southern Persia, but it seems unlikely; and
+it is far more probable that they were obliterated by Alexander as his
+most active opponents after he passed Aria (Herat) and Drangia
+(Seistan).
+
+The sixteenth satrapy was north of the Oxus, and included Sogdia and
+Aria (Herat). South of Aria was the fourteenth satrapy, represented by
+Seistan and Western Makran, with "the islands of the sea in which the
+King settles transported convicts"; and east of this again was the
+seventeenth satrapy covering Southern Baluchistan and Eastern Makran.
+It is only during the last twenty-five years that an accurate
+geographical knowledge of these uninviting regions has been attained.
+The gradual extension of the red line of the Indian border, with the
+necessity for preserving peace and security, has gradually enveloped
+Makran and Persian Baluchistan, the Gadrosia and Karmania of the
+Greeks, and has brought to light many strange secrets which have been
+dormant (for they were no secrets to the traveller of the Middle Ages)
+for a few centuries prior to the arrival of the British flag in
+Western India. It is an inhospitable country which is thus included.
+"Mostly desert," as one ancient writer says; marvellously furrowed and
+partitioned by bands of sun-scorched rocky hills, all narrow and sharp
+where they follow each other in parallel waves facing the Arabian Sea,
+or massed into enormous square-faced blocks of impassable mountain
+barrier whenever the uniform regularity of structure is lost. And yet
+it is a country full not only of interest historical and
+ethnographical, such as might be expected of the environment of a
+series of narrow passages leading to the western gates of India, but
+of incident also. There are amongst these strange knife-backed
+volcanic ridges and scarped clay hills valleys of great beauty, where
+the date-palms mass their feathery heads into a forest of green, and
+below them the fertile soil is moist and lush with cultured
+vegetation. But we have described elsewhere this strangely mixed land,
+and we have now only to deal with the aspect of it as known to the
+Greeks before the days of Alexander. That knowledge was ethnographical
+in its quality and exceedingly slight in quantity. Herodotus mentions
+the Sagartoi, Zarangai, Thamanai, Uxoi, and Mykoi. These are Seistan
+tribes. The Sagartoi were nomads of Seistan, mentioned both amongst
+tribes paying tribute and those who were exempt. The Zarangai were the
+inhabitants of Drangia (Seistan), where their ancient capital fills
+one of the most remarkable of all historic sites. The Zarangai are
+said to be recognizable in the Afghan Durani. No Afghan Durani would
+admit this. He claims a very different origin (as will be explained),
+and in the absence of authoritative history it is never wise to set
+aside the traditions of a people about themselves, especially of a
+people so advanced as the Duranis. More probable is it that the
+ancient geographical appellation Zarangai covers the historic Kaiani
+of Seistan supposed to be the same as the Kakaya of Sanscrit.
+
+The Uxoi may be the modern Hots of Makran--a people who are
+traditionally reckoned amongst the most ancient of the mixed
+population which has drifted into the Makran ethnographic cul-de-sac,
+and who were certainly there in Alexander's time. In eastern Makran,
+Herodotus mentions only the Parikanoi and the Asiatic Ethiopian.
+Parikan is the Persian plural form of the Sanscrit Parva-ka, which
+means "mountaineer." This bears exactly the same meaning as the word
+Kohistani, or Barohi, and is not a tribal appellation at all, although
+the latter may possibly have developed into the Brahui, the well-known
+name of a very important Dravidian people of Southern Baluchistan
+(highlanders all of them) who are akin to the Dravidian races of
+Southern India. The Asiatic Ethiopian presents a more difficult
+problem. During the winter of 1905 careful inquiries were made in
+Makran for any evidence to support the suggestion that a tribe of
+Kushite origin still existed in that country. It is of interest in
+connection with the question whether the earliest immigrants into
+Mesopotamia (these people who, according to Accadian tradition,
+brought with them from the South the science of civilization) were a
+Semitic race or Kushites. It is impossible to ignore the existence of
+Kushite races in the east as well as the south. We have not only the
+authority of the earliest Greek writings, but Biblical records also
+are in support of the fact, and modern interest only centres in the
+question what has become of them. Bellew suggests that it was after
+the various Kush or Kach, or Kaj tribes that certain districts in
+Baluchistan are called Kach Gandava or Kach (Kaj) Makran, and that the
+chief of these tribes were the Gadara, after whom the country was
+called Gadrosia. This seems mere conjecture. At any rate the term
+Kach, sometimes Kachchi, sometimes Katz, is invariably applied to a
+flat open space, even if it is only the flat terrace above a river
+intervening between the river and a hill, and is purely geographical
+in its significance. But it was a matter of interest to discover
+whether the Gadurs of Las Bela could be the Gadrosii, or whether they
+exhibited any Ethiopian traits. The Gadurs, however, proved to be a
+section of the Rajput clan of Lumris, a proud race holding themselves
+aloof from other clans and never intermarrying with them. There could
+be no mistake about the Rajput origin of the red-skinned Gadur. He was
+a Kshatrya of the lunar race, but he might very possibly represent the
+ancient Gadrosii, even though he is no descendant of Kush. The other
+Rajput tribes with whom the Gadurs coalesce have apparently held their
+own in Las from a period quite remote, and must have been there when
+Alexander passed that way.
+
+Asiatic negroes abound in Makran: some of them fresh importations from
+Africa, others bred in the slave villages of the Arabian Sea coast, as
+they have been for centuries. They are a fine, brawny, well-developed
+race of people, and some of the best of them are to be found as
+stokers in the P. & O. service; but they do not represent the Asiatic
+Ethiopian of Herodotus, who could hardly compile a gazetteer for the
+Greeks which should include all the ethnographical information known
+to the Persians, any more than our Intelligence Department could
+compile a complete gazetteer of the whole Russian Empire. To the
+maritime Greek nation the overwhelming preponderance of the huge
+Empire which overshadowed them must have created the same feeling of
+anxious suspicion that the unwieldy size of Russia presents to us, and
+it is not very likely that military intelligence of a really practical
+nature was offered gratis to the Greeks by the Persian geographers and
+military leaders. It is not surprising, therefore, that Herodotus did
+not know all that existed on the far Persian frontier. There are
+tribes and peoples about Southern Baluchistan who are as ancient as
+Herodotus but who are not mentioned. For instance, the ruling tribe in
+Makran until quite recently (when they were ousted by certain Sikh or
+Rajput interlopers called Gichki) were the Boledi, and their country
+was once certainly called Boledistan. The Boledi valley is one of the
+loveliest in a country which is apt to enhance the loveliness of its
+narrow bands of luxuriance by their rarety and their narrowness. It is
+a sweet oasis in the midst of a barren rocky sea, and must always have
+been an object of envy to dwellers outside, even in days when a fuller
+water-supply, more widely spread, turned many a valley green which is
+now deep drifted with sand. Ptolemy mentions the Boledis, so that they
+can well boast the traditional respectability of age-long ancestry.
+The Boledis are said to have dispossessed the Persian Kaiani Maliks,
+who ruled Makran in the seventeenth century, when they headed what is
+known as the Baluch Confederation. This may be veritable history, but
+their pride of race and origin, on whatever record it is based, has
+come to an end now; it has been left to the present generation to see
+the last of them. A few years ago there was living but one
+representative of the ruling family of the Boledis, an old lady named
+Miriam, who was exceedingly cunning in the art of embroidery, and made
+the most bewitching caps. She was, I believe, dependent on the bounty
+of the Sultan of Muscat, who possesses a small tract of territory on
+the Makran coast. Herodotus apparently knew nothing about the Boledis,
+nor can it be doubted that the Greek knowledge of Makran was
+exceedingly scanty. Thus, whilst Alexander marched to the Indian
+frontier, well supplied with information as to the ways thither when
+once he could make Persia his base, he was almost totally ignorant of
+the one route out of India which he eventually followed, and which so
+nearly enveloped his whole force in disaster.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ASSYRIA AND AFGHANISTAN--ANCIENT LAND ROUTES--POSSIBLE SEA ROUTES
+
+
+With the building up of the vast Persian Empire, and the gradual
+fostering of eastern colonies, and the consequent introduction of the
+manners and methods of Western Asia into the highlands of Samarkand
+and Badakshan, other nationalities were concerned besides Persians and
+Greeks. Captive peoples from Syria had been deported to Assyria seven
+centuries before Christ. The House of Israel had been broken up (for
+Samaria had fallen in 721 B.C. before the victorious hosts of Sargon),
+and some of the Israelitish families had been deported eastwards and
+northwards to Northern Mesopotamia and Armenia. With the vitality of
+their indestructible race it is at least possible that a remnant
+survived as serfs in Assyria, preserving their own customs and
+institutions--secretly if not openly--intermarrying, trading, and
+money-making, yet still looking for the final restoration of Israel
+until the final break-up of the Assyrian Kingdom. They were never
+absolutely absorbed, and never forgot to recount their historic
+pedigree to their children.
+
+With the final overthrow of the Assyrian Kingdom we lose sight of the
+tribes of Israel, who for more than a century had been mingled with
+the peoples of Northern Mesopotamia and Armenia. At least history
+holds no record of their further national existence. From time
+immemorial in Asia it had been customary for the captives taken in war
+to be transported bodily to another field for purposes of colonization
+and public labour. When the world was more scantily peopled such
+methods were natural and effectual; the increase of working power
+gained thereby being of the utmost importance in days when enormous
+irrigation canals were excavated, and bricks had to be fashioned for
+the construction of walled cities.
+
+The extent and magnificence of Assyrian building must have demanded an
+immense supply of such manual labour for the purpose of brickmaking.
+All the mighty works of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon were
+literally "the work of men's hands." In Mesopotamia was captured
+labour especially necessary. Stone was indeed available at Nineveh,
+but the barrenness of the soil which stretches flatly from the rugged
+hills of Kurdistan across Mesopotamia rendered the country
+unproductive unless enormous works of irrigation were undertaken for
+the distribution of water. Mesopotamia is a country of immense
+possibilities, but the wealth of it is only for those who can
+distribute the waters of its great rivers over the productive soil.
+The yearly inundations of the Euphrates and Tigris are but sufficient
+for the needs of a narrow strip of land on either side the rivers, and
+the crops of the country undeveloped by canals can only support a
+scattered and scanty population. Towards the south there is another
+difficulty. The flat soil becomes water-logged and marshy and runs to
+waste for want of drainage. There is no stone for building purposes
+near Babylon. Approaching Babylon over the windy wastes of
+scrub-powdered plain there is nothing to be seen in the shape of a
+hill. Long, low, flat-topped mounds stretch athwart the horizon and
+resolve themselves on nearer approach into deeply scarred and
+weather-worn accretions of debris, or else they are banks of ancient
+waterways winding through the steppe, the last remnants of a
+stupendous system of irrigation. Then there breaks into view the
+solitary erection which stands in the open plain overlooking a wide
+vista of marsh and swamp to the west, which represents the ruins
+called Birs Nimrud, the Ziggurat or temple which, in successive tiers
+devoted to the powers of heaven, supported the shrine of Mercury. It
+is by far the most conspicuous object in the Babylonian landscape;
+huge, dilapidated, and unshapely, it mounts guard over a silent,
+stagnant, swampy plain.
+
+Now the remarkable feature in all these gigantic remains of antiquity
+is that they are built of brick. In the wide expanse of Mesopotamia
+plain around there is not a stone quarry to be found. Of Nineveh, we
+learn from the masterly records of Xenophon that as he was leading the
+surviving 10,000 Greeks in their retreat from the disastrous field of
+Babylon back to the sunny Hellespont, some 200 years after the
+destruction of Nineveh, he came upon a vast desert city on the Tigris.
+The wall of it was 25 feet wide, 100 feet high, with a 20-foot
+basement of stone. This was all that was left of Kalah, one of the
+Assyrian capitals. A day's march farther north he came on another
+deserted city with similar walls. These were the dry bones of Nineveh,
+already forgotten and forsaken. Two centuries had in these early ages
+been sufficient to blot out the memory of Assyrian greatness so
+completely that Xenophon knew not of it, nor recognized the place
+where his foot was treading. Barely seventy years ago was the memory
+of them restored to man, and tokens of the richness and magnificence
+of the art which embellished them first given to the world. The mounds
+representing Nineveh and Babylon are some of them of enormous size.
+The mound of Mugheir (the ancient Ur) is the ancient platform of an
+Assyrian palace, which is faced with a wall 10 feet thick of red
+kiln-dried bricks cemented with bitumen. Some of these platforms were
+raised from 50 to 60 feet above the plain and protected by massive
+stone masonry carried to a height exceeding that of the platform. But
+the Babylonian mound of Birs Nimrud, which rises from the plain level
+to the blue glazed masonry of the upper tier of the Ziggurat, is
+altogether a brick construction. The debris of the many-coloured
+bricks now forms a smooth slope for many feet from its base; but
+above, where the square blocks of brickwork still hold together in
+scattered disarray, you may still dig out a foot-square brick with the
+title and designations of Nebuchadnezzar imprinted on its face. These
+artificial mounds could only have been built at an enormous cost of
+labour. The great mound of Koyunjik (the palace of Nineveh) covers an
+area of 100 acres and reaches up 95 feet at its highest point. It has
+been calculated that to heap up such a pile would "require the united
+efforts of 10,000 men for twelve years, or 20,000 men for six years"
+(Rawlinson, _Five Monarchies_), and then only the base of the palace
+is reached; and there are many such mounds, for "it seems to have been
+a point of honour with the Assyrian Kings that each should build a new
+palace for himself" (Ragozin, _Chaldaea_).
+
+Only conquering monarchs with whole nations as prisoners could have
+compassed such results. This, indeed, was one of the great objectives
+of war in these early times. It was the amassing of a great population
+for manual labour and the creation of new centres of civilization and
+trade. Thus it was that the peoples of Western Asia--Egyptians,
+Israelites, Jews, Ph[oe]nicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and even
+Greeks--were transported over vast distances by land, and a movement
+given to the human race in that part of the world which has infinitely
+complicated the science of ethnology. The peopling of Canada by the
+French, of North America by the English, of Brazil by the Portuguese,
+of Argentina and Chile by Spaniards and Italians, is perhaps a more
+comprehensive process in the distribution of humanity and more
+permanent in its character. But ancient compulsory movement, if not as
+extensive as modern voluntary emigration, was at least wholesale, and
+it led to the distribution of people in districts which would not
+naturally have invited them. The first process in the consolidation of
+a district, or satrapy, was the settlement of inhabitants, sometimes
+in supercession of a displaced or annihilated people, sometimes as an
+ethnic variety to the possessors of the soil. Tiglath Pileser was the
+first Assyrian monarch to consolidate the Empire by its division into
+satrapies. Henceforward the outlying provinces of the dominions were
+convenient dumping places for such bodies of captives as were not
+required for public works at home.
+
+Nothing would be more natural than that Sargon should deport a portion
+of the Israelitish nation to colonize his eastern possessions towards
+India, just as Darius Hystaspes later employed the same process to
+the same ends when he deported Greeks from the Lybian Barke to
+Baktria. There is nothing more astonishing in the fact that we should
+find a powerful people claiming descent from Israel in Northern
+Afghanistan than that we should find another people claiming a Greek
+origin in the Hindu Kush.
+
+Nor was the importance of peopling waste lands and raising up new
+nations out of well-planted colonies overlooked ten centuries before
+Christ any more than it is now. Then it was a matter of transporting
+them overland and on foot to the farthest eastern limits of these
+great Asiatic empires. Always east or south they tramped, for nothing
+was known of the geography of the North and West. Eastwards lay the
+land of the sun, whence came the Indians who fought in the armies of
+Darius, and where gold and ivory, apes and peacocks were found to fill
+Ph[oe]nician ships. To-day it is different. The peopling of the world
+with whites is chiefly a Western process. Emigrants go out in ships,
+not as captives, but almost equally in compact bodies--the best of our
+working men to Canada, and many of the best of our much-wanted
+domestic servants to South Africa. It is a perpetual process in the
+world's economy, and perhaps the chief factor in the world's history;
+but in the old, old centuries before the Christian era it was
+necessarily a land process, and the geographical distribution of the
+land features determined the direction of the human tide. Some twenty
+years before the fall of Samaria and the deportation of the ten tribes
+of Israel, Tiglath Pileser had effected conquests in Asia which
+carried him so far east that he probably touched the Indus. Why he
+went no farther, or why Alexander subsequently left the greater part
+of the Indian peninsula unexplored, is fully explicable on natural
+grounds, even if other explanations were wanting.
+
+The Indus valley would offer to the military explorers from the West
+the first taste of the quality of the climate of the India of the
+plains which they would encounter. The Indus valley in the hot weather
+would possess little climatic attraction for the Western highlander.
+Alexander's troops mutinied when they got far beyond the Indus. Any
+other troops would mutiny under such conditions as governed their
+outfit and their march. It is more than possible that the great
+Assyrian conqueror before him encountered much the same difficulty. It
+is clear, however, historically, that the Assyrian knew and trod the
+way to Northern Afghanistan (or Baktria), and if we examine the map of
+Asia with any care we shall see that there is no formidable barrier to
+the passing of large bodies of people from Nineveh to Herat (Aria), or
+from Herat to the Indus valley, until we reach the very gates of India
+on the north-west frontier. Four centuries later than Tiglath Pileser
+the battle of Arbela was fought to a finish between Alexander and
+Darius (who possessed both Greek and Indian troops in his army) on a
+field which is not so very far to the east of Nineveh, and which is
+probably represented more or less accurately by the modern Persian
+town of Erbil. The modern town may not be on the exact site of the
+action, and we know that the ancient town was some sixty miles away
+from the battlefield. However that may be, we learn that in the
+general retreat of the Persians which followed the battle, Darius made
+his way to Ecbatana, the ancient capital of the Medes. There he
+remained for about a year, but hearing of Alexander's advance from
+Persepolis in the spring of 330 B.C. he fled to the north-east, with a
+view to taking refuge with his kinsman Bessos, who was then satrap of
+Baktria. This gives us the clue to the general line of communication
+between Northern Mesopotamia and Baktria (or Afghanistan) in ancient
+days; and the twenty-five centuries which have rolled by since that
+early period have done little to modify that line.
+
+Until the beginning of the nineteenth century A.D. from the earliest
+times with which we can come into contact through any human record,
+this high-road (not the only one, but the chief one) must have been
+trodden by the feet of thousands of weary pilgrims, captives,
+emigrants, merchants, or fighting men--an intermittent tide of
+humanity exceeding in volume any host known to modern days--bringing
+East into touch with the West to an extent which we can hardly
+appreciate. It may be said that the straightest road to Baktria did
+not lie through Ecbatana. It did not; but independently of the fact
+that Ecbatana was a city of great defensive capacity, and of reasons
+both political and military which would have impelled Darius to take
+that route, we shall find if we examine the latest Survey of India map
+of Western Persia that the geographical distribution of hill and
+valley make it the easiest, if not the shortest, route. The
+configuration of Western Persia, like that of Makran and Southern
+Baluchistan extending to our own north-west frontier, mainly consists
+of long lines of narrow ridges curving in lines parallel to the coast,
+rocky and mostly impassable to travellers crossing their difficult
+ridge and furrow formation transversely, but presenting curiously easy
+and open roads along the narrow lateral valleys. Ecbatana once stood
+where the modern Hamadan now stands. The road from Arbil (or Erbil)
+that carries most traffic follows this trough formation to Kermanshah
+and then bends north-eastward to Hamadan. From Hamadan to Rhagai and
+the Caspian gates, which was the route followed by Darius in his
+flight from Ecbatana, the road was clearly coincident with the present
+telegraph line to Tehran from Hamadan, which strikes into the great
+post route eastward to Mashad and Herat, one of the straightest and
+most uniformly level roads in all Asia. It must always have been so.
+Remarkable physical changes have occurred in Asia during these
+twenty-five centuries, but nothing to alter the relative disposition
+of mountain and plain in this part of Persia, or to change the general
+character of its ancient highway. All this part of Persia was under
+the dominion of the Assyrian king when the tribes of Israel left Syria
+for Armenia. He had but recently traversed the road to India, and he
+knew the richness of Baktria (of Afghan Turkistan and Badakshan) and
+could estimate what a colony might become in these eastern fields.
+
+What more natural than that he should draft some of his captives
+eastward to the land of promise? There is not an important tribe of
+people in all that hinterland of India that has not been drafted in
+from somewhere. There is not a people left in India, for that matter,
+that can safely call themselves indigenous. From Persia and Media,
+from Aria and Skythia, from Greece and Arabia, from Syria and
+Mesopotamia they have come, and their coming can generally be traced
+historically, and their traditions of origin proved to be true. But
+there is one important people (of whom there is much more to be said)
+who call themselves Ben-i-Israel, who claim a descent from Kish, who
+have adopted a strange mixture of Mosaic law and Hindu ordinance in
+their moral code, who (some sections at least) keep a feast which
+strangely accords with the Passover, who hate the Yahudi (Jew) with a
+traditional hatred, and for whom no one has yet been able to suggest
+any other origin than the one they claim, and claim with determined
+force; and these people rule Afghanistan. It may be that they have
+justification for their traditions, even as others have; they may yet
+be proved to stand in the same relationship to the scattered remnants
+of Israel as some of the Kafir inhabitants of Northern Afghanistan can
+be shown to hold to the Greeks of pre-Alexandrian days. It is
+difficult to account for the name Afghan: it has been said that it is
+but the Armenian word Aghvan (Mountaineer). If this is so, it at once
+indicates a connection between the modern Afghan and the Syrian
+captives of Armenia.
+
+But whilst "men in nations" were thus traversing the highlands of
+Persia from Mesopotamia to Northern Afghanistan by highways so ancient
+that they may be regarded almost as geographical fixtures as
+everlasting as the hills, we do not find much evidence of traffic with
+the Central Asian States north of the Oxus.
+
+Early military excursions into the land of the Skyths were more for
+the purpose of dealing with the predatory habits of these warlike
+tribes, who afterwards peopled half of Europe as well as India, than
+of promoting either trade or geographical inquiry; and it was the
+route which led to Northern Afghanistan and Baktria through Northern
+Persia which was most attractive from its general accessibility and
+promise of profit. It was this way that Northern Kashmir and the
+gold-fields of Tibet were touched. The Indian gold which formed so
+large a part of the Persian revenues in the time of Darius undoubtedly
+came from Northern India and Tibet. Old as are the workings of the
+Wynaad gold-fields in the west, and Kolar in the east, of the
+peninsula, it is unlikely that either of these sources was known to
+Persia.
+
+The more direct routes to India from Ecbatana, passing through Central
+Persia _via_ Kashan, Yezd, and Kirman, terminated on the Helmund or in
+Makran, and there is no evidence that the mountain system which faces
+the Indus was ever crossed by invading Persian hosts. There was,
+indeed, a tradition in Alexander's time that an attempt had been made
+to traverse Makran and that it had failed. This, says Arrian, was one
+of the reasons why Alexander obstinately chose that route on his
+retirement from India. In spite, however, of the geographical
+difficulties which render it improbable that the hosts of Tiglath
+Pileser (who could have dealt with the Skythians of the north readily
+enough) ever broke across the north-western gateways of India's
+mountain borderland, there was undoubtedly a close connection between
+Assyria and India of which the evidence is still with us.
+
+Throughout the golden age of the Second Empire of Assyria, after the
+subjugation of Babylon and the consolidation of the Empire by Tiglath
+Pileser, during the reigns of Sargon and Senacherib (who fought the
+first Assyrian naval fight), Esar Haddon (who destroyed Sidon and
+removed the inhabitants) and Assur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), to the
+final overthrow of Assyria by Babylon in 625 B.C., when the star of
+Nebuchadnezzar arose on the southern horizon, Assyria held the supreme
+command of Eastern commerce, and Nineveh dictated the cannons of art
+to the world. No event more profoundly affected the commerce of Asia
+than the destruction of Sidon and the bodily transfer of its
+commercial inhabitants to Assyria. This was the age of Assyrian art,
+of literature, and of architecture; Assyrian culture realized its
+culminating point in the reign of Assur-bani-pal, when the library at
+Nineveh far surpassed any library that the world had ever seen. It was
+then that intercourse between Assyria and India became unbroken and
+intimate. Then public works of the largest dimensions were undertaken,
+and colonies formed for the purpose of developing the riches of the
+newly acquired lands in the East. Assyrian art found its way to India,
+and the affinity between Assyrian and Indian art is directly traceable
+still in spite of the impress subsequently effected by Greece and
+Rome.
+
+The carpets that are spread on the floors of every Anglo-Indian home
+and which, as Turkish, Persian, Central Asian, or Indian, are to be
+found in every carpet shop in London, usually possess in the
+intricacies of their pattern some trace of ancient Assyrian art. As
+Sir George Birdwood has long ago pointed out, general similarities
+between Assyrian and Indian design in carpet patterns may possibly be
+due to a common Turanian origin, pre-Semitic and pre-Aryan; but there
+are details of architectural plan in the Southern Indian temples
+which, quite as much as the reproduction of the ancient Assyrian "knop
+and flower" in its infinite variety of form (all expressing more or
+less conventionally the cone and the lotus of the original idea),
+testify to an infinitely old art affinity, and at the same time
+witness to the wonderful vitality of intelligent design.
+
+The tree of life so largely interwoven into Eastern fabrics was the
+"Asherah" or "grove" sacred to Asshur the supreme god of the
+Assyrians, the Lord and Giver of life; and it appears to have been the
+development of the "Hom" or lotus, which, although it is a Kashmir
+valley plant, is always admirably rendered in Assyrian sculpture.
+Eventually the date palm took the place of the Hom in the Euphrates
+valley, just as the vine replaced it in Asia Minor and Greece. In
+Central Asian rugs we find the cone replaced by the pomegranate, and
+the tree of life becomes a pomegranate tree. There is too much
+intricacy in such similarity of ornamental detail between Assyrian and
+Indian art for the result to have been merely developments from a
+common pre-historic stock along separate lines. They are clearly
+imitations one of the other, and the similarity is but another link in
+the chain of evidence which proves that the highways of Asia
+connecting Assyria with India through Persia were well-trodden ways
+seven centuries at least before Christ, even if the sea route from the
+Red Sea and Euphrates had not then reached the Indus and western coast
+of India.
+
+Whilst all historical evidence points to the Tehran-Mashad route as
+the great highway which linked Mesopotamia with Baktria in past ages,
+there are certain curious little indications that the southern road
+through Persia, viz. Yezd and Kirman, was also well known, for it is a
+remarkable fact (which may be taken for what it is worth) that it is
+in the villages and bazaars of Sind that the potters may be found
+whose conservative souls delight in the reproduction of a class of
+ornamental decoration which most clearly indicates an Assyrian origin.
+The direct route to Sind from Mesopotamia is not by way of Herat. It
+is (as will be subsequently explained) _via_ Kirman and Makran, but
+there is absolutely no historical evidence to support the suggestion
+that this was a route utilized by the Assyrians; and there is, on the
+other hand, Arrian's statement that roads through Makran were unknown
+or but legendary.
+
+It is impossible, however, to ignore the fact that the sea route to
+North-western India was utilized in very ancient times; and although
+its connection with the northern landward gates of India may appear to
+be rather obscure, that connection is a matter which actually concerns
+us rather nearly in the present day. For it is by this ancient sea
+route that Persia and Baluchistan, Seistan and Afghanistan derive
+those supplies of small arms and ammunition which are abundant in
+those countries, but which never pass through India. Muskat is the
+chief depot for distribution, and the Persian ports of Bandar Abbas,
+Jask, or Pasni on the Makran coast are utilized as ports for the
+interior, leading by routes which are quite sufficiently good for
+caravan traffic towards the point where Afghan territory meets that of
+Persia and Baluchistan just south of Seistan. Once in Seistan they are
+well behind the passes which split our nearer line of defence in the
+trans-Indus hills. Even our command of the sea fails to suppress this
+traffic, which has led to such a general distribution of arms of
+precision (chiefly of German manufacture), that these countries may
+fairly claim to be able to arm their whole population. No recent
+researches in the Persian Gulf or on the Persian coast have added much
+to the sum of our knowledge respecting the early navigation of these
+Eastern seas, but there can be no question as to its immense
+antiquity. The Ph[oe]nician settler in Syria and Mesopotamia has been
+traced back to his primeval home in the Bahrein Islands, which, if
+Herodotus is correct in his estimated date for the founding of Tyre
+(2756 years B.C.), takes us back to very early times indeed for the
+coast navigation of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Seas. Hiram, King
+of Tyre, could look back through long ages to the days when his
+Ph[oe]nician forefathers started their well-packed vessels (the
+Ph[oe]nicians were famous for their skill in stowing cargo) to crawl
+along the coasts of Makran and Western India for the purpose of
+acquiring those stores of spices and gold which first made commerce
+profitable, or else to make their way westward, guided by the
+headlands and shore outlines of Southern Arabia, to gather the riches
+from African fields. Makran is full of strange relics of immense age
+for which none can account. Since Egyptology has become a recognized
+science, who will lay the foundations of such a science for Southern
+Arabia and Makran? When will some one arise with the wisdom and the
+leisure to write of the power of ancient Arabia, and to trace the
+impressions left on the whole world of commerce, of art, of
+architecture, and literature by the ancient races who hailed from the
+South?
+
+We cannot tell when the first sea-borne trade passed to and fro
+between India and the Erythrean Sea, a creeping, slow-moving trade
+making the best shift possible of wind and tide, and knowing no guide
+but the pole star of that period, and the rocky headlands and islands
+of the Makran coast. Many of the ancient islands exist no more, but
+the coast is a peculiarly well-marked one for the mariner still.
+Probably the coast trade was earlier than the overland caravan
+traffic; but the latter was certainly co-existent with the Assyrian
+monarchy when Persia and Central Asia lay at the feet of the conqueror
+Tiglath Pileser.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+GREEK EXPLORATION--ALEXANDER--MODERN BALKH--THE BALKH PLAIN AND
+BAKTRIA
+
+
+Twenty-two centuries have rolled away since the first military
+expedition from Europe was organized and led into the wilds of an Asia
+which was probably as civilized then as it is now. Two thousand two
+hundred years, and yet along the wild stretches of the Indian
+frontier, where a mound here and there testifies to the former
+existence of some forgotten camp, or where in the slant rays of the
+evening sun faint indications may be traced on the level Punjab flats
+of the foundation of a city long since dead, the name of the great
+Macedonian is uttered with reverence and awe as might be the name of a
+god who can still influence the lives of men, yet qualified by an
+affix which indicates a curious survival of the mythological
+conception of gods as human beings. You may wander through some of the
+valleys cleft through the western frontier hills, where an
+intermittent rivulet of water spreads a network of streamlets on the
+boulder-covered bed of the nullah, and where the stony hills rise in
+barren slopes on either side, and find, perchance half hidden by
+weather-worn debris and tufts of stringy verdure, the remains of what
+was once an artificial water-channel, stone built and admirably
+graded, and you may ask who was responsible for this construction. Not
+a man can say. There is no history, no tradition even, connected with
+it. It passes their understanding. Doubtless it was the work of
+"Sekunder" (Alexander)--that prehistoric, mythological,
+incomprehensible, and yet beneficent being who lives in the minds of
+the frontier people as the apotheosis of the Deputy Commissioner. Yet
+the impression left on India by the Greeks is marvellously small. It
+is chiefly to be found in the architecture and the sculpture of the
+Punjab. The Greek language disappeared from the Indus valley about the
+end of the tenth century A.D., and there is hardly a Greek place-name
+now to be recognized anywhere on the Indus banks. But any unusual
+relic of the past, the story of which has passed beyond the memory of
+the present tribes-people (even though it may be obviously of mediaeval
+Arabic origin), is invariably attributed to Alexander. It is, however,
+chiefly in the sculpture and decorations of Buddhist buildings (which
+never existed in Alexander's day) that clear evidence exists of Greek
+art conception. The classical features and folded raiment of the
+sculptured saints and buddhas, which are found so freely in certain
+parts of the Punjab, are obviously derived from original Greek ideals
+which may very possibly have been transmitted through Rome.
+
+With Alexander in India we have nothing to do in these pages. It is as
+the first explorer in the regions beyond India, the Afghan and
+Baluchistan hinterlands, that he at present concerns us; and it may
+fairly be stated that no later expedition combining scientific
+research with military conquest ever added more to the sum of the
+world's knowledge of those regions than that led by Alexander. For
+centuries after it no light arises on the geographical horizon of the
+Indian border. Indeed, not until political exigencies caused by
+Russia's steady advance towards India compelled a revision of
+political boundaries in Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and India,
+was any very accurate idea obtained of the geographical conditions of
+Northern and Western Afghanistan, or of Baluchistan, or of Southern
+Persia. The mapping of these countries has been recent, and the
+progress of it, as year by year the network of Indian triangulation
+and topography spread westward and northward, has reopened many
+sources of light which, if not altogether new, have lain hidden ever
+since the Macedonian conqueror passed over them. Long before the Greek
+army mustered on the banks of the Hellespont we have seen that the
+highways to the East were well trodden and well known. It was not
+likely that Alexander's intelligence department was lacking in
+information. For many centuries subsequent to that expedition the rise
+of the Parthian power absolutely cut off these old-world trade
+communications and set the restless tides of human emigration into new
+channels. But in Alexander's time there was nothing in Persia to
+interrupt the interchange of courtesies between East and West.
+
+The great Aryan tide had already flowed from the Central Asian
+highlands into India, but Jutes and Skyths had yet to make that great
+drift westward which peopled half of Europe with nomadic tribes
+speaking kindred tongues--a drift which never rested in its westward
+advance till, as Anglians and Saxons, it had enveloped England and
+faced its final destiny in an American continent. Assyria had passed
+by with arts and commerce rather than with arms, and Persia had
+followed in Assyrian tracks. Both had established colonies half-way to
+India in the Afghan highlands, Persia with the aid of captive Greeks,
+and Assyria with people taken from the Syrian land. The list of
+Assyrian and Persian satrapies included all those lands which we now
+call the hinterland of India, and which in Alexander's time must have
+been absolutely Persianized. But beyond the historical evidence which
+can be collected to prove the early, the constant, traffic which
+ensued between Mesopotamia, or Asia Minor, and India, after the
+consolidation of those two great empires, there is the tradition which
+certain Greek writers (notably Arrian) treat rather scornfully, of the
+conquest of Upper India by the mythical hero Bacchus. It is never wise
+to treat any tradition scornfully, and Arrian is himself obliged to
+admit the difficulty of explaining certain records connected with
+Alexander's history, without assuming that the tradition was not
+groundless.
+
+Writing of the city of Nysa, Arrian says that "it was built by
+Dionysos or Bacchus, when he conquered the Indians; but who this
+Bacchus was, or at what time or from whence he conquered the Indians
+is hard to determine, whether he was that Theban who from Thebes, or
+he who from Timolus, a mountain of Lydia, undertook that famous
+expedition into India is very uncertain." There is a Greek epic poem
+in hexameter verse, called the "Dionysiaka," or "Bassarika," which
+tells of the conquest of India by Bacchus, the greatest of all his
+achievements. The author is Nonnus of Panopolis in Egypt, who wrote
+about the beginning of the fifth century of our era. Bacchus is said
+to have received a command from Zeus to turn back the Indians, who had
+extended their conquests to the Mediterranean, and in the execution of
+this command he marched through Syria and Assyria. In Assyria he was
+entertained with magnificent hospitality. Nothing further is said of
+the route he took to reach India. The first battle which took place
+in India was on the banks of the Hydaspes, where the Indians were
+routed. Then followed as an incident in the war the destruction of the
+Indian fleet in a naval battle, which is instructive. It took the
+assistance of the goddess of war, Pallas Athene, to bring the campaign
+to a conclusion, which terminated with the death of the Indian leader
+Deriades. Here, then, is crystallized in verse the tradition to which
+Arrian refers, and remembering that we are indebted to two great epics
+of India, the "Ramayana" and the "Mahabharata," for such glimmering of
+the ancient history of the Aryan occupation of India as we possess, we
+may very well conceive that the germs of real historical fact lie
+half-concealed in this poem of Nonnus. However that may be, it is
+tolerably certain that Alexander found a people in Northern India who
+claimed a Greek origin when he arrived there, quite apart from the
+colonists of Baktria who had been transported there by Darius
+Hydaspes, and that he recognized their claim to distant relationship.
+
+When Alexander, then, mustered his army in the sunny fields of Macedon
+he was preparing for an expedition over no uncertain ways between
+Greece and Baktria or Arachosia (Northern and Western Afghanistan). He
+knew what lay before him if he could once break through the Persian
+barrier; and the strength of that barrier he must have been well aware
+lay as much in the stern fighting qualities of the mercenary Greek
+legions in the pay of Persia as in the hosts of Persian and Indian
+troops which the Persian monarch could array against him. We have
+lists of the component forces on both sides. The Macedonian legions
+were homogeneous and patriotic. The Persian army was partly European,
+but chiefly Asiatic, with a mixed company of Asiatic troops such as
+has probably never taken the field since. The opposing forces, indeed,
+partook of the nature of the two armies which fought out the issue of
+the Russo-Japanese campaign, and the result was much the same. There
+was no tie of national sentiment to bind together the unwieldy cohorts
+of Persia. They fought for their pay, and they fought well; but when
+big battalions are divided in religious sentiment and unswayed by
+patriotism, they are no match for Macedonian cohesion, Mahomedan
+Jehad, or Japanese Bushido.
+
+It is quite interesting to examine the details of Alexander's army.
+The main body consisted of six brigades of 3000 men, each united to
+form an irresistible phalanx. Heavily armoured, with a long shield, a
+long sword, and a four-and-twenty foot spear (sarina), the infantryman
+of the phalanx must have possessed a powerful physique to enable him
+to carry himself and his weapons in the field. The depth of the
+phalanx was sixteen ranks, and the first six ranks were so placed that
+they could all bring their spears into action at once. The bulk of
+the phalanx consisted of Macedonians only. The light infantry, bowmen,
+and dartsmen numbered about 6000. A third corps of 6000 men more
+lightly armed, but with longer swords than the phalangists (called
+Hypaspists), were intermediate. The cavalry consisted of three
+classes, light, heavy, and medium, 3000 Macedonian and Thessalian
+horsemen, heavily armoured, forming its main strength. The light
+cavalry were Thracian lancers. The Royal Horse Guard included eight
+Macedonian squadrons of horsemen picked from the best families in
+Greece. It is useful to note that there were mounted infantry and
+artillery (_i.e._ balistai and katapeltai) with the force. More useful
+still to note that none of Alexander's victories were won by the solid
+strength of his phalanx; it was the sweeping and resistless force of
+his cavalry charges (often led by himself) that gained them.
+
+Perhaps the most notable feature about this Greek expedition to India
+was the fact that it was the first military expedition of which there
+is any record which included scientific inquiry as one of its objects.
+Alexander had on his personal staff men of literary if not of
+scientific acquirements, and it is to them doubtless that we owe a
+comparatively clear account of the expedition, although unfortunately
+their records have only been transmitted to us by later authors. If we
+could but recover originals what a host of doubtful points might be
+cleared up! It is true that previous to the date of Alexander one man
+of genius, Xenophon, had kept a record of a magnificent military
+achievement, and had proved himself to be master of literature as he
+was of the science of leading; but Xenophon stands alone, and it may
+be doubted whether, during the many centuries which have passed away
+since the era of Greek supremacy, any practical leader of men has ever
+attained such a splendid position in the ranks of writers of military
+history. Alexander appears, at any rate, to have been no historian,
+but his staff of cultivated literary assistants and men of letters
+included many notable Greek names.
+
+Alexander crossed the Hellespont in the spring of the year 334 B.C.,
+and first encountered the Persians near the Granikos River. The battle
+was decisive although the losses on either side do not appear to have
+been heavy. It was but the augury of what was to follow. The
+subsequent advance of the Macedonian troops southward through the
+lovely land of Iona, and the reduction of Miletus and Helikarnassos,
+brought the first year's campaign to a close. The second year opened
+with the conquest of Pamphyllia and Phrygia, the passage of the Tauros
+ranges being made in winter. On the return of spring he recrossed the
+Tauros and reduced the western hill-tribes of Kilikia. Part of his
+force, meanwhile, had occupied the passes into Syria known as the
+Syrian gates. Within two days march of the Syrian gates the Persian
+hosts again were massed in an open plain under Darius, who had
+advanced from the east, waiting to fall upon the Macedonian troops and
+crush them as they debouched from the defile. Tired of waiting,
+however, Darius moved forward into Kilikia by the Amanian passes to
+look for Alexander, and thus it happened that when Alexander finally
+emerged from the Syrian gates into the plains of Syria he found his
+enemy behind him. He partially retraced his steps and regained the
+pass by midnight, and there from one of the adjoining summits he
+"beheld the Persian watch-fires gleaming far and wide over the plain
+of Issos." The rapidity of Alexander's movements was only equalled by
+the fierce energy of his onslaught when he led his cavalry against the
+unwieldy formations of his Persian enemy. It was his own hand that
+gained the victory both then and afterwards.
+
+There is no more stirring story in all history than this progress of
+the Macedonian force. Step by step it has been traced out from
+Granikos to Issos and from Issos to Arbela; but this is not the place
+to recapitulate that part of the story which applies only to Western
+Asia. It is not until after the final decisive battle at Arbela, when
+Darius fled in hot haste along the south-eastern road to Ecbatana, the
+former capital of Media, and thence in the spring of 330 B.C.
+retreated with a disorganized force and an intriguing court towards
+Baktria, where he hoped to find a refuge with his kinsman Bessos the
+satrap of that province, that we really touch on the subject with
+which we wish to deal in this book, viz. the high-roads to Afghanistan
+in those long past days. Alexander, meanwhile, had received the
+submission of Babylon and restored the temple of Belus, and made
+himself master of a more spacious empire than the world had yet seen.
+It was then that the amazing results of his military success began to
+turn his head. From this point the severe simplicity of the Macedonian
+soldier is exchanged for the luxury, arrogance, and intolerance of the
+despot and conqueror. As Alexander advanced in material strength so
+did he slide down the easy descent of moral retrogression, and whilst
+we can still admire his magnificence as a military leader we find
+little else left to admire about him. From Babylon to the lovely
+valley wherein lies Susa, and from Susa to Persepolis, was more or
+less of a triumphal march in spite of the fierce opposition of the
+satrap Artobaizanes. Of Persepolis we are taught to believe that
+Alexander left nothing behind him but blackened ruins--the result of a
+drunken orgy. During the winter, amidst snow and ice, he subdued the
+Mardians in their mountain fastnesses (for he never left an active foe
+on the flank or rear), and with the return of the sweet Persian spring
+he renewed his hunt after Darius, turning his face to the north and
+east.
+
+There are two high-roads through Persia to the East--one leading to
+Northern Afghanistan and the Oxus regions over Mashad, the other to
+Kirman, Seistan, and Kandahar. Along both of them there now runs a
+telegraph line connecting with the Russian system _via_ Mashad, and
+the Indian system _via_ Kirman. They must always have been
+high-roads--the great trade routes to Central Asia and India. Where
+the orderly line of telegraph poles now stretches in unending
+regularity to mark the dusty highway, there, through more ages than we
+can count, the padded foot of the camel must have worn the road into
+ridges and ruts as he plodded his weary way with loads of merchandise
+and fodder. No geological evolution can have disturbed those tracks
+since the Assyrian kings first drew riches from the East and started
+colonies on the Baktrian highlands; they are now as they were 1000
+years before Christ, and it is only natural that in the ordinary
+course of the same unresting spirit of enterprise the telegraph posts
+will sooner or later cast long shadows over a passing railway. The
+desert regions of Persia separate these two roads: the wide flat
+spaces of sand or "Kavir"; an unending procession of sand-hills on the
+glittering fields of salt-bound swamp. The desert is crossable--it has
+been fairly well exploited--but nothing so far has been found in it to
+justify the expectation of great discoveries of dead and buried
+cities, or traces of a former civilization such as once occupied the
+deserts of Chinese Turkistan.
+
+We may well believe that the central deserts of Persia were the same
+in Alexander's time as they are in ours. Consequently any large
+company of people would have been more or less forced into one or
+other of the well-known routes which the geographical configuration of
+the country presented to them. In his pursuit of Darius Alexander
+followed the northern route to Baktria which strikes a little north of
+east from Ecbatana (Hamadan), and in these days leads direct to Tehran
+the modern capital of Persia. The tragical fate of Darius, and
+Alexander's crocodile grief thereat, belongs to another story. It is
+only when he touches the regions beyond Mashad that he figures as one
+of the earliest explorers of Afghanistan, and certainly the earliest
+of whom we have any certain record. Unfortunately these records say
+very little of the nature of those cities and centres of human life
+which he found on the Afghan border; nor is there any definite
+allusion to be found in the writings of Alexander's historians to the
+colonial occupation of Afghanistan which must have preceded the
+Persian conquests. We have seen that Assyrian influence was strongly
+and continuously felt in India for many centuries after the
+consolidation of the Second Assyrian Empire, and the probability that
+between the Tigris and the Oxus there must have been intercommunication
+from the earliest days of the rise of Assyrian power.
+
+There is one ragged and time-worn city in Afghan Turkistan which
+certainly belongs to the centuries preceding the era of Alexander--it
+was the capital of Baktria, the city of Bessos, and it has been a
+great centre of commerce, a city of pilgrimage, Buddhist and
+Mahomedan, for many a century since. This is Balkh, traditionally
+known as the "Mother of cities," whose foundation is variously
+ascribed to Nimrud, or to "Karomurs the Persian Romulus," Assyrian or
+Persian as the fancy strikes the narrator. Of its extreme antiquity
+there can be no doubt. It is certain that at a very early date it was
+the rival of Ecbatana, of Nineveh, and of Babylon. Bricks with
+inscriptions are said to have been found there some seventy years ago,
+and similar bricks should certainly be there still. Officers of the
+Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission passed through modern Balkh in 1884,
+but no such bricks were found during the very cursory and entirely
+superficial examination which was all that could be made of the place;
+square bricks, without inscription, of the size and quality of those
+which may any day be dug out of the Birs Nimrud at Babylon were
+certainly found, and point to a similarity of construction in a part
+of the ancient walls, which is surely not accidental. Modern Balkh
+consists of about 500 houses of Afghan settlers, a colony of Jews, and
+a small bazaar set in the midst of a waste of ruins and many acres of
+debris. The walls of the city are 61/2 or 7 miles in perimeter; in some
+places they are supported by a rampart like the walls of Herat. These,
+of course, are modern, as is the fort and citadel, or Bala Hissar,
+which stands on a mound to the north-east. The green cupola of the
+Masjid Sabz and the arched entrance to the ruined Madrasa testify to
+modern Mahomedan occupation, as do the Top-i-Rustam and the
+Takht-i-Rustam (two ancient topes) to the fervour of religious zeal
+with which its Buddhist inhabitants invested it in the early centuries
+of our era. Balkh awaits its Layard, and not only Balkh, for there are
+mounds and ruins innumerable scattered through the breadth of the
+Balkh plain.
+
+As one approaches Balkh by the Akcha road from the west, one looks
+anxiously around for some outward signs of its extreme antiquity. They
+are not altogether wanting, but time and the mellowing hand of Nature
+have rounded off the edges of the mounds of debris which lie scattered
+over miles of the surrounding country, brushing them over with the
+fresh green of vegetation, and leaving no sign by which to judge of
+the age of them. It is difficult in this part of Asia to get back
+farther than the age of the great destroyer Chenghiz Khan. His time
+has passed by long enough to leave but little evidence that the hand
+of the destroyer was his hand; but probably nothing visible on the
+surface dates back further than the six centuries which have come and
+gone since his Mongol hordes were set loose. Beyond these surface
+ruins and below them there must be cities arranged, as it were, in
+underground flats, one piled on another, strata below strata, till we
+reach the debris of the pre-Semitic days of Western and Central Asia,
+when the Turanian races who supplied Arcadian civilization to
+Mesopotamia peopled the land. Just as we cannot tell exactly when
+Babylon first became a city, so are we confounded by the age of Balkh.
+Babylon belongs to the time when myths were grouped around the
+adventures of a solar hero. Ultimately, however, the Ca-dimissa of the
+Accad became the Bab-ili (the "gate of God") of the Semite. It was
+always the "gate of God," but whether the presiding deity was always
+the Accadian Merodach seems doubtful. Fourteen or fifteen centuries
+before Christ there was probably a Balkh as there was a Babylon; and
+from time immemorial and a date unreckoned Balkh and Babylon must have
+been the two great commercial centres of Asia. What a history to dig
+out when its time shall come!
+
+As the Akcha road leads into the city it passes the outer wall, which
+is about 30 feet high, by a gateway which is frankly nothing more than
+a gap in the partially destroyed wall. It then skirts along, past a
+ziarat gay with red flags, to a gateway in the second wall under the
+citadel leading to an avenue of poplars ending with a garden. Here is
+a pretentious and fairly comfortable caravanserai, facing a court
+which is shaded by magnificent plane trees. At first sight Balkh
+appears to consist of nothing but ruins, but ascending the mound,
+which is surrounded by the dilapidated fort walls, one can see from
+this vantage of about 70 feet how many new buildings are grouped round
+the remnants of the old Mahomedan mosque, of which the dome and one
+great gateway are all that is left.
+
+The plain of the ancient Baktria, of which Balkh represents the
+capital, lies south of the Oxus River, extending east and west for
+some 200 miles parallel to the river after its debouchment from the
+mountains of Badakshan. It is flat, with a scattering of prominences
+and mounds at intervals denoting the site of some village or fortress
+of sufficient antiquity to account for its gradual rise on the
+accumulations of its own debris, probably assisted in the first
+instance by some topographical feature. Looking south it appears to be
+flanked by a flat blue wall of hills, presenting no opportunity for
+escalade or passage through them, a blue level line of counterscarp,
+which is locally known as the Elburz. This great flanking wall is in
+reality very nearly what it appears to be--an unassailable rampart;
+but there are narrow ways intersecting it not easily discernible, and
+through these ways the rivers of the highlands make a rough passage to
+the plains. Wherever they tumble through the mountain gateways and
+make placid tracks in the flats below, they are utilized for
+irrigation purposes, and so there exists a narrow fringe of
+cultivation under the hills, which extends here and there along the
+banks of the rivers out into the open Balkh plain. But these rivers
+never reach the Oxus. This is not merely because the waters of them
+are absorbed in irrigation, but because there is a well-ascertained
+tectonic action at work which is slowly raising the level of the
+plain. Thus it happens that whilst big affluents from the north bring
+rushing streams of much silt-stained water to the great river, no such
+affluents exist on the south. The waters of the Elburz streams are all
+lost in the Oxus plain ere they reach the river. Nevertheless there
+are abundant evidences of the former existence of a vast irrigation
+system drawn from the Oxus. The same lines of level mounds which break
+the horizon of the plains of Babylon are to be seen here, and they
+denote the same thing. They are the containing walls of canals which
+carried the Oxus waters through hundreds of square miles of flat
+plain, where they never can be carried again because of the alteration
+in the respective levels of plain and river. Ten centuries before
+Christ, at least, were the plains of Babylon thus irrigated, and just
+as the arts of Greece and India rose on the ashes of the arts of
+Nineveh, so doubtless was the science of irrigation carried into the
+colonial field of Baktria from Assyria, and thus was the city of
+"Nimrud" surrounded with a wealth of cultivation which rendered it
+famous through Asia for more centuries than we can tell. Whether or no
+the science of irrigation drifted eastwards from the west it seems
+more than probable that the ruined and decayed water-ways which
+intersect the Balkh plain were primarily due to the introduction of
+Syrian labour, and account for the presence in that historic region of
+a people amongst others who claim descent from captive Israelites.
+There are no practical irrigation engineers in the world (excepting
+perhaps the Chinese) who can rival the Afghans in their knowledge of
+how to make water flow where water never flowed before. It is of
+course impossible, on such evidence as we possess as yet, to claim
+more than the appearance of a probability based on such an undeniable
+possibility as this.
+
+After the death of Darius his kinsman Bessos escaped into his own
+satrapy (probably to Balkh), and there assumed the upright tiara, the
+emblem of Persian royalty, taking at the same time the name of
+Artaxerxes.
+
+True to his invariable principle of leaving no unbeaten enemy on the
+flank of his advance, Alexander proceeded to subjugate Hyrkania, from
+which country he was separated by the Elburz (Persian) mountains. He
+crossed those mountains in three divisions by separate passes, and
+effected his purpose with his usual thoroughness and without much
+difficulty. Having crushed the Mardians he shaped a straight course
+eastward to Herat on his way to Baktria, marching by the great highway
+which connects Tehran with Mashad. The country around Mashad (part of
+Khorasan) was a satrapy of Persia under Satibarzanes, who submitted
+without apparent opposition and was confirmed in his government. The
+capital of this province was Artakoana, described as a city situated
+in a plain of exceptional fertility where the main roads from north to
+south and from west to east crossed each other. To no place does such
+a description apply so closely as Herat, and it has consequently been
+assumed that Herat indicates more or less closely the site of the
+ancient city Artakoana, which, indeed, is most probable. But Alexander
+had not long passed that city in his march towards Baktria when the
+news of the revolt of Satibarzanes reached him with the story of the
+loss of the Macedonian escort which had been left with that satrap and
+had been massacred to a man. He immediately turned on his tracks,
+captured Artakoana, routed the satrap, and by way of leaving a
+permanent monument of his victory founded a new city in the
+neighbourhood which he called Alexandreia. This is probably the actual
+origin of the modern Herat, and it is a tribute to the sagacity of the
+Macedonian King that from that time to this it has abundantly proved
+its importance as a strategical and commercial centre.
+
+The forward march to Baktria would have taken the Greek army via
+Kushk, Maruchak, and Maimana along the route which is practically the
+easiest and safest for a large body of troops. It is the route
+followed by the Afghan Boundary Commission in 1885. Alexander,
+however, instead of resuming his march on Baktria, elected to crush
+another of the Persian satraps who was concerned in the murder of
+Darius and who ruled a province to the south of Herat. Crossing the
+Hari Rud he therefore marched straight on Farah (Prophthasia), then
+the capital of Seistan (Drangiana). Farah is considerably to the north
+of any part of the Afghan province of Seistan at present, but it was
+undoubtedly Alexander's objective, and the Drangiana of those times
+was considerably more extensive than the Seistan of to-day--a fact
+which will go some way to account for the exaggerated reports of the
+ancient wealth and fertility of that province. Farah is a great
+agricultural centre still, and would add enormously to the restricted
+cultivable area of Seistan, even if one allows for the effects of sand
+encroachment in that unpleasant region. Then occurred the plot against
+Alexander's life which was detected at Prophthasia, and the consequent
+torture and death of Philotas, who probably had no part in it. It is
+one of the many actions of Alexander's life which reveals the ferocity
+of the barbarian beneath the genius of the soldier. It was but the
+barbarity of his age--a barbarity for the matter of that which lasted
+in England till the time of the Georges, and which still survives in
+Afghanistan. After a halt in Seistan, probably whilst waiting for
+reinforcements, he struck north-eastwards again for Baktria. As it is
+generally assumed that the Macedonian force now followed the Helmund
+valley route to the Paropamisos, _i.e._ the Hindu Kush and its
+extension westwards, it is as well to consider what sort of a country
+it is that forms the basin of Helmund.
+
+It is worth remarking in the first place that the Ariaspian
+inhabitants of the Helmund valley had received from Cyrus the name of
+Euergetai, or benefactors, because they had assisted him at a time
+when he had been in great difficulties. This is enough to satisfy us
+that the district was known and had been traversed by a military force
+long before Alexander entered it, and that he was making no
+venturesome advance in ignorance of what lay before him. The valley of
+the Helmund (or Etymander) could not have differed greatly in its
+geographical features 300 years before Christ from its present
+characteristics. The Helmund of the Seistan basin then occupied a
+different channel to its present outlets into the Seistan swamps. How
+different it is difficult to tell, for it has frequently changed its
+course within historic times, silting up its bed and striking out a
+new channel for itself, splitting into a number of streams and
+wandering uncontrolled in loops or curves over the face of the flat
+alluvial plains to which it brought fertility and wealth. It has been
+a perpetual source of political discussion as a boundary between
+Afghanistan and Persia, and it has altered the face of the land so
+extensively and so often that there is nothing in ancient history
+referring to the vast extent of agricultural wealth and the immensity
+of its population which can be proved to be impossible, although it
+seems likely enough that false inferences have been drawn from the
+widespread area of ruined and deserted towns and villages which are
+still to be seen and may almost be counted. It is not only that the
+water-supply and facilities for irrigation, by shifting their
+geographical position, have carried with them the potentialities for
+cultivation. Other forces of Nature which seem to be set loose on
+Seistan with peculiar virulence and activity have also been at work.
+The sweeping blasts of the north-west wind, which rage through this
+part of Asia with a strength and persistence unknown in regions more
+protected by topographical features, carrying with them vast volumes
+of sand and surface detritus, piling up smooth slopes to the windward
+side of every obstruction, smoothing off the rough angles of the gaunt
+bones of departed buildings, and sometimes positively wearing them
+away by the force of attrition, play an important part in the
+kaleidoscopic changes of Seistan landscape. Villages that are
+flourishing one year may be sand-buried the next. Channels that now
+run free with crop-raising water may be choked in a month, and all
+the while the great Helmund, curving northward in its course, pours
+down its steady volume of silt from the highlands, carrying tons of
+detritus into open plains where it is spread out, sun-baked, dried,
+wind-blown, and swirled back again to the southward in everlasting
+movement. Thus it is that the evidence of hundreds of square miles of
+ruins is no direct evidence of an immense population at any one
+period. Nor can we say of this great alluvial basin, which is by turns
+a smiling oasis, a pestilential swamp, a huge spread of populous
+villages, or a howling desert smitten with a wind which becomes a
+curse and afflicted with many of the pests and plagues of ancient
+Egypt, that at any one period of its history more than another it
+deserved the appellation of the "granary of Asia." The Helmund of
+Seistan, however, is quite a different Helmund from the same river
+nearer its source. Its character changes from the point where it makes
+its great bend northward towards its final exit into the lagoons and
+swamps of the Hamun. At Chaharburjak, where the high-road to Seistan
+from the south crosses the river into Afghan territory, the Helmund is
+a wide rippling stream (when not in flood), distinguished, if
+anything, for the clearness of its waters. From this point eastwards
+it parts two deserts. To the north the great, flat, windswept
+Dasht-i-Margo, about as desolate and arid a region as fancy could
+depict. To the south the desert of Baluchistan, by no means so
+absolutely devoid of interest, with its marshalled sand-dunes
+answering to the processes of the winds, its isolated but picturesque
+peaks like islands in a sand sea, a few green spots here and there
+showing where water oozes out from the buried feet of the rocky hills,
+decorated with bunches of flowering tamarisk and perchance a palm or
+two--a modified desert, but still a desert. Between the two deserts is
+the Helmund, running in a cliff-sided trough which is never more than
+a mile or two wide, intensely green and bright in the grass and crop
+season, with flourishing villages at reasonable intervals and a
+high-road connecting them from which can be counted that strange
+multitude of departed cities of the old Kaiani Kingdom, which are
+marked by a ragged crop of ruins still upstanding in a weird sort of
+procession. Sometimes the high-road sweeps right into the midst of a
+roofless palace, through the very walls of the ancient building, and
+outside may be found spaces brushed clean by the wind leaving masses
+of pottery, glass, and other common debris exposed.
+
+One constant surprise to modern explorers is the extraordinary
+quantity of domestic crockery the remains of which surround old
+eastern cities; and almost yet more of a surprise it is how far and
+how widespread are certain easily recognized specialities, such, for
+instance, as the so-called "celadon." Chips and fragments of celadon
+are to be found from Babylon to Seistan, from Seistan to India, in
+Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Siam. In Siam are all that remains of
+what were probably the original furnaces. Every shower of rain that
+falls in this extended cemetery of crumbling monuments reveals small
+treasures in the way of rings, coins, seals, etc. Much of the
+cultivation and of the extent of population indicated by the ruins in
+this narrow valley must have existed in the times of Alexander of
+Macedon and the Ariaspians, and we find no difficulty in accepting the
+Helmund (or Etymander) as the line of route which he followed for a
+certain distance. Indeed, there is much more than a passing
+probability that he followed the line which gave him water and
+supplies as far as the junction of the Argandab and Helmund, for the
+problem of crossing the desert from the Helmund valley to Nushki and
+the cultivated districts of Kalat is a serious one--one, indeed, which
+gave the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commissioners much anxious thought. But
+beyond the Argandab junction it is extremely improbable that Alexander
+followed the Helmund. The Helmund and its surroundings have been
+carefully surveyed from this point through the turbulent districts of
+Zamindawar for 100 miles or more, and again from its source near Kabul
+for some fifty miles of its downward flow. The Zamindawar section of
+the river affords an open road, although the river, as we follow it
+upward, gradually becomes enclosed in comparatively narrow (yet still
+fertile) valleys, and rapidly assumes the character of a mountain
+stream. North of Zamindawar and south of its exit from the Koh-i-Baba
+mountain system to the west of Kabul, no modern explorer has ever seen
+the Helmund. It there passes through the Hazara highlands, and
+although we have not penetrated that rugged plateau we know very well
+its character by repute, and we have seen similar country to the west
+where dwell cognate tribes--the Taimani and the Firozkohi. This upland
+basin of the Helmund to the west of Kabul and Ghazni, this cradle of a
+hundred affluents pouring down ice-cold water to the river, is but a
+huge extension southwards of the Hindu Kush, and from it emerge many
+of the great rivers of Afghanistan. To the north the rivers of Balkh
+and Khulm take a hurried start for the Oxus plains. Westward the Hari
+Rud streams off to Herat. South-westward extends the long curving line
+of the Helmund, and eastward flow the young branches of the Kabul. A
+rugged mountain mass called the Koh-i-Baba, the lineal continuation of
+the Hindu Kush, dominates the rolling plateau from the north and
+continues westward in an almost unbroken wall to the Band-i-Baian
+looking down into the narrow Hari Rud valley. It is a part of the
+continental divide of Asia, high, rugged, desolate, and almost
+pathless.
+
+No matter from which side the toiler of the mountains approaches this
+elevated and desolate region, whether emerging from the Herat
+drainage he essays to reach Kabul, or from the small affluents of the
+Helmund he strikes for the one gap which exists between the Hindu Kush
+and the Koh-i-Baba which will lead him to Balkh and Afghan Turkistan,
+he will have enormous difficulties to encounter. It can be done,
+truly, but only with the pains and penalties of high mountaineering
+attached. Taken as a whole, the highest uplands above the sources of
+the minor rivers which water the bright and fertile valleys of Ghur,
+Zamindawar, and Farah may be described much as one would describe
+Tibet--a rolling, heaving, desolate tableland, wrinkled and
+intersected by narrow mountain ranges, whose peaks run to 13,000 and
+14,000 feet in altitude, enclosing between them restricted spaces of
+pasture land. The Mongol population, who claim to have been introduced
+as military settlers by Chenghiz Khan, live a life of hard privation.
+They leave their barren wastes which the wind wipes clear of any tree
+growth, for the lower valleys in the winter months, merely resorting
+to them in the time of summer pasturage. The winter is long and
+severe. It is not the altitude alone which is accountable for its
+severity; it is the geographical position of this Central Afghan
+upheaval which exposes it to the full blast of the ice-borne northern
+winds which, sweeping across Turkistan with destructive energy, reduce
+the atmosphere of Seistan to a sand-laden fog, and penetrate even to
+the valley of the Indus where for days together they wrap the whole
+landscape in a dusty haze. For many months the Hazara highlands are
+buried under successive sheets of snowdrift. In summer, like the
+Pamirs, they emerge from their winter's sleep and become a succession
+of grass-covered downs. There are then open ways across them, and
+travellers may pass by many recognizable tracks. But in winter they
+are impassable to man and beast. Yet we are asked to believe that
+Alexander, who had the best of guides in his pay, and who knew the
+highways and byways of Asia as well, if not better, than they are
+known now to any military authorities, took his army _in winter_ up
+the Helmund valley till it struck its sources somewhere under the
+Koh-i-Baba!
+
+There was no madness in Alexander's methods. His withdrawal from India
+through the defiles and deserts of Makran was most venturesome and
+most disastrous, but he had a distinct object to gain by the attempt
+to pass into Persia that way. Here there was no object. The Helmund
+route does not, and did not, lead directly to his objective, Baktria,
+and there was another high-road always open, which must have been as
+well known then as, indeed, it is well known to-day. There can be very
+little doubt that he followed the Argandab to the neighbourhood of the
+modern Kandahar (in Arachosia), and from Kandahar to Kabul he took the
+same historic straight high-road which was followed by a later
+General (Lord Roberts) when he marched from Kabul to Kandahar. This
+would give him quite difficulties enough in winter to account for
+Arrian's story of cold and privations. It would lead him direct to the
+plains of the Kohistan north of Kabul, where there must have ever been
+the opportunity of collecting supplies for his force, and where,
+separated from him by the ridges of the Hindu Kush, were planted those
+Greek colonies of Darius Hystaspes whose assistance might prove
+invaluable to his onward movement. It was here, at any rate, not far
+from the picturesque village of Charikar, that he founded that city of
+Alexandreia, the remains of which appear to have been recently
+disturbed by the Amir, and to which we shall make further reference.
+Military text-books still speak of the Unai, or Bamian, as a pass
+which was traversed by the Greeks. It is most improbable that they
+ever crossed the Hindu Kush that way, and the question obviously
+arises in connection with this theory of his march--How was it
+possible for Alexander to spend the rest of the winter near the
+sources of the Helmund? It was not possible. His next step was to
+cross the Hindu Kush. This he attempted with difficulty in the spring,
+and reached a fertile country in fifteen days. He might have crossed
+by the Kaoshan Pass (which local tradition assigns as the pass which
+he really selected), or by the Panjshir, which is longer, but in some
+respects easier. The Panjshir is the pass usually adopted for the
+passage of large bodies of troops by the Afghans themselves, and there
+is reported to be, in these days, a well-engineered Khafila road,
+which is kept open by forced labour in snow-time, connecting Kabul
+with Andarab by this route. The pass of the Panjshir is about 11,600
+feet high, whereas the Kaoshan, though straighter, is 14,300.
+Considering the slow rate of movement (fifteen days) it is more
+probable that he took the easier route _via_ Panjshir. In either case
+he would reach the beautiful and fertile valley of Andarab, and from
+that base he could move freely into Baktria. The country had been
+ravaged and wasted by Bessos, but that did not delay Alexander. The
+chief cities of Baktria surrendered without opposition, and he pushed
+forward to the Oxus in his pursuit of Bessos.
+
+All this would be more interesting if we could trace the route more
+closely which was followed to the Oxus. We know, however, that for
+previous centuries Balkh had been the capital city, the great trade
+emporium of all that region. There is therefore no difficulty in
+accepting Balkh as the Greek Baktria. Between Balkh and the Oxus the
+plains are strewn with ruins, some of them of vast extent, whilst
+other evidences of former townships are to be found about Khulm and
+Tashkurghan farther to the east, and on the direct route from Andarab
+to the Oxus. Bessos had retreated to Sogdiana of which Marakanda was
+capital, and the straight road to Marakanda (Samarkand) crosses the
+Oxus at Kilif. The description of the river Oxus at that point tallies
+fairly well with Arrian's account of it. It is deep and rapid, and the
+hill fortress of Kilif on the right bank, and of Dev Kala and other
+isolated rocky hills on the left, hedges in the river to a channel
+which cannot have changed through long ages. Elsewhere the Oxus is
+peculiarly liable to shift its channel, and has done so from time to
+time, forming new islands, taking fresh curves, and actually changing
+its destination from the Caspian to the Aral Sea; but at Kilif it must
+have ever been deep and rapid, covering a breadth of about
+three-quarters of a mile. Across the breadth nowadays is about as
+peculiar a ferry as was ever devised. Long, shallow, flat-bottomed
+boats, square as to bow and stern, are towed from side to side of the
+river by swimming horses. This would not be a matter of so much
+surprise if the horses employed for the purpose were powerful animals
+from fourteen to fifteen hands in height, but the remarkable feature
+about the Kilif stud is the diminutive and ragged crew of underfed
+ponies which it produces. And yet two, or even one, of these
+inefficient-looking little animals will tow across a barge of twenty
+feet or so in length, crowded with weighty bales of Bokhara
+merchandise, and filled as to interstices with its owners and their
+servants. The ponies are attached to outriggers with a strap from a
+surcingle or belly-band buckled to their backs, thus supporting their
+weight in the water at the same time that it takes the haulage. With
+their heads just above stream, snorting and blowing, they swim with
+measured strokes and tow the boat (advancing diagonally in crab-like
+fashion to meet the current) straight across the river. The inadequacy
+of the means to the end is the first thing which strikes the beholder,
+but he is, however, rapidly convinced of the extraordinary hauling
+capacity of a swimming horse when properly trained. Alexander crossed
+on rafts supported on skins stuffed with straw, and it took him five
+days to cross his force in this primitive fashion.
+
+On the right bank of the river, Bessos was given up by traitors in his
+camp and was sent south to "Zariaspa" to await his doom. Zariaspa is
+identified with Balkh by some authorities, but the name is probably a
+variant on Adraspa which almost certainly was Andarab. Andarab was the
+fertile and promising district into which Alexander descended from the
+slopes of the Hindu Kush, by whichever route (Kaoshan or Panjshir) he
+crossed those mountains. Directly on the route between Andarab and
+Balkh is a minor province called Baglan, and a little less than
+half-way (after crossing a local pass of no great significance called
+Kotal Murgh) is a village or township, nowadays called Zardaspan,
+which is sufficiently like Zariaspa to suggest an identity which is at
+least plausible though it may be deceptive. But it is the fact that
+the town of Baraki which lies farther on the same route is on the
+outskirts of Baglan; and in this connection a reference to the theory
+put forward by Dr. Bellew in his _Ethnography of Afghanistan_
+(_Asiatic Quarterly_, October 1891) is at least interesting. He points
+out that the captive Greeks who were transported in the sixth century
+B.C. by Darius Hystaspes from the Lybian Barke to Baktrian territory
+were still occupying a village called Barke in the time of Herodotus.
+A century later again during the Macedonian campaign, Kyrenes, or
+Kyreneans, existed in that region according to Arrian, and it is
+difficult to account for them in that part of Asia unless they were
+the descendants of those same exiles from Barke, a colony of Kyrene
+whom Darius originally transported to Baktria. They were in possession
+of the Kaoshan Pass too, and might have rendered very effective aid to
+Alexander during his passage across the mountains. Another body of
+Greek colonists are recorded to have been settled in this same part of
+Baktria by Xerxes after his flight from Greece, namely, the
+Brankhidai, whose original settlement appears to have been in Andarab.
+As we shall see later, people from Greece or from Grecian colonies
+undoubtedly drifted across Asia to Northern Afghanistan in even
+earlier times than those of the Persian Empire. There can, indeed, be
+very little doubt that Ariaspa, or Andarab, was an important position
+for the Greeks to occupy from its strategic value as commanding the
+most practicable of the Hindu Kush passes.
+
+When Bessos, therefore, was deported across the Oxus to Zariaspa it is
+probable that he was sent to Andarab; and here too Alexander returned
+to winter towards the close of the year 329 B.C. after his
+extraordinary success in Sogdia (Bokhara). With his trans-Oxus
+campaign we have nothing to do; it is another history, and deeply
+interesting as it would be to follow it in detail we must return to
+Afghanistan. Nothing in all his Eastern campaign is more remarkable
+than the facility with which Alexander recruited his army from Greece
+during its progress. Gaps in the ranks were constantly filled up, and
+the fighting strength of his force maintained at a high level. His
+army was reorganized during the winter, and with the returning spring
+he again started expeditions across the Oxus, in the course of which
+he captured Roxana, the most beautiful woman in Asia (after the wife
+of Darius) and married her. The particular fortress which held this
+charming lady was perched on the top of an isolated craggy hill, and
+the story of its capture is as thrilling as that of Aornos
+subsequently. But, like Aornos, it is difficult to locate it. It might
+have been Dev Kala, or Kilif, or any of a dozen such rock-crowned
+hills which border the Oxus River. It is about this period that we
+read first of his encounters with the Skythic races of Central Asia,
+who gave him great trouble at the time and who subsequently subverted
+the Greek power in Baktria altogether. In the spring of 327 B.C. he
+moved out to invade a mountain district to the "East of Baktria"
+(probably modern Badakshan), and subdued the hill-tribes under
+Khorienes whom he confirmed in the government of his own country. It
+was summer ere he set out finally from Baktria on his Indian
+expedition. He recrossed the Paropamisos in ten days and halted at
+Alexandreia near Charikar. Then commences the first recorded
+expedition of the Kabul River basin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+GREEK EXPLORATION--ALEXANDER--THE KABUL VALLEY TO THE INDUS
+
+
+Alexander passed the next winter at the city of his own founding,
+Alexandreia, in the Koh Daman to the north of Kabul. And from thence
+in two divisions he started for the Indus, sending the main body of
+his troops by the most direct route, with Taxila (the capital of the
+Upper Punjab) for its objective, and himself with lighter brigades
+specially organized to subdue certain tribes on the northern flank of
+the route who certainly would imperil the security of his line of
+communication if left alone. This was his invariable custom, and it
+was greatly owing to the completeness with which these flanking
+expeditions were carried out that he was able to keep open his
+connection with Greece. There have been discussions as to the route
+which he followed. Hyphaestion, in command of the main body,
+undoubtedly followed the main route which would take him most directly
+to the plains of the Punjab, which route is sufficiently well
+indicated in these days as the "Khaibar." We hear very little
+about his march eastwards.
+
+  [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF ALEXANDER'S ROUTE]
+
+In the days preceding the use of fire-arms the march of a body of
+troops through defiles such as the Khurd Kabul or the Jagdallak was
+comparatively simple. So far from such defiles serving as traps
+wherein to catch an enemy unawares and destroy him from the cliffs and
+hills on either side, these same cliffs and hills served rather as a
+protection. The mere rolling down of stones would not do much
+mischief, even if they could be rolled down effectively, which is not
+usually the case; and in hand-to-hand encounters the tribespeople were
+no match for the armoured Greeks. Alexander's operations would
+preserve his force from molestation on its northern flank, and the
+rugged ridges and spread of desolate hill-slopes presented by the
+Safed Koh and other ranges on the south has never afforded suitable
+ground for the collection of fighting bodies of men in any great
+strength. General Stewart marched his force from Kabul to Peshawur in
+1880 with his southern flank similarly unprotected with the same
+successful result, his movements being so timed as to give no
+opportunity for a gathering of the Ghilzai clans. On the northern
+flank of the Khaibar route, however, there had been large tribal
+settlements from the very beginning of things, and it was most
+important that these outliers should feel the weight of Alexander's
+mailed fist if the road between Kabul and the Indus were ever to be
+made secure. He accordingly directed his attention to a more northerly
+route to India which would bring him into contact with the Aspasians,
+Gauraians, and Assakenians.
+
+We need not follow the ethnologists who identify these people with
+certain tribes now existing with analogous names. There may very
+possibly be remnants of them still, but they are not to be identified.
+They obviously occupied the open cultivable valleys and alluvial
+spaces which are interspersed amongst the mountains of the Kabul River
+basin, the Kohistan and Kafiristan of modern maps. The Gauraians
+certainly were the people of the Panjkora valley, and there is no
+difficulty in assigning to the Aspasians the first great fertile tract
+of open valley which would be encountered on the way eastwards. This
+is Laghman (or Lamghan) with its noble reach of the Kabul River
+meeting a snow-fed affluent, the Alingar, from the Kafir hills. There
+is, indeed, no geographical alternative. Similarly with even a cursory
+knowledge of the actual geographical conformation of the country, it
+is impossible to imagine that Alexander would choose any other route
+from Alexandreia towards Laghman than that which carries him past
+Kabul. The Koh Daman (the skirts of the hills) which intervene between
+Alexandreia (or Bagram) and Kabul is one of the gardens of
+Afghanistan. There one may wander in the sweet springtide amidst the
+curves and folds of an undulating land, neither hill nor plain, with
+the scent of the flowering willow in the air, and the rankness of a
+spring growth of flower and grass bordering narrow runlets and
+irrigation channels; an unwinking blue above and a varied carpet
+beneath, whilst the song of the labourer rises from fields and
+orchards. Westward are the craggy outlines of Paghman (a noble
+offshoot of the Hindu Kush hiding the loveliness of the Ghorband
+valley behind it), down whose scarred and wrinkled ribs slide
+waterfalls and streams to gladden the plain. Piled up on steep and
+broken banks from the very foot of the mountains are scattered
+white-walled villages, and it is here that you may find later in the
+year the best fruit in Afghanistan.
+
+In November a gentle haze rests in soft indecision upon the
+dust-coloured landscape--heavier and bluer over the low-lying fields
+from which all vegetation has been lifted, lighter and edged with
+filmy skirts where it rises from the sun-warmed brow of the hills. It
+is a different world from the world of spring--all utterly
+sad-coloured and dust-laden; but it is then that the troops and
+strings of fruit-laden donkeys take their leisurely way towards the
+city, where are open shops facing the narrow shadowed streets with
+golden bulwarks of fruit piled from floor to roof. A narrow band of
+rugged hills shuts off this lovely plain on the east from the only
+valley route which could possibly present itself to an inexperienced
+eye as an outlet from the Charikar region to the Kabul River bed, ere
+it is lost in the dark defiles leading to the Laghman valley. The
+hills are red in the waning light, and when the snow first lays its
+lacework shroud over them in network patches they are inexpressibly
+beautiful. But they are also inexpressibly rough and impracticable,
+and the valley beyond is but a walled-in boulder-strewn trough, which
+no general in his senses would select for a military high-road.
+Alexander certainly did not march that way; he went to where Kabul is,
+and there, at the city of Nikaia, he made sacrifice to the goddess
+Athena. If Nikaia was not the modern Kabul it must have been very near
+it. Does not Nonnus tell us that it was a stone city near a lake?
+There is but one lake in the Kabul valley, and it is that at Wazirabad
+close to the city. It is usual to regard Nonnus as a most
+untrustworthy authority, but here for once he seems to have wandered
+into the straight and narrow path of truth. So far there can be no
+reasonable doubt about the direction of this great Pioneer's
+explorations in Afghanistan. Beyond this, once again, we prefer to
+trust to the known geographical distribution of hill and valley, and
+the opportunities presented by physical features of the country,
+rather than to any doubtful resemblance between ancient and modern
+place, or tribal, names, for determining the successive actions of the
+expedition. After the summons to Taxiles, chief of Taxila (itself the
+chief city of the Upper Punjab), and the satisfactory reply thereto,
+there was nothing to disturb the even course of Alexander's onward
+movements but the activity of the mountain tribespeople who flanked
+the line of route.
+
+The valley of Laghman must always have been a populous valley. From
+the north the snow-capped peaks of Kafiristan look down upon it, and
+from among the forest-clad valleys at the foot of these peaks two
+important river systems take their rise, the Alingar and the Alishang,
+which, uniting, join the Kabul River in the flat plain, where villages
+now crowd in and dispute each acre of productive soil. It is difficult
+to reach the Laghman valley from the west. The defiles of the Kabul
+River are here impassable, but they can be turned by mountain routes,
+and Alexander's force, which included the Hyspaspists, who were
+comparatively lightly armed, with the archers, the "companion" cavalry
+and the lancers, was evidently picked for mountain warfare. The
+heavier brigades were with Hyphaestion who struck out by the
+straightest route for Peukelaotis, which has been identified with an
+ancient site about 17 miles to the north-east of Peshawur on the
+eastern bank of the Swat River, and was then the capital of the
+ancient Gandhara. We are told that Alexander's route was rugged and
+hilly, and lay along the course of the river called Khoes. Rugged and
+hilly it certainly was, but the Khoes presents a difficulty. He could
+not actually follow the course of the Kabul River (Kophen) from the
+Kabul plain because of the defiles, but he could have followed that
+river below Butkak to the western entrance of the Laghman valley where
+it unites with the Alingar, or Kao, River. It is impossible to admit
+that he reached the Kao River after crossing the Kohistan and
+Kafiristan, and then descended that river to its junction with the
+Kabul. No cavalry could have performed such a feat. Geographical
+conditions compel us to assume that he followed the Kabul River, which
+is sometimes called Kao above the junction of the Kao River.
+
+It is far more impossible to identify the actual sites of Alexander's
+first military engagements than it is to say, for instance, at this
+period of history, where Caesar landed in Great Britain, as we have no
+means of making exhaustive local inquiries; but subsequent history
+clearly indicates that his next step after settling the Laghman tribes
+was to push on to the valley of the Choaspes, or Kunar. It was in the
+Kunar valley that he found and defeated the chief of the Aspasians.
+The Kunar River is by far the most important of the northern
+tributaries of the Kabul. It rises under the Pamirs and is otherwise
+known as the Chitral River. The Kunar valley is amongst the most
+lovely of the many lovely valleys of Afghanistan. Flanked by the
+snowy-capped mountains of Kashmund on the west, and the long level
+water parting which divides it from Bajaor and the Panjkora drainage
+on the east, it appears, as one enters it from Jalalabad, to be hemmed
+in and constricted. The gates of it are indeed somewhat narrow, but it
+widens out northward, where the ridges of the lofty Kashmund tail off
+into low altitudes of sweeping foothills a few miles above the
+entrance, and here offer opportunity for an easy pass across the
+divide from the west into the valley. This is a link in the oldest and
+probably the best trodden route from Kabul to the Punjab, and it has
+no part with the Khaibar. It links together these northern valleys of
+Laghman, Kunar, and Lundai (_i.e._ the Panjkora and Swat united) by a
+road north of the Kabul, finally passing southwards into the plains
+chequered by the river network above Peshawur.
+
+The lower Kunar valley in the early autumn is passing beautiful. Down
+the tawny plain and backed by purple hills the river winds its way,
+reflecting the azure sky with pure turquoise colour--the opaque blue
+of silted water--blinking and winking with tiny sun shafts, and
+running emerald green at the edges. Sharp perpendicular columns of
+black break the landscape in ordered groups. These are the cypresses
+which still adorn in stately rows the archaic gardens of townlets
+which once were townships. The clustering villages are thick in some
+parts--so thick that they jostle each other continuously. There is
+nothing of the drab Punjab about these villages. They are
+white-walled and outwardly clean, and in at least one ancient garden
+there is a fair imitation of a Kashmir pavilion set at the end of a
+white eye-blinding pathway, leading straight and stiff between rows of
+cypress, and blotched in spring with inky splashes of fallen
+mulberries. The scent of orange blossoms was around when we were
+there, luscious and overpowering. It was the oppressive atmosphere of
+the typical, sensuous East, and the free, fresh air from the river
+outside the mud walls of that jealously-guarded estate was greatly
+refreshing when we climbed out of the gardens. All this part of the
+river must have been attractive to settlers even in Alexander's time,
+and it requires no effort of imagination to suppose that it was here
+that his second series of actions took place. Higher up the river the
+valley closes, until, long before Chitral is reached, it narrows
+exceedingly. Here, in the north, the northern winds rage down the
+funnel with bitter fury and make life burdensome. The villages take to
+the hill-slopes or cluster in patches on the flat terraces at their
+foot. The revetted wall of small hillside fields outline the spurs in
+continuous bands of pasture, and at intervals quaint colonies of huts
+cling to the hills and seem ready to slither down into the wild rush
+of the river below. Such as a whole is the Kunar valley, which,
+centuries after Alexander had passed across it, was occupied by Kafir
+tribes who may have succeeded the Aspasian peoples, or who may indeed
+represent them. All the wild mountain districts west of the Kunar are
+held by Kafirs still, and there is nothing remarkable in the fact
+(which we shall see later on) that just to the east of the Kunar
+valley Alexander found a people claiming the same origin there that
+the Kafirs of Kashmund and Bashgol claim now.
+
+It was during the fighting in the Kunar valley that we hear so much of
+that brilliant young leader Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, who was then
+shaping his career for a Royal destiny in Egypt. With all the
+thrilling incidents of the actual combat we have no space to deal, and
+much as they would serve to lighten the prosaic tale of the progress
+of Alexander's explorations, we must reluctantly leave them to Arrian
+and the Greek historians. We are told that after the Kunar valley
+action Alexander crossed the mountains and came to a city at their
+base called Arigaion. Assuming that he crossed the Kunar watershed by
+the Spinasuka Pass, which leads direct from Pashat (the present
+capital of Kunar) into Bajaor, he would be close to Nawagai, the
+present chief town of Bajaor. Arigaion would therefore be not far from
+Nawagai. The place was burnt down; but recognizing the strategic
+importance of the position, he left Krateros to fortify it and make it
+the residence not only of such tribespeople as chose to return to
+their houses, but also of such of his own soldiers as were unfit for
+further service. This seems to have been his invariable custom, and
+accounts for the traditions of Greek origin which we still find so
+common in the north-western borderland of India. The story of this
+part of his expedition reads almost as if it were journalistic. Then,
+as now, the tribesmen took to the hills. Then, as now, their position
+and approximate numbers could be ascertained by their camp-fires at
+night. Ptolemy was intelligence officer and conducted the
+reconnaissance, and on his report the plan of attack was arranged.
+This was probably the most considerable action fought by Alexander in
+the hills north of India. The conflict was sharp but decisive, and the
+Aspasians, who had taken up their position on a hill, were utterly
+routed. According to Ptolemy 40,000 prisoners and 230,000 oxen were
+taken, and the fact that the pick of the oxen were sent to Macedonia
+to improve the breed there shows how complete was the line of
+communication between Greece and Upper India. The next tribe to be
+dealt with were the Assakenians, and to reach them it was necessary to
+cross the Gauraios, or Panjkora, which was deep, swift as to current,
+and full of boulders. As we find no mention in Arrian's history of the
+passage of the Suastos (Swat River) following on that of the Gauraios,
+we must conclude that Alexander crossed the Panjkora _below_ its
+junction with the Swat, where the river being much enclosed by hills
+would certainly afford a most difficult passage. There are other
+reasons which tend to confirm this view.
+
+The next important action which took place was the siege and capture
+of the city called Massaga, which was only taken after four days'
+severe fighting, during which Alexander was wounded in the foot by an
+arrow. M'Crindle[1] quotes the various names given in Sanscrit and
+Latin literature, and agrees with Rennel in adopting the site of
+Mashanagar, mentioned by the Emperor Baber in his memoirs as lying two
+marches from Bajaor on the river Swat, as representing Massaga. M.
+Court heard from the Yasufzais of Swat that there was a place called
+by the double name of Mashkine and Massanagar 24 miles from Bajaor. It
+is not to be found now, but there is in the survey maps a place on the
+Swat River about that distance from Nawagai (the chief town in Bajaor)
+called Matkanai, close to the Malakand Pass, and this is no doubt the
+place referred to. It is very difficult even in these days to get a
+really authoritative spelling for place-names beyond, or even within,
+the British Indian border; and as these surveys were made during the
+progress of the Tirah expedition when the whole country was armed,
+such information as could be obtained was often unusually sketchy. If
+this is the site of Massaga it would be directly on the line of
+Alexander's route from Nawagai eastwards, as he rounded the spurs of
+the Koh-i-Mor which he left to the north of him, and struck the
+Panjkora some miles below its junction with the Swat. There can be
+little doubt that it was near this spot that the historic siege took
+place. His next objective were two cities called Ora and Bazira, which
+were obviously close together and interdependent. Cunningham places
+the position of Bazira, at the town of Rustam (on the Kalapani River),
+which is itself built on a very extensive old mound and represents the
+former site of a town called Bazar. Rustam stands midway between the
+Swat and Indus, and must always have been an important trade centre
+between the rich valley of Swat and the towns of the Indus. Ora may
+possibly be represented by the modern Bazar which is close by.
