77^ Lieut. Irwin's Memoir of Afghanistan, [Sept, 



Aral nor the Seestan lake are navigated except by fishers or fowlers. 

 The rivers too we have enumerated are more generally an obstruc- 

 tion to intercourse than a facility. Wood is indeed floated on them 

 from the mountains, and in some cases goods are conveyed on rafts 

 from a higher to a lower place. We are also to except the Indus and 

 its eastern tributaries, which are navigated by trading boats as on the 

 rivers of our own provinces. The trade thus carried on is indeed far 

 inferior in amount to what is anticipated, and that especially in the 

 case of the Indus. In lower Sindh and Kushmeer alone water car- 

 riage is the chief mode of transportation in the country. But these, 

 and the particulars of ferries and fords, and modes of crossing rivers, 

 need not be here mentioned in detail, since they are in the pro- 

 vince of Lieut. Macartney. I may have appeared to have already 

 greatly encroached on it, but this introductory matter seemed neces- 

 sary to the readily and correctly apprehending what follows. 



( To be continued. ) 





