SCIENCE. Supplement 



FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1886. 



KHAM-I-AB. 



The accompanying map from the London Tivies 

 of Sept. 3 gives with the greatest attainable ac- 

 curacy, as it contains the most recent surveys of 

 the engineers attached to the English commission, 

 the relative positions of all the places of impor- 

 tance in the last part of the Afghan frontier. The 

 frontier has been absolutely laid down and marked 

 with pillars as far as Dukchi, which is forty miles 

 from the Oxus ; and, as a general statement, the 

 reader may accept the fact that Afghanistan re- 

 tains pasturages of from fifteen to twenty miles 

 north of the road from Meruchak to this place. 

 Andkoi and Kerki on the west, Mazar-i-Sherif, 

 and Chushka Guzar ferry on the east, form the 

 four limiting points of the tract of Afghan terri- 

 tory which is of importance in connection with 

 the final stage of the Afghan frontier question. 

 The district of still more immediate importance 

 is the forty miles separating Dukchi from the Oxus. 

 It is here that the commissioners have been un- 

 able to come to an agreement on the spot, and 

 that the governments of England and Russia must 

 devise some means of reconciling conflicting 

 views so that the frontier delimitations may be 

 brought to a clear end. The government of Rus- 

 sia has employed, during the recent exchanges of 

 opinion, the most conciliatory language, and there 

 does not seem at present any reason why the nego- 

 tiation should not, after all, terminate in an ami- 

 cable manner. At all events, it is a question call- 

 ing, in the interests of both countries, for calm 

 consideration and delicate handling. 



Since the British commission has been on the 

 Afghan fx'ontier, — and this, we may remind our 

 readers, has been since November, 1884, — it has 

 been found that the existing frontier of Afghan- 

 istan and Bokhara on the Oxus, and the one rec- 

 ognized by the tribes and chiefs on the spot, lies 

 between the border districts of Kham-i-Ab and 

 Bosaga respectively. English officers discovered 

 that in 1873 or thereabouts the local officials of 

 Afghanistan and Bokhara actually marked out 

 this boundary. No place of the name of Khoja 

 Saleh was found to exist ; but the tract of country 

 from the shrine of the Saint, called Ziarat-i-Kwaja 

 Salor, down the river to Kham-i-Ab, or for a dis- 

 tance of twenty -five miles in all, was known to 

 the Afghans as Kliwaja Salor, or Khoja Saleh. It 



is thus mai'ked on the map. Tlie district is of 

 some fertility, and forms a subdivision of the 

 Akcha governorship, to which it has belonged for 

 nearly a century. It is appropriate to observe 

 that by the 1873 agreement, which has been so 

 much refeiTed to as the basis of the present nego- 

 tiations, Akcha was declared part and parcel of 

 the dominions of Afghanistan. The district of 

 Khoja Saleh is inhabited by Karkins as well as 

 Ersaris. The former are not Turcomans ; and the 

 latter, who reside in Akcha and other Afghan 

 towns, as well as along the Oxus, are not nomads, 

 although Turcomans. They have been cultivators 

 of the soil for a very long time past, and have 

 paid then- taxes regularly, and given no trouble to 

 the Afghans. 



The confusion which has arisen with regard to 

 Khoja Saleh must, no doubt, be attributed to the 

 account given by Su- Alexander Burnes of his 

 passage of the Oxus at this place. No subsequent 

 traveller has visited this particular point on the 

 Oxus (Vambery crossed at Kerki ; and the Rus- 

 sian envoys to Afghanistan, at either Kilif or 

 Chushka), and the hasty impressions of the Eng- 

 lish traveller have guided geographers ever since. 

 We have no knowledge of what reports the cap- 

 tains of the Russian vessels, which began to ascend 

 the river as high as Kilif in 1879, may have sent 

 in as to where they first came into touch with 

 Afghan authority, and this would be a point about 

 which the English government might usefully 

 institute some inquiries ; but it is encouraging 

 to know that that government has something to 

 say in reply to the demand that the frontier should 

 be laid down in rigid accordance with the terms 

 of the protocol which repeated the phrase of 

 Khoja Saleh employed in 1884 at the time of the 

 formation of the commission, as well as during 

 the negotiations of 1873-73. Accompanying the 

 protocol a Blue-book (Central Asia, No. 3, 1885). 

 containing certain maps, was published, and 

 among these was an extract from the Russian 

 staff map of Afghanistan. This map was intended 

 for the guidance of the commissioners ; and a 

 zone of investigation, as well as a line of a pro- 

 posed frontier, was marked on it. Kham-i-Ab is 

 not mentioned on this map, but the point marked 

 ' Khodsha-Salor ' on it corresponds as nearly as 

 possible in latitude and longitude with the Kham- 

 i-Ab of the Afghans. Thus it is a fair conten- 

 tion that the Khoja Saleh of the protocol and 

 agi-eement of 1873 should be taken as indicating 