+Geographically this is the most probable solution of the problem of
+Alexander's movements, there being direct connection with the Swat
+valley through Rustam which is not to be found farther north.
+Alexander would have to cross the Malakand from the Swat valley to the
+Indus plains, but would encounter no further obstacles if he moved on
+this route. Bazira made a fair show of resistance, but the usual Greek
+tactics of drawing the enemy out into the plains was resorted to by
+Koenos with a certain amount of success; and when Ora fell before
+Alexander, the full military strength of Bazira dispersed and fled for
+refuge to the rock Aornos.
+
+So far we have followed this Greek expedition into regions which are
+beyond the limits of modern Afghanistan, but the new geographical
+detail acquired during the most recent of our frontier campaigns
+enables new arguments to be adduced in favour of old theories (or the
+reverse), and this departure from the strict political boundaries of
+our subject leads us to regions which are at any rate historically and
+strategically connected with it. With Aornos, however, our excursion
+into Indian fields will terminate. Round about Aornos historical
+controversy has ebbed and flowed for nearly a century, and it is not
+my intention to add much to the literature which already concerns
+itself with that doubtful locality. I believe, however, that it will
+be some time yet before the last word is said about Aornos. Of all the
+positions assigned to that marvellous feat of arms performed by the
+Greek force, that which was advanced by the late General Sir James
+Abbott in 1854 is the most attractive--so attractive, indeed, that it
+is hard to surrender it. The discrepant accounts of the capture of the
+famous "rock" given by Arrian (from the accounts of Ptolemy, one of
+the chief actors in the scene), Curtius, Diodoros, and Strabo
+obviously deal with a mountain position of considerable extent, where
+was a flattish summit on which cavalry could act, and the base of it
+was washed by the Indus. All, however, write as if it were an isolated
+mountain with a definite circuit of, according to Arrian, 23 miles and
+a height of 6200 feet (according to Diodoros of 12 miles and over 9000
+feet). The "rock" was situated near the city of Embolina, which we
+know to have been on the Indus and which is probably to be identified
+more or less with the modern town of Amb. The mountain was
+forest-covered, with good soil and water springs. It was precipitous
+towards the Indus, yet "not so steep but that 220 horse and war
+engines were taken up to the summit," all of which Sir James Abbott
+finds compatible with the hill Mahaban which is close to Amb, and
+answers all descriptions excepting that of isolation, for it is but a
+lofty spur of the dividing ridge between the Chumla, an affluent of
+the Buner River, and the lower Mada Khel hills, culminating in a peak
+overlooking the Indus from a height of 7320 feet. The geographical
+situation is precisely such as we should expect under the
+circumstances. The tribespeople driven from Bazira (assuming Bazira to
+be near Rustam) following the usual methods of the mountaineers of the
+Indian frontier, would retreat to higher and more inaccessible
+fastnesses in their rugged hills. There is but one way open from
+Rustam towards the Indus offering them the chance of safety from
+pursuit, and undoubtedly they followed that track. It leads up to the
+great divide north of them and then descends into the Chumla valley
+leading to that of Buner, and the hills which were to prove their
+salvation might well be those flanking the Chumla on the south, rising
+as they do to ever higher altitudes as they approach the Indus. This,
+in fact, is Mahaban. By all the rules of Native strategy in Northern
+India this is precisely the position which they would take up.
+
+Aornos appears to have been a kind of generic name with the Greeks,
+applied to mountain positions of a certain class, for we hear of
+another Aornos in Central Asia, and the word translated "rock" seems
+to mean anything from a mountain (as in the present case) to a
+sand-bank (as in the case of the voyage of Nearkos). No isolated hill
+such as would exactly fit in with Arrian's description exists in that
+part of the Indus valley, and no physical changes such as alteration
+in the course of the Indus, or such as might be effected by the
+tectonic forces of Nature, are likely to have removed such a mountain.
+Abbott's identification has therefore been generally accepted for many
+years, and it has remained for our latest authority to question it
+seriously.
+
+The latest investigator into the archaeological interests of the Indian
+trans-frontier is Dr. M. A. Stein, the Inspector-General of Education
+in India. The marvellous results of his researches in Chinese
+Turkistan have rendered his name famous all over the archaeological
+world, and it is to him that we owe an entirely new conception of the
+civilization of Indo-China during the Buddhist period. Dr. Stein's
+methods are thorough. He leaves nothing to speculation, and indulges
+in no romance, whatever may be the temptation. He takes with him on
+his archaeological excursions a trained native surveyor of the Indian
+survey, and he thus not only secures an exact illustration of his own
+special area of investigation, but incidentally he adds immensely to
+our topographical knowledge of little known regions. This is specially
+necessary in those wild districts which are more immediately
+contiguous to the Indian border, for it is seldom that the original
+surveys of these districts can be anything more than topographical
+sketches acquired, sometimes from a distance, sometimes on the spot,
+but generally under all the disadvantages and disabilities of active
+campaigning, when the limited area within which survey operations can
+be carried on in safety is often very restricted. Thus we have very
+presentable geographical maps of the regions of Alexander's exploits
+in the north, but we have not had the opportunity of examining special
+sites in detail, and there are doubtless certain irregularities in the
+map compilation. This is very much the case as regards those hill
+districts on the right bank of the Indus immediately adjoining the
+Buner valley both north and south of it. Mahaban, the mountain which
+in Abbott's opinion best represents what is to be gathered from
+classical history of the general characteristics of Aornos, is south
+of Buner, overlooking the lower valley close to the Indus River. Dr.
+Stein formed the bold project of visiting Mahaban personally, and
+taking a surveyor with him. It was a bold project, for there were many
+difficulties both political and physical. The tribespeople
+immediately connected with Mahaban are the Gaduns--a most unruly
+people, constantly fighting amongst themselves; and it was only by
+seizing on the exact psychological moment when for a brief space our
+political representative had secured a lull in these fratricidal
+feuds, that Stein was enabled to act. He actually reached Mahaban
+under most trying conditions of wind and weather, and he made his
+survey. Incidentally he effected some most remarkable Buddhist
+identifications; but so far as the identification of Mahaban with
+Aornos is concerned he came to the conclusion that such identification
+could not possibly be maintained. This opinion is practically based on
+the impossibility of fitting the details of the story of Aornos to the
+physical features of Mahaban. It is unfortunate (but perhaps
+inevitable) that even in those incidents and operations of Alexander's
+expedition where his footsteps can be distinctly traced from point to
+point, where geographical conformation absolutely debars us from
+alternative selection of lines of action, the details of the story
+never do fit the physical conditions which must have obtained in his
+time.
+
+As the history of Alexander is in the main a true history, there is
+absolutely no justification for cutting out the thrilling incident of
+Aornos from it. There was undoubtedly an Aornos somewhere near the
+Indus, and there was a singularly interesting fight for its
+possession, the story of which includes so many of the methods and
+tactics familiar to every modern north-west frontiersman, that we
+decline to believe it to be all invention. But the story was written a
+century after Alexander's time, compiled from contemporary records it
+is true, but leaving no margin for inquiry amongst survivors as to
+details. If, instead of ancient history, we were to turn to the
+century-old records of our own frontier expeditions and rewrite them
+with no practical knowledge of the geography of the country, and no
+witness of the actual scene to give us an _ex parte_ statement of what
+happened (for no single participator in an action is ever able to give
+a correct account of all the incidents of it), what should we expect?
+Some furtive investigator might study the story of the ascent of the
+famous frontier mountain, the Takht-i-Suliman (a veritable Aornos!),
+during the expedition of 1882-83, and find it impossible to recognize
+the account of its steep and narrow ascent, requiring men to climb on
+their hands and knees, with the fact that a very considerable force
+did finally ascend by comparatively easy slopes and almost dropped on
+to the heads of the defenders. Such incidents require explanation to
+render them intelligible, and at this distance of time it is only
+possible to balance probabilities as regards Aornos.
+
+Alexander's objective being India, eventually, and the Indus (of
+India, not of the Himalayas) immediately, he would take the road
+which led straightest from Massaga to the Indus; it is inconceivable
+that he would deliberately involve himself and his army in the maze of
+pathless mountains which enclose the head of Buner. He would certainly
+take the road which leads from Malakand to the Indus, on which lies
+Rustam. It has always been a great high-road. One of the most
+interesting discoveries in connection with the Tirah campaign was the
+old Buddhist road, well engineered and well graded, which leads from
+Malakand to the plains of the Punjab--those northern plains which
+abound with Buddhist relics. If we identify Bazar, or Rustam, with
+Bazireh we may assume with certainty that a retreating tribe, driven
+from any field of defeat on the straight high-road which links
+Panjkora with the Indus, would inevitably retire to the nearest and
+the highest mountain ridge that was within reach. This is certainly
+the ridge terminating with Mahaban and flanking the Buner valley on
+the south, a refuge in time of trouble for many a lawless people.
+Probability, then, would seem to favour Mahaban, or some mountain
+position near it. The modern name of this peak is Shah Kot, and it is
+occupied by a mixed and irregular folk. Here Dr. Stein spent an
+unhappy night in a whirling snow-storm, but he succeeded in examining
+the mountain thoroughly. He decided that that position of Mahaban
+could not possibly represent Aornos, for the following reasons:--The
+hill-top is too narrow for military action; the ascent, instead of
+being difficult, is easy from every side; and there is no spring of
+water on the summit, which summit must have been a very considerable
+plateau to admit of the action described; finally, there is no great
+ravine, and therefore no opportunity for the erection of the mound
+described by Arrian, which enabled the Greeks to fusilade the enemy's
+camp with darts and stones. Can we reconcile these discrepancies with
+the text of history?
+
+After the reduction of Bazira Alexander marched towards the Indus and
+received the submission of Peukelaotis, which was then the capital of
+what is now, roughly speaking, the Peshawur district. The site of this
+ancient capital appears to be ascertained beyond doubt, and we must
+regard it as fixed near Charsadda, about 17 miles north-east (not
+north-west as M'Crindle has it) from Peshawur. From this place
+Alexander marched to Embolina, which is said to be a city close
+adjoining the rock of Aornos. On the route thither he is said by
+Arrian to have taken "many other small towns seated upon that river,"
+_i.e_. the Indus; two princes of that province, Cophaeus and Assagetes,
+accompanying him. This sufficiently indicates that his march must have
+been up the right bank of the Indus, which would be the natural route
+for him to follow. Arrived at Embolina, he arranged for a base of
+supplies at that point, and then, with "Archers, Agrians, Caenus'
+Troop" and the choicest, best armed, and most expeditious foot out of
+the whole army, besides 200 auxiliary horse and 100 equestrian
+archers, he marched towards the "rock" (8 miles distant), and on the
+first day chose a place convenient for an encampment. The day after,
+he pitched his tents much higher. The ancient Embolina may not be the
+modern Amb, but Amb undoubtedly is an extremely probable site for such
+a base of supplies to be formed, whether the final objective were
+Mahaban or any place (as suggested by Stein) higher up the river. The
+fact that there is a similarity in the names Amb and Embolina need not
+militate against the adoption of the site of Amb as by far the most
+probable that any sagacious military commander would select. A mere
+resemblance between the ancient and modern names of places may, of
+course, be most deceptive. On the other hand it is often a most
+valuable indication, and one certainly not to be neglected.
+Place-names last with traditional tenacity in the East, and obscured
+as they certainly would be by Greek transliteration (after all, not
+worse than British transliteration), they still offer a chance of
+identifying old positions such as nothing else can offer excepting
+accurate topographical description. Once again, if Embolina were not
+Amb it certainly ought to have been.
+
+Alexander's next movements from Embolina most clearly indicate that he
+had to deal with a mountain position. There is no getting away from
+it, nor from the fact that the road to it was passable for horsemen,
+and therefore not insuperably difficult. At the same time he had to
+move as slowly as any modern force would move, for he was traversing
+the rough spurs of a hill which ran to 7800 feet in altitude. Further,
+the mountain was high enough to render signalling by fire useful. The
+"rock" was obviously either a mountain itself or it was perched on the
+summit of a mountain. Ptolemy as usual had conducted the
+reconnaissance. He established himself unobserved in a temporary
+position on the crest, within reach of the enemy, who attempted to
+dispossess him and failed; and it was he who (according to the story)
+signalled to Alexander. Ptolemy had followed a route, with guides,
+which proved rough and difficult, and Alexander's attempt to join him
+next day was prevented by the fierce activity of the mountaineers, who
+were plainly fighting from the mountain spurs. Then, it is said,
+Alexander communicated with Ptolemy by night and arranged a combined
+plan of attack. When it "was almost night" of the following day
+Alexander succeeded in joining Ptolemy, but only after severe fighting
+during the ascent. Then the combined forces attacked the "rock" and
+failed. All this so far is plain unvarnished mountain warfare, and the
+incidents follow each other as naturally as in any modern campaign. It
+becomes clear that the "rock" was a position on the crest of a high
+mountain, the ascent of which was rendered doubly difficult by fierce
+opposition. But it was practicable. Nothing is said about cavalry
+ascending. Why, then, did Alexander take cavalry? This question leads
+to another. Why do our frontier generals always burden themselves with
+cavalry on these frontier expeditions? They cannot act on the
+mountain-sides, and they are useless for purposes of pursuit. The
+answer is that they are most valuable for preserving the line of
+communication. Without the cavalry Alexander had no overwhelming force
+at his disposal, and it would not be very hazardous if we assumed that
+the force which actually reached the crest of the mountain was a
+comparatively small one--much of the original brigade being dispersed
+on the route.
+
+Dr. Stein found the ascent too easy to reconcile with history. This
+might possibly be the effect of long weather action of the slopes of
+mountains subject to severe snow-falls. Twenty-three centuries of wind
+and weather have beaten on those scarred and broken slopes since
+Alexander's day. Those twenty-three centuries have had such effect on
+the physical outlines of land conformation elsewhere as absolutely to
+obliterate the tracks over which the Greek force most undoubtedly
+passed. What may have been the exact effect of them on Mahaban,
+whether (as usual) they rounded off sharp edges, cut out new channels,
+obliterated some water springs and gave rise to others, smoothing
+down the ruggedness of spurs and shaping the drainage, we cannot say.
+Only it is certain that the slopes of Mahaban--and its crest for that
+matter--are not what they were twenty-three centuries ago. We shall
+never recognize Aornos by its superficial features. Then, in the Greek
+story, follows the episode of filling up the great ravine which yawned
+between the Greek position and the "rock" on which the tribespeople
+were massed, and the final abandonment of the latter when, after three
+days' incessant toil, a mound had been raised from which it could be
+assailed by the darts and missiles of the Greeks. Arrian tells the
+story with a certain amount of detail. He states that a "huge rampart"
+was raised "from the level of that part of the hill where their
+entrenchment was" by means of "poles and stakes," the whole being
+"perfected in three days." On the fourth day the Greeks began to build
+a "mound opposite the rock," and Alexander decided to extend the
+"Rampart" to the mound. It was then that the "Barbarians" decided to
+surrender.
+
+In the particular translation from which I have quoted (Rookes, 1829)
+there is nothing said about the "great ravine" of which Stein writes
+that it is clearly referred to by "all texts," and a very little
+consideration will show that it could never have existed. No matter
+what might have been the strength of Alexander's force it could only
+have been numbered by hundreds and not by thousands, when it reached
+the summit of the mountain. We might refer to the modern analogy of
+the expedition to the summit of the Takht-i-Suliman, where it was
+found quite impossible to maintain a few companies of infantry for
+more than two or three days. Numbers engaged in action are
+proverbially exaggerated, especially in the East; but the physical
+impossibility of keeping a large force on the top of a mountain must
+certainly be acknowledged. Even supposing there were a thousand men,
+and that no guards were required, and no reliefs, and that the whole
+force could apply themselves to filling up a "large ravine" with such
+"stakes and poles" as they could carry or drag from the
+mountain-slopes, it would take three months rather than three days to
+fill up any ravine which could possibly be called "large." General
+Abbott, as a scientific officer, was probably quite correct in his
+estimate of the "Rampart" as some sort of a "trench of approach with a
+parapet." There could not possibly have been a "great mound built of
+stakes and poles for crossing a ravine." It may be noted that
+Ptolemy's defensive work on his first arrival on the summit is called
+(or translated) "Rampart," and yet we know that it could only have
+been a palisade or an abattis. The story told by Arrian (and possibly
+maltreated by translators) is doubtless full of inaccuracies and
+exaggerations, but we decline to believe that it is pure invention.
+There is nothing in it, so far, which absolutely militates against the
+Mahaban of to-day (that refuge for Hindustani fanatics at one time,
+and for the discontented tribesfolk of the whole countryside through
+all time) being the Aornos of Arrian. No appearance of "precipices"
+is, however, to be found in the survey of the summit which accompanied
+Dr. Stein's report, and no opportunity for the defeated tribesmen to
+fall into the river. The story runs that the defeated mountaineers
+retreating from the victorious Greeks fell over the precipices in
+their hot haste, and that many of them were drowned in the Indus. This
+is indeed an incident which might be added as an effective addition to
+any tall story of a fight which took place on hills in the immediate
+neighbourhood of a river; but under no conceivable circumstances could
+it be adjusted to the formation of the Mahaban hill, even if it were
+admitted that armoured Greeks were any match in the hills for the
+fleet-footed and light-clad Indians. Probably the incident is purely
+decorative, but we need not therefore assume that the whole story is
+fiction. It has been pointed out by Sir Bindon Blood, who commanded
+the latest expedition to the Buner valley, that failing Mahaban there
+is north of the Buner River, immediately overlooking the Indus, a peak
+called Baio with precipitous flanks on the river side, which would fit
+in with the tale of Aornos better even than Mahaban. The Buner River
+joins the Indus through an impassable gorge steeply entrenched on
+either side, and a mile or two above it is the peak of Baio. So far as
+the Indus is concerned, that river presents no difficulties, for boats
+can be hauled up it far beyond Baio--even to Thakot. Looking northward
+or westward from above Kotkai one sees the river winding round the
+foot of the lower spurs of the Black Mountain on its left or eastern
+bank. Beyond is Baio on its right bank, towering (with a clumsy fort
+on its summit) over the Indus and forming part of a continuous ridge,
+beyond which again in the blue distance is the line of hills over
+which is the Ambela Pass at the head of the Chumla valley. (It is
+curious how the nomenclature hereabouts echoes faintly the Greek
+Embolina.) Above Baio is the ford of Chakesar, from which runs an
+old-time road westward to Manglaor, once the Buddhist capital of Swat.
+It would be all within reach of either Indians or Greeks, so we need
+not quite give up the thrilling tale of Aornos yet, even if Dr. Stein
+defeats us on Mahaban.
+
+Then follows the narrative of an excursion into the country of the
+Assakenoi and the capture of the elephants, which had been taken for
+safety into the hills. The scene of this short expedition must have
+been near the Indus, and was probably the valley of the Chumla or
+Buner immediately under Mahaban, to the north. There was in those
+far-off days a different class of vegetation on the Indus banks to
+any which exists at present. We know that a good deal of the Indus
+plain below its debouchment from the hills was a reedy swamp in
+Alexander's time, and it was certainly the haunt of the rhinoceros for
+centuries subsequently, and consequently quite suitable for elephants,
+and it is probable that for some little distance above its debouchment
+the same sort of pasturage was obtainable. Most interesting perhaps of
+all the incidents in Arrian's history is that which now follows. We
+are told that "Alexander then entered that part of the country which
+lies between the Kophen and the Indus, where Nysa is said to be
+situate." Other authorities, however, Curtius (viii. 10), Strabo (xv.
+697), and Justin (xii. 7), make him a visitor to Nysa before he
+crossed the Choaspes and took Massaga. All this is very vague; the
+river he crossed immediately before taking Massaga was certainly the
+Gauraios or Panjkora.
+
+There is a certain element of confusion in classical writings in
+dealing with river names which we need not wait to investigate; nor is
+it a matter of great importance whether Alexander retraced his steps
+all the way to the country of Nysa (for no particular reason), or
+whether he visited Nysa as he passed from the Kunar valley to the
+Panjkora. The latter is far more probable, as Nysa (if we have
+succeeded in identifying that interesting relic of pre-Alexandrian
+Greek occupation) would be right in his path. Various authorities have
+placed Nysa in different parts of the wide area indicated as lying
+between the Kophen (Kabul) and the Indus, but none, before the Asmar
+Boundary Commission surveyed the Kunar valley in the year 1894, had
+the opportunity of studying the question _in loco_. Even then there
+was no possibility of reaching the actual site which was indicated as
+the site of Nysa; and when subsequently in 1898 geographical surveys
+of Swat were pushed forward wherever it was possible for surveyors to
+obtain a footing, they never approached that isolated band of hills at
+the foot of which Nysa once lay. The result of inquiries instituted
+during the progress of demarcating the boundary between Afghanistan
+and the independent districts of the east from Asmar have been given
+in the _R.G.S. Journal_, vol. vii., and no subsequent information has
+been obtained which might lead me to modify the views therein
+expressed, excepting perhaps in the doubtful point as to _when_, in
+the course of his expedition, Alexander visited Nysa. In the first
+engraved Atlas sheet of the Indian Survey dealing with the regions
+east of the Kunar River, the name of Nysa, or Nyssa, is recorded as
+one of the most important places in that neighbourhood, and it is
+placed just south of the Koh-i-Mor, a spur, or extension, from the
+eastern ridges of the Kunar valley. From what source of information
+this addition to the map was made it is difficult to say, now that the
+first compiler of those maps (General Walker) has passed away. But it
+was undoubtedly a native source. Similarly the information obtained at
+Asmar, that a large and scattered village named _Nusa_ was to be found
+in that position, was also from a native (Yusufzai) source. No
+possible cause can be suggested for this agreement between the two
+native authorities, and it is unlikely that the name could have been
+invented by both. At the same time Nysa, or Nusa, is not now generally
+known to the borderland people near the Indian frontier, and it is
+certainly no longer an important village. It is probably no more than
+scattered and hidden ruins. Above it towers the three-peaked hill
+called the Koh-i-Mor, whose outlines can be clearly distinguished from
+Peshawur on any clear day, and on that hill grows the wild vine and
+the ivy, even as they grow in glorious trailing and exuberant masses
+on the scarped slopes of the Kafiristan hills to the west.
+
+We may repeat here what Arrian has to say about Nysa. "The city was
+built by Dionysos or Bacchus when he conquered the Indians, but who
+this Bacchus was, or at what time or from whence he conquered the
+Indians is hard to determine. Whether he was that Theban who from
+Thebes or he who from Tmolus, a mountain of Lydia, undertook that
+famous expedition into India ... is very uncertain." So here we have a
+clear reference to previous invasions of India from Greece, which were
+regarded as historical in Arrian's time. However, as soon as
+Alexander arrived at Nysa a deputation of Nysaeans, headed by one
+Akulphis, waited on him, and, after recovering from the astonishment
+that his extraordinary appearance inspired, they presented a petition.
+"The Nysaeans entreat thee O King, for the reverence thou bearest to
+Dionysos, their God, to leave their city untouched ... for Bacchus ...
+built this city for an habitation for such of his soldiers as age or
+accident had rendered unfit for military service.... He called this
+city Nysa (Nuson) after the name of his nurse ... and the mountain
+also, which is so near us, he would have denominated Meros (or the
+thigh) alluding to his birth from that of Jupiter ... and as an
+undoubted token that the place was founded by Bacchus, the ivy which
+is to be found nowhere else throughout all India, flourishes in our
+territories." Alexander was pleased to grant the petition, and ordered
+that a hundred of the chief citizens should join his camp and
+accompany him. It was then that Akulphis, with much native shrewdness,
+suggested that if he really had the good of the city at heart he
+should take two hundred of the worst citizens instead of one hundred
+of the best--a suggestion which appealed at once to Alexander's good
+sense, and the demand was withdrawn. Alexander then visited the
+mountain and sacrificed to Bacchus, his troops meanwhile making
+garlands of ivy "wherewith they crowned their heads, singing and
+calling loudly upon the god, not only by the name of Dionysos, but by
+all his other names." A sort of Bacchic orgy!
+
+But who were the Nysaeans, and what became of them? In Arrian's
+_Indika_ he says: "The Assakenoi" (who inhabited the Swat valley east
+of Nysa) "are not men of great stature like the Indians ... not so
+brave nor yet so swarthy as most Indians. They were in old times
+subject to the Assyrians; then after a period of Median rule submitted
+to the Persians ... the Nysaioi, however, are not an Indian race, but
+descendants of those who came to India with Dionysos"; he adds that
+the mountain "in the lower slopes of which Nysa is built" is
+designated Meros, and he clearly distinguishes between Assakenoi and
+Nysaioi. M. de St. Martin says that the name Nysa is of Persian or
+Median origin; but although we know that Assyrians, Persians, and
+Medes all overran this part of India before Alexander, and all must
+have left, as was the invariable custom of those days, representatives
+of their nationality behind them who have divided with subsequent
+Skyths the ethnographical origin of many of the Upper Indian valley
+tribes of to-day, there seems no sound reason for disputing the origin
+of this particular name.
+
+Ptolemy barely mentions Nysa, but we learn something about the Nysaeans
+from fragments of the _Indika_ of Megasthenes, which have been
+collected by Dr. Schwanbeck and translated by M'Crindle. We learn that
+this pre-Alexandrian Greek Dionysos was a most beneficent conqueror.
+He taught the Indians how to make wine and cultivate the fields; he
+introduced the system of retiring to the slopes of Meros (the first
+"hill station" in India) in the hot weather, where "the army recruited
+by the cold breezes and the water which flowed fresh from the
+fountains, recovered from sickness.... Having achieved altogether many
+great and noble works, he was regarded as a deity, and obtained
+immortal honours."
+
+Again we read, in a fragment quoted by Strabo, that the reason of
+calling the mountain above Nysa by the name of Meron was that "ivy
+grows there, and also the vine, although its fruit does not come to
+perfection, as the clusters, on account of the heaviness of the rains,
+fall off the trees before ripening. They" (the Greeks) "further call
+the Oxydrakai descendants of Dionysos, because the vine grew in their
+country, and their processions were conducted with great pomp, and
+their kings, on going forth to war, and on other occasions, marched in
+Bacchic fashion with drums beating," etc.
+
+Again we find, in a fragment quoted by Polyaenus, that Dionysos, "in
+his expedition against the Indians, in order that the cities might
+receive him willingly, disguised the arms with which he had equipped
+his troops, and made them wear soft raiment and fawn-skins. The spears
+were wrapped round with ivy, and the thyrsus had a sharp point. He
+gave the signal for battle by cymbals and drums instead of the
+trumpet; and, by regaling the enemy with wine, diverted their thoughts
+from war to dancing. These and all other Bacchic orgies were employed
+in the system of warfare by which he subjugated the Indians and the
+rest of Asia."
+
+All these lively legends point to a very early subjugation of India by
+a Western race (who may have been of Greek origin) before the
+invasions of Assyrian, Mede, or Persian. It could not well have been
+later than the sixth century B.C., and might have been earlier by many
+centuries. The Nysaeans, whose city Alexander spared, were the
+descendants of those conquerors who, coming from the West, were
+probably deterred by the heat of the plains of India from carrying
+their conquests south of the Punjab. They settled on the cool and
+well-watered slopes of those mountains which crown the uplands of Swat
+and Bajaur, where they cultivated the vine for generations, and after
+the course of centuries, through which they preserved the tradition of
+their Western origin, they welcomed the Macedonian conqueror as a man
+of their own faith and nation. It seems possible that they may have
+extended their habitat as far eastward as the upper Swat valley and
+the mountain region of the Indus, and at one time may have occupied
+the site of the ancient capital of the Assakenoi, Massaga, which there
+is reason to suppose stood near the position now occupied by the town
+of Matakanai; but they were clearly no longer there in the days of
+Alexander, and must be distinguished as a separate race altogether
+from the Assakenoi. As the centuries rolled on, this district of Swat,
+together with the valley of Dir, became a great headquarters of
+Buddhism. It is from this part of the trans-frontier that some of the
+most remarkable of those sculptures have been taken which exhibit so
+strong a Greek and Roman influence in their design. They are the
+undoubted relics of stupas, dagobas, and monasteries belonging to a
+period of a Buddhist occupation of the country, which was established
+after Alexander's time. Buddhism did not become a State religion till
+the reign of Asoka, grandson of that Sandrakottos (Chandragupta) to
+whom Megasthenes was sent as ambassador; and it is improbable that any
+of these buildings existed in the time of the Greek invasion, or we
+should certainly have heard of them.
+
+But along with these Buddhist relics there have been lately unearthed
+certain strange inscriptions, which have been submitted by their
+discoverer, Major Deane,[2] to a congress of Orientalists, who can
+only pronounce them to be in an unknown tongue. They have been found
+in the Indus valley east of Swat, most of them being engraved on stone
+slabs which have been built into towers, now in ruins. The towers are
+comparatively modern, but it by no means follows that these
+inscriptions are so. It is the common practice of Pathan builders to
+preserve any engraved or sculptured relic that they may find, by
+utilizing them as ornamental features in their buildings. It has
+probably been a custom from time immemorial. In 1895 I observed
+evidences of this propensity in the graveyard at Chagan Sarai, in the
+Kunar valley, where many elaborately carved Buddhist fragments were
+let into the sides of their roughly built "chabutras," or sepulchres,
+with the obvious purpose of gaining effect thereby. No one would say
+where those Buddhist fragments came from. The Kunar valley appears at
+first sight to be absolutely free from Buddhist remains, although it
+would naturally be selected as a most likely field for research. These
+undeciphered inscriptions may possibly be found to be vastly more
+ancient than the towers they adorned. It is, at any rate, a notable
+fact about them that some of them "recall a Greek alphabet of archaic
+type." So great an authority as M. Senart inclines to the opinion that
+their authors must be referred to the Skythic or Mongolian invaders of
+India; but he refers at the same time to a sculptured and inscribed
+monument in the Louvre, of unknown origin, the characters on which
+resemble those of the new script. "The subject of this sculpture seems
+to be a Bacchic procession." What if it really is a Bacchic
+procession, and the characters thereon inscribed prove to be an
+archaic form of Greek--the forgotten forms of the Nysaean alphabet?
+
+Whilst surveying in the Kunar valley along the Kafiristan borderland,
+I made the acquaintance of two Kafirs of Kamdesh, who stayed some
+little time in the Afghan camp, in which my own tent was pitched, and
+who were objects of much interest to the members of the Boundary
+Commission there assembled. They submitted gracefully enough to much
+cross-examination, and amongst other things they sang a war-hymn to
+their god Gish, and executed a religious dance. Gish is not supreme in
+their mythology, but he is the god who receives by far the greatest
+amount of attention, for the Kafir of the lower Bashgol is ever on the
+raid, always on the watch for the chance of a Mahomedan life. It is,
+indeed, curious that whilst tolerant enough to allow of the existence
+of Mahomedan communities in their midst, they yet rank the life of a
+Mussulman as the one great object of attainment; so that a Kafir's
+social position is dependent on the activity he displays in searching
+out the common enemy, and his very right to sing hymns of adoration to
+his war-god is strictly limited by the number of lives he has taken.
+The hymn which these Kafirs recited, or sang, was translated word by
+word, with the aid of a Chitrali interpreter, by a Munshi, who has the
+reputation of being a most careful interpreter, and the following is
+almost a literal transcript, for which I am indebted to Dr. MacNab, of
+the Q.O. Corps of Guides:--
+
+     O thou who from Gir-Nysa's (lofty heights) was born
+     Who from its sevenfold portals didst emerge,
+     On Katan Chirak thou hast set thine eyes,
+     Towards (the depths of) Sum Bughal dost go,
+     In Sum Baral assembled you have been.
+     Sanji from the heights you see; Sanji you consult?
+     The council sits. O mad one, whither goest thou?
+     Say, Sanji, why dost thou go forth?
+
+The words within brackets are introduced, otherwise the translation is
+literal. Gir-Nysa means the mountain of Nysa, Gir being a common
+prefix denoting a peak or hill. Katan Chirak is explained to be an
+ancient town in the Minjan valley of Badakshan, now in ruins; but it
+was the first large place that the Kafirs captured, and is apparently
+held to be symbolical of victory. This reference connects the Kamdesh
+Kafirs with Badakshan, and shows these people to have been more
+widespread than they are at present. Sum Bughal is a deep ravine
+leading down to the plain of Sum Baral, where armies are assembled for
+war. Sanji appears to be the oracle consulted before war is
+undertaken. The chief interest of this verse (for I believe it is only
+one verse of many, but it was all that our friends were entitled to
+repeat) is the obvious reference in the first line to the mountain of
+Bacchus, the Meros from which he was born, on the slopes of which
+stood the ancient Nysa. It is, indeed, a Bacchic hymn (slightly
+incoherent, perhaps, as is natural), and only wants the accessories of
+vine-leaves and ivy to make it entirely classical.
+
+That eminent linguistic authority, Dr. Grierson, thinks that the
+language in which the hymn was recited is derived from what Sanscrit
+writers said was the language of the Pisacas, a people whom they
+dubbed "demons" and "eaters of raw flesh," and who may be represented
+by the "Pashai" dwellers in Laghman and its vicinity to-day. Possibly
+the name of the chief village of the Kunar valley Pashat may claim the
+same origin, for Laghman and Kunar both spread their plains to the
+foot of the mountains of Kafiristan.
+
+The vine and the ivy are not far to seek. In making slow progress
+through one of the deep "darras," or ravines, of the western Kunar
+basin, leading to the snow-bound ridges that overlook Bashgol, I was
+astonished at the free growth of the wild vine, and the thick masses
+of ivy which here and there clung to the buttresses of the rugged
+mountain spurs as ivy clings to less solid ruins in England. The
+Kafirs have long been celebrated for their wine-making. Early in the
+nineteenth century, when the adventurer Baber, on his way to found the
+most magnificent dynasty that India has ever seen at Delhi, first
+captured the ancient city of Bajaor, and then moved on to the valley
+of Jandoul--now made historic by another adventurer, Umra Khan--he was
+perpetually indulging in drinking-parties; and he used to ride in from
+Jandoul to Bajaor to join his cronies in a real good Bacchic orgy more
+frequently than was good for him. He has a good deal to say about the
+Kafir wine in that inimitable Diary of his, and his appreciation of
+it was not great. It was, however, much better than nothing, and he
+drank a good deal of it. Through the kindness of the Sipah Salar, the
+Amir's commander-in-chief, I have had the opportunity of tasting the
+best brand of this classical liquor, and I agree with Baber--it is not
+of a high class. It reminded me of badly corked and muddy Chablis,
+which it much resembled in appearance.
+
+  [Illustration: GREEK RETREAT FROM INDIA]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Ancient India_, "Invasion by Alexander the Great." Appendix.
+
+[2] The late Sir H. Deane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GREEK EXPLORATION--THE WESTERN GATES OF INDIA
+
+
+South of the Khaibar route from Peshawur to Kabul and separated from
+it by the remarkable straight-backed range of Sufed Koh, is an
+alternative route _via_ the Kuram valley, at the head of which is the
+historic Peiwar Pass. From the crest of the rigid line of the Sufed
+Koh one may look down on either valley, the Kabul to the north or the
+Kuram to the south; and but for the lack of any convenient lateral
+communications between them, the two might be regarded as a twin
+system, with Kabul as the common objective. But there is no
+practicable pass across the Sufed Koh, so that no force moving along
+either line could depend on direct support from the other side of the
+mountains. It will be convenient here to regard the Kuram as an
+alternative to the Kabul route, and to consider the two together as
+forming a distinct group.
+
+The next important link between Afghanistan and the Indian frontier
+south of the Kuram, is the open ramp of the Tochi valley. The Tochi
+does not figure largely in history, but it has been utilized in the
+past for sudden raids from Ghazni in spite of the difficulties which
+Nature has strewn about its head. The Tochi, and the Gomul River south
+of it, must be regarded as highways to Ghazni, but there is no
+comparison between the two as regards their facilities or the amount
+of traffic which they carry. All the carrying trade of the Ghazni
+province is condensed into the narrow ways of the Gomul. Trade in the
+Tochi hardly extends farther than the villages at its head. About the
+Gomul there hangs many a tale of adventure, albeit adventure of rather
+ancient date, for it is exceedingly doubtful if any living European
+has ever trod more than the lower steps of that ancient staircase.
+Then, south of the Gomul, there follows a whole series of minor passes
+and byways wriggling through the clefts of the mountains, scrambling
+occasionally over the sharp ridges, but generally adhering closely to
+the line of some fierce little stream, which has either split its way
+through the successive walls of rock offered by the parallel uptilted
+ridges, or else was there, flowing gently down from the highlands,
+before these ridges were tilted into their present position. There are
+many such streams, and the history of their exploration is to be found
+in the modern Archives of the Survey of India. They may have been used
+for centuries by roving bands of frontier raiders, but they have no
+history to speak of. South of the Gomul, they all connect Baluchistan
+with India, for Baluchistan begins, politically, from the Gomul; and
+they are of minor importance because, by grace of the determined
+policy of the great maker of the Baluch frontier, Sir Robert Sandeman,
+their back doors and small beginnings in the Baluch highlands are all
+linked up by a line of posts which runs from Quetta to the Gomul _via_
+the Zhob valley. Whoever holds the two ends of the Zhob holds the key
+of all these back doors. There is not much to be said about them. No
+great halo of historical romance hangs around them; and yet the stern
+grandeur of some of these waterways of the frontier hills is well
+worth a better descriptive pen than mine. I know of one, in the depths
+of a fathomless abyss, whose waters rage in wild fury over fantastic
+piles of boulders, tossing up feathers of white spray to make glints
+of light on the smooth apron of the limestone walls which enclose and
+overshadow it, which is matchless in its weird beauty. From rounded
+sun-kissed uplands, where olive groves shelve down long spurs, the
+waters come, and with a gradually deepening and strengthening rush
+they swirl into the embrace of the echoing hills, passing with swift
+transition from a sunny stream to a boiling fury of turgid water under
+the rugged cliffs of the pine-clad Takht-i-Suliman. Then the stream
+sets out again, babbling sweetly as it goes, into the open, just a
+dimpled stream, leaving lonely pools in silent places on its way, and
+breaking up into a hundred streamlets to gladden the mountain people
+with the gift of irrigation.
+
+It is impossible to describe these frontier waterways. There is
+nothing like them to be found amidst scenes less wild and less
+fantastic than their frontier cradles. But full of local light and
+colour (and local tragedy too) as they surely are, they are
+unimportant in the military economy of the frontier, and their very
+wildness and impassability have saved them from the steps of the great
+horde of Indian immigrants. When, however, we reach still farther
+southward to the straight passes leading to Quetta, we are once again
+in a land of history. It is there we find by far the most open gates
+and those most difficult to shut, although the value of them as
+military approaches is very largely discounted by the geographical
+conditions of Western India at the point where they open on to the
+Indus frontier.
+
+Quetta, Kalat, and Las Bela, standing nearly in line from north to
+south, are the watch-towers of the western marches. Quetta and Kalat
+stand high, surrounded by wild hill country. Magnificent cliff-crowned
+mountains overlooking a wilderness of stone-strewed spurs embrace the
+little flat plain on which Quetta lies crumpled. Here and there on the
+plain an isolated smooth excrescence denotes an extinct volcano. Such
+is the Miri, now converted into the protecting fort of Quetta. The
+road from Quetta to the north-west, _i.e._ to Kandahar and Herat, has
+to pass through a narrow hill-enclosed space some eight miles from
+Quetta; and this physical gateway is strengthened and protected by all
+the devices of which military engineering skill is capable, whilst
+midway between Quetta and Kandahar is the formidable Khojak range
+which must always have been a trouble to buccaneers from the
+north-west. From Quetta to the south-east extends that road and that
+railway which, intersecting the complicated rampart of frontier hills,
+finally debouches into the desert plains round Jacobabad in Sind.
+Kalat is somewhat similarly situated. High amongst the mountains,
+Kalat also commands the approaches to an important pass to the plains,
+_i.e._ the Mula, a pass which in times gone by was a commercial
+high-road, but which has long been superseded by the Quetta passes of
+Harnai and Bolan (or Mashkaf). Las Bela is an insignificant Baluch
+town in the valley of the Purali, and at present commands nothing of
+value. But it was not always insignificant, as we shall see, and if
+its military value is not great at present, Las Bela must have stood
+full in the tide of human immigration to India for centuries in the
+past. It is a true gateway, and the story of it belongs to a period
+more ancient than any.
+
+Owing to the peculiar geographical conformation of the country, Quetta
+holds in her keeping all the approaches from the west, thus
+safeguarding Kalat. The Kalat fortress is only of minor importance as
+the guardian of the Mula stairway to the plains of India. It is the
+extraordinary conformation of ridge and valley which forms the great
+defensive wall of the southern frontier. Only where this wall is
+traversed by streams which break through the successive ridges
+gathering countless affluents from left and right in their
+course--affluents which are often as straight and rectangular to the
+main stream as the branches of a pear-tree trained on a wall are to
+the parent stem--is it possible to find an open road from the plains
+to the plateau.
+
+For very many miles north of Karachi the plains of Sind are faced by a
+solid wall of rock, so rigid, so straight and unscalable (this is the
+Kirthar range) as to form a veritably impracticable barrier. There is
+but one crack in it. For a short space at its southern end, however,
+it subsides into a series of minor ridges, and it is here that the
+connection between Karachi and Las Bela is to be found. These southern
+Las Bela approaches (about which there is more to be said) are not
+only the oldest, but they have been the most persistently trodden of
+any in the frontier, and they would be just as important in future as
+they have been in the past but for their geographical position. They
+are commanded from the sea. No one making for the Indus plains can
+again utilize these approaches who does not hold command of the
+Arabian Sea. In this way, and to this extent, the command of the
+Arabian Sea and of the Persian Gulf beyond it becomes vitally
+important to the security of India. Omitting for the present the Gomul
+gateway (the story of the exploration of which belongs to a later
+chapter), and in order to preserve something of chronological sequence
+in this book, it is these most southern of the Baluchistan passes
+which now claim our attention.
+
+Until quite lately these seaboard approaches to India have been almost
+ignored by historians and military strategists (doubtless because so
+little was known about them), and the pages of recent text-books are
+silent concerning them. They lead outwards from the lower Indus
+valleys through Makran, either into Persia or to the coast ports of
+the Arabian Sea. From extreme Western Persia to the frontiers of India
+at Quetta, or indeed to the Indus delta, it is possible for a laden
+camel to take its way with care and comfort, never meeting a
+formidable pass, never dragging its weary limbs up any too steep
+incline, with regular stages and more or less good pasturage through
+all the 1400 or 1500 miles which intervene between Western Persia and
+Las Bela. From the pleasant palm groves of Panjgur in Makran to India,
+it might indeed be well to have an efficient local guide, and indeed
+from Las Bela to Karachi the road is not to be taken quite haphazard;
+nevertheless, if the camel-driver knew his way, he could not only
+lead his charge comfortably along a well-trodden route, but he might
+turn chauffeur at the end of his long march and drive an exploring
+party back in a motor.
+
+In the illimitable past it was this way that Dravidian peoples flocked
+down from Asiatic highlands to the borderland of India. Some of them
+remained for centuries either on the coast-line, where they built
+strange dwellings and buried each other in earthen pots, or they were
+entangled in the mass of frontier hills which back the solid Kirthar
+ridge, and stayed there till a Turco-Mongol race, the Brahuis (or
+Barohis, _i.e._ "men of the hills"), overlaid them, and intermixing
+with them preserved the Dravidian language, but lost the Dravidian
+characteristics. According to their own traditions a large number of
+these Brahuis were implanted in their wild and almost inaccessible
+hills by the conqueror Chenghiz Khan, and some of them call themselves
+Mingals, or Mongols, to this day. This seems likely to be true. It is
+always best to assume in the first instance that a local tradition
+firmly held and strongly asserted has a basis of fact to support it.
+Here are a people who have been an ethnological puzzle for many years,
+talking the language of Southern Indian tribes, but protesting that
+they are Mongols. Like the degenerate descendants of the Greeks in the
+extreme north-west, or like the mixed Arab peoples of the Makran coast
+and Baluchistan, these half-bred Mongols have preserved the
+traditions of their fathers and adopted the tongue of their mothers.
+It is strange how soon a language may be lost that is not preserved by
+the women! What we learn from the Brahuis is that a Dravidian race
+must once have been where they are now, and this supports the theory
+now generally admitted, that the Dravidian peoples of India entered
+India by these western gateways.
+
+No more interesting ethnographical inquiry could be found in relation
+to the people of India than how these races, having got thus far on
+their way, ever succeeded in getting to the south of the peninsula. It
+could only have been the earliest arrivals on the frontier who passed
+on. Later arrivals from Western Persia (amongst whom we may reckon the
+Medes or Meds) remained in the Indus valley. The bar to frontier
+progress lies in the desert which stretches east of the Indus from the
+coast to the land of the five rivers. This is indeed India's second
+line of defence, and it covers a large extent of her frontier.
+Conquerors of the lower Indus valley have been obliged to follow up
+the Indus to the Punjab before striking eastwards for the great cities
+of the plains. Thus it is not only the Indus, but the desert behind
+it, which has barred the progress of immigration and conquest from
+time immemorial, and it is this, combined with the command given by
+the sea, which differentiates these southern gates of India from the
+northern, which lead on by open roads to Lahore, Delhi, and the heart
+of India.
+
+The answer to the problem of immigration is probably simple. There was
+a time when the great rivers of India did not follow their courses as
+they do now. This was most recently the case as regards the Indus and
+the rivers of Central India. In the days when there was no Indus delta
+and the Indus emptied itself into the great sandy depression of the
+Rann of Katch, another great lost river from the north-east, the
+Saraswati, fed the Indus, and between them the desert area was
+immensely reduced if it did not altogether disappear. Then, possibly,
+could the cairn-erecting stone-monument building Dravidian sneak his
+way along the west coast within sight of the sea, and there indeed has
+he left his monuments behind him. Otherwise the Dravidian element of
+Central Southern India could only have been gathered from beyond the
+seas; a proposition which it is difficult to believe. However, never
+since that desert strip was formed which now flanks the Indus to the
+east can there have been a right-of-way to the heart of India by the
+gateways of the west. The earliest exploration of these western roads,
+of which we can trace any distinct record, was once again due to the
+enterprise of the Greeks. We need not follow Alexander's victorious
+footsteps through India, nor concern ourselves with the voyage of his
+fleet down the Indus, and from the mouth of the Indus to Karachi.
+General Haig, in his pamphlet on the Indus delta, has traced out his
+route[3] with patient care, demonstrating from observations taken
+during the course of his surveys the probable position of the
+coast-line in those early days.
+
+From Karachi to the Persian Gulf, a voyage undertaken 300 years B.C.,
+of which a log has been kept from day to day, is necessarily of
+exceeding interest, if only as an indication of a few of the changes
+which have altered the form of that coast-line in the course of
+twenty-two centuries. This old route from Arabia to the west coast of
+India can hardly be left unnoticed, for it illustrates the earliest
+beginning of those sea ways to India which were destined finally to
+supplant the land ways altogether. I have already pointed out that,
+judged by the standard of geographical aptitude only, there is no
+great difficulty in reaching Persia from Karachi. But geographical
+distribution of mountain, river, and plain is not all that is
+necessary to take into account in planning an expedition into new
+territory. There is also the question of supplies. This was the rock
+on which Alexander's enterprise split. In moving out of India towards
+Persia he adopted the same principle which had stood him in good stead
+on the Indus, viz. the maintenance of communication between army and
+fleet. Naturally he elected to retire from India by a route which as
+far as possible touched the sea. This was his fatal mistake, and it
+cost him half his force.
+
+We need not trouble ourselves further with the ethnographical
+conditions of that extraordinary country, Makran, in Alexander's time;
+nor need we follow in detail the changes which have taken place in the
+general configuration of the coast-line between India and the Persian
+Gulf during the last 2000 years, references to which will be found in
+the _Journal of the Royal Society of Arts_ for April 1901. Apart from
+the enormous extension of the Indus delta, and in spite of the
+disappearance of many small islands off the coast, the general result
+has been a material gain by the land on the sea in all this part of
+the Asiatic coast-line.
+
+Alexander left Patala about the beginning of September 326 B.C. to
+push his way through the country of the Arabii and Oritae to Gadrosia
+(or Makran) and Persia. The Arabii occupied the country between
+Karachi and the Purali (or river of Las Bela), and the Oritae and
+Gadrosii apparently combined with other tribes to hold the country
+that lay beyond the Purali (or Arabius). He had previously done all
+that a good general can do to ensure the success of his movements by
+personally reconnoitring all the approaches to the sea by the various
+branches of the Indus; by pacifying the people and consolidating his
+sovereignty at Patala so as to leave a strong position behind him
+entirely subject to Greek authority; and by dividing his force so as
+to utilize the various arms with the best possible effect. This force
+was comprised in three divisions; one under Krateros included the
+heavy transport and invalids, and this was despatched to Persia by a
+route which was evidently as well known in that day as it is at
+present. It is never contended by any historian that Alexander did not
+know his way out of India. On the contrary, Arrian distinctly
+insinuates that it was the perversity of pride, the "ambition to be
+doing something new and astonishing" which "prevailed over all his
+scruples" and decided him to send his crank Indus-built galleys to the
+Euphrates by sea, and himself to prove that such an army led by "such
+a general" could force a passage through the Makran wilderness where
+the only previous records were those of disaster. He had heard that
+Cyrus and Semiramis had failed, and that decided him to make the
+attempt.
+
+We can follow Krateros no farther than to point out that his route was
+by the Mulla (and not the Bolan) Pass to Kalat and Quetta. Thence he
+must have taken the Kandahar route to the Helmund, and following that
+river down to the fertile and well-populated plains of lower Seistan
+(or Drangia) he crossed the Kirman desert by a well-known modern
+caravan route, and joined Alexander at or near Kirman; for Alexander
+was "on his way to Karmania" at the time that Krateros joined him, and
+not at Pura (the capital of the Gadrosii) as suggested by St. John.
+One interesting little relic of this march was dug up by Captain
+Mackenzie, R.E., during the construction of the fort on the Miri at
+Quetta. A small bronze figure of Hercules was brought to light, and it
+now rests in the Asiatic Society's Museum at Calcutta.
+
+Alexander, as we have said, left Patala about the beginning of
+September. But where was Patala? Probably it was neither Hyderabad (as
+suggested by General Cunningham) nor Tatta (as upheld by other
+authorities), but about 30 miles S.E. of the former and 60 miles
+E.N.E. of the latter, in which locality, indeed, there are ruins
+enough to satisfy any theory. From Patala we are told by Arrian that
+he marched with a sufficient force to the Arabius; and that is all.
+But from Quintus Curtius we learn that it was nine marches to Krokala
+(a point easier of identification than most, from the preservation of
+the name which survived through mediaeval ages in the Karak--the
+much-dreaded pirate of the coast--and can now be recognized in
+Karachi) and five marches thence to the Arabius. He started in cool
+monsoon weather. His route, after leaving Krokala, is determined by
+the natural features of the country as then existing. There was no
+shore route in these days. Alexander followed the subsequent mediaeval
+route which connected Makran with Sind in the days of Arab ascendancy,
+a route that has been used as a highway into India for nearly eight
+centuries. It is not the route which now connects Karachi and Las
+Bela, but belongs to the later mediaeval phase of history. As the sea
+then extended at least to Liari, in the basin of the Purali or
+Arabius, we are obliged to locate the position of his crossing that
+river as being not far south of Las Bela; where in Alexander's time it
+was "neither wide nor deep," and in these days is almost entirely
+absorbed in irrigation. This does not, I admit, altogether tally with
+the five marches of Quintus Curtius. It would amount to over a hundred
+miles of marching, some of which would be heavy, though not very much
+of it; but the discrepancy is not a serious one. The Arabius may have
+been far to the east of its present channel--indeed, there are old
+channels which indicate that it was so, and it does not follow that
+the river was crossed at the point at which it was struck. The reason
+for placing this crossing so far north is that room is required for
+subsequent operations. After crossing, we are told that Alexander
+"turned to his left towards the sea" (from which he was evidently
+distant some space), and with a picked force he made a sudden descent
+on the Oritae. He marched one night only through desert country and in
+the morning came to a well-inhabited district. Pushing on with cavalry
+only, he defeated the Oritae, and then later joining hands with the
+rest of his forces, he penetrated to their capital city. For these
+operations he must necessarily have been hedged in between the Purali
+and Hala range, which he clearly had not crossed as yet. Now we are
+expressly told by Arrian that the capital city of the Oritae was but a
+village that did duty for the capital, and that the name of it was
+Rambakia. The care of it was committed to Hephaestion that he might
+colonize it after the fashion of the Greeks. But we find that
+Hephaestion certainly did not stay long there, and could only have left
+the native village as he found it, with no very extensive
+improvements.
+
+It would be most interesting to decide the position of Rambakia. What
+we want to find is an ancient site, somewhere approaching the
+sea-coast, say 30 or 40 miles from the crossing of the Purali, in a
+district that might once have been cultivated and populous. We have
+found two such sites--one now called Khair Kot, to the north-west of
+Liari, commanding the Hala Pass; and another called Kotawari,
+south-west of Liari, and very near the sea. The latter has but
+recently been uncovered from the sand, but an existing mud wall and
+its position on the coast indicate that it is not old enough for our
+purpose. The other, Khair Kot, is an undoubted relic of mediaeval Arab
+supremacy. It is the Kambali of Idrisi on the high-road from Armail
+(now Bela) to the great Sind port of Debal, and the record of it
+belongs to another history. Nevertheless, Khair Kot is exactly where
+we should expect Rambakia to be, and quite possibly where Rambakia
+was. Amongst the coins and relics collected there, there is, however,
+no trace of Greek inscription; but that this corner of the Bela
+district was once flourishing and populous there is ample evidence.
+
+From Rambakia Alexander proceeded with half his targeteers and part of
+his cavalry to force the pass which the Gadrosii and Oritae had
+conjointly seized "with the design of stopping his progress." This
+pass might either have been the turning pass at the northern end of
+the Hala, or it might have been on the water-parting from which the
+Phur River springs farther on. I should think it was probably the
+former, where there is better room for cavalry to act.
+
+Immediately after defeating the Oritae (who apparently made little
+resistance) Alexander appointed Leonatus, with a picked force, to
+support the new Governor of Rambakia (Hephaestion having rejoined the
+army), and left him to make arrangements for victualling the fleet
+when it arrived, whilst he pushed on through desert country into the
+territory of the Gadrosii by "a road very dangerous," and drawing down
+towards the coast. He must then have followed the valley of the Phur
+to the coast, and pushed on along the track of the modern telegraph
+line till he reached the neighbourhood of the Hingol River. We are
+indebted to Aristobulus for an account of this track in Alexander's
+time. It was here that the Ph[oe]nician followers of the army
+gathered their myrrh from the tamarisk trees; here were the mangrove
+swamps, and the euphorbias, which still dot the plains with their
+impenetrable clumps of prickly "shoots or stems, so thick set that if
+a horseman should happen to be entangled therewith he would sooner be
+pulled off his horse than freed from the stem," as Aristobulus tells
+us. Here, too, were found the roots of spikenard, so precious to the
+greedy Ph[oe]nician followers. These same products formed part of the
+coast trade in the days when the Periplus was written, 400 years
+later, though there is little demand for them now.
+
+It was somewhere near the Hingol River that Alexander made a
+considerable halt to collect food and supplies for his fleet. His
+exertions and his want of success are all fully described by Arrian,
+as well as the rude class of fishing villages inhabited by
+Ichthyophagi, all the latter of which might well be cut out of the
+pages of Greek history and entered in a survey report as modern
+narrative. After this we have but slight indications in Arrian's
+history of Alexander's route to Pura, the capital of Gadrosia. Three
+chapters are full of most graphic and lively descriptions of the
+difficulties and horrors of that march. We only hear that he reached
+Pura sixty days after leaving the country of the Oritae, and there is
+no record of the number of troops that survived. Luckily, however, the
+log kept by the admiral of the fleet, Nearkhos, comes into our
+assistance here, and though it is still Arrian's history, it is
+Nearkhos who speaks.
+
+We must now turn back to follow the ships. I cannot enter in detail
+into the reasons given by General Haig, in his interesting pamphlet on
+the Indus Delta Country, for selecting the Gharo creek as the
+particular arm of the Indus which was finally selected for the passage
+of the fleet seaward. I can only remark that whilst the nature of the
+half-formed delta of that period is still open to conjecture, so that
+I see no reason why the island of Krokala, for instance, should not
+have been represented by a district which bears a very similar name
+nowadays, I fully agree that the description of the coast as given by
+Nearkhos can only possibly apply to that section of it which is
+embraced between the Gharo creek and Karachi.
+
+It is only within very recent times that the Gharo has ceased to be an
+arm of the Indus. For the present, at any rate, we cannot do better
+than follow so careful an observer as General Haig in his conclusions.
+There can be little doubt that Alexander's haven, into which the fleet
+put till the monsoon should moderate, and where it was detained for
+twenty days, was _somewhere near_ Karachi. That it was the modern
+Karachi harbour seems improbable. Of all parts of the western coast of
+India, that about Karachi has probably changed its configuration most
+rapidly, and there is ample room for conjecture as to where that haven
+of refuge of 2000 years ago might actually have been. Let us accept
+the fleet of river-built galleys, manned with oars, and open to every
+phase of wind and weather, as having emerged from it about the
+beginning of October, and as having reached the island of Domai, which
+I am inclined to identify with Manora.
+
+Much difficulty has been found in making the estimate of each day's
+run, as given in stadia, tally with the actual length of coast. I
+think the difficulty disappears a good deal if we consider what means
+there were of making such estimates. Short runs in the river between
+known landmarks are very fairly consistent in the Greek accounts. On
+the basis of such short runs, and with a very vague idea of the effect
+of wind and tide, the length of each day's run at sea was probably
+reckoned at so much per hour. There could hardly have been any other
+way of reckoning open to the Greeks. They recognized no landmarks
+after leaving Karachi. Even had they been able to use a log-line it
+would have told them but little. Wind and current (for the currents on
+this part of the sea mostly follow the monsoon wind) were either
+against them or on their beam all the way to the Hingol, and they
+encountered more than one severe storm which must have broken on them
+with the full force of a monsoon head wind. From the point where the
+fleet rounded Cape Monze and followed the windings of the coast to the
+harbour of Morontobara the estimates, though excessive, are fairly
+consistent; but from this point westward, when the full force of
+monsoon wind and current set against them, the estimates of distance
+are very largely in excess of the truth, and continue so till the
+pilot was shipped at Mosarna who guided them up the coast of Persia.
+Thenceforward there is much more consistency in their log. It must not
+be supposed that Nearkhos was making a voyage of discovery. He was
+following a track that had often been followed before. It was clear
+that Alexander knew the way by sea to the coasts of Persia before he
+started his fleet, and it is a matter of surprise rather than
+otherwise that he did not find a pilot amongst the Malli, who, if they
+are to be identified with the Meds, were one of the foremost sea-going
+peoples of Asia. His Ph[oe]nician and Greek sailors evidently were
+strangers to the coast, and some of his mixed crew of soldiers and
+sailors had subsequently to be changed for drafts from the land
+forces.
+
+We cannot now follow the voyage in detail, nor could we, even if we
+would, indicate the precise position of those islands of which Arrian
+writes between Cape Monze and Sonmiani; some of them may now be
+represented by shoals known to the coasting vessels, whilst others may
+be connected with the mainland. I have no doubt myself that
+Morontobara (the "woman's haven") is represented by the great
+depression of the Sirondha lake. Between Morontobara and Krokala
+(which about answers to Ras Kachari) they touched at the mouth of the
+Purali, or Arabius, not far from Liari, having an island which
+sheltered them from the sea to windward, which is now part of the
+mainland. Near by the mouth of the Arabius was another island "high
+and bare" with a channel between it and the mainland. This, too, has
+been linked up with the shore formation, and the channel no longer
+exists, but there is ample evidence of the ancient character of this
+corner of the coast. Between the Arabius and Krokala (three days'
+sail) very bad weather was made, and two galleys and a transport were
+lost. It was at Krokala that they joined hands with the army again.
+Here Nearkhos formed a camp, and it was "in this part of the country"
+that Leonatus defeated the Oritae and their allies in a great battle
+wherein 6000 were slain. Arrian adds that a full account of the action
+and its sequel, the crowning of Leonatus with a golden crown by
+Alexander, is given in his other work, but as a matter of fact the
+other account is so entirely different (representing the Oritae as
+submitting quietly) that we can only suppose this to have been a
+separate and distinct action from the cavalry skirmish mentioned
+before.
+
+It must be noted that the coast hereabouts has probably largely
+changed. A little farther west it is changing rapidly even now, and it
+is idle to look for the names given by the Greeks as marking any
+positive locality known at present. Hereabouts at any rate was the
+spot where Alexander with such difficulty had collected ten days'
+supplies for the fleet. This was now put on board, and the bad or
+indifferent sailors exchanged for better seamen. From Krokala, a
+course of 500 stadia (largely over-estimated) brought them to the
+estuary of the Hingol River (which is described a winter torrent under
+the name of Tomeros), and from this point all connection between the
+fleet and the army appears to have been lost. It was at the mouth of
+the Hingol that a skirmish took place with the natives which is so
+vividly described by Nearkhos, when the Greeks leapt into the sea and
+charged home through the surf. Of all the little episodes described in
+the progress of the voyage this is one of the most interesting; for
+there is a very close description given of certain barbarians clothed
+in the skins of fish or animals, covered with long hair, and using
+their nails as we use fish-knives, armed with wooden pikes hardened in
+the fire, and fighting more like monkeys than men. Here we have the
+real aboriginal inhabitants of India. Not so very many years ago, in
+the woods of Western India, a specimen almost literally answering to
+the description of Nearkhos was caught whilst we were in the process
+of surveying those jungles, and he furnished a useful contribution to
+ethnographical science at the time. Probably these barbarians of
+Nearkhos were incomparably older even than the Turanian races which we
+can recognize, and which succeeded them, and which, like them, have
+been gradually driven south into the fastnesses of Central and
+Southern India.
+
+Makran is full of Turanian relics connecting it with the Dravidian
+races of the south; but there is no time to follow these interesting
+glimpses into prehistoric ethnography opened up by the log of
+Nearkhos. Nor, indeed, can we follow the voyage in detail much
+farther, for we have to take up the route of Alexander, about which
+very much less has hitherto been known than can be told about the
+voyage of Nearkhos. We may, however, trace the track of Nearkhos past
+the great rocky headland of Malan, still bearing the same name that
+the Greeks gave it, to the commodious harbour of Bagisara, which is
+likely enough the Damizar, or eastern bay, of the Urmara headland. The
+Padizar, or western bay, corresponds more nearly with the name
+Bagisara, but as they doubled a headland next day it is clear they
+were on the eastern side of the Isthmus. The Pasiris whom he mentions
+have left frequent traces of their existence along the coast. Kalama,
+reached on the second day from Bagisara, is easily recognizable in the
+Khor Khalmat of modern surveys, and it is here again that we can trace
+a very considerable extension of the land seawards that would
+completely have altered the course of the fleet from the coasting
+track of modern days. The island of Karabine, from which they procured
+sheep, may very well have been the projecting headland of Giaban, now
+connected by a low sandy waste with the mainland. It could never have
+been the island of Astola, as conjectured by M'Crindle and others.
+From Kalama to Kissa (now disappeared) and Mosarna, along the coast
+called Karbis (now Gazban), the course would again be longer than at
+present, for there is much recent sand formation here; and when we
+come to Mosarna itself, after doubling the headland of Jebel Zarain,
+we find the harbour completely silted up. It may be noted that this
+western bay of Pasni was probably exactly similar to the Padizar of
+Urmara or of Gwadur, and that there is a general (but not universal)
+tendency to shallowing on the western sides of all the Makran
+headlands. Here they took the pilot on board, and after this there was
+little difficulty.
+
+In three more days they made Barna (or Badara), which answers to
+Gwadur, where were palm trees and myrtles, and we need follow them for
+the present no farther. Colonel Mockler, who was well acquainted with
+the Makran coast, but hardly, perhaps, appreciated all the changes
+which the coast-line has undergone (neither, indeed, did I till the
+surveys were complete), has traced the course of that historic fleet
+with great care. He has pointed out correctly that two islands (Pola
+and Karabia) have disappeared from the eastern neighbourhood of the
+Gwadur headland and one (Derenbrosa) from its western extremity; and
+he might have added that yet another is breaking up, and rapidly
+disappearing off the headland of Passabandar, near Gwadur. He has
+identified Kyiza (or Knidza), the small town built on an eminence not
+far from the shore, which was captured by stratagem, beyond doubt, and
+has traced the fleet from point to point with a careful analysis of
+all existing records that I cannot pretend to imitate. We cannot,
+however, leave Nearkhos without a passing reference to that island on
+the coast of the Ichthyophagi, and which was sacred to the sun, and
+which was, even in those days, enveloped in such a halo of mystery and
+tradition that even Arrian holds Nearkhos up to contempt for expending
+"time and ingenuity in the not very difficult task of proving the
+falsehood" of these "antiquated fables." I have been to that island,
+the island of Astola, and the tales that were told to Nearkhos are
+told of it still. There, off the southern face of it, is the "sail
+rock," the legendary relic of a lost ship which may well have been the
+transport which Nearkhos did undoubtedly lose off its rocky shores.
+There, indeed, I did not find the Nereid of such fascinating manners
+and questionable customs as Nearkhos describes on the authority of the
+inhabitants of the coast, but sea-urchins and sea-snakes abounded in
+such numbers as to make the process of exploration quite sufficiently
+exciting; and there were not wanting indications of those later days
+when the Meds (now an insignificant fish-eating people scattered in
+the coast hamlets) were the dreaded pirates of the Arabian Sea, and
+used to convey the crews of the ships they captured to that island,
+where they were murdered wholesale. It is curious that the name given
+by Nearkhos is Nosala, or Nuhsala. In these days it is Astola, or more
+properly Hashtala, sometimes even called Haftala. I am unable to
+determine the meaning of the termination to which the numerals are
+prefixed. Another name for it is Sangadip, which is also the mediaeval
+name for Ceylon. There can be no doubt about the identity of this
+island of sun worship and historic fable.
+
+We must now turn to Alexander. We left him near the mouth of the
+Hingol, then probably four or five miles north of its present
+position, and nearer the modern telegraph line. So far he had almost
+step by step followed out the subsequent line of the Indo-Persian
+telegraph, and at the Hingol he was not very far south of it. Near
+here Leonatus had had his fight with the Oritae, and Alexander had
+spent much time (for it must be remembered that he started a month
+before his fleet, and that the fleet and Leonatus at least joined
+hands at this point) in collecting supplies of grain from the more
+cultivated districts north, and was prepared to resume his march along
+the coast, true to his general tactical principle of keeping touch
+with his ships. But an obstacle presented itself that possibly he had
+not reckoned on. The huge barrier of the Malan range, abutting direct
+on the sea, stopped his way. There was no "Buzi" pass (or goat track)
+in those days, such as finally and after infinite difficulty helped
+the telegraph line over, though there was indeed an ancient stronghold
+at the top, which must have been in existence before his time, and was
+likely enough the original city of Malan. He was consequently forced
+into the interior, and here his difficulties began.
+
+We should be at a loss to follow him here, but for the fact that there
+is only one possible route. He followed up the Hingol till he could
+turn the Malan by an available pass westward. Nothing here has altered
+since his days. Those magnificent peaks and mountains which surround
+the sacred shrine of Hinglaz are, indeed, "everlasting hills," and it
+was through them that he proceeded to make his way. It would be a
+matter of immense interest could one trace any record of the Hinglaz
+shrine in classical writings, but there is none that I know of. And
+yet I believe that shrine which, next possibly to Juggernath, draws
+the largest crowds of pilgrims (Hindu and Mussulman alike) of any in
+India, was in existence before the days of Alexander. For the shrine
+is sacred to the goddess Nana (now identified with Siva by Hindus),
+and the Assyrian or Persian goddess Nana is of such immense antiquity
+that she has furnished to us the key to an older chronology even than
+that of Egypt. The famous cylinder of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria,
+tells us that in the year 645 B.C. he destroyed Susa, the capital of
+Elam, and from its temple he carried back the Chaldean goddess Nana,
+and by the express command of the goddess herself, took her from
+whence she had dwelt in Elam, "a place not appointed her," and
+reinstated her in her own sanctuary at Urukh (now Warka in
+Mesopotamia), whence she had originally been taken 1635 years before
+by a conquering king of Elam, who had invaded Accad territory. Thus
+she was clearly a well-established deity in Mesopotamia 2280 years
+B.C. Alexander, however, would have left that Ziarat hidden away in
+the folds of the Hinglaz mountain on his left, and followed the
+windings of the Hingol River some forty miles to its junction with a
+stream from the west, which would again give him the chance of
+striking out parallel to the coast.
+
+We should be in some doubt at what particular point Alexander left the
+Hingol, but for the survival of names given in history as those of a
+people with whom he had to contend, viz. the Parikanoi, the Sagittae,
+and the Sakae, names not mentioned by Arrian. Now, Herodotus gives the
+Parikanoi and Asiatic Ethiopians as being the inhabitants of the
+seventeenth satrapy of the Persian Empire, and Bellew suggests that
+the Greek Parikanoi is a Greek transcript of the Persian form of
+Parikan, the plural of the Sanscrit Parva-ka--or, in other words, the
+_Ba-rohi_--or men of the hills. However this may be, there is the bed
+of the stream called Parkan skirting the north of the Taloi range and
+leading westwards from the Hingol, and we need look no farther for the
+Parikanoi. In support of Bellew's theory it may be stated that it is
+not only in the heart of the Brahui country, but the Sajidi are still
+a tribe of Jalawan Brahuis, of which the chief family is called Sakae,
+and that they occupy territory in Makran a little to the north of the
+Parkan. There is every reason why Alexander should have selected this
+route. It was his first chance of turning the Malan block, and it led
+most directly westwards with a trend towards the sea. But at the time
+of the year that he was pushing his way through this low valley
+flanked by the Taloi hills, which rose to a height of 2000 feet above
+him on his left, there would not be a drop of water to be had, and the
+surrounding wilderness of sandy hillocks and scanty grass-covered
+waste would afford his troops no supplies and no shelter from the
+fierce autumn heat. All the miseries of his retreat were concentrated
+into the distance (about 200 miles) between the Hingol and the coast.
+
+The story of that march is well told by Arrian. It was here that
+occurred that gallant episode when Alexander proudly refused to drink
+the small amount of water that was offered him in a helmet, because
+his army was perishing with thirst. It must have been near the harbour
+of Pasni, once again almost on the line of the present telegraph, that
+Alexander emerged from the sand-storm with but four horsemen on to
+the sea-coast at last, and instantly set to work to dig wells for his
+perishing troops. Thenceforward Arrian tells us only that he marched
+for seven days along the coast till he reached the well-known highway
+to Karmania, when he turned inland, and his difficulties were at an
+end. Now, that well-known highway was almost better known then than it
+is now. He could only leave the coast near the Dasht River at Gwadur,
+and strike across into the valley of the Bahu, which would lead him
+through a country subsequently great in Arabic history, over the yet
+unsuspected sites of many famous cities, to Bampur, the capital of
+Gadrosia. From leaving the coast to Bampur the duration of his march
+with an exhausted force would be little less than a month. Working
+backward again from that same point (which may be regarded as an
+obligatory one in his route) the seven days' weary drag through the
+sand of the coast would carry him no farther than from the
+neighbourhood of Pasni, and that is why I have selected that point for
+the historic episode of his guiding his army by chance and emerging on
+to the shore unexpectedly, rather than the neighbourhood of the Basol
+River, to which the Parkan route should naturally have led him. He
+clearly lost his way, as Arrian says he did, or else the estimated
+number of marches is wrong. We are told by Arrian that he reached
+Pura, the capital of Gadrosia, on the sixtieth day after leaving the
+country of the Oritae. This is a little indefinite, as he may be
+considered to have left the country of the Oritae when he started to
+collect supplies from the northern district, and we do not know how
+long he was on this reconnaissance. Probably, however, the date of
+leaving the coast and striking inland up the Hingol River is the date
+referred to by Arrian, in which case we may estimate that he spent
+about twenty-four days negotiating the fearful country opened up to
+him on the Parkan route ere he touched the seashore again. This is by
+no means an exaggerated estimate if we consider the distance
+(something short of 200 miles) and the nature of his army. A
+half-armed mob, which included women and children, and of which the
+transport consisted of horses and mules and wooden carts dragged by
+men, cannot move with the facilities of a modern brigade. Nor would a
+modern brigade move along that line with the rapidity that has
+distinguished some of our late man[oe]uvres in South Africa. On the
+whole, I think the estimate a probable one, and it brings us to
+Bampur, the ancient capital of Gadrosia.
+
+We have now followed Alexander out of India into Persia. Thenceforward
+there are no great geographical questions to decipher, or knots to be
+untied. His progress was a progress of triumph, and the story of his
+retreat well ends with the thrilling tale of his meeting again with
+Nearkhos, after the latter had harboured his fleet at the mouth of the
+Minab River and set out on the search for Alexander, guided by a
+Greek who had strayed from Alexander's army. Blackened by exposure and
+clothed in rags, Nearkhos was unrecognized till he announced himself
+to the messenger sent to look for him. Even Alexander himself at first
+failed to recognize his admiral in the extraordinary apparition that
+was presented to him in his camp, and could only believe that his
+fleet must have perished and that Nearkhos and Arkias were sole
+survivors. We can imagine what followed. Those were days of ready
+recognition of service and no despatches, and all Persia was open to
+the conquerors to choose their reward.
+
+After Alexander's time many centuries elapsed before we get another
+clear historic view into Makran, and then what do we find? A country
+of great and flourishing cities, of high-roads connecting them with
+well-known and well-marked stages; armies passing and re-passing, and
+a trade which represented to those that held it the dominant
+commercial power in the world, flowing steadily century after century
+through that country which was fatal to Alexander, and which we are
+rather apt now to consider the fag-end of the Baluchistan wilderness.
+The history of Makran is bound up with the history of India from time
+immemorial. Not all the passes of all the frontiers of India put
+together have seen such traffic into the broad plains of Hindustan as
+for certainly three, and possibly for eight, centuries passed through
+the gateways of Makran. As one by one we can now lay our finger on
+the sites of those historic cities, and first begin faintly to measure
+the importance of Makran to India ere Vasco da Gama first claimed the
+honour of doubling the Cape and opened up the ocean highway, we can
+only be astonished that for four centuries more Makran remained a
+blank on the map of the world.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[3] _Indus Delta Country_, 1894.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CHINESE EXPLORATIONS--THE GATES OF THE FAR NORTH
+
+
+There are many gateways into India, gateways on the north as well as
+the north-west and west, and although these far northern ways are so
+rugged, so difficult, and so elevated that they can hardly be regarded
+as of political or strategic importance, yet they are many of them
+well trodden and some were once far better known than they are now.
+Opinions may perhaps differ as to their practical value as military or
+commercial approaches under new conditions of road-making, but they
+never have, so far, been utilized in either sense, and the interest of
+them is purely historical. These are the ways of the pilgrims, and we
+are almost as much indebted to Chinese records for our knowledge of
+them as we are to the researches of modern explorers.
+
+For many a century after Alexander had left the scene of his Eastern
+conquests historical darkness envelopes the rugged hills and plains
+which witnessed the passing of the Greeks. The faith of Buddha was
+strong before their day, but the building age of Buddhism was later.
+No mention is to be found in the pages of Greek history of the
+magnificent monuments of the creed which are an everlasting wonder of
+the plains of Upper India. Such majestic testimony to the living force
+of Buddhism could hardly have passed unnoticed by observers so keen as
+those early Greeks; and when next we are dimly lighted on our way to
+identify the lines of movement and the trend of commerce on the Indian
+frontier, we find a new race of explorers treading their way with
+pious footsteps from shrine to shrine, and the sacred books and
+philosophic teaching of a widespreading faith the objects of their
+quest. The Chinese pilgrim Fa Hian was the first to leave a permanent
+record of his travels. His date is about A.D. 400, and he was only one
+of a large number of Chinese pilgrims who knew the road between India
+and China far better than any one knew it twenty-five years ago.
+
+Although the northern approaches to India from the direction of China
+are rather far afield, yet recent revelations resulting from the
+researches of such enterprising travellers as Sven Hedin and Stein,
+confirming the older records, require some short reference to the
+nature of those communications between the outside world of Asia and
+India which distinguished the early centuries of our era. In those
+early centuries there was to be found in that western extension of
+the Gobi desert which we call Chinese Turkistan, in the low-lying
+country, mostly sand-covered, which stretches to a yellow horizon
+northward beneath the shimmering haze of an almost perpetual dust
+veil, very different conditions of human existence to those which now
+prevail. The zone of cultivation fed by the streams of the Kuen Lun
+was wider, stretching farther into the desert. Rivers ran fuller of
+water, carrying fertility farther afield; great lakes spread
+themselves where now there are but marshes and reeds, and cities
+flourished which have been covered over and buried under accumulating
+shifting sand for centuries. A great central desert there always has
+been within historic period, but it was a desert much modified by
+bordering oases of green fertility, and a spread of irrigated
+cultivation which is not to be found there now.
+
+Amongst the most interesting relics recovered from some of these
+unearthed cities are certain writings in Karosthi and Brahmi (Indian)
+script, which testify to the existence of roads and posts and a
+regular system of communication between these cities of the plain,
+which must have been in existence in those early years of the
+Christian era when Karosthi was a spoken language in Northern India.
+All this now sand-buried country was Buddhist then, and a great city
+overlooked the wide expanse of the Lop Lake, and the rivers of the
+southern hills carried fertility far into the central plain. When the
+pilgrim Fa Hian trod the weary road from Western China to Chinese
+Turkistan by way of Turfan and the Buddhist city of Lop, he followed
+in a groove deep furrowed by the feet of many a pilgrim before him,
+and a highway for devotees for many a century after.
+
+Strange as it may seem, the ancient people of this desert waste--the
+people who now occupy the cultivated strip of land at the foot of the
+Kuen Lun mountains which shut them off from Tibet--are an Indian race,
+or rather a race of Indian extraction, far more allied to the
+Indo-European than to any Mongol, Chinese, Tibetan, or Turk race with
+which they may have been recently admixed. Did they spread northward
+from India through the rugged passes of Northern Kashmir, taking with
+them the faith of their ancestors? We do not know; but there can be
+little doubt that the Chanto of the Lop basin and of Turfan is the
+lineal successor of the people who welcomed the Chinese pilgrims in
+their search after truth. Buddhist then and Mahomedan now, they seem
+to have lost little of their genial spirit of hospitality to
+strangers.
+
+Khotan (Ilchi) was the central attraction of Western Turkistan, one at
+least of the most blessed wayside fountains of faith, the ultimate
+sources of which were only to be found in India. Those ultimate
+sources have long left India. They are concentrated in Lhasa now,
+which city is still the sanctuary of Buddhism to the thousands of
+pilgrims who make their way from China on the east and Mongolia on the
+north as full of devout aspiration and of patient searching after
+spiritual knowledge as was ever a Chinese pilgrim of past ages. Not
+only was Western Turkistan full of the monuments and temples of
+Buddhism scattered through the length of the green strips of territory
+which bordered the dry steppe of the central depression watered on the
+north by the Tarim River, and on the south by the many mountain
+streams which rushed through the gorges of the Kuen Lun, but there was
+an evident extension of outward and visible signs of the faith to the
+northward, embracing the Turfan basin, which in many of its physical
+characteristics is but a minor repetition of that of Lop, and possibly
+even as far west as the great Lake Issyk Kul. Thus the old pilgrim
+route to India from Western China, which was chosen by the devotee so
+as to include as many sacred shrines as could possibly be made to
+assist in adding grace to his pilgrimage, was a very different route
+to that now followed by the pious Mongolian or Western Chinaman to
+Lhasa.
+
+Avoiding the penalties of the Nan Shan system of mountains which
+guards the Tibetan plateau on the north-east, these early pilgrims
+held on their journey almost due west, and, skirting the Mongolian
+steppe within sight of the Tibetan frontier hills, they reached
+Turfan; then turning southward, they passed on to the Lop Nor lake
+region by a well-ascertained route, which at that time intersected the
+well-watered and fertile land of Lulan. There is water still in the
+lower Tarim and in the Konche River beds, but it has proved in these
+late years to be useless for agricultural development owing to the
+increasing salinity of the soil. Several recent attempts at
+recolonizing this area have resulted in total failure. From the Lop
+Lake to Khotan _via_ Cherchen the old-world route was much the same as
+now, but the width of fertility stretched farther north from the Kuen
+Lun foothills, and the temples of Buddhism were rich and frequent, and
+thus were pious pilgrims refreshed and elevated every step of the way
+through this Turkistan region. Khotan appears to have been the local
+centre of the faith. No lake spread out its blue waters to catch the
+sky reflections here, but from the cold wastes of Tibet, through the
+gorges of the great Kuen Lun range, the waters of a river flowed down
+past the temples and stupas of Ilchi to find their way northward
+across the sands to the Tarim.
+
+The high ritual of Buddhism in its ancient form was strange and
+imposing. When we read Fa Hian's account of the great car procession,
+we are no longer surprised at the effect which Buddhist symbolism
+exercised on its disciples. Fa Hian and his fellow-travellers were
+lodged in a sangharama, or temple of the "Great Vehicle," where were
+three thousand priests "who assemble to eat at the sound of the
+_ghanta_. On entering the dining hall their carriage is grave and
+demure, and they take their seats in regular order. All of them keep
+silence; there is no noise with their eating bowls; when the
+attendants give more food they are not allowed to speak to one another
+but only to make signs with the hand." "In this country," says Fa
+Hian, "there are fourteen great sangharamas. From the first day of the
+fourth month they sweep and water the thoroughfares within the city
+and decorate the streets. Above the city gate they stretch an awning
+and use every kind of adornment. This is when the King and Queen and
+Court ladies take their place. The Gomati priests first of all take
+their images in the procession. About three or four li from the city
+they make a four-wheeled image car about 30 feet high, in appearance
+like a moving palace adorned with the seven precious substances. They
+fix upon it streamers of silk and canopy curtains. The figure is
+placed in the car with two Bodhisatevas as companions, while the Devas
+attend on them; all kinds of polished ornaments made of gold and
+silver hang suspended in the air. When the image is 100 paces from the
+gate the King takes off his royal cap, and changing his clothes for
+new ones proceeds barefooted, with flowers and incense in his hand,
+from the city, followed by his attendants. On meeting the image he
+bows down his head and worships at its feet, scattering the flowers
+and burning the incense. On entering the city the Queen and Court
+ladies scatter about all kinds of flowers and throw them down in wild
+profusion. So splendid are the arrangements for worship!"[4] Thus
+writes Fa Hian, and it is sufficient to testify to the strength of
+Buddhism and the magnificence of its ritual in the third century of
+our era, when India still held the chief fountains of inspiration ere
+the holy of holies was transferred to Lhasa and the pilgrim route was
+changed.
+
+So far, then, we need not look for the influence exercised by the most
+recent climatic pulsation of Central Asia which has dried up the
+water-springs and allowed the sand-drifts to accumulate above many of
+the minor townships of the Lop basin, in order to account for the
+trend of Asiatic religious history towards Tibet. It was the gradual
+decay of the faith, and its final departure from its birthplace in the
+plains of India in later centuries, which sent pilgrims on another
+track, and left many of the northern routes to be rediscovered by
+European explorers in the nineteenth century. Most of the Chinese
+pilgrims visited Khotan, but from Khotan onward their steps were bent
+in several directions. Some of them visited Ki-pin, which has been
+identified with the upper Kabul River basin. Here, indeed, were
+scattered a wealth of Buddhist records to be studied, shrines to be
+visited, and temples to be seen. The road from Balkh to Kabul and from
+Kabul to the Punjab was pre-eminently a Buddhist route. Balkh, Haibak,
+and Bamian all testify, as does the neighbourhood of Kabul itself, to
+the existence of a lively Buddhist history before the Mahomedan
+Conquest, and between Kabul and India there are Buddhist remains near
+Jalalabad which rival in splendour those of the Swat valley and the
+Upper Punjab. All these places were objects of devout attention
+undoubtedly, but to reach Kabul _via_ Balkh from Khotan it would be
+necessary to cross the Pamirs and Badakshan. It is not easy to follow
+in detail the footsteps of these devotees, but it is obvious that
+until they entered the "Tsungling" mountains they remained north of
+the great trans-Himalayan ranges and of the Hindu Kush. The Tsungling
+was the dreaded barrier between China and India, and the wild tales of
+the horrors which attended the crossing of the mountains testify to
+the fact that they were not much easier of access or transit at the
+beginning of the Christian era than they are now.
+
+The direct distance between Khotan and Balkh is not less than 700
+miles, and 700 miles of such a mountain wilderness as would be
+involved by the passing of the Pamirs into the valley of the Oxus and
+the plains of Badakshan would represent 900 to 1000 of any ordinary
+travelling. And yet there appear to be indications of a close
+connection between these two centres of Buddhism. The great temple a
+mile or two to the west of Khotan, called the Nava Sangharama, or
+royal new temple, is the same as that to the south-west of Balkh,
+according to a later traveller, Hiuen Tsiang, while the kings of
+Khotan were said to be descended from Vaisravana, the protector of the
+Balkh convent. No modern traveller has crossed Badakshan from the
+Pamirs to Balkh, but the general conformation of the country is fairly
+well ascertained, and there can be no doubt that the journey would
+occupy any pilgrim, no matter how devout and enthusiastic, at least
+two and a half months, and another month would be required to traverse
+the road from Balkh _via_ Hiabak, or Baiman, over the Hindu Kush to
+Kabul.
+
+Now we are told that Fa Hian journeyed twenty-five days to the Tsen-ho
+country, from whence, by marching four days southward, he entered the
+Tsungling mountains. Another twenty-five days' rugged marching took
+him to the Kie-sha country, a country "hilly and cold" in "the midst
+of the Tsungling mountains," where he rejoined his companions who had
+started for Ki-pin. It is therefore clear that he did not rejoin them
+at Kabul, nor could they have gone there; and the question
+arises--Where is Kie-sha? The continuation of Fa Hian's story gives
+the solution to the riddle. Another month's wandering from Kie-sha
+across the Tsungling mountains took him to North India. It was a
+perilous journey. The terrors of it remained engraved on the memory of
+the saint after his return to his home in China. Great "poison
+dragons" lived in those mountains, who spat poison and gravel-stones
+at passing pilgrims, and few there were who survived the encounter.
+The impression conveyed of furious blasts of mountain-bred winds is
+vivid, and many travellers since Fa Hian's time have suffered
+therefrom. "On entering the borders" of India he came to a little
+country called To-li. To-li seems to be identified beyond dispute with
+Darel, and with this to guide us we begin to see where our pilgrims
+must have passed. Fifteen days more of Tsungling mountain-climbing
+southwards took him to Wuchung (Udyana), where he remained during the
+rains. Thence he went "south" to Sin-ho-to (Swat), and finally
+"descended" into Gandara, or the Upper Punjab.
+
+From these final stages of his journey India-ward there is little
+difficulty in recognizing that Kie-sha must be Kashmir. In the first
+place, Kashmir lies on the most direct route between Chinese Turkistan
+and India. Nor is it possible to believe that the wealth of Buddhist
+remains which now appeal to the antiquarian in that delightful garden
+of the Himalayas were not more or less due to the first impulse of the
+devotees of the early faith to plant the seeds of Buddhism where the
+passing to and fro of innumerable bands of pilgrims would of
+necessity occur. Through Kashmir lay the high-road to High Asia, at
+that time included in the Buddhist fold, where Indian language had
+crystallized and corroborated the faith that was born in India. Thus
+it was that glorious temples arose amidst the groves and on the slopes
+of Kashmir hills, and even in the days of Fa Hian, when Buddhism was
+already nine centuries old, there must have been much to beguile the
+pilgrim to devotional study. In short, Kashmir could not be overlooked
+by any devotee, and whether the direct route thither was taken from
+Khotan, or whether Kashmir was visited in due course from Northern
+India, we may be certain that it was one of the chief objectives of
+Chinese pilgrimage.
+
+Fa Hian says so little about the kingdom of Kie-sha which can be made
+use of to assist us, that it is not easy to identify the part of
+Kashmir to which he refers. Twenty-five days after entering the
+Tsungling mountains would enable him to reach the valley of Kashmir by
+the Karakoram Pass, Leh, and the Zoji-la at the head of the Sind
+valley. It is not a matter of much consequence for our purposes which
+route he took, as it is quite clear that all these northern routes
+were open to Chinese pilgrim traffic from the very earliest times. The
+alternative route would be to the head of the Tagdumbash Pamir, over
+the Killik Pass, and by Hunza to Gilgit and Astor. The Hunza country
+(Kunjut) has always had an attraction for the Chinese. It has been
+conquered and held by China, and is still reckoned by its inhabitants
+as part of the Chinese Empire. Hunza and Nagar pay tribute to China to
+this day.
+
+If we remember that the pains and penalties of a pilgrimage over any
+of the Hindu Kush passes, or by the Karakoram (the chief trade route
+through all time), to India, is as nothing to the trials which modern
+Mongolian pilgrims undergo between China and Lhasa, over the terrible
+altitudes of the Tibetan plateau, there will be little to surprise us
+in these earlier achievements. Pioneers of exploration in the true
+sense they were not, for the Himalayan byways must have been as well
+known to them as were the Asiatic highways to Alexander ere he
+attempted to reach India. We may assume, however, that Fa Hian entered
+the central valley of Kashmir from Leh, for it gives a reasonable
+pretext for his choice of a route out of it. It is not likely that he
+would go twice over the same ground. He witnessed the pomp and
+pageantry of Buddhist ritual in Kie-sha. The King of the country had
+kept the great five-yearly assembly. He had "summoned Sramanas from
+the four quarters, who came together like clouds." Silken canopies and
+flags with gold and silver lotus-flowers figure amongst the
+ritualistic properties, and form part of the processional arrangements
+which end with the invariable offerings to the priests. "The King,
+taking from the chief officer of the Embassy the horse he rides, with
+its saddle and bridle, mounts it, and then, taking white taffeta,
+jewels of various kinds, and things required by the Sramanas, in union
+with his ministers, he vows to give them all to the priests. Having
+thus given them, they are redeemed at a price from the priests." No
+mention is made of the price, but as the Kashmiri of the past has been
+excellently well described by another pilgrim as a true prototype of
+the Kashmiri of the present, it is unlikely that the King lost much by
+the deal.
+
+The description of Kie-sha as "in the middle of the Tsungling range"
+would hardly apply to any country but Kashmir, and the fact is noted
+that from Kie-sha towards India the vegetation changes in character.
+Having crossed Tsungling, we arrive at North India, says Fa Hian, but
+to reach the "little country called To-li" (Darel) he would have to
+cross by the Burzil Pass into the basin of the Indus, and then follow
+the Gilgit River to a point under the shadow of the Hindu Koh range,
+opposite the head-waters of the Darel. Crossing the Hindu Koh, he
+would then drop straight into this "little country." Remembering
+something of the nature of the road to Gilgit ere our military
+engineers fashioned a sound highway out of the rocky hill-sides, one
+can sympathize with the pious Fa Hian when recalling in after years
+the frightful experiences of that journey.
+
+A few miles beyond Gilgit the rough evidences of a ruined stupa, and a
+still rougher outline of a Buddhist figure cut on the rocks which
+guard a narrow gorge leading up the Hindu Koh slopes, points to the
+take-off for Darel. No modern explorer has followed that route, except
+one of the native explorers of the Indian survey who travelled under
+the soubriquet of "the Mullah." The Mullah made his way through the
+Darel valley to the Indus, and describes it as a difficult route.
+There is little variation in the tale of troubled progress, but "the
+Mullah" makes no mention of Buddhist relics, nor is it likely that
+they would have appealed to him had he seen them. There can be little
+doubt, however, that Darel holds some hidden secrets for future
+enterprise to disclose. "Keeping along Tsungling, they journeyed
+southward for fifteen days," says Fa Hian. "The road is difficult and
+broken with steep crags and precipices in the way. The mountain-side
+is simply a stone wall standing up 10,000 feet. Looking down, the
+sight is confused and there is no sure foothold. Below is a river
+called Sintu-ho (Indus). In old days men bored through the walls to
+make a way, and spread out side ladders, of which there are seven
+hundred in all to pass. Having passed the ladders, we proceed by a
+hanging rope bridge to cross the river." All this agrees fairly well
+with the Mullah's account of ladders and precipices, and locates the
+route without much doubt. The Darel stream joins the Indus some 30 to
+35 miles below Chilas, where the course of the latter river is
+practically unsurveyed. Crossing the Indus, Fa Hian came to Wuchung,
+which is identified with Udyana, or Upper Swat, and there he remained
+during the rains. The Indus below the Darel junction is confined
+within a narrow steep-sided gorge with hills running high on either
+side, those on the east approaching 15,000 and 16,000 feet. There are
+villages, groups of flat-roofed shanties, clinging like limpets to the
+rocks, but there is little space for cultivation, and no record of
+Buddhist remains north of Buner. No systematic search has been
+possible.
+
+Investigations such as led to the remarkable discovery by Dr. Stein of
+the site of that famous Buddhist sanctuary marking the spot where
+Buddha, in a former birth, offered his body to the starving tigress on
+Mount Banj, south of Buner, have never been possible farther north, on
+account of the dangerous character of the hill-people of those
+regions. Other Chinese pilgrims, Song Yun (A.D. 520) and Huec Sheng,
+have recorded that after leaving the capital of ancient Udyana (near
+Manglaor, in Upper Swat) they journeyed for eight days south-east, and
+reached the place where Buddha made his body offering. "There high
+mountains rose with steep slopes and dizzy peaks reaching to the
+clouds," etc. "There stood on the mountain the temple of the collected
+bones which counted 300 priests." But there is no mention of other
+Buddhist sites of importance in the valley of the Indus. Leaving
+Udyana, Fa Hian and his companions went south to the country of
+Su-ho-to (Lower Swat), and finally ("descending eastward") in five
+days found themselves in Gandhara--or the Upper Punjab. Nine days'
+journey eastward from the point where they reached Gandhara they came
+to the place of Buddha's body-offering, or Mount Banj. Such, in brief
+outline, is the story of one pilgrim's journey across the Himalayas to
+India. Other pilgrims undoubtedly entered India _via_ the Kabul River
+valley, but we need hardly follow them. There were hundreds of them,
+possibly thousands, and the pains and penalties of the pilgrimage but
+served to add merit to their devotion.
+
+The point of the story lies in its revelation as regards connection
+between Central Asia and India in the early centuries A.D. Clearly
+there was no pass unknown or unvisited by the Chinese. Not merely the
+direct routes, but all the connecting ways which linked up one
+Buddhist centre with another were equally well known. What has
+required from us a weary process of investigation to overcome the
+difficulties of map-making, was to them, if not exactly an open book,
+certainly a geographical record which could be turned to practical
+use, and it is instructive to note the use that was made of it. As a
+pious duty, bristling with difficulty and danger, travel over the
+wandering tracks which pass through the northern gates of the
+Himalayas was regarded with fervour; but it may be taken for granted
+that less pious-minded adventurers than the Chinese pilgrims would
+most certainly have made good use of that geographical knowledge to
+exploit the riches of India had such a proceeding been possible. We
+know that attempts have been made. From the earliest times the Mongol
+hordes of China and Central Asia have been directed on India, and no
+gateway which could offer any possible hope of admittance has been
+neglected. Baktria (Badakshan), lying beyond the mountain barrier, had
+been at their mercy. The successors to Alexander's legions in that
+country were swamped and dispersed within a century or two of the
+foundation of the Greek kingdom; and the Kabul River way to India has
+let in army after army. But these northern passes have not only barred
+migratory Asiatic hordes through all ages, but have proved too much
+even for small organized Mongol military expeditions.
+
+The Chinese hosts, who apparently thought little of crossing the
+Tibetan frontier over a succession of Alpine passes such as no Western
+general in the world's history has ever encountered, failed to
+penetrate farther than Kunjut. The Mongol invasion of Tibet early in
+the sixteenth century (which is so graphically described in the
+Tarikh-i-Rashidi by Mirza Haidar) was tentatively pushed into Kashmir
+_via_ Ladakh, and was defeated by the natural difficulties of the
+country--not by the resistance of the weak-kneed Kashmiri--much,
+indeed, as a similar expedition to Lhasa was defeated by cold and
+starvation. No modern ingenuity has as yet contrived a method of
+dealing with the passive resistance of serrated bands of mountains of
+such altitude as the Himalayas. No railway could be carried over such
+a series of snow-capped ramparts; no force that was not composed of
+Asiatic mountaineers could attempt to pass them with any chance of
+success; and these northern lines, these eternal defences of Nature's
+making may well be left, a vast silent wilderness of peaks,
+undisturbed by man's puny efforts to improve their strength. Certainly
+the making of highways in the midst of them is not the surest means of
+adding to their natural powers of passive obstruction, although such
+public works may possibly be deemed necessary in the interests of
+peace and order preservation amongst the "snowy mountain men."
+
+Chinese pilgrims no longer tread those rocky mountain-paths (except in
+the pages of Rudyard Kipling's entrancing work), and the tides of
+devotion have set in other directions--to Mecca or to Lhasa; but the
+fact that thousands of Buddhist worshippers yearly undertake a journey
+which, for the hardships entailed by cold and starvation between the
+western borders of China and Lhasa, should surely secure for them a
+reserve of merit equal to that gathered by their forefathers from the
+"Tsungling" mountains, might possibly lead to the question whether the
+plateau of Eastern Tibet does not afford the open way which is not to
+be found farther west. If a Chinese force of 70,000 men could advance
+into the heart of Tibet, and finally administer a severe defeat on the
+Gurkhas (which surely occurred in 1792) in Nepal, it is clear that
+such a force could equally well reach Lhasa. It is also certain that
+the stupendous mountain-chains and the elevated passes, which are the
+ruling features of the eastern entrance into Tibet from China, far
+exceed in natural strength and difficulty those which intervene
+between the plains of India and Lhasa. We are therefore bound to admit
+that it might be possible for an unopposed Chinese force to invade
+India by Eastern Tibet; possibly even by the valley of Assam. There
+is, however, no record that such an attempt has ever been made. The
+savage and untamable disposition of the eastern Himalayan tribes, and
+their intense hostility to strangers may have been, through all time,
+a strong deterrent to any active exploitation of their country; and
+the density of the forests which close down on the narrow ways which
+intersect their hills, give them an advantage in savage tactics such
+as was not possessed by the fighting Gurkha tribe in Nepal. But
+whatever the reason may be, there is apparently no record of any
+Chinese force descending through the Himalayas into the eastern plains
+of India by any of the many ways afforded by the affluents of the
+Brahmaputra. We may, I think, rest very well assured that no such
+attempt could possibly be made by any force other than Chinese, and
+that it is not likely that it ever will be made by them. We do not (at
+present) look to the north-east (to China) for the shadows of coming
+events in India. We look to the north, and looking in that direction
+we are quite content to write down the approach to India by any
+serious military force across Tibet or through the northern gateways
+of Kashmir to be an impossibility.
+
+The footsteps of the Buddhist pilgrim point no road for the tread of
+armies. In the interests of geographical research it is well to follow
+their tracks, and to learn how much wiser geographically they were in
+their day than we are now. It is well to remember that as modern
+explorers we are as hopelessly behind them in the spirit of
+enterprise, which reaches after an ethical ideal, as we are ahead of
+them in the process of attaining exact knowledge of the world's
+physiography, and recording it.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[4] _Buddhist Records of the Western World_, vol. i. p. 27.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MEDIAEVAL GEOGRAPHY--SEISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN
+
+
+It was about eight centuries before Buddhism, debased and corrupted,
+tainted with Siva worship and loaded with all the ghastly
+paraphernalia of a savage demonology, had been driven from India
+across the Himalayas, that the Star of Bethlehem had guided men from
+the East to the cradle of the Christian faith--a faith so like
+Buddhism in its ethical teaching and so unlike in its spiritual
+conceptions,--and during those eight centuries Christianity had
+already been spread by Apostles and missionaries through the broad
+extent of High Asia. Thereupon arose a new propaganda which, spreading
+outwards from a centre in south-west Arabia, finally set all humanity
+into movement, impelling men to call the wide world to a recognition
+of Allah and his one Prophet by methods which eventually included the
+use of fire and sword. The rise of the faith of Islam was nearly
+coincident (so far as India was concerned) with the fall of Buddhism.
+Thenceforward the gentle life-saving precepts of Gautama were to be
+taught in the south, and east, and north; in Ceylon, Burma, China, and
+Mongolia after being first firmly rooted in Tibet and Turkistan, but
+never again in the sacred groves of the land of their birth. And this
+raging religious hurricane of Islam swept all before it for century
+after century until, checked at last in Western Europe, it left the
+world ennobled by many a magnificent monument, and, by adding to the
+enlightenment of the dark places of the earth, fulfilled a mission in
+the development of mankind. With it there arose a new race of
+explorers who travelled into India from the west and north-west,
+searching out new ways for their commerce, and it is with them now and
+their marvellous records of restless commercial activity that we have
+to deal. Masters of the sea, even as of the land, no military and
+naval supremacy which has ever directed the destinies of nations was
+so widespread in its geographical field of enterprise as that of the
+Arabs. The whole world was theirs to explore. Their ships furrowed new
+paths across the seas, even as their khafilas trod out new highways
+over the land; and at the root of all their movement was the
+commercial instinct of the Semite. After all it was the eternal
+question of what would pay. Their progenitors had been builders of
+cities, of roads, of huge dams for water storage and irrigation, and
+directors for public works in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The might of
+the sword of Islam but carved the way for the slave-owner and the
+merchant to follow. Thus it is that mediaeval records of exploration in
+Afghanistan and Baluchistan are mostly Arab records; and it is from
+them that we learn the "open sesame" of India's landward gates, long
+ere the seaports of her coasts were visited by European ships.
+
+Nothing in the history of the world is more surprising than the rapid
+spread of Arab conquests in Asia, Africa, and Western Europe at the
+close of the seventh century of our era, excepting, perhaps, the
+thoroughness of the subsequent disappearance of Arab influence, and
+the absolute effacement of the Arabic language in those countries
+which Arabs ruled and robbed. In Persia, Makran, Central Asia, or the
+Indus valley, hardly a word of Arabic is now to be recognized.
+Geographical terms may here and there be found near the coast,
+surviving only because Arab ships still skirt those shores and the
+sailor calls the landmarks by old-world names. Even in the English
+language the sea terms of the Arab sailor still live. What is our
+"Admiral" but the "Al mir ul bahr" of the Arabian Sea, or our "Barge"
+but his "Barija," or warship! But in Sind, where Arab supremacy lasted
+for at least three centuries, there is nothing left to indicate that
+the Arab ever was there.
+
+The effacement of the Arab in India is chiefly due to the Afghan, the
+Turk, and the Mongol. Mahmud of Ghazni put the finishing blow to Arab
+supremacy in the Indus valley, when he sacked Multan about the
+beginning of the eleventh century; and subsequently the destroying
+hordes of Chenghiz Khan and Tamerlane completed the final downfall of
+the Empire of the Khalifs.
+
+Between the beginning of the eighth century and that of the eleventh
+the whole world of the Indian north-west frontier and its broad
+hinterland, extending to the Tigris and the Oxus, was much traversed
+and thoroughly well known to the Arab trader. In Makran we have seen
+how they shaped out for themselves overland routes to India,
+establishing big trade centres in flourishing towns, burying their
+dead in layers on the hill-sides, cultivating their national fruit,
+the date, in Makran valleys, and surrounding themselves with the
+wealth and beauty of irrigated agriculture. The chief impulse to Arab
+exploration emanated from the seat of the Khalifs in Mesopotamia, and
+the schools of Western Persia and Bagdad appear to have educated the
+best of those practical geographers who have left us their records of
+travel in the East; but there are indications of an occasional influx
+of Arabs from the coasts of Southern Arabia about whom we learn
+nothing whatever from mediaeval histories. It will be at any rate
+interesting to discuss the general trend of exploration and travel,
+associated either with pilgrimage or commerce, which distinguished the
+days of Arab supremacy, and which throws considerable light on the
+geography of the Indian borderland before its political features were
+rearranged by the hand of Chenghiz Khan and his successors. This has
+never yet been attempted by the light of recent investigations, and
+even now it can only be done partially and indifferently from the want
+of completed maps. The borderland which touches the Arabian
+Sea--Southern Baluchistan--has been completely explored and mapped,
+and the more obvious inferences to be derived from that mapping have
+already been made. But Seistan, Karmania, the highways and cities of
+Turkistan (Tocharistan) and Badakshan have not, so far as I know, been
+outlined in any modern work based on Arab writings and collated with
+the geographical surveys of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission and
+their reports. It was after all but a cursory examination of a huge
+area of most interesting country that was possible within the limited
+time devoted to boundary demarcation labours in 1883-85; but the
+physical features of this part of Asia being now fairly well defined,
+there is a good deal to be inferred with reasonable probability from
+the circumstance that highways and cities must ever be dependent for
+their location on the distributions of topography.
+
+The first impression produced by the general overlook of all the
+historic area which lies between Eastern Persia and the sources on the
+Oxus, is one of surprise. There is so little left of this great busy
+world of Arab commerce. It seems to have dropped out of the world's
+economy, and certain regions to have reverted to a phase of pristine
+freedom from sordid competition, which argues much for a decreased
+population and a desiccated area of once flourishing lands.
+
+There are no forests and jungles in Western Afghanistan, or at least
+only in restricted spaces on the mountain-slopes, so that there is no
+wild undergrowth uprooting and covering the evidences of man's busy
+habitation such as we find in Ceylon and the Nepal Tarai; where may be
+seen strange staring stone witnesses of the faith of former centuries,
+half hidden amidst the wild beauty and luxuriance of tropical forest
+growth. There is nothing indeed quite so interesting. Nature has
+spread out smooth grass slopes carpeted with sweet flowers in summer,
+but frozen and windswept in winter; and beneath the surface we know
+for a surety that the buried remains of centuries of busy traffic and
+marketing lie hidden, but there is frequently no sign whatever above
+ground. It is difficult to account for the utter want of visible
+evidence. In the processes of clearing a field for military action,
+when it becomes essential to remove some obstructive mud-built village
+and trace a clear and free zone for artillery fire, it is often found
+that the work of destruction is exceedingly difficult. Only with the
+most careful management can the debris be so dispersed that it affords
+no better cover to the enemy than the village which it once
+represented. As for effacing it altogether, only time, with the
+assistance of wind and weather, can accomplish that. But it is
+remarkable with what completeness time succeeds. I have stood on the
+site of a buried city in Sind--a city, too, of the mediaeval era of
+Arab ascendency--and have recognized no trace of it but what appeared
+to be the turbaned effigies of a multitude of faithful mourners in
+various expressive attitudes of grief and despair, who represented the
+ancient cemetery of the city. The city had been wiped off the land as
+clean as if it had been swept into the sea, but the burying places
+remained, and the stone mourners continue mourning through the
+centuries.
+
+The architectural order of these Khalmat tombs is quite Saracenic, and
+the vestiges of geometrical design which relieve the plain surface of
+the stone work and accentuate the lines of arch and moulding, are all
+clean cut and clear. At the end of each tomb, set up on a pedestal,
+the folded turban testifies in hard stone to the faith of the occupant
+beneath. The sharp edges of the slabs and the clearness of the
+ornamental carving are sufficient to prove that the age of these tombs
+and monuments cannot be so very remote, although remote enough to have
+led to the effacement of the township to which they belong. Sometimes
+a mound, where no mound would naturally occur, indicates the base of
+one of the larger buildings. Sometimes in the slanting rays of the
+evening sun certain shadows, unobserved before, take shape and
+pattern themselves into the form of a basement; and almost always
+after heavy rain strange little ornaments, beads, and coins, glass
+bangles, rings, etc., are washed out on the surface which tell their
+own tale as surely as does the widespread and infinitely varied
+remnants of household crockery. This last feature is sometimes quite
+amazing in its variety and extent, and the quality of the local finds
+is not a bad indication of the quality of the local household which
+made use of it. "Celadon" ware is abundant from Karachi to Babylon,
+and some of it is of extraordinary fineness and beauty of glaze. Pale
+sage green is invariably the colour of it, and the tradition of luck
+which attaches to it is common from China to Arabia.
+
+In places where vanished towns were in existence as late as the
+eighteenth century (for instance, in the Helmund valley below Rudbar),
+debris of pottery may be found literally in tons. In other places,
+still living, where generations of cities have gradually waxed and
+waned in successive stages, each in turn forming the foundation of a
+new growth, it is very difficult to derive any true historical
+indication from the debris which is to be found near the surface.
+Nothing but systematic and extensive excavation will suffice to prove
+that the existing conglomeration of rubbishy bazaars and ruined
+mosques is only the last and most unworthy phase of the existence of a
+city the glory of whose history is to be found in the world-wide
+tradition of past centuries. And so it happens that, moving in the
+footsteps of these old mediaeval commercial travellers, with the story
+of their travels in one's hand, and the indications of hill and plain
+and river to testify to the way they went, and a fair possibility of
+estimating distances according to their slipshod reckoning of a "day's
+journey," one may possess the moral certainty that one has reached a
+position where once there stood a flourishing market-town without the
+faintest outward indication of it. Without facilities for digging and
+delving, and the time for careful examination, there must necessarily
+be a certain amount of conjecture about the exact locality of some
+even of the most famous towns which were centres of Arab trade through
+High Asia. Some indeed are to be found still under their ancient
+names, but others (and amongst them many of great importance) are no
+longer recognizable in the place where once they palpitated with
+vigorous Eastern life.
+
+The area of Asia which for three or four centuries witnessed the
+monopoly of Arab trade included very nearly the whole continent. Asia
+Minor may be omitted from that area, and the remoter parts of China;
+but all the Indian borderland was literally at their feet; and we can
+now proceed to trace out some of their principal lines of route and
+their chief halting-places in those districts of which the mediaeval
+geography has lately become known.
+
+It is not at all necessary, even if it were possible, to follow the
+records of all the eminent Arab travellers who at intervals trod these
+weary roads. In the first place they often copied their records from
+one another, so that there is much vain repetition in them. In the
+second place they are not all equally trustworthy, and their writing
+and spelling, especially in place-names, wants that attention to
+diacritical marks which in Eastern orthography is essential to correct
+transliteration. It is perhaps unfortunate that the most eminent
+geographer amongst them should not have been a traveller, but simply a
+compiler.
+
+Abu Abdulla Mohamed was born at Ceuta in Morocco towards the end of
+the eleventh century. Being descended from a family named Idris, he
+came to be known as Al Idrisi. The branch of the family from which
+Idrisi sprang ruled over the city of Magala. He travelled in Europe
+and eventually settled at the Court of Roger II. in Sicily. Here he
+wrote his book on geography. He quotes the various authors whom he
+consulted in its compilation, and derived further information from
+travellers whose accounts he compared and tested. The title of his
+work is _The Delight of those who seek to wander through the Regions
+of the World_, and it is from the French translation of this work by
+Jaubert that the following notes on the countries lying beyond the
+western borders of India are taken. This account may be accepted as
+representing the condition of political and commercial geography
+throughout those regions at the end of the eleventh century, some
+eighty years or so after the borders of India had been periodically
+harried by Mahmud of Ghazni, and not very long before the Mongol host
+appeared on the horizon and made a clean sweep of Asiatic
+civilization.
+
+To the west of the Indian frontier in those early days lay the Persian
+provinces of Makran and Sejistan (Seistan), which two provinces
+between them appear to represent a great part of modern Baluchistan.
+The "Belous" were not yet in Baluchistan; they lived north of the
+mountains occupied by the "Kufs," with whom they are invariably
+associated in Arab geography. "The Kufs," says Idrisi, "are the only
+people who do not speak Persian in the province of Kerman. Their
+mountains reach to the Persian Gulf, being bordered on the north by
+the country of Najirman (?Nakirman), on the south and east by the sea
+and the Makran deserts, on the west by the sea and the 'Belous'
+country and the districts of Matiban and Hormuz." These are doubtless
+the "Bashkird" mountains, and the "species of Kurd, brave and savage"
+which inhabited them under the name of Kufs probably represent the
+progenitors of the present inhabitants.
+
+The "Bolous" or "Belous" lived in the plains to the north "right up
+to the foot of the mountains," and these are the people (according to
+Mr. Longworth Dames) who, hailing originally from the Caspian
+provinces, are the typical Baluch tribespeople of to-day.
+
+These mountains, which Idrisi calls the "cold mountains," extend to
+the north-west of Jirift and are "fertile, productive, and wooded."
+"It is a country where snow falls every year," and of which "the
+inhabitants are virtuous and innocent." There have been changes since
+Idrisi's time, both moral and physical, but here is a strong item of
+evidence in favour of the theory of the gradual desiccation which has
+enveloped Southern Baluchistan and dried up the water-springs of
+Makran. What Idrisi called the "Great Desert" is comprehensive. All
+the great central wastes of Persia, including the Kerman desert as
+well as the basin of the Helmund south of the hills, the frontier
+hills of the Sind border up to Multan, were a part of it, and they
+were inhabited by nomadic tribes of "thieves and brigands."
+
+Modern Seistan is a flat, unwholesome country, distributed
+geographically on either side of the Helmund between Persia and
+Afghanistan. It owes its place in history and its reputation for
+enormous productiveness to the fact that it is the great central basin
+of Afghanistan, where the Helmund and other Afghan rivers run to a
+finish in vast swamps, or lagoons. Surrounded by deserts, Seistan is
+never waterless, and there was, in days which can hardly be called
+ancient, a really fine system of irrigation, which fertilized a fairly
+large tract of now unproductive land on the Persian side of the river.
+The amount of land thus brought under cultivation was considerable,
+but not considerable enough to justify the historic reputation which
+Seistan has always enjoyed as the "Granary of Asia." This traditional
+wealth was no doubt exaggerated from the fact that the fertility of
+Seistan (like that of the Herat valley, which is after all but an
+insignificant item in Afghan territory) was in direct contrast to the
+vast expanse of profitless desert with which it was surrounded--a
+green oasis in the midst of an Asiatic wilderness.
+
+The Helmund has taken to itself many channels in the course of
+measurable time. Its ancient beds have been traced and mapped, and
+with them have been found evidences of closely-packed townships and
+villages, where the shifting waters and consequent encroachment of
+sand-waves leave no sign of life at present.
+
+Century after century the same eternal process of obliteration and
+renovation has proceeded. Millions of tons of silt have been deposited
+in this great alluvial basin. Levels have changed and the waters have
+wandered irresponsibly into a network of channels westward. Then the
+howling, desiccating winds of the north-west have carried back
+sand-waves and silt, burying villages and filling the atmosphere for
+hundreds of miles southward with impalpable dust, crossing the Helmund
+deserts even to the frontier of India. There is no measurable scale
+for the force of the Seistan winds. They scoop up the sand and sweep
+clean the surface of the earth, polishing the rounded edges of the
+ragged walls of the Helmund valley ruins. It is a notable fact that no
+part of these ruins face the wind. All that is left of palaces and
+citadels stands "end on" to the north-west. For a few short months in
+the year the wind is modified, and then there instantly arises the
+plague of insects which render life a burden to every living thing.
+And yet Seistan has played a most important part in the history of
+Asia, and may play an important role again.
+
+Arab records are very full of Seistan. The earliest of them that give
+any serious geographical information are the records of Ibn Haukel,
+but there are certainly indications in his account which engender a
+suspicion that he never really visited the country. He mentions the
+capital Zarinje (of which the ruins cover an enormous area to the east
+of Nasratabad, the present capital) and writes of it as a very large
+town with five gates, one of which "leads to Bist." There were
+extensive fortifications, and a bazaar of which he reckons the annual
+revenue to be 1000 direms.
+
+There were canals innumerable, and always the wind and the windmills.
+It is curious that he traces the Helmund as running to Seistan first
+and then to the Darya-i-Zarah. This is in fact correct, only the
+Darya-i-Zarah (or Gaod-i-Zireh, as we know it) receives no water from
+the Helmund until the great Hamun (lagoons) to the north of Nasratabad
+are filled to overflow. He also mentions two rivers as flowing into
+the Zarah--one from Farah (an important place in his time), which is
+impossible, as it would have to cross the Helmund; and one from Ghur.
+This indicates almost certainly that the name Zarah was not confined,
+as it is now, to the great salt swamp south of Rudbar on the Helmund,
+but it included the Hamuns north of Nasratabad, into which the Farah
+River and the Ghur River do actually empty themselves. At present
+these two great lake systems are separated by about 120 miles of
+Helmund River basin, and are only connected occasionally in flood time
+by means of the overflow (called Shelag) already referred to. The
+mention of Bist, and of the bridge of boats across the river at that
+point, is important, for it is clear that about the year A.D. 950 one
+high-road for trade eastward was across the desert, _i.e._ _via_ the
+Khash Rud valley from Zarinje to about the meridian of 63 E.L. and
+then straight over the desert to Bist (Kala Bist of modern mapping).
+The further mention of robats (or resting-places) _en route_,
+indicates that it was well kept up and a much traversed high-road.
+Subsequently Girishk appears to have become the popular crossing-place
+of the river, but it is well to remember that the earlier route still
+exists, and could readily be made available for a flank march on
+Kandahar.
+
+From Idrisi's writings we learn that a century later, _i.e._ about the
+end of the eleventh century, the Seistan province extended far beyond
+its present limits. Bamian and Ghur (_i.e._ the central hills of
+Afghanistan) were _vis-a-vis_ to that province; Farah was included;
+and probably the whole line of the frontier hills from the Sulimanis,
+opposite Multan, to Sibi and Kalat. It was an enormous province, and a
+new light breaks on its traditional wealth in grain and agricultural
+produce when we understand its vast extent.
+
+The regions of Ghur and Dawar bordered it to the north, and there is a
+word or two to be said about both hereafter. Ghur in the eleventh
+century included the valley of Herat and all the wedge of mountainous
+country south of it to Dawar, but how far Seistan extended into the
+heart of the mountain system which culminates to the south-west of
+Kabul it is difficult to say. It is difficult to understand the
+statement that Bamian, for instance, bordered Seistan, with Ghur in
+between, unless, indeed, in these early days of Ghur's history (for
+Ghur was only conquered by the Arabs in A.D. 1020, and was still far
+from intertwining its history with that of Ghazni when Idrisi wrote)
+the greatness of Bamian overshadowed the light of the lesser valleys
+of Ghur, and Bamian was the ruling province of Central Afghanistan.
+This, indeed, seems possible. The district of Dawar to the south of
+Ghur has always been something of a mystery to geographers. Described
+by Idrisi as "vast, rich, and fertile," and "the line of defence on
+the side of Ghur, Baghnein, and Khilkh," it would be impossible to
+place it without a knowledge of the towns mentioned, were it not that
+we are told that Derthel, one of the chief towns of Dawar, is on the
+Helmund, and that one crosses the river there "in order to reach
+Sarwan." This at once indicates the traditional ford at Girishk as the
+crossing-place, and Zamindawar as the Dawar of Idrisi. Khilkh then
+becomes intelligible also as a town of the Khilkhi (the people who
+then occupied Dawar, described as Turkish by Idrisi, and probably
+identified with the modern Ghilzai), and finds its modern
+representative in the Kalat-i-Ghilzai which crowns the well-known rock
+on the road from Kandahar to Kabul. "The country is inhabited by a
+people called Khilkh," says Idrisi. "The Khilkhs are of a Turkish
+race, who from a remote period have inhabited this country, and whose
+habitations are spread to the north of India on the flank of Ghur and
+in western Seistan." Thus the position of the Ghilzai in the
+ethnography of Central Afghanistan appears to have been established
+long before the days of Mongol irruption. Then as now they formed a
+very important tribal community.
+
+It is, however, sometimes difficult to reconcile Idrisi's account of
+the routes followed by his countrymen in this part of Asia with
+existing geographical features. Deserts and mountains must have been
+much the same as they are now, and the best, if not the only, way to
+unravel the geographical tangle is to take his itinerary and see where
+it leads us. Of Baghnein on the southern borders of Seistan, he says
+it is an "agreeable country, fertile and abundant in fruits." From
+there (_i.e_. the country, not the town) to Derthel one reckons one
+day's journey through the nomad tribes of Bechinks, Derthel being
+"situated on the banks of the Helmund and one of the chief towns of
+Dawar."
+
+So we have to cross an open uncultivated region for 40 miles or so
+from Baghnein to reach Derthel, on the Helmund. Again, "one crosses
+the Helmund at Derthel to reach Sarwan--a town situated about one
+day's journey off," on which depends a territory which produces
+everything in abundance. "Sarwan is bigger than Fars, and more rich in
+fruit and all sorts of productions. Grapes are transported to Bost (or
+Bist), a town two days distant passing by Firozand, which possesses a
+big market, and is on the traveller's right as he travels to Benjawai,
+which is _vis-a-vis_ to Derthel." "Rudhan (?Rudbar) is a small town
+south of the Helmund."
+
+The Helmund valley has been surveyed from Zamindawar to its final exit
+into the Seistan lagoons, and we know that at Girishk there is a very
+ancient ford, which now marks, and has always marked, the great
+highway from Kandahar to Herat. South of Girishk, at the junction of
+the Arghandab with the Helmund, we find extensive and ancient ruins at
+Kala Bist; and south of that again there are many ruins at intervals
+in the Helmund valley; but these latter are comparatively recent,
+dating from the time of the Kaiani Maliks of the eighteenth century.
+
+Assuming that the Helmund fords have remained constant, and placing
+Derthel on one side of the river at Girishk and Benjawai on the other,
+we find on our modern maps that from the ford it is a possible day's
+journey to Kala Sarwan, higher up the Helmund, where "fruit and grapes
+are to be had in abundance," and from whence they might certainly have
+been sent to Bist, where grapes do not grow. Baghnein, separated from
+Derthel by a strip of nomad country, one day's journey wide, might
+thus be on either side the Helmund; but its contiguity to Ghur seems
+to favour a position to the west, rather than to the east, of the
+river, somewhere east of the plains of Bukwa about Washir.
+
+Now it is certain that no Arab traveller, crossing the Helmund desert
+from the west by the direct route recently exploited in British Indian
+interests below Kala Bist and south of the river, could by any
+possibility have reached a grape-growing and highly-cultivated country
+in one day's journey. The inference, then, is tolerably clear. Arab
+traders and travellers never made use of this southern route. Nor
+should we ourselves make use of such a route as that _via_ Nushki and
+the Koh-i-Malik Siah, were we not forced into it by Afghan policy. The
+natural high-road from the east of Persia and Herat to India is _via_
+the plains of Kandahar and the ford of Girishk, and the Arabs, with
+all Khorasan at their feet, were not likely to travel any other way.
+
+Undoubtedly the system of approach to the Indus valley, open to Arab
+traffic from Syria and Bagdad, most generally used and most widely
+recognized was that through the Makran valleys to Karachi and Sind,
+whilst the inland route, _via_ Persia and Seistan, made the well-known
+ford of the Helmund at Girishk, or the boat bridge at Kala Bist, its
+objective, and passed over the river to the plains about Kandahar. But
+it is a very remarkable, and possibly a significant, fact that the
+continuation of the route to Sind and the Indus valley from the plains
+about Kandahar is not mentioned by any Arab writer. Did the Arabs
+descend through any of the well-known passes of the frontier--the
+Mulla, Bolan, Saki-Sarwar, or Gomul--into the plains of India?
+Possibly they did so; but in that case it is difficult to account for
+so important a geographical feature as the frontier passes of Sind
+being ignored by the greatest geographer of his day.
+
+Following Idrisi's description of the Helmund province we have a brief
+itinerary from the Helmund ford (Derthel or Benjawai) to Ghazni, said
+to be nine days' journey inland. None of the places mentioned are to
+be identified in modern maps except Cariat, which is more than
+probably Kariut, a rich and fertile district in the Arghandab valley
+in the direct line to Kalat-i-Ghilzai. This route passes well to the
+north-east of Kandahar, which was apparently of little account in
+Idrisi's days. Although there are extensive ruins at Kushk-i-Nakhud,
+indicated by a huge artificial mound half-way between Girishk and
+Kandahar, there is nothing in Idrisi's writings by which they can be
+identified.
+
+Ghazni was then a large town "surrounded by mud walls and a ditch.
+There are many houses and permanent markets in Ghazni; much business
+is done there. It is one of the 'entrepots' of India. Kabul is nine
+days' journey from it." This is not much to say of the city which had
+been enriched by the spoils carried away from Muttra and Somnath, and
+by the treasures amassed during seventeen fierce raids of that Mahmud
+who, by repeated conquests, made all Northern and Western India
+contribute to his treasury.
+
+Later, in 1332, the Arab traveller, Ibn Batuta, writes of Ghazni as a
+small town set in a waste of ruins--a description which fits it not
+inaptly at the present day; but in Idrisi's time, before the wars with
+Ghur led to its destruction, whilst still the wealth of a great part
+of India supported its magnificence, and whilst it was still the
+theme of glowing panegyric by contemporary historians, one would
+expect a rather more enthusiastic notice. But even Kabul (nine days'
+journey distant from Ghazni) is only recognized as "_L'une des grandes
+villes de l'Inde, entouree de murs_," with a "_bonne citadelle et au
+dehors divers faubourgs_."[5]
+
+There is little to interest us, however, in tracing out the routes
+that linked up Ghazni and Kabul with the Helmund. They have been the
+same through all time, with just the difference of place-names. Towns
+and villages, caravanserais and posts, have come and gone, but that
+historic road has been marked out by Nature as one of the grandest
+high-roads in Asia, from the days of Alexander to those of Roberts.
+Two minars tapering to the sky on the plain before Ghazni are all that
+are left of its ancient glories, and one cannot but contrast the
+scattered debris of that once so famous city with the solid endurance
+of the far greater and older architectural efforts in Egypt and
+Assyria. Southern Afghanistan is indeed singularly poor and empty of
+historic monuments. Even now were Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat, its
+three great cities, to be flattened out by a widespread earthquake
+there would be little that was not of Buddhist origin left for the
+future archaeologist to make a stir about.
+
+Idrisi writes of the Kingdom of Ghur as apart from Herat, although a
+great part of the long Herat valley was certainly included. He calls
+it a country "mountainous and well inhabited, where one finds springs,
+rivers, and gardens--easy to defend and very fertile. There are many
+cultivated fields and flocks. The inhabitants speak a language which
+is not that of the people of Khorasan, and they are not Mohammedans."
+Who were they? The Khilkhis or Ghilzais we know at that time
+overspread the southern hills of Dawar; but who were the people
+speaking a strange language in the land of the Chahar Aimak where now
+dwell the Taimanis, unless they were the Taimanis themselves whose
+traditions date from the time of Moses?
+
+More recently the Ghilzais have left Zamindawar, and the Taimanis have
+been pressed backward and upward into the central hills by the Afghan
+Durani clans, who circle round westward, forming a fringe on the
+foothills between Herat and Kandahar, and who have now completely
+monopolized Zamindawar. Here, indeed, the truculent Nurzai and
+Achakzai, and other elements of the Durani section of Afghan
+ethnography, flourish exceedingly, and it is in this corner of
+Afghanistan, bordering on the Herat highway to India, that nearly all
+the fanatics and ghazis of the country are bred. They presented so
+turbulent and uncompromising a front to strangers in 1882 that there
+was great difficulty in getting a fair survey of the land of the
+Chahar Aimak or of Zamindawar.
+
+The mediaeval provinces of Ghur and Bamain figure so largely in the
+records of Arab geography, and appear to have been so fully open to
+commerce during the centuries succeeding the Arab conquests, that one
+naturally wonders whether there can have been any remarkable change in
+the physical configuration of those regions which, in these later
+days, has rendered them more inaccessible and unapproachable. The Arab
+accounts of trade routes flit easily from point to point, taking
+little reckoning of long distances and gigantic ice-bound passes, or
+the perils of a treacherous climate. An itinerary which deals with
+stupendous mountains and extreme altitudes has little more of
+descriptive illustration in these Arab records than such as would
+apply to camel tracks across the sandy desert or over the flat plain.
+Nor is the distance which figures as a "day's journey" sensibly
+changed to suit the route. Forty miles or so across the backbone of
+the Hindu Kush is written of in much the same terms as if it were
+forty miles over the plains. Giving the Arab travellers all credit for
+far greater powers of endurance and determination than we moderns
+possess, we must still believe that there is a great deal of
+exaggeration (or forgetfulness) in these heroic records of the past.
+It is unlikely that the physical conditions of the country have
+materially changed.
+
+So little has been written of this central region of modern
+Afghanistan (within which lie the ruins of more than one kingdom), so
+little has it been traversed by modern explorers, that it may be
+useful to give some slight general description of the country with
+which these records deal, including Bamain and Kabul and the mountain
+system occupied by the Taimani and Hazara tribes as well as the
+prolific region of Zamindawar with the routes which traverse it.
+
+No part of Afghanistan has been subject to more speculative theories,
+or requires more practical elucidation, than this mountain region in
+which so large a share of the drama of Afghan history has been played.
+Before the days of the Anglo-Russian agreement on the subject of the
+northern boundaries of Afghanistan nothing was known of its geography,
+beyond what might be gathered from the doubtful records of Ferrier's
+journey--and that was very little. The geography of a country shapes
+its history just as surely in the East as in the West, and we have
+consequently much new light thrown on the interesting story of the
+rise and fall of the Ghur dynasties by the fairly comprehensive
+surveys of the region of their turbulent activities which were carried
+out in 1882-83.
+
+From these sources we obtain a very fair idea of the general
+conformation of Central Afghanistan, _i.e._ that part of Afghanistan
+which is occupied by the tribes known as the Chahar Aimak, _i.e._ the
+Jamshidis, the Hazaras, Firozkohis, and Taimanis. It consists in the
+first place of a huge irregular tableland--or uplift--which has been
+deeply scored and eroded by centuries of river action, the rivers
+radiating from the central mass of the Koh-i-Babar to the west of
+Kabul and flowing in deep valleys either directly northward towards
+the Oxus, due west towards Herat (eventually to turn northward), or
+south-west in irregular but more or less parallel lines to the Helmund
+lagoons in Seistan.
+
+The Kabul River basin also finds its head near the same group of river
+sources. The central mountain mass, the Koh-i-Babar, is high, rocky,
+generally snow-capped and impassable. To the north it sends down long,
+barren, and comparatively gentle spurs to the main plateau level,
+which is deeply cut into by the northern system of rivers, including
+the Murghab and the Balkh Ab. But the strangest feature in this
+network of hydrography is the long, deep, narrow valley (almost
+ditch-like in its regularity) which has been eroded by the Hari Rud
+River as it makes its way due west, cutting off the sources of the
+northern group from those of the Helmund or south-western group. It is
+a most remarkable valley, depressed to a depth of 1000 to 2000 feet
+below the general plateau level, bounded on the north by a
+comparatively level line of red-faced cliffs, and on the south by
+another straight flat-backed range called the Band-i-Baian (or farther
+west, the Sufed Koh), which has been carved into the semblance of a
+range by the parallel valleys of the Hari Rud on the north and the
+Tagao Ishlan on the south, which hug the range between them.
+
+No affluents of any consequence join either stream. Either separate or
+together they make their way with straight determination westward
+towards Herat. South of this curious ditch rise the many streamlets
+which work their way, sometimes through comparatively open valleys
+where the floor level has been raised by the centuries of detritus,
+sometimes through steep and narrow gorges where the harder rock of the
+plateau formation presents more difficulties to erosion, into the
+great Helmund basin. These are affluents of the Adraskand, the Farah
+Rud, and the Helmund, all of which have the same bourne in the Seistan
+depression. High up between the Farah Rud and the Helmund affluents
+isolated rugged peaks and short ranges crease and crumple the surface
+of the inhospitable land of the Hazaras, who occupy all the highest of
+the uplands and all the sources of the streams, a hardy, handy race of
+Mongols, living in wild seclusion, but proving themselves to be one of
+the most useful communities amongst the many in Afghanistan. We have
+some of them as sepoys in the Indian Army. Lower down in the same
+river basins, where the gentle grass-covered valleys sweep up to the
+crests of the hills, cultivation becomes possible. Here flocks of
+sheep dot the hill-sides, and the land is open and free; but there are
+still isolated and detached ribs of rocky eminence rising to 11,000
+and 12,000 feet, maintaining the mountainous character of the scenery,
+and rivers are still locked in the embrace of occasional gorges which
+admit of no passing by. This is the land of that very ancient people,
+the Taimanis.
+
+The fierce and lawless Firozkohis live in the Murghab basin on the
+plateau north of the Hari Rud, the Jamshidis to the west of them in
+the milder climate of the lower hills, into which the plateau
+subsides.
+
+Whilst we are chiefly concerned in tracing out the mediaeval commercial
+routes of Afghanistan, we may briefly summarize the events which prove
+that those traversed between Herat and the central kingdoms were
+important routes, worn smooth by the feet of armies as well as by the
+tread of pack-laden khafilas. They are still very rough and they
+present solid difficulties here and there, but in the main they are
+passable commercial roads, although little commerce wends its way
+about them now.
+
+In the Middle Ages the Kingdom of Ghur included the Herat valley as
+far as Khwaja Chist above Obeh in the valley of the Hari Rud, as well
+as all the hill country to the south-east. About the earliest mention
+of Ghur by any traveller is that of Ibn Haukel, who speaks of Jebel al
+Ghur, and talks of plains, ring-fenced with mountains, fruitful in
+cattle and crops, and inhabited by infidels (_i.e._ non-Mussulmans).
+The later history of Ghur is inextricably intertwined with that of
+Ghazni.
+
+Mahmud of Ghazni frequently invaded the hills of Ghur which lay to the
+west of him, but never made any practical impression on the Ghuri
+tribespeople. In 1020, however, Mahomedans conquered Ghur effectually
+from Herat. About a century later (this is after the time of Idrisi,
+whose records we are following) a member of the ruling Ghuri family
+(Shansabi) was recognized as lord of Ghur, and it was one of his sons
+(Alauddin) who inflicted such terrible reprisals on Ghazni when he
+sacked and destroyed that city and its people. It was about this time
+(according to some authorities) that the kingdom of Bamian was founded
+by another member of the same family; but we find Bamian distinctly
+recognized as a separate kingdom by Idrisi a century or so earlier.
+From 1174 to 1214 Bamian was the seat of government of a branch of
+this family ruling all Tokharistan (Turkistan), during which period
+Seistan and Herat were certainly tributary to Ghur. Ghur then became
+so powerful, that it was said that prayers in the name of the Ghuri
+were read from uttermost India to Persia, and from the Oxus to Hormuz.
+
+In 1214 Ghur was reduced first by Mahomedans from Khwarezm (Khiva),
+and shortly afterwards by Chenghis Khan and his Mongol hosts. About
+the middle of the thirteenth century, however, a recrudescence of
+power appeared under the Kurt (or Tajik) dynasty subject to the
+supreme government of the Mongols. Seistan, Kabul, and Tirah were
+then ruled from Herat as the capital of Ghur. Timur finally broke up
+Herat and Ghur in 1383, since which time its history has been as
+obscure as the geography of the region which surrounded it. Such in
+brief is the stormy tale of Ghur, and it leads to one or two
+interesting deductions. There was evidently constant and ready
+communication with Herat, Bamian, and Ghazni. The capital of Ghur must
+have been an important town, situated in a fertile and fairly populous
+district, which, although it was mountainous, yet enjoyed an excellent
+climate. It must have been a military centre too, with fortresses and
+places of defence. During its later history it is clear that Ghur was
+often governed from Herat, but in earlier mediaeval days Ghur possessed
+a distinct capital and a separate entity amongst Afghan kingdoms, and
+was able to hold its own against even so powerful an adversary as
+Mahmud of Ghazni, whilst its communications were with Bamian on the
+north-east rather than with Kabul, which was then regarded as an
+"Indian" city. We can at any rate trace no record of a direct route
+between Ghur and Kabul.
+
+In the twelfth century we read that the capital of Ghur was known as
+Firozkohi, which name (says Yule) was probably appropriated by the
+nomad Aimak tribe now called Firozkohi; but within the limits of what
+is now recognized as the habitat of the Firozkohi (_i.e._ the plateau
+which forms the basin of the Upper Murghab), it is impossible to find
+any place which would answer to what we know of the general condition
+of the surroundings and climate of the capital of Ghur, and which
+would justify a claim to be considered a position of commanding
+eminence. The altitude of the Upper Murghab branches is not more than
+6000 to 7000 feet above sea-level, at which height the climate
+certainly admits of agriculture, but no place that has been visited,
+nor indeed any position in the valleys of the Upper Murghab affluents,
+corresponds in any way to what we are told of this capital.
+
+If we look for the best modern lines of communication through Central
+Afghanistan we shall certainly find that they correspond with mediaeval
+routes, fitting themselves to the conformation of the country. Central
+Afghanistan is open to invasion from the north, west, and south, but
+not directly from the east. The invasion of Ghur from Ghazni, for
+instance, must have been directed by Kalat-i-Gilzai, Kariut, and Musa
+Kila (in Zamindawar), to Yaman, which lies a little to the east of
+Ghur (or Taiwara). So far as we know there are no passes leading due
+west from Ghazni to the heart of the Taimani country.
+
+From the south the Helmund and its affluents offer several openings
+into the heart of the Hazara highlands to the east of Taimani land,
+amidst the great rocky peaks of which the positions were fixed from
+stations on the Band-i-Baian. But there is no certain information
+about the inhabited centres of Hazara population; and from what we
+know of that desolate region of winter snow and wind, there never
+could have been anything to tempt an invader, nor would any sound
+commercial traveller have dreamt of passing that way from Seistan to
+Bamian and Kabul. The idea that Alexander ever took an army up the
+Helmund valley, and over the Bamian passes, must be regarded as most
+improbable in spite of the description of Quintus Curtius, who
+undoubtedly describes a route which presented more difficulties than
+are quite appropriate to the regular Kandahar to Kabul road. On the
+other hand, from Seistan by the Farah Rud there is a route which is
+open to wheeled traffic all the way to Daolatyar on the upper Hari
+Rud. Daolatyar may be regarded as the focus of several routes trending
+north-eastward from Seistan, with the ultimate objective of Bamian and
+the populous valleys of Ghur.
+
+One of the chief affluents of the Farah Rud is now known as the Ghur,
+and we need look no farther than this valley for the central interest
+of the Ghur kingdom, although the exact position of the capital may
+still be open to discussion. Between the Tagao Ghur and the Farah Rud
+are the Park Mountains, which are almost Himalayan in general
+characteristics and beauty, with delightful valleys and open spaces,
+terraced fields, well-built two-storied wooden houses, pretty
+villages, orchards with an abundance of walnuts and vines trailing
+over the trees; the Ghur valley itself being broad and open with a
+clear river of sweet water in its midst. This is near its junction
+with the Farah Rud. Above this, for a space, the valley narrows to a
+gorge and there is no passing along it, whilst above the gorge again
+it becomes wide, cultivated, and well populated, and this is where the
+Taimani headquarters of Taiwara are found. Taiwara is locally known as
+Ghur, and may be absolutely on the site of the ancient capital, for
+there are ruins enough to support the theory. Beyond an intervening
+band of hills to the south are two valleys full of cultivation and
+trees, wherein are two important places, Nili and Zarni, which
+likewise boast of extensive ruins, whilst at Jam Kala, hard by, there
+is perched on a high spur above the road with only one approach, a
+remarkable stone-built fort. Yaman, to the east of Taiwara, in the
+Helmund drainage, is a permanent Taimani village. Here also are very
+ancient ruins, and the people say that they date from the time of
+Moses. At that time they say that cups were buried with the dead, one
+at the head and one at the foot of the corpse. Our native surveyor
+Imam Sharif saw one of these cups with an inscription on it, but was
+unable to secure the relic.
+
+Nili and Zarni are in direct connection with Farah, with no
+inconvenient break in the comparatively easy line of communication;
+and they all (including Taiwara) are in direct communication with
+Herat, by a good khafila route (_i.e._ good for camels). But the
+routes differ widely, that from Herat to Taiwara by Farsi being more
+direct, whilst the route from Herat to Zarni by Parjuman (which is
+well kept up between these two places) passes well to the south. All
+these places, again, are connected with the Hari Rud valley at Khwaja
+Chist (the Ghur frontier) by a good passable high-road, which first
+crosses the hills between Zarni and Taiwara, then passes under the
+shadow of a remarkable mountain called Chalapdalan, or Chahil Abdal
+(12,700 feet high--about which many mysterious traditions still
+hover), over the Burma Pass into the Farah Rud drainage, thence over
+another pass into the valleys of the Tagao Ishlan, and finally over
+the Band-i-Baian into the Hari Rud valley at Khwaja Chist.
+
+This is the route described by Idrisi as connecting Ghur with Herat,
+as we shall see. The Ghur district is linked up with Daolatyar and
+Bamian by the Farah Rud line of approach, or by a route, described as
+good, which runs east into the Hazara highlands, and then follows the
+Helmund. The latter is very high. There is therefore absolutely no
+difficulty in traversing these Taimani mountain regions in almost any
+direction, and the facility for movement, combined with the beauty and
+fertility of the country, all point unmistakably to Taiwara and its
+neighbourhood as the seat of the Ghuri dynasty of the Afghan kings.
+
+The picturesque characteristics of Ghur extend southward to Zamindawar
+on its southern frontier, the valleys of the Helmund, the Arghandab,
+the Tarnak, and Arghastan--this is a land of open, rolling watersheds,
+treeless, but covered with grass and flowers in spring, and crowned
+with rocky peaks and ridges of rugged grandeur alternating with the
+rich beauty of pastoral fields. The summer of their existence is in
+curious contrast to the stern winter of the storm-swept highlands
+above them, or the dreary expanse of drab sand-dusted desert below.
+The route upstream to the backbone of the mountains, and so over the
+divide to the kingdom of Bamian, was once a well-trodden route.
+
+Since so many routes converge on Daolatyar at the head of the Hari Rud
+valley, one would naturally look for Daolatyar to figure in mediaeval
+geography as an important centre. It is not easy, however, to identify
+any of the places mentioned by Idrisi as representing this particular
+focus of highland routes. Between Ghur and Herat, or between Ghur and
+Ghazni, the difficulty lies in the number and extent of populous
+towns, any one of which may represent an ancient site, to say nothing
+of ruins innumerable. Between Taiwara and Herat we get no information
+from Idrisi till we reach Khwaja Chist on the frontier. He merely
+mentions the existence of a khafila road, and then he counts seven
+days' journey between Khwaja Chist and Herat, reckoning the first as
+"short."
+
+The names of the halting-places between Khwaja Chist and Herat are
+Housab, Auca, Marabad, Astarabad, Bajitan (or Najitan), and Nachan.
+Auca I have no hesitation in identifying with Obeh. There is a large
+village at Marwa which might possibly represent Marabad, and Naisan
+would correspond in distance with Nachan, but this is mere guesswork;
+to identify the others is impossible, without further examination than
+was undertaken when surveying the ground.
+
+The story of the commerce of Central Asia, which centred itself in
+Herat in the days of Arab supremacy, has a strong claim on the student
+of Eastern geography, for it is only through the itineraries of these
+wandering Semetic merchants and travellers that we can arrive at any
+estimation of the peculiar phase of civilization which existed in Asia
+in the mediaeval centuries of our era; a period at which there is good
+reason to suppose that civilization was as much advanced in the East
+as in the West. It is not the professional explorers, nor yet the
+missionaries (great as are their services to geography), who have
+opened up to us a knowledge of the world's highways and byways
+sufficient to lead to general map illustration of its ancient
+continents, so much as the everlasting pushing out of trade
+investigations in order to obtain the mastery of the road to wealth.
+
+India and its glittering fame has much to answer for, but India (that
+is to say, the India we know, the peninsula of India) was so much
+more get-at-able by sea than by land even in the early days of
+navigation, that we do not learn so much about the passes through the
+mountains into India as the way of the ships at sea, and the coast
+ports which they visited. According to certain Arab writers large
+companies of Arabs settled in the borderland and coasts of India from
+the very earliest days. Indeed, there are evidences of their existence
+in Makran long before the days of Alexander; but there is very little
+evidence of any overland approach to India across the Indus.
+Hindustan, to the mediaeval Arab, commenced at the Hindu Kush, and
+Kabul and Ghazni were "Indian" frontier towns; and the invasions and
+conquests of India dating back to Assyrian times include no more than
+the Indus basin, and were not concerned with anything farther south.
+The Indus, with its flanking line of waterless desert, was ever a most
+effectual geographical barrier.
+
+The Arabs entered India and occupied the Indus valley through Makran,
+and throughout their writings we find, strangely, little reference to
+any of the Indian frontier passes which we now know so well. But in
+the north and north-west of Afghanistan, in the Seistan and the Oxus
+regions, they were thoroughly at home both as traders and travellers;
+and with the assistance of their records we can make out a very fair
+idea of the general network of traffic which covered High Asia. The
+destroying hordes of the subsequent Mongol invasions, and the
+everlasting raids of Turkmans and Persians on the border, have clean
+wiped out the greater number of the towns and cities mentioned by
+them, and the map is now full of comparatively modern Turkish and
+Persian names which give no indication whatever of ancient occupation.
+There are, nevertheless, some points of unmistakable identity, and
+from these we can work round to conclusions which justify us in
+piecing together the old route-map of Northern Afghanistan to a
+certain extent. This is not unimportant even to modern geographers.
+The roads of the old khafila travellers may again be the roads of
+modern progress. We know, at any rate, that the Arabs of 1000 years
+ago were much the same as the Arabs of to-day in their manners and
+methods. Their routes were camel routes, not horse routes, and their
+day's journey was as far as a camel could go in a day, which was far
+in the wider and more waterless spaces of desert or uninhabited
+country, and very much shorter when convenient halting-places
+occurred. These Arab itineraries are bare enumeration of place-names
+and approximate distances. As for any description of the nature of the
+road or the scenery, or any indication of altitude (which they
+possibly had no means of judging), there is not a trace of it; and the
+difficulties of transliteration in place-names are so great as to
+leave identification generally a matter of mere guesswork.
+
+One of the most interesting geographical centres from which to take
+off is Herat, and it may be instructive to note what is said about
+Herat itself and its connections with the Oxus and Seistan. Herat,
+says Idrisi, is "great and flourishing, it is defended inside by a
+citadel, and is surrounded outside by 'faubourgs.' It has many gates
+of wood clamped with iron, with the exception of the Babsari gate,
+which is entirely of iron. The Grand Mosque of the town is in the
+midst of the bazaars.... Herat is the central point between Khorasan,
+Seistan, and Fars." Ibn Haukel (tenth century) mentions a gate called
+the Darwaza Kushk, which is evidence that Kushk was of importance in
+those days, though no separate mention is made of that place; and he
+adds that the iron gate was the Balkh gate, and was in the midst of
+the city. The strategical value of the position was clearly
+recognized.
+
+That grand edifice, the Mosalla, with its mosques and minars, which
+stood outside the walls of Herat and was the glory of the town in 1883
+(when it was destroyed in the interests of military defence), had no
+previous existence in any other form than that which was given it when
+it was built in the twelfth century.
+
+Both Ibn Haukel and Idrisi mention a mountain about six miles from
+Herat, from which stone was taken for paving (or mill-stones), where
+there was neither grass nor wood, but where was a place (in Ibn
+Haukel's time, but not mentioned by Idrisi) "inhabited, called Sakah,
+with a temple or Church of Christians." Idrisi says this mountain was
+"on the road to Balkh, in the direction of Asfaran." This would seem
+to indicate that Asfaran, "on the road to Balkh," must be Parana (or
+Parwana), an important position about a day's march north of Herat.
+Ibn Haukel says nothing about the road to Balkh, which can only be
+northward from Herat, but merely mentions that the mountain was on the
+desert or uncultivated side of Herat, where was a river which had to
+be crossed by a bridge. This could only be _south_ of Herat. Asfaran
+is also stated to be on the road to _Seistan_ and to have had four
+places dependent on it, one of which was Adraskand; and the route to
+Asfaran from Herat is further described as three days' journey
+(Idrisi). Ibn Haukel also describes Asfaran as possessing four
+dependent towns, and places it between Farah and Herat, or _south_ of
+Herat. As Adraskand[6] is a well-known place between Herat and Farah,
+we must assume that this is either another Asfaran, or that Idrisi has
+made a mistake in copying Ibn Haukel. It might possibly be represented
+by Parah, twenty-five miles south-west of Herat, although the limited
+area of cultivable ground around renders this unlikely. Subzawar would
+indicate a far more promising position for an important trade centre
+such as Asfaran must have been, and would accord better with the three
+days' journey from Herat of Idrisi, or the itinerary from Farah given
+by Ibn Haukel, while the extensive ruins around testify to its
+antiquity. Asfaran was almost certainly Subzawar.
+
+Considering the interest which may once again surround the question of
+communications from Herat to India, it may be useful to point out that
+the route connecting Farah with Herat 1000 years ago remains
+apparently unchanged. The bridge called the Pul-i-Malun, over the Hari
+Rud, must have been in existence then, and there was another bridge
+over the Farah River one day's march below Farah, on the highway
+between Herat and Seistan. To the west of Herat, on the ruin-strewn
+road to Sarakhs, we have one or two interesting geographical
+propositions.
+
+Idrisi mentions a place possessing considerable local importance
+"before Herat had become what it is now," about 9 miles west of Herat,
+called Kharachanabad. This can easily be recognized in the modern
+Khardozan, a walled but very ancient town, which is about 81/2 miles
+distant. Between it and the walls of the city there is now no place of
+importance, nor does it appear likely, for local reasons, that there
+ever could have been any. Another place, called Bousik, or Boushinj
+(Pousheng, according to Ibn Haukel), is said to be half the size of
+Sarakhs, built on the flat plain 6 miles distant from the mountains,
+surrounded with walls and a ditch, with brick houses, and inhabitants
+who were commercial, rich, and prosperous, and "who drink the water of
+the river that runs to Sarakhs." This indicates a site on the banks of
+the Hari Rud. The only modern place of importance which answers this
+description is the ancient town of Zindajan, which is about 6 miles
+from the mountains, and which (according to Ferrier) still bears the
+name of Foosheng. This name, however, was not recognized by the Afghan
+Boundary Commission. "To the west of Bousik are Kharkerde and Jerkere.
+One reckons two days' journey to this last town, which is well
+populated, smaller than Kuseri, but where there is plenty of water and
+cultivation. From Jerkere to Kharkerde is two days' journey." These
+two places are obviously on the road to Nishapur. There is an ancient
+"haoz," or tank, below the isolated hill of Sangiduktar, near the
+Persian frontier, which might well represent what is left of Jerkere,
+and Kharkerde lies beyond it, on the road to Rue Khaf (itself a very
+ancient site, probably representing Rudan), near Karat. Another place
+which has a very ancient and troubled history is Ghurian, about
+thirteen miles west of Zindajan. This is readily identified as the
+Koure of Idrisi, which is described as twelve miles from Bousik, on
+the left of the high-road westward, and about three miles from it.
+
+This corresponds exactly with Ghurian, and proves that the high-road
+has retained its position through ages. Koure is described as an
+important town, but there is no mention of walls or defences. Another
+place, second only in importance to Bousik, is Kouseri. It is in fact
+said to be equal to Bousik, and to possess "running water and
+gardens." There can be little doubt that this is Kuhsan (or Kusan),
+one of the most important towns of the Herat valley.
+
+This great high-road, intersecting the plain from the north-west gate
+of the city, is a pleasant enough road in the spring and summer
+months. For a space it runs singularly free from crowded villages and
+close cultivation, and the tread of a horse's hoof is amongst
+low-growing flowers of the plain, a dwarf yellow rose with maroon
+centre being the most prominent. Then, as one skirts the Kaibar River
+as it runs to a junction with the Hari Rud from the northern hills,
+cultivation thickens and villages increase.
+
+The road next hugs the Hari Rud, and, passing the high-walled town of
+Zindajan to the south, runs, white and even and hard, with the scarlet
+and purple of poppies and thistles fringing it, between long gravel
+slopes of open dasht and the twin-peaked ridge of Doshak, to Rozanak
+and Kuhsan. Kuhsan is a little to the south of the Kaman-i-Bihist. It
+was here that the British Commission of the Russo-Afghan Boundary
+gathered in the late autumn of 1884, one half from England and the
+other half from India. The drab squares of the cultivated plain were
+bare then, in November, and the poplars on the banks of the river were
+scattering yellow leaves to the blasts of the bitter north-west winds
+of autumn which sweep through Khorasan and Seistan, making of life a
+daily burden. But there came a marvellous change in the spring-time,
+when the world was scarlet and green below and blue above; when the
+sand-grouse began to chatter through the clear sky; then
+Kaman-i-Bihist (the bow of Paradise) justified its name. The old Arab
+of the trading days who wandered northward to Sarakhs must have loved
+this place.
+
+Stretching Sarakhs-ward are the hills, rocky and broken along the
+river edge, but gradually giving place eastward to easy rounded
+slopes, softened by rain and snow, and washed into smooth spurs with
+treacherous waterways between which become quagmires under the
+influence of a north-western "shamshir." The extraordinary effect of
+denudation which yearly results from the heavy rain-storms which are
+so frequent in spring and early summer in these hills must have
+absolutely changed their outlines during the centuries which have
+elapsed since the Semitic trader trod them. A summer storm-cloud
+charged with electricity may burst on their summits, and the whole
+surface of the slopes at once becomes soft and pulpy. Mud avalanches
+start on the steeper grades and carry down thousands of tons of slimy
+detritus in a crawling mass, and spread it out in fans at their feet.
+It is not safe to say that the modern passes of the Paropamisus north
+of Herat--the Ardewan and the Babar--were the passes of mediaeval
+commerce, although the Ardewan is marked by certain wells and ruined
+caravanserais which show that it has long been used. It seems possible
+that these passes may have shifted their positions more than once.
+There was undoubtedly a well-trodden route from Bousik, which carried
+the traveller more directly to Sarakhs than would the Ardewan or even
+the Chashma Sabz Pass. This road followed the river more closely than
+any railway ever will. It turned the river gorge to the east, and
+probably passed through the hills by the Karez Ilias route, which runs
+almost due north to Sarakhs. The only certain indication which we can
+find in Idrisi is the statement that the "silver hill" (_i.e._ the
+hill of the silver mine) is on the road from Herat to Sarakhs. The
+Simkoh (silver hill) is still a well-known feature in the broken range
+of the Paropamisus, near that route. But it is difficult after
+centuries of disturbing forces, natural and artificial, to identify
+the sites of many of the towns and markets mentioned by Idrisi, who
+places Badghis to the west of Bousik, and gives the "silver hill" as
+one of its "dependencies." There were two considerable towns, Kua (or
+Kau) and Kawakir, said to have been near the silver hill, and there is
+mention of a place called Kilrin in this neighbourhood. Probably the
+ruins at Gulran represent the latter, but Kua and Kawakir are not
+identified. Gulran was one of the most fascinating camps of the Afghan
+Boundary Commission. On the open grass slopes stretching in gentle
+grades northward, bordered by the line of red Paropamisan cliffs to
+the south and west and by the open desert stretching to Merv on the
+north, it was, during one or two early months of the year, quite an
+ideal camping-ground.
+
+It was here that the wild asses of the mountains made a raid on the
+humble four-footed followers of the Commission, and signified their
+extreme disgust at the free use which was made of their
+feeding-grounds; thus witnessing to the condition of primeval
+simplicity into which that once populous district had subsided after
+centuries of border raid and insecurity. The remains of an old karez,
+or underground irrigation channel, not far north of Gulran, testified
+to a former condition of cultivation and prosperity.
+
+From Gulran (which is connected with the Herat plains directly by the
+pass called Chashma Sabz) roads stretch northwards and north-eastwards,
+without obstacle, to the open Turkistan plains, where ancient sites
+abound. Idrisi's indications, however, are but a very uncertain
+foundation for identifying most of them. The "dependencies" of Badghis
+are said to be Kua, Kughanabad, Bast, Jadwa, Kalawun, and Dehertan,
+the last place being built on a hill having neither vegetation nor
+gardens; but "lead is found there, and a small stream."
+
+The great trade centres of Turkistan, north of the Paropamisus, in
+mediaeval days were undoubtedly near Panjdeh, at the confluence of the
+Kushk and Murghab rivers, and at Merv-el-Rud, or Maruchak. Two or
+three obvious routes lead from the passes above Kaman-i-Bihist, or
+above Herat, to Panjdeh and Maruchak. One is indicated by the drainage
+of the Kushk River, and the other by that of the Kashan, which is more
+or less parallel to the Kushk to the east of it, with desolate Chol
+country in between. From Herat the most direct route to Panjdeh and
+Merv is by the Babar Pass, or by Korokh, the Zirmast Pass, and Naratu.
+Korokh (Karuj) is mentioned both by Ibn Haukel and Idrisi as being
+situated three marches from Herat, surrounded by entrenchments, and in
+the "gorge of mountains," with gardens and orchards and vines. The
+Korokh of to-day is between the mountains, but only some twenty-five
+miles from Herat. This modern Korokh has, however, many evidences of
+great antiquity, and it is on the high-road to an important group of
+passes leading past Naratu to Bala Murghab and Maruchak. The most
+remarkable feature about Korokh is a grove of pine trees closely
+resembling the "stone" pine of Italy, which mass themselves into a
+dark blotch on the landscape and mark Korokh in this treeless country
+most conspicuously. There are no other trees of the same sort to be
+found now in this part of Asia, but I was told that they once were
+abundant in the Herat valley, which renders it possible that the
+"arar" trees, mentioned by Ibn Haukel as a peculiar source of revenue
+to Bousik, may have been of this species. Naratu, again, is very
+ancient, and its position among the hills (for it is a hill-fortress)
+seems to identify it with Dahertan. Undoubtedly this was one of the
+most important of the old routes northward, and it is a route of which
+account should be taken to-day.
+
+In the Kuskh River more than one ancient site was observed, Kila Maur
+being obviously one of the most important, whilst in the Kashan stream
+there were evidences of former occupation at Torashekh and at
+Robat-i-Kashan. Whilst there is a general vague resemblance between
+the names of certain old Arab towns and places yet to be found in the
+Herat valley and Badghis, it is only here and there that it has been
+possible to identify the precise position of a mediaeval site. The
+dependencies of Badghis, enumerated by Idrisi, require the patient and
+careful researches of a Stein to place them accurately on the basis
+of such vague definitions as are given. We are merely told that
+Kanowar and Kalawun are situated at a distance of three miles one from
+the other, and that between them there is neither running water nor
+gardens. "The people drink from wells and from rain-water. They
+possess cultivated fields, sheep, and cattle." Such a description
+would apply excellently well to any two contiguous villages in the
+Chol country anywhere between the Kushk and the Kashan. Those rolling,
+wave-like hills, with their marvellous spread of grass and flowers in
+summer, and their dreary, wind-scoured bareness in winter, are
+excellent for sheep and cattle at certain seasons of the year; but
+water is only to be found at intervals, and there are much wider
+distances than three miles where not even wells are to be found.
+
+Writing again of Herat, Idrisi says that, starting towards the east in
+the direction of Balkh, one encounters three towns in the district of
+Kenef: Tir, Kenef, and Lakshur; and that they are all about equally
+distant, it being one day's journey to Tir, one more to Kenef, and
+another to Lakshur (Lacschour). Tir is a rich town where the "prince
+of the country" resides, larger than Bousik, full of commerce and
+people, with brick-built houses, etc. Kenef is as large, but more
+visited by foreigners; and Lakshur is equal to either. They are all of
+them big towns of commercial importance, Lakshur being bounded on the
+west by the Merv-el-Rud province, of which the capital is
+Merv-el-Rud.
+
+Assuming for the present that Maruchak, on the Murghab, represents
+Merv-el-Rud (Merv of the River), where are we to place these three
+important sites, so that the last shall be east of the Maruchak
+province and only three days' journey from Herat? The distance from
+Herat to Maruchak is not less than 150 miles, and it is called by
+Idrisi a six days' journey. Starting towards the east can only refer
+to the Balkh route already referred to, _i.e._ _via_ Korokh and the
+Zirmast Pass. It cannot mean the Hari Rud valley, for that leads to
+Bamian rather than Balkh. By the Korokh route, however, it is possible
+to follow a more direct line to Balkh than any which would pass by
+Maruchak or Bamian. There is on this route, east of Naratu and
+south-east of Maruchak, a place called Langar which might possibly
+correspond to Lakshur, and it is not more than 70 to 80 miles from
+Herat. From Langar there is an easy pass leading over the
+Band-i-Turkistan more or less directly to Maimana and Balkh, and it
+seems probable that this was a recognized khafila route. Tir is an
+oft-repeated name in the Herat district. The river itself was called
+Tir west of Herat, and there is the bridge of Tir (Tir-pul) just above
+Kuhsan. The mountains, again, to the north-east are known as Tir
+Band-i-Turkistan, and the Tir mentioned as on the road to Balkh must
+certainly have been east of Herat. Of Kenef I can trace no evidence.
+It must have been close to Korokh.
+
+That this route, through the Korokh valley and across the
+water-parting by the Zirmast Pass to Naratu, was the high road between
+Herat and Balkh I have very little doubt. It was the route selected
+for mail service during the winter when the Afghan Boundary Commission
+camp was at Bala Murghab, on the Murghab River, and it was seldom
+closed by snow, although the Zirmast heights rise to over 7000 feet,
+and the Tir Band-i-Turkistan (which represents the northern _rebord_
+or revetment of the uplands which contain the Murghab drainage) cannot
+be much less. The intense bitterness of a Northern Afghan winter is
+more or less spasmodic. It is only the dreaded shamshir (the
+"scimitar" of the north-west) which is dangerous, and travelling is
+possible at almost every season of the year. The condition of the
+mountain ways and passes immediately above Bala Murghab is not that of
+steep and difficult tracks across a rugged and rocky divide. In most
+cases it is possible to ride over them, or, indeed, off them, in
+almost any direction; but as these mountains extend eastward they
+alter the character of their crests. From Herat to Maruchak this is
+not, however, the direct road; the Kushk River, or the Kashan,
+offering a much easier line of approach.
+
+All our investigations in 1884 tended to prove beyond dispute that
+Maruchak represents the famous old city of Merv-el-Rud, the "Merv of
+the River," to which every Arab geographer refers. Sir Henry Rawlinson
+sums up the position in the Royal Geographical Society's _Proceedings_
+(vol. viii.), when he points out that there were two Mervs known to
+the ancient geographer. One is the well-known Russian capital in
+trans-Caspia, the "Merv of the Oasis," a city which, in conjunction
+with Herat and Balkh, formed the tripolis of primitive Aryan
+civilization. It was to this place that Orodis, the Parthian king,
+transported the Roman soldiers whom he had taken prisoners in his
+victory over Crassus, and here they seemed to have formed a
+flourishing colony.
+
+Merv was in early ages a Christian city, and Christian congregations,
+both Jacobite and Nestorian, flourished at Merv from about A.D. 200
+till the conquest of Persia by the Mahomedans. Merv the greater has as
+stirring a history as any in Asia, but Merv-el-Rud, which was 140
+miles south of the older Merv, is altogether of later date. This city
+is said to have been built by architects from Babylonia in the fifth
+century A.D., and was flourishing at the time of the Arab invasion.
+All this Oxus region (Tokharistan) was then held by a race of
+Skytho-Aryans (white Huns) called Tokhari or Kushan, and their
+capital, Talikhan, was not far from Maruchak. Now, Merv-el-Rud is the
+only great city named in history on the Upper Murghab, above Panjdeh,
+before the end of the fourteenth century A.D. After that date, in the
+time of Shah Rokh (Timur's son), the name Merv-el-Rud disappears, and
+Maruchak takes its place in all geographical works, the inference
+being that, Merv-el-Rud being destroyed in Timur's wars, Maruchak was
+built in its immediate neighbourhood. This surmise of Rawlinson's is
+confirmed by the appearance of Maruchak, which is but an insignificant
+collection of inferior buildings surrounded by a mud wall, with a
+labyrinth of deep canal cuttings in front of it and a rough irregular
+stretch of untilled country around. Merv-el-Rud must have been a much
+greater place.
+
+There are, however, abundant evidences of grass-covered ruins, both
+near Maruchak and at the junction of the Chaharshamba River with the
+Murghab some 10 miles above Maruchak. Sir Henry Rawlinson points out
+the strategic value of this point, as the Chaharshamba route leads
+nearly straight into the Oxus plains and to Balkh. At the point of the
+junction of the two rivers the valley of the Murghab hardly affords
+room enough for a town of such importance as we are led to believe
+Merv-el-Rud to have been, even after making all due allowance for
+Oriental exaggeration. It is only about Maruchak that the valley
+widens out sufficiently to admit of a large town. It seems probable,
+therefore, that the site of Maruchak must be near the site of
+Merv-el-Rud, although it does not actually command the entrance to
+the Chaharshamba valley and the road to Afghan Turkistan.
+
+On this road, some 30 miles from the junction of the rivers, there is
+to be seen on the slopes which flank the southern hills, the jagged
+tooth-edged remains of a very old town (long deserted) which goes by
+the name of Kila Wali. It is here, or close by, that the Tochari
+planted their capital Talikan, at one time the seat of government of a
+vast area of the Oxus basin. There is, however, another Talikan[7] in
+Badakshan to the east of Balkh, and there are symptoms that some
+confusion existed between the two in the minds of our mediaeval
+geographers. Ibn Haukel writes of Talikan as possessing more wholesome
+air than Merv-el-Rud, and he refers to the river running between the
+two. This is evidently in reference to the capital of Tocharistan at
+Kila Wali. Again when he writes of Talikan as the largest city in
+Tocharistan, "situated on a plain, near mountains," he is correct
+enough as applied to Kila Wali, but this has nothing to do with
+Andarab and Badakshan with which we find it directly associated in the
+context.
+
+On the other hand the Talikan in Badakshan was one of a group of
+important cities whose connection with India lay through Andarab and
+the northern passes of the Hindu Kush. Between Maruchak and Panjdeh,
+along the banks of the Murghab, are ruins innumerable, the sites of
+other towns which it is impossible to identify with precision. There
+can be little doubt, however, that the remains of the bridge which
+once spanned the river at a point between Maruchak and Panjdeh marked
+the site of Dizek (or Derak, according to Idrisi), which we know to
+have been built on both sides of the river, and that Khuzan existed
+near where Aktapa now is (_i.e._ near Panjdeh). The name Dizek is
+still to be recognized, but it is applied to a curious sequence of
+ancient Buddhist caves which have been carved out of the cliffs at
+Panjdeh, and not to any site on the river banks.
+
+The confusion which occasionally exists between places bearing the
+same name in mediaeval geographical annals is very obvious in Idrisi's
+description of Merv. The greater Merv (the Russian provincial capital)
+is clearly mixed up in his mind with the lesser Merv when, in
+describing the latter, he says that Merv-el-Rud is situated in a plain
+at a great distance from mountains, and that its territory is fertile
+but sandy; three grand mosques and a citadel adorn an eminence and
+water is brought to it by innumerable canals, all of which is
+applicable to Merv but not to Merv-el-Rud. He then continues with a
+description of the greater Merv, which is quite apropos to that
+locality, and makes it clear incidentally that Khiva (not Merv)
+represents the ancient Khwarezm. Again, he enumerates towns and places
+of Mahomedan origin which are "dependent" on "Merv." Amongst them we
+find Mesiha, a pretty, well-cultivated place one day's journey to the
+west of Merv; Jirena (Behvana), a market-town 9 miles from Merv, and 3
+from Dorak (? Dizek), a place situated on the banks of the river; then
+Dendalkan, an important town two days from Merv on the road to
+Sarakhs; Sarmakan, a large town to the left of Dorak and 3 miles
+farther, Dorak being situated on the banks of the river at 12 miles
+from Merv in the direction of Sarakhs; Kasr Akhif (or Ahnef), a little
+town at one day's distance from Merv on the road to Balkh; Derah, a
+small town 12 miles from Kasr Ahnef where grapes were abundant. Here,
+says Idrisi, the river divides the town in two parts which are
+connected by a bridge. It is quite impossible to straighten out this
+geographical enumeration, unless we assume that it refers to
+Merv-el-Rud and not to Merv. Then Mesiha becomes a possibility, and
+might be looked for among the ruined sites on the Kushk
+River--possibly at Kila Maur. Dorak, at 12 miles from Merv in the
+direction of Sarakhs, and Dendalkan at two days' journey in the same
+direction, would still be on the river banks. Kasr Ahnef we know to
+have been built after the Arab invasion in the valley of the Murghab,
+about 12 miles from Khuzan (identified by Rawlinson with Ak Tepe) and
+15 from Merv-el-Rud, and must have been situated near the
+Band-i-Nadir, where the desert road to Balkh enters the hills. Ak Tepe
+must once have been a place of great importance, both strategically
+(as it commands the position of the two important highways southward
+to Herat, the Kushk and the Murghab valleys) and commercially. But
+apparently its importance did not survive to Arab times. Dendalkan was
+certainly near Ak Tepe.
+
+In making our surveys of this historic district it was exceedingly
+difficult to associate the drab and dreary landscape of this Chol
+(loess) country and its intersecting rivers with such a scene of busy
+commercial life as the valleys must have presented in Arab times. The
+Kushk is at best a "dry" river, as its name betokens, an
+unsatisfactory driblet in a world of sandy desolation. Reeds and
+thickets hide its narrow ways, and it is only where its low banks
+recede on either hand as it emerges into the flat plains above Panjdeh
+that there is room for anything that could by courtesy be called a
+town. The Murghab River shows better promise.
+
+Below Maruchak, where towns once crowded, it widens into green spaces,
+and the multiplicity and depth of the astonishing system of canals
+which distribute the waters of the river on its left bank leave no
+room to doubt the strength of the former population that constructed
+them. Where the pheasants breed now in myriads, in reedy swamps and
+scrubby thickets, there may lie hidden the foundations of many an old
+town with its caravanserais, its mosques, and its baths. The economic
+value of the Murghab River is still great in Northern Afghanistan. No
+one watching the sullen flood pouring past Bala Murghab in the winter
+time and looking up to the dark doors of the mountains from whence it
+seems to emerge, could have any idea of the wealth and fertility and
+the spread of its usefulness which is to be found on the far side of
+those doors. From its many cradles in the Firozkohi uplands to its
+many streamlets reaching out round Merv and turning the desert into a
+glorious field of fertility, the Murghab does its duty bravely in the
+world of rivers, and well deserves all that has ever been written in
+its praise by past generations of geographers.
+
+Amongst the many high-roads of Northern Afghanistan which are
+mentioned by the Arab writers, none is more frequently referred to
+than the road from Herat to Balkh, _i.e._ to Afghan Turkistan.
+Intervening between Herat and Afghan Turkistan there is immediately
+north the easy round-backed range called by various names which have
+been lumped under the term Paropamisus, down the northern slopes of
+which the Kushk and Kashan made a fairly straight way through the sea
+of rounded slopes and smooth steep-sided hills which constitute the
+Chol. But this range is but an extension of the southern rampart of
+the Firozkohi upland, which forms the upper basin of the Murghab and
+overlooks the narrow valley of the Hari Rud.
+
+The northern rampart or buttress of that upland is the Tir
+Band-i-Turkistan, the western flank of which is turned by the Murghab
+River as it makes its way northward. So that there are several ways by
+which Afghan Turkistan may be reached from Herat. Setting aside the
+Hari Rud route to Bamian or Kabul, which would be a difficult and
+lengthy detour for the purpose of reaching Balkh, there is the route
+we have already mentioned _via_ Korokh, Naratu, and Langar, and thence
+over the Band-i-Turkistan, or down the Murghab. But there is another
+and probably the most trodden way, _via_ the Kashan to the Murghab
+valley at the junction of the Chaharshamba River, and up that river to
+the divide at its head, passing over into the Kaisar drainage, and so,
+either to Andkhui and the Oxus, or to Maimana and Balkh. This was the
+route made use of generally by the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission,
+and the existence of ancient tanks (called "Haoz") and of "robats" (or
+halting-places) at regular intervals in the Kashan valley, testifies
+to its use at no very ancient date.
+
+The entrance to the Chaharshamba valley is very narrow, so narrow as
+to preclude the possibility of any large town ever having occupied
+this position; but it opens out as one passes the old Kila Wali ruins
+where there is ample space for the old capital of Tocharistan to have
+existed. On the north, trailing streams descend from the Kara Bel
+plateau (a magnificent grass country in summer and a cold scene of
+windy desolation in winter), and their descent is frequently through
+treacherous marshes and shining salt pitfalls, making it exceedingly
+difficult to follow them to the plateau edge. To the south are the
+harder features of the Band-i-Turkistan foothills, the crest of the
+long black ridge of this Band being featureless and flat, as is
+generally the case with the boundary ridges and revetments of a
+plateau country. Over the Chaharshamba divide (at about 2800 feet) and
+into the Kaisar drainage is an introduction to a country that is
+beautiful with the varied beauty of low hill-tops and gentle slopes,
+until one either by turning north, debouches into the flat desert
+plains of the Oxus at Daolatabad, or continuing more easterly, arrives
+at Maimana, the capital of the little province of Almar, the centre of
+a small world of highly cultivated and populous country, and a town
+which must from its position represent one or other of the ancient
+trade centres mentioned by Idrisi. Here we leave behind the long lines
+of Turkman kibitkas looking like rows of black bee-hives in the
+snow-spread distance, and find the flat-roofed substantial houses of a
+settled Uzbek population, with flourishing bazaars and a general
+appearance of well-being inside the mud walls of the town.
+
+Idrisi writes that Talikan is built at the foot of a mountain which is
+part of the Jurkan range (Band-i-Turkistan), and that it is on the
+"paved" route between Merv and Balkh. This at once indicates that
+route as an important one compared with other routes (there being a
+desert route across the Karabel plateau from near Panjdeh in addition
+to those already mentioned), although there is no sign of any serious
+road-making to be detected at present. Sixty miles from Talikan, on
+the road to Balkh, Idrisi places Karbat, a town not so large as
+Talikan but more flourishing and better populated. The distance
+reckoned along the one possible route here points to Maimana, which is
+just 60 miles from Talikan, but there is no other indication of
+identity. Karbat was a dependency of the province of Juzjan (or
+Jurkan, probably Guzwan), and 54 miles to the east of it was the town
+of Aspurkan, a small town, itself 54 miles from Balkh. Now Balkh, by
+any possible route, is at least 130 to 140 miles from Maimana, but if
+we assume Aspurkan to have been just half-way (as Idrisi makes it)
+between Maimana and Balkh, we find Sar-i-pul (a small place
+indifferently supplied with water, and thus answering Idrisi's
+description of Aspurkan) almost exactly in that position. In support
+of this identification of Aspurkan with Sar-i-pul there is the name
+Aspardeh close to Sar-i-pul. Other places are mentioned by Idrisi as
+flourishing centres of trade and industry in this singularly favoured
+part of Afghanistan, where the low spurs and offshoots of the
+Band-i-Turkistan break gently into the Oxus plains. He says that
+Anbar, one day's march to the south-west of Aspurkan, was a larger
+place than Merv-el-Rud, with vineyards and gardens surrounding it and
+a fair trade in cloth. There, both in summer and winter, the chief of
+the country resided. Two days from Aspurkan, and one from Karbat, was
+the Jewish colony of Yahudia, a walled town with a good commercial
+business. This colony is also mentioned by Ibn Haukel as situated in
+the district of Jurkan. From Yahudia to Shar (a small town in the
+hills) was one day's march. The main road south-west from Sar-i-pul
+has probably remained unchanged through the centuries. It runs to
+Balangur (? Bala Angur) and Kurchi, the former being 10 miles and the
+latter 30 from Sar-i-pul. Either might represent the site of Anbar.
+Twenty miles from Kurchi is Belchirag, and Belchirag is about 25 from
+Maimana. It would thus represent the site of the ancient Yahudia
+fairly well, whilst 25 to 30 miles from Belchirag we find Kala Shahar,
+a small town in the mountains, still existing. Jurkan is described as
+a town by Idrisi (and as a district by Ibn Haukel), built between two
+mountains, three short marches from Aspurkan, and Zakar is another
+commercial town two marches to the south-east. I should identify
+Jirghan of our maps with Jurkan, and Takzar with Zakar.
+
+All this part of Afghan Turkistan is rich in agricultural
+possibilities. The Uzbek population of the towns and the Ersari
+Turkmans of the deserts beyond Shibarghan are all agriculturists, and
+the land is great in fruit. They are a peaceful people, hating the
+Afghan rule and praying for British or any other alternative.
+Shibarghan is an insignificant walled town with a small garrison of
+Afghan Kasidars; always in straits for water in the dry season. The
+road between Shibarghan and Sar-i-pul is flat, skirting the edge of
+the rolling Chol to the east of it. Sar-i-pul itself is but a small
+walled town in rotten repair, sheltering a few Kasidars and two guns,
+but no regular Afghan troops. There are a few Jews there who make and
+sell wine, and a few Peshawur bunniahs (shopkeepers).
+
+From Sar-i-pul a direct road runs to Bamian and Kabul _via_ Takzar to
+the south-east, and strikes the hill country almost at once after
+leaving Sar-i-pul. It surmounts a high divide (about 11,000 feet), and
+crosses the Balkh Ab valley to reach Bamian. There is another route up
+the Astarab stream leading to Chiras at the head of the Murghab River
+and into the Hazara highlands; but these were never trade routes
+except for local purposes. The Hazaras send down to the plain their
+camel hair-cloth and receive many of the necessities of life in
+exchange, but there is no through traffic.
+
+The characteristics of the Astarab road are typical of this part of
+Afghanistan. After passing Jirghan the valley is shut in by
+magnificent cliffs from 700 to 1000 feet high. The vista is closed by
+snow peaks to the south, which, with the brilliancy of up-springing
+crops on the banks of the river, form a picture of almost Alpine
+beauty. There is, curiously enough, an entire absence of forest in
+the valley, but blocks of a soft white clay mixed with mica lend a
+weird whiteness to its walls, dazzling the eye, and making patchwork
+of Nature's colouring. Snakes abound in great numbers, mostly
+harmless, but the deadly "asp-i-mar" is amongst them. There is a
+yellow variety which is freely handled by the Uzbeks, who call this
+snake Kamchin-i-Shah-i-Murdan. About eight miles beyond Jirghan the
+Uzbek population ceases. From this point there are only Firozkohis and
+some few Taimanis who have been ejected from the Hari Rud valley for
+their misdeeds. They are all robbers by profession, supporting
+existence by slave trading. They kidnap girls and boys from the Hazara
+villages of the highlands and trade them to the Uzbeks in exchange for
+guns, ammunition, and horses. These Taimani robbers are by no means
+the only slave dealers. Nearly every well-to-do establishment in
+Afghan Turkistan has one or two Hazara slaves. The prices paid, of
+course, vary, but 300 krans each was paid for two girls bought in
+1883. Expert native authorities have a very high opinion of the
+handiness of Hazara slave girls. They are good at needlework, turning
+out most exquisite embroidery, and they are never idle.
+
+The narrowness of the Astarab gorge renders it impossible to follow
+the river along the whole of its course. The road finally leaves the
+valley and strikes up to the plateau on its left bank. One remarkably
+persistent feature in these valley formations is the existence of two
+plateau levels, or terraces; that immediately overlooking the valley
+being sometimes 100 feet lower than the second platform which is
+thrown back for a considerable distance, leaving a broad terrace
+formation between the line of its cliff edge and that bordering the
+stream. Occasionally there is more than one such terrace indicating
+former geologic floors of the valley.
+
+On gaining the plateau level a very remarkable scene opens out--a
+broad green dasht, or plain, slopes away to a sharp line westwards
+bordered by glittering cliffs and intersected by the white line of the
+road. In the midst of this setting of white and green are the remains
+of what must once have been a town of considerable importance, which
+goes by the name locally of the Shahar-i-Wairan, or ancient city. Such
+buildings as remain are of sun-dried brick; there appears to be no
+indication of the usual wall or moat surrounding this city, and
+nothing suggestive of a canal or "karez"; nothing, in short, but
+scattered ruins covering about one and a half square miles. The
+kabristan (or graveyard) was easily recognizable, and its vast size
+furnished some clue to the size of the city. All history, all
+tradition even, about this remarkable place seems lost in oblivion;
+but a city of such pretensions must have had a fair place in geography
+from very early times. It seems improbable, however, that it could
+have been more than a summer residence in its palmy days, for winter
+at this elevation (nearly 7000 feet) and in such an exposed locality
+would be very severe indeed. The only indication which can be derived
+from Idrisi's writings is the reference to the small town in the
+mountains called Shah (Shahar) one day's march from the Jewish colony
+of Yahudia. As already explained there is a Kila Shahar some 25 to 30
+miles from Yahudia (if we accept the position of Belchirag as more or
+less representing that place), but the Shahar-i-Wairan is nearer by
+some 10 miles, and fits better into the geographical scheme. I should
+be inclined to identify the Shahar-i-Wairan with the ancient Shahar
+(or Shah) and the Kila Shahar as a later development of the same
+place. The point, however, to be specially noted about this
+geographical theory is that there is no route by which camels can pass
+either over the Band-i-Turkistan or the mountains enclosing the Balkh
+Ab from the district of Sangcharak southward. The province of
+Sangcharak, which corresponds roughly to the ancient district of
+Jurkan (or Gurkan), is rich throughout, with highly cultivated valleys
+and a dense population, but it is a sort of geographical cul-de-sac.
+
+Communication with the plains of the Oxus and with Balkh (by the lower
+reaches of the Balkh Ab) is easy and frequent, but there never could
+have been a khafila road over the rugged plateau land and mountains
+which divide it from the basin of the Helmund.
+
+From time immemorial efforts have been made to reach Kabul by the
+direct route from Herat which is indicated by the remarkable lie of
+the Hari Rud valley. It was never recognized as a trade route,
+although military expeditions have passed that way; and it has always
+presented a geographical problem of great interest. From Herat
+eastwards, past Obeh as far as Daolatyar, there is no great difficulty
+to be overcome by the traveller, although the route diverges from the
+main valley for a space. Between Daolatyar and the head of
+Sar-i-jangal stream (which is the source and easternmost affluent of
+the Hari Rud) the valley is well populated and well cultivated, with
+abundant pasturage on the hills. But the winter here is severe. From
+the middle of November to the middle of February snow closes all the
+roads, and even after its disappearance the deep clayey tracks are
+impassable even for foot travellers. In the neighbourhood of a small
+fort called Kila Sofarak, about 40 miles from Daolatyar, there is a
+parting of the ways. Over the water-parting at the head of the stream
+by the Bakkak Pass a route leads into the Yakulang valley, a
+continuation of the Band-i-Amir, or river of Balkh, which, in the
+course of its passage through the gorges of the mountains, here forms
+a series of natural aqueducts uniting seven narrow and deep lakes.
+Inexpressibly wild and impressive is the character of the scenery
+surrounding those deep-set lakes in the depths of the Afghan hills.
+
+Near the lakes are the ruins of two important towns or fortresses,
+Chahilburj, and Khana Yahudi. On a high rock between them are the
+ruins of Shahr-i-Babar the capital of kings who ruled over a country
+most of which must have been included in the Hazara highlands, and was
+probably more or less conterminous with the Bamian of Idrisi. Between
+the Yakulang and the Bamian valley is a high flat watershed. Looking
+north-west a vast broken plateau, wrinkled and corrugated by minor
+ranges, and scored by deep valleys and ravines, fills up the whole
+space from the mountains standing about the source of the Murghab and
+Hari Rud to the Kunduz River of Badakshan.
+
+So little is this part of modern Afghanistan known, that it may be as
+well to give a short description of the existing lines of
+communication connecting the Oxus plains and Herat with Bamian and
+Kabul, before attempting to follow out their mediaeval adaptation to
+commercial intercourse.
+
+From Balkh, or Mazar-i-Sharif, or from Deh Dadi (the new fortified
+position near Mazar) the most direct routes southward either follow
+the Balkh Ab valley to Kupruk and the Zari affluent, and then crossing
+the Alakah ridge pass into the river valley again, and so reach the
+Band-i-Amir and the head of the river at Yakulang; or passing by the
+Darra Yusuf (a most important affluent of the Balkh River) attain more
+directly to Bamian. Balkh and Mazar lie close together on the open
+plain, and about 10 miles to the south of them rises the northern wall
+of the plateau called Elburz, through which the Balkh River, and other
+drainage of the plateau, forces its passage. Thus the whole course of
+the Balkh River, from its head to within a mile or two of Balkh, lies
+within a deep and narrow ditch cut out from the plateau which fills up
+the space from the Elburz to the great divide of Central Afghanistan.
+East and west of the Balkh River the plateau increases in elevation as
+it reaches southward, culminating in knolls or peaks 12,000 and 13,000
+feet high about the latitude 35 deg. 30', and falling gently where it
+encloses the actual sources of the river. It is this plateau, or
+uplift, which forms the dominant topographical feature of Northern
+Afghanistan.
+
+West of the Balkh Ab it is represented by the Firozkohi uplands, which
+contain the head valleys of the Murghab, bordered on the north by the
+Tirband-i-Turkistan from the foot of which stretch away towards the
+Oxus the endless sand-waves of the Chol, and by the highlands of
+Maimana and Sangcharak, and which trend northward to within a few
+miles of Balkh. At Balkh its northern edge is well defined by the
+Elburz, but between Balkh and Maimana it is more or less merged into
+the great loess sand sea, and its limitations become indefinite. East
+of the longitude of Balkh it is lost in a distance whither our
+surveyors have not traced its outlines, but where without doubt it
+fills a wide area north of the Hindu Kush, determining the nature of
+the Badakshan River sources and shaping itself into a vast upland
+region of mountain and deep sunk gully, and generally preserving the
+same characteristics throughout, till it overlooks the valley of the
+Oxus. That part of it which embraces the affluents of the Balkh Ab and
+the Kunduz is described as intensely wild and dreary, traversed by
+irregular folds and ridges which rise in more or less rounded slopes
+to great altitudes, hiding amongst them deep-seated valleys and
+gulches, wherein is to be found all that there is of cultivation and
+beauty. From above it presents the aspect of a huge drab-coloured,
+hill-encumbered desert where man's habitation is not, and Nature has
+sunk her brightest efforts out of sight. These efforts are to be found
+in the valleys, which are excavated by ages of erosion, steep sided,
+with precipitous cliffs overhanging, and a narrow green ribbon of
+fertility winding through the flat floor of them.
+
+Across those dreary uplands, or else wandering blindfold along the
+bottom of the river troughs, run the roads and tracks of the country;
+some of them being the roads of centuries of busy traffic. A little
+apart from the obvious route supplied by the lower course of the Balkh
+Ab, and more important as leading more directly to the crest of the
+main divide, is the road from Mazar to the Band-i-Amir district which
+is practically the best road to Kabul. This strikes on to the plateau
+and crosses several minor passes over spurs dividing the heads of
+certain eastern affluents of the Balkh Ab before it drops into the
+trough of the Darra Yusuf. Following the course of this river, and
+skirting the towns of Kala Sarkari and Sadmurda, it strikes off from
+its head over a pass called Dandan Shikan (the "tooth-breaker") into
+the Kamard valley which runs eastwards into the big river of
+Badakshan--the Kunduz. From Kamard over three passes into the
+Saigan--another valley draining deeply eastwards into the Kunduz. From
+this again, two parallel routes and passes southward connect Saigan
+with the Bamian depression. Here the river of Bamian also runs east,
+parallel to Saigan and Kamard (the three forming three parallel
+depressions in the general plateau land), but meeting an affluent
+draining from the east, the two join and curve northward into the
+Kunduz.
+
+This new affluent from the east is important, for it leads over the
+easy Shibar Pass into the head of the Ghorband valley and to Charikar.
+Finally, there is the well-travelled route from Bamian, leading
+southward over the Hajigak Pass into the Helmund valley at
+Gardandiwal, where it crosses the river and then proceeds _via_ the
+Unai Pass and Maidan to Kabul. Such is the general system of the Balkh
+communications with Kabul.
+
+From Tashkurghan, east of Mazar, there are other routes equally
+important. There is a direct road southward, which starts through an
+extraordinary defile, where perpendicular walls of slippery rock
+enclose a narrow cleft which hardly admits the passing of a loaded
+mule to Ghaznigak and Haibak. From Haibak you may follow up the
+Tashkurgan River to its head and then drop over the Kara Pass into
+Kamard at Bajgah, and so to Bamian again; or you may avoid Bamian
+altogether and striking off south-east from Haibak over the plateau,
+slip down into the Kunduz drainage at Baghlan, and then follow it to
+its junction with the Andarab at Dosh. This position at Dosh gives
+practical command of all the passes over the Hindu Kush into the Kabul
+basin, for the Andarab drains along the northern foot of the Hindu
+Kush, and commands the back doors of all passes between the Chapdara
+(or Chahardar) and the Khawak.
+
+The most trodden route to-day is that which is the most direct between
+Kabul and Mazar, _i.e._ the route _via_ Bamian and the Darra Yusuf.
+This is the route taken by the late Amir when he met his cousin Ishak
+Khan in the field of Afghan Turkistan and defeated him. It is not the
+route taken by the Afghan Boundary Commission in returning from the
+same field in 1885. They returned by Haibak and Dosh and deploying
+along the northern foot of the Hindu Kush, crossed by nearly every
+available pass either into the Ghorband valley or that of the
+Panjshir.
+
+It would almost appear from mediaeval geographical record that there
+was no way between Herat and Kabul that did not lead to the Bamian
+valley. This is very far from accurately representing the actual
+position, for Bamian lies obviously to the north of the direct line of
+communication. Bamian was undoubtedly a place of great significance,
+probably more important as a Buddhist centre than Kabul, more valuable
+as a centre trade-market subsequently than the Indian city, as Kabul
+was called. But its significance has disappeared, and it is now far
+more important for us to know how to reach Kabul directly from the
+west than how to pass through Bamian. The route to Bamian and Kabul
+from Herat diverges at the small deserted fort of Sofarak, and follows
+the Lal and the Kerman valleys at the head of the Hari Rud. Crossing
+the Ak Zarat Pass southward there is little difficulty in traversing
+the Besud route to the Helmund, from whence the road to Kabul over the
+Unai Pass is open. The Bakkak Pass northward is the only real
+difficulty between Herat and Bamian; much worse, indeed, than anything
+on the route between Herat and Kabul direct; so that we have
+determined the existence of a fairly easy route by the Hari Rud from
+Herat to Kabul, and another route, with but one severe pass, between
+Herat and Bamian. We must, however, remember that we are dealing with
+Alpine altitudes. Overlooking the Yakulang head of the Balkh River are
+magnificent peaks of 13,000 and 14,000 feet, and the passes are but a
+few thousand feet lower. The valley of the Bamian, deep sunk in the
+great plateau level, is between 8000 and 9000 feet above sea-level,
+and the passes leading out of it are over 10,000 feet. To the south is
+the magnificent snow-capped array of the Koh-i-Baba (or probably
+Babar, from the name of the ancient people who occupied Bamian), the
+culminating group of the central water-parting of Afghanistan running
+to 16,000 and 17,000 feet. It is altitude, nothing but sheer altitude,
+which is the effectual barrier to approach through the mountains which
+divide the Oxus and Kabul basins. Rocky and "tooth-breaking" as may be
+the passes of these northern hills they are all practicable at certain
+times and seasons, but for months they are closed by the depth of
+winter snows and the fierce terror of the Asiatic blizzard. The deep
+valleys traversing the storm-ridden plateau are often beautiful
+exceedingly, and form a strange contrast to the dull grey expanse of
+rocky ridge and treeless plain of the weird plateau land; but in order
+to reach them, or to pass from one to the other, high altitudes and
+rugged pathways must always be negotiated.
+
+In the days before the Mahomedan conquest, the pilgrim days of devout
+Chinese searchers after truth, the footsteps of the Buddhist devotees
+can be very plainly traced. Balkh was a specially sacred centre; and
+the magnificence of the Bamian relics are also celebrated. We should
+not have known precisely the route followed by the pilgrims had they
+not left their traces half-way between Balkh and Bamian at Haibak.
+Here in the heart of this stony and rugged wilderness is an open
+cultivated plain, green with summer crops and streaked with the dark
+lines of orchard foliage. Little white houses peep out from amongst
+the greenery, and there is a kind of Swiss summer holiday air
+encompassing this mountain oasis which must have enchanted the
+votaries of Buddha in their time. The Buddhist architects of old were
+unsurpassed, even by the Roman Catholic Monks of later ages in the
+selection of sites for their monasteries and temples. The sweet
+seductions which Nature has to offer in her mountain retreats were as
+a thanksgiving to the pilgrim, weary footed and sore with the terrible
+experiences of travel which was far rougher than anything which even
+the most devoted Hajji can place to the credit of his account with the
+recording angel of the present day, and they were appreciated
+accordingly. Haibak, although not quite on the straight line to
+Bamian, was not to be overlooked as a resting-place, and here one of
+the quaintest of all these northern religious relics was literally
+unearthed by Captain Talbot[8] during the progress of the Russo-Afghan
+surveys. A small circular stupa was discovered cut out of solid rock
+below the ground level. It was surrounded by a ditch, and crowned by a
+small square-built chamber which was also cut out of the rock _in
+situ_. There was nothing to indicate the origin or meaning of a stupa
+in such a position, and time was wanting for anything more than a
+superficial examination; but here we had the evidence of Buddhist
+occupation and Buddhist worship forming a distinct link between Balkh
+and Bamian, and marking one resting-place for the weary pilgrim. As
+for caves, the country round Haibak appears to be studded with them.
+
+So long must this strange region of ditch-like valleys, carved out of
+the wrinkled central highlands of Afghanistan, have existed as the
+focus of devout pilgrimage, if not of commercial activity, under the
+Bamian kings, that the absence of any record descriptive of the routes
+across it is rather surprising. Above the surface of the plateau the
+long grey folds of the hills follow each other in monotonous
+succession, with little relief from vegetation and unmarked by forest
+growth. It is generally a scene of weary, stony desolation through
+which narrow, white worn tracks thread their way. In the valleys it is
+different. Cut squarely out of the plateau these intersecting valleys,
+cliff bound on either side with reddish walls such as border the
+valley of Bamian, offer fair opportunity for colonization. Where the
+valleys open out there is space enough for cultivation, which in early
+summer makes pretty contrast with the ruddy hills that hedge it. Where
+it spreads out from the mouth of the gorges nourished by hundreds of
+small channels which carry the water far afield, it is in most
+charming contrast to the gaunt ruggedness of the hills from whence it
+emerges. Such is the general outlook from the Firozkohi plateau,
+looking northward into the Oxus plains when the yellow dust haze,
+driven southward by the north-western winds, lifts sufficiently from
+athwart the plains to render it possible to see towards Maimana or
+into the valley of Astarab.
+
+The valley of Bamian stands at a level of about 8500 feet; the passes
+out of it northward to Balkh or southward to Kabul rise to 11,000 and
+12,000 feet. It is the mystery of its unrecorded history and the local
+evidences of the departed glory of Buddhism, which render Bamian the
+most interesting valley in Afghanistan. Massive ruins still look down
+from the bordering cliffs, and for six or seven miles these cliffs are
+pierced by an infinity of cave dwellings. Little is left of the
+ancient city but its acropolis (known as Ghulghula), which crowns an
+isolated rock in the middle of the valley. Enormous figures (170 and
+120 feet high) are carved out of the conglomerate rock on the sides of
+the Bamian gorge. Once coated with cement, and possibly coloured, or
+gilt, these images must have appealed strongly to the imagination of
+the weary pilgrim who prostrated himself at their feet. "Their golden
+lines sparkle on every side," says Huen Tsang, who saw them in the
+year A.D. 630, when he counted ten convents and 1000 monks of the
+"Little Vehicle" in the valley of Bamian.
+
+Twelve hundred and fifty years later the great idols were measured by
+theodolite and tape, and duly catalogued as curiosities of the world's
+museum. We know very little of the later history of Bamian. The city
+was swept off the face of the valley by Chengiz Khan; and Nadir Shah,
+in later times, left the marks of his artillery on the face of cliffs
+and images. Moslem destroyers and iconoclasts have worked their wicked
+will on these ancient monuments, but they witness to the strength and
+tenacity of a faith that still survives to sway a third of the human
+race.
+
+Chahilburj and Shahr-i-Babar (31 miles above Chahilburj at the
+junction of the Sarikoh stream with the Band-i-Amir) with the ruined
+fortresses of Gawargar and Zohak, wonderful for the multiplicity of
+its lines of defence, all attest to the former position of Bamian in
+Afghan history and explain its prominence in mediaeval annals. And yet
+there is not much said about the road thither from Balkh, or onward to
+the "Indian city" of Kabul.
+
+Idrisi just mentions the road connecting Balkh with Bamian, which he
+describes as follows: "From Balkh to Meder (a small town in a plain
+not far from mountains) three days' journey. From Meder to Kah
+(well-populated town with bazaar and mosque) one day's journey. From
+Kah to Bamian three days." Bamian he describes as of about the same
+extent as Balkh, built on the summit of a mountain called Bamian, from
+which issue several rivers which join the Andarab, possessing a
+palace, a grand mosque, and a vast "faubourg"; and he enumerates
+Kabul, Ghazni, and Karwan (which we find elsewhere to be near
+Charikar) amongst others as dependencies of Bamian.
+
+It is not easy to identify Meder and Kah. The total distance from
+Balkh to Bamian is at least 200 miles by the most direct route _via_
+the Darra Yusuf. Forty miles a day through such a country must be
+regarded as a fine performance, even for Arab travellers who would
+think little of 50 or 60 miles over the flats of Turkistan. However,
+we must take the record as we find it, and assume that the camels of
+those days (for the Arabs never rode horses on their journeys) were
+better adapted for work in the hills than they are at present.
+
+The inference, however, is strong that not very much was really known
+about this mountain region south of the Balkh plain. To the pilgrim it
+offered no terrors; but to the merchant, with his heavily laden
+caravan, it is difficult to conceive that 800 or 900 years ago it
+could have been much easier to negotiate than it is to the Bokhara
+merchants of to-day, who take a much longer route between the Oxus and
+Kabul than that which carries them past Bamian.
+
+The province of Badakshan to the east (the ancient Baktria) is still
+but indifferently explored. It is true that certain native explorers
+of the Indian Survey have made tracks through the country, passing
+from the Pamir region to the Oxus plains; but no English traveller has
+recently done more than touch the fringe of that section of the Hindu
+Kush system which includes Kafiristan and its extension northwards,
+encircled by the great bend of the Oxus River. Kafiristan has ever
+been an unexplored region--a mountain wilderness into which no call of
+Buddhism ever lured the pilgrim, no Moslem conqueror (excepting
+perhaps Timur) ever set his foot, until the late Amir Abdurrahmon
+essayed to reduce that region and make it part of civilized
+Afghanistan. Even he was content to leave it alone after a year or two
+of vain hammering at its southern gates. Kafiristan formed part of the
+mediaeval province, or kingdom, of Bolor; but it is always written of
+as the home of an uncouth and savage race of people, with whom it was
+difficult to establish intercourse. Kafiristan is, however, in these
+modern days very much curtailed as the home of the Kafir. Undoubtedly
+many of the border tribes fringing the country (Dehgans, Nimchas,
+etc.), who are now to be numbered amongst the most fanatical of Moslem
+clans, are comparatively new recruits to the faith, and therefore
+handle the new broom with traditional ardour; but they were not so
+long ago members of the great mixed community of Kafirs who, driven
+from many directions into the most inaccessible fastnesses of the
+hills by the advance of stronger races north and south, have occupied
+remote valleys, preserving their own dialects, mixing up in strange
+confusion Brahman, Zoroastian, and Buddhist tenets with classical
+mythology, each valley with apparently a law and a language of its
+own, until it is impossible to unravel the threads of their
+complicated relationship. Here we should expect to find (and we do
+find) the last relics of the Greek occupation of Baktria, and here are
+certainly remnants of a yet more ancient Persian stock, with all the
+flotsam and jetsam of High Asia intermingled. They are, from the point
+of view of the Kabul Court, all lumped together as Kafirs under two
+denominations, Siahposh and Lalposh; and not till scientific
+investigation, such as has not yet reached Afghanistan, can touch them
+shall we know more than we do now. No commercial road ever ran through
+the heart of Kafiristan, but there were two routes touching its
+eastern and western limits, viz. that on the east passing by Jirm, and
+that on the west by Anjuman, both joining the Kokcha River, which are
+vaguely referred to by our Arab authorities. That by Jirm is certainly
+impracticable for any but travellers on foot.
+
+Badakshan (_i.e._ the province) was apparently full of well-populated
+and flourishing towns 1000 years ago. The names of many of them are
+given by Idrisi, but it is not possible to identify more than a few.
+The ancient Khulm (50 miles east of Balkh) was included in Badakshan.
+In Idrisi's day it was a place "of which the productions and
+resources were very abundant: there is running water, cultivated
+fields, and all sorts of vegetable productions." From thence to
+Semenjan "a pretty town, in every way comparable to Khulm, commercial,
+populated, and encircled with mud walls," two days' journey. Then we
+have "from Balkh to Warwalin" (a town agreeable and commercial with
+others dependent on it), two days. From Warwalin to Talekan, two days.
+Talekan is described as only one-fourth the size of Balkh, on the
+banks of a big river in a plain where there are vineyards. And then,
+strangely enough, we find "from Balkh to Khulm west of Warwalin is a
+two-days' journey. From Semenjan to Talekan, two days."
+
+This is a puzzle which requires some adjustment. From Balkh to Khulm
+is about 50 miles and may well pass as two days' journey. But from
+Balkh to Warwalin is also said to be a two-days' journey, and from
+Warwalin to Talekan two days, whilst Khulm is two days _west_ of
+Warwalin. The difficulty lies in the fact that all these places must
+be on a line running almost due _east_ from Balkh. It was and is the
+great high-road of Badakshan in the Oxus plains. Moreover, Talekan has
+been fixed by native surveyors at a point about 150 miles east of
+Balkh which fully corresponds in its physical features to the
+description given of that place above. If, however, we assume 150
+miles to represent six days' journey instead of four, the difficulty
+vanishes. We then have Balkh to Khulm, two days; Khulm to Warwalin,
+two days; and Warwalin to Talekan, two days. This would place Warwalin
+somewhere about Kunduz, which is, indeed, a very probable position for
+it.
+
+Semenjan is important. Two days from Talekan; two days from Khulm;
+five days from Andarab.
+
+Andarab is fortunately a fixed position. The description given of it
+by Idrisi places it at the junction of the Kaisan (or Kasan) stream
+with the Andarab, both of which retain their ancient names. Andarab is
+a very old and a very important position in all itineraries, from
+Greek times till now, and it may be important again. But seeing that
+Khulm is separated from Talekan by four days, it is difficult to
+distinguish between Semenjan and Warwalin which is also two days from
+each of those places. This illustrates the problems which beset the
+unravelling of Arab itineraries. Seeing, however, that Talekan and
+Warwalin have already been confused once, it is, I think, justifiable
+to assume that the same mistake has occurred again. Such an assumption
+would place Semenjan about where Haibak is, and where some central
+town of importance must have always been, judging from its important
+geographical position. Haibak is rather more than a hundred miles from
+Andarab by the only practicable khafila route, which is a very fair
+five-days' journey. This would indicate that the route followed by the
+English Commission for the settlement of the Russo-Afghan frontier
+from Balkh to Kabul was one of those recognized as trade routes in
+the tenth and eleventh centuries. The location of one other town in
+Badakshan is of interest, and that is a town called by Idrisi
+"Badakshan," which gave its name to the province. The first assumption
+to make is that the modern capital Faizabad is on or near the site of
+the ancient one. Let us see how it fits Idrisi's itinerary. The
+information is most meagre. From Talekan to Badakshan, seven days.
+From Andarab to the same town (going east), four days. Badakshan is
+described as a town "not very large but possessing many dependencies
+and a most fertile soil. The vine and other trees grow freely, and the
+country is watered by running streams. The town is defended by strong
+walls, and it possesses markets, caravanserais, and baths. It is a
+commercial centre. It is built on the west bank of the Khariab, the
+largest river of those which flow to the Oxus." It is elsewhere stated
+that the Khariab is another name for the Oxus or Jihun. It is added
+that horses are bred there and mules; and rubies and lapis lazuli
+found in the neighbourhood and distributed through the world. Musk
+from Wakhan is brought to Badakshan. Also Badakshan adjoins Canouj, a
+dependency of India. The two provinces which are found immediately
+beyond the Oxus (under one government) are Djil and Waksh, which lie
+between the Khariab (? Oxus) and Wakshab rivers, of which the first
+bathes the eastern part of Djil and the other the country of Waksh.
+The Waksh joins the Oxus from the north near the junction of the
+latter with the Kunduz. Then follow the names of places dependent on
+Waksh, of which Helawerd and Menk seem to be the chief.
+
+Now Faizabad is about 70 miles from Talekan, and about 160 at least
+from Andarab. From Andarab the route strikes east at first, but after
+crossing the Nawak Pass, over a spur of the Hindu Kush (which is
+itself crossed near this point by the Khawak), it turns and passes
+down the valley of Anjuman to Jirm and Faizabad. Jirm is on the left
+bank of the Kokcha or Khariab--Faizabad being on the right,--and its
+altitude (4800 feet) would certainly admit of vine-growing and may be
+suitable for horse-breeding; but it must be admitted that in both
+these particulars Faizabad has the advantage, although Jirm is the
+centre of the mining industry in lapis lazuli, if not in rubies. Jirm
+is about 130 miles from Andarab, and 80 (with a well-marked road
+between) to Talekan. To fit Idrisi's itinerary we should have to
+select a spot in the Anjuman valley some sixty miles south of Jirm.
+This would involve an impossible altitude for either wine or horses
+(in that latitude), so we are forced to conclude that the itinerary is
+wrong. If it were exactly reversed and made seven days from Andarab
+and four from Talekan, Jirm would represent the site of the ancient
+capital exactly. Some such adjustment as this is necessary in order to
+meet the requirements, and Idrisi's indications of the climate. On
+the whole, I am inclined to believe that Jirm represents the ancient
+capital. However that may be, it is important to note that the Anjuman
+route from the pass at the head of the Panjshir valley was a
+recognized route in the Middle Ages, and emphasizes the importance of
+the Andarab position in Afghanistan. We have seen that from the very
+earliest times, prior to the Greek invasion of India, this was
+probably the region of western settlements in Baktria. It is about
+here that we find the greatest number of indications (if place-names
+are to be trusted) of Greek colonization. It is one of the districts
+which are to be recognized as distinctly the theatres of Alexander's
+military movements during his famous expedition. It commands four, if
+not five, of the most important passes across the Hindu Kush. The
+surveyor who carried his traverse up to the head of the Andarab and
+over the Khawak Pass into the Panjshir found a depression in the Hindu
+Kush range which admitted of two crossings (the Til and Khawak) at an
+elevation of about 11,650 feet, neither of which presented any great
+physical difficulty apart from that of altitude, both leading by
+comparatively easy grades into the upper Panjshir valley.
+
+It is reported that since the Russo-Afghan Commission surveyors passed
+that way, the late Amir has constructed a passable road for commercial
+purposes, which can be kept open by the employment of coolie labour in
+removing the snow, and that khafilas pass freely between Kabul and
+Badakshan all the year round. In the tenth century there is ample
+evidence that it was a well-trodden route, for we find it stated that
+from Andarab to Hariana (travelling southward) is three days' journey.
+"Hariana is a small town built at the foot of a mountain and on the
+banks of a river, which, taking its source near Panjshir (Banjohir)
+traverses that town without being utilized for irrigation until,
+reaching Karwan, it enters into the territory of India and joins its
+waters to the Nahrwara (Kabul) River. The inhabitants of Hariana
+possess neither trees nor orchards. They only cultivate vegetables,
+but they live by mining. It is impossible to see anything more perfect
+than the metal which is extracted from the mines of Panjshir, a small
+town built on a hill at one day's distance from Hariana and of which
+the inhabitants are remarkable for violence and wickedness
+(mechancete) of their character. The river, which issues from
+Panjshir, runs to Hariana as we have said." ... "From there (?
+Hariana) to Karwan, southward, two days' journey." "The town of Karwan
+is small but pretty, its environs are agreeable, bazaars frequent,
+inhabitants well-off. The houses are built of mud and bricks. Situated
+on the banks of a river which comes from Panjshir, this town is one of
+the principal markets of India."
+
+From this account it is clear that the village of Panjshir must have
+been somewhere near the modern Khawak, and Hariana about 20 miles
+lower down the stream. But the site is not identified. Karwan was
+obviously near the site of the modern Charikar, and might possibly be
+Parwan, a very ancient site. It is worthy of note that in the tenth
+century all the Kabul province was "India." Of all the passes
+traversing the Hindu Kush we have mention only of this, the Khawak,
+and (indirectly) of the group which connect Kabul with Bamian; and it
+may be doubted whether in the Middle Ages any use was made of the
+Shibar, Chapdara, or others that lie between the Kaoshan and Irak for
+commercial purposes.
+
+There is, however, strong inference that the Greeks made use of the
+Kaoshan, or Parwan, which is also commanded from Andarab. The
+excellent military road constructed by the late Amir from Charikar, up
+the Ghorband valley and over the Chapdara Pass, is a modern
+development.
+
+Here, however, we must take leave of the routes to India, which are
+sufficiently dealt with elsewhere, and returning to Badakshan see if
+we can unravel some of the mediaeval geography of the region which
+stretches eastward to the Oxus affluents and the Pamirs. We know that
+between Khotan and Balkh there was a very well-trodden pilgrim route
+in the earlier days of our era (from the first century to the tenth),
+when both these places were full of the high-priests of Buddhism. Was
+it also a commercial route? The shortest way to determine its
+position is to examine the map and see which way it must have run at a
+time when (if we are to believe Mr. Ellsworthy Huntington's theories
+of periodic fluctuations of climate in High Asia) all that vastly
+elevated region was colder, less desiccated, and possibly more fertile
+than now, whilst its glaciers and lakes were larger and more
+extensive.
+
+Before turning eastward into the highlands and plateau of Asia it is
+interesting to note that north of the Oxus the districts of Jil (which
+was the region of mountains) and Waksh were both well known, and
+boasted many important commercial centres. The two districts (under
+one government) lay between the Wakshab which joins the Oxus from the
+north to the north-east of Khulm, and the Khariab, which is clearly
+another river than the Khariab (now the Kokcha) of Badakshan, and
+which is probably the Oxus itself (see preceding note). These
+trans-Oxus regions take us afield into the Khanates of Central Asia
+beyond Afghanistan, and we can only note in passing that 1000 years
+ago Termez was the most important town on the Oxus, commanding as it
+did the main river crossing from Bokhara to Khulm and Balkh; Kabadian
+also being very ancient. Termez may yet again become significant in
+history.
+
+References to the Pamir region are very scanty, and indicate that not
+much was known about them. The most direct road from Khotan in Chinese
+Turkistan to Balkh, a well-worn pilgrim route of the early centuries
+of our era, is that which first strikes north-west to Yarkand, and
+then passing by the stone fort of Tashkurghan (one of the ancient
+landmarks of Central Asian travel) follows the Tashkurghan River to
+its head, passes over the Wakhjir Pass from the Tagdumbash Pamir into
+the valley of the Wakhab (or Panja) River and follows that river to
+Zebak in Badakshan. So far it is a long, difficult, and toilsome route
+rising to an altitude of 15,000 to 16,000 feet, but after passing
+Zebak to Faizabad and so on through Badakshan to Balkh, it is a
+delightful road, full of picturesque beauty and incident. At certain
+seasons of the year no part of it would appear formidable to such
+earnest and determined devotees as the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims. From
+Huen Tsang's account, however, it would seem that a still more
+northerly route was usually preferred, one which involved crossing the
+Oxus at Termez or Kilif. It is a curious feature in connection with
+Buddhist records of travel (even the Arab records) that no account
+whatever seems to be taken of abstract altitude, _i.e._ the altitude
+of the plains. So long as the mountains towered above the pilgrims'
+heads they were content to assume that they were traversing lowlands.
+Never does it seem to have occurred to them that on the flat plains
+they might be at a higher elevation than on the summits of the Chinese
+or Arabian hills. The explanation undoubtedly lies in the fact that
+they had no means of determining elevation. Hypsometers and aneroids
+were not for them. The gradual ascents leading to the Pamir valleys
+did not impress them, and so long as they ascended one side of a range
+to descend on the other, the fact that the descent did not balance the
+ascent was more or less unobserved. Wandering over the varied face of
+the earth they were content to accept it as God made it, and ask no
+questions. Recent investigations would lead us to suppose that in the
+palmy days of Buddhist occupation of Chinese Turkistan, when Lop Nor
+spread out its wide lake expanse to reflect a vista of towns and
+villages on its banks, refreshing the earth by a thousand rivulets not
+then impregnated with noxious salts; when high-roads traversed that
+which is now but a moving procession of sand-waves following each
+other in silent order at the bidding of the eternal wind; when men
+made their arrangements for posting from point to point, and forgot to
+pay their bills made out in the Karosthi language, the climate was
+very different from what it is now.
+
+It was colder, moister, and the zones of cultivation far more
+extensive, but it may also be that these regions were not so highly
+elevated; indeed, there is good reason for believing that the eternal
+processes of expansion and contraction of the earth's crust, never
+altogether quiescent, is more marked in Central Asia than elsewhere,
+and that the gradual elevation, which is undoubtedly in operation now,
+may have also affected the levels of river-beds and intervening
+divides, and thrown out of gear much of the original natural
+possibilities for irrigation. However that may be, it is fairly
+certain that no great amount of trade ever crossed the Pamirs. Marco
+Polo crossed them, passing by Tashkurghan and making his way eastwards
+to Cathay, and has very little to say about them except in admiration
+of the magnificent pasturage which is just as abundant and as
+nutritious now as it was in his time. Idrisi's information beyond the
+regions of the Central Asian Khanates and the Oxus was very vague. He
+says that on the borders of Waksh and of Jil are Wakhan and Sacnia,
+dependencies of the country of the Turks. From Wakhan to Tibet is
+eighteen journeys. "Wakhan possesses silver mines, and gold is taken
+from the rivers. Musk and slaves are also taken from this country.
+Sacnia town, which belongs to the Khizilji Turks, is five days from
+Wakhan, and its territory adjoins China." Wakhan probably included the
+province of the same name that now forms the extreme north-eastern
+extension of Afghanistan, but the Tibet, which was eighteen days'
+journey distant, in nowise corresponds with the modern Tibet. Assuming
+that it was "Little Tibet" (or Ladakh), which might perhaps correspond
+in the matter of distance, we should still have some difficulty in
+reconciling Idrisi's description of the "Ville de Tibet" with any
+place in Ladakh. He says "the town of Tibet is large, and the country
+of which it is the capital carries the name." This country belongs to
+the "Turks Tibetians." Its inhabitants entertain relations with
+Ferghana, Botm,[9] and with the subjects of the Wakhan; they travel
+over most of these countries, and they take from them their iron,
+silver, precious stones, leopard skins, and Tibetan musk. This town is
+built on a hill, at the foot of which runs a river which discharges
+into the lake Berwan, situated towards the east. It is surrounded with
+walls, and serves as the residence of a prince, who has many troops
+and much cavalry, who wear coats of mail and are armed _de pied en
+cap_. They make many things there, and export robes and stuff of which
+the tissue is thick, rough, and durable. These robes cost much, and
+one gets slaves and musk destined for Ferghana and India. There does
+not exist in the world creatures endowed with more beautiful
+complexions, with more charming figures, more perfect features, and
+more agreeable shape than these Turk slaves. They are disrobed and
+sold to merchants, and it is this class of girl who fetches 300
+dinars. The country of Bagnarghar lies between Tibet and China,
+bounded on the north by the country of the Kirkhirs (Kiziljis in
+another MS.), possibly Kirghiz.
+
+The course of the river on which the town is built, no less than the
+name of the lake into which that river falls and the description of
+the Turk slave girls (as of the cavalry), is quite inapplicable to
+anything to be found in modern Tibet. I have little doubt that the
+Tibet of Idrisi was a town on the high-road to China, which followed
+the Tarim River eastward to its bourne in Lake Burhan. Lake Burhan is
+now a swamp distinct from Lob, but 1000 years ago it may have been a
+part of the Lob system, and Bagnarghar a part of Mongolia. The
+description of the slave girls would apply equally well to the Turkman
+women or to the Kirghiz, but certainly not to the flat-featured,
+squat-shaped Tibetan, although there are not wanting good looks
+amongst them. Then follows, in Idrisi's account, a list of the
+dependencies of Tibet and some travellers' tales about the musk-deer.
+It is impossible to place the ancient town of Tibet accurately. There
+are ruined sites in numbers on the Tarim banks, and amongst them a
+place called Tippak, but it would be dangerous to assume a connection
+between Tibet and Tippak. This is interesting (and the interest must
+be the excuse for the digression from Afghanistan), because it
+indicates that modern Chinese Turkistan was included in Tibet a
+thousand years ago, and it further throws a certain amount of light on
+the origin of the remarkable concentration of Buddhist centres in the
+Takla Makan.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] Joubert's translation.
+
+[6] Adraskand is mentioned as "a little place with cultivation,
+gardens, and plenty of sweet water," and as one of the four towns
+under the domination of Asfaran. This corresponds fairly well with the
+modern town of Kila Adraskand of the same name. On the same southern
+route from Herat, undoubtedly, was "Malin Herat, at one day's journey,
+a town surrounded by gardens." The picturesque ruins of the bridge
+called the Pul-i-Malun, across the Hari Rud, on the Kandahar road, is
+evidence of the former existence of a town of Malun, of which no trace
+remains to-day, but which must have corresponded very closely with
+Rozabagh.
+
+[7] Talikhan in modern maps.
+
+[8] Now Colonel the Hon. M. G. Talbot, R.E.
+
+[9] The name or term Bot is locally applied now to certain Himalayan
+districts as well as to Tibet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ARAB EXPLORATION--MAKRAN
+
+
+Between Arabia and India is the strange land of Makran, in the
+southern defiles and deserts of which country Alexander lost his way.
+Had he by chance separated himself from the coast and abandoned
+connection with his fleet he might have passed through Makran by more
+northerly routes to Persia, and have made one of those open ways which
+Arab occupation opened up to traffic 1000 years later. Makran is not
+an attractive country for the modern explorer. It is not yet a popular
+field for enterprise in research (though it well may become so), and a
+few words of further description are necessary to explain how it was
+that the death-trap of Alexander proved to be the road to wealth and
+power of the subsequent Arab.
+
+  [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF ANCIENT & MEDIAEVAL MAKRAN
+    TO ILLUSTRATE PAPER BY COL. T. H. HOLDICH.]
+
+From the sun-swept Arabian Sea a long line of white shore, with a
+ceaseless surf breaking on it, appears to edge it on the north. This
+is backed by other long lines of level-topped hills, seldom rising to
+conspicuous peaks or altitudes, but just stretched out in long
+grey and purple lines with a prominent feature here and there to serve
+as a useful landmark to mariners. Now and then when the shoreline is
+indented, the hills actually face the sea and there are clean-cut
+scarped cliffs presenting a square face to the waves. At such points
+the deep rifted mountains of the interior either extend an arm to the
+ocean, as at Malan, or it may be that a narrow band of ancient ridge
+leaves jagged sections of its length above sea-level, parallel to the
+coast-line, and that between it and the hills of the interior is a
+sandy isthmus with sea indentation forming harbours on either side.
+This country, for a width of about 100 miles, is called Makran. It is
+the southernmost region of Southern Baluchistan, a country
+geologically of recent formation, with a coastal uplift from the
+sea-bottom of soft white sand strata capped here and there by
+laterite. Such a formation lends itself to quaint curiosities in hill
+structure. A protecting cap may preserve a pinnacle of soft rock,
+whilst all around it the persistence of weather action has cut away
+the soil. Gigantic cap-crowned pillars and pedestals are balanced in
+fantastic array about the mountain slopes; deep cuttings and gorges
+are formed by denudation, and from the gullies so fashioned amongst
+these hills there may tower up a scarped cliff edge for thousands of
+feet, with successive strata so well defined that it possesses all the
+appearance of massive masonry construction.
+
+The sea which beats with unceasing surf on the shores of Makran is
+full of the wonders of the deep. From the dead silent flat surface,
+such as comes with an autumn calm, monstrous fish suddenly shoot out
+for 15 or 20 feet into the air and fall with a resounding slap almost
+amounting to a detonation. Whales still disport themselves close
+inshore, and frighten no one. It is easy, however, to understand the
+terror with which they inspired the Greek sailors of Nearkhos in their
+open Indian-built boats as they wormed their way along the coast.
+Occasionally a whale becomes involved with the cable of the
+Indo-Persian telegraph line and loops himself into it, with fatal
+results. There are islands off the shore, cut out from the mainland.
+Some of them are in process of disappearance, when they will add their
+quota to the bar which makes approach to the Makran shores so
+generally difficult; others, more remote, bid fair to last as the
+final remnants of a long-ago submerged ridge through ages yet to come;
+and one regrets that the day of their enchantment has passed. Of such
+is that island of Haftala, Hashtala, Nuhsala (it is difficult to
+account for the variety of Persian numerals which are associated with
+its name), which is called Nosala by Nearkhos and said by him to be
+sacred to the sun. In the days of the Greeks it was enveloped in a
+haze of mystery and tradition. The Karaks who made of this island a
+base for their depredations, finally drew down upon themselves the
+wrath of the Arabs, and this led incidentally to one of the most
+successful invasions of India that have ever been conducted by sea and
+land.
+
+But it is not only the historical and legendary interest of this
+remarkable coast which renders it a fascinating subject for
+exploration and romance. The physical conditions of it, the bubbling
+mud volcanoes which occasionally fill the sea with yellow silt from
+below, and always remain in a perpetual simmer of boiling activity;
+the weird and fantastic forms assumed by the mud strata of recent
+sea-making, which are the basis of the whole structure of ridge and
+furrow which constitute Makran conformation, no less than the
+extraordinary prevalence of electric phenomena,--all these offered the
+Arabian Sea as a promising gift to the inventive faculty of such Arab
+genius as revelled in stories of miraculous enterprise. On a still,
+warm night when the stars are all ablaze overhead the sea will, of a
+sudden, spread around in a sheet of milky white, and the sky become
+black by contrast with the blackness of ink. Then again will there be
+a transformation to a bright scintillating floor, with each little
+wavelet dropping sparks of light upon it; and from the wake of the
+vessel will stretch out to the horizon a shining way, like a silver
+path into the great unknown. Meanwhile, the ship herself will be lit
+up by the electric genii. Each iron rod or stanchion will gleam with a
+weird white light; each spar will carry a little bunch of blue flame
+at its point; the mast-head will be aflame, and softly through the
+wonders of this strange Eastern sea the ship will stalk on in solemn
+silence and most "excellent loneliness." Small wonder that Arab
+mariners were stirring storytellers, living as they did amidst the
+uncounted wonders of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
+
+Hardly less strange is the land formation of this southern edge of
+Baluchistan. It is an old, old country, replete with the evidences of
+unwritten history, the ultimate bourne of much of the flotsam and
+jetsam of Asiatic humanity; a cul-de-sac where northern intruders meet
+and get no farther. Yet geologically it is very new--so new that one
+might think that the piles of sea-born shells which are to be found
+here and there drifted into heaps on the soft mud flats amongst the
+bristling ridges, were things of yesterday; so new, in fact, that it
+has not yet done changing its outline. There is little difficulty in
+marking the changes in the coast-line which must have occurred since
+the third century B.C. One may even count up the island formations and
+disappearances which have occurred within a generation; so incomplete
+that the changing conditions of its water-supply have left their marks
+everywhere over it. Desiccated forests are to be found with the trees
+still standing, as they will continue to stand in this dry climate for
+centuries. Huge masonry constructions, built as dams for the retention
+of water in the inland hills, testify to the existence of an abundant
+water-supply within historic periods; as also do the terraced slopes
+which reach down in orderly steps to the foot of the ridges, each step
+representing a formerly irrigated field. The water has failed;
+whether, as is most probable, from the same desiccating processes
+which are drying up lakes and dwindling glaciers in both northern and
+southern hemispheres, or whether there has been special interference
+with the routine of Nature and man has contributed to his own undoing,
+it is impossible at present to say, but the result is that Makran is
+now, and has been for centuries, a forgotten and almost a forsaken
+country. In order to understand the remarkable peculiarity of its
+geographical formation one requires a good map. Ridges, rather than
+ranges, are the predominant feature of its orography. Ridges of all
+degrees of altitude, extension, and rockiness, running in long lines
+of parallel flexure on a system of curves which sweeps them round
+gradually from the run of Indus frontier hills to an east and west
+strike through Makran, and a final trend to the north-west, where they
+guard the Persian coasts of the Gulf. As a rule they throw off no
+spurs, standing stiff, jagged, naked, and uncompromising, like the
+parallel walls of some gigantic system of defences, and varying in
+height above the plain from 5000 feet to 50. The higher ranges have
+been scored by weather and wet, with deep gorges and drainage lines,
+and their scarred sides present various degrees of angle and
+declivity, according to the dip of the strata that forms them. Some of
+the smaller ridges have their rocky backbone set up straight, forming
+a knife-like edge along which nothing but a squirrel could run. Across
+them, breaking through the axis almost at right angles run some of the
+main arteries of the general drainage system; but the most important
+features of the country are the long lateral valleys between the
+ridges, the streams of which feed the main rivers. These are often 8
+or 10 miles in width, with a flat alluvial bottom, and one may ride
+for mile after mile along the open plain with clay or sand spread out
+on either hand, and nothing but the distant wall of the hills flanking
+the long and endless route. Some of these valleys are filled with a
+luxuriance of palm growth (the dates of Panjgur, for instance, being
+famous), and it is this remarkable feature of long, lateral valleys
+which, through all the ages, has made of Makran an avenue of approach
+to India from the west. The more important ranges lie to the north,
+facing the deserts of Central Baluchistan. It is in the solid phalanx
+of the coastal band of hills that the most marked adherence to the
+gridiron, or ridge and furrow formation, is to be found.
+
+Exceptionally, out of this banded system arises some great mountain
+block forming a separate feature, such as is the massive crag-crowned
+cliff-lined block of Malan, west of one of the most important rivers
+of Makran (the Hingol), to which reference has already been made. From
+it an arm stretches southwards to the sea, and forms a square-headed
+obstruction to traffic along the coast, which almost defeated the
+efforts of the Indo-Persian telegraph constructors when they essayed
+to carry a line across it, and did entirely defeat the intentions of
+Alexander the Great to conduct his army within sight of his
+Indus-built fleet. It is within the folds of this mountain group that
+lies hidden that most ancient shrine of Indo-Persian worship, to which
+we have already referred in the story of Alexander's retreat.
+
+It is the possibilities of Makran as an intervening link in the route
+from Europe to India which renders that country interesting at the
+present time, and it is therefore with a practical as well as
+historical interest that we take up the story of frontier exploration
+from the time when we first recognize the great commercial movements
+of the Arab races, centuries after the disappearance of the last
+remnants of ancient explorations by Assyrians, Persians, and Greeks.
+It is extraordinary how deep a veil of forgetfulness was drawn over
+Southern Baluchistan during this unrecorded interval. For a thousand
+years, from the withdrawal of Alexander's attenuated force to the rise
+and spread of Islam, we hear nothing of Makran, and we are left to the
+traditions of the Baluch tribes to fill up the gap in history. What
+the Arabs made of mediaeval Makran as a gate of India may be briefly
+told. Recent surveys have revealed their tracks, although we have no
+clear record of their earliest movements. We know, however, that there
+was an Arab governor of Makran long previous to the historical
+invasion of India in A.D. 712, and that there must have been strong
+commercial interest and considerable traffic before his time. Arabia,
+indeed, had always been interested in Makran, and amongst other relics
+of a long dead past are those huge stone constructions for
+water-storage purposes to which we have referred, and which must have
+been of very early Arab (possibly Himyaritic) building, as well as a
+host of legends and traditions, all pointing to successive waves of
+early tribal emigration, extending from the Persian frontier to the
+lower Arabius--the Purali of our time.
+
+Hajjaj, the governor of Irak, under the Kalif Walid I., projected
+three simultaneous expeditions into Asia for the advancement of the
+true faith. One was directed towards Samarkand, one against the King
+of Kabul, and the third was to operate directly on India through the
+heart of Makran. The Makran field force was organised in the first
+instance for the purpose of punishing certain Karak and Med pirates,
+who had plundered a valuable convoy sent by the ruler of Ceylon to
+Hajjaj and to the Kalif. These Karaks probably gave their names to the
+Krokala of Nearkhos, and the Karachi of to-day, and have disappeared.
+The Meds still exist. The expedition, which was placed under the
+command of an enterprising young general aged seventeen, named Mahomed
+Kasim, not only swept through Makran easily and successfully, but
+ended by establishing Mahomedan supremacy in the Indus valley, and
+originated a form of government which, under various phases, lasted
+till Mahmud of Ghazni put an end to a degenerated form of it by
+ousting the Karmatian rulers of Multan in A.D. 1005. The original
+force which invaded Sind under Mahomed Kasim, and which was drawn
+chiefly from Syria and Irak, consisted of 6000 camel-riders and 3000
+infantry. In Makran the Arab governor (it is important to note that
+there was an Arab governor of Makran before that country became the
+high-road to India) added further reinforcements, and there was also a
+naval squadron, which conveyed catapults and ammunition by sea to the
+Indus valley port of Debal. It was with this small force that one of
+the most surprising invasions of India ever attempted was successfully
+carried through Makran--a country hitherto deemed impracticable, and
+associated in previous history with nothing but tales of disaster. For
+long, however, we find that Mahomed Kasim had both the piratical Meds,
+and the hardly less tractable Jats (a Skythic people still existing in
+the Indus valley) in his train, and the news of his successes carried
+to Damascus brought crowds of Arab adventurers to follow his fortunes.
+When he left Multan for the north, he is said to have had 50,000 men
+under his command. His subsequent career and tragic end are all
+matters of history.
+
+The points chiefly to note in this remarkable invasion are that the
+Arab soldiers first engaged were chiefly recruited from Syria; that,
+contrary to their usual custom, they brought none of their women with
+them; and that none of them probably ever returned to their country
+again. Elliott tells us of the message sent them by the savage Kalif
+Suliman: "Sow and sweat, for none of you will ever see Syria again."
+What, then, became of all these first Arab conquerors of Western
+India? They must have taken Persian-speaking wives of the stock of
+Makran and Baluchistan, and their children, speaking their
+mother-tongue, lost all knowledge of their fathers' language in the
+course of a few generations. There are many such instances of the
+rapid disappearance of a language in the East. For three centuries,
+then, whilst a people of Arab descent ruled in Sind, there existed
+through Makran one of the great highways of the world, a link between
+West and East such as has never existed elsewhere on the Indian
+border, save, perhaps, through the valley of the Kabul River and its
+affluents. Along this highway flowed the greater part of the mighty
+trade of India, a trade which has never failed to give commercial
+predominance to that country which held the golden key to it, whether
+that key has been in the hands of Arab, Turk, Venetian, Portuguese,
+or Englishman. And though there are traces of a rapid decline in the
+mediaeval prosperity of Makran after the commencement of the eleventh
+century, yet its comparative remoteness in geographical position saved
+it subsequently from the ruthless destruction inflicted by Turk and
+Tartar in more accessible regions, and left to it cities worth
+despoiling even in the days of Portuguese supremacy.
+
+It is only lately that Makran has lapsed again into a mere
+geographical expression. Twenty years ago our maps told us nothing
+about it. It might have been, and was, for all practical purposes, as
+unexplored and unknown as the forests of Africa. Now, however, we have
+found that Makran is a country of great topographical interest as well
+as of stirring history. And when we come to the days of Arab
+ascendency, when Arab merchants settled in the country; when good
+roads with well-marked stages were established; when, fortunately for
+geography, certain Western commercial travellers, following, _longo
+intervallo_, the example of the Chinese pilgrims--men such as Ibn
+Haukal of Baghdad, or Istakhri of Persepolis--first set to work to
+reduce geographical discovery to systematic compilation, we can take
+their books and maps in our hands, and verify their statements as we
+read. It is true that they copied a good deal from each other, and
+that their manner of writing geographical names was obscure, and
+leaves a good deal to be desired--a fault, by the way, from which the
+maps of to-day are not entirely free--yet they are on the whole as
+much more accurate than the early Greek geographers as the area of
+their observations is more restricted. We may say that Makran and Sind
+are perhaps more fully treated of by Arab geographers than any other
+portion of the globe by the geographers who preceded them; and as
+their details are more perfect, so, for the most part, is the
+identification of those details rendered comparatively easy by the
+nature of the country and its physical characteristics. With the
+exception of the coast-line the topography of Makran to-day is the
+topography of Makran in Alexandrian days. This is very different
+indeed from the uncertain character of the Indus valley mediaeval
+geography. There the extraordinary hydrographical changes that have
+taken place; the shifting of the great river itself from east to west,
+dependent on certain recognized natural laws; the drying up and total
+disappearance of ancient channels and river-beds; the formation of a
+delta, and the ever-varying alterations in the coast-line (due greatly
+to monsoon influences), leave large tracts almost unrecognizable as
+described in mediaeval literature. Makran is, for the most part, a
+country of hills. Its valleys are narrow and sharply defined; its
+mountains only passable at certain well-known points, which must have
+been as definite before the Christian era as they are to-day; and it
+is consequently comparatively easy to follow up a clue to any main
+route passing through that country.
+
+Makran is, in short, a country full of long narrow valleys running
+east and west, the longest and most important being the valley of Kej.
+The main drainage of the country reaches the sea by a series of main
+channels running south, which, inasmuch as they are driven almost at
+right angles across the general run of the watersheds, necessarily
+pass through a series of gorges of most magnificent proportions, which
+are far more impressive as spectacles than they are convenient for
+practical road-making. Thus Makran is very much easier to traverse
+from east to west than it is from north to south.
+
+I have, perhaps, said enough to indicate that the old highways through
+Makran, however much they may have assisted trade and traffic between
+East and West, could only have been confined to very narrow limits
+indeed. It is, in fact, almost a one-road country. Given the key,
+then, to open the gates of such channels of communication as exist,
+there is no difficulty in following them up, and the identification of
+successive stages becomes merely a matter of local search. We know
+where the old Arab cities _must_ have been, and we have but to look
+about to find their ruins. The best key, perhaps, to this mediaeval
+system is to be found in a map given by the Baghdad traveller, Ibn
+Haukal, who wrote his account of Makran early in the tenth century,
+and though this map leaves much to be desired in clearness and
+accuracy, it is quite sufficient to give us the clue we require at
+first starting. In the written geographical accounts of the country,
+we labour under the disadvantage of possessing no comparative standard
+of distance. The Arab of mediaeval days described the distance to be
+traversed between one point and another much as the Bedou describes it
+now. It is so many days' journey. Occasionally, indeed, we find a
+compiler of more than usual precision modifying his description of a
+stage as a long day's journey, or a short one. But such instances are
+rare, and a day's journey appears to be literally just so much as
+could conveniently be included in a day's work, with due regard to the
+character of the route traversed. Across an open desert a day's
+journey may be as much as 80 miles. Between the cities of a
+well-populated district it may be much less. Taking an average from
+all known distances, it is between 40 and 50 miles. Nor is it always
+explained whether the day's journey is by land or sea, the unit "a
+day's journey" being the distance traversed independent of the means
+of transit.
+
+In Ibn Haukal's map, although we have very little indication of
+comparative distance, we have a rough idea of bearings, and the
+invaluable datum of a fixed starting-point that can be identified
+beyond doubt. The great Arab port on the Makran coast, sometimes even
+called the capital of Makran, was Tiz; and Tiz is a well-known coast
+village to this day. About 100 miles west of the port of Gwadur there
+is a convenient and sheltered harbour for coast shipping, and on the
+shores of it there was a telegraph station of the Persian Gulf line
+called Charbar. The telegraph station occupied the extremity of the
+eastern horn of the bay, and was separated inland by some few miles of
+sandy waste from a low band of coarse conglomerate hills, which
+conceal amongst them a narrow valley, containing all that is left of
+the ancient port of Tiz. If you take a boat from Charbar point, and,
+coasting up the bay, land at the mouth of this valley, you will first
+of all be confronted by a picturesque little Persian fort perched on
+the rocks on either hand, and absolutely blocking the entrance to the
+valley. This fort was built, or at least renewed, in the days of
+General Sir F. Goldsmid's Seistan mission, to emphasize the fact that
+the Persian Government claimed that valley for its own. About a mile
+above the fort there exists a squalid little fishing village, the
+inhabitants of which spend their spare moments (and they have many of
+them) in making those palm mats which enter so largely into the house
+architecture of the coast villages, as they sit beneath the shade of
+one or two remarkably fine "banian" trees. The valley is narrow and
+close, and the ruins of Tiz, extending on both sides the village, are
+packed close together in enormous heaps of debris, so covered with
+broken pottery as to suggest the idea that the inhabitants of old Tiz
+must have once devoted themselves entirely to the production of
+ceramic art ware. Every heavy shower of rain washes out fragments of
+new curiosities in glass and china. Here may be found large quantities
+of an antique form of glass, the secret of the manufacture of which
+has (according to Venetian experts) long passed away, only to be
+lately rediscovered. It takes the shape of bangles chiefly, and in
+this form may be dug up in almost any of the recognized sites of
+ancient coast towns along the Makran and Persian coasts. It is
+apparently of Egyptian origin, and was brought to the coast in Arab
+ships. Here also is to be found much of a special class of pottery, of
+very fine texture, and usually finished with a light sage-green glaze,
+which appears to me to be peculiarly Arabic, but of which I have yet
+to learn the full history. It is well known in Afghanistan, where it
+is said to possess the property of detecting poison by cracking under
+it, but even there it is no modern importation. This is the celadon to
+which reference has already been made. The rocky cliffs on either side
+the valley are honey-combed with Mahomedan tombs, and the face of
+every flat-spaced eminence is scarred with them. A hundred generations
+of Moslems are buried there. The rocky declivities which hedge in this
+remarkable site may give some clue to the yet more ancient name of
+Talara which this place once bore. Talar in Baluchi bears the
+signification of a rocky band of cliffs or hills.
+
+The obvious reason why the port of Tiz was chosen for the point of
+debarkation for India is that, in addition to the general convenience
+of the harbour, the monsoon winds do not affect the coast so far west.
+At seasons when the Indus delta and the port of Debal were rendered
+unapproachable, Tiz was an easy port to gain. There must have been a
+considerable local trade, too, between the coast and the highly
+cultivated, if restricted, valleys of Northern Makran, and it is more
+than probable that Tiz was the port for the commerce of Seistan in its
+most palmy days.
+
+From Tiz to Kiz (or Kej, which is reckoned as the first big city on
+the road to India in mediaeval geography) was, according to Istakhri
+and Idrisi, a five-days' journey. Kiz is doubtless synonymous with
+Kej, but the long straight valley of that name which leads eastwards
+towards India has no town now which exactly corresponds to the name of
+the valley. The distance between Tiz and the Kej district is from 160
+to 170 miles. No actual ruined site can be pointed out as yet marking
+the position of Kiz, or (as Idrisi writes it) Kirusi, but it must have
+been in the close neighbourhood of Kalatak, where, indeed, there is
+ample room for further close investigation amongst surrounding ruins.
+About the city, we may note from Idrisi that it was nearly as large as
+Multan, and was the largest city in Makran. "Palm trees are
+plentiful, and there is a large trade," says our author, who adds that
+it is two long days' journey west of the city of Firabuz. From all the
+varied forms which Arab geographical names can assume owing to
+omission of diacritical marks in writing, this place, Firabuz, has
+perhaps suffered most. The most correct reading of it would probably
+be Kanazbun, and this is the form adopted by Elliott, who conjectures
+that Kanazbun was situated near the modern Panjgur. From Kej to
+Panjgur is not less than 110 miles, a very long two-days' journey. Yet
+Istakhri supports Idrisi (if, indeed, he is not the original author of
+the statement) that it is two days' journey from Kiz to Kanazbun. This
+would lead one to place Kanazbun elsewhere than in the Panjgur
+district, more especially as that district lies well to the north of
+the direct road to India, were it not for local evidence that the
+fertile and flourishing Panjgur valley must certainly be included
+somehow in the mediaeval geographical system, and that the conditions
+of khafila traffic in mediaeval times were such as to preclude the
+possibility of the more direct route being utilized. To explain this
+fully would demand a full explanation also of the physical geography
+of Eastern Makran. I have no doubt whatever that Sir H. Elliott is
+right in his conjecture, and that amongst the many relics of ancient
+civilization which are to be found in Panjgur is the site of Kanazbun.
+Kanazbun was in existence long before the Arab invasion of Sind. The
+modern fort of Kudabandan probably represents the site of that more
+ancient fort which was built by the usurper Chach of Sind, when he
+marched through Makran to fix its further boundaries about the
+beginning of the Mahomedan era. Kanazbun was a very large city indeed.
+"It is a town," says Idrisi, "of which the inhabitants are rich. They
+carry on a great trade. They are men of their word, enemies of fraud,
+and they are generous and hospitable." Panjgur, I may add, is a
+delightfully green spot amongst many other green spots in Makran. It
+is not long ago that we had a small force cantoned there to preserve
+law and order in that lawless land. There appeared to be but one
+verdict on the part of the officers who lived there, and that verdict
+was all in its favour. In this particular, Panjgur is probably unique
+amongst frontier outposts.
+
+The next important city on the road to Sind was Armail, Armabel, or
+Karabel, now, without doubt, Las Bela. From Kudabandan to Las Bela is
+from 170 to 180 miles, and there is considerable variety of opinion as
+to the number of days that were to be occupied in traversing the
+distance. Istakhri says that from Kiz to Armail is six days' journey.
+Deduct the two from Kiz to Kanazbun, and the distance between Kanazbun
+and Armail is four days. Ibn Haukal makes it fourteen marches from
+Kanazbun to the port of Debal, and as he reckons Armail to be six
+from Debal on the Kanazbun road, we get a second estimate of eight
+days' journey. Idrisi says that from Manhabari to Firabuz is six
+marches, and we know otherwise that from Manhabari to Armail was four,
+so the third estimate gives us two days' journey. Istakhri's estimate
+is more in accordance with the average that we find elsewhere, and he
+is the probable author of the original statements. But doubtless the
+number of days occupied varied with the season and the amount of
+supplies procurable. There were villages _en route_, and many
+halting-places. The _Ashkalu l' Bilad_ of Ibn Haukal says: "Villages
+of Dahuk and Kalwan are contiguous, and are between Labi and Armail";
+from which Elliott conjectures that Labi was synonymous with Kiz.
+Idrisi states that "between Kiz and Armail two districts touch each
+other, Rahun and Kalwan." I should be inclined to suggest that the
+districts of Dashtak and Kolwah are those referred to. They are
+contiguous, and they may be said to be between Kiz and Armail, though
+it would be more exact to place them between Kanazbun and Armail.
+Kolwah is a well-cultivated district lying to the south of the river,
+which in its upper course is known as the Lob. I should conjecture
+that this may be the Labi referred to by Ibn Haukal.
+
+The city of Armail, Armabel (sometimes Karabel), or Las Bela, is of
+great historic interest. From the very earliest days of historical
+record Armail, by right of its position commanding the high-road to
+India, must have been of great importance. Las Bela is but the modern
+name derived from the influx of the Las or Lumri tribe of Rajputs. It
+is at present but an insignificant little town, picturesquely perched
+on the banks of the Purali River, but in its immediate neighbourhood
+is a veritable _embarras de richesse_ in ancient sites. Eleven miles
+north-west of Las Bela, at Gondakahar, are the ruins of a very ancient
+city, which at first sight appear to carry us back to the
+pre-Mahomedan era of Arab occupation, when the country was peopled by
+Arabii, and the Arab flag was paramount on the high seas. Not far from
+them are the caves of Gondrani, about which there is no room for
+conjecture, for they are clearly Buddhist, as can be told from their
+construction. We know from the Chachnama of Sind that in the middle of
+the eighth century the province of Las Bela was part of a Buddhist
+kingdom, which extended from Armabel to the modern province of Gandava
+in Sind. The great trade mart for the Buddhists on the frontier was a
+place called Kandabel, which Elliott identifies with Gandava, the
+capital of the province of Kach Gandava. It is, however, associated in
+the Chachnama with Kandahar, the expression "Kandabel, that is,
+Kandahar" being used, an expression which Elliott condemns for its
+inaccuracy, as he recognizes but the one Kandahar, which is in
+Afghanistan. It happens that there is a Kandahar, or Gandahar, in
+Kach Gandava, and there are ruins enough in the neighbourhood to
+justify the suspicion that this was after all the original Kandabel
+rather than the modern town of Gandava.
+
+The capital of this ancient Buddha--or Buddhiya--kingdom I believe to
+have been Armabel rather than Kandabel, it being at Armabel that Chach
+found a Buddhist priest reigning in the year A.H. 2, when he passed
+through. The curious association of names, and the undoubted Buddhist
+character of the Gondrani caves, would lead one to assign a Buddhist
+origin also to the neighbouring ruins of Gondakahar (or Gandakahar)
+only that direct evidence from the ruins themselves is at present
+wanting to confirm this conjecture. They require far closer
+investigation than has been found possible in the course of ordinary
+survey operations. The country lying between Las Bela and Kach Gandava
+is occupied at present by a most troublesome section of the Dravidian
+Brahuis, who call themselves Mingals, or Mongols, and who possibly may
+be a Mongolian graft on the Dravidian stock. They may prove to be
+modern representatives of the old Buddhist population of this land,
+but their objection to political control has hitherto debarred us from
+even exploring their country, although it is immediately on our own
+borders. About 8 miles north of Las Bela are the ruins of a
+comparatively recent Arab settlement, but they do not appear to be
+important. It is probable that certain other ruins, about 11/2 miles
+east of the town, called Karia Pir, represent the latest mediaeval
+site, the site which was adopted after the destruction of the older
+city by Mahomed Kasim on his way to invade Sind. Karia Pir is full of
+Arabic coins and pottery. So many invasions of India have been planned
+with varied success by the Kalifs of Baghdad since the first invasion
+in the days of Omar I. in A.D. 644, till the time of the final
+occupation of Sind in the time of the sixth Kalif Walid, about A.D.
+712, that there is no difficulty in accounting for the varied sites
+and fortunes of any city occupying so important a strategical position
+as Bela.
+
+From Armail we have a two-days' march assigned by Istakhri and Idrisi
+as the distance to the town of Kambali, or Yusli, towards India. These
+two places have, in consequence of their similarity in position,
+become much confused, and it has been assumed by some scholars that
+they are identical. But they are clearly separated in Ibn Haukal's
+map, and it is, in fact, the question only of which of two routes
+towards India is selected that will decide which of the two cities
+will be found on the road. There is (and always must have been) a
+choice of routes to the ancient port of Debal after passing the city
+of Armail. That route which led through Yusli in all probability
+passed by the modern site of Uthal. Close to this village the
+unmistakable ruins of a considerable Arab town have been found, and I
+have no hesitation in identifying them as those of Yusli. About
+Kambali, too, there can be very little doubt. There are certain
+well-known ruins called Khairokot not far to the west of the village
+of Liari. We know from mediaeval description that Kambali was close to
+the sea, and the sea shaped its coast-line in mediaeval days so as
+nearly to touch the site called Khairokot. Even now, under certain
+conditions of tide, it is possible to reach Liari in a coast
+fishing-boat, although the process of land formation at the head of
+the Sonmiani bay is proceeding so fast that, on the other hand, it is
+occasionally impossible even to reach the fishing village of Sonmiani
+itself. The ruins of Khairokot are so extensive, and yield such large
+evidences of Arab occupation that a place must certainly be found for
+them in the mediaeval system. Kambali appears to be the only possible
+solution to the problem, although it was somewhat off the direct road
+between Armail and Debal.
+
+From either of these towns we have a six-days' journey to Debal,
+passing two other cities _en route_, viz. Manabari and the "small but
+populous town of Khur."
+
+The Manhanari of Istakhri, Manbatara of Ibn Haukal, or Manabari of
+Idrisi, again confronts us with the oft-repeated difficulty of two
+places with similar names, there being no one individual site which
+will answer all the descriptions given. General Haig has shown that
+there was in all probability a Manjabari on the old channel of the
+Indus, nearly opposite the famous city of Mansura, some 40 miles
+north-east of the modern Hyderabad, which will answer certain points
+of Arabic description; but he shows conclusively that this could not
+be the Manhabari of Ibn Haukal and Idrisi, which was two days' journey
+from Debal on the road to Armail. As we have now decided what
+direction that road must have taken, after accepting General Haig's
+position for Debal, and bearing in mind Idrisi's description of the
+town as "built in a hollow," with fountains, springs, and gardens
+around it, there seems to me but little doubt that the site of the
+ancient Manhabari is to be found near that resort of all Karachi
+holiday-makers called Mugger Pir. Here the sacred alligators are kept,
+and hence the recognized name; but the real name of the place,
+divested of its vulgar attributes, is Manga, or Manja Pir. The affix
+Pir is common throughout the Bela district, and is a modern
+introduction. The position of Mugger Pir, with its encircling walls of
+hills, its adjacent hot springs and gardens (so rare as to be almost
+unique in this part of the country), its convenient position with
+respect to the coast, and, above all, its interesting architectural
+remains, mark it unmistakably as that Manhabari of Idrisi which was
+two days' march from Debal.
+
+Whether Manhabari can be identified with that ancient capital of
+Indo-Skythia spoken of by Ptolemy and the author of the _Periplus_ as
+Minagar, or Binagar, may be open to question, though there are a good
+many points about it which appear to meet the description given by
+more ancient geographers. The question is too large to enter on now,
+but there is certainly reason to think that such identification may be
+found possible. The small but populous town of Khur has left some
+apparent records of its existence near the Malir waterworks of
+Karachi, where there is a very fine group of Arab tombs in a good
+state of preservation. There is a village called Khair marked on the
+map not far from this position, and the actual site of the old town
+cannot be far from it, although I have not had the opportunity of
+identifying it. It is directly on the road connecting Debal with
+Manhabari. With Manhabari and Khur our tale of buried cities closes in
+this direction. We have but to add that General Haig identifies Debal
+with a ruin-covered site 20 miles south-west of Thatta, and about 45
+miles east-south-east of Karachi.
+
+All these ancient cities eastwards from Makran are associated with one
+very interesting feature. Somewhat apart from the deserted and hardly
+recognizable ruins of the cities are groups of remarkable tombs,
+constructed of stone, and carved with a most minute beauty of design,
+which is so well preserved as to appear almost fresh from the hands of
+the sculptor. These tombs are locally known as "Khalmati."
+
+Invariably placed on rising ground, with a fair command of the
+surrounding landscape, they are the most conspicuous witnesses yet
+remaining of the nature of the Saracenic style of decorative art which
+must have beautified those early cities. The cities themselves have
+long since passed away, but these stone records of dead citizens still
+remain to illustrate, if but with a feeble light, one of the darkest
+periods in the history of Indian architecture. These remains are most
+likely Khalmati (_not_ Karmati) and belong to an Arab race who were
+once strong in Sind and who came from the Makran coast at Khalmat. The
+Karmatians were not builders.
+
+We have so far only dealt with that route to India which combined a
+coasting voyage in Arab ships with an overland journey which was
+obviously performed on a camel, or the days' stages could never have
+been accomplished. But the number of cities in Western Makran and
+Kirman which still exist under their mediaeval names, and which are
+thickly surrounded with evidences of their former wealth and
+greatness, certifies to a former trade through Persia to India which
+could have been nowise inferior to that from the shores of Arabia or
+Egypt. Indeed, the overland route to India through Persia and Makran
+was probably one of the best trodden trade routes that the world has
+ever seen. It is almost unnecessary to enumerate such names as Darak,
+Bih, Band, Kasrkand, Asfaka, and Fahalfahra (all of which are to be
+found in Ibn Haukal's map), and to point out that they are represented
+in modern geography by Dizak, Geh, Binth, Kasrkand, Asfaka, and Bahu
+Kalat. Degenerated and narrowed as they now are, there are still
+evidences written large enough in surrounding ruins to satisfy the
+investigator of the reality and greatness of their past; whilst the
+present nature of the routes which connect them by river and mountain
+is enough to prove that they never could have been of small account in
+the Arab geographical system. One city in this part of Makran is, I
+confess, something of a riddle to me still. Rasak is ever spoken of by
+Arab geographers as the city of "schismatics." There is, indeed, a
+Rasak on the Sarbaz River road to Bampur, which might be strained to
+fit the position assigned it in Arab geography; but it is now a small
+and insignificant village, and apparently could never have been
+otherwise. There is no room there for a city of such world-wide fame
+as the ancient headquarters of heresy must have been--a city which
+served usefully as a link between the heretics of Persia and those of
+Sind.
+
+Istakhri says that Rasak is two days' journey from Fahalfahra (which
+there is good reason for believing to be Bahu Kalat), but Idrisi makes
+it a three-days' journey from that place, and three days from Darak,
+so that it should be about half-way between them. Now, Darak can
+hardly be other than Dizak, which is described by the same authority
+as three days' journey from Firabuz (_i.e._ Kanazbun). It is also said
+to have been a populous town, and south-west of it was "a high
+mountain called the Mountain of Salt." South-west of Dizak are the
+highest mountains in Makran, called the Bampusht Koh, and there is
+enough salt in the neighbourhood to justify the geographer's
+description. It may also be said to be three days' journey from
+Kanazbun. Somewhere about half-way between Dizak and Bahu Kalat is the
+important town of Sarbaz, and from a description of contiguous ruins
+which has been given by Mr. E. A. Wainwright, of the Survey Department
+(to whom I am indebted for most of the Makran identifications), I am
+inclined to place the ancient Rasak at Sarbaz rather than in the
+position which the modern name would apply to it. It is rather
+significant that Ibn Haukal omits Rasak altogether from his map. Its
+importance may be estimated from Idrisi's description of it taken from
+the translation given by Elliott in the first volume of his History of
+India: "The inhabitants of Rasak are schismatics. Their territory is
+divided into two districts, one called Al Kharij, and the other Kir"
+(or Kiz) "Kaian. Sugar-cane is much cultivated, and a considerable
+trade is carried on in a sweetmeat called 'faniz,' which is made
+here.... The territory of Maskan joins that of Kirman." Maskan is
+probably represented by Mashkel at the present day, Mashkel being the
+best date-growing district in Southern Baluchistan. It adjoins Kirman,
+and produces dates of such excellent quality that they compare
+favourably with the best products of the Euphrates. Idrisi's
+description of this part of Western Makran continues thus: "The
+inhabitants have a great reputation for courage. They have date-trees,
+camels, cereals, and the fruit of cold countries." He then gives a
+table of distances, from which we can roughly estimate the meaning of
+"a day's journey." After stating that Fahalfahra, Asfaka, Band, and
+Kasrkand are dependencies of Makran which resemble each other in point
+of size and extent of their trade, he goes on to say, "Fahalfahra to
+Rasak two days." (Istakhri makes it three days, the distance from Bahu
+Kalat to Sarbaz being about 80 miles.) "From Fahalfahra to Asfaka two
+days." (This is almost impossible, the distance being about 160 miles,
+and the route passing through several large towns.) "From Asfaka to
+Band one day towards the west." (This is about 45 miles south-west
+rather than west.) "From Asfaka to Darak three days." (150 to 160
+miles according to the route taken.) "From Band to Kasrkand one day."
+(About 70 miles, passing through Bih or Geh, which is not mentioned.)
+"From Kasrkand to Kiz four days." This is not much over 150 miles, and
+is the most probable estimate of them all. It is possible, of course,
+that from 70 to 80 miles may have been covered on a good camel within
+the limits of twenty-four hours. Such distances in Arabia are not
+uncommon, but we are not here dealing with an absolutely desert
+district, devoid of water. On the contrary, halting-places must have
+always been frequent and convenient.
+
+I cannot leave this corner of Makran without a short reference to what
+lay beyond to the north-west, on the Kirman border, as it appears to
+me that one or two geographical riddles of mediaeval days have recently
+been cleared up by the results of our explorations. Idrisi says that
+"Tubaran is near Fahraj, which belongs to Kirman. It is a
+well-fortified town, and is situated on the banks of a river of the
+same name, which are cultivated and fertile. From hence to Fardan, a
+commercial town, the environs of which are well populated, four days.
+Kir Kaian lies to the west of Fardan, on the road to Tubaran. The
+country is well populated and very fertile. The vine grows here and
+various sorts of fruit trees, but the palm is not to be found."
+Elsewhere he states that "from Mansuria to Tubaran about fifteen
+days"; and again, "from Tubaran to Multan, on the borders of Sind, ten
+days." Here there is clearly the confusion which so constantly arises
+from the repetition of place-names in different localities. Multan and
+Mansuria are well-known or well-identified localities, and Turan was
+an equally well-recognized district of Lower Sind, of which Khozdar
+was the capital. Turan may well be reckoned as ten days from Multan,
+or fifteen from Mansuria, but hardly the Tubaran, about which such a
+detailed and precise description is given. There are two places called
+indifferently Fahraj, Pahrag, Pahra, or Pahura, both of which are in
+the Kirman district; one, which is shown in St. John's map of Persia,
+is not very far from Regan, in the Narmashir province, and is
+surrounded far and wide with ruins. It has been identified by St. John
+as the Pahra of Arrian, the capital of Gadrosia, where Alexander
+rested after his retreat through Makran. The other is some 16 miles
+east of Bampur, to the north-west of Sarbaz. Both are on the banks of
+a river, "cultivated and fertile"; both are the centres of an area of
+ruins extending for miles; both must find a place in mediaeval
+geography. For many reasons, into which I cannot fully enter, I am
+inclined to place the Pahra of Arrian in the site near Bampur. It
+suits the narrative in many particulars better than does the Pahra
+identified with Fahraj by St. John. The latter, I have very little
+doubt, is the Fahraj of Idrisi, and the town of Tubaran was not far
+from it. Fardan may well have been either Bampur itself (a very
+ancient town) or Pahra, 16 miles to the east of it; and between Fardan
+and Fahraj lay the district of Kir (or Kiz) Kaian, which has been
+stated to be a district of Rasak. "On Tubaran," says Idrisi, "are
+dependent Mahyak, Kir Kaian, Sura" (? Suza), "Fardan" (? Bampur or
+Pahra), "Kashran" (? Khasrin), "and Masurjan. Masurjan is a
+well-peopled commercial town surrounded with villages on the banks of
+the Tubaran, from which town it is 42 miles distant. Masurjan to Darak
+Yamuna 141 miles, Darak Yamuna to Firabuz 175 miles." If we take Regan
+to represent the old city of Masurjan, and Yakmina as the modern
+representative of Darak Yamuna, we shall find Idrisi's distances most
+surprisingly in accordance with modern mapping. Regan is about 40
+miles from Fahraj, and the other distances, though not accurate of
+course, are much more approximately correct than could possibly have
+been expected from the generality of Idrisi's compilation.
+
+I cannot, however, now open up a fresh chapter on mediaeval geography
+in Persia. It is Makran itself to which I wish to draw attention. In
+our thirst for trans-frontier knowledge farther north and farther
+west, we have somewhat overlooked this very remarkable country. Idrisi
+commences his description with the assertion that "Makran is a vast
+country, mostly desert." We have not altogether found it so. It is
+true that the voyager who might be condemned to coast his way from the
+Gulf of Oman to the port of Karachi in the hot weather, might wonder
+what of beauty, wealth, or even interest, could possibly lie beyond
+that brazen coast washed by that molten sea; might well recall the
+agonies of thirst endured during the Greek retreat; might think of the
+lost armies of Cyrus and Simiramis; and whilst his eye could not fail
+to be impressed with the grand outlines of those bold headlands which
+guard the coast, his nose would be far more rudely reminded of the
+unpleasant proximity of Ichthyophagi than delighted by soft odours of
+spikenard or myrrh. And yet, for century after century, the key to the
+golden gate of Indian commerce lay behind those Makran hills. Beyond
+those square-headed bluffs and precipices, hidden amongst the serrated
+lines of jagged ridges, was the high-road to wealth and fame, where
+passed along not only many a rich khafila loaded with precious
+merchandise, but many a stout array of troops besides. Those citizens
+of Makran who "loved fair dealing, who were men of their word, and
+enemies to fraud," who welcomed the lagging khafila, or sped on their
+way the swift camel-mounted soldiers of Arabia, could have little
+dreamed that for centuries in the undeveloped future, when trade
+should pass over the high seas round the southern coast of Africa, and
+the Western infidel should set his hated foot on Eastern shores,
+Makran should sink out of sight and into such forgetfulness by the
+world, that eventually this ancient land of the sun should become
+something less well known than those mountains of the moon in which
+lay the far-off sources of the Egyptian Nile.
+
+Yet it is not at all impossible that Makran may once again rise to
+significance in Indian Councils. Men's eyes have been so much turned
+to the proximity of Russia and Russian railways to the Indian frontier
+that they have hardly taken into serious consideration the problems of
+the future, which deal with the direct connection overland between
+India and Europe other than those which touch Seistan or Herat. That
+such connection will finally eventuate either through Seistan or Herat
+(or through both) no one who has any appreciation of the power of
+commercial interests to overcome purely military or political
+objections will doubt; but meanwhile it may be more than interesting
+to prove that a line through Persia is quite a practicable scheme,
+although it would not be practicable on any alignment that has as yet
+been suggested. It would not be practicable by following the coast,
+for instance. It would be useless to link up Teheran with Mashad,
+unless the Seistan line were adopted in extension; and the proposal to
+join Ispahan to Seistan through Central Persia would involve such a
+lengthening of the route to India as would seriously discount its
+value. The only solution of the difficulty is through Makran to
+Karachi. Military nervousness would thus be met by the fact that
+Russia could make no use of such a line for purposes of invasion,
+inasmuch as it would be commanded and protected from the sea.
+Political difficulties with Afghanistan would be absolutely avoided by
+a Persian line. Whether that would be better than a final agreement
+with Russia based on mutual interest, which would certainly make
+strongly for the peace of our borders, is another question. I am only
+concerned just now in illustrating the geography of Makran and
+pointing out its facilities as a land of possible routes to India, and
+in showing how the exploration of Baluchistan and of Western India was
+secured in mediaeval times by means of these routes.
+
+It will, then, be interesting to note that at the eastern extremity of
+Makran, dovetailed between the Makran hills as they sweep off with a
+curve westward and our Sind frontier hills as they continue their
+general strike southwards, is the little state of Las Bela. The
+mountain conformation which encloses it makes the flat alluvial
+portion of the state triangular in shape, and from the apex of the
+triangle to the sea runs a river now known as the Purali, which in
+ancient times was called the Arabis from the early Arab occupation of
+the region. There are relics of apparent Arabic origin which,
+independently of Greek records, testify to a very early interest in
+this corner of the Indian borderland. Las Bela has a history which is
+not without interest. It has been a Buddhist centre, and the caves of
+Gondakahar near by testify to the ascetic fervour of the Buddhist
+priesthood. The grave of one of the greatest of frontier political
+leaders, Sir Robert Sandeman, lies near this little capital. Already
+it forms an object of devotional pilgrimage through all the Sind
+countryside. Possibly once again it may happen that Las Bela will be a
+wayside resting-place on the road to India, as it has undoubtedly been
+in the centuries of the past. It is not difficult to reach Las Bela
+from Karachi by following the modern telegraph line. There are no
+great physical obstacles interposed to make the way thorny for the
+slow-moving train of a khafila, and where camels can take their
+stately way there the more lively locomotive can follow. Should the
+railway from Central Persia (let us say Ispahan) ever extend its iron
+lines to Las Bela, it will make little of the rest of its extension to
+Karachi. It is the actual physical arrangement of Makran topography
+only which really matters; and here we are but treading in the
+footsteps of the ubiquitous Arab when first he made his way
+south-eastward from Arabia, or from Syria, to the Indian frontier. He
+could, and he did, pass from the plateau of Persia into the very heart
+of Makran without encountering the impediment of a single difficult
+pass.
+
+Although the chief trade route of the Arabs to India was not through
+Persia, but by way of the sea in coasting vessels, it is probable that
+both Arabs and Persians before them made good use of the geographical
+opportunities offered for an approach to the Indus valley and Northern
+India, and that the central line of Persian approach through Makran
+had been a world-old route for centuries. It is really a delightful
+route to follow, full of the interest of magnificent scenery and of
+varied human existence, and it is the telegraph route from Ispahan to
+Panjgur in Makran. With the initial process of reaching Ispahan,
+whether through the Kurdistan hills from Baghdad by way of Kermanshah
+and the ancient town of Hamadan to Kum (the mountain road selected for
+the telegraph line), or whether from Teheran to Kum and thence by
+Kashan (a line not so replete with hills), we have no concern. This
+part of Persia now falls by agreement under the influence of Russia,
+and it is only by further agreement with Russia that this link in any
+European connection could be forged. But from Ispahan to Karachi one
+may still look over the wide uplands of the Persian plateau and
+imagine, if we please, that it is for England to take her share in the
+development of these ancient highways into a modern railway. Ispahan
+is 5300 feet above sea-level, and from Ispahan one never descends to a
+lower level than 3000 feet till one enters Makran.
+
+As Ispahan lies in a wide valley separated by a continuous line of
+flanking hills from the main high road of Central Persia, which
+connects Teheran and Kashan with Kirman, passing through Yezd, it is
+necessary to cross this intervening divide in order to reach Yezd.
+There is a waterway through the hills, near Taft, a little to the
+south-west of Yezd which meets this difficulty. From Yezd onwards to
+the south-west of Kirman, Bam, and the populous plains of Narmashir
+and Regan, the road is never out of sight of mountains, the long lines
+of the Persian ranges flanking it north and south culminating in the
+magnificent peak of the Koh-i-Basman, but leaving a wide space between
+unhindered by passes or rivers. From Narmashir the modern telegraph
+passes off north-eastward to Seistan, and from there follows the new
+trade route to Nushki and Quetta. It is probable that through all ages
+this palpable method of circumventing the Dasht-i-Lut (the Kirman
+desert) by skirting it on the south was adopted by travellers seeking
+Seistan and Kandahar. There is, however, the difficulty of a
+formidable band of mountains skirting the desert Seistan, which would
+be a difficulty to railway construction. From Regan to Bampur and
+Panjgur the normal and most convenient mountain conformation (although
+the ranges close in and the valleys narrow) points an open way, with
+no obstacle to bar the passage even of a motor; but after leaving
+Bampur on the east there is a divide (of about 4000 to 5000 feet) to
+be crossed before dropping into the final system of Mashkhel drainage,
+which leads straight on to Panjgur, Kalat, and Quetta. Early Arab
+commercial explorers did not usually make this detour to Quetta in
+order to reach the Indus delta country, nor should we, if we wished to
+take the shortest line and the easiest through Persia to Karachi or
+Bombay. Much depends on the objective in India. Calcutta may be
+reached from the Indus valley by the north-western lines on the normal
+Indian gauge, or it may be reached through the Rajputana system on the
+metre gauge. But for the latter system and for Bombay, Karachi becomes
+our objective. To reach Karachi _via_ Seistan and Quetta would add at
+least 500 unnecessary miles to our route from Central Persia, an
+amount which equals the total distance between the present Russian
+terminus of the Transcaspian line at Kushk and our own Indian terminus
+at New Chaman. A direct through line from Panjgur to Karachi by the
+old Arab caravan route, within striking distance from the sea, would
+apparently outflank not only all political objections, but would
+satisfy those military objectors who can only see in a railway the
+opportunity for invasion of India.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+EARLIEST ENGLISH EXPLORATION--CHRISTIE AND POTTINGER
+
+
+The Arabs of the Mediaeval period, whose footsteps we have been
+endeavouring to trace, were after their fashion true geographers and
+explorers. True that with them the process of empire-making was
+usually a savage process in the first instance, followed by the
+peaceable extension of commercial interests. Trade with them (as with
+us) followed the flag, and the Semitic instinct for making the most of
+a newly-acquired property was ever the motive for wider exploration.
+With the Chinese, during the Buddhist period, the ecstatic bliss of
+pilgrimage, and the acquirement of special sanctity, were the motive
+power of extraordinary energies; but with this difference of impulse
+the result was much the same. Arab trader and Chinese pilgrim alike
+gave to the world a new record, a record of geographical fact which,
+simple and unscientific as it might be, was yet a true revelation for
+the time being. But when Buddhism had become a memory, and Arab
+domination had ceased to regulate the affairs of the Indus valley;
+when the devastating hordes of the Mongol swept through Afghanistan to
+the plains of India, geographical record no longer formed part of the
+programme, and exploration found no place in the scheme of conquest.
+The Mongol and the Turk were not geographers, such as were the Chinese
+pilgrim and the Arab, and one gets little or nothing from either of
+geographical record, in spite of the abundance of their historical
+literature and the really high standard of literary attainment enjoyed
+by many of the Turk leaders. That truly delightful historical
+personage Babar, for instance, "the adventurer," the founder of the
+Turk dynasty in India, good-looking, intellectual, possessed of great
+ability as a soldier, endowed with true artistic temperament as
+painter, poet, and author, the man who has left to all subsequent ages
+an autobiography which is almost unique in its power of presenting to
+the mind of its reader the impression of a "whole, real, live, human
+being," with all his faults and his fancies, his affections and
+aspirations, was apparently unimpressed with the value of dull details
+of geography. He can say much about the human interests of the scenes
+of his wanderings; he can describe landscape and climate, flowers and
+fruits (especially melons); but though he doubtless possessed the true
+bandit's instinct for local topography (which must, indeed, have been
+very necessary in many of the episodes of his remarkable career) he
+makes no systematic attempt to place before us a clear notion of the
+geographical conditions of Afghanistan as they existed in his time.
+His literary cousin Haidar is far more useful as a geographer. To him
+we owe something more than a vague outline of the elusive kingdom of
+Bolar and the limits of Kafiristan, but he merely touches on
+Afghanistan in its connection with Tibet, and says little of the
+country with which we are now immediately concerned.
+
+The one pre-eminent European traveller of the thirteenth century
+(1272-73), the immortal Marco Polo, hardly touched Afghanistan. He and
+his kinsmen passed by the high valleys of Vardos and Wakhan on their
+way to Kashgar and Cathay, but his geographical information is so
+vague as to render it difficult (until the surveys of these regions
+were completed) to trace his footsteps. The raid of Taimur into
+Kafiristan early in the fifteenth century, when it is said that he
+reached Najil from the Khawak Pass over the Hindu Kush, will be
+referred to again in dealing with Masson's narrative; but even to this
+day it is doubtful how far he succeeded in penetrating into
+Kafiristan, although the geographical inference of a practicable
+military line of communication between Andarab and the head of the
+Alingar River is certain. Three hundred and thirty years after Polo's
+journey another European traveller passed through Badakshan and across
+the Pamirs. This was the lay Jesuit, Benedict Goes, a true
+geographer, bent on the exploration of Cathay and the reconnaissance
+of its capabilities as a mission field. He crossed the Parwan Pass of
+the Hindu Kush from Kabul to Badakshan and journeyed thence to
+Yarkand; but he did not survive to tell his story in sufficient detail
+to leave intelligible geography. We find practically no useful
+geographical records of Afghanistan during many centuries of its
+turbulent history, so that from the time of Arab commercial enterprise
+to the days of our forefathers in India, when Afghanistan began to
+loom large on the political horizon as a factor in our relations with
+Russia and it became all important to know of what Afghanistan
+consisted, there is little to collect from the pages of its turbid
+history which can fairly rank as a record of geographical exploration.
+It took a long time to awaken an intelligent interest in trans-Indus
+geography in the minds of India's British administrators. But for
+Russia it is possible that it would have remained unawakened still;
+but early in the nineteenth century the shadow of Russia began to loom
+over the north-western horizon, and it became unpleasantly obvious
+that if we did not concern ourselves with Afghan politics, and secure
+some knowledge of Afghan territory, our northern neighbours would not
+fail to secure the advantages of early action.
+
+It is strange to recall the fact that we are indebted to the Emperor
+Napoleon Buonaparte for the first exploration made by British
+officers into the trans-frontier regions of Afghanistan and
+Baluchistan in British political interests. Nearly a century ago (in
+1810) the uneasiness created by the ambitious schemes of that most
+irrepressible military freebooter resulted in the nomination of two
+officers of Bombay Infantry to investigate the countries lying to the
+west of what was then British India, with a view to ascertaining the
+possibilities of invasion. The Punjab and Sind intervened between
+British India and the hinterland of the frontier, and their
+independence and jealous suspicion of the expansive tendency of the
+British Raj added greatly to the difficulties and the risks of any
+such trans-frontier enterprise. The Bombay Infantry has ever been a
+sort of nursery for explorers of the best and most famous type, and
+the two young gentlemen selected for this remarkable exploit were
+worthy forerunners of Burton and Speke. The traditions of intelligence
+service may almost be said to have been founded by them. The rule of
+exploration a century ago admitted of no elaborate preparation: a
+knowledge of the languages to be encountered was the one acquisition
+which was deemed indispensable; and there can be little doubt that the
+knowledge of Oriental tongues was an advantage which in those days
+very rapidly led to distinction. It was probably less widespread but
+much more thorough than it is at present. Captain Christie and
+Lieutenant Pottinger started fair in the characters which they meant
+to assume during their travels. They embarked as natives in a native
+ship, and from the very outset they found it necessary to play up to
+their disguise. The port of Sonmiani on the north-eastern shores of
+the Arabian Sea was the objective in the first instance, and the role
+of horse-dealers in the service of a Bombay firm was the part they
+elected to play. How far it really imposed on Baluch or Afghan it is
+difficult to say. One cannot but recollect that when another gallant
+officer in later years assumed this disguise on the Persian frontier,
+he was regarded as a harmless but eccentric European, who injured
+nobody by the assumption of an expert knowledge which he did not
+possess. He was known locally for years after his travels had ceased
+as the English officer who "called himself" a horse-dealer.
+
+Sonmiani was a more important port a century ago than it is now that
+Karachi has absorbed the trade of the Indus coast; but even then the
+mud flats which render the village so unapproachable from the coast
+were in process of formation, and it was only with favourable
+conditions of tide that this wretched and long overlooked little
+seaport could be reached. Sonmiani, however, may yet again rise to
+distinction, for it is a notable fact that the facility for reaching
+the interior of Baluchistan and the Afghan frontier by this route,
+which facility decided its selection by Christie and Pottinger, is no
+less nowadays than it was then. The explanation of it lies in the fact
+that the route practically turns the frontier hills. It follows the
+extraordinary alignment of their innumerable folds, passing between
+them from valley to valley instead of breaking crudely across the
+backbone of the system, and slips gently into the flat places of the
+plateau land which stretch from Kharan to Kandahar. The more obvious
+reason which presented itself to these early explorers was doubtless
+the avoidance of the independent buffer land of Sind. They experienced
+little difficulty, in spite of many warnings of the dangers in front
+of them, when they left Sonmiani for Bela. At Bela they interviewed an
+interesting and picturesque personality in the person of the Jam, and
+were closely questioned about the English and their proceedings.
+Apparently the Jam was prepared to accept their description of things
+European generally, until they ventured to describe a 100-gun warship
+and its equipment. Such an astounding creation he was unable to
+believe in, and he frankly said so. From Bela the great northern
+high-road led to the old capital, Khozdar, through a district infested
+with Brahui robbers; but there was no better alternative, and the two
+officers followed it. On the whole, the Brahui tribespeople treated
+them well, and there was no serious collision. Khozdar was an
+important centre in those days, with eight hundred houses, and certain
+Hindu merchants from Shikarpur drove a thriving business there.
+Nothing was more extraordinary in the palmy days of Sind than the
+widespread commercial interests of Shikarpur. Credit could be obtained
+at almost all the chief towns of Central Asia through the Shikarpur
+merchants, and it was by draft, or "hundi," on Hindu bankers far and
+wide that travellers were able to keep themselves supplied with cash
+as they journeyed through these long stages.
+
+The route to Kalat passed by Sohrab and Rodinjo, and the two wayfarers
+reached Kalat on February 9, 1810. The cold was intense; they were
+quite unprepared for it, and suffered accordingly. Living with the
+natives and putting up at the Mehman Khana (the guest house) of such
+principal villages or towns as possessed one, they naturally were
+thrown very closely into contact with native life, and learned native
+opinions. The views of such travellers when dealing with the social
+details of native existence are especially valuable, and the opinions
+expressed by them of the character and disposition of the people
+amongst whom they lived, and with whom they daily conversed on every
+conceivable subject, are infinitely to be preferred to those of the
+state officials of that time who lived in an artificial atmosphere.
+Thus we find very considerable divergence in the opinions expressed
+regarding Baluch and Afghan character between such close observers as
+Pottinger or Masson and such eminent authorities as Burnes and
+Elphinstone. The splendid hospitality and the affectation of
+frankness which is common to all these varied types of frontier
+humanity, combined with their magnificent presence, and very often
+with a determined adherence to certain rules of guardianship and the
+faithful discharge of the duties which it entails, are all of them
+easily recognizable virtues which are much in the minds and mouths of
+official travellers with a mission. The counteracting vices, the
+spirit of fanatical hatred, of thievish malevolence, and the utter
+social demoralization which usually (but not always) distinguishes
+their domestic life and disgusts the stranger, is not so much _en
+evidence_, and is only to be discerned by those who mix freely with
+ordinary natives of the jungle and bazaar. As an instance, take
+Pottinger's estimate of Persian character; it is really worth
+recording as the impression of one of the earliest of English soldier
+travellers. "Among themselves, with their equals, the Persians are
+affable and polite; to their superiors, servile and obsequious;
+towards their inferiors, haughty and domineering. All ranks are
+equally avaricious, sordid, and dishonest.... Falsehood they look on
+... as highly commendable, and good faith, generosity, and gratitude
+are alike unknown to them. In debauchery none can exceed them, and
+some of their propensities are too execrable and infamous to admit of
+mention.... I feel inclined to look upon Persia, at the present day,
+to be the very fountainhead of every species of tyranny, cruelty,
+meanness, injustice, extortion, and infamy that can disgrace or
+pollute human nature, and have ever been found in any age or nation."
+These are strong terms to use about a people of whom we have been
+assured that the basis of their youthful education is to "ride, to
+shoot, and to speak the truth!" and yet who is it who knows Persia who
+will say even now that they are undeserved? May the Persian parliament
+mend their morals and reform their methods--if, indeed, such a "silk
+purse" as a parliament can be made out of such crude material as the
+Persian plebs!
+
+In spite of endless vexations and much spiteful malevolence, which
+included endless attempts to trip up Pottinger in his assumed disguise
+(and which, it must be admitted, were met by a not too strict
+adherence to the actual truth on Pottinger's part), he does not
+condemn the Baluchi and the Afghan in such terms as he applies to the
+Persian; but he illustrates most forcibly the dangers arising from
+habitual lawlessness due to the semi-feudal system of the Baluch
+federation, and consequent want of administrative responsibility. In
+spite, however, of endless difficulties, he finally got through, and
+so did Christie; and for the getting through they were both largely
+indebted to the vicarious hospitality of village chiefs and heads of
+independent clans.
+
+At Kalat they found it far easier to get into the timber and mud
+fortress than to get out again, and this difficulty repeated itself at
+Nushki. At Nushki begins the real interest of their adventures.
+Christie (after the usual wrangling and procrastination which attended
+all arrangements for onward movement) took his way to Herat on almost
+the exact line of route (_via_ Chagai, the Helmund, and Seistan) which
+was followed seventy-three years later by the Russo-Afghan Boundary
+Commission. Pottinger made what was really a far more venturesome
+journey _via_ Kharan to Jalk and Persia. The meeting of these two
+officers eventually at Ispahan in the darkness of night, and their
+gradual recognition of each other, is as dramatic a story as the
+meeting of Nearkhos with Alexander in Makran, or of Nansen with
+Jackson amongst the ice-floes of the Far North.
+
+Christie gives us but small detail of his adventures. He necessarily
+suffered much from thirst, but met with no serious encounters. Beyond
+a well-deserved tribute to the sweet beauty of that picturesque
+wayside town of Anardara in his careful record of his progress
+northward from Seistan, where he made Jalalabad (which he calls
+Doshak) his base for further exploration, he says very little about
+the country he passed through. Incidentally he mentions Pulaki
+(Poolki) as a very remarkable relic of past ages. He describes the
+ruins of this place as covering an area of 16 square miles. Ferrier
+mentions the same place subsequently, and locates it about a day's
+march to the north of Kala-i-Fath (which Christie did not visit), and
+it must have been one of the most famous of mediaeval towns in Seistan.
+But as collective ruins covering an area of 500 square miles have been
+noted by Mr. Tate, the surveyor of the late Seistan mission, who
+camped in their midst to the north of Kala-i-Fath, the exact site of
+Pulaki may yet require careful research before it is identified.
+Seistan is the land of half-buried ruins. No such extent of ruins
+exists anywhere else in the world. It seems probable, therefore, that,
+like the sites of many another ancient city of Seistan, Pulaki has
+been either partially or absolutely absorbed in the boundless sea of
+desert sand, which envelops and hides away each trace of the past as
+its waves move forward in irresistible sequence before the howling
+blasts of the north-west.
+
+Christie's route through Seistan followed the track connecting
+Jalalabad on the Helmund with Peshawaran on the Farah Rud in dry
+seasons, but which disappears in seasons of flood, when the two hamuns
+or lakes of Seistan become one. Pushing on to Jawani he passed
+Anardara on April 4, and reached Herat on the 18th. His description of
+Herat is of a very general character, but is sufficient to indicate
+that no very great change took place between the time of his visit and
+that of the 1883 Commission. He was fairly well received, and
+remained a month without any incident worthy of note, leaving on May
+18 for Persia.
+
+This century-old visit of a British officer to Herat is chiefly
+notable for its revelations as to the attitude of the Afghan
+Government and people towards the English at the time it was made.
+With the exception of the risk inseparable from travel in a lawless
+country infested with organised bands of professional robbers, there
+appears to have been no hostility bred by fanaticism or suspicion of
+the trend of British policy. Afghanistan was socially in about the
+same stage of development that France was in the days of Louis XI.--or
+England a little earlier; and it is only the solidity conferred on
+Afghan administration by the moral support of the British Government
+which has effected any real change. Were England to abandon India
+to-morrow there would be nothing to prevent a lapse into the same
+condition of social anarchy which prevailed a century ago. India would
+become the bait for ceaseless activity on the part of every Afghan
+border chief who thought he had following sufficient to make a raid
+effective. A thin veneer of civilization has crept into Afghanistan
+with motors and telegraphs, but with it also has arisen new incentives
+to hostility from dread of a possible loss of independence, and (in
+the western parts of Afghanistan) from real fanatical hatred to the
+infidel. Thus Afghanistan is actually more dangerous as a field of
+exploration to the individual European at the present moment than it
+was in the days of Christie and Pottinger. At the same time, British
+military assistance would not only be welcome nowadays in case of a
+conflict with a foreign enemy, but it would be claimed as the
+fulfilment of a political engagement and expected as a right.
+
+Christie's stay at Herat seems to have been quite uneventful, and when
+he left for Persia no one barred his way. The Persian frontier then
+seems to have been rather more than 20 miles distant from
+Herat--Christie places it a mile beyond the village of "Sekhwan," 22
+miles from the city. The only place which appears to correspond with
+the position of Sekhwan now is Shakiban, which probably represents
+another village. Making rapid progress westward through Persia, he
+eventually reached Ispahan, where he rejoined Pottinger on June 30. It
+must have been a hot and trying experience!
+
+Lieutenant Pottinger's adventures after leaving Nushki (from which
+place he had considerable difficulty in effecting his departure) were
+more exciting and apparently more risky than those of Christie. He
+selected a route which no European has subsequently attempted, and
+which it would be difficult to follow from his description of it were
+it not that this region has now been completely surveyed. He struck
+southwards down the Bado river, which leads almost directly to Kharan
+and the desert beyond it stretching to the Mashkhel "hamun" or swamp.
+He did not visit Kharan itself, and he apparently misplaces its
+position by at least 50 miles, unless, indeed (which is quite
+possible), the present site of the Naoshirwani capital is far removed
+from that of a century ago. I am unaware, however, that any evidence
+exists to that effect.
+
+Until the desert was encountered there was no great difficulty on this
+route, but the horror of that desert crossing fully atoned for any
+lack of unpleasant incident previously. It would even now be regarded
+as a formidable undertaking, and we can easily understand the deadly
+feelings that beset this pioneer explorer as he made his way in the
+month of April from Kharan on a south-westerly track to the border of
+Persia at Jalk. His description of this desert, like the rest of his
+narrative, is full of instructive suggestion. The scope of his
+observation generally, and the accuracy of the information which he
+collected about the infinitely complex nationality of the Baluch
+tribes, renders his evidence valuable as regards the natural phenomena
+which he encountered; and no part of this evidence is more interesting
+than his story of the Kharan desert, especially as no one since his
+time has made anything like a scientific examination of its
+construction and peculiarities. He describes it as a sea of red sand,
+"the particles of which were so light that when taken in the hand
+they were scarcely more than palpable; the whole is thrown into an
+irregular mass of waves, principally running from east to west, and
+varying in height from 10 to 20 feet. Most of them rise
+perpendicularly on the opposite side to that from which the prevailing
+wind blows (north-west), and might readily be fancied at a distance to
+resemble a new brick wall. The side facing the wind slopes off with a
+gradual declivity to the base (or near it) of the next windward wave."
+He further describes a phenomenon which he observed in the midst of
+this sand sea, which I think has not been described by any later
+traveller or surveyor. He says "the desert seemed at a distance of
+half a mile or less to have an elevated or flat surface from 6 to 12
+inches higher than the summits of the waves. This vapour appeared to
+recede as we advanced, and once or twice completely encircled us,
+limiting the horizon to a very confined space, and conveying a most
+gloomy and unnatural sensation to the mind of the beholder; at the
+same moment we were imperceptibly covered with innumerable atoms of
+small sand, which, getting into our eyes, mouths and nostrils, caused
+excessive irritation, attended with extreme thirst that was increased
+in no small degree by the intense heat of the sun." This was only
+visible during the hottest part of the day. Pottinger's explanation of
+this curious phenomenon is that the fine particles of this dust-sand,
+which are swept into the air almost daily by the force of the
+north-west winds, fail to settle down at once when those winds cease,
+but float in the air by reason of some change in their specific
+gravity due to rarefaction from intense heat; and he adds that he has
+seen this condition of sand-haze at the same time that, in an opposite
+quarter, he has observed the mirage or luminous appearance of water
+which is common to all deserts. Crossing the bed of the Budu (the
+Mashkhel nullah--dry in April), he makes a curious mistake about the
+direction of its waters, which he says run in a south-easterly
+direction towards the coast. It actually runs north-west and empties
+itself (when there is water in it) into the Mashkhel swamps. I must
+admit, however, that, from personal observation, it is often
+exceedingly difficult to decide from a casual inspection in which
+direction the water of these abnormally flat nullahs runs. Shortly
+after passing the Mashkhel, he encountered an ordinary dust-storm,
+followed by heavy rain, which much modified the terrors of the awful
+heat.
+
+Pottinger has something to say about the hot winds that occur between
+June and September in these regions, known as the Bad-i-Simun, or
+pestilential winds, which kill men exposed to them and destroy
+vegetation, but his information was not derived from actual
+observation, and it is difficult to get any really authentic account
+of these winds. Parts of the Sind desert are equally subject to them.
+After losing his way (which was inexcusable on the part of his guide
+with the hills in sight), he arrived finally at the delightful little
+valley of Kalagan, near Jalk, where the terrors of nature were
+exchanged for those of his human surroundings. Kalagan is one of the
+sweetest and greenest spots of the Baluch frontier, and it is easy to
+realize Pottinger's intense joy in its palm groves and orchards. He
+was now in Persia, and his subsequent proceedings do not concern our
+present purpose. He travelled by Sib and Magas to Pahra and Bampur,
+maintaining his disguise as a Pirzada, or wandering religious student,
+with some difficulty, as he was insufficiently versed in the tenets of
+Islam. However, he acted up to his Moslem professions with a certain
+amount of success till he reached Pahra, where he was at once
+recognized as an Englishman by a boy who had previously met an English
+officer exploring in Southern Persia. But he was excellently well
+treated at Pahra, in strange contrast to his subsequent treatment at
+Bampur, close by. He eventually reached Kirman, and passed on by the
+regular trade route to Ispahan.
+
+It is impossible to take leave of these two gallant young officers
+without a tribute of admiration for their magnificent pluck, the
+tenacity with which they held to their original purpose, the
+forbearance and cleverness with which they met the persistent and
+worrying difficulties which were set in their way by truculent native
+officials, and the accuracy of their final statements. Pottinger
+really left little to be discovered about the distribution of Baluch
+tribes, and if his mapping exhibits some curious eccentricities, we
+must remember that it was practically a compilation from memory, with
+but the vaguest means at his disposal for the measurement of
+distances. It was a first map, and by the light of it the success of
+the subsequent explorations of Masson (which covered a good deal of
+the same ground in Baluchistan) is fairly accounted for. Christie died
+a soldier's death early in his career, but Pottinger lived to transmit
+an honoured name to yet later adventurers in the field of geography.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+AMERICAN EXPLORATION--MASSON
+
+
+In 1832 Lord William Bentinck, then Governor-General of India, found
+Shah Sujah, the deposed Amir of Kabul, living as a pensioner at
+Ludhiana when he visited the Punjab for an interview with its ruler
+Ranjit Singh. At that interview the question of aiding Shah Sujah to
+regain his throne from the usurper Dost Mahomed, who was suspected of
+Russian proclivities, was mooted; and it was then, probably, that the
+seeds of active interference in Afghan politics were sown, although
+the idea of aiding Shah Sujah was negatived for the time being. The
+result was the mission of Alexander Burnes to Kabul, which formed a
+new era in Central Asian geography. From this time forward the map of
+Afghanistan commenced to grow. The story of Burnes' first journey to
+Kabul was published by Murray in 1834, and his example as a
+geographical observer stimulated his assistants Leech, Lord, and Wood
+to further enterprise during a second journey to the same capital.
+Indeed the geographical work of some of these explorers still remains
+as our standard reference for a knowledge of the configuration of
+Northern Badakshan. This was the beginning of official recognition of
+the value of trans-Indian geographical knowledge to Indian
+administration; but then, as now, information obtained through
+recognized official agents was apt to be regarded as the only
+information worth having; and far too little effort was made to secure
+the results of travellers' work, who, in a private capacity and
+unhindered by official red tape, were able to acquire a direct
+personal knowledge of Afghan geography such as was absolutely
+impossible to political agents or their assistants.
+
+Before Indian administrators had seriously turned their attention to
+the Afghan buffer-land and set to work to fill up "intelligence"
+material at second hand, there was at least one active European agent
+in the field who was in direct touch with the chief political actors
+in that strange land of everlasting unrest, and who has left behind
+him a record which is unsurpassed on the Indian frontier for the width
+of its scope of inquiry into matters political, social, economic, and
+scientific, and the general accuracy of his conclusions. This was the
+American, Masson. It must be remembered that the Punjab and Sind were
+almost as much _terra incognita_ to us in 1830 as was Afghanistan. The
+approach to the latter country was through foreign territory. The Sikh
+chiefs of the Punjab and the Amirs of Sind were not then necessarily
+hostile to British interests. They watched, no doubt, the gradual
+extension of the red line of our maps towards the north-west and west,
+and were fully alive to the probability that, so far as regarded their
+own countries, they would all soon be "painted red." But there was no
+official discourtesy or intoleration shown towards European
+travellers, and in the Sikh-governed Punjab, at any rate, much of the
+military control of that most military nationality was in the hands of
+European leaders. Nor do we find much of the spirit of fanatical
+hatred to the Feringhi even in Afghanistan at that time. The European
+came and went, and it was only due to the disturbed state of the
+country and the local absence of law and order that he ran any risk of
+serious misadventure.
+
+In these days it would be impossible for any European to travel as
+Masson or Ferrier travelled in Afghanistan, but in those days there
+was something to be gained by friendship with England, and the
+weakness of our support was hardly suspected until it was disclosed by
+the results of the first Afghan war. So Masson and Ferrier assumed the
+role of Afghan travellers, clothed in Afghan garments, but more or
+less ignorant of the Afghan language, living with the people,
+partaking of their hospitality, studying their ways, joining their
+pursuits, discussing their politics, and placing themselves on terms
+of familiarity, if not of intimacy, with their many hosts in a way
+which has never been imitated since. No one now ever assumes the
+dress of the Afghan and lives with him. No one joins a caravan and
+sits over the nightly fire discussing bazaar prices or the character
+of a chief. A hurried rush to Kabul, a few brief and badly conducted
+interviews with the Amir, and the official representative of India's
+foreign policy returns to India as an Afghan oracle, but with no more
+knowledge of the real inwardness of Afghan political aspiration, or of
+the trend of national thought and feeling, than is acquired during a
+six months' trip of a travelling M.P. in India. Consequently there is
+a peculiar value in the records of such a traveller as Masson. They
+are in many ways as valuable now as they were eighty years ago, for
+the character of the Afghan has not changed with his history or his
+politics. To some extent they are even more valuable, for it is
+inevitable that the story of a long travel through an unknown and
+unimagined world should be received with a certain amount of
+reservation until later experience confirms the tale and verifies
+localities.
+
+Fifty years elapsed before the footsteps of Masson could be traced
+with certainty. Not till the conclusion of the last Afghan war, and
+the final reshaping of the surveys of Baluchistan, could it be said
+exactly where he wandered during those strenuous years of unremitting
+travel. And now that we can take his story in detail, and follow him
+stage by stage through the Indian borderlands, we can only say that,
+considering the circumstances under which his observations were taken
+and recorded, it is marvellously accurate in geographical detail. Were
+his long past history of those stirring times as accurate as his
+geography or as his antiquarian information there would be little
+indeed left for subsequent investigators to add.
+
+Masson was in the field before Burnes. In the month of September 1830
+the Resident in the Persian Gulf writes to the Chief Secretary to the
+Government of India[10] that "an American gentleman of the name of
+Masson" arrived at Bushire from Bassadore on the "13th June last," and
+that he described himself as belonging to the state of Kentucky,
+having been absent for ten years from his country, "which he must
+consequently have left when he was young, as he is now only about
+two-and-thirty years of age." The same letter says that previous to
+the breaking out of the war between Russia and Persia in 1826 Masson
+"appears to have visited Khorasan from Tiflis by way of Mashed and
+Herat, making no effort to conceal his European origin," and that from
+Herat he went to Kandahar, Shikarpur, and Sind.
+
+Masson appears to have furnished some valuable information to the
+Indian Government regarding the Durani occupation of Herat and the
+political situation in Kabul and Kandahar, which, according to his
+own account, he subsequently regretted, as he obviously regarded the
+British attitude towards Afghanistan at that time in much the same
+light as certain continental nations regarded the British attitude
+towards the Transvaal previous to the last Boer war. "About the same
+time," says the same letter from the Resident at Bushire, Masson was
+much in the Bahawalpur country (Sind), after which he proceeded to
+Peshawar, Kabul, Ghazni, etc. Extracts from his reports of his
+journeys are forwarded with other information. In his book (_Travels
+in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, the Punjab, and Kalat_, published in
+1842) Masson opens his story with the autumn of 1826, when he was in
+Bahawalpur and Sind, which he had approached through Rajputana, and
+not from Afghanistan. He has much to say about Bahawalpur which,
+however interesting and valuable as first-hand information about a
+foreign state in 1826, no longer concerns this story. From Bahawalpur
+he passed on to Peshawar and Kabul, from Kabul to Kandahar, and thence
+to Shikarpur. As the incidents of his remarkable journey between
+Kandahar and Shikarpur, described in the letter of the Bushire
+Resident, are obviously the same as those in his book, the inference
+is strong that the journey from Tiflis to Herat and Kandahar (which is
+not mentioned in the book) has been somehow misplaced in the
+Resident's record.
+
+When Masson entered Afghanistan from Peshawar there is certain
+indirect evidence that this was the first time that he crossed the
+Afghan border. He knew nothing of the Pashto language, which would be
+remarkable in the case of a man like Masson, who always lived with the
+people and not with the chiefs, and there is not the remotest
+reference to any previous visit to Herat in his subsequent history. We
+will at any rate follow the text of his own narrative, and surely no
+narrative of adventure that has ever appeared before or since in
+connection with Afghan exploration can rival it for interest. Peshawar
+was at that time held by four Pathan Sirdars, brothers, who were
+hardly independent, as they held their country (a small space
+extending to about 25 miles round Peshawar, and which included Kohat
+and Hangu) entirely at the pleasure of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Chief of
+the Punjab. Some show of making a strike for independence had been
+made in connection with the Yusufzai rising led by Saiad Ahmad Shah,
+but it had been suppressed, and during the temporary occupation of
+Peshawar by the Sikhs the city had been despoiled and devastated.
+Masson estimated that there were about fifty or sixty thousand
+inhabitants in Peshawar, where he was exceedingly well treated.
+"People of all classes were most civil and desirous to oblige." He was
+an honoured guest at all entertainments.
+
+How long Masson remained at Peshawar it is difficult to say, for there
+is a most lamentable absence of dates from his records, and Peshawar
+appears to have been the base from which he started on a good many
+excursions. Finally he made acquaintance with a Pathan who offered to
+accompany him to Kabul, and he left Peshawar for Afghanistan by the
+Khaibar route. He mentions two other routes as being popular in those
+days, _i.e._ those of Abkhana and Karapa, and he asserts that they
+were far more secure for traders than the Khaibar, but not so level
+nor so direct. Masson started with his companion, dressed as a Pathan,
+but taking nothing but a few pais (copper coins) and a book. His
+companion, however, possessed a knife tied up in a corner of his
+pyjamas. After cautiously crossing the plains and some intervening
+hills, they struck the high road of the Khaibar apparently not far
+from Ali Masjid, and here they fell in with the first people they had
+met _en route_--about twenty men sitting in the shade of a rock,
+"elderly, respectable, and venerable." They were hospitably received
+and entertained, and news of the arrival of a European quickly spread.
+Every European was expected to be a doctor in those days, and Masson
+had to assume the role and make the most of his limited medical
+knowledge. He either prescribed local remedies, or healed the sick on
+Christian Science principles with a certain amount of success--enough
+to ensure him a welcome wherever he went. It is a curious story for
+any one who has traversed the Khaibar in these later days to read. A
+European with a most limited knowledge of Pushto tramping the road in
+company with a Pathan, living the simple life of the people, picking
+up information every yard of the way, keenly interested in his rough
+surroundings, taking count of the ragged groups of stone-built huts
+clinging to the hill-sides or massed around a central citadel in the
+open plain, with here and there a disintegrating monument crowning the
+hill-top with a cupola or dome, the like of which he had never seen
+before.
+
+Masson had hardly realized in these early days that he was on one of
+the routes most sacred to pilgrimage of all those known to the
+disciples of Buddha, and it was not till later years that he set about
+a systematic exploration of the extraordinary wealth of Buddhist
+relics which lie about Jalalabad and the valleys adjoining the Khaibar
+route to Kabul. On his journey he made his way with the varied
+incidents of adventure common to the time--robbed at one place,
+treated with hospitality at another; sitting under the mulberry trees
+discussing politics with all the energy of the true Afghan (who is
+never deficient in the power of expressing his political sentiments),
+and, taking it altogether, enjoying a close, if not an absolutely
+friendly, intimacy with the half-savage people of those wholly savage
+hills. An intimacy, such as no other educated European has ever
+attained, and which tells a tale of a totally different attitude on
+the part of the Afghan towards the European then, to that which has
+existed since. The fact that Masson was American and not English
+counted for nothing. The difference was not recognized by the Afghans,
+although it was explained by him sometimes with careful elaboration.
+It was the time when Dost Mahomed ruled in Kabul, but with the claims
+of Shah Sujah (possibly backed by both Sikh and British) on the
+political horizon. It was a time of political intrigue amongst Afghan
+Sirdars and chiefs so complicated and so widespread as to be almost
+unintelligible at this distance of time, and not even Masson, with all
+his advantages of intimate association and great powers of intuition,
+seems to have fathomed the position satisfactorily. Consequently it
+was to the interests of the Afghan Government to stand well with the
+British, even if it were equally their aim to keep on good terms with
+Russia--in short, to play the same game that has lasted during the
+rest of the century, and which threatens to last for many another
+decade yet. But this was before the mission of Burnes, and before the
+events of the subsequent Afghan war had taught the Afghan that British
+arms were not necessarily invincible, nor British promises always
+trustworthy.
+
+Apart from the ordinary chances of disaster on the roads arising from
+the lack of law and order, any European would have met with a
+hospitable reception at that time, and Masson himself relates how, in
+Kabul, during some of the friendly gatherings which he attended, the
+respective probabilities of British or Russian intervention in Kabul
+affairs was a common subject of discussion. It is easy for one who
+knows the country to picture him sitting under the shade of the
+mulberry trees, with the soft lush of the Afghan summer in grass and
+flowers about him, the scent of the willow in the air, and, across the
+sliding blue of the Kabul River, a dim haze shadowing the rounded
+outlines of some ancient stupa, whilst trying to unriddle the tangle
+of Afghan politics or taking notes of weird stories and ancient
+legends. Nothing seems to have come amiss to his inquiring mind.
+Archaeology, numismatics, botany, geology, and history--it was all new
+to him, and an inexhaustible opportunity lay before him. He certainly
+made good use of it. He busied himself, amongst other things, with an
+inquiry into the origin of the Siahposh Kafirs, and, although his
+speculations regarding them have long been discounted by the results
+of subsequent investigation from nearer points of view, it is
+interesting to note how these savages were then regarded by the
+nearest Mahomedan communities. Masson admits that the history of a
+Greek origin is supported by all natural and historical indications,
+but he declines to accept "so bold and welcome an inference." Why he
+should call it "bold and welcome" and then reject it, is not
+explained, but it is probable that he accepted the claim to a Greek
+origin on the part of the Kafirs as indicating that they claimed to
+be Greek and nothing but Greek. When we consider the number and extent
+of the Greek colonies which once existed beyond the Hindu Kush it
+would indeed be surprising if there were no survival of Greek blood in
+the veins of the people who, in the last stronghold of a conquered and
+hunted race, represent the debris of the once powerful Baktrian
+kingdom. Incidentally he discussed the interesting episode of Timur's
+invasion of Kafiristan, a subject on which no recent investigations
+have thrown any further light. The story, as told by Timur's
+historian, Sharifudin, says that in A.D. 1399, when Timur was at
+Andarab, complaints were made to him of outrage and oppression by the
+exaction of tribute, or "Karaj," against the idolaters of Katawar and
+the Siahposh. It appears that Katawar was then the general name for
+the northern regions of Kafiristan, although no reference to that name
+had been recorded lately.
+
+Timur is said to have taken a third part of the army of the Andarab
+against the infidels, and to have reached Perjan (probably Parwan),
+from whence he detached a part of his force to act to the north of
+that place, whilst he himself proceeded to Kawak, which is certainly
+Khawak at the head of the Panjshir valley. If Perjan is Parwan (which
+I think most probable) this distribution of his force would indicate
+that he held the Panjshir valley at both ends, and thus secured his
+flank whilst operating in Kafiristan. From Khawak he "made the
+ascent" of the mountains of "Ketnev" (_i.e._ he crossed the
+intervening snow-covered divide between the Panjshir and the head of
+the Alishang) and descended upon the fortress of Najil. This was
+abandoned by the Siahposh Kafirs, who held a high hill on the left
+bank of the river. After an obstinate fight the hill was carried, and
+the male infidels, "whose souls were blacker than their garments,"
+were killed, and their women and children carried away. Timur set up a
+marble pillar with an inscription recording the event, and it would be
+exceedingly interesting if that pillar could be identified. Masson
+thinks that a structure which he ascertained to have been in existence
+in his time a little to the north of Najil, known as the Timur Hissar
+(Timur's Fort), may be the fort which Timur destroyed after it had
+been abandoned by the Kafirs, and that the record of his victory would
+be found near by. The chief of Najil in Masson's time claimed descent
+from Timur, and there was (and is still) so much of Tartar tradition
+enveloping the valley of Najil (or the upper Alishang) as to make it
+fairly certain that Tartar, or Mongol, troops did actually invade that
+valley from the Panjshir, and that there is consequently a practicable
+pass from the Panjshir into the upper Alishang.
+
+If we are correct in our assumption of the position of Farajghan and
+Najil in the modern maps of Afghanistan, as determined from native
+sources of information (for no surveyor has ever laid down the course
+of the upper affluents of the Alishang) this Mongol force must have
+crossed from about the centre of the Panjshir valley. It is a matter
+of interest to observe that, historically, between Afghan Turkistan
+and the Kabul plain the fashionable pass over the Hindu Kush until
+quite recently was the Parwan, and this, no doubt, was due to the fact
+that its altitude (12,300 feet) is less by quite 2000 feet than that
+of the Kaoshan which closely adjoins it, although the Kaoshan is in
+some other important respects the easier pass of the two. The Khawak,
+at the head of the Panjshir, is lower still (11,650 feet), but it
+offers a more circuitous route; whilst the Chahardar, the pass
+selected by the Amir Abdurrahmon for the construction of a high-road
+into Afghan Turkistan from the Kabul plain, is as high as the Kaoshan.
+All these routes converge on the important strategical position of
+Charikar, adjoining the junction of the Ghorband and Panjshir rivers;
+and they all lead from that ancient strategical centre of Baktria, the
+Andarab basin. Undoubtedly through all time the passage over the
+Khawak (now a well-trodden khafila route, said to be open to traffic
+all the year round) must have been the most attractive to the
+freebooters and adventurers of the north; but there appears to have
+been a reputation for ferocity and strength attached to the
+inhabitants of the Panjshir valley, which was remarkable even in the
+days when the only recognized right was might, and half Asia was
+peopled by barbarians. They were spoken of with the respect due to a
+condition of savage independence by the Arab writers who detail the
+geography of these regions, and it is probable that they shared the
+historical lawlessness of their Kafir neighbours (the Siahposh), even
+if in those days they did not share a race affinity. At the beginning
+of the sixteenth century the Emperor Babar notes that the Panjshir
+people paid tribute to their neighbours the Kafirs.
+
+Masson's observations on this troublous corner of Asiatic geography
+are shrewd and interesting, and as much to the purpose to-day as they
+were when they were written. The explorations of McNair and Robertson
+over the Kafiristan border from Chitral, and the march of Lockhart's
+party through the Arnawai valley, added much to the geographical
+knowledge of the eastern fringe of Kafiristan, whilst the
+identification of the Koh-i-Mor with the classic Meros, and of certain
+sections of the eastern Kafirs as representative of the ancient
+Nysaeans, clearly establishes the Greek connection about which Masson
+was so sceptical. But the Kafirs of Central and Western Kafiristan,
+the inhabitants of the upper basins of the Alishang and Alingar about
+the centre of the Hindu Kush and of the Badakshan rivers to the north,
+are just as unknown to us as they were to him. The only certain
+inference that we can draw from the total absence of history about
+these valleys of the Hindu Kush is that between the Khawak Pass at
+the head of the Panjshir valley on the west, and the Minjan Pass
+leading to Chitral on the east, there is not, and never has been, a
+practicable route connecting the Kabul basin with Badakshan. No Arab
+khafilas ever passed that way; no hordes of raiding robbers from
+Central Asian fields ever forced a passage southward through those
+Kafir defiles; they are still dark and impenetrable, the home of
+distinct and separate valley communities, differing as widely in form
+of speech as in superstitious ritual, the very flotsam and jetsam of
+High Asia, as wild as the eagles above them or the markhor on their
+craggy hill-sides.
+
+We will not follow Masson into the mazes of Afghan political history.
+It is all a story of the past, but a story with a moral to it. Had the
+Government of India in those days but troubled itself to obtain
+information from existing practical sources within its reach, instead
+of improvising a most imperfect political intelligence system, the
+subsequent war with Afghanistan would have been conducted on very
+different lines to those which were adopted, if it ever took place at
+all.
+
+Masson made his way steadily to Kabul after meeting with adventures
+and vicissitudes enough for a two-volume novel, and passed on to
+Ghazni, where the army of Dost Mahomed Khan was then encamped, and
+with which he took up his quarters. Here he was well received, and he
+interviewed the great Afghan Chief (who settled his quarrel with his
+brothers from Kandahar without fighting), and thus records his opinion
+of a remarkable personage in history: "Dost Mahomed Khan has
+distinguished himself on various occasions by acts of personal
+intrepidity ... has proved himself an able Commander, equally well
+skilled in stratagem and polity, and only employs the sword when other
+means fail. He is remarkably plain in attire.... I should not have
+conjectured him a man of ability either from his conversation or his
+appearance"; but "a stranger must be cautious in estimating the
+character of a Durani from his appearance," which caution he also
+found it necessary to exercise in the case of Dost Mahomed's corpulent
+brother, Mahomed Khan, the Governor of Ghazni. From Ghazni, Masson
+continued his journey to Kandahar, still trudging the weary road on
+foot in the doubtful company of casual Pathan wayfarers; and he
+accepts the savage treatment which he experienced at the hands of
+certain Lohanis near Ghazni as all in the day's work, never
+complaining of his want of luck so long as he got off with his life,
+and always ready to accept the chances of the most unsafe road rather
+than remain inactive. At Kandahar he again set himself to acquire a
+store of useful political information, though with what object it is
+difficult to say. He certainly did not mean it for the Indian
+Government, for he regrets later on in his career that he ever gave
+any of it away, and as a record of almost unintelligible Afghan
+intrigue it could hardly have interested his own. He was a wide
+observer, however, and must have been the possessor of a most
+remarkable memory. He was indeed a whole intelligence department in
+himself. After some weird and gruesome experiences in Kandahar (where,
+however, he was personally made welcome) he left for Shikarpur by the
+Quetta and Bolan route, and it was on this journey that he nearly lost
+his life. He committed the error of allowing the caravan with which he
+was to travel to precede him, trusting to his being able to catch it
+up _en route_. He fell amongst the Achakzai thieves of those ugly
+plains, and being everywhere known and recognised as a Feringhi, he
+passed a very rough time with them. They stripped him of his clothing
+after beating him and robbing him of his money, and left him
+"destitute, a stranger in the centre of Asia, unacquainted with the
+language--which would have been useful to me--and from my colour
+exposed on all occasions to notice, inquiry, ridicule, and insult."
+However, "it was some consolation to find the khafila was not far
+off," and eventually he joined it; but he nearly died of cold and
+exposure, and it took him years to recover from the rheumatism set up
+by crouching naked over the embers of the fire at night.
+
+There are several points about this remarkable journey which might
+lead one to suspect that romance was not altogether a stranger to it,
+were it not that the route itself is described with surprising
+accuracy. It has only lately been possible to verify step by step the
+road described by Masson. He could hardly have carried about volumes
+of notes with him under such conditions as his story depicts, and it
+might very well have happened that he dislocated his topography or his
+ethnography from lapse of memory. But he does neither; and the most
+amazing feature of Masson's tales of travel is that in all essential
+features we knew little more about the country of the Afghans after
+the last war with Afghanistan than he could have told us before the
+first. Shall (or Quetta as we know it now) is described as a town of
+about 300 houses, surrounded by a slight crenelated wall. The "huge
+mound" (now the fort) is noted as supporting a ruinous citadel, the
+residence of the Governor. Fruit was plentiful then, and he adds that
+"Shall is proverbially celebrated for the excellence of its lambs." By
+the desolate plain of Dasht-i-bedoulat and the Bolan Pass, Masson trod
+the well-known route to Dadar and Shikarpur. He lived a strange life
+in those days. No one since his time has rubbed shoulders with Afghan
+and Baluch, intimately associating himself with all their simple and
+savage ways; reckoning every man he met on the road as a robber till
+he proved a friend; absolutely penniless, yet still meeting with rough
+hospitality and real kindness now and then, and ever absorbing with a
+most marvellous power of digestion all that was useful in the way of
+information, whether it concerned the red-hot sand-strewn plains, or
+the vermin-covered thieves and outcasts that disgraced them. It was
+quite as often with the lowest of the gang as with the leaders that he
+found himself most intimately associated.
+
+In those days Sind was a country as unknown to us geographically as
+Afghanistan. The Indus and its capacity for navigation was a matter of
+supreme interest, but the deserts of Sind were eyed askance, and
+across those deserts came little call for exploration. The government
+of the country under the Sind Amirs was decrepit and loose, leaving
+district municipalities to look after themselves, and promoting no
+general scheme for the public good. Shikarpur had been a great centre
+of trade under the Duranis, and its financial credit extended far into
+Central Asia. But in Masson's time much of that credit had disappeared
+with the capitalists who supported it--chiefly Hindu bankers--who
+migrated to the cities of Multan and Amritsar as the Sikh power in the
+Punjab became a more and more powerful factor in frontier politics.
+Whether Masson is correct in his estimate of the mischief done by the
+reckless supply of funds from Shikarpur to the restless nobles of
+Afghanistan, who were thus enabled to set on foot raids and inroads
+into each other's territories, is, I think, doubtful. The want of
+money never stayed an Afghan raid--on the contrary it is more apt to
+instigate it. From Shikarpur he bent his steps towards the Punjab. No
+modern traveller, racing down the Indus valley by a north-western
+train, can well appreciate the amount of human interest and activity
+which lies hidden beyond the wide flat plains of tamarisk jungle that
+stretch between him and the frontier hills. This same Indus valley was
+Arabic India for centuries, and there were Greek settlements centuries
+earlier than the Arabs; none of this escaped Masson.
+
+The vicissitudes of this weary walk were many. Masson was put to
+curious expedients in order to keep himself even decently clothed.
+From under one hospitable roof he stole out in the evening, when the
+ragged retinue of his host were all in a state of stupefaction from
+drink, in order to be spared their too familiar adieux. It is a
+remarkable fact that he found himself able to pass muster as a Mongol
+on his journey, there being a tradition in Sind that some Mongols were
+as fair as Englishmen. From Rohri on the Indus he made his way almost
+exactly along the line of the present railway, through Bhawalpur to
+Uch, continually losing his way in the narrow tracks that intersected
+the intricate jungle, with but a rupee or two in his pocket, and
+nothing but the saving grace of the village masjid as a refuge for the
+night. His experiences with wayfarers like himself, the lies that he
+heard (and I am afraid also told), the hospitality which he received
+both from men and women, and the variety of incident generally which
+adorns this part of Masson's tale is a refreshing contrast to the
+dreary monotony of the modern traveller's tale of Indian travel, the
+bare record of a dusty railway experience, with here and there a new
+impression of old and worn-out themes. He was impressed with the
+"contented, orderly, and hospitable" character of the people of
+Northern Sind, whose condition was "very respectable" notwithstanding
+an oppressive government. Saiads and fakirs, pirs and spiritual guides
+of all sorts were an abomination to him, but it is somewhat new to
+hear of Saiads that "they may commit any crime with impunity." At
+Fazilpur (in Bhawalpur) he found an old friend, one Rahmat Khan, and
+was once again in the lap of native luxury. Clean clothes, a bed to
+lie on, and good food, kept him idle for a month ere he started again
+northward for Lahore. Rahmat Khan was almost too generous. He spent
+his last rupee recklessly on a nautch, and had to borrow from the
+Hindus of his bazaar in order to find two rupees to present to his
+guest for the cost of his journey to Lahore. Of this large sum it is
+interesting to note that Masson had still eight annas left in his
+pocket on his arrival at that city. Alas for the good old days! What a
+modern tramp might achieve in India if he were allowed free play it is
+difficult to guess, but never again will any European travel 360 miles
+in India and feed himself for two months on a rupee and a half.
+
+Masson notes the extraordinary extent of ancient ruins around Uch,
+and correctly infers the importance of that city in the days of Arab
+ascendency. He has much to say that is still interesting about Multan
+and its surroundings. It must have been new to historians to hear that
+the heat of Multan is due to the maledictions of the Saint Shams
+Tabieri, who was flayed alive by the progenitors of the people who now
+venerate his shrine. Multan was in the hands of the Sikhs when Masson
+was there. From Multan Masson ceased to follow the modern line of
+railway, and adopted a route north of the Ravi River until near the
+city, when he recrossed to the southern bank. Lost in admiration of
+the luxuriance of the cultivation of this part of the Punjab, and full
+of the interest aroused by the fact that he was on classical ground,
+the ground of ancient history, he wandered into Lahore. Lahore and the
+Sikh administration, the character of Ranjit Singh and his policy
+towards British and Afghan neighbours, are all part of Indian history,
+but it is interesting to recall the prominence of French and Italians
+in the Punjab 100 years ago. General Allard was encountered quite
+accidentally by Masson, who was at once recognized as a European, and
+found himself able to talk French fluently. This naturally led to his
+entertainment by the General at his own splendid establishments. The
+beautiful tomb of Jehangir, the Shahdera, was occupied as a residence
+by the French general, Amise, who died, so they said, in expiation of
+his impiety in cleaning it up and making it tidy--which was probably
+very necessary. The tomb of Anarkalli, south of the city, was used as
+a harem by M. Ventura, the Italian general, whilst the well-known
+Avitabile lived in a house decorated after the fashion of Neapolitan
+art in cantonments to the east of the city. The lovely gardens of
+Shalimar had already been robbed of much of their beauty by the
+transfer of marble and stone from their pavilions for the building of
+Amritsar, the new religious capital of the Sikhs. Lahore is "a dull
+city in the commercial sense," says Masson, and Amritsar "has become
+the great mart of the Punjab." We need not follow Masson's
+explorations in the Punjab and Sind, further than to relate that he
+finally left Lahore during the rainy season (he was riding now, and in
+fairly easy circumstances) and made his way south again _via_ Multan,
+Haidarabad, and Tatta, to Karachi. There is a lamentable want of dates
+about this narrative, and it is almost impossible to fix the month, or
+even the year, in which Masson visited any particular part of the
+frontier.
+
+His next exploits and explorations conducted from Karachi are
+sufficiently remarkable in themselves to place Masson quite at the
+head of the list of frontier explorers. He stands, indeed, in the same
+relation to the Indian borderland as Livingstone does to Africa. He
+first made a sea trip in Arab crafts up the Persian Gulf, visiting
+Muskat and obtaining a passage in a cruiser of the H.E.I. Company to
+Bushire. This we know from Major David Wilson's report to have been in
+1830. It was then that he gave up the record of his previous travels,
+to which we have referred, and which he subsequently thought he had
+reason to regret. A month or two was passed at Tabriz, and a trip up
+the Tigris to Bagdad and Basrah. From Basrah he returned in a merchant
+vessel to Muskat, and finally made Karachi again in an Arab bagala. At
+Karachi he was not permitted to land, owing (as he suspected) to
+another party of Englishmen who were then attempting to explore the
+Indus. This turned out to be Captain Burnes' (afterwards Sir Alex.
+Burnes) party. The objection was based on a somewhat ridiculous notion
+of the capacity of the English to carry about regiments of soldiers
+concealed in _boxes_, and Masson subsequently learned that having no
+boxes with him, the opposition in his case had been withdrawn by the
+Amirs of Sind as tantamount to a breach of hospitality. However, for
+the time he was forced to return to Urmara on the Makran coast, from
+which place he hoped to reach Kalat. In this he was disappointed, but
+he found his way back to Sonmiani in an Arab dunghi (or bagala),
+which, with the monsoon wind at her back, was run in gallant style
+straight over the shallow bar into the harbour with hardly a foot of
+water below her. The practice of medicine was what sustained Masson at
+this period, but his reputation was slightly impaired by a crude
+prescription of sea water. A lady, too, who suffered from a
+disposition of her face to break out into white blotches, and who
+appealed for a remedy, was told that she would look much better all
+white. This again led to a lively controversy; but on the whole the
+practice of medicine was as useful to Masson as it has proved through
+all ages to explorers in all regions of the world.
+
+The story of Masson's next journey through Las Bela and Eastern
+Baluchistan to Kalat and the neighbourhood of Quetta, must have been
+an almost unintelligible record for half a century after it was
+written. It is almost useless to repeat the names of the places he
+visited. Five-and-twenty years ago these names were absolutely
+unfamiliar, an empty sound signifying nothing to the dwellers on the
+British side of the Baluch frontier. Gradually they have emerged from
+the regions of the vague unknown into the ordered series of completed
+maps; and nothing testifies more surely to the general accuracy of
+Masson's narrative than the possibility which now exists of tracing
+his steps from point to point through these wild and desolate regions
+of rocky ridge and salt-edged jungle in Eastern Baluchistan. It is
+certainly significant that in the year 1830 more should have been
+known of the regions that lie between Karachi and Quetta or Kandahar,
+than was known fifty years later when plans were elaborated for
+bringing Quetta into railway communication with India.
+
+Had Masson's information been properly digested, the most direct route
+to Kalat, Quetta, or Kandahar, _via_ the Purali River, would surely
+have been weighed in administrative councils, and the advantage of
+direct communication with the seaport by a cheaply constructed line
+would have received due consideration. But Masson's work was still
+unproven and unchecked, and it would have been more than any
+Englishman's life was worth to have attempted in 1880 the task which
+he undertook with such light-hearted energy. His observations of the
+country he passed through, and the complicated tribal distribution
+which distinguishes it are necessarily superficial, but they are
+shrewd. It was clearly impossible for him to attempt any form of
+survey, and without some map evidence of the scene of his wanderings
+his explorations were deprived at the time of their chief
+significance. From Las Bela to Kalat he appears to have encountered no
+more dangerous adventure than might befall any Baluch traveller in the
+same regions. From Kalat he wandered at leisure northward till he
+overlooked the Dasht-i-bedaulat from the heights of Chahiltan. This
+well-known Quetta peak has probably often been ascended by Englishmen
+in late years, and the misty legend which is wreathed around it is
+familiar to every regimental mess in the Quetta garrison. It is
+perhaps a little disappointing to remember that the first white man
+who achieved its ascent and told the story of the forty heaven-sent
+infants who gambol about its summit to the eternal glory of the
+sainted Hazart Ghaos (the patron saint of Baluch children), was an
+American. Masson's interesting record of Chahiltan botany, however,
+would be more useful if he translated the native names into botanical
+language.
+
+From Quetta he returned to Kalat, and, determined to see as much of
+the borderland as possible, he made his return journey from Kalat to
+Sonmiani _via_ the Mulla Pass. The pass is still an interesting
+feature in Baluch geography. It was once the popular route from the
+plains to the highlands, when trade was more frequent between Kalat
+and Hindustan, and may serve a useful purpose again. Very few even of
+frontier officials know anything of it. Masson gives a capital
+description of the Mulla route, "easy and safe, and may be travelled
+at all seasons." From Jhal he went south through Sind to Sehwan, the
+antiquity of which place gives him room for much speculation; but from
+Sehwan to Sonmiani his route is not so clear. He started backwards on
+his tracks from Sehwan, then struck southward through lower Sind,
+passing on his way many ancient sites (locally known as "got," _i.e._
+kot, or fort), the origin of which he was apparently unable to
+determine, but halting at no place with a name that is still
+prominent, unless the modern Pokran represents his Pokar. I am not
+aware whether the "gots" described by Masson in lower Sind have as yet
+been scientifically examined, but his description of them tallies
+with that of similar ruins lately found near Las Bela (especially as
+regards the stone-built circle), which, occurring as they do in Makran
+and the valley of the Purali (the ancient Arabis), are possibly relics
+of the building races of Arabs (Sab[oe]an or Himyaritic) who occupied
+these districts in early ages before they became withered and
+waterless with the gradual alteration of their geographical
+conditions. Other constructions, such as the cylindrical heaps on the
+hills, are more certainly Buddhist. Masson was unaware that he was
+traversing a province which figured as Bodh in Arab chronicles, and is
+full of the traces of Buddhist occupation. Makran, Las Bela, and the
+Sind borderland still offer a mine of wealth for archaeological
+research. The last two or three days' march was in company with a
+Bulfut (Lumri) camel-man, whose mount was shared by Masson. As the
+Lumri sowar was in the habit not only of taking opium himself but of
+giving it to his camel, the morning's ride was sometimes perilously
+lively.
+
+One would have thought that after so extensive an exploration, filled,
+as it was, with daily risk from the hostility of fanatics, or the more
+common (in those days) assaults of robbers, Masson would have had
+enough of adventure to last him some years. It was not so. He appears
+to have been an irreclaimable nomadic vagabond, and his only thought,
+now that he had reached the West, was to be off again to Afghanistan.
+Kalat again was his first objective, and to reach that place he
+followed very much the same route as before. From Kalat, however, to
+Kandahar and Kabul, he opened up a new line which is worth
+description. There is little to record as far as Kalat. Once again he
+joined a mixed Afghan khafila returning from India, and followed the
+route which leads through Las Bela, Wad, and Khozdar. It was spring,
+and the country was bright with flowers, the narrow little valleys
+being full of the brilliance of upspringing crops. It is a mistake to
+regard Baluchistan as a waste corner of Asia, the dumping ground of
+the rubbish left over from the world's creation. Much of it,
+doubtless, is inexpressibly dreary, and in certain dry and sun-baked
+plains scarred with leprous streaks of salt eruption, it is
+occasionally difficult to realize the beauty of the spring and summer
+time in valleys where water is still fairly abundant, and the green
+things of the earth seem mostly to congregate. A bed of scarlet
+tulips, or the yellow sheen of the flowering shrub which spreads
+across the plain of Wad would make any landscape gay, and the long
+jagged lines of purple hills with chequered shadows patching their
+rugged spurs would be a fascinating background to any picture. "Only
+man is vile,"--but this is not true either.
+
+The character of the mixed inhabitants of these valleys of Eastern
+Baluchistan (we have no room for ethnological disquisitions) is as
+rugged as their hills, and as varied with patches of brightness as
+their plains. Masson knew them as no one knows them now, and he
+evidently loved them. His life was never safe from day to day, but
+that did not prevent much good comradeship, some genuine friendship,
+and a shrewd appreciation of the straight uprightness of those who,
+like the patriarchs and prophets of old, seemed to be the righteous
+few who leaven the whole lump. Masson was not a missionary, he was
+only a well-educated and most observant vagabond, but what he has to
+say of Baluch (or Brahui) character is just what Sandeman said half a
+century later, and what Barnes or MacMahon[11] would say to-day.
+
+What Masson never seemed to appreciate (any more than the Arab traders
+who trod the same roads in mediaeval centuries) was the change of
+altitude that accrued after long travelling over apparently flat
+roads. The natural change in the character of vegetation with the
+increase of altitude appears, therefore, to surprise him. He reached
+Kalat without much incident. Here he parted with the Peshin Saiads and
+the Brahuis of the caravan, and proceeded with the Afghan contingent
+to Kandahar. The direct road from Kalat to Kandahar runs through the
+Mangachar valley and thence crosses the Khwaja Amran, or Kojak range,
+by the Kotal-i-bed into Shorawak, and runs northward to Kandahar
+through the eastern part of the Registan, without touching the main
+road from Quetta till within a march or two of Kandahar itself. It is
+worth noting that there was no want of water on this route, and no
+great difficulties were experienced in passing through the hills.
+Irrigation canals and the intricacies of natural ravines in Shorawak
+seem to have been the chief obstacles. It is a route which was never
+made use of during the last Afghan war, nor, so far as I can discover,
+during the previous one. The Achakzai tribespeople (some of whom were
+with the khafila returning to their country from Bombay) behaved with
+remarkable modesty and good faith, and altogether belied their natural
+characteristics of truculence and treachery. The journey was made on
+camel-back in a kajawa, a method of travelling which ensures a good
+overlook of the proceedings of the khafila and the country traversed
+by it, but which can have few other recommendations. Kandahar,
+however, was not Masson's objective on this trip. Afghanistan was in
+its usual state of distracted politics, and Kabul was the centre of
+distraction. To Kabul, therefore, Masson felt himself impelled; like
+the stormy petrel he preferred a troubled horizon and plenty of
+incident to the calmer seas of oriental existence in the flat plains
+of Kandahar. His journey with an Afghan khafila by the well-trodden
+road which leads to Ghazni was quite sufficiently full of incident,
+and the extraordinary rapacity of the Ghilzai tribes, who occupy the
+road as far as that city, leaves one astonished that enough was left
+of the khafila for useful business purposes in Kabul. Masson was
+impressed with the desolation and degradation of Ghazni. He can hardly
+believe that this waste wilderness of mounds around an insignificant
+town, with its two dreary sentinel minars standing out on the plain,
+and a dilapidated tomb where rests all that is left of the great
+conqueror Mahmud, can be the city of such former magnificence as is
+described in Afghan history. Every traveller to Ghazni has been
+touched with the same feeling of incredulity, but it only testifies to
+the remarkable power possessed by the destroying hordes of Chenghiz
+Khan and his successors of making a clean sweep of the cities which
+fell into their hands.
+
+A few days before Masson's arrival in Kabul (this is one of the rare
+dates which we find recorded in his story) in June 1832, three
+Englishmen had visited the city. These were Lieutenant Burnes, Dr.
+Gerard, and the Rev. Joseph Wolff. He does not appear to have actually
+met them. Mr. Wolff had been fortunate enough to distinguish himself
+as a prophet, and had acquired considerable reputation. An earthquake
+preceding certain local disturbances between the Sunis and the Shiahs,
+which he foretold, had established his position, and imitators had
+begun to arise amongst the people. No better account of the city of
+Kabul, the beauty of its surroundings, its fruit and its trade, and
+the social customs of its people, is to be found than that of Masson.
+What he observed of the city and suburbs in 1832 might almost have
+been written of the Kabul of fifty years later; but the last
+twenty-five years have introduced many radical changes, and good roads
+for wheeled vehicles (not to mention motors) and a small local railway
+have done more even than the stucco palaces and fantastic halls of the
+late Amir Abdurrahmon to change the character of the place. The
+curious spirit of tolerance and liberality which still pervades Kabul
+and distinguishes it from other Afghan towns, which makes the life of
+an individual European far more secure there than it would be in
+Kandahar, the absence of Ghazidom and fanaticism, was even more marked
+then than it is now. Armenian Christians were treated with more than
+toleration, they intermarried with Mahomedans; the fact that Masson
+was known to be a Feringhi never interfered with the spirit of
+hospitality with which he was received and treated. Only on one
+occasion was he insulted in the streets, and that was when he wore a
+Persian cap instead of the usual lunghi. But the Jews were as much
+anathema as they are now, and Masson tells a curious tale of one Jew
+who was stoned to death by Mahomedans for denying the divinity of
+Jesus Christ, after the Christian community of Armenians had declined
+to carry out the punishment. To this day nothing arouses Afghan hatred
+like the cry of Yahudi (Jew), and it may very possibly be partly due
+to their firm conviction in their origin as Ben-i-Israel.
+
+The summer of 1832 at Kabul must have been a delightful experience,
+but with the coming autumn the restlessness of the nomad again seized
+on Masson and he made that journey to Bamian in company with an Afghan
+friend, one Haji Khan, chief of Bamian, which followed the mission of
+Burnes to Kunduz, and proved the possibilities of the route to Afghan
+Turkestan by the southern passes of the Hindu Kush. Bamian was then
+separated from Kabul by the width of the Besud territory, which was
+practically controlled by a semi-independent Hazara chief,
+Yezdambaksh. Beyond Bamian the pass of Ak Robat defined the northern
+frontier of Afghanistan, beyond which again were more semi-independent
+chiefs, of whom by far the most powerful, south of the Oxus, was Mir
+Murad Beg of Kunduz. Amongst them all political intrigue was in a
+state of boiling effervescence. Haji Khan (a Kakar soldier of fortune)
+from Western Afghanistan knew himself to be unpopular with the Amir
+Dost Mahomed Khan, and had shrewd suspicions that spite of a
+long-tried friendship, he was regarded as a dangerous factor in Kabul
+politics. Yezdambaksh, influenced doubtless by his gallant wife, who
+rode and fought by his side and was ever at his elbow in council,
+trimmed his course to patch up a temporary alliance with Haji Khan
+under the pretext of suffocating the ambition of the local chief of
+Saighan; whilst Murad Beg about that time was strong enough to
+preserve his own position unassisted and aloof. Into the seething
+welter of intrigue arising from the conflicting interests of these
+many candidates for distinction in the Afghan border field Masson
+plunged when he accepted Haji Khan's invitation to join him at Bamian.
+Across the lovely plain of Chardeh, bright with the orange blossoms of
+the safflower, Masson followed the well-known route to Argandi and
+over the Safed Khak Pass to the foot of the divide which is crossed by
+the Unai (called Honai by Masson), meeting with the usual demands for
+"karij," or duty, from the Hazaras at their border, with the usual
+altercations and violence on both sides. Well known as is this route,
+it may be doubted whether any better description of it has ever been
+written than that of Masson. Instead of striking straight across the
+Helmund at Gardandiwal by the direct route to Bamian, the party
+followed the course of the Helmund, then fringed with rose bushes and
+willows, passing through a delightfully picturesque country till they
+fell in with the Afghan camp, after much wandering in unknown parts on
+the banks of the Helmund, at a point which it is difficult to
+identify.
+
+The story of the daily progress of the oriental military camp, and the
+daily discussions with Haji Khan, who appeared to be as frank and
+childlike in his disclosures of his methods as any chattering booby,
+is excellent. There is no doubt that Masson at this time exercised
+very considerable influence over his Afghan and Hazara acquaintances,
+and he is probably justified in his claim to have prevented more than
+one serious row over the everlasting demands for karij. It is to be
+noted that two guns were dragged along with this expedition by forced
+Hazara labour, eighty men being required for one, and two hundred for
+the other, assisted by an elephant. The calibre of the guns is not
+mentioned. At a place called Shaitana they were still south of the
+Helmund, and in the course of their progress through Besud visited the
+sources of the Logar. Near these sources is the Azdha of Besud, the
+petrified dragon slain by Hazrat Ali (not to be confused with Azdha of
+Bamian), a volcanic formation stretching its white length through
+about 170 yards, exhaling sulphurous odours. The red rock found about
+its head is supposed to be tinged with blood. The Azdha afterwards
+seen and described at Bamian is of "more imposing size."
+
+Another long march (apparently on the road to Ghazni) brought the
+expedition to the frontier of Besud, at a point reckoned by Masson as
+three marches from the Ghazni district. From here they retraced their
+steps and crossed the Helmund at Ghoweh Kol (? Pai Kol), making for
+Bamian. This closed the Besud expedition, which, regarded as a
+geographical exploration, is still authoritative, no complete survey
+of that district having ever been made. From the Helmund they reached
+Bamian by the Siah Reg Pass, thus proving the possibility of
+traversing that district by comparatively unknown routes which were
+"not on the whole difficult to cavalry, though impracticable to
+wheeled carriages." The guns were left in Besud, to be dragged through
+by Hazaras. It must be remembered that this was early winter, and the
+frozen snow rendered the passes slippery and difficult. The aspect of
+the Koh-i-Baba (? Babar) mountains, and their "craggy pinnacles"
+(which, by reason of their similarity of outline, gave much trouble to
+our surveyors in 1882-83) seems to have impressed Masson greatly. The
+descent into the Bamian valley was "perfectly easy, and the road
+excellent throughout." Masson's contributions to the Asiatic Society
+on the subject of Bamian and its "idols" are well known. His
+observations were acute, and on the whole accurate. He rightly
+conjectured these wonderful relics to be Buddhist, although he never
+grasped the full extent of Buddhist influence, nor the extraordinary
+width of their occupation in Northern Afghanistan. His conjectures and
+impressions need not be repeated, but his somewhat crude sketches of
+Bamian and the citadel of Gulgula intensify the regret which I always
+feel that a thoroughly competent photographer was not attached to the
+long subsequent Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission.
+
+Masson's wanderings in the company of the Afghan chief Haji Khan and
+his redoubtable army through the valleys and over the passes of the
+Hindu Kush and its western spurs is full of interest to the military
+reader. The Afghan force consisted largely of cavalry, as did that of
+the gallant Hazara chief, Yezdambaksh. Nothing is said about infantry,
+but it was probably little better than a badly armed mob chiefly
+concerned in guarding the guns which reached the valley of Bamian,
+but, as already stated, they could not follow the cavalry over the
+Siah Reg Pass from Besud. They were sent round by the "Karza" Pass,
+which is probably the one known as Kafza on our maps, which indicates
+the most direct route from Kabul to Bamian.
+
+It is necessary to follow the ostensible policy of these military
+movements in order to render Masson's account of them intelligible.
+Haji Khan was acting in concert with Yezdambaksh and his Hazara
+troops, with the presumed object of crushing first Mahomed Ali, the
+chief of Saighan (north of Bamian), and ultimately repeating the
+process on Rahmatulla Khan, the chief of Kamard (north of Saighan). In
+order to effect this he had to pass up the Bamian valley to its
+northern head, marked by the Ak Robat Pass (10,200 feet high), and
+thence descend into the Saighan valley by the route formed by one of
+its southern tributaries. It was early winter (or late autumn), but
+still the passes seemed to have been more or less free from snow, and
+the Ak Robat Pass in particular appears to have given little trouble,
+although the valley contracts almost to a gorge in the descent.
+Masson noted evidences of the former existence of a considerable town
+near this route on the descent from Ak Robat. Much to his
+astonishment, instead of smashing the Saighan opposition with his
+superior force, Haji Khan proceeded to patch up an alliance with
+Mahomed Ali, which was cemented by his marrying one of the daughters
+of that wily chief. Here, however, he experienced a cruel
+disappointment. Instead of the lovely bride whom he had been led to
+expect, he received a squat and snub-nosed Hazara girl, who was,
+indeed, of very doubtful parentage. This little swindle, however, was
+not permitted to interfere with his politics. The alliance ought to
+have aroused the suspicion of Yezdambaksh, but the latter seems to
+have trusted to the strength of his following to meet any possible
+contingency.
+
+The next step was to proceed to Kamard and repeat the process of
+occupation. Here, however, an unexpected difficulty arose. The
+easy-going, hard-drinking Tajik chief of Kamard was far too wily to
+put himself into Haji Khan's power, and with some of the Uzbek chiefs
+who owed their allegiance to that fine old border bandit Murad Khan of
+Kunduz (of whom we shall hear again), positively declined to permit
+Haji Khan to come farther. Meanwhile, however, a force had advanced
+over the divide between Saighan and Kamard by a pass which Masson
+calls the Nalpach (or horseshoe-breaking pass), which can hardly be
+the same as the well-known Dandan Shikan (or tooth-breaking pass),
+but is probably to the east of it, leading more directly to Bajgah.
+Before ascending the pass, Masson noted the remains of an ancient town
+or fort built of immense stones, and here they halted. Here also snow
+fell. Next day a reconnaissance in force was made over the Nalpach
+Pass ("long, but not difficult"), and apparently part of the force
+descended into Kamard and commenced hostile operations against the
+Kamard chieftain. Haji Khan, however, returned to camp. He had now
+succeeded in breaking up the Hazara force which was with him into two
+or three detached bodies, so the opportunity was ripe for one of the
+blackest acts of treachery that ever disgraced Afghan history--which
+is saying a good deal. He entrapped and seized the fine old Hazara
+chief, Yezdambaksh, and, after dragging him about with him under
+circumstances of great indignity, he finally executed him. The Hazara
+troops seem to have scattered without striking a concerted blow; their
+camp was looted, whilst such wretched refugees as were caught were
+stripped and enslaved.
+
+The savage barbarity of these proceedings, especially of the method of
+the execution of Yezdambaksh (a rope being looped round the wretched
+victim's neck, the two ends of which were hauled tight by a mixed
+company of relatives and enemies), disgusted Masson deeply, and there
+is a very obvious disposition evinced hereafter to part company with
+his treacherous host, although he makes some attempt to excuse these
+proceedings by pointing out that Haji Khan, after meeting with an
+unexpected rebuff from Kamard (which he dare not resent so long as the
+redoubtable Murad Beg loomed in the distance as the protector of the
+frontier chiefs of Badakshan), would have been unable to keep and feed
+his troops in the winter without scattering the Hazara contingent and
+possessing himself of the resources of Besud.
+
+Winter had already set in, and the subsequent story is instructive in
+illustration of the difficulties which beset the road between Kabul
+and Bamian during the winter season. The resources of Bamian were
+insufficient even for his diminished force (now reduced to about its
+original strength of eight hundred), and the Ghulam Khana contingent
+grew restive and impatient, demanding to go back to Kabul. The passes,
+however, were not only closed by snow, but the position at Karzar was
+held by Hazaras, who, however much they were demoralised by the
+execution of their chief, might well be expected to make reprisals.
+The Ghulam Khana men, about two hundred and twenty strong, therefore
+moved in force from Bamian, with the hope of being able to influence
+the Hazaras to let them pass through Besud. Apparently they did not
+rank as true Afghans. No great resistance was made at Karzar, although
+they were not admitted to shelter. They were freely looted, and
+eventually allowed to pass after three days' detention, exposed to
+the terrific blasts of a winter shamal (north-west wind) in snow which
+was then breast high. Many of them perished before reaching Kabul, and
+many more were permanently disabled from frostbites.
+
+Haji Khan, meanwhile, settled down as the uninvited guest of the
+people of Bamian, and ensconced himself and his wives in the fort of
+Saidabad, a strongly built construction of burnt bricks of immense
+size, which Masson believed to have been built by the Arabs. Saidabad
+is hard by the detached position of Gulgula; it is described by Masson
+in considerable detail. Here, at an altitude of about 8500 feet, a
+winter in Bamian is endurable, and Haji Khan avowed his intention of
+remaining. It is interesting to note that a khafila from Bokhara for
+Kabul arrived about this time, and was duly looted. Even in winter the
+route (as a commercial route) was open.
+
+Masson's efforts were now directed towards getting back to Kabul. His
+first essay was in company of two brothers of Haji Khan, who vowed to
+get to Kabul somehow, even if, as Afghans, they had to fight their way
+through Besud. The party followed up the Topchi valley from Bamian,
+and crossing by the Shutar Gardan Pass, they reached Karzar. Here
+again Masson noted extensive ruins _en route_. The road was bad and
+the difficulties great, "leading over precipices," but they did,
+nevertheless, succeed in crossing the main divide. Here Masson
+experienced a very bad time, and to his disgust found that he must
+retrace his steps to Bamian, owing to counter orders from Haji Khan
+recalling the escort. There appeared, however, a prospect of getting
+out of Bamian by the Shibar Pass (an easy pass), leading to the head
+of the Ghorband valley; and trusting to certain arrangements made by a
+Paghmani chief, Masson made a fresh attempt, passing eastward the
+ancient remains of Zohak, and ascending by a fairly easy open track to
+the valley or plain of Irak. Probably this pass is the one known as
+Khashka in our maps. The wind was terrific, but the comparative
+freedom from snow was an unexpected advantage.
+
+Passing eastwards from Irak (still on the northern slopes of the Hindu
+Kush) the party made comparatively easy progress by a valley which
+Masson calls Bubulak (where he observed tobacco to be growing). They
+gradually ascended until once again they found themselves in snow, but
+instead of making direct for the Shibar they inclined to a more
+northerly pass called Bitchilik, which is separated from the Shibar by
+a slight kotal (or divide). Here they found the Paghmani chief whom
+they expected to join, but they found also that the section of Hazaras
+who held these passes then were determined to bar their passage. Once
+again Masson had to abandon the attempt (albeit the Shibar route to
+Kabul would have been a very devious and dangerous one), and returned
+to Bamian.
+
+There are one or two circumstances about this exploration of the
+western Hindu Kush passes which deserve attention. For once Masson is
+slightly inaccurate in his geography when he states that the Irak
+stream drains into the Bamian valley. It joins the Bamian River after
+it has left the valley and turned northward. So slight an error is
+only a useful proof of his general accuracy. Another remarkable fact
+was that he, a Feringhi, was elected by the Afghan gang with which he
+was temporarily associated as their Khan, or chief! He was a little
+better dressed than most of them in European chintzes. He found
+himself utterly unable to restrain their looting propensities, but he
+made himself quite popular by his civility and his small presents to
+the wretched Hazaras on whom they were quartered. Incidentally he
+gives us a most valuable impression of the nature of an important
+group of Afghan passes, and I doubt if his information has ever been
+much improved upon.
+
+Finally, the surrender of the Karzar position by the Hazaras reopened
+the road to Kabul, and Masson was enabled to reach that capital by the
+Topchi, Shutar Gardan, Kalu, Hajigak routes to Gardandiwal on the
+Helmund. The Hajigak route he describes as easy of ascent, but "steep
+and very troublesome" in the south. The Shutar Gardan (called
+Panjpilan now) was "intricate and dangerous," but the passing of it
+was done at night. This is, and always has been, the main khafila
+route between Kabul, Bamian, and Bokhara. The journey from the Helmund
+across the Unai (which pass was itself "difficult") was not
+accomplished without great distress. A winter shumal caught Masson on
+the road, and but for the timely shelter at Zaimuni would have
+terminated his career there and then. Masson describes the terrific
+effect of the wind with great vigour, but those who have experienced
+it will not accuse him of exaggeration.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] _Selections from Travels and Journals preserved in the Bombay
+Secretariat_, Forrest, 1908.
+
+[11] Now Sir Hugh Barnes and Sir Henry MacMahon, one a past, and the
+other the present, Agent for the Governor-General in Baluchistan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AMERICAN EXPLORATION--MASSON (_continued_)
+
+
+On Masson's return to Kabul he observed the first symptoms of active
+interest in Afghan politics on the part of the Indian Government, in
+the person of an accredited native agent (Saiad Karamat Ali) who had
+travelled with Lieut. Conolly to Herat. Colonel Stoddart was at that
+time detained in Bokhara, and was apparently under the impression that
+he was befriended by a "profligate adventurer," one Samad Khan, who
+had succeeded in establishing himself there as a pillar of the State
+after imposing on so astute a politician as the Amir Dost Mahomed Khan
+and on many of the leading Afghan Sirdars. Masson seems to have been
+better aware of the character of this Khan than the Indian Government,
+for he notes that "to be befriended by such a man is in itself
+calamitous."
+
+It is quite comprehensible that the Indian Government should not duly
+appreciate the position of an adventurer like Masson and his intimate
+acquaintance with Afghanistan and its riotous rulers; but it was
+unfortunate; for it is not too much to say that Indian Government
+officials at that time were but amateurs in their knowledge of Afghan
+politics compared to Masson; and much of the horrors of subsequent
+events might have been avoided could Masson have been admitted freely
+and fully to their counsels. However, for a time he employed himself
+in collecting historical and scientific notes on Afghanistan, which we
+still regard as standard works for reference. No one has succeeded
+better in giving us an impression of the leading characteristics of
+the Afghan chiefs of his time, and probably there is not much
+improvement effected by a century of moral development. Steeped up to
+the eyes in treachery towards each other, debauchees, drunkards,
+liars, and murderers, one cannot but admire their extraordinary
+virility. It was truly a case of the survival of the fittest, and the
+fittest were certainly remarkable men.
+
+The Amir Dost Mahomed Khan was one of the worst, and one of the best.
+One of the twenty-two sons of Sirafraz Khan, he worked his way upwards
+by truly Afghan methods; methods which in the early days of his career
+were utterly detestable, but which attained some sort of reflected
+dignity later, when there were not wanting signs that in a different
+environment he might have been truly great. He was illiterate and
+uneducated, but appreciated the advantages of elementary schooling in
+others. Into the strange welter of political intrigue which forms
+Afghan history during the period of his rise to power we need not
+enter; but it is necessary to note the extraordinary difference with
+which the stranger in the land, a Feringhi, was regarded throughout
+Afghanistan, then, as compared with his reception at present. It is
+even possible that the life of a Feringhi was then safer (_i.e._
+deemed of more importance) than that of any ordinary Afghan chief. It
+is certain that there was a strong feeling that it was well to be on
+good terms with the representatives of a powerful neighbouring state.
+This feeling was greatly weakened by the results of the first Afghan
+war, and has never again been completely restored.
+
+Although we are only dealing with Masson as an explorer, it is
+impossible not to express sympathy with his whole-hearted admiration
+for the country of the Afghan. His description of the beauties of the
+land, especially in early spring with the awakening of the season of
+flowers, the irresistible charm of the mountain scenery of the
+Kohistan as the gradual burst of summer bloom crept upwards over the
+hills--all this finds an echo in the heart of every one who has ever
+seen this "God granted" land; where, after all, the seething scum of
+Afghan politics is very much confined to a class, although it
+undoubtedly sinks deeper and reaches the mass of the people with more
+of the force of self-interest than is the case in India, where the
+historical pageant of kings and dynasties has passed over the great
+mass of India's self-absorbed people and left them profoundly
+unconscious of its progress.
+
+In the year 1833 Masson resumed his researches in the neighbourhood of
+Kabul, commencing in the plains about 25 miles north-east from Kabul,
+and 8 or 10 from Charikar. These researches were continued for some
+years, until the failure of the mission to Kabul in 1838 obliged him
+to leave the country; and in his proposal to resume them again in 1840
+he was opposed by "a miserable fraction of the Calcutta clique," who
+had recourse to "acts as unprecedented, base, and illegal as perhaps
+were ever perpetrated under the sanction of authority against a
+subject of the British Crown." So that apparently he claimed British
+nationality before he left Afghanistan. However that may be, it is
+certain that no subsequent explorer has added much that is of value to
+the extraordinary evidences of ancient occupation collected by Masson.
+Here, he maintains, once existed the city of Alexandria founded by
+Alexander on the Kabul plain; and a recent announcement from Kabul
+that the site of an ancient city has been discovered obviously refers
+to the same position at Begram near Charikar, and is a useful
+commentary on the rapidity with which the fame and name of an original
+explorer can disappear.
+
+The Masson collection of coins, which totalled between 15,000 and
+20,000 in 1837, and which was presented to the East India Company,
+proved a veritable revelation of unknown kings and dynasties, and
+contributed enormously to our positive knowledge of Central Asian
+history. The vast number of Cufic coins found at Begram show that the
+city must have existed for some centuries after the Mahomedan
+invasion. Chinese travellers tell of a city called Hupian in this
+neighbourhood, but Masson is inclined to place the site of Hupian near
+Charikar, where there was, in his time, a village called Malek Hupian.
+He thinks that Begram had certainly ceased to exist at the time of
+Timur's expedition to India; or that conqueror would not have found it
+necessary to construct a canal from the Ghorband stream in order to
+colonize this favoured corner of the Kabul plain. The canal still
+exists as the Mahighir, and the people of the neighbourhood talked
+Turki in Masson's time. Three miles east of Kabul there is another
+ancient site known as Begram. This was probably the precursor of Kabul
+itself, and other "Begrams" are known in India. The term appears to be
+generic and to denote a famous site. Buddhist relics lie thickly round
+about the Afghan Begrams, groups of them being very abundant
+throughout the Kabul valley.
+
+It was after his first visit to Begram that Masson became acquainted
+with M. Honigberger, whom he describes as a gentleman from Lahore bent
+on archaeological research; and at the close of the autumn Dr.
+Gerard, the companion of Lieut. Burnes, appeared at Kabul.
+Honigberger's researches, like those of Gerard, appear to have been
+confined to archaeology, and the results of them form an interesting
+story which was given to the world by Eugene Jacquet; but as neither
+of these gentlemen can be said to have contributed to the early
+geographical knowledge of the country, no further reference need be
+made to them, beyond remarking that Honigberger very narrowly escaped
+being murdered on his subsequent journey to Bokhara.
+
+Masson's extraordinary capability of dealing with every class of
+people with whom he came in contact, and his consequent apparent
+immunity from the dangers which beset the ordinary unaccredited
+traveller, should not lead to the assumption that Afghanistan was a
+safe country to travel in at the time of our first political
+negotiations, in spite of there being less fanaticism at that time;
+whilst the trans-Oxus states were then almost unapproachable. There,
+at least, the gradual encroachment of Russian civilization has
+absolutely altered the conditions of European existence, and Bokhara
+has become quite a favourite resort for tourists.
+
+Masson's story of Afghan intrigue, which is the substance of Afghan
+history at this period, is as interesting as are his archaeological
+investigations, for it affords us a view of events which occurred
+behind the scenes, shut off from India by the curtain of the frontier
+hills; but whilst he thus occupied his busy mind with the past and
+the present policy of Afghanistan, he did not lose sight of the
+opportunity for making fresh excursions into Afghan territory. His
+visits to the Kabul valley and Peshawar can hardly claim to be
+original explorations, though he undoubtedly acquired by them a local
+geographical knowledge far in advance of anything then existing on the
+Indian side of the border, and some of it ranks as authoritative even
+now. It must not be supposed that these visits and investigations were
+carried on without grave risk and constant difficulty, but by this
+time Masson had so wide and so varied a personal acquaintance with the
+leading chiefs and tribespeople of the country that he usually
+succeeded in distinguishing friend from foe, and extricated himself
+from positions which would have been fatal to any one less
+knowledgeable than himself.
+
+During the year 1835 we learn that Masson was in Northern Afghanistan,
+chiefly at Kabul, gathering information; but there appears to be
+hardly a place which now figures in our maps with any prominence in
+the Kabul province which he did not succeed in visiting; and as
+regards some of them (Kunar, for instance) there was nothing added to
+his record for at least sixty years. He penetrated the Alishang valley
+to within 12 miles of Najil, a point which no European has succeeded
+in reaching since; but his sphere of observation was always too
+restricted to enable him to make much of his geographical
+opportunities. Najil is now somewhat doubtfully placed on our maps
+from native information gathered during the surveys executed with the
+Afghan campaign of 1878-80.
+
+It was at this period in Masson's career (in 1835) that English
+political interest in Kabul began to take an active shape. About this
+time Masson accepted a proposal from the Indian Government (which
+reached him through Captain Wade, the political officer on the Punjab
+frontier) to act as British agent and keep the Government informed as
+to the progress of affairs in Kabul. It is rather surprising that
+Masson, who never misses an opportunity of asserting that he was not
+an Englishman, and was by no means in sympathy with the policy of the
+Indian Government towards Afghanistan, should have accepted this
+responsibility. However, he did so, for a time at least, though he
+subsequently requested that he might be relieved from the duties
+entailed by such an equivocal position. He negotiated the foundation
+of a commercial treaty between India and Kabul, but with scant
+success. This period of seething intrigue at Kabul (as also between
+Dost Mahomed Khan and the Sikhs) was hardly favourable to its
+inception. His efforts were duly acknowledged by the Government, but
+his position as agent became untenable when he found that it led to
+interference with the great object of his residence in Afghanistan,
+_i.e._ antiquarian research. We can only touch upon the political
+events of 1836-37 cursorily, in spite of their absorbing interest, in
+order to follow the sequence of Masson's career.
+
+At the beginning of 1836 the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh were
+consolidating their position on the Western Punjab frontier, whilst
+Dost Mahomed Khan was working all he knew to secure men and money for
+military purposes. This led to a half-hearted renewal of
+correspondence between Masson and Wade. The commencement of the year
+1837 was marked by active preparations on the part of Dost Mahomed for
+a campaign against the Sikhs, resulting in an equivocal victory for
+the Afghans near Jamrud under Akbar Khan, but no essential change in
+the relative position as regards the Peshawar frontier. Various were
+the projects set on foot at this time for the assassination of the
+Amir, and in the general network of bloody intrigue Masson was not
+overlooked; but he was discreetly absent from Kabul during the winter
+of 1836-37, having previously found it necessary to keep his house
+full of armed men. He returned to Kabul in the spring.
+
+Towards the end of September 1837 Captain Burnes arrived in Kabul on
+that historical commercial mission which was to result in a disastrous
+misunderstanding between the Indian Government and the Amir. If we are
+to believe Masson, it would be difficult to conceive a more
+mismanaged and hopelessly bungled political function than this mission
+proved to be; but we must remember that in experience of the Afghan
+character and knowledge of intrigue the Indian Government and Council
+were by no means experts. It is difficult to believe that the mere
+fact of inadequate recognition of his services and consequent
+disappointment could have so affected a man of Masson's independence
+of character, natural ability, and clear sense of justice, as to lead
+him to misrepresent the position absolutely. As a commercial mission
+he regarded it as unnecessary.
+
+Burnes was instructed to proceed first to Haidarabad (in Sind) for the
+purpose of opening up the Indus to commercial navigation, and thence
+to journey _via_ Attok to Peshawar (held by the Sikhs), Kabul, and
+Kandahar, back again to Haidarabad, all in the interest of a trade
+which was already flourishing between Afghanistan and ports on the
+Indus already established. "The Governments of India and of England,"
+says Masson, "as well as the public at large were never amused and
+deceived by a greater fallacy than that of opening the Indus as
+regards commercial objects."
+
+The keynote of Masson's policy was non-interference, so long as
+interference either in trade or politics was not forced on the British
+Government. At that time such views were undoubtedly sound; but even
+then there was a stir in the political atmosphere which betokened much
+nervousness in high quarters on the subject of Persian and Russian
+intrigues with Afghanistan. So far, however, as Masson observes,
+"there was little notion entertained at this time of convulsing
+Central Asia, of deposing and setting up Kings, of carrying on wars,
+of lavishing treasure, and of the commission of a long train of crimes
+and follies." But with the arrival of Burnes at Kabul trade interests
+seem to have faded and those of a more active policy to have taken
+their place. The weak point in this change of policy appears to have
+been the want of definite instructions from the Government of India to
+their agent.
+
+The appearance of a Russian officer (Lieut. Vektavitch) at Kabul from
+the Russian camp at Herat in December (he had, according to Masson, no
+real authority to support him, and could only have been acting as a
+spy on Burnes) was a source of much agitation; but nothing whatever
+appears to have eventuated from his residence in Kabul, except grave
+risk to himself. Masson never believed in the dangers arising from
+either Persian or Russian intrigue (and he was certainly in a position
+to judge), and he remarks about Vektavitch "that such a man could have
+been expected to defeat a British mission is too ridiculous a notion
+to be entertained; nor would his mere appearance have produced such a
+result had not the mission itself been set forth without instructions
+for its guidance, and had it not been conducted recklessly, and in
+defiance of all common sense and decorum." This, indeed, is the
+attitude assumed by Masson throughout towards the mission, although he
+was still in the service of the Indian Government and acting under
+Burnes.
+
+Burnes certainly seems to have behaved with great want of dignity in
+the presence of the Amir and his Sirdars; making obeisance, and
+addressing the Amir as if he were a dependant. Nor can his private
+arrangements and his method of living in Kabul be commended as those
+of a dignified agent. European manners and customs were looser in
+those days in India than they are now, but with all latitude for the
+_autres temps autres m[oe]urs_ excuse for his conduct, his ideas of
+Eastern life seem to have been almost too oriental even for the
+approval of the dissolute Afghan. Certain it is that no proposal made
+by him on his own responsibility to the Amir (especially as regards
+the cession of Peshawar on the death of Ranjit Singh) was supported by
+his Government, and time after time he enjoyed the humiliation of
+being obliged to eat his own words. On these occasions it would appear
+that Masson seldom omitted the opportunity of saying "I told you so."
+
+In the interests of geographical explorations, this mission of Burnes
+was important. Whatever else he was, there is no question that he was
+as keen a geographical observer as Masson himself, and even if the
+wisdom of the despatch of his assistants (Lieut. Leech to Kandahar,
+and Dr. Lord with Lieut. Wood to Badakshan) may be questioned on
+political grounds, it led to a series of remarkable explorations, some
+of which even now furnish authority for Afghan map-making.
+
+In May 1837, Lieut. Eldred Pottinger arrived on leave from India (with
+the interest of his father Sir Henry Pottinger to back him), and
+immediately made secret preparations for his adventurous journey
+through the Hazarajat from Kabul to Herat, which terminated in his
+participation in the defence of Herat against the Persians. Thus was
+the first authentic account received of the nature of that difficult
+mountain region which has subsequently been so thoroughly exploited.
+Afghanistan was just beginning to be known.
+
+Masson naturally disapproved of Pottinger's exploit, for he found
+himself in hot water owing to the suspicion that he connived at it. He
+says: "I have always thought that however fortunate for Lieut.
+Pottinger himself, his trip to Herat was an unlucky one for his
+country; the place would have been fought as well without him; and his
+presence, which would scarcely be thought accidental, although truly
+it was so, must not only have irritated the Persian King, but have
+served as a pretext for the more prominent exertions of the Russian
+staff. It is certain that when he started from Kabul he had no idea
+that the city would be invested by a Persian army." Colonel Stoddart
+was then the British agent in the Persian Camp.
+
+Incidentally it may be useful to note the results of the occupation of
+Seistan about this time by an Afghan army under Shah Kamran, Governor
+of Herat and brother to Dost Mahomed; the one brother, in fact, whom
+he feared the most. Kamran's army had threatened Kandahar in the early
+spring and had spread into Seistan. Here the cavalry horses perished
+from disease, and the finest force which had marched from Herat for
+years was placed absolutely _hors de combat_. Unable to obtain the
+assistance of the army in the field, the frontier fortress of Ghorian
+surrendered, and thus reduced Kamran to the necessity of retirement on
+Herat and sustaining a siege. The destructive climate of Seistan has
+evidently not greatly changed during the last century.
+
+Masson's view of the policy best adapted to the tangled situation was
+the surrender of Peshawur to Sultan Mahomed Khan (the Amir's brother),
+who already enjoyed half its revenues, which would have been an
+acceptable proposition to the Sikh chief, Ranjit Singh (who found the
+occupation of Peshawar a most profitless undertaking), and would at
+the same time have reconciled the chiefs at Kandahar. The Amir Dost
+Mahomed would have reconciled himself to a situation which he could
+not avoid and the Indian Government would have enjoyed the credit of
+establishing order on their frontiers on a tolerably sure basis
+without committing themselves to any alliance, for (he writes) "my
+experience has brought me to the decided opinion that any strict
+alliance with powers so constituted would prove only productive of
+mischief and embarrassment, while I still thought that British
+influence might be usefully exerted in preserving the integrity of the
+several states and putting their rulers on their good behaviour."
+Subsequent events proved the soundness of these views, but we must
+remember that Masson wrote "after the event." That he did, however,
+strongly counsel Burnes to make no promise in the name of his
+Government of the cession of Peshawar to the Amir on the death of
+Ranjit Singh, is clear, and it is impossible to say how far the
+disappointment felt by the Amir at the refusal of the Indian
+Government to ratify this promise may have affected his subsequent
+actions. Masson thinks that Burnes should have been recalled, but he
+admits the difficulty that beset him owing to want of instructions.
+"The folly of sending such a man as Captain Burnes without the fullest
+and clearest instructions was now shown," etc. etc. It is surprising
+that with his confidence in the ability of his immediate Chief so
+absolutely destroyed, he should have continued to serve under him.
+
+Finally, on April 26, Burnes and Masson left Kabul together in a hurry
+and were subsequently joined by Lord and Wood, and "thus closed a
+mission, one of the most extraordinary ever sent forth by a
+Government, whether as to the singular manner in which it was
+conducted, or as to the results." Shortly after Masson resigned an
+appointment under the Government of India which he stigmatises as
+"disagreeable and dishonourable." It was a pity that he held it so
+long.
+
+When Masson reached India he found that the Government had already
+decided to restore the refugee Shah Sujah to the throne of Kabul, and
+that a military expedition to Kandahar had been arranged. What he has
+to say about the manner of this arrangement and the nature of the
+influence brought to bear on Lord Auckland to bring it about is not
+more pleasant reading than is his story of the Kabul Mission. This
+tale, indeed, does not belong to the history of exploration any
+further than to indicate under what conditions the first military
+geographical knowledge of Farther Afghanistan was gained by such true
+explorers as Pottinger, Lord, and Wood; and what amount of actually
+new information was attained by Burnes' mission. This was very
+considerable, as we shall see when we follow Burnes' assistants into
+the field. Meanwhile we have not quite done with Masson.
+
+The closing incidents of the career of this remarkable man, as an
+explorer, call for little more comment. Once again, in the year
+preceding the disastrous termination to our first occupation of Kabul,
+did he make Karachi and Sonmiani his base of departure for a fresh
+venture in behalf of archaeological research in Afghanistan. It was his
+intention to proceed to Kandahar and Kabul, but his plans were
+frustrated by as remarkable a series of incidents as could well have
+barred the progress of any traveller. The Government of India,
+instigated by reports which (according to Masson) were the results of
+local intrigue and were palpably false, considered itself justified in
+an expedition to Kalat and the deposition of its Brahui chief, Mehrab
+Khan. This expedition was successfully carried out by General
+Wiltshire, and Mehrab Khan was killed in the defence of his citadel.
+Subsequently a British agent, Lieut. Loveday, was appointed to Kalat,
+and Masson found him there on his arrival from Sonmiani. Masson's
+description of him and of his crude political methods is not
+flattering, and his weak surrender of Kalat to the badly armed Brahui
+rabble who attacked the place in the interests of the late Khan's son
+was certainly disgraceful. That surrender, which was only wiped out by
+Nott's advance on Kalat, and the final suppression of the Brahui
+revolt, cost Loveday his life, and placed Masson in deadly peril. He,
+however, succeeded in reaching Quetta, where Captain Bean was in
+political charge; but this officer not only put him into confinement
+but treated him with positive barbarity.
+
+It is difficult to understand the political view of Masson's existence
+in Baluchistan. If any man was capable of unriddling the network of
+intrigue that occupied all the Baluch chiefs at this time, or could
+bring anything of personal influence to bear on them, it was
+undoubtedly Masson, and something of his history was at any rate
+known. But he had resigned service under the Indian Government as
+"disagreeable and dishonourable," and his reappearance at a time when
+all Baluchistan was in the ferment of seething revolt was perhaps
+regarded with suspicion. It is also quite conceivable that the local
+political officer regarded him simply as an interloping loafer, and,
+until he became better acquainted with Masson's character and ability,
+would be no more likely to pay him attention than would any political
+officer on the frontier to-day who suddenly found himself confronted
+with a European in native dress with no valid explanation of his
+appearance under very ambiguous circumstances. The days were not long
+past when European loafers of any nationality whatsoever could, and
+did, find not only service, but distinction, in the courts and armies
+of native chiefs who were hostile to British interests. One can only
+gather from Masson's strange story that there was no officer in the
+British political service at that time with intuition sufficient to
+enable him to appraise the situation correctly, or make use of other
+experience than his own.
+
+Here, however, we must leave Masson. As an explorer in Afghanistan he
+stands alone. His work has never been equalled; but owing to the very
+unsatisfactory methods adopted by all explorers in those days for the
+recording of geographical observations it cannot be said that his
+contribution to exact geographical knowledge was commensurate with
+his extraordinary capacity as an observant traveller, or his
+remarkable industry.
+
+It is as a critic on the political methods of the Government of India
+that Masson's records are chiefly instructive. Hostile critics of
+Indian administrative methods usually belong to one of two classes.
+They are either uninformed, notoriety-seeking demagogues playing to a
+certain party gallery at home, or they are disappointed servants of
+the Government, by whom they consider that their merits have been
+overlooked. To this latter class it must be conceded that Masson
+belonged, in spite of his expressed contempt for government service.
+Thus the virulence of his attacks on the ignorance and fatuity of the
+political officials with whom he was brought in contact must be freely
+discounted, because of the obvious animus which pervades them. Still
+it is to be feared there is too much reason to believe that private
+interest was the recommendation which carried most weight in the
+appointment of unfledged officers, both civil and military, to
+political duty on the Indian frontier. These gentlemen took the field
+without experience, and without that which might to a certain extent
+take the place of experience, viz. an education in the main principles
+both social and economical which govern the conditions of existence of
+the people with whom they had to deal. A knowledge of political
+economy, law, and languages is not enough to enable the young
+administrator to take his place on the frontier, if he knows not
+enough of the characteristics of the frontier tribes-people to enable
+him to maintain the dignity of his position. Even physically there are
+qualifications which are not always regarded as useful, which make for
+strong influence and good government. A man may be physically powerful
+enough to use his strength in fair contest to the immense enhancement
+of his personal prestige, but he must not strike a blow where the blow
+cannot be returned; and above all he must not endeavour to conciliate
+by a silly display of obsequious attention, unless he is prepared to
+sacrifice all his personal influence and destroy the respect due to
+his office.
+
+Setting aside Masson's sentiments of disgust and horror (which he
+really felt) that the fate of men should have been placed at the mercy
+of the political officers in whom, at that time, Lord Auckland was
+pleased to repose confidence, and his assertions that "on me developed
+the task to obtain satisfaction for the insults some of these shallow
+and misguided men thought fit to practise," his own account of the
+extraordinary complexity of intrigue, and the unfathomable abyss of
+deceit and crime which distinguished the political field of native
+Baluchistan, is quite enough to account for much of their failure to
+deal with the situation. At the same time, it is a strong indication
+of the necessity for a sounder system of political education than any
+which now exists. Possibly a time may come when we shall cease to see
+systems of administration suitable to the plains applied to frontier
+mountaineers, or, for that matter, the foreign methods of India
+hammered into the nomadic pastoral peoples of other continents than
+Asia, where they are wholly inapplicable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ENGLISH OFFICIAL EXPLORATION--LORD AND WOOD
+
+
+Then followed the Afghan Campaign of 1839-40, a campaign which was in
+many ways disastrous to our credit in Afghanistan both as diplomats
+and soldiers, but which undoubtedly opened out an opportunity for
+acquiring a general knowledge of the conformation of the country which
+was not altogether neglected. With the political methods attending the
+inception of the campaign (treated with such scathing scorn by
+Masson), and the strange bungling of an overweighted and unwieldy
+force armed with antique weapons we have nothing to do. The question
+is whether, apart from the acquisition of route sketches and
+intelligence reports dependent on the movements of the army in the
+field, was there anything that could rank as original exploration in
+new geographical fields? Lieut. North's excellent traverse and report
+of the route to Kandahar, which still supplies data for an integral
+part of our maps, was distinguished for more accuracy of detail and
+observation than most efforts of a similar character made at that
+time; but it can hardly be regarded as an illustration of new and
+original exploration, the route itself being well enough known to
+British Missions, although never before surveyed. It is undoubtedly
+one of the best map contributions of the period.
+
+The adventures of Dr. Lord and Lieut. Wood in Badakshan, and the
+remarkable journey of Broadfoot across Central Afghanistan, however,
+belong to another category. These explorations covered new ground,
+much of which has never since been visited by European travellers, and
+they are authoritative records still. There were missed opportunities
+in abundance. Also opportunities which were not missed, but of which
+our records are so incomplete and obscure that the modern map-maker
+can extract but little useful information from them.
+
+When Burnes was in Kabul on his first commercial mission, Dr. Lord and
+Lieut. Leech of the Bombay Engineers were attached to his staff, and
+both these gentlemen, with Lieut. Wood of the Indian Navy,
+distinguished themselves by much original research, and have left
+records the value of which has been proved by subsequent observations.
+In the middle of October 1837 Dr. Lord left Kabul on an expedition
+into the plains of the Koh Daman, to the north of that city, which was
+to be extended to the passes of the Hindu Kush leading into Badakshan,
+when he was subsequently invited to attend the court of Murad Beg,
+the chief of Kunduz, in his professional capacity. Murad Beg was one
+of the strongest chiefs of that time. As a bold and astute freebooter
+and successful warrior he had made his name great amongst the Uzbeks
+south of the Oxus, and had consolidated their scattered clans for the
+time being into a formidable cohesion, the strength of which made
+itself felt and respected at Kabul. Where Dost Mahomed's influence
+ceased on the north there commenced that of Murad Beg, and the line of
+division may be said to have extended from Ak Robat at the head of the
+Bamian valley on the west, to the passes and foot-hills of the Hindu
+Kush above Andarab on the east. It was late in the year for Lord to
+attempt the passing of the Hindu Kush, and he appears to have lingered
+too long amongst the delightful autumn scenes of that land of
+enchantment, the Koh Daman. He selected the passes which strike off
+from Charikar, near the junction of the Ghorband with the Panjshir
+rivers. There has always been a slight confusion in the naming of this
+group of passes, owing to the universal habit in Afghanistan of
+bestowing the name of some possibly insignificant village site on
+rivers, passes, and roads, without attaching any distinct and definite
+name to these features themselves.
+
+From that break in the hills which gives passage to the Ghorband from
+the south-west and the Panjshir from the north-east there strikes off
+one well-known route across the backbone of the Hindu Kush, which is
+marked near the southern foot of the mountains by the ancient town of
+Parwan--a commercial site more ancient than that of Kabul--the
+headquarters of Sabaktagin, the Ghuri conqueror, when he wrested Kabul
+from the Hindu kings, and of Timur the Tartar in later ages.
+Consequently, the pass which bears north from that point is often
+called the Parwan. It was, according to Lord, the chief khafila route
+from Badakshan (although it may be doubted whether it was ever as
+popular as the Khawak when the Panjshir route was not closed by tribal
+hostility), notwithstanding that far less traffic passed that way than
+by Bamian and the Unai. The head of the pass was known as Sar Alang,
+so that it figures in geographical records frequently under this name
+also, whilst the local name acquired for it in the course of surveying
+in 1883 was Bajgah. To the west of this is the Kaoshan Pass, which is
+also known _par excellence_ as the pass of "Hindu Kush"; and farther
+west again is the Gwalian (or Walian), an alternative to the Kaoshan
+when the latter is in flood. Lord selected the Parwan or Sar Alang
+Pass, narrow, rocky, and uneven, with a fall of about 200 feet per
+mile, and was fairly defeated in his attempt to cross, on October 19,
+by snow. This is about the closing time of the passes generally, the
+Parwan being only 12,300 feet in altitude, although Lord estimated it
+at 15,000. It is worth noting here that the Russo-Afghan Boundary
+Commission party crossed by the Chahardar Pass (a pass to the west
+again of the Walian) in the same month of October without encountering
+any insuperable difficulty from snow, although the Chahardar is more
+than 1000 feet higher than the Parwan. The fact that Lord met a
+khafila snow-bound near the top of the pass indicates that it was
+closed rather unexpectedly. Valuable observations were, however, the
+result of this reconnaissance. It revealed the fact that snow lies
+lower and deeper on the northern side of the Hindu Kush than on the
+southern, a fact which is in direct opposition to the general
+characteristics of the Himalayas. The explanation is, however, simple.
+In both cases the snow lies lowest on that side which reaches down to
+low humid plains and much precipitation of moisture. Where the barrier
+of the mountains breaks the upward sweep of vapour-bearing currents,
+there snowfall is arrested, and the highlands become desiccated.
+Lord's observation as a geologist also determined the constitution of
+these mountains. He noted the rugged uplift (beautiful from the
+admixture of pure white felspar and glossy black hornblende) of the
+central granite peaks through the overlying gneiss, schists, and
+slate, which thus revealed the extension of one of the great primeval
+folds of Himalayan conformation.
+
+Returning from his attempt to cross the pass, Lord had the good
+fortune to be able to extend his researches for a day's march up the
+Ghorband valley, and to explore the ancient lead mines of Ferengal,
+which have been sunk in the Ghorband conglomerates, but had long been
+abandoned by the Afghans. These he found to have been worked on
+"knowledge and principle, not on blind chance,"--as might have been
+expected in a country which still possesses some of the best practical
+mining and irrigation engineers in the world; and he testifies, _inter
+alia_, to the extraordinary effect of the exceeding dryness of the
+interior, as evidenced by the preservation from decay of dead animals.
+Similar phenomena have been observed in many parts of the world both
+before and since, and it would appear that a satisfactory scientific
+explanation is still wanting for this preservative tendency of caves
+and mines; the atmosphere, in some cases where well-preserved remains
+are found, being subject to exactly the same conditions of humidity as
+the outer air.
+
+It was during this interesting exploratory trip that Dr. Lord received
+a welcome invitation to visit Murad Beg in the Uzbek capital of
+Kunduz, where his professional advice was in urgent demand. Although
+the northern passes of the Hindu Kush were closed, the route to
+Badakshan was still open _via_ Bamian and Khulm, and it was by this
+route that for the first (and apparently the last) time the journey
+from Kabul to Kunduz was made by European officers. Lord was
+accompanied by Lieut. Wood, and it is to Wood's summary of the
+conditions of the route that we now refer. As far as Bamian it was
+already beginning to be a well-known road (well known, that is, to
+European travellers); but beyond that point it was a new venture then,
+nor can any record be traced of subsequent investigations on it.
+
+Wood summarises the route by first enumerating the seven passes which
+have to be negotiated before reaching Kunduz (or Khulm), and gives us
+a slight description of them all. Four of these passes were in Afghan
+territory, and three beyond. Of the passes of Ispahak and Unai he
+merely remarks that a mail-coach might be driven over them. The
+Hajigak group he regards as the "Key-guide to the Bamian line," the
+Hajigak being the highest pass encountered (about 11,000 feet). A
+little to the north is the Irak, and to the south is the Pushti
+Hajigak (Kafzur in modern maps); the Hajigak, or Irak, being open to
+khafilas for ten months of the year, but for a considerably less
+period to the passage of troops. The next pass Wood calls Kalloo
+(Panjpilan in our maps), which he regards as being lower than Hajigak.
+Then follows the descent into Bamian. Next is the Ak Robat Pass
+(10,200 feet), between the valleys of Bamian and Saighan, of which
+Wood reports that "it is open to wheeled traffic of all description."
+As far as this (the then frontier of Afghanistan) Wood refers to the
+fact, already recorded, that the Amir's Lieutenant--Haji Khan--was
+able to take field-pieces "of a size between 12- and 18-pounders." We
+already know the conditions under which this passage of artillery was
+effected. It is also on record that Nadir Shah took guns as far as
+Saighan. What is not so generally known is that the Uzbek chief, Murad
+Beg, took an 18-pounder over the rest of the route from Saighan to
+Kunduz. The three remaining passes are (1) the Dandan Shikan, between
+Saighan and Kamard, of which Wood reports the north face to be
+exceedingly difficult, and where he would never have believed that a
+gun could pass, had it not been actually traversed by the 18-pounder
+of Murad Beg. It may be mentioned here that it took 1100 men to drag
+that gun up the northern face of the pass, so that Wood is quite
+justified in classing it as only fit for camels. Then follows (2) the
+Kara Pass, leading from Kamard into the valley of the Tashkurghan
+River, about which the only remark made by Wood is that it may be
+turned by the pass of Surkh Kila (which involves a considerable
+detour). As Wood does not definitely state which is (3) the seventh
+pass, we may assume that it is the Shamsuddin, which is merely a
+detour to avoid an awkward reach of the Tashkurghan valley.
+
+This is probably the first clear exposition which has ever been made
+of the general nature of the route connecting Kabul with Afghan
+Turkistan, and for it we must give Lieut. Wood all the credit that is
+fully due; for no subsequent surveys and investigations have
+materially altered his opinion. It must not be forgotten that in
+dealing with the story of Afghan exploration we are touching on past
+records. The far-sighted policy of public works development, which
+distinguished the late Amir Abdurrahmon, led to the extension of roads
+for facilitating commerce between the Oxus and Kabul, the full effect
+of which we have yet to learn. To the north of Kabul the roads opened
+to khafila traffic, _via_ the Chahardar Pass and the Khawak, have
+introduced a new and important feature into the system of Afghan
+communications; and it is more than probable that the facilities for
+wheeled traffic between Kabul and Tashkurghan have lately been largely
+increased.[12] It is well also to remember that it is not the physical
+difficulties of rough roads and narrow passes which form the chief
+obstacle to the movement of large bodies of troops. Roads can be made,
+and crooked places straightened with comparative ease, but altitude,
+sheer altitude, still remains a formidable barrier, which no modern
+ingenuity has taught us to overcome. Deep impassable snow-drifts, and
+the fierce killing blasts of the north-westers of Afghanistan close
+these highland fields for months together; and neither roads nor
+railways (still less air-ships) can prevail against them.
+
+When Wood and Lord turned eastward from Khulm, and passed on to Kunduz
+and Badakshan, they were treading ground which was absolutely new to
+the European explorer, and which has seldom been reached even by the
+ubiquitous native surveyor. Lord gives us but a scanty account of
+Kunduz and northern Badakshan in his report, and we must turn to the
+immortal Wood (the discoverer of one of the Oxus' sources) for fuller
+and more picturesque detail. Wood left Kunduz for the upper Oxus in
+the early spring of 1838, and it is somewhat remarkable that he should
+have effected an important exploration successfully in regions so
+highly elevated at the worst season of the year. Before following Wood
+to the Oxus, we may add a few further details of that important march
+from Kabul to Kunduz.
+
+It was in November 1837 that Wood and Lord were again in Kabul after
+their unsuccessful attempt to cross the Parwan Pass, and losing no
+time they started on the 15th for Badakshan by the Bamian route,
+crossing the Unai Pass and the elevated plain which separates it from
+the Helmund without difficulty. They encountered large parties of
+half-starved Hazaras seeking the plains on their annual pilgrimage to
+warm quarters for the winter. They crossed the Hajigak Pass on the
+19th "with great ease," then passing the divide between the Afghan and
+Turkistan drainage; but they had to make a considerable detour to
+avoid the direct Kalu Pass, and entered Bamian by the precipitous
+Pimuri defile and the volcanic valley of Zohak. The Ak Robat Pass
+presented no difficulty. In Saighan they encountered the slave-gang of
+wretched Hazara people who were being then conducted to Kunduz as
+yearly contribution. Not much is said about the Dandan Shikan Pass
+dividing Saighan from Kamurd, where they were welcomed by the drunken
+old chief Rahmatulla Khan, whose character for reckless hospitality
+seems to have been a well-known feature in Badakshan. He is mentioned
+by every traveller who passed that way since Burnes' mission in 1832.
+On the 28th they reached Kuram, where they found another slave-gang
+being conducted by Afghans from Kabul, who had the grace to appear
+much ashamed of being caught red-handed in a traffic which has never
+commended itself to Afghan public opinion. Amongst Uzbeks it is
+different, the custom of man-stealing appears to have smothered every
+better feeling, and the traffic in human beings extends even into
+their domestic arrangements. Their wives are just as much "property"
+as their slaves. A little below Kuram they struck off to the right by
+a direct route to Kunduz, and passing over a district which had "a
+wavy surface," "affording excellent pasturage," which involved the
+crossing of the pass of Archa, they finally crossed the Kunduz River,
+and making their way through the swampy district of Baglan and
+Aliabad, reached Kunduz on December 4.
+
+Wood is not enthusiastic about Kunduz. He calls it one of the most
+wretched towns in Murad Beg's dominions. "The appearance of Kunduz
+accords with the habits of an Uzbek; and by its manner, poverty and
+filth, may be estimated the moral worth of its inhabitants." He
+thought a good deal of Murad Beg all the same, and could not deny his
+great abilities. "But with all his high qualifications Murad Beg is
+but the head of an organised banditti, a nation of plunderers, whom,
+however, none of the neighbouring states can exterminate." Murad Beg
+has joined his fathers long ago, but no recent account of Kunduz much
+alters Wood's opinion of it. The wretched Badakshanis whom Murad Beg
+conquered, and whom he set to live or die in the dank pestilential
+marshes which fill up the space between the Badakshan highlands and
+the Oxus, have since then been restored to their own country; and of
+Badakshan we heard enough from the Amir's officials connected with the
+Pamir Boundary Commission to lead us to believe in it as a veritable
+land of promise, a land whose natural beauty and fertility may be
+compared to that of Kashmir--but this was told of the mountain
+regions, not of the Oxus flats.
+
+When Wood got away from Kunduz and travelled eastwards to Faizabad and
+Jirm he does rise to enthusiasm, and tells us of scenes of natural
+beauty which no European eye has seen since he passed that way. On
+December 11, in mid-winter, Wood started from Kunduz with the
+permission of Murad Beg to trace the "Jihun" to its source, and the
+story of this historical exploration will always be most excellent
+reading.
+
+First crossing an open plain with a southern background of mountains,
+a plain of jungle grass, moist and unfavourable to human life, with
+stifling mists of vapour flitting uneasily before them, the party
+reached higher ground and the town of Khanabad. Behind Khanabad rises
+the isolated peak of Koh Umbar, 2500 feet above the plain, which
+appears to be a remarkable landmark in this region. It has never yet
+been fixed geographically. Passing through the low foot-hills
+surrounding this mountain, Wood emerged into the plain of Talikhan,
+and reached the ancient town of that name in a heavy downpour of
+winter rain. Here at once he encountered reminiscences of Greek
+occupation and claimants to the lineage of Alexander the Great. The
+trail of the Greek occupation of Baktria clings to Badakshan as does
+that of Nysa to the valleys of Kafiristan. The impression of Talikhan
+is summed up by Wood in the statement that it is a most disagreeable
+place in rainy weather. He might say the same of every town in Afghan
+Turkistan. He has much to say of Uzbek character and idiosyncrasies.
+In one respect he says that the habits of Uzbek children are superior
+to those of young Britons. They do not rob sparrows' nests! Here, too,
+Wood found himself on the track of Moorcroft. Striking eastward he
+crossed the Lataband Pass (since fixed at 5650 feet in height) and
+first encountered snow. From the pass he describes the surrounding
+view as glorious: "In every quarter snowclad peaks shot up into the
+sky," and he gives the name Khoja Mahomed to the range (unnamed in our
+maps) which crosses Badakshan from north-east to south-west and forms
+the chief water-parting of the country. Before him the Kokcha "rolled
+its green waters through the rugged valley of Duvanah." The summit of
+Lataband is wide and level and the descent eastwards comparatively
+easy.
+
+Through the pretty vale of Mashad (where Wood's party crossed the
+Varsach River) to Teshkhan the road led generally over hilly country
+covered with snow; but leaving Teshkhan it rises over the pass of
+Junasdara (fixed by Wood at 6600 feet), crossing one of the great
+spurs of the Khoja Mahomed system, and descended to Daraim, "a valley
+scarce a bowshot across, but watered, as all the valleys in Badakshan
+are, by a beautiful stream of the purest water, and bordered, wherever
+there is soil, by a soft velvet turf." To Daraim succeeded the plain
+of Argu and the "wavy" district of Reishkhan, which reached to the
+valley of the Kokcha. So far, since leaving Talikhan, they had met
+with "no sign of man or beast," but the latter were occasionally in
+close proximity, for the path was made easy by hog tracks, and Wood
+has some grisly tales to tell about the ferocity of the wolves of the
+country. Junasdara he describes as a difficult or steep pass, but he
+notes the fact that Murad Beg had crossed it with artillery which left
+evidence in wheel tracks.
+
+Of Faizabad, when Wood was there, "scarcely a vestige was left," and
+Jirm had become the capital of the country. But Faizabad has risen to
+importance since, and according to the reports of subsequent native
+explorers, has regained a good deal of its commercial importance.
+"Behind the site of the town the mountains are in successive ridges to
+a height of at least 2000 feet" (_i.e._ above the plain); "before it
+rolls the Kokcha in a rocky trench-like bed sufficiently deep to
+preclude all danger of inundation. Looking up the valley, the ruined
+and uncultivated gardens are seen to fringe the stream for a distance
+of two miles above the town." Faizabad is about 3950 feet above
+sea-level. Wood makes it about 500 feet lower, and his original
+observations were probably of more than equal value with those of
+subsequent native explorers. But certain recent improvements in
+exploring instruments, and certain refinements in computing the value
+of such observations, render the balance of probability in favour of
+the later records. Wood (as a sailor) was a professional observer, and
+where observations alone are concerned his own are excellent.
+
+From Faizabad Wood went to Jirm, which he regarded as a more important
+position than Faizabad. Elsewhere an opinion has been expressed that
+Jirm was the ancient capital of the country. Wood took the shortest
+road to Jirm which leaves the Kokcha valley and passes over the Kasur
+spur, winding by a high and slippery path for some distance along the
+face of the hill. It was a two days' march. The fort at Jirm he
+describes as the most important in Murad Beg's dominions. His stay at
+Jirm gave him the opportunity of visiting the lapis-lazuli mines near
+the head of the Kokcha River under the shadow of the Hindu Kush just
+bordering Kafiristan. This experience was useful, for Wood not only
+contributes a most interesting account of the working of the mines,
+but places on record the impracticable nature of the route which
+follows the Kokcha River from its source above the mines to Jirm. Near
+the assumed source, and not far south of the mines, there are two
+passes across the Hindu Kush, viz. the Minjan, which connects with the
+well-known Dorah and leads to Chitral, and the Mandal, which unites
+the head of the Bashgol valley of Kafiristan with the Minjan sources
+of the Kokcha. The upper reaches of the Kokcha River form the Minjan
+valley. Sir George Robertson crossed the Mandal in 1889 and fixed its
+height at over 15,000 feet, and he places the head of the Minjan (or
+Kokcha) much farther south than it appears in our maps. As the Mandal
+Pass connects Kafiristan with the Minjan valley of the Kokcha
+(pronounced by Wood to be almost impracticable above Jirm), it is of
+no great geographical importance; nor, owing to the same
+impracticability, is the Minjan Pass itself of any great consequence,
+although it connects with Chitral. The Dorah (14,800 feet), on the
+other hand, links up Chitral with another branch of the Kokcha,
+passing by the populous commercial town of Zebak, and is consequently
+a pass to be reckoned with in spite of its altitude. It is, in short,
+the chief pass over the Hindu Kush directly connecting India with
+Badakshan; but a pass which is nearly as high as Mont Blanc affords no
+royal gateway through the mountains.
+
+Wood had sufficiently indicated the nature of the Kokcha valley
+between Jirm and Minjan. At the point where the mines occur it is
+about 200 yards wide. On both sides the mountains are "high and
+naked," and the river flows in a trough 70 feet below the bed of the
+valley. We know that it is not a practicable route. It is, however,
+much to be regretted that no modern explorer has touched the valley of
+Anjuman to the west of Minjan, which, whilst it is perhaps the main
+contributor to the waters of the Kokcha, also appears to have
+contained a recognised route in mediaeval times. "If you wish not to go
+to destruction, avoid the narrow valley of Koran," is a native warning
+quoted by Wood, which seems to apply to the upper Kokcha. As a
+passable khafila route, Idrisi writes that from Andarab to Badakshan
+_towards the east_ is a four days' journey. Andarab (the ancient site)
+being fixed at the junction of the Kasan stream with the Andarab
+River, the only possible route eastwards would be to the head of the
+Andarab at Khawak, and thence over the Nawak Pass into the Anjuman
+valley. Nor can the Nawak (which is as well known a pass as the
+Khawak) have any _raison d'etre_ unless it connects with that valley.
+There is, however, the possibility of a wrong inference from Idrisi's
+vague statement. "Badakshan" (which was represented by either Jirm or
+Faizabad) is actually east of Andarab, but to reach it by the obvious
+route of the lowlands, following the Kunduz River and ultimately
+striking eastwards, would involve starting from Andarab to the west of
+north. But just as the Mandal leading into the Minjan valley opens up
+no useful route in spite of being a well-known pass, so may the Nawak
+lead to nothing really practicable in Anjuman. This, indeed, is
+probably the case, but Anjuman remains to be explored.
+
+Returning to Jirm, Wood awaited the opportunity for his historic
+exploration of the Oxus. This occurred at the end of January 1838,
+when news came to Jirm that the Oxus was frozen above Darwaz. The only
+route open to travellers in the snow time of that region is the bed of
+the frozen river, and Wood determined to make the best use of the
+opportunity. He was anxious to visit the ruby mines of the Oxus
+valley, but in this he did not succeed, owing to the extreme
+difficulties of the route following the river from its great bend
+northward to the district of Gharan, in which these mines are
+situated. He met the remnants of a party returning from Gharan which
+had lost nearly half its numbers from an avalanche when he reached
+Zebak, and wisely determined to expend his efforts in following up the
+course of the river to its source, rather than tempt Providence by a
+dangerous detour. To reach Zebak from Jirm it was necessary to follow
+the Kokcha to its junction with the Wardoj and then turn up that
+valley to Zebak. This journey in winter, with the biting blasts of the
+glacier-bred winds of the Hindu Kush in their teeth, was sufficiently
+trying. These devastated regions seem to be never free from the plague
+of wind. It is bad enough in the Pamirs in summer, but in winter when
+superadded to the effects of a cold registering 6 deg. below zero it must
+have been maddening. There was no great difficulty in crossing the
+divide between Zebak (a small but not unimportant town) and the elbow
+of the Oxus River at Ishkashm.
+
+Once again since the days of Wood a party of Europeans, which included
+two well-known geographers (Lockhart and Woodthorpe, both of whom have
+since gone to their rest), reached Ishkashm in 1886, and they were
+treated there with anything but hospitality. Wood seemed to have fared
+better. With the authority of Murad Beg to back him, and his own tact
+and determination to carry him through, he succeeded in overcoming all
+obstacles, and from point to point he made his way to where the Oxus
+forks at Kila Panja. From Ishkashm to Kila Panja the valley was fairly
+wide and open, and here for the first time he met those interesting
+nomadic folk the Kirghiz.
+
+Wood's observations on the people he met are always acute and
+interesting, but he seems rather to have been influenced (as he admits
+that he may have been) by his Badakshani guides in framing his
+estimate of Kirghiz character. Thieves and liars they may be. These
+characteristics are common in High Asia, but even in these particulars
+they compare favourably with Uzbeks and Afghans generally. At any rate
+he trusted them, and it was with their assistance that he reached the
+source of the Oxus. Without them in a world of snow-covered hills and
+depressions, with every halting-place buried deep and not a trace of a
+track to be seen, he would have fared badly. At Kila Panja he was
+faced with a difficulty which gave him anxious consideration. Could he
+have guessed what issues would thereafter hang on a decision to that
+momentous question--which branch of the Oxus led to its real
+source--it would have caused him even greater anxiety. Ultimately he
+followed the northern branch which waters the Great Pamir, and after
+almost incredible exertion in floundering through snowdrifts and
+scratching his way along the ice road of the river surface, on
+February 19, 1838, he overlooked that long narrow expanse of frozen
+water which is now known as Victoria Lake.
+
+We may discuss the question of the source, or sources, of the Oxus
+still, and trace them to the great glaciers from which the lakes north
+and south of the Nicolas range are fed, or to the ice caverns of the
+Hindu Kush as we please--there are many sources, and it is not in the
+power of mortal man to measure their relative profundity--but Wood
+still lives in geographical history as the first explorer of the upper
+Oxus, and will rank with Speke and Grant as the author of a solution
+to one of the great riddles of the world's hydrography. With infinite
+labour he dug a hole through the ice and found the depth of the lake
+at its centre to be only 9 feet. Were he to plumb it again in these
+days he would find it even less, for the lake (like all Central Asian
+lakes) is growing smaller and shallower year by year. The information
+which he absorbed about the high regions of Asia, the Pamirs (the
+Bam-i-dunya), was wonderfully correct on the whole, and is strong
+evidence of his ability in sifting the mass of miscellaneous matter
+with which the Asiatic usually conceals a geographical truth. He is
+incorrect only in the matter of altitude, which he fixes too high by
+more than a thousand feet, and he makes rather a strange mistake in
+recording that the Kunar (the Chitral River) rises north of the Hindu
+Kush and breaks through that range. Otherwise it would be difficult to
+add to or to correct his information by the light of subsequent
+surveys. With his return journey surrounded by all the enchantment of
+bursting spring in those regions we need not concern ourselves. After
+a three months' absence he rejoined Dr. Lord at Kunduz.
+
+Wood's return to Kunduz was but the prelude to another journey of
+exploration into the northern regions of Badakshan which, in some
+respects, was the most important of all his investigations, for it is
+to the information obtained on this journey that we are still indebted
+for what little knowledge we possess of the general characteristics of
+the Oxus valley above Termez. Dr. Lord was summoned in his medical
+capacity to visit a chief at Hazrat Imam on the Oxus River, and Wood
+seized the opportunity to explore the Oxus basin from Hazrat Imam
+upwards through Darwaz.
+
+Kunduz itself has been described by both authorities as a miserable
+swamp-bound town, with pestilential low-lying flats stretching beyond
+it towards the Oxus. This low country is, however, productive, and is
+probably by this time largely reclaimed from the grass and reed beds
+which covered it. Into this poisonous swamp country the Uzbek chief
+had imported the wretched Badakshani Tajiks whom he had captured
+during his extensive raids, for the purpose of colonizing. Wood
+reckons that 100,000 people must have originally been dumped into this
+swamp land, of whom barely 6000 were left when he was at Kunduz.
+Between the swamp and the Oxus was a splendid stretch of prairie or
+pasture land, reaching to the tangled jungle which immediately fringed
+the river below the Darwaz mountains, and this naturally excited his
+admiration. "Eastward" of Khulm "to the rocky barriers of Darwaz all
+the high-lying portion of the valley is at this season (March) a wild
+prairie of sweets, a verdant carpet enamelled with flowers"; and he
+describes the "low swelling" hills fringing these plains as "soft to
+the eye as the verdant sod which carpets them is to the foot." This is
+very pretty, and quite accords with the general description of country
+which forms part of the Oxus valley much farther west. The Oxus
+jungles, however, only occur at intervals. In Wood's time (1838) they
+were a thick tangle of low-growing scrub, which formed the haunts of
+wild beasts which were a terror to the dwellers in the plains. Tigers
+are found in those patches of Oxus jungle still. Hazrat Imam then
+ranked with Zebak and Jirm as one of the most important towns of
+Badakshan. East of Hazrat Imam were the traces of a gigantic canal
+system with its head about Sherwan, from which point to the foot-hills
+of Darwaz the river is (or was) fordable in almost any part. Wood
+forded it at a point near Yang Kila, opposite Saib in Kolab, in March,
+and found the river running in three channels, only one of which was
+really difficult. In this one, however, the current was running 4
+miles an hour and the width of the channel was about 200 yards. It was
+only by uniting the forces of the party to oppose the stream that
+they were able to effect the passage. Thus was Wood probably the first
+European to set his foot in Kolab north of the Oxus. The river-bottom
+in this part of its course is generally pebbly, and at the Sherwan
+ford guns had been taken across. Near the mouth of the Kokcha (here a
+sluggish muddy stream) Wood found the site of an ancient city which he
+calls Barbarra, and which I think is probably the Mabara of Idrisi.
+
+Wood's next excursion from Kunduz was by the direct high road westward
+to Mazar, where he and Lord hoped to find relics of Moorcroft (in
+which quest they were successful), and back again. This only confirmed
+what was previously known of the facility of that route, one of the
+most ancient in the world, and the attention which had been paid to it
+by the construction of covered tanks (they would be called Haoz
+farther west) at intervals for the convenience of travellers. The
+final recall of these two explorers to Kabul afforded them the
+opportunity for investigating the route which runs directly south from
+Kunduz by the river valley of that name to the junction with the
+Baghlan. Thence, following the Baghlan to its head, they crossed by
+the Murgh Pass into the valley of Andarab, and diverging eastward they
+adopted the Khawak Pass to reach the Panjshir valley, and so to Kabul.
+No great difficulties were encountered on this route (which has only
+been partially explored since), involving only two passes between the
+Oxus and Kabul, _i.e._ the Murgh (7400 feet) which is barely mentioned
+by Wood, and the Khawak (11,650 feet--Wood makes it 1500 feet higher),
+and it undoubtedly possesses many advantages as the modern popular
+route between Kabul and Badakshan. It is not the high-road to Mazar
+(the capital of Afghan Turkistan), which will always be represented by
+the Bamian route, but it must be recognised as a fairly easy means of
+communication in summer between the chief fords of the Oxus and the
+Kabul valley. The Greek settlements were about Baghlan and Andarab,
+and undoubtedly this was the road best known to them across the Hindu
+Kush, and probably as much used as the Kaoshan or Parwan passes, which
+were more direct. For many centuries, however, in mediaeval history the
+Panjshir valley possessed such an evil reputation as the home of the
+worst robbers in Asia, that a wide berth was given to it by casual
+travellers. Timur Shah made good use of it for military purposes, as
+we have seen, and latterly it has been improved into a fair commercial
+high-road under Afghan engineers. The Panjshir inhabitants (once
+Kafirs--now truculent Mohamedans) have been reduced to reason, and it
+will be in the future what it has been in the ancient past--one of the
+great khafila routes of Asia. When Wood crossed it in May it was not
+really practicable for horses, and the party made their way across
+with considerable difficulty. It is the altitude, and the altitude
+alone, which renders it a formidable military barrier, and thus will
+it remain as part of that great Hindu Kush wall which forms the
+central obstruction of a buffer state.
+
+Before taking leave of these two most successful (and most
+trustworthy) explorers of Afghanistan, it may be useful to sum up
+their views on that little-known region, Badakshan. The plains, the
+useful and beautiful valleys of Badakshan, lie in the embrace of a
+kind of mountain horse-shoe, which shuts them off from the Oxus on the
+north-east and east and winds round to the Hindu Kush on the south.
+The weak point of the semicircular barrier occurs at the junction with
+the Hindu Kush, where the pass between Zebak and Ishkashm is only 8700
+feet high. From the slopes of the Hindu Kush mountain torrents drain
+down through the valleys of Zebak (called the Wardoj by Wood), the
+Minjan (or Kokcha) and the Anjuman into the great central river of
+Kokcha. Of these valleys, so far as we know, only the Wardoj is really
+practicable as a northerly route to the Oxus. Shutting off the head of
+the Kokcha system, a lateral range called Khoja Mahomed by Wood (a
+name which ought to be preserved), in which are many magnificent
+peaks, sends down its contributions north-west to the Kunduz. We know
+nothing about these valleys, and Wood tells us nothing, but the
+geographical inference is strong that all this part of upper
+Badakshan, including the heads of the Kokcha and Kunduz affluents, is
+but a wide inhospitable upland plateau of a conformation similar to
+that which lies east and west of it, cut into deep furrows and
+impassable gorges by the mountain streams which run thousands of feet
+below the plateau level. Within it will almost certainly be traced in
+due course of time the evidences of those primeval parallel folds, or
+wrinkles, which form the basis of Himalayan construction. Probably the
+Khoja Mahomed represents one of them, and the heads of the streams
+which feed the Kokcha and the eastern affluents of the Kunduz will be
+found (as already indicated in the Wardoj, or Zebak, stream) to take
+their source in deep, lateral, ditch-like valleys, which, closely
+underlying these folds, have been reshaped and altered by ages of
+denudation and seismic destruction.
+
+The few inhabitants who are hidden away in remote villages and hamlets
+belong to the great Kafir community. This is a part of unexplored
+Kafiristan rather than Badakshan, and he will be a bold man indeed who
+undertakes its investigation. No Asiatic secret now held back from
+view will command so much vivid interest in its unfolding as will the
+ethnographical conditions of these people when we can really get at
+them. This mountain region occupies a large share of Badakshan. The
+rest of the plateau land to the west we know fairly well and have
+sufficiently described. The wonder of the world is that the deeply
+recessed valleys of it, the Bamian, Saighan, Kamard, Baghlan, and
+Andarab depressions should have figured so largely in the world's
+history. That a confined narrow ribbon of space such as Bamian,
+difficult of access, placed by nature in the heart of a wilderness,
+should have been the centre not only of a great kingdom but the focus
+of a great religion, would be inexplicable if we did not remember that
+through it runs the connecting link between the wealth of India and
+the great cities of the Oxus plains and Central Asia.
+
+The northern slopes and plains of Badakshan, between the mountains and
+the Oxus, form part of a region which once represented the wealth of
+civilization in Asia. The whole region was dotted with towns of
+importance in mediaeval times, and the fame of its beauty and wealth
+had passed down the ages from the days of Assyria and Greece to those
+of the destroying Mongol hordes. From prehistoric times nations of the
+west had planted colonies in Baktria, and here are to be gathered
+together the threads of so many ethnographical survivals as may be
+represented by the successive Empires of the West. Baktria is the
+cradle of a marvellously mixed ethnography, and to all who have seen
+the weird beauty of that strange land, the fascination which it has
+ever possessed for the explorer and pilgrims is no matter of surprise.
+
+A word or two must be added here about that previous explorer
+(Moorcroft) in Northern Afghanistan whose fate was ascertained by
+Lord. It is most unfortunate that some of the most important
+manuscripts of this unfortunate Asiatic traveller were never
+recovered, but his story has been written and will be referred to in
+further detail. We have direct testimony to the fate which finally
+overtook him in Dr. Lord's report of his visit to Mazar-i-Sharif,
+which was made with the express purpose of recovering all the records
+that might be traced of Moorcroft's travels in Afghan Turkistan.
+
+A previous story of Moorcroft is highly interesting. An early Tibetan
+explorer (the celebrated Abbe Huc) told a tale of a certain Englishman
+named Moorcroft, who was reported to have lived in Lhasa for twelve
+years previous to the year 1838 and who was supposed to have been
+assassinated on his way back to India _via_ Ladak. The story was
+circumstantial and attracted considerable attention. We know now from
+a memorandum of Dr. Lord written in May 1838, that in the early spring
+of that year when he and Lieut. Wood visited Mazar-i-Sharif they
+discovered that the German companion of Moorcroft (Trebeck) had died
+in that city, leaving amongst many loose records a slip of paper, with
+the date September 6, 1825, thereon, noting the fact that "Mr. M."
+(Moorcroft) "died on August 27th." Dr. Lord's investigations led him
+to the conclusion that Moorcroft died at Andkhui, a victim "not more
+to the baneful effects of the climate than to the web of treachery and
+intrigue with which he found himself surrounded and his return cut
+off." Trebeck, who seems to have been held in great estimation by the
+Afghans, died soon after; neither traveller leaving any substantial
+account of his adventures. Moorcroft's books (thirty volumes) were
+recovered, and the list of them would surprise any modern traveller
+who believes in a light and handy equipment. Dr. Lord's inquiries, in
+my opinion, effectually dispose of the venerable Abbe's story of
+Moorcroft's residence at Lhasa; although, of course, the record of his
+visit to Western Tibet and the Manasarawar Lakes earlier in the
+century must have been well enough known; and the Tibetans may
+possibly have believed in a reincarnation of their one and only
+European visitor in their own capital.
+
+This chapter cannot be closed without a tribute of respect to those
+most able and enterprising geographers who (chiefly as assistants to
+Burnes) were the means of first giving to the world a reasonable
+knowledge of the geography of Afghanistan. The names of Leech, Lord,
+and Wood will always remain great in geographical story, and although
+none of them individually (nor, indeed, all of them collectively)
+covered anything like as wide an area as the American Masson, they
+effected a far greater change in the maps of the period--for Masson
+was no map-maker. As regards Sir Alexander Burnes, his initiative in
+all that pertained to geographical exploration was great and valuable,
+but he was individually more connected with the exploitation of
+Central Asian and Persian geography than with that of Afghanistan.
+Previous to the year 1836, when he undertook his political mission to
+Kabul (and when he was travelling over comparatively old ground), he
+had already extended his journeys across the Hindu Kush to the Oxus,
+Bokhara, and Persia; and the book which he published in 1834 was a
+revelation in Central Asian physiography and policy. But as an
+explorer in Afghanistan he owed his information chiefly to his
+assistants, and undoubtedly he was splendidly well served. The
+ridiculous and costly impedimenta which seemed to be recognised as a
+necessary accompaniment to a campaign or "an occupation" in those
+days--the magnificent tents, the elephants, wives and nurseries and
+retinue of military officers--found no place whatever in the
+explorers' camps. Men were content to make their way from point to
+point and take their chance of native hospitality. They lived with the
+people amongst whom they moved, and they gradually became almost as
+much of them as with them. Perhaps their views, political and social,
+became somewhat too warmly tinted with local colour by these methods,
+but undoubtedly they learned more and they saw more, and they acquired
+a wider, deeper sympathy with native aspirations and native character
+than is possible to travellers who move _en prince_ amongst a people
+who only interest them as races dominating a certain section of the
+mountains and plains of a strange world. All honour to the names of
+Leech, Lord, and Wood--especially Wood.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[12] The latest reports indicate that there is now a road fit for
+motor traffic between Kabul and Afghan Turkistan, as well as between
+Kabul and Badakshan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA--MOORCROFT
+
+
+One of the most disappointing of the early British explorers of our
+Indian trans-frontier was Moorcroft. Disappointing, because he got so
+little geographical information out of so large an area of adventure.
+Moorcroft was a veterinary surgeon blessed with an unusually good
+education and all the impulse of a nomadic wanderer. He was
+Superintendent of the H.E.I. Company's stud at Calcutta, and his views
+on agricultural subjects generally, especially the improvement of
+stock, were certainly in advance of his time, although it seems
+extraordinary that he should have sought further inspiration in the
+wilds of the then unexplored trans-Himalayas or in Central Asia. The
+Government of India were evidently sceptical as to the value of such
+researches, and he received but cold comfort from their grudging
+spirit of support, which ended in a threat to cut off his pay
+altogether after a few years' sojourn in Ladak whilst studying the
+elementary principles of Tibetan farming. Neither would they supply
+him with the ample stock of merchandise which he asked for as a means
+of opening up trade with those chilly countries; and when, finally, he
+assumed the position of a high political functionary, and became the
+vehicle of an offer to the Government of India of the sovereignty of
+Ladak (which certainly might have led to complications with the Sikh
+Government of the Punjab) he was rather curtly told to mind his own
+business.
+
+On the whole, it is tolerably clear that the Government represented by
+old John Company was not much more favourable to irresponsible
+travelling over the border and political intermeddling than is our
+modern Imperial institution. However, the fact remains that Moorcroft
+showed a spirit of daring enterprise, which led to the acquirement of
+a vast amount of most important information about countries and
+peoples contiguous to India of whom the Government of the time must
+have been in utter ignorance. When he first exploited Ladak, Leh was
+the _ultima thule_ of geographical investigation. What lay beyond it
+was almost blank conjecture, and a residence of two years must have
+ended in the amassing of a vast fund of useful information.
+Unfortunately, much of that information was lost at his death, and the
+correspondence and notes which came into the hands of his biographer
+were of such a character--so extraordinarily discursive and frequently
+so little relevant to the subject of his investigation--as to leave an
+impression that Moorcroft was certainly eccentric in his
+correspondence if not in more material ways. We get very little
+original geographical suggestion from him; but his constant and
+faithful companion Trebeck is much more consistent and careful in such
+detail as we find due to his personal observation, and it is to
+Trebeck rather than Moorcroft that the thanks of the Asiatic map-maker
+are due. With the Ladak episodes of Moorcroft's career we have nothing
+to do here, beyond noting that there is ample evidence that he never
+reached Lhasa, and never resided there, in spite of the persistent
+rumours which prevailed (even in Tibet) that a traveller of his name
+had lived in the city. It is exceedingly difficult to account for this
+rumour, unless indeed we credit the authors of it with a confusion of
+ideas between Lhasa, the capital of Tibet proper, and Leh, the capital
+of little Tibet.
+
+The interest of Moorcroft's adventures so far as we are now concerned
+commences with his journey from Peshawar to Kabul, Badakshan and
+Bokhara in 1824, when he was undoubtedly the first in the field of
+British Central Asiatic exploration. He owed his safe conduct from
+Peshawar (which place he reached only after some most unpleasant
+experiences in passing through the Sikh dominions of the Punjab) to a
+political crisis. Dost Mahomed Khan was consolidating his power at
+Kabul, but he had not then squared accounts with Habibullah the son of
+the former governor, his deceased elder brother Mahomed Azim Khan; and
+certain other members of his family (his brothers, Yar Mahomed, Pir
+Mahomed, and Sultan Mahomed), who were governors in the Indus
+provinces, thought it as well to step in and effect an arrangement. It
+was their stately march to Kabul which was Moorcroft's opportunity.
+Those were days when an Englishman was yet of interest to the Afghan
+potentate, who knew not what turn of fortune's wheel might necessitate
+an appeal for the intervention of the English.
+
+Moorcroft did not love the Afghans, and between the unauthorised
+robbers of the Kabul road and the official despoilers of the city he
+paid dearly for the right of transit through Afghanistan of himself
+and his merchandise. It was this assumed role of merchant (if indeed
+it was assumed) that hampered Moorcroft from first to last in his
+journeys beyond the frontier of British India. There was something to
+be made out of him, either by fair means or foul, and the rapacious
+exactions to which he was subjected were probably not in the least
+modified by his obstinate refusals to meet what he considered unjust
+demands. Invariably he had to pay in the end. His account of the road
+to Kabul is interesting from the keen observation which he brought to
+bear on his surroundings. He has much to say about the groups of
+Buddhist buildings which are so marked a feature at various points of
+the route, and his previous experiences in Tibet left him little room
+for doubt as to the nature of them. It is strange that locally there
+was not a tale to be told, not even a legend about them, which even
+indefinitely maintained their Buddhist origin.
+
+From Kabul Moorcroft succeeded in getting free with surprisingly
+little difficulty, though several members of his party declined to go
+farther. He gradually made his way by the Unai and Hajigak passes to
+Bamian, and thence to Haibak and Balkh. He was not slow to recognize
+the connection between the obvious Buddhist relics of Bamian and those
+which he had seen on the Kabul road; and at Haibak he visited a tope
+called Takht-i-Rustam (a generic name for these topes in Central Asia)
+of which his description tallies more or less with that of Captain
+Talbot, R.E., who unearthed what is probably the same relic some sixty
+years later. To Moorcroft we owe the identification of Haibak with the
+old mediaeval town of Semenjan, and he states that he was told on the
+spot that this was its ancient name. No such name was recognised sixty
+years later, but the evidence of Idrisi's records confirms the fact
+beyond dispute.
+
+We need not enter into details of this well-worn and often described
+route. Moorcroft's best efforts were not directed to gazetteering, and
+we have much abler and more complete accounts of it than his. After
+passing the Ak Robat divide, Moorcroft found himself beyond Afghan
+jurisdiction and within the reach of that historic Uzbek chieftain,
+Murad Beg of Kunduz. Although Murad Beg was little better than a
+successful freebooter, he is a personage who has left his own definite
+mark on the history of days when British interest was just dawning on
+the Oxus banks. Moorcroft fell into his hands, and in spite of
+introductions he fared exceedingly badly. Indeed there can be little
+doubt that the cupidity excited by the possibility of so much plunder
+would have ended fatally for him, but for a happy inspiration which
+occurred to him when his affairs appeared to be _in extremis_. With
+great difficulty and at the peril of his life he made his way eastward
+to Talikhan, where resided a saintly Pirzada, uncle of Murad Beg, the
+one righteous man whose upright and dignified character redeemed his
+people from the taint of utter barbarism and treachery. He had
+discrimination enough to read Moorcroft aright, and at once
+discountenanced the tales that had been assiduously set abroad of his
+being a British spy upon the land; and he had firmness and authority
+sufficient to deliver him from the rapacity of his truculent nephew,
+and procure him freedom to depart after months of delay in the
+pestilential atmosphere of Kunduz. Yet this grand old Mahomedan saint
+patronised the institution of slavery, and was not above making a
+profit out of it, though at the same time he firmly declined to
+receive presents or have bribes for his good offices.
+
+As other travellers following in Moorcroft's footsteps at no great
+distance of time fell also into the hands of Murad Beg, and
+experienced very different treatment, it is useful just to note
+Moorcroft's description of him. He says: "I scarcely ever beheld a
+more forbidding countenance. His extremely high cheekbones gave the
+appearance to the skin of the face of its being unnaturally stretched,
+whilst the narrowness of the lower jaw left scarcely room for the
+teeth which were standing in all directions; he was extremely
+near-sighted." Not an attractive description! The spring had well
+advanced, and it was not till the middle of February 1825 that
+Moorcroft was able to resume his journey to the Oxus. He travelled
+from Kunduz to Tashkurghan and Mazar, and from the latter place he
+followed the most direct route to Bokhara _via_ the Khwaja Salar ferry
+across the Oxus, reaching Bokhara on February 25. Here his narrative
+ends, and we only know from Dr. Lord and Wood that he returned from
+Bokhara to Andkhui, and died there apparently of fever contracted in
+Kunduz. He was buried near Balkh. Trebeck died soon after, and was
+buried at Mazar-i-Sharif. Burnes visited and described the tombs of
+both travellers, but they have long since disappeared.
+
+As a geographer there is much that is wanting in the methods of this
+most enterprising traveller, who at least pioneered the way to High
+Asia from British India but who never made geographical exploration a
+primary object of his labours. He was true to the last to his trade as
+a student of agriculture, and it is in this particular, rather than
+in the regions of geography or history, that the value of his studies
+chiefly lies. He was the first to point out the general character of
+that disastrous road to Kabul which has cost England so dear, and he
+is still, with Burnes and Lord and Wood, our chief authority for the
+general characteristics of Badakshan and of the Oxus valley east of
+Balkh. He did not, however, touch the Oxus east of Khwaja Salar, and
+consequently did not see or appreciate the great spread of splendid
+pastoral country which lies between the pestilential marsh lands of
+Kunduz and the river.
+
+One would be apt to gather a pessimistic idea of lower Badakshan from
+the pages of Moorcroft's story, which are undoubtedly tinted strongly
+with the gloomy and grey colouring of his own unhappy experiences. Of
+Balkh he has very little to say; he noted no antiquities about Balkh,
+but he calls attention to the wide spaces covered with ruins which are
+to be found at intervals scattered over the plains between Balkh and
+the Oxus. It is a little difficult to follow his exact route across
+the Oxus plains by the light of modern maps, but his Feruckabad is
+probably our Feruk, and I gather that his Akbarabad is Akcha or
+Akchaabad. The condition of Balkh, of Akcha, and of the ruin-studded
+plains of the Oxus were evidently much the same in 1824 as they were
+in 1884. Khwaja Salar (where Moorcroft crossed the Oxus in ferry-boats
+drawn by horses) has since become historical. It was accepted in the
+Anglo-Russian protocols defining the Afghan boundary as an important
+point in the Russo-Afghan boundary delimitation, but it was not to be
+found. Moorcroft gives a very good reason for its disappearance, by
+stating that the place was razed to the ground just the day before he
+arrived there. Since then the ruins of the old village have been
+devoured by the shifting Oxus, and nothing but a ziarat at some
+distance from the river remains as a record of the distinguished saint
+who gave it its name.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BURNES
+
+
+No traveller who ever returned to his country with tales of stirring
+adventure ever attracted more interest, or even astonishment, than
+Lieut. Alexander Burnes. He published his story in 1835, when the Oxus
+regions of Asia were but vaguely outlined and shadowy geography. It
+did not matter that they had been the scene of classical history for
+more than 2000 years, and that the whole network of Oxus roads and
+rivers had been written about and traversed by European hosts for
+centuries before our era. That story belonged to a buried past, and
+the British occupation of India had come about in modern history by
+way of the sea. England and Russia were then searching forward into
+Central Asia like two blind wrestlers in the dark, feeling their
+ground before them ere they came to grips. A veil of mystery hung over
+these highlands, a geographical fog that had thickened up, with just a
+thinner space in it here and there, where a gleam of light had
+penetrated, but never dispersed it, since the days when Assyrian and
+Persian, Skyth, Greek, and Mongul wandered through the highest of
+Asiatic highways at their own sweet will.
+
+In the present year of grace and of red tape bindings to most books of
+Asiatic travels, when the best of the geographical information
+accumulated by the few who bear with them the seal of officialdom is
+pigeon-holed for a use that never will be made of it, it is quite
+refreshing to fall back on these most entertaining records of men who
+(whether official or otherwise) all travelled under the same
+conditions of association with the natives of the country they
+traversed, accepting their hospitality, speaking their language,
+assuming their manners and dress, and passing with the crowd (and with
+the crowd only) as casual wayfarers. The fact of their European origin
+was almost always suspected, if not known, to certain of the better
+informed of their Asiatic hosts, but they were seldom given away. It
+was nobody's business to quarrel with England then. A hundred years
+ago the military credit of England stood high, and the irrepressible
+advance of the red line of the British India-border impressed the mind
+of the Asiatic of the highlands beyond the plains as evidence of an
+irresistible power. Russia then made no such impression. She was still
+far off, and the ties of commerce bound the Oxus Khanates to India,
+even when Russian goods were in Asiatic markets. The bankers of the
+country were Hindus--traders from the great commercial centre of
+Shikarpur. It is strange to read of this constant contact with Hindus
+in every part of Central Asia in those days, when the _hundi_ (or
+bill) of a Shikarpur banker was as good as a letter of credit in any
+bazaar as far as the Russian border. The power of England in India
+undoubtedly loomed much larger in Asiatic eyes before the disasters of
+the first Afghan war, and Englishmen of the type of Burnes, Christie,
+Pottinger, Vigne, and Broadfoot were able to carry out prolonged
+journeys through districts that are certainly not open to English
+exploration now. Even were English officers to-day free under existing
+political conditions to travel beyond the British border at all, it is
+doubtful whether any disguise would serve as a protection.
+
+The day has passed for such ventures as those of Burnes, and we must
+turn back a page or two in geographical history if we wish to
+appreciate the full value of British enterprise in exploring
+Afghanistan. Undoubtedly Burnes ranks high as a geographer and
+original pioneer. The fact that there is little or nothing left of the
+scene of his travels in 1830-32 and 1833 which has not been reduced to
+scientific mapping now, does not in any way detract from the merit of
+his early work; although it must be confessed that the perils of
+disguise prevented the use of any but the very crudest methods of
+ascertaining position and distance, and his map results would, in
+these days, be regarded as disappointing. Sind and the Punjab being
+trans-border lands, there were always useful and handy opportunities
+for teaching the enterprising subaltern of Bombay Infantry how to
+travel intelligently; with the natural result that no corps in the
+world possessed a more splendid record of geographical achievement
+than the Bombay N.I.
+
+Burnes began well in the Quartermaster-General's department, and was
+soon entrusted with political power. Full early in his career he was
+despatched with an enterprising sailor, Lieut. Wood, on a voyage up
+the Indus which was to determine the commercial possibilities of its
+navigation, and which did in fact lead to the formation of the Indus
+flotilla--some fragments of which possibly exist still. It is most
+interesting to read the able reports compiled by these young officers;
+and one might speculate idly as to the feelings with which they would
+now learn that within half a century their flotilla had come and gone,
+superseded by one of the best paying of Indian railways. Their
+feelings would probably be much the same as ours could we see fifty
+years hence a well-established electric train service between Kabul
+and Peshawar, and a double or treble line of rails linking up Russia
+with India _via_ Herat. We shall not see it. It will be left to
+another generation to write of its accomplishment.
+
+Searching the archives of the Royal Geographical Society for the story
+of Burnes the traveller (apart from the voluminous records of Burnes
+the diplomat), I came across a book with this simple inscription on
+the title-page: "To the Royal Geographical Society of London, with the
+best wishes for its prosperity by the Author." This is Vol. I. of
+Burnes' Travels. It is written in the attenuated, pointed, and
+ladylike style which was the style of the very early Victorian era. It
+hardly leads to an impression of forceful and enterprising character.
+
+On January 2, 1831, Burnes made his first plunge into the wilderness
+which lay between him and Lahore, the capital of the Sikh kingdom, and
+he entered that city on the 17th. There he was most hospitably
+received by the French officers in the service of Ranjit Singh,
+Messieurs Allard and Court, and was welcomed by the Maharaja Ranjit
+Singh, who treated him with "marked affability." Burnes was
+accompanied by Dr. Gerard, and the two travellers were taken by Ranjit
+Singh to a hunting party in the Punjab, a description of which serves
+as a forcible illustration of the changes which less than one century
+of British administration has effected in the plains of India. Never
+will its like be seen again in the Land of the Five Rivers. The
+guests' tents were made of Kashmir shawls, and were about 14 feet
+square. One tent was red and the other white, and they were connected
+by tent-walls of the same material, shaded by a _Shamiana_ supported
+on silver-mounted poles. In each tent stood a camp-bed with Kashmir
+shawl curtains. It was, as Burnes remarks, not an encampment suited to
+the Punjab jungles; and the hunting procession headed by the
+Maharaja, dressed in a tunic of green shawls, lined with fur, his
+dagger studded with the richest brilliants, and a light metal shield,
+the gift of the ex-king of Kabul (Shah Sujah, who, it will be
+remembered, also surrendered the Koh-i-Nor diamond to Ranjit Singh
+about this time), as the finishing touch to his equipment, must have
+been quite melodramatic in its effects of colour and movement. It was,
+as a matter of fact, a pig-sticking expedition, but the game fell to
+the sword rather than to the spear; such of it, that is to say, as was
+not caught in traps. The party was terminated by a hog-baiting
+exhibition, in which dogs were used to worry the captive pigs, after
+the latter were tied by one leg to a stake. When the pigs were
+sufficiently infuriated, the entertainment concluded with letting them
+loose through the camp, in order, as Ranjit said, "that men might
+praise his humanity."
+
+Such episodes, however they might beguile the journey to the Afghan
+frontier, belong to other histories than that of Afghan exploration,
+and little more need be said of Burnes' experiences before reaching
+the Afghan city of Peshawar, than that he experienced very different
+treatment _en route_ to that which made Moorcroft's journey both
+perilous and disheartening. In Peshawar the two brothers of Dost
+Mahomed Khan (Sultan Mahomed and Pir Mahomed) seem to have rivalled
+each other in courtly attentions to their guests, and Burnes was as
+much enchanted with this garden of the North-West as any traveller of
+to-day would be, provided that his visit were suitably timed. Burnes
+thus sums up his impression of Ranjit Singh: "I never quitted the
+presence of a native of Asia with such impressions as I left this man;
+without education, and without a guide, he conducts all the affairs of
+his kingdom with surpassing energy and vigour, and yet he wields his
+power with a moderation quite unprecedented in an Eastern prince."
+
+On leaving Lahore Burnes received this salutary advice from M. Court,
+packed in a French proverb, "Si tu veux vivre en paix en voyageant,
+fais en sorte de hurler comme les loups avec qui tu te trouves." And
+he set himself to conform to this text (and to the excellent sermon
+which accompanied it) with a determination which undoubtedly served as
+the foundation of his remarkable success as a traveller. It cannot be
+too often insisted that the experiences of intelligent and cultivated
+Europeans in the days of close association with the Asiatic led to an
+appreciation of native character and to an intimacy with native
+methods, which is only to be found in India now amongst missionaries
+and police officers, if it is to be found at all. But even with all
+the advantages possessed by such experiences as those of Burnes and of
+the intrepid school of Asiatic travellers of his time, it required an
+intuitive discernment almost amounting to genius to detect the motive
+springs of Eastern political action.
+
+It may be doubted (as Masson doubted) whether to the day of his death
+Burnes himself quite understood either the Afghan or the Sikh. But he
+vigorously conformed to native usages in all outward show: "We threw
+away all our European clothes and adopted without reserve the costume
+of the Asiatic. We gave away our tents, beds, and boxes, and broke our
+tables and chairs--a blanket serves to cover the saddle and to sleep
+under.... The greater portion of my now limited wardrobe found a place
+in the 'kurjin.' A single mule carried the whole of the baggage."
+Armed with letters of introduction from a holy man (Fazl Haq), who
+boasted a horde of disciples in Bokhara, and with all the graceful
+good wishes which an Afghan potentate knows how to bestow, Burnes left
+Peshawar and the two Afghan sirdars, and started for Kabul. It is
+instructive to note that he avoided the Khaibar route, which had an
+evil reputation.
+
+It would be interesting to trace Burnes' route from Peshawar to
+Bokhara, _via_ Kabul and Bamian, were it not that we are dealing with
+ground already sufficiently well discussed in these pages. Moreover,
+Burnes travelled to Kabul in company which permitted him to make
+little or no use of his opportunities for original geographical
+research. After he left Kabul the vicissitudes and difficulties that
+beset him were only such as might be experienced by any recognised
+official political mission, and he experienced none of the vexatious
+opposition and delay which was so fatal to Moorcroft. _En route_ he
+passed through Bamian, Haibak, Khulm, and Balkh; he visited Kunduz,
+and identified the tomb of Trebeck at Mazar; and by the light of a
+brilliant moon he stood by the grave of Moorcroft, which he found
+under a wall outside the city, apart from the Mussulman cemeteries.
+The three days passed at Balkh were assiduously employed in local
+investigation and the collection of coins and relics. He found coins,
+or tokens, dating from early Persian occupation to the Mogul
+dynasties, and he notes the size of the bricks and their shape, which
+he describes as oblong approaching to square; but he mentions no
+inscriptions.
+
+At this time Balkh was in the hands of the Bokhara chief, and Burnes
+was already in Bokhara territory. The journey across the plains to the
+Oxus was made on camels, Burnes being seated in a kajawa, and
+balancing his servant on the other side. It was slow, but it gave him
+the opportunity of overlooking the broad Oxus plain and noting the
+general accuracy of the description given of it by Quintus Curtius. As
+they approached the Oxus it was found necessary to employ a Turkman
+guard. Burnes does not say from what Turkman tribe his guard was
+taken, but from his description of them, their dress, equipment, and
+steeds, they were clearly men of the same Ersari tribe that was found
+fifty years later in the same neighbourhood by the Russo-Afghan
+Boundary Commission. "They rode good horses and were armed with a
+sword and long spear. They were not encumbered with shields and
+powder-horns like other Asiatics, and only a few had matchlocks....
+They never use more than a single rein, which sets off their horses to
+advantage."
+
+On the banks of the river they halted near the small village of Khwaja
+Salar. This was the same place evidently that Moorcroft visited, and
+which he described as destroyed in a raid; and it was here that Burnes
+made use of the peculiar horse-drawn ferry which has already been
+described. Fifty years later the ferry was at Kilif, and nothing was
+to be found of the "village" of Khwaja Salar. Burnes' astonishment at
+the quaint, but most efficient, method of utilizing the power of
+swimming horses to haul the great ferry-boats has been shared by every
+one who has seen them since; but he noted a fact which has not been
+observed by other travellers, viz. that _any_ horse was taken for the
+purpose, no matter whether trained or not; and he states that the
+horses were yoked to the boat by a rope fixed to the hair of the mane.
+If so, this method was improved on during the next half-century, for
+the rope is now attached to a surcingle. "One of the boats was dragged
+over by two of our jaded ponies; and the vessel which attempted to
+follow us without them was carried so far down the stream as to detain
+us a whole day on the banks till it could be brought up to the camp
+of our caravan." The river at this point is about 800 yards wide, and
+runs at the rate of three to four miles an hour. The crossing was
+effected in fifteen minutes. Burnes adds: "I see nothing to prevent
+the general adoption of this expeditious mode of crossing a river....
+I had never before seen the horse converted to such a use; and in my
+travels through India I had always considered that noble animal as a
+great encumbrance in crossing a river." And yet after two centuries of
+military training in the plains of India, we English have not yet
+arrived at this economical use of this great motive power always at
+our command in a campaign!
+
+After passing the Oxus the chief interest of Burnes' story commences.
+His life at Bokhara and his subsequent journey through the Turkman
+deserts to Persia form a record which, combined with his own physical
+capability, his energy, and his unfailing tact, good humour, and
+modesty, stamp him as one of the greatest of English travellers. His
+name has its own high place in geographical annals. We shall never
+cease to admire the traveller, whatever we may think of the diplomat.
+But once over the Oxus his story hardly concerns the gates of India.
+He was beyond them, he had passed through, and was now on the far
+landward side, still on a road to India; but it is a road over which
+it no longer concerns us to follow him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE GATES OF GHAZNI--VIGNE
+
+
+Amongst original explorers of Afghanistan place must be found for G.
+T. Vigne, who made in 1836 a venturesome, and, as it proved, a most
+successful exploration of the Gomul route from the Indus to Ghazni.
+Vigne was not a professional geographer so much as a botanist and
+geologist, and the value of his work lies chiefly in the results of
+his researches in those two branches of science, although he has left
+on record a map of his journey which quite sufficiently illustrates
+his route. He had previously visited Ladak (Little Tibet) and Kashmir,
+and had made passing acquaintance with the Chief of the Punjab, Ranjit
+Singh, in whose service foreigners found honourable employment. Masson
+was in the field at the same time as Vigne, and the success of his
+antiquarian researches in Northern Afghanistan, as well as those of
+Honigberger and other archaeologists during the time that Dost Mahomed
+ruled in Kabul, and whilst the Amir's brother, Jabar Khan, befriended
+Europeans, indicated a very different political atmosphere from that
+which has subsequently clouded the Afghan horizon, so far as European
+travellers are concerned.
+
+Vigne found no difficulty whatever in passing through Punjab territory
+to the Indus Valley near Dera Ismail Khan, where he joined a Lohani
+khafila which was making its annual journey to Ghazni with a valuable
+stock of merchandise consisting chiefly of English goods. In the
+genial month of May the khafila left Draband and took the world-old
+Gomul route through the frontier hills to the central uplands of
+Afghanistan. The heat must have been awful, and as Vigne lived the
+life of the Lohani merchants, and shared their primitive shelter from
+day to day, it is not surprising that we find him complaining gently
+of the climate. The Lohanis treated him with the utmost kindness and
+consideration from first to last; and the story of his travels is in
+pleasing contrast to the tale told by Masson about the same time, of
+his adventures on the Kandahar side. This was due chiefly, no doubt,
+to Vigne's success as a doctor. It is always the doctors who make the
+best way amongst uncivilized peoples, and India especially (or rather
+the British Raj in India) owes almost as much to doctors as to
+politicians. There is also a fellow-feeling which binds together
+travellers of all sorts and conditions when bound for the same bourne,
+taking together the same risks, experiencing the same trials and
+difficulties, and enjoying unrestrained intercourse. This kind of
+fellowship is world wide. One can trace a genial spirit of
+_camaraderie_ pervading the wanderings of Chinese pilgrims, the tracks
+of mediaeval Arab merchants, the ways of modern missionaries, or the
+ocean paths of sailors. Once on the move, with the sweet influences of
+primitive nature pervading earth and air around, we may find, even in
+these days, that the Afghan becomes quite a sociable companion, and
+that he is to be trusted so far as he gives his word.
+
+Vigne seems to have had no trouble whatever except such as arose from
+the persistent neglect of his medical instructions in cases of severe
+illness. As the khafila followed the Gomul River closely, it was, of
+course, subject to attack from the irrepressible Waziris on its flank,
+and had to pay heavy duties to the Suliman Khel Ghilzais as soon as it
+touched their country. There is little change in these respects since
+1836, except that the Gomul route has been made plain and easy through
+the first bands of frontier hills till it reaches the plateau, and the
+Waziris are under better control. The interest of the journey lies in
+that section of it which connects Domandi (the junction of the Gomul
+and the Kundar Rivers) with Ghazni. This central part of Afghanistan
+has never yet been surveyed. From the Takht-i-Suliman a few peaks have
+been indifferently fixed on the ridges which form the divide between
+the Gomul and the Ghazni drainage, but the hilly country beyond,
+stretching to the Ghazni plain, is absolutely unreconnoitred. We have
+still to appeal to Broadfoot and Vigne for geographical authority in
+these regions, although native information (but not native surveyors)
+has furnished details of a route which sufficiently corresponds with
+that of both these enterprising travellers.
+
+There is some confusion about dates in Vigne's account, but it appears
+that the khafila reached the Sarwandi Pass (which he calls
+Sir-i-koll--7200 feet) over the central divide on the 12th June, and
+thence descended into the Kattawaz country on the Ghazni side of this
+central water-parting. About this region we have no accurate
+geographical knowledge. Beyond the Sarwandi ridge, and intervening
+between it and Ghazni, is a secondary pass, called Gazdarra in our
+maps, crossing a ridge near the northern foot of which is Dihsai (the
+nearest approach to Vigne's Dshara), which was reached by Vigne on the
+16th June. Probably the two names represent the same place.
+
+Vigne's description of the central Sarwandi ridge corresponds
+generally with what we know in other parts of the nature of those long
+sweeping folds which traverse the central plateau from north-east to
+south-west, preserving more or less a direction parallel to the
+frontier. He writes of it as a broken and tumbled mass of sandstone,
+but about "Dshara" he speaks of gently undulating hills exhibiting
+small peaks of limestone and denuded patches of shingle. Between the
+Sarwandi and the Dshara ridge the plain was covered with glittering
+sand and was sweet with the scent of wild thyme. Somewhere on the
+"level-topped" Sarwandi ridge there was said to be the ruins of an
+ancient city called Zohaka, with gates of burnt brick, which Vigne did
+not see, but in his map he indicates a position for it a long way to
+the east of the ridge. It is quite probable that the ruins of more
+than one ancient city are to be found in the neighbourhood of this
+very ancient highway. Ancient as it is, however, it formed no part of
+the mediaeval commercial system of the Arabs--a system which apparently
+did not include the frontier passes into India; and I have failed to
+identify Vigne's Zohaka with any previous indications. These uplands
+to the south of Ghazni evidently partake of the general
+characteristics of the Wardak and Logar Valleys beyond them,
+intervening between Ghazni and Kabul. Vigne was enchanted with the
+prospect around him, and with the clear sweet atmosphere filled with
+the aroma of wild thyme, wormwood, and the scented willow. It has
+charmed many a weary soldier since his time.
+
+At Dshara, finding that the Lohani khafila was not going to Ghazni but
+intended to follow a straighter route to Kabul, whilst at the same
+time a very ready and profitable business was being done in the
+well-populated valleys around, Vigne set off by himself with one
+Kizzilbash guide for Ghazni. He says many hard things of the Lohanis
+for breaking their promise of escort to Ghazni, remarks which seem
+scarcely to accord with his free acknowledgments of their great
+kindness to him elsewhere. As the opinion of so observant a traveller,
+sharing the trials of the road with a band of native merchants, is
+always interesting when it concerns the company with which he was
+associated, I will quote his opinion of the Lohanis. "Taking them
+altogether, I look on the Lohanis as the most respectable of the
+Mahomedans and the most worthy of the notice and assistance of our
+countrymen. The Turkish gentleman is said to be a man of his word; he
+must be an enviable exception; but I otherwise solemnly believe that
+there is not a Mahomedan--Sunni or Shiah--between Constantinople and
+Yarkand who would hesitate to cheat a Feringi, Frank or European, and
+who would not lie and scheme and try to deceive when the temptation
+was worth his doing so," etc. This, of course, includes the Lohanis.
+
+At Ghazni, Vigne found a servant of Moorcroft's, who gave him
+interesting information about the travels of that unfortunate
+explorer; and he takes some useful notes of the present military
+position and former condition of that city before its utter
+destruction by Allah-u-din, Ghuri. He determined to depart somewhat
+from the regular route to Kabul, and diverged from the straight road
+which runs to the Sher-i-dahan in order to visit the "bund-i-sultan,"
+or reservoir, which had been constructed by Mahmud on the Ghazni River
+for the proper water-supply of the town in its palmy days. As his last
+day's travel took him to Lungar and Maidan before reaching Kabul he
+evidently made a considerable detour westward. He inspected a copper
+mine (with which he was greatly disappointed) at a place called Shibar
+_en route_. To reach Shibar he made a long day's march from Ser-ab (?
+Sar-i-ab), near the head of the Logar River. It is difficult to trace
+this part of his route by the light of the map which he borrowed from
+Honigberger. He clearly followed up the Ghazni River nearly to its
+source, and then struck across to the head of the Logar, where he
+correctly places Ser-ab, and where he found an agent of Masson's
+engaged in excavating a tope. He next visited Shibar, and finally
+marched by Lungar to Maidan and Kabul. He must, therefore, have
+crossed the divide between the Ghazni River and the Logar, but we fail
+to follow him to the Shibar copper mine.
+
+Shibar is the name of the pass which divides the Turkistan drainage
+from the Ghorband, or Kabul, system; but it would be totally
+impracticable to reach that point in a day's excursion from Ser-ab. We
+must, therefore, conclude that there is another Shibar somewhere,
+undetected by our surveyors.
+
+At Kabul he received a hospitable welcome from the Nawab Jabar Khan,
+brother of the Amir Dost Mahomed, and here he fell in with Masson. We
+need not trace his journey farther, for his subsequent footsteps only
+followed the well-worn tracks to the Punjab. To Vigne we owe a vague
+reference to a yet earlier English traveller in Afghanistan, one
+Hicks, who died and was buried near the Peshawar gate of the old city.
+The inscription on his tomb in English was--
+
+     HICKS, SON OF WILLIAM AND ELIZABETH HICKS,
+
+and Vigne adds that "by its date he must have lived a hundred and
+fifty years ago." This is the earliest record we have of an English
+traveller reaching Kabul, and it is strange that nothing is known
+about Hicks, who certainly could not have inscribed his own epitaph!
+The remarkable feature about the tomb is that such a memorial of a
+Christian burial should have remained so long unmolested in a Moslem
+country. No vestige of the tomb was discovered during the occupation
+of Kabul in 1879-80.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ENGLISH OFFICIAL EXPLORATION--BROADFOOT
+
+
+In the year 1839 and in the month of October Lieut. J. S. Broadfoot of
+the Indian Engineers made a memorable excursion across Central
+Afghanistan, intervening between Ghazni and the Indus Valley, which
+resulted in the acquisition of much information about one of the gates
+of India which is too little known. No one has followed his tracks
+since with any means of making a better reconnaissance, nor has any
+one added much to the information obtained by him. It is true that
+Vigne had been over the ground before him, but there is no comparison
+between the use which Broadfoot made of his opportunities and the
+geography which Vigne secured. Both took their lives in their hands,
+but Vigne passed along with his Lohani khafila in days preceding the
+British occupation of Afghanistan. There was no fanatical hostility
+displayed towards him. On the contrary, his medical profession was a
+recommendation which won him friends and good fellowship all along the
+line. A few years had much changed the national (if one can use such
+a word with regard to Afghanistan) feeling towards the European. From
+day to day, and almost from hour to hour, Broadfoot felt that his life
+hung on the chances of the moment. He was told by friends and enemies
+alike that he would most certainly be killed. Yet he survived to do
+good service in other fields, and to maintain the reputation of that
+most distinguished branch of the military service, the Indian
+Engineers. Broadfoot was but typical of his corps, even in the
+scientific ability displayed in his researches, the clearness and the
+soundness of the views he expresses, the determined pluck of his
+enterprise, and his knowledge of native life and character. Durand,
+North, Leach, and Broadfoot were Lieutenants of Engineers at the same
+time, and their reports and their work are all historical records.
+
+Previously to his start on the Gomul reconnaissance Broadfoot had the
+opportunity of reconnoitring much of the country to the south of
+Ghazni bordering the Kandahar-Ghazni route. He had, therefore, a very
+fair acquaintance with the people with whom he had to deal, and a
+fairly well fixed point of departure for his work. His methods were
+the time-honoured methods of many past generations of explorers. He
+took his bearings with the prismatic compass, and he reckoned his
+distance by the mean values obtained from three men pacing.
+Consequently, he could not pretend, in such circumstances as he was
+placed (being hardly able to leave his tent in spite of his disguise),
+to complete much in the way of topography; but his clear description
+of the ground he passed over, and the people he passed amongst,
+furnishes nearly all that is necessary to enable us to realise the
+practical value and the political difficulty of that important line of
+communication with Central Afghanistan.
+
+From Ghazni southwards to Pannah there is nothing but open plain. From
+near Pannah to the Sarwandi Pass, which crosses the main divide (the
+Kohnak range) between the Helmund and the Indus basins, there is much
+of the ridge and furrow formation which distinguishes the
+north-western frontier, the alignment of the ridges being from N.E. to
+S.W., but the Gazdarra Pass over the Kattawaz ridge is not formidable,
+and the road along the plain of Kattawaz is open. In Kattawaz were
+groups of villages, denoting a settled population, and as much
+cultivation as might be possible amidst a lawless, crop-destroying,
+and raiding generation of Ghilzais.
+
+"Kattasang, as viewed from Dand" (on the northern side) "appears a
+mass of undulating hills, and as bare as a desert; it is the resort in
+summer of some pastoral families of Suliman Khels." Approaching the
+main divide of Sarwandi by the Sargo Pass two forts are passed near
+Sargo, which sufficiently well illustrate the characteristics of
+perpetual feud common to clans or families of the Ghilzai fraternity.
+The forts are close to each other; one of them is known as Ghlo kala
+(thieves' fort), but they are probably both equally worthy of the
+name. The inhabitants of these forts absolutely destroyed each other
+in a family feud, so that nothing now remains. Their very waters have
+dried up.
+
+Near the Sargo, on the Ghazni side of the Sarwandi Pass, is Schintza,
+at which place Vigne also halted, and from Schintza commences the real
+ascent to the Sarwandi. The ascent, and indeed the crossing
+altogether, are described by Broadfoot as easy. Vigne does not say
+much about this. From the foot of the Sarwandi one branch of the Gomul
+takes off, and from that point to the Indus the great trade route
+practically follows the Gomul on a gradually descending grade. It is a
+stony, rough, and broken hill route, now expanding into a broad track
+of river-bed, now contracting into a cliff-bordered gully,
+occasionally leaving the river and running parallel over adjoining
+cliffs, but more often involving the worry of perpetual crossing and
+re-crossing of the stream. Here and there is an expansion (such as the
+"flower-bed," Gulkatz) into a reed-covered flat, and occasionally
+there occurs a level open border space which the blackened stones of
+previous khafilas denote as a camping-ground. Wild and dreary, carving
+its way beneath the heat-cracked and rain-seared foot-hills of
+Waziristan, strewn with stones and boulders, and disfigured by
+leprous outbreaks of streaky white efflorescence, the Gomul in the hot
+weather is not an attractive river. In flood-time it is dangerous, and
+it is in the hottest of the hot weather months that the route is
+fullest of the moving khafila crowds.
+
+In Broadfoot's time the worst part of the route was between the
+plateau and the Indus plains. This is no longer so, for a
+trade-developing and road-making Government has made the rough places
+plain, and engineered a first-class high-road thus far. And there is
+this to be noted about that section of it which still lies beyond the
+ken of the frontier officer and which as yet the surveyor has not
+mapped. Not a single camel-load in Broadfoot's khafila had to be
+shifted on account of the roughness of the route between Ghazni and
+the Indus, and not a space of any great length occurred over which
+guns might not easily pass. The drawback to the route as a high-road
+for trade has ever been the blackmailing propensities of Waziris and
+cognate tribes who flank the route on either side. Broadfoot's khafila
+lost no less than 100 men in transit; but this was at a time when the
+country was generally disturbed. In more peaceful days previously
+Vigne refers to constant losses both of men and property, but to
+nothing like so great an extent.
+
+Broadfoot still stands for our authority in all that pertains to the
+central Afghan tribes-people--chiefly the Suliman Khel clan of
+Ghilzais--who occupy the Highlands between Waziristan and Ghazni.
+Under the iron heel of the late Amir of Afghanistan no doubt much of
+their turbulent and feud-loving propensities has been repressed, and
+with its repression has followed a development of agriculture, and a
+general improvement throughout the favoured districts of Kattawaz and
+the Ghazni plain. Here the climate is exceptionally invigorating, and
+much of the sweet landscape beauty of the adjoining districts of
+Wardak and Logar (two of the loveliest valleys of Afghanistan) is
+evidently repeated. Several fine rivers traverse these uplands, the
+Jilgu and the Dwa Gomul (both rising from the central divide near to
+the sources of the Tochi) having much local reputation, and claiming a
+crude sort of reverence from the wild tribes of the plateau which is
+only accorded to the gifts of Allah. The Suliman Khel are not
+nomads--though like all Afghans they love tents--and their villages,
+clinging to wall-sides or clustering round a central tower, are well
+built and often exceedingly picturesque. The Ghilzai skill at the
+construction of these underground irrigation channels called karez is
+famous throughout Afghanistan. It is, however, the more westerly clans
+who especially excel in the development of water-supply. The Suliman
+Khel and the Nasirs take more kindly to the khafila and "povindah"
+form of life, and this Gomul route is the very backbone of their
+existence. It is a pity that we know so little about it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+FRENCH EXPLORATION--FERRIER
+
+
+Amongst modern explorers of Afghanistan who have earned distinction by
+their capacity for single-handed geographical research and ability in
+recording their experiences, the French officer M. Ferrier is one of
+the most interesting and one of the most disappointing. He is
+interesting in all that relates to the historical and political
+aspects of Afghanistan at a date when England was specially concerned
+with that country, and so far and so long as his footsteps can now be
+traced with certainty on our recent maps, he is clearly to be credited
+with powers of accurate observation and a fairly retentive memory. It
+is just where, as a geographer, he leaves the known for the unknown,
+and makes a plunge into a part of the country which no European has
+actually traversed before or since, that he becomes disappointing. He
+is the only known wanderer from the west who has traversed the uplands
+of the Firozkohi plateau from north to south; and it is just that
+region of the Upper Murghab basin which our surveyors were unable to
+reach during the progress of the Russo-Afghan Boundary mapping. The
+rapidity of the movements of the Commission when once it got to work
+precluded the possibility, with only a weak staff of topographers, of
+detailing native assistants to map every corner of that most
+interesting district, and naturally the more important section of the
+country received the first attention. But they closed round it so
+nearly as to leave but little room for pure conjecture, and it is
+quite possible to verify by local evidence the facts stated by
+Ferrier, if not actually to trace out his route and map it.
+
+M. Ferrier's career was a sufficiently remarkable one. He served with
+the French army in Africa, and was delegated with other officers to
+organise the Persian army. Here he was regarded by the Russian
+Ambassador as hostile to Russian interests, and the result was his
+return to France in 1843, where he obtained no satisfaction for his
+grievances. Deciding to take service with the Punjab Government under
+the Regency which succeeded Ranjit Singh, he left France for Bagdad
+and set out from that city in 1845 for a journey through Persia and
+Afghanistan to India.
+
+Ferrier reached Herat seven years after the siege of that place by the
+Persians, and four years after the British evacuation of Afghanistan,
+and his story of interviews with that wily politician, Yar Mahomed
+Khan, are most entertaining. It is satisfactory to note that the
+English left on the whole a good reputation behind them. His attempt
+to reach Lahore _via_ Balkh and Kabul was frustrated, and he was
+forced off the line of route connecting Balkh with Kabul at what was
+then the Afghan frontier. It was at this period of his travels that
+his records become most interesting, as he was compelled to pass
+through the Hazara country to the west of Kabul by an unknown route
+not exactly recognisable, crossing the Firozkohi plateau and
+descending through the Taimani country to Ghur. From Ghur he was sent
+back to Herat, and so ended a very remarkable tour through an
+absolutely unexplored part of Afghanistan. His final effort to reach
+the Punjab by the already well-worn roads which lead by Kandahar and
+Shikarpur was unsuccessful. Considering the risks of the journey, it
+was a surprising attempt. It was in the course of this adventure that
+he came across some of the ill-starred remnants of the disasters which
+attended the British arms during the evacuation of Afghanistan. There
+were apparently Englishmen in captivity in other parts of Afghanistan
+than the north, and the fate of those unfortunate victims to the
+extraordinary combination of political and military blundering which
+marked those eventful years is left to conjecture.
+
+Such in brief outline was the story of Afghan exploration as it
+concerned this gallant French officer, and from it we obtain some
+useful geographical and antiquarian suggestions. The province of
+Herat he regards as coincident with the Aria of the Greek historians,
+and the Aria metropolis (or Artakoana) he considers might be
+represented either by Kuhsan or by Herat itself. He expends a little
+useless argument in refuting the common Afghan tradition that any part
+of modern Herat was built by Alexander. Between the twelfth century
+and the commencement of the seventeenth Herat has been sacked and
+rebuilt at least seven times, and its previous history must have
+involved many other radical changes since the days of Alexander. It
+is, however, probable that the city has been built time after time on
+the site which it now occupies, or very near it. The vast extent of
+mounds and other evidences of ancient occupation to the north of it,
+together with its very obvious strategic importance, give this
+position a precedence in the district which could never have been
+overlooked by any conqueror; but the other cities of Greek geography,
+Sousa and Candace, are not so easy to place. Ferrier may be right in
+his suggestion that Tous (north-west of Mashad) represents the Greek
+Sousa, but he is unable to place Candace. To the west of Herat are
+three very ancient sites, Kardozan, Zindajan (which Ferrier rightly
+identified with the Arab city of Bouchinj), and Kuhsan, and Candace
+might have stood where any of them now stand.
+
+Ferrier's description of Herat and its environment fully sustains Sir
+Henry Rawlinson's opinion of him as an observant traveller. For a
+simple soldier of fortune he displays remarkable erudition, as well as
+careful observation, and there is hardly a suggestion which he makes
+about the Herat of 1845 which subsequent examination did not justify
+in 1885. It was the custom during the residence of the English Mission
+under Major d'Arcy Todd in Herat for some, at least, of the leading
+Afghan chiefs to accept invitations to dinner with the English
+officers, a custom which promoted a certain amount of mutual
+good-fellowship between Afghans and English, of which the effects had
+not worn off when Ferrier was there. When, finally, Yar Mahomed was
+convinced that Ferrier had no ulterior political motive for his visit,
+and was persuaded to let him proceed on his journey, a final dinner
+was arranged, at which Ferrier was the principal guest. It appears to
+have been a success. "At the close of the repast the guests were
+incapable of sitting upright, and at two in the morning I left these
+worthy Mussulmans rolling on the carpet! The following day I prepared
+for my departure." In 1885 manners and methods had changed for the
+better. The English officers employed on the reorganisation of the
+defences of the city were occasionally entertained at modest
+tea-parties by the Afghan military commandant, but no such rollicking
+proceedings as those recounted by Ferrier would ever have been
+countenanced; and it must be confessed that Ferrier's accounts, both
+here and elsewhere, of the social manners and customs of the Afghan
+people are a little difficult to accept without reservation. We must,
+however, make allowances for the times and the loose quality of Afghan
+government. He left Herat by the northerly route, passing Parwana, the
+Baba Pass, and the Kashan valley to Bala Murghab and Maimana.
+
+Ferrier has much to say that is interesting about the tribal
+communities through which he passed, especially about the Chahar
+Aimak, or wandering tent-living tribes, which include the Hazaras,
+Jamshidis, Taimanis, and Firozkohis. He is, I think, the first to draw
+attention to the fact that the Firozkohis are of Persian origin, a
+people whose forefathers were driven by Tamerlane into the mountains
+south of Mazanderan, and were eventually transported into the Herat
+district. They spring from several different Persian tribes, and take
+the name Firozkohi from "a village in the neighbourhood of which they
+were surrounded and captured." The origin of the name Ferozkohi has
+always been something of a geographical puzzle, and it is doubtful
+whether there was ever a city originally of that name in Afghanistan,
+although it may have been applied to the chief habitat of this
+agglomeration of Persian refugees and colonists.
+
+Ferrier's account of his progress includes no geographical data worthy
+of remark. Politically, this part of Afghan Turkistan has remained
+much the same during the last seventy years, and geographically one
+can only say that his account of the route is generally correct,
+although it indicates that it is compiled from memory. For instance,
+there is a steep watershed to be crossed between Torashekh and Mingal,
+but it is not of the nature of a "rugged mountain," nor could there
+have ever been space enough for the extent of cultivation which he
+describes in the Murghab valley. He is very much at fault in his
+description of the road from Nimlik (which he calls Meilik) to Balkh.
+The hills are on the right (not left) of the road, and are much higher
+than those previously described as rugged mountains. No water from
+these hills could possibly reach the road, for there is a canal
+between them, the overflow of which, however, might possibly swamp the
+road. Balkh hardly responds to his description of it. There is no
+mosque to the north of Balkh, nor is the citadel square.
+
+The road from Khulm to Bamian passes through Tashkurghan (which is due
+east of Mazar--not south) and Haibak, and changes very much in
+character before reaching Haibak. From Haibak to Kuram the description
+of the road is fairly correct, but no amount of research on the part
+of later surveyors has revealed the position of "Kartchoo" (which
+apparently means locally a market); nor could Ferrier possibly have
+encountered snow in July on any part of this route, even if he saw
+any. We must, however, consider the conditions under which he was
+travelling, and make allowances for the impossibility of keeping
+anything of the nature of a systematic record. At Kuram, a well-known
+point above Haibak on the road to Kabul, he reached the Uzbek
+frontier. Beyond this point--into Afghanistan--no Uzbek would venture,
+and it was impossible to proceed farther on the direct route to Kabul.
+Yielding to the pressure of friendly advice, he made a retrograde
+detour to Saripul, through districts occupied by Hazaras, and
+"Kartchoo" was but a nomadic camp that he encountered during his first
+day out from Kuram. Clearly he was making for the Yusuf Darra route to
+Saripul; and his next camp, Dehao, marks the river. It may possibly be
+the point marked Dehi on modern maps. At Saripul he was not only well
+received by the Uzbek Governor, Mahomed Khan, but the extraordinary
+influence which this man possessed with the Hazaras, Firozkohis, and
+other Aimak tribes of northern Afghanistan enabled Ferrier to procure
+food and horses at irregular stages which carried him to Ghur in the
+Taimani land.
+
+It is this part of Ferrier's journey which is so tantalizing and so
+difficult to follow. He must have travelled both far and fast. Leaving
+Saripul on July 11, he rode "ten parasangs," over country very varied
+in character, to Boodhi. Now this country has been surveyed, and there
+can be no reasonable doubt about the route he took southwards. But no
+such place as Boodhi has ever been identified, nor have the
+remarkable sculptures which were observed _en route_, fashioned on an
+"enormous block of rock," been found again, although careful inquiries
+were made about them. They may, of course, have been missed, and
+information may have been purposely withheld, for geographical surveys
+do not permit of lengthy halts for inquiry on any line of route.
+Ferrier's description of them is so full of detail that it is
+difficult to believe that it is imaginary. He mentions that on the
+plain on which Boodhi stood, "two parasangs to the right," there were
+the "ruins of a large town," which might very possibly be the ruins
+identified by Imam Sharif (a surveyor of the Afghan Boundary
+Commission), and which would fix the position of "Boodhi" somewhere
+near Belchirag on the main route southward to Ghur. Belchirag is about
+55 miles from Saripul. The next day's ride must have carried him into
+the valley of the Upper Murghab on the Firozkohi plateau, crossing the
+Band-i-Turkistan _en route_, and it was here that he met with such a
+remarkable welcome at the fortress of Dev Hissar.
+
+Ferrier describes the valley of the Upper Murghab in terms of rapture
+which appear to be a trifle extravagant to those who know that
+country. No systematic survey of it, however, has ever been possible,
+and to this day the position of Dev Hissar is a matter of conjecture,
+and the charming manners of its inhabitants (so unlike the ordinary
+rough hospitality of the men and the unobtrusive character of the
+women of the Firozkohi Aimak) are experiences such as our surveyors
+sighed for in vain! As a mere guess, I should be inclined to place Dev
+Hissar near Kila Gaohar, or to identify it with that fort. At any
+rate, I prefer this solution of the puzzle to the suggestion that Dev
+Hissar and its delightful inhabitants, like the previous sculptures,
+were but an effort of imagination on the part of this volatile and
+fascinating Frenchman.
+
+There is always an element of suspicion as to the value of Ferrier's
+information when he deals with the feminine side of Hazara human
+nature. For instance, he asserts that the Hazara women fight in their
+tribal battles side by side with their husbands. This is a feature in
+their character for independence which the Hazara men absolutely deny,
+and it is hardly necessary to add that no confirmation could be
+obtained anywhere of the remarkable familiarity with which the ladies
+of Hissar are said by Ferrier customarily to treat their guests.
+
+The next long day's ride terminated at Singlak (another unknown
+place), which was found deserted owing to a feud between the Hazaras
+and Firozkohis. It was evidently within the Murghab basin and short of
+the crest of the line of watershed bordering the Hari Rud valley on
+the north, for the following day Ferrier crossed these hills, and the
+Hari Rud valley beneath them (avoiding Daolatyar), at a point which he
+fixes as "six parasangs S.W. of Sheherek." Again it is impossible to
+locate the position. Kila Safarak is at the head of the Hari Rud, and
+Kila Shaharak is in another valley (that of the Tagao Ishlan), so that
+it will perhaps be safe to assume that it was nowhere near either of
+these places, but at a point some 10 miles west of Daolatyar, which
+marks the regular route for Ghur from the north.
+
+Ferrier's description of this part of his journey is vague and
+unsatisfactory. No such place as Kohistani, "situated on a high plain
+in the midst of the Siah Koh," is known any more than is Singlak. The
+divide, or ridge, which he crossed in passing from the Murghab valley
+to the narrow trough of the Hari Rud is lower than the hills on the
+south of the river. He could not possibly have crossed snow nor
+overlooked the landscape to Saripul. It is doubtful if Chalapdalan,
+the mountain which impressed him so mightily, is visible from any part
+of the broken watershed north of the Hari Rud. Chalapdalan is only
+13,600 feet high, and there would have been no snow on it in July. As
+we proceed farther we fail to identify Ferrier's Tingelab River,
+unless he means the Ab-i-lal. The Hari Rud does not flow through
+Shaharak, and no one has found a village called Jaor in the Hari Rud
+valley. Continuing to cross the Band-i-Baian (which he calls Siah
+Koh) from Kohistani Baba, a very long day's ride brought him to
+Deria-dereh, also called "Dereh Mustapha Khan," which was evidently a
+place of importance and the headquarters of a powerful section of
+either Hazaras or Taimanis under a Chief, Mustapha Khan. Here, in a
+small oblong valley entirely closed by mountains, was a little lake of
+azure colour and transparent clearness which lay like a vast gem
+embedded in surrounding verdure ... "around which were somewhat
+irregularly pitched a number of Taimani tents, separated from each
+other by little patches of cultivation and gardens enclosed by stone
+walls breast high.... The luxuriance of the vegetation in this valley
+might compare with any that I had ever seen in Europe. On the summits
+of the surrounding mountains were several ruins, etc. etc." Ash and
+oak trees were there. Fishermen were dragging the lake, women were
+leading flocks to the water, and young girls sat outside the tents
+weaving bereks (barak, or camel-hair cloth), and contentment was
+depicted on every face.
+
+From Deria-dereh another long day's ride brought him to Zirni, which
+he describes as the ancient capital of Ghur. From the Band-i-Baian (or
+Koh Siah, as he calls it) to Zirni is at least 100 miles by the very
+straightest road, and that would pass by Taiwara. It is clear that he
+did not take that road, or he could hardly have ignored so important a
+position as Taiwara. If he made a detour eastward he would pass
+through Hazara country--very mountainous, very high and difficult,
+and the length of the two days' journey would be nearer 150 miles than
+100. To the first day's journey (as far as Deria-dereh) he gives ten
+hours on horseback, which in that country might represent 60 miles;
+but no such place as he describes, no lake with Arcadian surroundings,
+has been either seen or heard of by subsequent surveyors within the
+recognized limits of Taimani country. If it exists at all, it is to
+the east of the great watershed from which spring the Ghur River and
+the Farah Rud, hidden within the spurs of the Hazara mountains. This
+is just possible, for this wild and weatherbeaten country has not been
+so fully reconnoitred as that farther west; but it makes Ferrier's
+journey extraordinary for the distances covered, and fully accounts
+for the fact that he has preserved so little detail of this eventful
+ride that, practically, there is nothing of geographical interest to
+be learnt from it.
+
+Ferrier's description of the ruins which are to be found in the
+neighbourhood of Zirni and Taiwara, especially his reference to a
+"paved" road leading towards Ghazni, is very interesting. He is fully
+impressed with the beauty of the surrounding country, and what he has
+to say about this centre of an historical Afghan kingdom has been more
+or less confirmed by subsequent explorers. Only the "Ghebers" have
+disappeared; and the magnificent altitude of the "Chalap Dalan"
+mountain, described by him as one of the "highest in the world," has
+been reduced to comparatively humble proportions. Its isolated
+position, however, undoubtedly entitles it to rank as a remarkable
+geographical feature.
+
+At Zirni Ferrier found that his further progress towards Kandahar was
+arrested, and from that point, to his bitter disgust, he was compelled
+to return to Herat. From Zirni to Herat was, in his day, an unmapped
+region, and he is the first European to give us even a glimpse of that
+once well-trodden highway. His conjectures about the origin of the
+Aimak tribes which people Central Afghanistan are worthy of study, as
+they are based on original inquiry from the people themselves; but it
+is very clear that either time has modified the manners of these
+people, or that popular sources of information are not always to be
+trusted. He repeats the story of the fighting propensities of Hazara
+women when dealing with the Taimanis, and adds, as regards the latter,
+that "a girl does not marry until she has performed some feat of
+arms." It may be that "feats of arms" are not so easy of achievement
+in these days, but it is certain that such an inducement to marry
+would fail to be effective now. It might even prove detrimental to a
+girl's chances.
+
+Once again we can only regard with astonishment Ferrier's record of a
+ride from "Tarsi" (Parsi) to Herat, at least 90 miles, in one night. A
+district Chief told Captain (now Colonel) the Hon. M. G. Talbot, who
+conducted the surveys of the country in 1883, that "a good Taimani on
+a good horse" might accomplish the feat, but that nobody else could.
+Ferrier, with his considerable escort, seemed to have found no
+difficulty, but undoubtedly he was in excellent training. His general
+description of the country that he passed through accords with the
+pace at which he swept through it, and nothing is to be gained by
+criticising his hasty observations. At Herat he was fortunate in
+securing the consent of Yar Mahomed Khan to his project for reaching
+the Punjab _via_ Kandahar and Kabul; and with letters from that wily
+potentate to the Amir Dost Mahomed Khan and his son-in-law Mahomed
+Akbar Khan this "Lord of the Kingdom of France, General Ferrier" set
+out on another attempt to reach India. In this he was unsuccessful,
+and his path was a thorny one. He travelled by the road which had been
+adopted as the post-road between Herat and Kandahar, during the
+residence of the English Mission at Herat--a route which, leaving
+Farah to the west, approaches Kandahar by Washir and Girishk, and
+which is still undoubtedly the most direct road between the two
+capitals. But the particularly truculent character of the Durani
+Afghan tribes of Western Afghanistan rendered this journey most
+dangerous for a single European moving without an armed escort, and he
+was robbed and maltreated with fiendish persistency. It was a
+well-known and much-trodden old road, but it has always been, and it
+is still, about the worst road in all Afghanistan for the fanatical
+unpleasantness of its Achakzai and Nurzai environment.
+
+After leaving Washir Ferrier was imprisoned at Mahmudabad, and again
+when he reached Girishk, and the story of the treatment he received at
+both places says much for the natural soundness of his constitution.
+Luckily he fell in with a friendly Munshi who had been in English
+service, who, whilst warning Ferrier that he might consider the
+position of his head on his shoulders as "wonderfully shaky," did a
+good deal to dissipate the notion that he was an English spy, and
+helped him through what was indeed a very tight place. It was at this
+point of his journey that Ferrier heard of an English prisoner in
+Zamindawar,--a traveller with "green eyes and red hair,"--and the fact
+that he actually received a note from this man (which he could not
+read as it was written in English) seems to confirm that fact. He
+could do nothing to help him, and no one knows what may have been the
+ultimate fate of this unfortunate captive.
+
+Ferrier is naturally indignant with Sir Alexander Burnes for
+describing the Afghans as "a sober, simple steady people" (Burnes'
+_Travels in Bokhara_, vol. i. pp. 143, 144). How Burnes could ever
+have arrived at such an extraordinary estimate of Afghan character is
+hard to imagine, and it says little for those perceptive faculties for
+which Masson has such contempt. But it not inaptly points the great
+contrast that does really exist between the Kabuli and the Kandahari
+to this day. When the English officers of the Afghan Boundary
+Commission in 1883 were occupied in putting Herat into a state of
+defence, their personal escort was carefully chosen from soldiers of
+the northern province, who, by no means either "sober or simple," were
+at any rate far less fanatical and truculent than the men of the west,
+and they were, on the whole, a pleasant and friendly contingent to
+deal with.
+
+At Girishk, and subsequently, Ferrier has certain geographical facts
+of interest to record. Some of them still want verification, but they
+are valuable indications. He notes the immense ruins and mounds on
+both sides the Helmund at Girishk. He was in confinement at Girishk
+for eight days, where he suffered much from "the vermin which I could
+not prevent from getting into my clothes, and the rattling of my
+inside from the scantiness of my daily ration." However, his trials
+came to an end at last, and he left Girishk "with a heart full of
+hatred for its inhabitants and a lively joy at his departure," fording
+the Helmund at some little distance from the town. He remarks on the
+vast ruins at Kushk-i-Nakhud, where there is a huge artificial mound.
+A similar one exists at Sangusar, about 3 miles south-east of
+Kushk-i-Nakhud. At Kandahar the final result of a short residence that
+was certainly full of lively incident, and an interview with the
+Governor Kohendil Khan (brother of the Amir Dost Mahomed), was a
+return to Girishk. This must have been sickening; but it resulted in a
+series of excursions into Baluch territory which are not
+uninstructive. The ill-treatment (amounting to the actual infliction
+of torture) which Ferrier endured at the hands of the Girishk Governor
+(Sadik Khan, a son of Kohendil Khan) on this second visit to Girishk,
+was even worse than the first, and it was only by signing away his
+veracity and giving a false certificate of friendship with the brute
+that he finally got free again. He was to follow the Helmund to Lash
+Jowain in Seistan, but the attempt was frustrated by a local
+disturbance at Binadur, on the Helmund. So far, however, this abortive
+excursion was of certain geographical interest as covering new ground.
+The places mentioned by Ferrier _en route_ are all still in existence,
+but he gives no detailed account of them.
+
+Once more a start was made from Girishk, and this time our explorer
+succeeded in reaching Farah by the direct route through Washir. It was
+in the month of October, and the fiery heat of the Bakwa plain was
+sufficiently trying even to this case-hardened Frenchman. About Farah
+he has much to say that still requires confirmation. Of the exceeding
+antiquity of this place there is ample evidence; but no one since
+Ferrier has identified the site of the second and later town of Farah
+"an hour" farther north or "half an hour" from the Farah Rud (river),
+where bricks were seen "three feet long and four inches thick," with
+inscriptions on them in cuneiform character, amidst the ruins. This
+town was abandoned in favour of the older (and present) site when Shah
+Abbas the Great besieged and destroyed it, but there can be no doubt
+that the bricks seen by Ferrier must have possessed an origin long
+anterior to the town, which only dates from the time of Chenghiz Khan.
+The existence of such evidence of the ancient and long-continued
+connection between Assyria and Western Afghanistan would be
+exceedingly interesting were it confirmed by modern observation. Farah
+is by all accounts a most remarkable town, and it undoubtedly contains
+secrets of the past which for interest could only be surpassed by
+those of Balkh. At Farah Ferrier was lodged in a "hole over the north
+gate of the town, open to the violent winds of Seistan, which rushed
+in at eight enormous holes, through which also came the rays of the
+sun." Here wasps, scorpions, and mice were his companions, and it must
+be admitted that Ferrier's account of the horrors of Farah residence
+have been more or less confirmed by all subsequent travellers to
+Seistan. But he finally succeeded in obtaining, through the not
+inhospitable governor, the necessary permission from Yar Mahomed Khan
+of Herat (whose policy in his dealings with Ferrier it is quite
+impossible to decipher) to pass on to Shikarpur and Sind; and the
+permission is couched in such pious and affectionate terms, that the
+"very noble, very exalted, the companion of honour, of fortune, and of
+happiness, my kind friend, General Ferrier," really thought there was
+a chance of escaping from his clutches. He was, by the way, invited
+back again to Herat, but he was told that he might please himself.
+
+Here follows a most interesting exploration into a stretch of
+territory then utterly unreconnoitred and unknown, and it is
+unfortunate that this most trying route through the flats and wastes
+which stretch away eastwards of the Helmund lagoons should still be
+but sketchily indicated in our maps. It is, however, from Farah to
+Khash (where the Khash Rud is crossed), and from Khash to the Helmund,
+but a track through a straight region of desolation and heat,
+relieved, however (like the desert region to the south of the
+Helmund), by strips of occasional tamarisk vegetation, where grass is
+to be found in the spring and nomads collect with their flocks.
+Watering-places might be developed here by digging wells, and the
+route rendered practicable across the Dasht-i-Margo as it has been
+between Nushki and Seistan, but when Ferrier crossed it it was a
+dangerous route to attempt on tired and ill-fed horses. The existence
+of troops of wild asses was sufficient evidence of its life-supporting
+capabilities if properly developed. Ferrier struck the Helmund about
+Khan Nashin. Here a most ill-timed and ill-advised fight with a Baluch
+clan ended in a disastrous flight of the whole party down the Helmund
+to Rudbar, and it would perhaps be unkind to criticise too closely the
+heroics of this part of Ferrier's story.
+
+At Rudbar Ferrier again noticed bricks a yard square in an old dyke,
+whilst hiding. Rudbar was well known to the Arab geographers, but this
+record of Ferrier's carries it back (and with it the course of the
+Helmund) to very ancient times indeed. Continuing to follow the river,
+they passed Kala-i-Fath and reached "Poolka"--a place which no longer
+exists under that name. This is all surveyed country; but no
+investigator since Ferrier has observed the same ancient bricks at
+Kala-i-Fath which Ferrier noted there as at Farah and Rudbar. There is
+every probability, however, of their existence. All this part of the
+Helmund valley abounds in antiquities which are as old as Asiatic
+civilization, but nothing short of systematic antiquarian exploration
+will lead to further discoveries of any value.
+
+Ferrier was now in Seistan, and we may pass over his record of
+interesting observations on the wealth of antiquarian remains which
+surrounded him. It is enough to point out that he was one of the first
+to call public attention to them from the point of view of actual
+contact. It must be accepted as much to the credit of Ferrier's
+narrative that the latest surveys of Seistan (_i.e._ those completed
+during the work of the Commission under Sir H. MacMahon in 1903-5)
+entirely support the account given in his _Caravan Journeys_ as he
+wandered through that historic land. By the light of the older maps,
+completed during the Afghan Boundary Commission some twenty years
+previously, it would have been difficult to have traced his steps. We
+know now that the lake of Seistan should, with all due regard to its
+extraordinary capacity for expansion and contraction, be represented
+as in MacMahon's map, extending southwards to a level with the great
+bend of the Helmund. Ferrier's narrative very conclusively illustrates
+this position of it, and proves that such an expansion must be
+regarded as normal. We can no longer accurately locate the positions
+of Pulaki and Galjin, but from his own statements it seems more than
+probable that the first place is already sand-buried. They were not
+far north of Kala-i-Fath. From there he went northward to Jahanabad,
+and north-west (not south-west) to Jalalabad. It was at Jahanabad that
+he nearly fell into the hands of Ali Khan, the chief of Chakhansur
+(Sheikh Nassoor of Ferrier), the scoundrel who had previously murdered
+Dr. Forbes and hung his body up to be carefully watered and watched
+till it fell to pieces in gold ducats. There was an unfortunate
+superstition current in Baluchistan to the effect that this was the
+normal end of European existence! Luckily it has passed away. Escaping
+such a calamity, he turned the lake at its southern extremity,
+passing through Sekoha, and travelled up its western banks till, after
+crossing the Harat Rud, he reached Lash Jowain. From here to Farah and
+from Farah once again to Herat, his road was made straight for him,
+and we need only note what he has to say about the extent of the ruins
+near Sabzawar to be convinced that here was the mediaeval provincial
+capital of Parwana. At Herat he was enabled to do what would have
+saved him a most adventurous journey (and lost us the pleasure of
+recording his work as that of a notable explorer of Afghanistan),
+_i.e._ take the straight road back to Teheran from whence he came.
+
+With this we may bid adieu to Ferrier, but it is only fair to do tardy
+justice to his remarkable work. I confess that after the regions of
+Central Afghanistan had been fairly well reconnoitred by the surveyors
+of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission, considerable doubt remained
+in my mind as to the veracity of Ferrier's statements. I still think
+he was imposed upon now and then by what he _heard_, but I have little
+doubt that he adhered on the whole (and the conditions under which he
+travelled must be remembered) to a truthful description of what he
+_saw_. It is true that there still remains wanting an explanation of
+his experiences at that restful island in the sea of difficulty and
+danger which surrounded him--Dev Hissar--but I have already pointed
+out that it may exist beyond the limits of actual subsequent
+observation; and as regards the stupendous bricks with cuneiform
+inscription, it can only be said that their existence in the
+localities which he mentions has been rendered so probable by recent
+investigation, that nothing short of serious and systematic
+excavation, conducted in the spirit which animated the discovery of
+Nineveh, will finally disprove this most interesting evidence of the
+extreme antiquity of the cities of Afghanistan, and their relation to
+the cities of Mesopotamia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+SUMMARY
+
+
+The close of the Afghan war of 1839-40 left a great deal to be desired
+in the matter of practical geography. It was not the men but the
+methods that were wanting. The commencement of the second and last
+Afghan war in 1878 saw the initiation of a system of field survey of a
+practical geographical nature, which combined the accuracy of
+mathematical deduction with the rapidity of plane table topography. It
+was the perfecting of the smaller class of triangulating instruments
+that made this system possible, quite as much as the unique
+opportunity afforded to a survey department in such a country as India
+for training topographers. It worked well from the very first, and
+wherever a force could march or a political mission be launched into
+such a region of open hill and valley as the Indian trans-frontier,
+there could the surveyors hold their own (no matter what the nature of
+the movement might be) and make a "square" survey in fairly accurate
+detail, with the certainty that it would take its final place
+without squeezing or distortion in the general map of Asia. This was
+of course very different from the plodding traverse work of former
+days, and it rapidly placed quite a new complexion on our
+trans-frontier maps. Since then regular systematic surveys in
+extension of those of India have been carried far afield, and it may
+safely be said now that no country in the world is better provided
+with military maps of its frontiers than India. In Baluchistan,
+indeed, there is little left to the imagination. A country which forty
+years ago was an ugly blank in our maps, with a doubtful locality
+indicated here and there, is now almost as well surveyed as Scotland.
+Afghanistan, however, is beyond our line, "out of bounds," and the
+result is that there are serious gaps in our map knowledge of the
+country of the Amir, gaps which there seems little probability of
+investigating under the present closure of the frontier to explorers.
+
+  [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF HINDU KUSH PASSES]
+
+By far the most important of these gaps are the uplands of Badakshan,
+stretching from the Oxus plains to the Hindu Kush. The plains of
+Balkh, as far east as Khulm and Tashkurghan, from whence the high-road
+leads to Haibak, Bamian, and the Hindu Kush passes, are fairly well
+mapped. The Oxus, to the north of Balkh, is well known, and the fords
+and passages of that river have been reckoned up with fair accuracy.
+From time immemorial every horde of Skythic origin, Nagas, Sakas, or
+Jatas, must have passed these fords from the hills and valleys of the
+Central Asian divide on their way to India. The Oxus fords have seen
+men in millions making south for the valleys of Badakshan and the
+Golden Gates of Central Asiatic ideal which lay yet farther south
+beyond the grim line of Hindu Kush. Balkh (the city) must have stood
+like a rock in the human tide which flowed from north to south. From
+the west, too, from Asia Minor and the Persian provinces, as well as
+from the Caspian steppes to the north-west, must have come many a
+weary band of tear-stained captives, transported across half a
+continent by their conquerors to colonize, build cities, and gradually
+amalgamate with the indigenous people, and so to disappear from
+history. From the west came Parthians, Medes, Assyrians, and Greeks,
+who did not altogether disappear. But no such human tide ever flowed
+into Badakshan from the east nor yet from the south. To the east are
+the barrier heights of the Pamirs. No crowd of fugitives or captives
+ever faced those bleak, inhospitable, wind-torn valleys that we know
+of. Nor can we find any trace of emigration from India. Yet routes
+were known across the Pamirs, and in due time, as we have seen, small
+parties of pilgrims from China made use of these routes, seeking for
+religious truth in Balkh when, as a Buddhist centre, Balkh was in
+direct connection with the Buddhist cities of Eastern Turkistan. And
+Buddhism itself, when it left India, went northward and flourished
+exceedingly in those same cities of the sandy plain, where the people
+talked and wrote a language of India for centuries after the birth of
+Christ. Balkh, however, never stayed the tide which overlapped it and,
+passing on, lost itself in the valleys under the Hindu Kush, or else,
+surmounting that range, streamed over into the Kabul basin. Whether
+the tide set in from north or west, the overflow was forced by purely
+geographical conditions into precisely the same channels, and in many
+cases it drifted into the hills and stayed there. What we should
+expect to find in Balkh, then (whenever Dr. Stein can get there), are
+records in brick, records in writing, and records in coin, of nearly
+every great Asiatic movement which has influenced the destinies of
+India from the days of Assyria to those of Mohamed. What a history to
+unfold!
+
+Of the Badakshan uplands south and south-east of Balkh, we have but
+most unsatisfying geographical record. In the days preceding the first
+Afghan war when Burnes, Moorcroft, Lord, and Wood were in the field,
+we certainly acquired much useful information which is still all that
+we have for scientific reference. Moorcroft, as we have seen, made
+several hurried journeys between Balkh and Kunduz under most perilous
+conditions, when endeavouring to escape from the clutches of the
+border chief, Murad Beg. But Moorcroft's opportunities of scientific
+observation were small, and his means of ascertaining his
+geographical position were crude, and we gain little or nothing from
+his thrilling story of adventure, beyond a general description of a
+desolate region of swamp and upland which forms the main features of
+Northern Badakshan.
+
+Lord and Wood, who followed Moorcroft at no great interval, and who
+were also in direct personal touch with Murad Beg under much the same
+political circumstances, have furnished much more useful information
+of the routes and passes between Haibak and Kunduz, and given us a
+very fair idea of the physical configuration of that desolate
+district. Lord's memoir on the _Uzbek State of Kundooz_ (published at
+Simla in July 1838) is indeed the best, if not the only, authoritative
+document concerning the history and policy of Badakshan, giving us a
+fair idea of the conditions under which Murad Beg established and
+consolidated his position as the paramount chief of that country, and
+the guardian of the great commercial route between Kabul and Bokhara;
+but there is little geographical information in the memoir. The four
+fortified towns of the Kunduz state, Kunduz, Rustak, Talikhan, and
+Hazrat Imam, are described rather as depositories for plunder than as
+positions of any great importance, and the real strength of Murad
+Beg's military force lay in the quality of his hordes of irregular
+Uzbek horsemen and the extraordinary hardiness and endurance of the
+Kataghani horses. So highly esteemed is this particular breed that the
+late Amir of Afghanistan would permit of no export of horses from
+Kataghan, reserving them especially for the purpose of mounting his
+own cavalry.
+
+We learn incidentally of the waste and desolation caused by the
+poisonous climate of the fens and marshes between Hazrat Imam and
+Kunduin, to which Murad Beg had transported 20,000 Badakshani families
+for purposes of colonization, and where Dr. Lord was told that barely
+1000 individuals had survived; but Wood tells us much more than this
+in his charming book on the Oxus. From the point where he left the
+main road from Kabul to Bokhara (a little below Kuram north of the
+Saighan valley) till he reached Kunduz, he was passing over country
+and by-ways which have never been revisited by any European
+geographer. He tells us that "the plain between the streams that water
+Kunduz and Kuram has a wavy surface, and though unsuited to
+agriculture has an excellent pasturage. The only village on the road
+is Hazrat Baba Kamur. On the eastern side the plain is supported by a
+ridge of hills sloping down from the mountains to the south. We
+crossed it by the pass of Archa (so called from the fir trees which
+cover its crest), from the top of which we had a noble view of the
+snowy mountains to the east, the outliers of Hindu Kush. Next day we
+forded the river of Kunduz, and continuing to journey along its right
+bank, through the swampy district of Baghlan and Aliabad, reached the
+capital of Murad Beg on Monday the 4th Dec. (1837)." The story of
+Wood's travels in Badakshan has already been told; the moon-lit march
+from Kunduz through the dense jungle grass and swamp, often knee-deep
+in water; the gradual rise to higher ground above; the floating vapour
+screen that hovered over the fens; Khanabad and its quaint array of
+colleges and students, and the Koh Umber mountain, isolated and
+conspicuous, dividing the plains of Kunduz and Talikhan--all these are
+features which will indicate the general character of that part of
+Badakshan but leave us no fixed and determined position. The Koh Umber
+in particular must be a remarkable topographical landmark, as it
+towers 2500 feet above the surrounding plain with a snow-covered
+summit. Wood says of it that it is central to the districts of
+Talikhan, Kunduz, and Hazrat Imam, and its pasturage is common to the
+flocks of all three plains. But it is an undetermined geographical
+feature, and still remains in its solitary grandeur, a position to be
+won by future explorers.
+
+From Khanabad to Talikhan, Faizabad, and Jirm (which, it will be
+recollected, was once the capital of Badakshan--probably the
+"Badakshan" of Arab geography), we have the description of a
+mountainous country supporting the conjectural topography of our maps,
+which indicate that this route borders and occasionally crosses a
+series of gigantic spurs or offshoots of a central range (which Wood
+calls the Khoja) which must itself be a north-easterly arm of the
+Hindu Kush, taking off from the latter range somewhere near the
+Khawak Pass. Here, then, is one of the most important blanks in the
+map of our frontier. Inconceivably rugged and difficult of access, it
+seems probable that it is more accessible from Badakshan than from the
+south. We know from Wood's account of the extraordinary difficulty
+that beset his efforts to reach the lapis-lazuli mines above Jirm in
+the Kokcha River something of the general nature of these northern
+valleys and defiles of Kafiristan reaching down to lower Badakshan. It
+would, indeed, be a splendid geographical feat to fix the position and
+illustrate the topography of this roughest section of Asia.
+
+Between the Khawak Pass of the Hindu Kush which leads to Andarab, and
+the Mandal, or Minjan, passes, some 70 miles to the east, we have
+never solved the problem of the Hindu Kush divide. What lies behind
+Wood's Khoja range, between it and the main divide? We have the valley
+called Anjuman, which is believed to lead as directly to Jirm from the
+Khawak Pass as Andarab does to Kunduz. It is an important feature in
+Hindu Kush topography, but we know nothing of it. We may, however,
+safely conjecture that the Minjan River, reached by Sir George
+Robertson in one of his gallant attempts to explore Kafiristan, is the
+upper Kokcha flowing past the lapis-lazuli mines to Jirm. But where
+does it rise? And where on the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush do
+the small affluents of the Alingar and Alishang have their beginning?
+These are the hidden secrets of Kafiristan. It is here that those
+turbulent people (who, by the way, seem to exhibit the same
+characteristics from whatever valley of Kafiristan they come, and to
+be much more homogeneous than is usually supposed) hide themselves in
+their upland villages, amidst their magnificent woods and forests,
+untroubled by either Afghan or European visitors. Here they live their
+primitive lives, enlivened with quaint ceremonies and a heathenism
+equally reminiscent of the mythology of Greece, the ritual of
+Zoroaster, and the beliefs of the Hindu. Who will unravel the secrets
+of this inhabited outland, which appears at present to be more
+impracticable to the explorer than either of the poles? Yule, in his
+preface to the last edition of Wood's _Oxus_, remarks that Colonel
+Walker, the late Surveyor-General of India (and one of the greatest of
+Asiatic geographers) repeatedly expressed his opinion that there is no
+well-defined range where the Hindu Kush is represented in our maps,
+and he adds that such an expression of opinion can only apply to that
+part of the Hindu Kush which lies east of the Khawak Pass. Sir Henry
+Yule refers to Wood's incidental notices of the mountains which he saw
+towering to the south of him, "rising to a vast height and bearing far
+below their summits the snow of ages," in refutation of such an
+opinion; and he further quotes the "havildar's" (native surveyor)
+report of the Nuksan and Dorah passes in confirmation of Wood.
+
+Since Yule wrote, Woodthorpe's surveys of the Nuksan and Dorah passes
+during the Lockhart mission leave little doubt as to the nature of the
+Hindu Kush as far west as those passes, but it is precisely between
+those passes and the Khawak, along the backbone of Kafiristan, that we
+have yet to learn the actual facts of mountain conformation. And here
+possibly there may be something in Walker's suggestion. The mountains
+to which Wood looked up from Talikhan or Kishm, towering to the south
+of him and covered with perpetual snow, certainly formed no part of
+the main Hindu Kush divide. Between them and the Hindu Kush is either
+the deep valley of Anjuman, or more probably the upper drainage of the
+Minjan, which, rising not far east of Khawak, repeats the almost
+universal Himalayan feature of a long, lateral, ditch-like valley in
+continuation of the Andarab depression, marking the base of the
+connecting link in the primeval fold formed by the Hindu Kush east and
+west of it. We should expect to find the Kafiristan mountain
+conformation to be an integral part of the now recognised Himalayan
+system of parallel mountain folds, with deep lateral valleys fed by a
+transverse drainage. The long valley of the Alingar will prove to be
+another such parallel depression, and we shall find when the map is
+finished that the dominating structural feature of all this wild
+hinterland of mountains is the north-east to south-west trend of
+mountain and valley which marks the Kunar (or Chitral) valley on the
+one side and the Panjshir on the other. The reason why it is more
+probable that the Minjan River takes the direct drainage of the
+northern slopes of this Kafiristan backbone into a lateral trough than
+that the Anjuman spreads its head into a fan, is that Sir George
+Robertson found the Minjan, below the pass of Mandal, to be a far more
+considerable river than its assumed origin in the official maps would
+make it. He accordingly makes a deep indentation in the Hindu Kush
+divide (on the map which illustrates his captivating book, _The Kafirs
+of the Hindu Kush_), bringing it down southward nearly half a degree
+to an acute angle, so as to afford room for the Minjan to rise and
+follow a course in direct line with its northerly run (as the Kokcha)
+in Badakshan. This is a serious disturbance of the laws which govern
+the structure of Asiatic mountain systems, as now recognized, and it
+is indeed far more likely that the Minjan (Kokcha) follows those laws
+which have placed the Andarab and the Panjshir (or for that matter the
+Indus and the Brahmaputra) in their parallel mountain troughs, than
+that the primeval fold of the Hindu Kush has become disjointed and
+indented by some agency which it would be impossible to explain. Who
+is going to complete the map and solve the question?
+
+We are still very far from possessing a satisfactory geographical
+knowledge of even the more accessible districts of Badakshan. We still
+depend on Wood for the best that we know of the route between
+Faizabad and Zebak; and of those Eastern mountains which border the
+Oxus as it bends northward to Kila Khum we know positively nothing at
+all.
+
+But beyond all contention the hidden jewels to be acquired by
+scientific research in Badakshan are archaeological and antiquarian
+rather than geographical. Now that Nineveh and Babylon have yielded up
+their secrets, there is no such field out of Egypt for the antiquarian
+and his spade as the plains of Balkh. But enough has been said of what
+may be hidden beneath the unsightly bazaars and crumbling ruins of
+modern Balkh. Whilst Badakshan literally teems with opportunities for
+investigation, certain features of ancient Baktria appear to be
+especially associated with certain sites; such, for instance, as the
+sites of Semenjan (Haibak), Baghlan, Andarab, and particularly the
+junction of the rivers at Kasan. That Andarab (Ariaspa) held the
+capital of the Greek colonies there can be as little doubt as that
+Haibak and its neighbourhood formed the great Buddhist centre between
+Balkh and Kabul. Again, who is going to make friends with the Amir of
+Afghanistan and try his luck? It must be a foreigner, for no
+Englishman would be permitted by his own government to pass that way
+at present.
+
+The wild and savage altitudes of Badakshan and Kafiristan by no means
+exhaust the unexplored tracts of Afghanistan. We have the curious
+feature of a well-surveyed route connecting Ghazni with Kandahar, one
+of the straightest and best of military routes trodden by armies
+uncountable from the days of Alexander to those of Roberts, a narrow
+ribbon of well-ascertained topography, dividing the two most important
+of the unexplored regions of Afghanistan. North-west of this road lies
+the great basin of the central Helmund. South-east is a broken land of
+plain, ribbed and streaked with sharp ridges of frontier formation,
+about which we ought to know a great deal more than we do. Up the
+frontier staircases and on to this plain run many important routes
+from India. The Kuram route strikes it at its northern extremity and
+leaves it to the southward. The Tochi valley route, and the great
+mercantile Gomal highway strike into the middle of it, and yet no one
+of our modern frontier explorers has ever reached it from one side or
+the other. We still depend on Broadfoot's and Vigne's account of what
+they saw there, although it is only just on the far side of the rocky
+band of hills which face the Indus.
+
+About midway between Ghazni and Bannu is the water-parting which
+separates the Indus drainage from that of the Helmund, and at this
+point there are some formidable peaks, well over 12,000 feet in
+height, to distinguish it. The Tochi passage is easy enough as far as
+the Sheranni group of villages near the head of its long cultivated
+ramp, but beyond that point the traveller becomes involved in the
+narrow lateral valleys which follow the trend of the ridges which
+traverse his path, where streams curl up from the Birmal hills to the
+south and from the high altitudes which shelter the Kharotis on the
+north. It is a perpetual wriggle through steep-sided rocky waterways,
+until one emerges into more open country after crossing the main
+divide by the Kotanni Pass. The hills here are called Jadran, and it
+is probable that the Jadran divide and that of the Kohnak farther
+south are one and the same. Beyond the Kotanni Pass to Ghazni the way
+is fairly open, but we know very little about it beyond the historical
+fact that the arch-raider, Mahmud of Ghazni, used to follow this route
+for his cavalry descents on the Indian frontier with most remarkable
+success. The remains of old encampments are to be seen in the plain at
+the foot of the Tochi, and disjointed indications of an ancient
+high-road were found on the hill slopes to the north of the stream by
+our surveyors.
+
+Of the actual physical facts of the Gomul route we have only the
+details gathered by Broadfoot under great difficulties, and a
+traveller's account by Vigne. What they found has already been
+described, and the frontier expedition to the Takht-i-Suliman in 1882
+sufficiently well determined the position of the Kohnak water-parting
+to give a fixed geographical value to their narratives. But we have no
+topography beyond Domandi and Wana. We know that the ever-present
+repellent band of rocky ridge and furrow, the hill and valley
+distribution which is distinctive, has to be encountered and passed;
+but the route does not bristle with the difficulties of narrow ways
+and stony footpaths as does the Tochi, and there is no doubt that it
+could soon be reduced to a very practicable artillery road. The
+important point is that we do not know here (any more than as regards
+the upper Tochi) a great deal that it concerns us very much to know.
+We have no mapping of the country which lies between the Baluch
+frontier and Lake Abistada, the land of the stalwart Suliman Khel
+tribes-people, and it is a country of which the possible resources
+might be of great value to us if ever we are driven again to take
+military stock of Afghanistan.
+
+But the importance of good mapping in this part of Afghanistan is due
+solely to its position in geographical relation to the Indian
+frontier. It is different when we turn to the stupendous altitudes of
+the high Hazara plateau land to the north of the Ghazni-Kandahar
+route. With this we are not likely to have any future concern, except
+that which may be called academic. In spite of the reputation for
+sterile wind-scoured desolation which the uplands hiding the upper
+Helmund valleys have always enjoyed, it is not to be forgotten that
+there are summer ways about them, and strong indications that some of
+these ways are distinctly useful. Our knowledge of the Helmund River
+(such knowledge, that is to say, as justifies us in mapping the
+course of the river with a firm line) from its sources ends almost
+exactly at the intersection of the parallel of 34 deg. of North latitude
+with the meridian of 67 deg. East longitude. For the next 120 miles we
+really know nothing about its course, except that it is said to run
+nearly straight through the heart of the Hazara highlands.
+
+Two very considerable, but nameless, rivers run more or less parallel
+to the Helmund to the south of it, draining the valleys of Ujaristan
+and Urusgan, the upper part of the latter being called Malistan. What
+these valleys are like, or what may be the nature of the dividing
+water-parting, we do not know, nor have we any authentic description
+of the valley of Nawar, which lies under the Gulkoh mountain at the
+head of the Arghandab, but apparently unconnected with it. Native
+information on the subject of these highly elevated valleys is
+excessively meagre, nor are they of any special interest from either
+the strategic or economic point of view. Far more interesting would it
+be to secure a geographical map of those northern branches of the
+Helmund, the Khud Rud, and the Kokhar Ab, which drain the mountain
+districts to the east of Taiwara above the undetermined position of
+Ghizao on the Helmund. These mountain streams must rush their waters
+through magnificent gorges, for the peaks which soar above them rise
+to 13,000 feet in altitude, and the country is described as
+inconceivably rugged and wild. This is the real centre and home of the
+Hazara communities, and, in spite of the fact that there are certain
+well-ascertained tracks traversing the country and connecting the
+Helmund with the valley of the Hari Rud, we know that for the greater
+part of the year they must be closed to all traffic. They are of no
+importance outside purely local interests. The comparatively small
+area yet unexplored which lies to the north of the Hazara mountains,
+shut off from them by the straight trough of the Hari Rud and
+embracing the head of the Murghab River of Turkistan, is almost
+equally unimportant, although it would be a matter of great interest
+to investigate a little more closely the remarkable statements of
+Ferrier which bear on this region.
+
+When we have finally struck a balance between our knowledge and our
+ignorance of that which concerns the landward gates of India, we shall
+recognize the fact that we know all that it is really essential that
+we should know of these uplifted approaches. They are inconceivably
+old--as old as the very mountains which they traverse. What use may be
+made of them has been made long ago. We have but to turn back the
+pages of history and we find abundant indications which may enable us
+to gauge their real value as highways from Central Asia to India.
+History says that none of the tracks which lead from China and Tibet
+have ever been utilized for the passage of large bodies of people
+either as emigrants, troops, commercial travellers, or pilgrims into
+India, although there exists a direct connection between China and the
+Brahmaputra in Assam, and although we know that the difficulties of
+the road between Lhasa and India are by no means insuperable. Nor by
+the Kashmir passes from Turkistan or the Pamirs is it possible to find
+any record of a formidable passing of large bodies of people, although
+the Karakoram has been a trade route through all time, and although
+the Chinese have left their mark below Chitral. Yet we have had
+explorers over the passes connecting the upper Oxus affluents with
+Gilgit and Chitral who have not failed, some of them, to sound a
+solemn note of warning.
+
+Before the settlement of the Oxus extension of the northern boundary
+of Afghanistan, something of a scare was started by a demonstration of
+the fact that it is occasionally quite easy to cross the Kilik Pass
+from the Taghdumbash Pamir into the Gilgit basin, or to climb over the
+comparatively easy slopes of the flat-backed Hindu Kush by the
+Baroghel Pass and slip down into the valley of the Chitral. There was,
+however, always a certain amount of geographical controversy as to the
+value of the Chitral or of the Kilik approach after the crossing of
+the Hindu Kush had been effected. Much of the difference of opinion
+expressed by exploring experts was due to the different conditions
+under which those undesirable, troublesome approaches to India were
+viewed. Where one explorer might find a protruding glacier blocking
+his path and terminating his excursions, another would speak of an
+open roadway.
+
+From season to season in these high altitudes local conditions vary to
+an extent which makes it impossible to forecast the difficulties which
+may obtrude themselves during any one month or even for any one
+summer. In winter, _i.e._ for at least eight months of the year, all
+are equally ice-bound and impracticable, and although the general
+spirit of desiccation, which reigns over High Asia and is tending to
+reduce the glaciers and diminish the snowfall, may eventually change
+the conditions of mountain passages to an appreciable extent (and for
+a period), it would be idle to speculate on any really important
+modification of these difficulties from such natural climatic causes.
+We must take these mountain passes as we find them now, and as the
+Chinese pilgrim of old found them, placed by Nature in positions
+demanding a stout heart and an earnest purpose, determined to wrest
+from inhospitable Nature the merit of a victorious encounter with her
+worst and most detestable moods, ere we surmount them. To the pilgrim
+they represented the "strait gate" and "narrow way" which ever leads
+to salvation, and he accepted the horrors as a part of the sacrifice.
+To us they represent troublesome breaks in the stern continuity of our
+natural defences which can be made to serve no useful purpose, but
+which may nevertheless afford the opportunity to an aggressive and
+enterprising enemy to spy out the land and raise trouble on the
+border. We cannot altogether leave them alone. They have to be watched
+by the official guardians of our frontier, and all the gathered
+threads of them converging on Leh or Gilgit must be held by hands that
+are alert and strong. It is just as dangerous an error to regard such
+approaches to India as negligible quantities in the military and
+political field of Indian defence, as to take a serious view of their
+practicability for purposes of invasion.
+
+Beyond this scattered series of rugged and elevated by-ways of the
+mountains crossing the great Asiatic divide from regions of Tibet and
+the Pamirs, to the west of them, we find on the edge of the unsurveyed
+regions of Kafiristan that group of passages, the Mandal and Minjan,
+the Nuksan and the Dorah which converge on Chitral as they pass
+southward over the Hindu Kush from the rugged uplands of Badakshan.
+None of these appear to have been pilgrim routes, nor does history
+help us in estimating their value as gateways in the mountains. They
+are practicable at certain seasons, and one of them, the Dorah, is a
+much-trodden route, connecting what is probably the best road
+traversing upper Badakshan from Faizabad to the Hindu Kush with the
+Chitral valley, and it enjoys the comparatively moderate altitude of
+about 14,500 feet above sea-level. A pass of this altitude is a pass
+to be reckoned with, and nothing but its remote geographical position,
+and the extreme difficulty of its approaches on either side (from
+Badakshan or Chitral), can justify the curious absence of any
+historical evidence proving it to have witnessed the crossing of
+troops or the incursions of emigrants. For the latter purpose, indeed,
+it may have served, but we know too little about the ethnography or
+derivation of the Chitral valley tribes to be able to indulge in
+speculation on the subject.
+
+What we know of the Dorah is that it is the connecting commercial link
+between Badakshan and the Kunar valley during the summer months (July
+to September), when mules and donkeys carry over wood and cloth goods
+to be exchanged for firearms and cutlery with other produce of a more
+local nature, including (so it is said) Badakshi slaves. It has been
+crossed in early November in face of a bitter blizzard and piercing
+cold, but it is not normally open then. The Nuksan Pass, which is not
+far removed from it, is much higher (16,100 feet) and is frequently
+blocked by glacial ice; but the Dorah, which steals its way through
+rugged defiles from the Chitral valley over the dip in the Hindu Kush
+down past the little blue lake of Dufferin into the depths of the
+gorges which enclose the upper reaches of the Zebak affluent of the
+great Kokcha River of Badakshan, (about which we have heard from
+Wood), is the one gateway which is normally open from year to year,
+and its existence renders necessary an advanced watch-tower at
+Chitral. Like the Baroghel and other passes to the east of it, it is
+not the Dorah itself but the extreme difficulty of the narrow ways
+which lead to it, the wildness and sterility of the remote regions
+which encompass it on either side, which lock this door to anything in
+the shape of serious military enterprise.
+
+Beyond the Dorah to the westward, following the Kafiristan divide of
+the Hindu Kush, we may well leave unassisted Nature to maintain her
+own work of perfect defence, for there is not a track that we can
+discover to exist, nor a by-way that we can hear of which passes
+through that inconceivably grand and savage wilderness of untamed
+mountains. Undoubtedly such tracks exist, but judging from the
+remarkable physical constitution of the Kafir, they are such as to
+demand an exceptional type of mountaineer to deal with them. It is
+only when we work our way farther westward to those passes which lead
+into the valleys of the upper Kabul River affluents, from the Khawak
+Pass at the head of the Panjshir valley to the Unai which points the
+way from Kabul to Bamian, that we find material for sober reflection
+derived from the records of the past.
+
+The general characteristics of these passes have been described
+already--and something of their history. We have seen that they have
+been more or less open doors to India through the ages. Men literally
+"in nations" have passed through them; the dynasties of India have
+been changed and her destinies reshaped time after time by the
+facilities of approach which they have afforded; and if the modern
+conditions of things military were now what they were in the days of
+Alexander or of Baber, there would be no reason why her destinies
+should not once again be changed through use of them. We must remember
+that they are not what they have been. How far they have been opened
+up by artificial means, or which of them, besides the Nuksan and the
+Chahardar, have been so improved, we have no means of knowing, but we
+may take it for granted that the Public Works Department of
+Afghanistan has not been idle; for we know that that department was
+very closely directed by the late Amir, and that his staff of
+engineers is most eminent and most practical.[13]
+
+The base of all this group of passes lies in Badakshan, so that the
+chief characteristics as gates of India are common to all. It has been
+too often pointed out to require repetition that the plains of
+Balkh--all Afghan Turkistan in short--lie at the mercy of any
+well-organized force which crosses the Oxus southwards; but once that
+force enters the gorges and surmounts the passes of the Badakshan
+ramparts a totally new set of military problems would be presented.
+The narrowness and the isolation of its cultivated valleys; the vast
+spaces of dreary, rugged desolation which part them; the roughness and
+the altitude of the intervening ranges--in short, the passive
+hostility of the uplands and their blank sterility would create the
+necessity for some artificial means of importing supplies from the
+plains before any formidable force could be kept alive at the front.
+Modern methods point to military railways, for the ancient methods
+which included the occupation of the country by well-planted military
+colonies are no longer available. All military engineers nowadays
+believe in a line, more or less perfect, of railway connection between
+the front of a field force and its base of supply. But it would be a
+long and weary, if not absolutely hopeless, task to bring a railway
+across the highlands of Badakshan to the foot of the Hindu Kush from
+the Oxus plains.
+
+We have read what Wood has to say of the routes from Kunduz southward
+to Bamian and Kabul. This is the recognized trade route; the great
+highway to Afghan Turkistan. Seven passes to be negotiated over as
+many rough mountain divides, plunges innumerable into the deep-rifted
+valleys by ways that are short and sharp, a series of physical
+obstacles to be encountered, to surmount any one of which would be a
+triumph of engineering enterprise. Amongst the scientific devices
+which altitude renders absolutely necessary, would be a repeated
+process of tunnelling. No railway yet has been carried over a sharp
+divide of 10,000 or 11,000 feet altitude, subject to sudden and severe
+climatic conditions, without the protection of a tunnel. As a work of
+peaceful enterprise alone, this would be a line probably without a
+parallel for the proportion of difficulty compared to its length in
+the whole wide world. As a military enterprise, a rapid construction
+for the support of a field army, it is but a childish chimera. Yet we
+are writing of Badakshan's best road!
+
+It is true that by the Haibak route to Ghori and that ancient military
+base of the Greeks, Andarab, the difficulty of the sheer physical
+altitude of great passes is not encountered, and there are spaces
+which might be pointed out where a light line could be engineered with
+comparative facility. Even to reach thus far from the Oxus plains
+would be a great advantage to a force that could spend a year or two,
+like a Chinese army, in devising its route, but this comparative
+facility terminates at the base of the Hindu Kush foot-hills; and it
+matters not beyond that point whether the way be rough or plain, for
+the wall of the mountains never drops to less than 12,500 feet, and no
+railway has ever been carried in the open over such altitudes.
+Tunnelling here would be found impossible, owing to the flat-backed
+nature of the wide divide. With what may happen in future military
+developments; whether a fleet of air-ships should in the farther
+future sail over the snow-crested mountain tops and settle, replete
+with all military devices in gunnery and stores, on the plains of the
+Kohistan of Kabul we need hardly concern ourselves. It is at least an
+eventuality of which the risk seems remote at present, and we may rest
+content with the Hindu Kush barrier as a defensive line which cannot
+be violated in the future as it has been in the past by any formidable
+force cutting through Badakshan, without years of preparation and
+forewarning.
+
+For any serious menace to the line of India's north-western defence we
+must look farther west--much farther west--for enough has been said of
+the great swelling highlands of the Firozkohi plateau, and of the
+Hazara regions south of the Hari Rud sources, to indicate their
+impracticable nature as the scene of military movement. It is, after
+all, the highways of Herat and Seistan that form the only avenues for
+military approach to the Indian frontier that are not barred by
+difficulties of Nature's own providing, or commanded from the sea.
+Once on these western fields we are touching on matter which has been
+so worn threadbare by controversy that it might seem almost useless to
+add further opinions. Historically it seems strange at first sight
+that, compared with the northern approaches to which Kabul gives the
+command, so very little use has been made of this open way. It was not
+till the eighteenth century saw the foundation laid for the Afghan
+kingdom that the more direct routes between Eastern Persia and the
+Indus became alive with marching troops. The reason is, obviously,
+geographical. Neither trade, nor the flag which preceded it from the
+west, cared to face the dreary wastes of sand to the south of the
+Helmund, backed, as they are, by the terrible band of the Sind
+frontier hills full of untamed and untameable tribes, merely for the
+purpose of dropping into the narrow riverain of the lower Indus,
+beyond which, again, the deserts of Rajputana parted them from the
+rich plains of Central India. When the Indus delta and Sind were the
+objective of a military expedition, the conquerors came by way of the
+sea, or by approaches within command of the sea--never from Herat.
+Herat was but the gateway to Kandahar, and to Kabul in the days when
+Kabul was "India."
+
+It was not, so far as we can tell, till Nadir Shah, after ravaging
+Seistan and the rich towns of the Helmund valley, found a narrow
+passage across the Sind frontier hills that any practical use was ever
+made of the gates of Baluchistan. Although there are ethnological
+evidences that a remnant of the Mongol hordes of Chenghis Khan settled
+in those same Sind hills, there is no evidence that they crossed them
+by any of the Baluch passes. It seems certain that in prehistoric
+times, when the geographical conditions of Western India were
+different from what they are now, Turanian peoples in tribal crowds
+must have made their way into India southwards from Western Asia, but
+they drifted by routes that hugged the coast-line. We have now,
+however, replaced the old natural geographical conditions by an
+artificial system which totally alters the strategic properties of
+this part of the frontier. We have revolutionised the savage
+wilderness of Baluchistan, and made highways not only from the Indus
+to the Helmund, but from Central India to the Indus. The old barriers
+have been broken down and new gateways thrown open. We could not help
+breaking them down, if we were to have peace on our borders; but the
+process has been attended with the disadvantage that it obliges us to
+take anxious note of the roads through Eastern Persia and Western
+Afghanistan which lead to them.
+
+For just about one century since the first scare arose concerning an
+Indian invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte, have we been alternating
+between periods of intense apprehension and of equally foolish apathy
+concerning these Western Indian gateways. The rise and fall of public
+apprehension might be expressed by a series of curves of curious
+regularity. At present we are at the bottom of a curve, for reasons
+which it is hardly necessary to enter into; but it is not an inapt
+position for a calm review of the subject. There is, then, one great
+highway after passing through Herat (which city is about 60 miles from
+the nearest Russian military post), a highway which has been quite
+sufficiently well described already, of about 360 miles in length
+between Herat and Kandahar; Kandahar, again, being about 80 miles
+from our frontier--say 500 miles in all; and the distinguishing
+feature of this highway between Russia and India is the comparative
+ease with which that great Asiatic divide which extends all the way
+from the Hindu Kush to the Persian frontier (or beyond) can be crossed
+on the north of Herat. There, this great central water-parting, so
+formidable in its altitudes for many hundreds of miles, sinks to
+insignificant levels and the comparatively gentle gradients of a
+debased and disintegrated range. This divide is parted and split by
+the passage of the Hari Rud River; but the passage of the river is
+hill-enclosed and narrow, with many a rock-bound gorge which would not
+readily lend itself to railway-making (although by no means precluding
+it), so that the ridges of the divide could be better passed
+elsewhere.
+
+We must concede that, taking it for all in all, that 500 miles of
+railway gap which still yawns between the Indian and Russian systems
+is an easy gap to fill up, and that it affords a road for advance
+which (apart from the question of supplies) can only be regarded as an
+open highway. Then there is also that other parallel road to Seistan
+from the Russian Transcaspian line across the Elburz mountains (which
+here represents the great divide) via Mashad--a route infinitely more
+difficult, but still practicable--which leads by a longer way to the
+Helmund and Kandahar. Were it not for the political considerations
+arising from the respective geographical positions of these two
+routes, one lying within Persian territory and the other being Afghan,
+they might be regarded as practically one and the same. Neither of
+them could be used (in the aggressive sense) without the occupation of
+Herat, and most assuredly should circumstances arise in which either
+of the two should be used (in the same aggressive sense) the other
+would be utilized at the same time.
+
+This is, then, the chief problem of Indian defence so far as the
+shutting of the gate is concerned, and there are no two ways of
+dealing with it. We must have men and material sufficient in both
+quantity and quality to guard these gates when open, or to close them
+if we wish them shut. The question whether these western gates should
+remain as they are, easily traversable, or should yield (as they must
+do sooner or later) to commercial interests and admit of an iron way
+to link up the Russian and Indian railway systems is really
+immaterial. In the latter case they might be the more readily closed,
+for such a connection would serve the purposes of a defence better
+than those for offence; but in any case in order to be secure we must
+be strong.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[13] Afghan Turkistan and Badakshan are now said to be connected with
+Kabul by good motor roads.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+     Abbas the Great, Shah, 494
+
+     Abbot, General Sir James, cited, 107-109, 119
+
+     Abdurrahmon, Amir, 357, 377, 419
+
+     Ab-i-lal river, 486
+
+     Abistada, Lake, 514
+
+     Abkhana route, 351
+
+     Abu Abdulla Mohammed (Al Idrisi). _See_ Idrisi
+
+     Accadian tradition cited, 34, 73
+
+     Achakzai (Duranis), 212, 361, 375, 491
+
+     Adraskand, 229 _and n._;
+       river, 216
+
+     Aegospotami, xiii, 160, 163
+
+     Afghan, Armenian identification of word, 50
+
+     Afghan Boundary Commission. _See_ Russo-Afghan
+
+     Afghan Turkistan:
+       Agricultural possibilities of, 251
+       Ferrier in, 481
+       Greek settlements in, 31
+       Kabul, route to:
+         Modern improvements in, 419 _and n._, 522 _n._
+         Wood's account of, 418-19
+       Richness of, known to Tiglath Pilesur, 49
+       Route to, by southern passes of Hindu Kush, 378
+       Routes to, from Herat, 248
+       Slavery in, 253
+       Snakes in, 253
+       Valley formations in, 253-4
+
+     Afghanistan:
+       Arab exploration of, 192
+       Assyrian colonies in highlands of, 61
+       Barbarity in, 78-9
+       Boundary Commission. _See_ Russo-Afghan
+       British attitude towards, in early 19th century, 349;
+         Afghan attitude towards British, 337-8
+       British war with (1839-40):
+         Conduct of, 359, 411
+         Effects of, 346, 353, 392
+         Geographical information acquired during, 411-12
+         Remnants of British disasters in, 478
+       British war with (1878-80), surveys in connection with, 397, 500
+       Christie's and Pottinger's exploration of, 329 _et seq._
+       Durani corner of, character of, 212
+       _Ethnography of Afghanistan_ (Bellew) cited, 20, 91
+       Foreign policy of, 353
+       Greek names in, 21
+       Helmund boundary of, 80
+       Hinterland of India, viewed as, 5
+       Indian land gates always held by, 22
+       Language of, Persian in origin, 21
+       Natural beauty of, 392
+       Persia:
+         Colonies of, in, 61
+         Intrigues of, British nervousness as to, 399-400
+         War with (1837), 402
+       Persian Empire including, in antiquity, 21
+       Rain-storms in, 233-4
+       Russian intrigues regarding, British nervousness as to, 399-400
+       Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission. _See that title_
+       Rulers of (Ben-i-Israel), traditions of, 49-50
+       Social conditions in, past and present, 337-8, 395
+       Surveying of, gaps in, 501;
+         important unexplored regions, 514
+
+     Afghanistan, Central:
+       Aimak tribes of, 488-9
+       Broadfoot's exploration of, 412, 470 _et seq._
+       Conformation of, 215
+       Hazara highlands, 84-6
+       Records of, scanty, 213-14
+       Routes through, 220, 222-3
+       Survey of (1882-3), 212, 214
+
+     Afghanistan, North (Baktria):
+       Alexander in, 88
+       Altitudes of peaks and passes in, 262-3
+       Assyrian estimate of, 6
+       Irrigation works in, 75-6
+       Kafir inhabitants of, 50
+       Kyreneans in, 91
+       Milesian Greeks (Brankhidai) transported to, 16, 19, 20, 31, 45,
+           87, 91;
+         survival of Greek strain in, 354-5, 358
+       Murghab river's economic value in, 246-7
+       Plateau of, 258
+       Route to, from Mesopotamia, 47-8, 54, 67-8, 70
+       Winter climate of, 240
+
+     Afghanistan, South:
+       Christie's and Pottinger's exploration of, 329 _et seq._
+       Firearms imported into, 55
+       Historic monuments scarce in, 211
+
+     Afghans:
+       Burnes' estimate of, 491
+       Durani. _See that title_
+       European travellers' intercourse with (unofficial), 452, 457-8
+       Foreigners, attitude towards, 337-8, 353, 392
+       Masson's intimacy with, 346-7, 350, 352, 362-3;
+         his influence with, 380
+       Slavery, attitude towards, 421
+
+     Afridi (Aprytae), 28, 31
+
+     Aimak tribes of Central Afghanistan, 488-9
+
+     Ak Robat, 446
+
+     Ak Robat pass, 378, 382, 421;
+       Wood's account of, 417
+
+     Ak Tepe (Khuzan), 245-6
+
+     Ak Zarat pass, 262
+
+     Akbar Khan (Afghan general), 398
+
+     Akcha (Akbarabad), 449
+
+     Akulphis, 125
+
+     Al Kharij, 313
+
+     Alakah ridge, 257
+
+     Alauddin (Allah-u-din), 218, 467
+
+     Alexander the Great:
+       Alexandreia (? Herat) founded by, 77
+
+     Alexander the Great:
+       Bakhi obliterated by, 31-2
+       Brankhidai of Milesia exterminated by, 20
+       Expedition of, to India:
+         Aornos episode, 106-107, 109-21
+         Army, constituents of, 64-5
+         Course and incidents of, 66-8, 70, 76-9, 83, 86-8, 90, 92-4,
+           96, 98-100, 103-107, 111-22, 125
+         Darius' flight from, 47-8, 67-8
+         Geographical information possessed by, 10, 26, 29, 38, 61, 79,
+           86, 147
+         Greek influence of, in Indus valley less than supposed, 22
+         Greeks in Afghanistan welcoming, 16, 63
+         Knowledge acquired by, 60
+         Mutiny beyond Indus, 46
+         Nature of, 60, 65
+         Recruitment from Greece during, 92
+         Retreat, route of, 38, 51, 86, 145-54, 156, 161-6, 291
+         Skythic tribes encountered by, 93
+       Marriage of Alexander with Roxana, 92
+       Philotas tortured to death by, 78
+       Reverential attitude towards, still felt in India, 58-9
+
+     Alexandreia (Bagram, Herat), 77, 87, 93, 96, 393
+
+     Ali Khan, 497
+
+     Ali Masjid, 351
+
+     Aliabad, 421, 505
+
+     Alingar (Kao) river, 96, 99-100, 327, 358, 507, 509
+
+     Alishang river, 99, 356-8, 507
+
+     Alishang valley, Masson in, 396
+
+     Allard, General, 366, 455
+
+     Almar, 249
+
+     Altitude:
+       Abstract, mediaeval ignorance of, 279
+       As a factor in defence, 419
+
+     Amb (Embolina), 107-108, 114-15, 121
+
+     Ambela pass, 121
+
+     Amise, General, 366
+
+     Amritsar, 363, 367
+
+     Anardara, 335, 336
+
+     Anbar, 250-51
+
+     Andarab (Adraspa, Ariaspa, Zariaspa):
+       Alingar river, communication with, 327
+       Capital of Greek colonies situated in, 511
+       Fertility of, 90
+       Greek settlements about, 435
+       Haibak route to, 524
+       Site of, 272, 427-8
+       Strategic importance of, 92, 275, 277, 357
+       Timur at, 355
+       otherwise mentioned, 243, 272-4, 276
+
+     Andarab river, 268, 272, 428;
+       strategic importance of, 261
+
+     Andarab valley, 88, 90, 438, 509
+
+     Andkhui, 248, 439, 448
+
+     Anjuman, 270
+
+     Anjuman valley, 274, 436, 507, 509;
+       importance of route, 275;
+       unexplored, 427-8
+
+     Aornos, 92, 106-107, 109-21
+
+     Aprytae (Afridi), 28, 31
+
+     Arabian Sea:
+       Command of, necessary for safety of southern Baluchistan passes,
+         140-41
+       Islands in, disappearance of, 286, 288
+       Phenomena of, 286-7
+
+     Arabic, derivatives from, 192
+
+     Arabii, 146, 305
+
+     Arabius river. _See_ Purali
+
+     Arabs:
+       Ascendency of, in seventh century, 191-2
+       Himyaritic, 372
+       Indian invasion by, 293-4
+       Indian route used by, _via_ Girishk, 209
+       Makran under ascendency of, 292-5
+       Methods of, mediaeval and modern, 227
+       Records of travel by, untrustworthiness of, 213
+       Saboean, 372
+       Sind under, 293, 311, 366
+
+     Arbela, Arbil. _See_ Erbil
+
+     Arbela, battle of, 47, 67
+
+     Archa pass, 421, 505
+
+     Ardewan pass, 234
+
+     Argandi, 379
+
+     Arghandab river, 83, 86, 208, 224, 515
+
+     Arghastan river, 224
+
+     Argu plain, 424
+
+     Aria, 32, 479. _See also_ Herat
+
+     Ariaspa. _See_ Andarab
+
+     Arigaion, 103
+
+     Arimaspians, 14
+
+     Aristobulus cited, 151-2
+
+     Armail (Armabel, Karabel, Las Bela), 150, 304-307, 320;
+       distances to, 303-304
+
+     Armenia, Israelites deported to, 39, 49
+
+     Arnawai valley, 358
+
+     Arrian cited, 19-20, 51, 54, 62-3, 87, 89, 91, 103, 104, 107, 114,
+       118, 119, 124, 126, 147, 148, 150, 152-3, 155, 156, 160, 165-6,
+       316
+
+     Artakoana, 32, 77, 479. _See also_ Herat
+
+     Artobaizanes, 68
+
+     Asfaka, 312, 314
+
+     Asfaran (? Subzawar), 229-30
+
+     Asmar Boundary Commission (1894), 123
+
+     Asoka, 129
+
+     Aspardeh, 250
+
+     Aspasians, 96, 100, 103, 104
+
+     Aspurkan (? Sar-i-pul), 250, 252
+
+     Assagetes, 114
+
+     Assakenians, 96, 104
+
+     Assakenoi, 121, 126, 129
+
+     Asshur (Assyrian god), 53
+
+     Assur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), 52, 162-3
+
+     Assyria:
+       Afghan colonies of, 61
+       Buildings in, nature of, 40-43
+       Israelite serfs in, 39
+
+     Assyrian Empire, Second:
+       Afghanistan as viewed by, 6
+       Art of, 7, 52-4
+       Babylonian overthrow of, 52
+       Golden age of, 51-3
+       Influence of, in India, 70
+       Israelites deported by, 16, 39, 44, 49, 61
+       Naval fight of, first, 52
+       Satrapies, institution of, 44
+
+     Astarab stream and route to Bamian, 252-4;
+       valley, 266
+
+     Astarabad, 225
+
+     Astola I. (Haftala), 160
+
+     Attok, Carpatyra probably near, 29
+
+     Auca (Obeh), 225
+
+     Auckland, Lord, 405, 409
+
+     Avitabile, 367
+
+     Azdha of Bamian, 380
+
+     Azdha of Besud, 380
+
+
+     Babar (Baba) pass, 234, 236, 481
+
+     Baber, Emperor, cited, 133, 358;
+       estimate of, 326-7
+
+     Babylon:
+       Antiquities of, 73
+       Assyria overthrown by, 52
+       Barrenness of country round, 41
+
+     Badakshan:
+       Alexander in, 93
+       Antiquarian treasures in, 511
+       Balkh-Pamirs route across, 177-8
+       British knowledge of, only recent, 345
+       Climate of, 422
+       Dorah route from, to Kunar valley, 520
+       Exploration of, by Indian surveyors, 268-9
+       Geographical knowledge of uplands of, defective, 501, 503, 510
+       Greek settlements and remains in, 20, 31, 423
+       Kabul, modern all-the-year-round route to, 275-6, 419 _n._,
+         522 _n._
+       Kafirs anciently in, 132
+       Lord's and Wood's mission to, 402
+       Moorcroft's journey to, 444
+       Railway across uplands to, impracticability of, 523
+       Routes to, compared, 414
+       Wood's views on, 436-7
+
+     Badakshan (town) (? Jirm), 273-5
+
+     Badakshani transported by Murad Beg, 432, 505
+
+     Badghis, 235, 236, 237
+
+     Bado river, 338-9
+
+     Baghdad:
+       Masson at, 368
+       Railway from, _via_ Hamadan and Kum, question as to, 322
+
+     Baghlan, 90, 261, 421, 505, 511;
+       Greek settlements about, 435
+
+     Baghlan river, 434;
+       valley, 437
+
+     Baghnein, 206-208
+
+     Bagisara (? Damizar), 158
+
+     Bagnarghar, 282-3
+
+     Bagram (Alexandreia), 77, 87, 93, 96, 393
+
+     Bahawalpur, 349, 364
+
+     Bahrein Is., 56
+
+     Bahu Kalat (Fahalfahra), 312-14
+
+     Bahu valley, 165
+
+     Baio peak, 120-21
+
+     Bajaor, 103
+
+     Bajaur, 128
+
+     Bajgah, 261, 384
+
+     Bajgah (Parwan, Sar Alang) pass, 414
+
+     Bajitan (Najitan), 225
+
+     Bakhi, 31-32
+
+     Bakhtyari, 32
+
+     Bakkak pass, 256, 262
+
+     Baktra. _See_ Balkh
+
+     Baktria. _See_ Badakshan
+
+     Bakwa plain, 493
+
+     Bala Murghab, 237, 240, 247, 481
+
+     Balangur (Bala Angur), 251
+
+     Balkh:
+       Antiquity of, 7, 71, 73
+       Approach to, by Akcha road, 72, 73
+       Buddhism at, 263, 502-503
+       Coins and relics at, 459
+       Ferrier's account of, 482
+       Importance of, in antiquity, 88
+       Khotan, distance from, 177
+       Modern, 71-4
+       Moorcroft at, 446, 449
+       Persian satrapy including, 31
+       Routes to, from:
+         Bamian, 267-8
+         Bokhara, 278
+         Herat, 239-40, 247-8
+         Kabul, 272-3
+         Khotan, 277, 278-9
+         Merv, 249-50
+         Punjab, 177
+         Southward, 257
+
+     Balkh Ab river, 215
+
+     Balkh Ab valley, 252, 255, 257;
+       route to Kabul, 259-60
+
+     Balkh plains:
+       Antiquarian interest of, 88, 511
+       Extent and character of, 74
+       Mapping of, 501
+       Rivers of, 75
+       Waterway ruins of, 76
+
+     Balkh (Band-i-Amir) river:
+       Course of, 257-8
+       Lakes and aqueducts of, 256
+       Sarikoh, junction with, 267
+       Scenery of, 262-3
+       Source of, 84
+
+     Baluch Confederation:
+       Kaiani Maliks at head of, 37
+       Lawlessness of, 334
+
+     Baluchistan:
+       Arab exploration of, 192
+       Desert of, 82
+       Exploration of, modern, 194;
+         by Christie and Pottinger, 329 _et seq._
+       Firearms imported into, 55
+       Frontier of, the Gomul, 137
+       Hinterland of India, viewed as, 5
+       Hot winds of, 341
+       Language of, Persian in origin, 21
+       Lasonoi emigration to, 30
+       Makran. _See that title_
+       Mediaeval geography regarding, 200
+       Mongol invasion of India through, 526
+       Natural features and conditions of, 32-3, 47, 373
+       Persian Empire including, 21
+       Political intrigue in, 409
+       Southern passes from, into India commanded from the sea, 140-41
+       Surveying of, 501
+
+     Baluchistan, East:
+       Inhabitants of, character of, 373-4
+       Masson's travels in, 369
+
+     Baluchistan, South:
+       Brahui of, 34
+       Configuration of, 48
+
+     Baluchs, Masson's intimacy with, 374
+
+     Bam, 323
+
+     Bamain, 213-14
+
+     Bam-i-dunya. _See_ Pamirs
+
+     Bamian:
+       Buddhist relics at, 177, 263, 265-6, 381, 446
+       Founding of kingdom of, 218
+       Importance of, in Middle Ages, 205, 261-2, 267
+       Masson in, 378-86
+       Route through, importance of, 438
+       Routes to, from:
+         Balkh, 267-8
+         Ghur, 224
+         Kabul (open in winter), 385-6
+         Oxus plains, 257
+         Sar-i-pul, 252
+
+     Bamian (Unai) pass, 87, 221
+
+     Bamian river, 260, 388
+
+     Bamian valley:
+       Description of, 263, 265-6
+       Importance of, 437-8
+
+     Bampur:
+       Alexander at, 165, 166, 316
+       Mountain conformation of, 323
+       Pottinger at, 342
+
+     Bampusht Koh mountains, 313
+
+     Band (Binth), 311-12, 314
+
+     Band-i-Amir mountains, 257
+
+     Band-i-Amir river. _See_ Balkh river
+
+     Band-i-Baian (Siah Koh, Sufed Koh) mountains, 84, 215, 486, 487
+
+     Band-i-Nadir, 245
+
+     Band-i-Turkistan, 239, 249, 250, 484
+
+     Banj mountain, 184, 185
+
+     Banjohir (Panjshir), 276-7
+
+     Bannu, 512
+
+     Baraki, 91
+
+     Barbarra (? Mabara), 434
+
+     Barna, Badara (Gwadur), 159
+
+     Barnes, Sir Hugh, 374 _and n._
+
+     Baroghel pass, 517, 521
+
+     Barohi, meaning of term, 34, 163. _See also_ Brahuis
+
+     Bashgol valley, 426
+
+     Bashkird mountains, 200
+
+     Basrah, 368
+
+     _Bassarika_ cited, 62
+
+     Bast, 236
+
+     Bazar (ancient) (Rustam, Bazira, Bazireh), 106, 113, 114
+
+     Bazar (modern) (? Ora), 106
+
+     Bean, Captain, 406-407
+
+     Begram, site of ancient city at, 393;
+       Cufic coins at, 394
+
+     Behistan inscriptions cited, 30
+
+     Behvana (Jirena), 245
+
+     Bela (in Baluchistan), 331
+
+     Bela. _See_ Las Bela
+
+     Belchirag, 251, 255, 484
+
+     Bellew cited, 32, 35, 163-4;
+       his _Ethnography of Afghanistan_ cited, 20, 91;
+       his _Inquiry_ cited, 21
+
+     Belous (Bolous), 200
+
+     Ben-i-Israel, traditions of, 49-50, 378
+
+     Benjawai, 207, 208, 210
+
+     Bentinck, Lord Wm., 344
+
+     Berwan lake, 282
+
+     Bessos (later Artaxerxes), 47, 68, 76, 88, 90
+
+     Besud route to the Helmund, 262
+
+     Besud territory, 378, 380-81
+
+     Bih (Geh), 311-12, 314
+
+     Binadur, 493
+
+     Binth (Band), 311-12, 314
+
+     Birdwood, Sir Geo., cited, 53
+
+     Birmal hills, 513
+
+     Birs Nimrud, 41, 43, 71
+
+     Bist (Kala Bist), 204, 207, 208
+
+     Bitchilik pass, 387
+
+     Blood, Sir Bindon, cited, 120
+
+     Bodh, 372
+
+     Bokhara (Sogdiae):
+       Alexander's success in, 92
+       Balkh under chief of, 459
+       Kabul and Bamian, main route from, 389
+       Khulm and Balkh route from, 278
+       Modern popularity of, 395
+       Moorcroft's journey to, 444
+
+     Bolan (Mashkaf) pass, 139, 362
+
+     Bolar, kingdom of, 327
+
+     Boledi, 36-7
+
+     Bolor, Kafiristan part of, 269
+
+     Bolous (Belous), 200
+
+     Bombay N.I., geographical record of, 454
+
+     Boodhi, 483-4
+
+     Botm, 282 _and n._
+
+     Bouchinj (Zindajan), 479
+
+     Bousik (Boushinj, Pousheng), 231, 234, 237
+
+     Brahmi script cited, 171
+
+     Brahuis (Barohis):
+       Baluchistan, in, 331
+       Masson's estimate of, 374
+       Mingals, 142, 306
+       Revolt of, at Kalat, 406
+       Sakae, 163-4
+       Stock of, 34
+       Traditions of, 142
+
+     Brankhidai of Milesia, 20, 91
+
+     Brick buildings of antiquity, 42-3
+
+     Broadfoot, Lieut. J. S., 513;
+       travels of, in Central Afghanistan, 412, 470 _et seq._;
+       estimate of, 471
+
+     Bubulak, 387
+
+     Buddhism:
+       Balkh, at, in antiquity, 72, 263, 502-503
+       Bamian, relics in, 263-6, 381, 446
+       Building age of, a later development, 170
+       Haibak, at, 264-5, 511
+       Jalalabad, relics at, 352
+       Kashmir, in, 179-80
+       Nava Sangharama, 178
+       Ritual of, 174-6, 181-2
+       Sind, ruins in, 372
+       Swat, in, 129
+       Takla Makan, in the, 283
+
+     _Buddhist Records of the Western World_, quoted, 175-6
+
+     Buddhiya kingdom, 305-306
+
+     Budu river, 341
+
+     Bunbury cited, 31
+
+     Buner river, 108, 120-21
+
+     Buner valley, Blood's expedition to, 120
+
+     Bushire, 348
+
+     Burhan, Lake, 283
+
+     Burnes, Sir Alexander, Indus navigation by, 368, 454;
+       at court of Ranjit Singh, 455-7;
+       mission of, to Kabul (1832), 344, 376;
+       to Kunduz, 378;
+       _Travels in Bokhara_ quoted, 455, 491;
+       date of publication, 344, 351;
+       commercial mission of, to Kabul (1837), 398-401, 404-405;
+       work of, 440-41;
+       estimate of, 453, 461
+
+     Burzil pass, 182
+
+
+     Candace, 479
+
+     Canouj, 273
+
+     Cariat (Kariut), 210
+
+     Carpatyra, 28-9
+
+     Cavalry on frontier expeditions, 117
+
+     Celadon ware, 82-3, 197, 300
+
+     Chach of Sind, 303, 306
+
+     Chachnama of Sind cited, 305
+
+     Chagai, 335
+
+     Chagan Sarai, 130
+
+     Chahar Aimak, 212, 214, 481
+
+     Chaharburjak, 81
+
+     Chahardar (Chapdara) pass, 261, 415, 419, 522
+       Height of, 357
+       Military road over, 277
+
+     Chaharshamba river and route to Balkh from Herat, 242, 248
+
+     Chahil Abdal (Chalapdalan) mountain, 223, 486, 488
+
+     Chahilburj, 257, 267
+
+     Chahiltan heights, 370-71
+
+     Chakesar ford, 121
+
+     Chakhansur, 497
+
+     Chalapdalan (Chahil Abdal) mountain, 223, 486, 488
+
+     Chandragupta (Sandrakottos), 129
+
+     Chapdara pass. _See_ Chahardar
+
+     Charbar, 299
+
+     Chardeh plain, 379
+
+     Charikar:
+       Military road from, over Chapdara pass, 277
+       Strategical position of, 357
+
+     Charsadda, 114
+
+     Chashma Sabz pass, 234, 235
+
+     Chenghiz Khan, 72, 85, 142, 193, 194, 218, 267, 376, 526
+
+     Cherchen, 174
+
+     China, Buddhist pilgrimage routes from, 169 _et seq._, 502, 518
+
+     Chinese Turkistan:
+       Buddhist occupation of, 280
+       Conditions of life in, in antiquity, 171, 172
+       Tibet, included in, 283
+
+     Chiras, 252
+
+     Chitral, passes converging on, 426-7, 519
+
+     Chitral river. _See_ Kunar river
+
+     Chitral valley:
+       Accessibility of, 517
+       Dorah route to, 519-20
+
+     Choaspes. _See_ Kunar
+
+     Chol country, 236, 238, 246, 247, 258
+
+     Christians:
+       Armenian, in Kabul, 377
+       Merv, at, 241
+       Sakah, at, 229
+
+     Christie, Captain, 329 _et seq._
+
+     Chumla river, 108;
+       valley, 121
+
+     Climate as affecting race distribution, 8, 46
+
+     Conolly, Lieut., 390
+
+     Cophaeus, 114
+
+     Court, M., 455, 457
+
+     Crockery debris, 82, 197
+
+     Cufic coins, 394
+
+     Cunningham, General, cited, 106, 148
+
+     Curtius, Quintus, cited, 107, 122, 148-9, 221, 459
+
+     Cyrus, King of Persia, 79, 147
+
+
+     Dadar, 362
+
+     Dahuk (? Dashtak), 304
+
+     Dames, Longworth, cited, 201
+
+     Damizar (? Bagisara), 158
+
+     Dand, 472
+
+     Dandan Shikan pass, 260, 384, 421;
+       Wood's account of, 418
+
+     Daolatabad, 249
+
+     Daolatyar, 221, 223-4, 256, 486
+
+     Daraim valley, 424
+
+     Darak (Dizak), 311-14
+
+     Darak Yamuna (Yakmina), 317
+
+     Dards, 31
+
+     Darel (To-li), 179, 182-3
+
+     Darel stream, 183-4
+
+     Darius, flight of, from Alexander, 47, 67;
+       death of, 70
+
+     Darius Hystaspes, transportation of Greeks by, 16, 19, 20, 31, 45,
+       87, 91
+
+     Darra Yusuf river, 257, 200
+
+     Darwaz mountains, 432-3
+
+     Darya-i-Zarah (Gaod-i-Zireh), 204
+
+     Dasht river, 165
+
+     Dasht-i-bedoulat plain, 362, 370
+
+     Dasht-i-Lut, 323
+
+     Dasht-i-Margo desert, 81, 495
+
+     Dawar (Zamindawar), 83, 205-206, 223, 491
+
+     Deane, Major Sir H., cited, 129
+
+     Debal, 293, 301, 303, 307, 308, 310
+
+     Deh Dadi, 257
+
+     Dehao (? Dehi), 483
+
+     Dehertan (? Dahertan), 236, 237
+
+     Dehgans, 269
+
+     Dehi (? Dehao), 483
+
+     _Delight of those who seek to wander through the Regions of the
+      World, The_ (Idrisi), cited, 199 _et seq._
+
+     Dendalkan, 245, 246
+
+     Dera Ismail Khan, 463
+
+     Derah, 245
+
+     Derak (Dizek), 244
+
+     Dereh Mustapha Khan (Deria-dereh), 487
+
+     Derenbrosa, I., 159
+
+     Derthel, 206-208, 210
+
+     Deserts as barriers, 7-9
+
+     Dev Hissar fortress, 484-5
+
+     Dev Kala, 89, 92
+
+     Dihsai (Dshara), 465-6
+
+     Diodoros cited, 107
+
+     _Dionysiaka_ cited, 62
+
+     Dir valley, 129
+
+     Dizak (Darak), 311-14
+
+     Dizek (Derak), 244
+
+     Djil, 273
+
+     Doctors as travellers, 463
+
+     Domai (Manora), I., 154
+
+     Domandi, 464, 513
+
+     Dorah pass, 508-509;
+       nature and importance of, 426-7, 519-21
+
+     Dorak (? Dizek), 245
+
+     Dosh, 261
+
+     Doshak. _See_ Jalalabad
+
+     Doshak range, 233
+
+     Dost Mahomed Khan, 344, 353, 359, 390, 403, 444, 462, 490;
+       operations by, against Sikhs, 397-8;
+       methods and estimate of, 360
+
+     Drangia. _See_ Seistan
+
+     Dravidian Brahuis, 306
+
+     Dravidian races entering India, 142-4
+
+     Dshara (Dihsai), 465-6
+
+     Dufferin lake, 520
+
+     Durand, 471
+
+     Durani Afghans:
+       Districts inhabited by, 212
+       Herat under occupation of, 348
+       Shikarpur, at, 363
+       Truculence of, 212, 490
+       Zarangai alleged to be recognisable as, 33-4
+
+     Duvanah valley, 424
+
+     Dwa Gomul river, 475
+
+
+     Eastward migrations, 6, 7, 9, 45, 49
+
+     Ecbatana:
+       Darius' flight to, 47-8, 67
+       Route, direct, to India from, 51
+
+     Egypt, buildings in, 40
+
+     Elam, 163
+
+     Elburz mountains:
+       Alexander's passage of, 74, 76, 258
+       Rivers of, 75
+       Road across, 528
+       mentioned, 74, 257
+
+     Elliott, Sir H., cited, 302, 304, 305;
+       quoted, 313
+
+     Embolina (Amb), 107-108, 114-15, 121
+
+     Erbil (Arbil):
+       Battle of Arbela at, 47
+       Route from, to Hamadan, 48
+
+     Ersari Turkmans, 251, 459-60
+
+     Esar Haddon, King of Assyria, 52
+
+     Ethiopians, Asiatic, problem regarding, 34-6, 163
+
+     Euxine (Black Sea):
+       Milesian colonies S. and W. of, 18
+       Skythic nomads N. of, 14, 19
+
+     Explorations of Indian trans-frontier, recentness of, 1, 17, 32,
+       60, 345
+
+
+     Fa Hian, 170, 172, 178, 180, 181, 184-5;
+       quoted, 174-6, 179, 183
+
+     Fahalfahra (Bahu Kalat), 312-14
+
+     Fahraj (Pahrag, Pahra, Pahura), 315, 317;
+       two places so named, 316
+
+     Faizabad:
+       Dorah route from, 519
+       Situation of, 273-4, 425
+       Wood's account and estimate of, 422, 425
+       Zebak, route from, 511
+       mentioned, 279, 506
+
+     Farah (Prophthasia):
+       Alexander the Great at, 78
+       Antiquity of, 7
+       Ferrier at, 493-4
+       Herat, route from, 230-34
+       Situation of, 7
+
+     Farah Rud river, 204, 216, 221, 336, 488, 494
+
+     Farajghan, 356
+
+     Fardan (? Bampur or Pahra), 315-17
+
+     Farsi, 223
+
+     Fazilpur, 365
+
+     Fazl Hag, 458
+
+     Ferengal, lead mines at, 416
+
+     Ferghana, 282
+
+     Ferrier, M., career of, 477;
+       at Herat, 477-8;
+       journey across Firozkohi plateau, 476, 478, 484;
+       route to Ghur, 485-7;
+       imprisonments of, 491-3;
+       at Farah, 493-4;
+       in Seistan, 496-7;
+       back to Herat, 498;
+       methods of, 346;
+       estimate of, 476, 480, 498;
+       cited, 214, 231, 335, 516;
+       _Caravan Journeys_ cited, 497
+
+     Ferrying by ponies, 89-90, 449, 460-61
+
+     Feruk (Feruckabad), 449
+
+     Firabuz (Kanazbun), 302-303;
+       distances from, 304, 313, 317
+
+     Firozand, 207
+
+     Firozkohi (mediaeval capital of Ghur), 219
+
+     Firozkohi plateau:
+       Ferrier's journey across, 476, 478, 484;
+         route to Ghur, 485-7
+       Impracticability of, for military operations, 525
+       Outlook from, 266
+       mentioned, 247, 258
+
+     Firozkohis:
+       District of, 84, 214, 217, 219, 253
+       Origin of, 481
+
+     Foosheng, 231
+
+     Forbes, Dr., murder of, 497
+
+     Forrest's _Selections from Travels and Journals preserved in the
+       Bombay Secretariat_ quoted, 348, _and n._
+
+
+     Gadrosia. _See_ Makran
+
+     Gadrosii, 146, 151
+
+     Gaduns, 111
+
+     Gadurs, 35
+
+     Galjin, 497
+
+     Gandhara (Upper Punjab), 99, 179, 185
+
+     Gandava (Sind), 305
+
+     Gaod-i-Zireh (Darya-i-Zarah), 204
+
+     Gardandiwal, 260, 379, 388
+
+     Gauraians, 96
+
+     Gauraios river. _See_ Panjkora
+
+     Gawargar, 267
+
+     Gazban (Karbis), 159
+
+     Gazdarra pass, 465, 472
+
+     Geh (Bih), 311-12, 314
+
+     Geography:
+       Ancient records of, absence of, 14-16, 18, 29
+       Distances, difficulties of estimating, by "a day's journey," 298
+       Influence of, on migratory movements, 9, 45-6;
+         on history, 214
+       Makran, of, 295 _et seq._
+       Official _v._ unofficial, 332, 345
+       Persian, extent and accuracy of, 17, 25-6, 29, 31
+       Recent advances in, 1, 17, 32, 60
+
+     Gerard, Dr., 376, 395
+
+     Germany, firearms from, imported to Persia, Seistan, etc., 55
+
+     Gharan, 429
+
+     Gharo river, 153
+
+     Ghazni (region):
+       Raids from, 136
+       Vigne's exploration of, 462, 465
+
+     Ghazni river, 468
+
+     Ghazni (town):
+       Alauddin's sack of, 218
+       Desolation of, 210-11, 376
+       Kandahar, route to, 512
+       Masson at, 359-60
+       Vigne at, 467
+
+     Ghaznigak, 261
+
+     Ghilzais (Khilkhis):
+       Districts of, 375-6
+       Importance of, 206, 212
+       Suliman Khel. _See that title_
+
+     Ghizao, 515
+
+     Ghorband drainage system, 468
+
+     Ghorband river, 413
+
+     Ghorband valley:
+       Beauty of, 97
+       Easy pass to, 260, 261, 387
+       Lead mines in, 416
+       Military road up, 277
+
+     Ghori, 524
+
+     Ghoweh Kol (? Pai Kol), 380
+
+     Ghulam Khana, 385
+
+     Ghur:
+       Ferrier at, 478
+       Ghazni to, no direct route from, 220
+
+     Ghur, kingdom of:
+       Description and history of, in mediaeval times, 205, 211-13,
+         217-19
+       Routes through, in mediaeval times, 220-24
+
+     Ghur river, 204, 221, 488
+
+     Ghur valley, 221-2
+
+     Ghurian (Koure), 231-2
+
+     Giaban headland, 159
+
+     Gichki, 37
+
+     Gilgit basin, 517;
+       river, 182
+
+     Girishk:
+       Ferrier's imprisonment at, 491-3
+       Ford at, 204, 206-10
+       Kandahar route by, 490
+       Ruins at, 492
+
+     Gish (war god), 131
+
+     Glass, Arabic, 300
+
+     Gobi desert, 171
+
+     Goes, Benedict, 327-8
+
+     Goldsmid, General Sir F., 299
+
+     Gomul river, 136, 464, 473-4
+
+     Gomul route from the Indus to Ghazni, Vigne's exploration of, 462,
+       512, 513
+
+     Gondakahar (Gandakahar, Gondekehar) caves, 305, 306, 320
+
+     Gondrani caves, 305, 306
+
+     Granikos river, 66
+
+     Great Britain:
+       Afghan attitude towards, 337-8;
+         British attitude towards Afghanistan in early nineteenth
+           century, 349
+       Afghan war (1839-40). _See_ Afghanistan, British war with
+       Afghan war (1878-80), surveys in connection with, 397, 500
+       Sixteenth century, condition of England in, 2
+
+     Greeks:
+       Baghlan and Andarab, settlements about, 435
+       Baktria, deportation to, 87, 91;
+         survival of strain in, 354-5, 358, 423
+       Dionysian, migration of, to Indian frontier, 16, 19, 62-3,
+         124-5, 358, 423
+       Indian art, influence on, 59-60
+       Kyrenean, in Baktria, 91
+       Milesian. _See that title_
+       Persian Empire, relations with, 20-21, 36, 61
+       Women of, as influencing language in Indus valley, 22
+
+     Grierson, Dr., cited, 132
+
+     Gulgula citadel, 381, 386
+
+     Gulkatz, 473
+
+     Gulkoh mountain, 515
+
+     Gulran (? Kilrin), 235
+
+     Gurkhas in Nepal, 188
+
+     Guzwan (? Gurkan, Juzjan, Jurkan, Jirghan), 250, 251, 255
+
+     Gwadur (Barna, Badara), 159, 299
+
+     Gwalian (Walian) pass, 414
+
+
+     Habibullah, 444
+
+     Haftala (Astola, Hashtala, Nuhsala, Nosala) Island, 161, 286
+
+     Haibak (Semenjan):
+       Andarab, distance from, 272;
+         route to, 524
+       Buddhist remains at, 177, 264-5, 511
+       Description of, 271
+       Moorcroft at, 446
+       mentioned, 261, 482
+
+     Haidar, cited, 186, 327
+
+     Haidarabad, 399
+
+     Haig, General, 27;
+       cited, 309-10;
+       _Indus Delta Country_ by, cited, 145, 153
+
+     Haji Khan, 378-87, 417
+
+     Hajigak pass, 260, 420, 446;
+       Masson's account of, 388;
+       Wood's account of, 417
+
+     Hajjaj, 292
+
+     Hala pass, 150
+
+     Hamadan, 322;
+       telegraph route from, to Teheran, 48
+
+     Harat Rud, 498
+
+     Hari Rud river:
+       Course of, 528
+       Herat-Kabul route by, 248, 256, 262
+       Pul-i-Malun across, 229 _n._, 230
+       Source of, 84, 256
+
+     Hari Rud valley, 215, 485-6, 528
+
+     Hariana, 276-7
+
+     Harnai pass, 139
+
+     Hazaras:
+       Characteristics of, 216, 481
+       Country of, nature of, 84-6, 214, 221, 516;
+         British interest in, merely academic, 514
+       Forced labour of, 380-81
+       Haji Khan's treachery against, 384
+       Kidnapping of, by Taimanis, 253
+       Masson's relations with, 387-8
+       Slave-gangs of, 421
+       Trading of, 252
+       Women of, Ferrier's account of, 485
+       Yezdambaksh, under, 378-9
+
+     Hazart Ghaos, 371
+
+     Hazrat Baba Kamur, 505
+
+     Hazrat Imam, 432-3, 504, 505, 506
+
+     Hedin, Sven, 170
+
+     Helawerd, 274
+
+     Helmund basin, 201;
+       central unexplored, 512
+
+     Helmund river (Etymander):
+       Course of:
+         Description of, 81-2, 83-4, 379
+         Variations in, 79-80, 202
+       Crossing-places on, 204-10, 380
+       Detritus borne by, 81
+       Indus, route to, 527
+       Northern branches of, unexplored, 515
+       Ruins bordering, 492
+       Unexplored portion of, 512, 515
+
+     Helmund valley:
+       Antiquarian treasures in, 496
+       Description of, 79 _et seq._
+       Nadir Shah in, 526
+       Pottery debris in, 197
+       Survey of, thoroughness of, 207
+
+     Hephaestion, 94, 95, 99, 150, 151
+
+     Herat (Aria):
+       Ancient cities on or near site of, 77
+       Balkh, routes to, 239-40, 247-8
+       Capital of Ghur in mediaeval times, 219
+       Christie at, 336-7
+       Commerce of, during Arab supremacy, 225
+       Defence of, against the Persians (1837), 402
+       Description of, by Idrisi, 228
+       Durani occupation of, 348
+       Farah, route to, 230-34
+       Ferrier at, 477;
+         his views as to, 479
+       India, military route to, 525-6
+       Kabul, route to, by Hari Rud, 248, 256, 262;
+         other routes, 257
+       Kandahar, direct route to, 490, 525-8
+       Mosalla, 228
+       Panjdeh and Merv, route to, 236
+       Persian satrapy including, 32
+       Persian siege of, 477
+       Tributary to Ghur in mediaeval times, 218
+
+     Herat valley, 202, 205, 211-12, 217;
+       route from, to India, 209;
+       trees in, 237
+
+     Herodotus cited, 17, 25, 26, 30, 31, 33-4, 56, 163
+
+     Hicks, 469
+
+     Hindu Koh range, 182
+
+     Hindu Kush mountains:
+       Direction of, 4
+       Geographical knowledge of, defective, 508-9
+       Passes over, 274, 327, 328, 357, 378, 381-2, 387, 413-15,
+           426-7, 434-5, 507, 517, 519-25
+         Andarab in relation to, 275, 277
+         Command of, 261
+         Masson's account of, 388
+         Mediaeval use of, 277
+         Wood's account of, 417-18
+       Snow line of, on north and south sides, 415
+
+     Hinglaz mountain and shrine, 162-3
+
+     Hingol river, 291;
+       Alexander at, on the retreat, 151, 157, 161-3, 166
+
+     History, unimportance of, to the ancients, 11, 25
+
+     Hiuen Tsiang cited, 178
+
+     Honigberger, M., 394-5, 462, 468
+
+     Hormuz, 200
+
+     Housab, 225
+
+     Huc, Abbe, cited, 439, 440
+
+     Huec Sheng, 184
+
+     Huen Tsang cited, 262, 279
+
+     Huntington, Ellsworthy, cited, 8, 278
+
+     Hunza (Kunjut), 180-81
+
+     Hupian, 394
+
+     Hyperboreans, 14, 19
+
+
+     Ibn Batuta cited, 210
+
+     Ibn Haukel of Baghdad cited, 203, 217, 228-31, 236, 237, 243,
+         251, 255, 295, 303;
+       _Ashkalu l' Bilad_ of, quoted, 304, 308-309;
+       map of Makran by, cited, 297-8, 307, 312, 313
+
+     Ichthyophagi, 160, 318
+
+     Idrisi (Abu Abdulla Mohammed) cited,199 _et seq._, 301-304,
+         307-309, 312, 313, 315-17, 427-8, 434, 446;
+       quoted, 303, 314, 316-17
+
+     Ilchi (Khotan), 172
+
+     _Iliad_ cited, 12
+
+     Imam Sharif, 222
+
+     India (_for particular districts, rivers, etc., see their names_):
+       Aboriginal inhabitants of, 157
+       Afghanistan:
+         Commercial treaty with, attempted, 397;
+           Burnes' mission, 398-401, 404-5
+         Land gates of India always in possession of, 22
+       Arab invasion of, by land and sea, 287
+       Art of:
+         Assyrian influence on, 7, 52-4
+         Greek influence on, 6, 22, 59-60, 129
+         Syrian and Armenian influence on, 6
+       Aryan influx to, 61
+       Assyrian influence in, 70;
+         on art, 7, 52-4
+       Bombay N.I., record of, 454
+       Defences of, natural:
+         North and north-east frontier, on, 3
+         South frontier, on--ridge and valley formation, 140;
+         Indus to Punjab desert, 7, 143-4, 226, 526
+       Dravidian races entering, 142-4, 158
+       Gold-fields of, 51
+       Government of:
+         Characteristics of, 408-10
+         Masson's criticisms of, 408, 409
+       Greek impression left on, slightness of, 59
+       History of, ancient, non-existent, 11
+       Makran route to. _See under subheading_ Routes
+       N.W. barrier of, true situation of, 5
+       Population of, not indigenous, 49
+       Railway systems of, 324
+       Rajput families of, 7
+       Routes to:
+         Makran route:
+           Arab supremacy, under, 226, 294, 311
+           Importance of, in antiquity, 167-8
+           Modern ignorance regarding, 141;
+             modern possibilities as to, 319-24
+         Northern, from Mongolia, 169 _et seq._, 186 _et seq._
+         Persian, 311, 319, 321-4
+         Sea-routes to N.W. in antiquity, 55
+       Russian designs as to, question of, 319-20
+       Trade of:
+         Persian, 21
+         Syrian and Phoenician, 13, 45
+         Wealth of, 295
+       Turanian races in, 157-8
+
+     Indian Survey, 183
+
+     Indus river (Sintu ho):
+       Boundary of early exploration, 7
+       Burnes' flotilla on, 454
+       Course of, variations in, 26-7, 296
+       Delta of, area of, 27
+       Desert flanking, 143-4, 226, 526
+       Gharo, creek of, 153
+       Gorge of, below the Darel, 183-4
+       Haig's _Indus Delta Country_ cited, 145, 153
+       Navigability of, near Baio, 121
+       Opening of, to commercial navigation, Burnes' mission regarding
+         (1837), 399
+       Rann of Katch, estuary of, in antiquity, 144
+       Routes from, to Helmund river and Central India, 527
+       Voyage down, by Scylax, 26-8
+
+     Indus valley:
+       Climate of, 46;
+         fog, 85-6
+       Greek and Arabic remains in, 364;
+         Greek language and its disappearance, 21, 59
+       Inscriptions, undecipherable, found in, 129-30
+       Mahomedan supremacy in, 293
+       Pathans in, ancient settlement of, 28
+       Persian satrapy including large part of, 31
+       Routes to, through Makran, 141. _See also under_ India--Routes
+       Vegetation in, in antiquity, 121-2
+
+     Inscriptions on stone slabs, 129-30;
+       on bricks, 494, 496, 499
+
+     Irak, 292;
+       valley, 387;
+       stream, 388;
+       pass, 417
+
+     Irrigation in Afghanistan, 75-6, 475
+
+     Ishak Khan, 261
+
+     Ishkashm, 429
+
+     Islam. _See_ Mahomedanism
+
+     Ispahan:
+       Railway from, question as to, 319, 321-2
+       Telegraph route from, to Panjgur, 322
+
+     Ispahak pass, Wood's description of, 417
+
+     Israelites:
+       Assyrian deportation of, 16, 39, 44, 49, 61
+       Disappearance of, as a nation, 40
+
+     Issyk Kul lake, 173
+
+     Istakhri of Persepolis cited, 295, 302, 303, 307, 308, 312
+
+
+     Jabar Khan, 462, 469
+
+     Jacobabad, 139
+
+     Jacquet, Eugene, 395
+
+     Jadran hills, 513
+
+     Jadwa, 236
+
+     Jagdallak defile, 95
+
+     Jahanabad, 497
+
+     Jhal, 371
+
+     Jalalabad (Doshak), 335, 497;
+       Buddhist relics near, 177, 352
+
+     Jalawan Brahuis, 164
+
+     Jalk, 335
+
+     Jam Kala, 222
+
+     Jamrud, 398
+
+     Jamshidis, 214, 216, 481
+
+     Jaor, 486
+
+     Jats, Jatas, 293, 501
+
+     Jawani, 336
+
+     Jebel al Ghur, 217
+
+     Jerkere, 231
+
+     Jews (Yahudi):
+       Afghan hatred of, 50, 377
+       Balkh, at, 71
+       Sar-i-pul, at, 252
+       Transportations of, 44
+       Yahudia, at 251, 255
+
+     Jihun. _See_ Oxus.
+
+     Jil district, 278
+
+     Jilgu river, 475
+
+     Jirena (Behvana), 245
+
+     Jirghan (? Jurkan, Gurkan, Juzjan, Guzwan), 250, 251, 255;
+       range, 249
+
+     Jirift, 201
+
+     Jirm (? Badakshan), 270, 506
+       Position and importance of, 270, 274-5
+       Wood's estimate of, 422, 425-6
+
+     Joubert's translation of Idrisi cited. _See_ Idrisi
+
+     _Journal of the Royal Society of Arts_ cited, 146
+
+     Junasdara pass, 424-5
+
+     Jurkan (Gurkan, Juzjan, ?Guzwan or Jirghan), 250, 251, 255;
+       range, 249
+
+     Jutes, 61
+
+
+     Kabadian, 278
+
+     Kabul:
+       Arab expedition against, 292
+       Burnes' mission to (1832), 344, 376;
+         his commercial mission to (1837-8), 392, 398-401, 404-405
+       Hicks' tomb at, 469
+       Masson British agent in, 397;
+         his account of, 376-7
+       Mediaeval estimate of, as "Indian" town, 211, 219, 226, 262;
+         mediaeval description quoted, 211
+       Modern conditions in, social and material, 377
+       Moorcroft's journey to, 444
+       Routes to and from:
+         Afghan Turkistan, Wood's account of route to, 418-19;
+           modern improvements in, 419 _and n._, 522 _n._
+         Andarab, Khafila road to, 88
+         Badakshan, all-the-year-round route to, 275-6, 419 _n._
+         Balkh, Frontier Commission's route from, 272-3
+         Bamian, route to, open in winter, 385-6
+         Bokhara and Bamian, main route to, 389
+         Herat, route from, by Hari Rud, 248, 256, 262;
+           other routes, 257
+         Kunduz, 416, 523
+         Mazar and Band-i-Amir, by, 259-261
+         Peshawar _via_ Kuram valley and Peiwar pass, 135
+         Punjab, route from:
+           Buddhist character of, 177
+           Kunar, Laghman and Lundai valleys, by, 101
+         Sar-i-pul, from, 252
+       Vigne at, 468-9
+
+     Kabul province, India in Middle Ages, 277
+
+     Kabul (Kophen, Nahrwara) river:
+       Alexander's probable course along, 100
+       Source of, 84
+       mentioned, 96, 276
+
+     Kabul river basin (Ki-pin), 96, 176, 215
+
+     Kabulis, 492
+
+     Kach (Kaj), meaning of term, 35
+
+     Kach Gandava, 305-306
+
+     Kafir wine, 133-4
+
+     Kafiristan:
+       Homogeneity of natives of, 508
+       Inhabitants of, 96, 269
+       Ivy and vine in, 124
+       Timur's invasion of, 327, 355-6
+       Unexplored wildness of, 269-70
+
+     Kafirs in Afghanistan:
+       Badakshan, in, 437
+       Ignorance regarding, 269-70
+       Kunar valley, in, 102-103;
+         two Kafirs of Kamdesh, 131-2
+       Siahposh. _See that title_
+
+     _Kafirs of the Hindu Kush, The_ (Robertson), cited, 510
+
+     Kafzur (Hajigak) pass, 417
+
+     Kah, 267, 268
+
+     Kaiani of Seistan, 34
+
+     Kaiani kingdom, ruins of, 82
+
+     Kaiani Maliks, 37, 208
+
+     Kaibar river, 232
+
+     Kaisan (Kasan) river, 272
+
+     Kaisar drainage, 248-9
+
+     Kala Bist, 204, 207, 208
+
+     Kala Sarkari, 260
+
+     Kala Sarwan, 206-208
+
+     Kala Shahar, 251, 255
+
+     Kala-i-Fath, 355, 496, 497
+
+     Kalagan, 342
+
+     Kalah, ruins of, 42
+
+     Kalama (Khor Khalmat), 158
+
+     Kalapani river, 106
+
+     Kalat, 323
+       British expedition to, 406
+       Christie and Pottinger at, 332
+       Masson at, 370-71
+       Strategic position of, 138-9
+
+     Kalat-i-Ghilzai (Khilkh), 206, 210
+
+     Kalatak, 301
+
+     Kalawun, 236, 238
+
+     Kalloo (Panjpilan) pass, 417
+
+     Kalu, 388
+
+     Kalwan (? Kolwah), 304
+
+     Kaman-i-Bihist, 232, 236
+
+     Kamard, Tajik chief of, 383, 384, 421
+
+     Kamard valley, 260, 261, 437
+
+     Kambali (? Khairokot), 150, 307-308
+
+     Kamdesh, 131
+
+     Kamran, Shah, 403
+
+     Kanazbun (Firabuz), 302-303;
+       distances from, 304, 313, 317
+
+     Kandabel, 305
+
+     Kandahar:
+       Flank march on, possibility of, 204-5
+       Indian frontier, distance from, 528
+       Kabul compared with, in matter of tolerance, 377
+       Leech's mission to, 401-402
+       Masson at, 360-61
+       Mediaeval insignificance of, 210
+       Routes from, to:
+         Ghazni, 512
+         Herat, 490;
+           Herat as gateway to, 525-8
+         Kabul, Alexander's, 86-7
+         Kalat, _via_ Mangachar valley, 374-5
+         Sonmiani, 331
+
+     Kandahar (in Kach Gandava), 305-306
+
+     Kandaharis, 492
+
+     Kanowar, 238
+
+     Kao river. _See_ Alingar
+
+     Kaoshan pass, 435:
+       Alexander's passage of, tradition as to, 87
+       Greek control of, before Alexander's expedition, 20, 91;
+         Greek use of, 277
+       Height of, 88, 357
+       "Hindu Kush," known as the pass of, 414
+
+     Kara pass, 260, 418
+
+     Karabel (Armail, Armabel, Las Bela), 304-307, 320
+
+     Karabel plateau:
+       Description of, 248
+       Route across, from near Panjdeh to Balkh, 250
+
+     Karabia I., 159
+
+     Karabine, 158
+
+     Karachi:
+       Approaches to, 140-41
+       Configuration of, changes in, 153
+       Makran route to, modern possibilities as to, 319-24
+       Malir waterworks, 310
+       Masson refused landing at, 368
+       Voyage from, to Persian Gulf (by Nearkhos), 146, 152-61
+
+     Karakoram pass, 180
+
+     Karakoram trade route, 181, 517;
+       description of, 3-4
+
+     Karaks, 286, 292
+
+     Karamat Ali, Saiad, 390
+
+     Karapa route, 351
+
+     Karat, 231
+
+     Karbat, 250
+
+     Karbis (Gazban), 159
+
+     Kardos, 327
+
+     Kardozan, 479
+
+     Karez Ilias route to Sarakhs, 234
+
+     Karia Pir, 307
+
+     Kariut (Cariat), 210
+
+     Karmania, 32, 165
+
+     Karmatians, 293, 311
+
+     Karomurs, 71
+
+     Karosthi language, 280;
+       script cited, 171
+
+     Kartchoo, 482
+
+     Karuj (Korokh), 236, 237
+
+     Karwan (? Parwan), 276-7
+
+     Karza (? Kafza) pass, 382, 385
+
+     Kasan, 511;
+       stream, 428
+
+     Kashan, 322;
+       river, 236, 237, 240;
+       valley, 481
+
+     Kashmir (Kie-sha):
+       Buddhism in, 179-80
+       Fa Hian in, 178-9, 182
+       Persian knowledge of, 31
+
+     Kashmir passes, no records of military use of, 517
+
+     Kashmund mountains, 100, 101
+
+     Kashran (? Khasrin), 317
+
+     Kaspioi, 31
+
+     Kaspira (Kasmira), 31
+
+     Kasr Akhif (Ahnef), 245
+
+     Kasrkand, 311-12, 314
+
+     Kasur spur, 426
+
+     Kataghani horses, 504-505
+
+     Katan Chirak, 132
+
+     Katawar, 355
+
+     Kattasang, 472
+
+     Kattawaz plain, 465, 472, 475
+
+     Kawak (Khawak), 355
+
+     Kawakir, 235
+
+     Kej (Kiz, Kirusi, ?Labi), 301-302
+
+     Kej valley, 297
+
+     Kenef, 238
+
+     Kunjut (Hunza), 180-181
+
+     Kerman desert, 201;
+       valley, 262
+
+     Kermanshah, 322
+
+     Ketnev, 356
+
+     Khaibar route to India:
+       Evil reputation of, 458
+       Hyphaestion's march by, 95
+       Masson's journey by, 351-2
+
+     Khair, 310
+
+     Khair Kot (? Kambali), 150, 307-308
+
+     Khalmat tombs, 196, 310-11
+
+     Khan Nashin, 495
+
+     Khana Yahudi, 257
+
+     Khanabad, 423, 506
+
+     Kharachanabad (Khardozan), 230
+
+     Kharan, 331, 335, 339
+
+     Kharan desert, 339-41
+
+     Khardozan (Kharachanabad), 230
+
+     Khariab river, 278
+
+     Khariab (Kokcha) river, 270, 273, 274
+
+     Kharkerde, 231
+
+     Kharotis, 513
+
+     Khash, 495
+
+     Khash Rud valley, 204
+
+     Khashka pass, 387
+
+     Khasrin (? Kashran), 317
+
+     Khawak pass:
+       Height of, 357, 435
+       Importance of, 521
+       Popularity of, 414
+       Timur at, 327, 355, 435
+       otherwise mentioned, 261, 275, 277, 419, 428, 434, 507
+
+     Khawak river, 274
+
+     Khazar, 388
+
+     Khilkh (Kalat-i-Ghilzai), 206
+
+     Khilkhis. _See_ Ghilzais
+
+     Khiva (Khwarezm), 218, 244
+
+     Khizilji Turks, 281-2
+
+     Khoes river, 99-100
+
+     Khoja Mahomed range, 424, 436, 437, 506, 507
+
+     Khojak range, 139
+
+     Khor Khalmat (Kalama), 158
+
+     Khorasan, 348
+
+     Khorienes, 93
+
+     Khotan (Ilchi):
+       Balkh, distance from, 177;
+         route to, 277, 278-9
+       Buddhist centre, as, 172, 174
+
+     Khozdar:
+       Christie and Pottinger at, 331
+       Masson at, 373
+       Turan, capital of, 315
+
+     Khulm, 88, 270-72, 416;
+       river, 84
+
+     Khur, 308, 310
+
+     Khurd Kabul defile, 95
+
+     Khud Rud, 515
+
+     Khuzan (Ak Tepe), 245-6
+
+     Khwaja Amran (Kojak) range, 374
+
+     Khwaja Chist, 217, 223
+
+     Khwaja Salar, 448, 449, 460
+
+     Khwarezm (Khiva), 218, 244
+
+     Ki-pin (Kabul river basin), 176
+
+     Kie-sha. _See_ Kashmir.
+
+     Kila Adraskand, 229 _n._
+
+     Kila Gaohar, 485
+
+     Kila Khum, 511
+
+     Kila Maur, 237, 245
+
+     Kila Panja, 430
+
+     Kila Shaharak, 486
+
+     Kila Sofarak, 256
+
+     Kila Wali, 243, 248
+
+     Kilif, 279;
+       pony ferry at, 89-90, 460
+
+     Kilik pass, 180, 517
+
+     Kilrin (? Gulran), 235
+
+     Kir (Kiz) Kaian, 313-17
+
+     Kirghiz (? Kirkhirs):
+       Idrisi's account of, 282-3
+       Wood's estimate of, 430
+
+     Kirman, 311, 313-15, 322-3;
+       telegraph _via_, to India, 69
+
+     Kirman desert, 147
+
+     Kirthar range, 140
+
+     Kishm, 509
+
+     Kiz (Kirusi, Kej, ?Labi), 301-302
+
+     Kiz (Kir) Kaian, 313-17
+
+     Kizzilbash, 467
+
+     Knidza (Kyiza), 160
+
+     Koh Daman:
+       Alexander at, 94
+       Description of, 96-7
+       Lord's expedition to, 412-13
+
+     Koh-i-Babar (Baba) mountains:
+       Altitude of, 263
+       Nature and direction of, 84, 381
+       Rivers starting from, 215
+
+     Koh-i-Basman, 323
+
+     Koh-i-Malik Siah, 209
+
+     Koh-i-Mor (Meros) mountains, 105, 123-4, 358
+
+     Koh Umber mountain, 423, 506
+
+     Kohendil Khan, 493
+
+     Kohistan:
+       Inhabitants of, 96
+       Mountain scenery of, 392
+
+     Kohistan plains, 87
+
+     Kohistani, 486
+
+     Kohistani Babas, 487
+
+     Kohnak divide, 513
+
+     Kojak (Khwaja Amran) range, 374
+
+     Kokcha (Khariab, Minjan) river:
+       Course of, nature of, at Faizabad, 424, 425
+       Mouth of, 434
+       Robertson's view regarding, 510
+       Route by headwaters of, nature of, 426, 427, 436
+       mentioned, 270, 273, 274, 507, 520
+
+     Kokcha valley, 424, 425, 427
+
+     Kokhar Ab river, 515
+
+     Kolab, 433-4
+
+     Kolar gold-fields, 51
+
+     Kolwah (? Kalwan), 304
+
+     Konche river, 174
+
+     Kophen river. _See_ Kabul river
+
+     Korokh (Karuj), 236, 237, 239, 240
+
+     Kotal-i-bed, 374
+
+     Kotal Murgh pass, 90
+
+     Kotanni pass, 513
+
+     Koure (Ghurian), 231-2
+
+     Koyunjik mound, 43
+
+     Krateros, 103, 147
+
+     Krokala, 148, 153, 156
+
+     Kua (Kau), 235, 236
+
+     Kudabandan, 303
+
+     Kuen Lun mountains, 171, 172, 173
+
+     Kufs, 200
+
+     Kughanabad, 236
+
+     Kuhsan, Kusan (? Kuseri, Kouseri), 232-3, 239, 479
+
+     Kum, 322
+
+     Kunar (Choaspes, Chitral) river, 122, 431;
+       importance of, 100
+
+     Kunar (Choaspes, Chitral) valley:
+       Description of, 100-103
+       Direction of, 509-10
+       Dorah route from, 520
+       Ivy and vine in, 133
+       Kafirs in, 102-103;
+         of Kamdesh, 131-2
+       Masson's investigations as to, 396
+       Survey of (1894), 123
+
+     Kundar river, 464
+
+     Kunduz (town):
+       Burnes' mission to, 378
+       Description of, 504
+       Lord's invitation to, 413, 416, 420-422
+       Southward routes from, to Bamian and Kabul, 523
+       Warwalin near, 272
+       Wood's estimate of, 422
+
+     Kunduz district:
+       Fortified towns of, 504
+       Pestilential climate of, 432, 447-9, 505
+       Kunduz river, 261, 421, 428, 436, 505;
+         scenery of, 257, 259-260
+
+     Kunduz valley route to Kabul, 434
+
+     Kunjut, 186
+
+     Kupruk, 257
+
+     Kuram, 482-3, 505
+
+     Kuram valley route, 135, 512
+
+     Kurchi, 251
+
+     Kurdistan hills, 322
+
+     Kurt (Tajik) dynasty in Ghur, 218
+
+     Kuseri, Kouseri (? Kuhsan, Kusan), 231-3
+
+     Kushan (Tokhari), 241
+
+     Kushk, 324
+
+     Kushk river, 236, 237, 240;
+       description of, 246
+
+     Kushk-i-Nakhud, 210, 492
+
+     Kyiza (Knidza), 160
+
+
+     Labi (? Kiz, Kirusi, Kej), 304
+
+     Ladakh ("Little Tibet"):
+       Idrisi's description of the town of, 281
+       Mongol invasion _via_, 186
+       Moorcroft in, 443-4
+       Vigne in, 462
+
+     Laghman valley, 96, 99-101;
+       inhabitants of, 100, 133
+
+     Lahore:
+       Burnes at, 455
+       Masson at, 366-7
+
+     Lakshur (? Langar), 238-9
+
+     Lalposh, 270
+
+     Lamghan. _See_ Laghman
+
+     Language, women's preservation of, 22, 143, 295
+
+     Lapis-lazuli mines above Jirm, 426, 507
+
+     Las (Lumri) tribe of Rajputs, 305
+
+     Las Bela (Armail, Armabel, Karabel):
+       Distances to, 303-304
+       Gadurs of, 35
+       Historic interest of, 304-307, 320
+       Masson at, 369
+       Ruins near, 372
+       Strategic position of, 138-9
+
+     Lash Jowain, 493, 498
+
+     Lasonoi, 30
+
+     Lataband pass, 424
+
+     Leach, Lieut., 471
+
+     Lead mines of Ferengal in Ghorband valley, 416
+
+     Leech, Lieut., on Burnes' staff, 401-402, 412;
+       work and methods of, 440-41
+
+     Leh, 180, 443, 444, 519
+
+     Leonatus, 151, 156, 161
+
+     Lhasa:
+       Buddhist centre, as, 172-3
+       Moorcroft's residence at, question as to, 439-40, 444
+       Pilgrimages to, 181, 187
+       Route from, to India, 517
+
+     Liari, 308
+
+     Lockhart mission, 358, 429, 509
+
+     Logar river, 380, 468;
+       valley, 466, 475
+
+     Lohanis, 360, 463, 467
+
+     Lob, 283
+
+     Lop basin, 172, 173
+
+     Lop Nor, 171, 174, 280
+
+     Lord, Dr., mission of, to Badakshan, 402;
+       expedition of, to Koh Daman and Hindu Kush passes, 412-15;
+       in Ghorband valley, 416;
+       at Kunduz, 413, 416, 420-21;
+       visit of, to Hazrat Imam, 432;
+       investigations by, regarding Moorcroft, 439;
+       _Uzbek State of Kundooz_ by, 504;
+       cited, 420, 505
+
+     Loveday, Lieut., 406
+
+     Ludhiana, 344
+
+     Ludi (Lydoi), 30
+
+     Lulan, 174
+
+     Lumri (Las) tribe of Rajputs, 35, 305
+
+     Lundai valley, 101
+
+     Lungar, 468
+
+     Lydoi (Ludi), 30
+
+
+     Mabara (? Barbarra), 434
+
+     Mackenzie, Captain, 148
+
+     M'Crindle cited, 159
+
+     MacMahon, Sir Henry, 374 _and n._, 497
+
+     MacNab, Dr., 131
+
+     McNair, 358
+
+     Mada Khel hills, 108
+
+     Mahaban (Shah Kot), 108, 110-11, 113, 117-21
+
+     _Mahabharata_ cited, 12, 63
+
+     Mahighir canal, 394
+
+     Mahmud of Ghazni, Multan conquered by (1005), 192-3, 293;
+       raids by, 200, 210, 218, 513;
+       tomb of, 376;
+       mentioned, 219, 468
+
+     Mahmudabad, 491
+
+     Mahomed Akbar Khan, 490
+
+     Mahomed Ali, Chief of Saighan, 378-9, 382-3
+
+     Mahomed Azim Khan, 444
+
+     Mahomed Kasim, 293-4, 307
+
+     Mahomed Khan, Sultan, 360, 403, 483
+
+     Mahomedanism, rise of, 187
+
+     Mahomedans:
+       Balkh, at, 72, 74
+       Kafir attitude towards, 131
+       Vigne's estimate of, 467
+
+     Maidan, 260, 468
+
+     Maimana, 239, 248-50, 258, 481
+
+     Makran (Gadrosia). _For particular districts, etc., see their
+         names_
+       Alexander's retreat through, 38, 51, 86, 145-54, 161-6
+       Ancient relics in, 56
+       Arabian interest in, prior to A.D. 712, 292;
+         Arab governors of, 193, 292, 293
+       Baluch traditions as to, 291
+       Bampur the ancient capital of, 165
+       Boledi long the ruling tribe in, 36-7
+       Coasting trade of, in antiquity, 57
+       Configuration, orography, and geological features of, 32-3, 48,
+         285, 288-91, 296
+       Decline of, in eleventh century, 295
+       Desiccation of, 288-9
+       Greek knowledge of, in ancient time scanty, 37
+       Hots of (? Uxoi), 34
+       Islands off, disappearance of, 286, 288
+       Kaiani Maliks' supremacy in, 37
+       Kushite race in, question as to, 34-5
+       Negroes in, 36
+       Persian satrapies including, 32, 200
+       Physical features of. _See subheading_ Configuration
+       Ports of, for importation of firearms, 55
+       Route through, to India under Arab supremacy, 209, 226, 294, 311
+         Ignorance as to, 141
+         Importance of, in antiquity, 167-8
+         Modern possibilities as to, 319-24
+       Stone-built circles in, 372
+       Tombs in (Khalmati), 310-11
+       Turanian relics in, 158
+       View of, from Arabian Sea, 284-5
+
+     Malan headland, 158, 285, 291;
+       range, 161-2, 164
+
+     Malek Hupian, 394
+
+     Malistan valley, 515
+
+     Malli (? Meds), 155, 160-61
+
+     Malun Herat, 229 _n_.
+
+     Manabari, 308-309
+
+     Manasarawar lakes, 440
+
+     Manbatara, 308
+
+     Mandal pass, 426, 507, 519
+
+     Manga (Manja, Mugger) Pir, 309
+
+     Mangachar valley, 374
+
+     Manglaor, 121
+
+     Manhabari (? Minagar, Binagar), 304, 309-10
+
+     Manjabari, 309
+
+     Manora (Domai) Island, 154
+
+     Mansura, 309
+
+     Mansuria, 315-16
+
+     Mashad:
+       Russian telegraph _via_, 69
+       Seistan, route to, 528
+       Teheran, objections regarding railway to, 319
+
+     Mashad valley, 424
+
+     Mashkaf (Bolan) pass, 139
+
+     Mashkel (? Maskan), 313-14;
+       swamp, 323, 339, 341
+
+     Massaga:
+       Alexander's capture of, 105, 122;
+         route from, 113
+       Nysaeans at, question as to, 128-9
+
+     Marabad, 225
+
+     Marakanda (Samarkand), 88
+
+     Mardians, 68, 76
+
+     Maruchak. _See_ Merv-el-Rud
+
+     Marwa, 225
+
+     Masson, arrival of, at Bushire, 348, 368;
+       in Peshawar, 350;
+       journey to Kabul _via_ Khaibar route, 351-4, 359;
+       to Ghazni and Kandahar, 359-60;
+       to Quetta and Shikapur, 361-3;
+       in the Punjab, 364-5;
+       at Lahore, 365-367;
+       to Karachi, 377;
+       trips by water, 367-8;
+       in E. Baluchistan, 369; at Chahiltan, 370-71;
+       through Sind, 371-2;
+       again to Kalat, Kandahar, and Kabul, 372-7;
+       Besud expedition, 378, 380;
+       to Bamian (1832), 378-86;
+       to Kabul, 386, 388;
+       researches near Kabul, 393;
+       accepts post as British agent in Kabul, 397;
+       relations with Burnes, 399-401, 404;
+       resigns office under Indian Government, 405, 407;
+       experiences at Quetta, 406-7;
+       meeting with Vigne, 469;
+       intimacy with Afghans, 346-7, 350, 352, 362-363;
+       influence with them, 380;
+       intimacy with Baluchs, 374;
+       coins collected by, 393;
+       criticisms of Indian Government by, 408, 409;
+       value of work of, 345, 347-8, 367, 388, 391, 396, 407;
+       methods of, 346;
+       estimate of, 361, 370, 372, 395-6, 408;
+       _Travels in Afghanistan_, _etc._, see that title;
+       otherwise mentioned, 458, 462, 463, 468, 491
+
+     Masurjan, 317
+
+     Matakanai, 105, 128
+
+     Matiban, 200
+
+     Mazanderan, 481
+
+     Mazar, 434, 435, 448, 459
+
+     Mazar-i-Sharif, 257, 439
+
+     Meder, 267, 268
+
+     Meds (? Malli), 155, 160-61, 292-3
+
+     Megasthenes, 129;
+       his _India_ cited, 126-7
+
+     Mehrab Khan, 406
+
+     Meilik (Nimlik), 482
+
+     Menk, 274
+
+     Mesiha, 245
+
+     Mesopotamia:
+       Earliest immigrants into, question as to origin of, 34-5
+       Irrigation works necessary in, 40-41
+       Israelite deportations to, 39
+       Nana-worship in, 163
+       Teheran-Mashad route from, to Baktria, 47-8, 54, 70
+
+     Merv-el-Rud:
+       Confused with Russian Merv by Idrisi, 244-5
+       Date and destruction of, 241-2
+       otherwise mentioned, 236, 239, 240-41
+
+     Merv of the Oasis (Russian):
+       Balkh, routes to, 249-50
+       Confused with Merv-el-Rud by Idrisi, 244
+       Herat route from, 236
+       Historic importance of, 241
+
+     Milesian Greeks:
+       Brankhidai, 20
+       Colonies of:
+         N. of Euxine, 14
+         S. and W. of Euxine, 18
+       Transportation of, to Baktria region, 16, 19, 20, 31, 45
+
+     Miletus:
+       Alexander's reduction of (334 B.C.), 66
+       Carpet-making industry of, 18
+       Destruction of, date of, 16
+
+     Minab river, 166
+
+     Minagar, Binagar (? Manhabari), 304, 309-10
+
+     Mingal, 482
+
+     Mingals, 142, 306
+
+     Minjan pass, 507, 519;
+       Chitral route through, 359, 426
+
+     Minjan river. _See_ Kokcha
+
+     Minjan valley, 132, 426, 436
+
+     Miri fort of Quetta, 138, 148
+
+     Mockler, Col., cited, 159-60
+
+     Mongols:
+       Afghanistan, in central plateau of, 85
+       Asiatic civilization overrun by, 200
+       Army of, destroyed on the Karakoram route, 4
+       Chenghiz Khan, under, 73
+       Ghur dynasty, subject to, 218
+       India:
+         Central Southern, problem of arrival in, 142-4
+         Invasion of, by, 326
+         Military expeditions to, attempted, 186
+         Pilgrimages to, 169 _et seq._
+
+     Monze, Cape, 154
+
+     Moorcroft, explorations by, 440;
+           question as to residence at Lhasa, 444;
+           journey from to Kabul, Badakshan, and Bokhara, 444-8;
+           official attitude towards, 442-3;
+           records of, 443;
+           fate of, 438-9;
+           grave of, 259;
+           estimate of, 443-4, 448, 503-504;
+           otherwise mentioned, 423, 434, 467
+
+     Morontobara, 154-5
+
+     Mosarna, 161
+
+     Mugger (Manga, Manja) Pir, 309
+
+     Mugheir (Ur), 42
+
+     Mula (Mulla) pass, 139, 140, 147, 371
+
+     Multan:
+       Hindu bankers in, 363
+       Mahmud's conquest of (1005), 193, 293
+       Masson's account of, 366
+       Tubaran, distance from, 315
+
+     Murad Beg, Mir of Kunduz, position of, 378-9, 504;
+           Badakshani families transported by, 432, 505;
+           Lord's invitation by, 413, 416;
+           estimate of, 413;
+           Wood's estimate of, 422;
+           Moorcroft's experience and estimate of, 446-8;
+           otherwise mentioned, 385, 418, 425, 429, 503
+
+     Murad Khan of Kunduz, 383
+
+     Murgh pass, 434-5
+
+     Murghab basin, Upper, unmapped, 477
+
+     Murghab river:
+       Economic value of, 246-7
+       Head of, unexplored, 516
+       Head valleys of, 258
+       Ruins on, 243-4
+       Upper, climate of, 220
+       otherwise mentioned, 215, 236, 239-41
+
+     Murghab valley, 242, 282, 284
+
+     Muskat, 55
+
+     Mustapha Khan, 487
+
+     Muttra, 210
+
+
+     Nachan, 225
+
+     Nadir Shah, 267, 418, 526
+
+     Nagas, 501
+
+     Nahrwara river. _See_ Kabul river
+
+     Naisan, 225
+
+     Najil, 327, 356, 396-7
+
+     Najirman (? Nakirman), 200
+
+     Najitan (Bajitan), 225
+
+     Nalpach pass, 383-4
+
+     Nan Shan mountain system, 173
+
+     Nana (Chaldean goddess), 162-3
+
+     Naoshirwan, 339
+
+     Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor, 328-329
+
+     Naratu, 236, 237, 239, 248
+
+     Narmashir, 323
+
+     Nasirs, 475
+
+     Nasratabad, 203
+
+     Nassoor, Sheikh, 497
+
+     Nava Sangharama, 178
+
+     Navigation, ancient, character of, 13, 56-7
+
+     Nawagai, 103
+
+     Nawak pass, 274, 428
+
+     Nawar valley, 515
+
+     Nearkhos, 26, 27;
+       voyage of, from Karachi to Persian Gulf, 145, 152-61, 286;
+       meeting of, with Alexander, 166-7;
+       cited, 286
+
+     Negroes, Asiatic, 36
+
+     New Chaman, 324
+
+     Nicolas range, 431
+
+     Nikaia (modern Kabul), Alexander at, 98. _See also_ Kabul
+
+     Nili, 222
+
+     Nimchas, 269
+
+     Nimlik (Meilik), 482
+
+     Nimrud, 71
+
+     Nineveh:
+       Ruins of, 42, 43
+       Zenith of, 52
+
+     Nishapur, 231
+
+     Nomadic life, conditions of, 23-5
+
+     Nonnus of Panopolis cited, 62-3, 98
+
+     North, Lieut., value of geographical work by, 411-12, 471
+
+     Nott, 406
+
+     Nuhsala (Nosala, Haftala, Hashtala) island, 161, 286
+
+     Nuksan pass, 508-509, 519, 520, 522
+
+     Nurzai, 212, 491
+
+     Nusa. _See_ Nysa
+
+     Nushki:
+       Christie and Pottinger at, 38
+       Route _via_, 209, 323
+       Telegraph to, 323
+
+     Nysa, Nyssa (Nusa, Nuson):
+       Tradition regarding, 62, 122-6
+       War-hymn connected with, 131-2
+
+     Nysaean inscriptions, question as to, 129-30
+
+     Nysaioi, 126-7
+
+
+     Obeh (Auca), 217, 225, 256
+
+     _Odyssey_ cited, 12
+
+     Olbia, 19
+
+     Omar I., Kalif of Baghdad, 307
+
+     Ora (? modern Bazar), 106
+
+     Oritae, 146, 150, 151, 156, 161
+
+     Orodis, 241
+
+     Oxus district, mediaeval geography of, 277 _et seq._
+
+     Oxus jungles, 433
+
+     Oxus (Jihun, Khariab) river:
+       Channel of, variations in, 89
+       Fords of, accurate knowledge of, 501-502
+       Irrigation works connected with, 75
+       Khariab a name for, 273, 278
+       Pony ferry over, at Kilif, 89-90, 460;
+         at Khwaja Salar, 449, 460-61
+       Wood's explorations of, 420, 423, 428-35
+
+     Oxydrakai, 127
+
+
+     Pactyans. _See_ Pathans
+
+     Padizar bay, 158, 159
+
+     Paghman offshoot of Hindu Kush, 97
+
+     Paghman, 387
+
+     Pahrag (Pahra, Pahura, Fahraj), 315, 317, 342;
+       two places so named, 316
+
+     Pamirs:
+       Climate of, 429
+       Mediaeval geography of, 277 _et seq._
+       Routes across, 502
+       Taghdumbash, 517
+
+     Panja (Wakhab) river, 279
+
+     Panjdeh:
+       Buddhist caves at, 244
+       Herat, routes from, 236
+       Karabel plateau route from near, to Balkh, 250
+
+     Panjgur:
+       Dates of, 290
+       Description of, 302-303
+       Mountain conformation of, 323
+       Railway from, to Karachi, question as to, 324
+       Telegraph route to, from Ispahan, 322
+
+     Panjkora river, 104, 122
+
+     Panjkora valley, 96
+
+     Panjpilan (Kalloo, Shutar Gardan) pass, 386, 388, 417
+
+     Panjshir (Banjohir), 276-7
+
+     Panjshir pass, 87-8
+
+     Panjshir route between Kabul and Andarab, 87-8, 414
+
+     Panjshir valley:
+       Mediaeval reputation of, 435
+       Timur in, 355-6
+       otherwise mentioned, 261, 275, 356-7, 434, 510, 521
+
+     Pannah, 472
+
+     Parah, 230
+
+     Parana (Parwana), 229, 481, 498
+
+     Parikanoi, 163-4
+
+     Parjuman, 223
+
+     Park mountains, 221
+
+     Parkan stream, 164
+
+     Paropamisos (Hindu Kush), 79, 234, 247. (_See also_ Hindu Kush.)
+
+     Parsi (Tarsi), 489
+
+     Parwan (? Karwan), 276-7
+
+     Parwan (Sar Alang, Bajgah) pass, 328, 435;
+       altitude of, 357;
+       description of, 414
+
+     Parwana (Parana), 229, 481, 498
+
+     Pashai, 133
+
+     Pashat, 133
+
+     Pasiris, 158
+
+     Pasni, bay of, 159, 164
+
+     Patala, 146, 148
+
+     Pathans:
+       Ancient settlement of, in present situation, 28
+       Greek names among, 21
+       Inscriptions used by, for decoration, 129-30
+       Persian origin of language of, 21
+
+     Peiwar pass, 135
+
+     Periplus cited, 310
+
+     Perjan (? Parwan), 355
+
+     Persepolis:
+       Alexander the Great at, 68
+       Inscriptions at, cited, 30
+
+     Persia:
+       Afghanistan:
+         Colonies in, 61
+         Intrigues regarding, British nervousness as to, 399-400
+         War with (1837), 402
+       Army of, French officers' organisation of, 477
+       Charbar point fort built by, 299
+       Configuration of western, 48
+       Desert regions of, 69;
+         "Great Desert," 201
+       Firearms imported into, 155
+       Helmund boundary of, 80
+       Routes through, to the East, two, 69;
+         routes to India, 311, 319, 321-4
+       Russia:
+         Sphere of influence of, 322
+         French organisation of Persian army resented by, 477
+         War with (1826), 348
+
+     Persian Empire:
+       Extent of, 21, 26-7
+       Geographical information possessed by, extent and accuracy of,
+         17, 25-6, 29, 31
+       Greek permeation of, 20-21; Greek attitude towards, 36
+       Indian hinterland under control of, in Alexander's time, 61
+       Indian trade of, 21
+       Nations subject to, lists of, 29-30
+       Satrapies of, identification of, 30-32
+
+     Persian Gulf:
+       Command of, necessary for safety of southern Baluchistan passes,
+         141
+       Masson's trip up, 367
+       Voyage to, from Karachi (by Nearkhos), 146, 152-61
+
+     Persians, Pottinger's estimate of, 333-4
+
+     Peshawar:
+       Cession of, to Afghanistan mooted by Burnes, 401, 404
+       Moorcroft's journey from, to Kabul and Bokhara, 444
+       Route to, from Kabul _via_ Kuram valley and Peiwar pass, 135
+       Sikh occupation of, 350
+
+     Peshawaran, 336
+
+     Peukelaotis, 99, 114
+
+     Philotas, 78
+
+     Phur river, 151
+
+     Physical geography, influence of, on migratory movements, 9, 45-6;
+       on history, 214
+
+     Pimuri defile, 421
+
+     Pir Mahomed, 445, 456
+
+     Pisacas, 133
+
+     Place-names, value of, in identifications, 115
+
+     Pokran (? Pokar), 371
+
+     Pola Island, 159
+
+     Polo, Marco, 281, 327
+
+     Polyaenus quoted, 127-8
+
+     Pony-ferries on the Oxus--at Kilif, 89-90, 460;
+       at Khwaja Salar, 449, 460-61
+
+     Poolka, 496
+
+     Poolki (Pulaki), 335-6, 497
+
+     Pottinger, Lieut., explorations by, 329 _et seq._;
+       at Herat, 402;
+       quoted--on Persian character, 333-4;
+       on the Kharan desert, 339-40
+
+     Pousheng (Boushinj, Bousik), 231, 234, 237
+
+     Ptolemy (son of Lagos), with Alexander's expedition, 103, 104, 116;
+       cited, 37, 104, 310
+
+     Pul-i-Malun bridge, 229 _n._, 230
+
+     Pulaki (Poolki), 335-6, 497
+
+     Punjab:
+       Alexander's march on, 94
+       Fa Hian in, 179, 185
+       French and Italians in, 366
+       Greek architecture and sculpture in, 59
+       Ranjit Singh's hunting party in, 455-6
+       Sikh Government, under, 345-6, 363
+
+     Pura, 165
+
+     Purali (Arabius) river, 146, 148, 149, 156, 292, 305, 320, 370
+
+     Pushti Hajigak (Kafzur) pass, 417
+
+     Pushto, 350, 352
+
+
+     Quetta (Shall):
+       British ignorance regarding, in 1880, 369
+       Masson and Bean at, 406;
+         Masson's account of, 362
+       Strategic importance of, 137-9
+       Telegraph to, from Seistan, 323
+
+     Quintus Curtius. _See_ Curtius
+
+
+     Ragozin's _Chaldea_ quoted, 43
+
+     Rahmat Khan, 365
+
+     Rahmatulla Khan, 382, 421
+
+     Rahun, 304
+
+     Rajput tribes, 35
+
+     Rajputana desert, 27
+
+     Ramayana cited, 12, 63
+
+     Rambakia, 150
+
+     Ranjit Singh, Bentinck's interview with (1832), 344;
+       position of, 350, 398;
+       Burnes' entertainment by, 455-6;
+       Burnes' estimate of, 457;
+       Vigne's acquaintance with, 462;
+       mentioned, 401, 404
+
+     Ras Kachari, 156
+
+     Rasak (? Sarbaz), 312-14
+
+     Ravi river, 366
+
+     Rawlinson, Sir Henry, cited, 241, 242, 245, 479;
+       his _Five Monarchies_ quoted, 43
+
+     Regan, 316, 317, 323
+
+     Registan, 375
+
+     Reishkhan district, 424
+
+     Robat-i-Kashan, 237
+
+     Roberts, Lord, 87
+
+     Robertson, Sir George, 358, 426, 507, 510
+
+     Rohri, 364
+
+     Rokh, Shah, 242
+
+     Rookes cited, 118
+
+     Roxana, 92
+
+     _R.G.S. Journal_ cited, 123;
+       _Proceedings_ cited, 241
+
+     Rozabagh, 229 _n._
+
+     Rozanak, 233
+
+     Ruby mines of Oxus valley, 428
+
+     Rudbar (? Rudhan), 207, 496
+
+     Rue Khaf (? Rudan), 231
+
+     Russia:
+       Afghan intrigues of, British nervousness regarding, 399-400
+       India:
+         Designs on, question as to, 319-20
+         Route to, nature of, 527-8
+       Persia:
+         Army organisation of, resented by, 477
+         Sphere of influence in, 322
+         War with (1826), 348
+       Transcaspian railway terminus, 324
+
+     Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission:
+       Camps of, 233, 235, 240
+       Escort of English officers of, 492
+       Geographical surveys in Reports of, 194, 264
+       Kwaja Salar, disappearance of, 450
+       Rapidity of movements of, 477
+       Routes of, 78, 248, 261, 272-3, 335, 415
+       otherwise mentioned, 71, 83, 231
+
+     Rustak, 504
+
+     Rustam (Bazira), 106, 113, 114
+
+
+     Sabaktagin, 414
+
+     Sacnia, 281
+
+     Sadik Khan, 493
+
+     Sadmurda, 260
+
+     Safed Khak pass, 379
+
+     Safed Koh, 95
+
+     Sagittae, 163
+
+     St. John cited, 148, 316
+
+     Saiad Ahmad Shah, 350
+
+     Saib, 433
+
+     Saidabad fort, 386
+
+     Saighan valley, 260, 379, 382, 421, 437, 505
+
+     Sajidi, 164
+
+     Sakae, 163, 164
+
+     Sakah, 229
+
+     Sakas, 501
+
+     Samad Khan, 390
+
+     Samaria, date of fall of, 39
+
+     Sarmakan, 245
+
+     Samarkand (Marakanda), 88, 292
+
+     Sandeman, Sir Robert, 137, 320;
+       cited, 374
+
+     Sandrakottos (Chandragupta), 129
+
+     Sangadip Island, 161
+
+     Sangcharak, 258;
+       mountains, 255
+
+     Sangiduktar, 231
+
+     Sangusar, 492
+
+     Sar Alang (Parwan, Bajgah) pass, 414
+
+     Saraswati river, 27, 144
+
+     Sarakhs, 230, 233, 234
+
+     Sarbaz (? Rasak), 312, 314;
+       river, 312
+
+     Sardanapalus (Assur-bani-pal), 52, 162-3
+
+     Sargo pass, 472
+
+     Sargon, 39, 45
+
+     Sar-i-jangal stream, 256
+
+     Sarikoh stream, 267
+
+     Sar-i-pul (? Aspurkan), 250-52, 483
+
+     Sarwan (Kala Sarwan), 206-208
+
+     Sarwandi (Sir-i-koll) pass, 465, 472;
+       ridge, 465-6
+
+     Satibarzanes, 77
+
+     Schintza, 473
+
+     Schwanbeck, Dr., 126
+
+     Scylax of Caryanda, 26-9
+
+     Sehwan, 371
+
+     Seistan (Sejistan, Drangia, Drangiana):
+       Afghan army's experience in, 403
+       Climate and natural conditions in, 80, 85, 201-203, 403, 494
+       Extent of, less than of ancient Drangiana, 78;
+         extent in mediaeval times, 205
+       Firearms imported into, 55
+       Goldsmid's mission to, 299
+       Inhabitants of, mentioned by Herodotus, 33
+       Lake of, 497
+       Route to Mashad, 528
+       Persian satrapy, 32, 200
+       Ruins in, abundance of, 336
+       Reputation of, 201-202
+       Surveys of, 496-7
+       Telegraph to, from Narmashir, 323
+       Tributary to Ghur in mediaeval times, 218
+
+     Sekhwan, 338
+
+     Sekoha, 498
+
+     Sejistan. _See_ Seistan
+
+     Semenjan. _See_ Haibak
+
+     Semiramis, 147
+
+     Senacherib, King of Assyria, 52
+
+     Senart, M., cited, 130
+
+     Seneca, cited, 21
+
+     Ser-ab (? Sar-i-ab), 468
+
+     Shah, 251, 255
+
+     Shah Kot (Mahaban), 108, 110-11, 113, 117-21
+
+     Shaharak, 486
+
+     Shahar-i-Babar, 257, 267
+
+     Shahar-i-Wairan (? Shahar, Shah), 254-5
+
+     Shaitana, 380
+
+     Shakiban, 338
+
+     Shams Tabieri, Saint, 366
+
+     Shamshirs, 233-4, 240
+
+     Shamsuddin pass, 418
+
+     Shansabi, 218
+
+     Sharif, Imam, 484
+
+     Sharifudin cited, 355
+
+     Sheherek, 486
+
+     Sheranni, 512
+
+     Sher-i-dahan, 468
+
+     Sherwan, 433-4
+
+     Shibar, 468
+
+     Shibar pass, 260, 277, 387
+
+     Shibarghan, 251-2
+
+     Shikapur, financial credit of, 331-2, 363, 452-3
+
+     Shorawak, 374-5
+
+     Shutar Gardan (Kalloo, Panjpilan) pass, 386, 388, 417
+
+     Siah Koh (Band-i-Baian), 486, 487
+
+     Siah Reg pass, 381
+
+     Siahposh Kafirs, 270, 354-6, 358
+
+     Siam, celadon furnaces in, 83
+
+     Sidonians, deportation of, by Assyria, 52
+
+     Sikhs, Dost Mahomed's operations against, 397-8
+
+     Simkoh, 234
+
+     Sind:
+       Arab ascendency in, 192, 293, 311, 366;
+         their geography of, 296;
+         buried Arab city in, 196
+       Assyrian art in pottery of, 54
+       Buddhist ruins in, 372
+       Frontier passes of, 209
+       Hot winds in, 341
+       Independent government, under, 329, 331, 345-6, 363
+       Masson in, 349; his account of, 365
+       Mongols settled in, 526
+       Mountain barrier of, 140
+
+     Singlak, 485
+
+     Sin-ho-to. _See_ Swat
+
+     Sintu-ho river. _See_ Indus
+
+     Sirafraz Khan, 391
+
+     Sir-i-koll (Sarwandi) pass, 465
+
+     Sirondha lake, 155
+
+     Skytho-Aryans, 241
+
+     Skyths:
+       Caspian, at north and west of, 19
+       Central Asia, of, 50;
+         Alexander's encounter with, 92-3
+       Euxine, at north of, 14
+       Westward migration of, 61
+
+     Slavery in Badakshan, 520
+
+     Sofarak, 262
+
+     Sogdia (Bokhara), 32, 92
+
+     Sohrab, 332
+
+     Somnath, 210
+
+     Song Yun cited, 184
+
+     Sonmiani, 308, 368;
+       route from, to interior, 330-31
+
+     Sousa, 479
+
+     Spinasuka pass, 103
+
+     Stein, Dr. M. A., 237, 503;
+       Buddhist sanctuary discovered by, 184;
+       methods of, 109-11;
+       cited, 111, 113, 117-18, 120-21, 170
+
+     Stoddart, Colonel, 390, 402
+
+     Stone-built circles, 372
+
+     Strabo cited, 107, 122;
+       quoted, 127
+
+     Stewart, General, 95
+
+     Subzawar, 230, 498
+
+     Sufed Koh mountains, 135, 215
+
+     Su-ho-to (Lower Swat), 185
+
+     Sujah, Shah, 344, 353, 405, 456
+
+     Suliman, Kalif, 294
+
+     Suliman hills, torrents and passes of, 36-7
+
+     Suliman Khel Ghilzais:
+       Broadfoot the authority on, 474-5
+       Duties levied by, 464, 474-5
+       Kattasang, in, 472
+       Land of, unexplored, 514
+
+     Sultan Mahomed, 445, 446
+
+     Sura (? Suza), 317
+
+     Surkh Kila pass, 418
+
+     Survey methods, perfecting of, 500
+
+     Suza (? Sura), 317
+
+     Swat (Sin-ho-to, Su-ho-to):
+       Buddhism in, 129
+       Fa Hian in, 179, 185
+       Geographical surveys of, 123
+       Uplands of, 128
+
+
+     Tabriz, 368
+
+     Taft, 322
+
+     Tagao Ghur river, 221
+
+     Tagao Ishlan river, 215-16, 223;
+       valley, 486
+
+     Tagdumbash Pamir, 180, 279, 517
+
+     Taimanis:
+       Country of, 84, 214, 217, 220, 222-223, 478, 488
+       Kidnapping by, in Afghan Turkistan, 253
+       Traditions of, 212
+       Women of, Ferrier's account of, 489
+       mentioned, 481, 489
+
+     Taiwara (Ghur):
+       Herat, route from, 223
+       Importance of, 487
+       Ruins at, 222, 488
+       mentioned, 220, 515
+
+     Tajik (Kurt), dynasty in Ghur, 218
+
+     Tajiks, Badakshani, 432
+
+     Takla Makan, 283
+
+     Takht-i-Rustam (tope at Haibak), 446
+
+     Takht-i-Suliman mountain:
+       Expedition to (1882), 112, 119, 513
+       River gorges of, 137
+       mentioned, 137, 464
+
+     Takzar (Zakar), 251, 252
+
+     Talara, 300-301
+
+     Talbot, Colonel the Hon. M. G., R.E., 264 _and n._, 446;
+       cited, 489-90
+
+     Talekan, 271-4
+
+     Talikan, 241, 243, 504;
+       Mahomedan saint at, 447
+
+     Talikan (Talikhan), 243 _and n._, 249
+
+     Talikan plains, 506, 509
+
+     Talikhan plain, 423
+
+     Taloi range, 164
+
+     Tamerlane. _See_ Timur
+
+     _Tarikh-i-Rashidi_ cited, 186
+
+     Tarim river, 173, 174, 283
+
+     Tarnak river, 224
+
+     Tashkurghan:
+       Fort of, 279, 281
+       Kabul, routes to, 260, 419
+       Moorcroft at, 448
+       otherwise mentioned, 88, 482
+
+     Tashkurghan river, 261, 279
+
+     Tarsi (Parsi), 489
+
+     Tate, Mr. G. P., cited, 336
+
+     Taxila, 29, 94, 99
+
+     Taxiles, 99
+
+     Teheran:
+       Hamadan telegraph route to, 48
+       Kashan, question as to railway _via_, 322
+       Mashad route from, 54, 77;
+         question as to railway by, 319
+
+     Termez, 278, 279
+
+     Teshkhan, 424
+
+     Thakot, 121
+
+     Tibet:
+       Chinese Turkistan formerly included in, 283
+       Gold-fields of, 51
+       Gold-digging legends concerning, 31
+       Idrisi's description of, 281-3
+       Invasion of India from, possibility as to, 188
+       Mongol invasion of, 186-7
+       Moorcroft in, 439-40
+
+     Tibetans, modern, 283
+
+     Tiglath Pilesur, King of Assyria, 6, 44, 46, 49, 51, 52, 57
+
+     Tigris river, 368
+
+     Til pass, 275
+
+     Timur Hissar, 356
+
+     Timur Shah (Tamerlane):
+       Herat and Ghur broken up by, 219
+       Kafiristan invaded by, 327, 355-6, 435
+       Merv-el-Rud destroyed by, 242
+       otherwise mentioned, 193, 394, 414, 481
+
+     Tingelab river, 486
+
+     Tippak, 283
+
+     Tir, 238-9
+
+     Tir Band-i-Turkistan mountains, 239, 240, 247, 258
+
+     Tirah Expedition, 105
+
+     Tiz (Talara), 299-301
+
+     Tochi river, 475
+
+     Tochi valley, 136;
+       route by, 512-14
+
+     Todd, Major d'Arcy, 480
+
+     Tokhari (Kushan), 241
+
+     Tokharistan (Oxus region), 241;
+       capital of, 243
+
+     To-li (Darel), 179, 182-3
+
+     Tomeros river, 157
+
+     Tous, 479
+
+     Topchi valley, 386, 388
+
+     Torashekh, 237, 482
+
+     Transportation of whole populations, 40, 44
+
+     Travel, _camaraderie_ of, 463-4
+
+     _Travels in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, the Punjab, and Kalat_
+      (Masson) cited, 349 _et seq._
+
+     Trebeck, 439-40, 444, 448, 459
+
+     Tsungling, 177, 178
+
+     Tubaran, 315-17
+
+     Turan, 315-16
+
+     Turfan, 172
+
+     Turki language, 394
+
+     Turkistan, Afghan. _See_ Afghan Turkistan
+
+     Turkman women, 283
+
+     Turkmans, Ersari, 459-60
+
+     Turks, Khizilji, 281-2
+
+     Turks Tibetans, 282
+
+
+     Uch, 364, 366
+
+     Udyana (Wuchung), 179, 184
+
+     Ujaristan valley, 515
+
+     Unai (Honai, Bamian) pass, 87, 260, 262, 379, 389, 414, 420, 446;
+       importance of, 521;
+       Wood's description of, 417
+
+     Ur (Mugheir), 42
+
+     Urmara, 368
+
+     Urukh (Warka), 163
+
+     Urusgan valley, 515
+
+     Uthal, 307
+
+     Uzbeks:
+       Agricultural pursuits of, 251
+       Dwellings of, 249
+       Kirghiz compared with, 430
+       Man-stealing propensities of, 421
+       Murad Khan acknowledged liege by, 383, 413
+       Snake-handling by, 253
+       Wood's estimate of, 423
+
+
+     Vaisravana, 178
+
+     Varsach river, 424
+
+     Vektavitch, Lieut., 400
+
+     Ventura, General, 367
+
+     Victoria Lake, 430-31
+
+
+     Wad, 373
+
+     Wade, Captain, 397, 398
+
+     Wainwright, E. A., cited, 313
+
+     Wakhab (Panja) river, 279
+
+     Wakhan, 273, 281, 327
+
+     Wakhjir pass, 279
+
+     Waksh, 273, 278
+
+     Wakshab river, 273, 278
+
+     Walian (Gwalian) pass, 414
+
+     Walid I., Kalif, 292, 307
+
+     Walker, General, cited, 123, 508
+
+     Wana, 513
+
+     Wardak valley, 466, 475
+
+     Wardoj river, 429, 437
+
+     Wardoj (Zebak) valley, 436
+
+     Warka (Urukh), 163
+
+     Warwalin, 271-2
+
+     Washir, 490
+
+     Wazirabad lake, 98
+
+     Waziris, 464, 474
+
+     Waziristan, 473
+
+     Weather, effects of, on natural features, 117-18
+
+     Westward migrations, 45, 61
+
+     Wilson, Major David, cited, 368
+
+     Wiltshire, General, 406
+
+     Wine made by Kafirs, 133-4
+
+     Wood, Lieut., mission of, to Badakshan, 402;
+       with Lord, 412, 416-18, 420, 422, 432, 439;
+       explorations of the Oxus by, 420, 423, 428-35;
+       Indus navigation by, 454; cited, 505-507, 523;
+       estimate of, 431;
+       value of work of, 418
+
+     Wolff, Rev. Joseph, 376
+
+     Woodthorpe, 429, 509
+
+     Wuchung (Udyana), 179, 184
+
+     Wynaad gold-fields, 51
+
+
+     Xenophon, retreat of, from Persia, 18, 42;
+       appreciation of, 66;
+       cited, 42
+
+     Xerxes, 20, 31, 91
+
+
+     Yahudi. _See_ Jews
+
+     Yahudia, 251, 255
+
+     Yakmina (Darak Yamuna), 317
+
+     Yakulang, 262; valley, 256
+
+     Yaman, 220, 222
+
+     Yang Kila, 433
+
+     Yar Mahomed Khan, 445, 477, 480, 490, 494
+
+     Yarkand, 279, 328
+
+     Yezd, 322
+
+     Yezdambaksh, 378, 382-4
+
+     Yule, Sir Henry, cited, 219, 508
+
+     Yusli, 307-308
+
+     Yusuf Darra route to Sar-i-pul, 483
+
+     Yusufzai rising, 350
+
+
+     Zaimuni, 389
+
+     Zakar (Takzar), 251, 252
+
+     Zal valley, 262
+
+     Zamindawar (Dawar), 83, 205-206, 223, 491
+
+     Zarah swamp, 204
+
+     Zarangai, 33-4
+
+     Zardaspan, 90
+
+     Zari stream, 257
+
+     Zariaspa. _See_ Andarab
+
+     Zarinje, 203, 204
+
+     Zarni, 222
+
+     Zebak:
+       Faizabad, route from, 511
+
+     Zebak:
+       Importance of, 427, 429, 433
+       mentioned, 279
+
+     Zebak river, 437, 520
+
+     Zebak (Wardoj) valley, 436
+
+     Zhob valley, 137
+
+     Zindajan (Bouchinj), 231, 232, 479
+
+     Zirmast pass, 236, 239, 240
+
+     Zirni, 487, 488
+
+     Zohak, 267, 387;
+       valley, 421
+
+     Zohaka, 466
+
+     Zoji-la, 180
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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