321 Notes on Kafir 1st in. [No. 4. 



many places falling over precipices and forming cascades — and 

 attain a breadth of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty 

 yards. 



Another considerable river rises in the northern part of Kafiristan 

 on the northern slope of the Hindu Kush, at a place designated by 

 the Si'ah-posh, Kandah-i-nil — Jcandah in Persian signifying, a dam or 

 dyke. 



It flows in a direction almost due north, to fifteen or twenty 

 miles beyond Jerm in Badakhshan ; after which, being joined by the 

 "Wardoj river (according to Wood), it runs nearly due west, and 

 unites with the Panj or upper branch of the Oxus, whose source is 

 lake Sir-i-kol in Pamir, ] 5,600 feet above the level of the sea, the 

 highest table-land in Asia, and probably in the world. These united 

 streams (according to the author just quoted) fall into the Oxus 

 at Killse Chap. He also calls the first mentioned river by the 

 name of Kokcha ; but the Kafirs, in whose couutry it rises, and the 

 people towards Jerm, consider it the source of the iEman or Oxus. # 

 In fact they know it by no other name, and what Lieut. Wood calls 

 the main branch of that river, they designate the Panj. 



Besides the large valleys watered by the river rising at Kandah-i- 

 Nil, there are several others that open into them and wind 

 amongst the hills in an oblique direction towards Kafiristan. The 

 whole of them send down numerous small streams to the larger 

 rivers. Along the banks of these the Kafirs occasionally make in- 

 roads into Badakhshan. f 



* " Aparena or the west, is the Litoda lake from which issues the Apara- 

 Gan'dica or Western Gan'dica, called also Chacshu in the Puranas, Oxus by the 

 Greeks, and Cocshu by the natives. This lake which is the source of the Oxus, 

 is noticed in some maps : by the natives it is called cul (kol) or the lake ; and by 

 Persian authors Divsaran ; Deva-sara in Sanskrit, signifies the lake of the 

 gods, or the divine lake. According to them it is near the mountains of 

 Andemas from the Sanskrit And'ha Tamasa, both words implying dark- 

 ness, (in the Tiirki language Belut Tagh, previously referred to), but being 

 joined together, they imply it in a superlative degree ; and it is the name of one 

 of the divisions of hell. On the summit is the JBelur, or dark country of 

 the maps. Wilford on the Sacred Isles of the West. Asiatic Researches; 

 Yol. VIII. Pp. 330." 



f " Robat, a deserted village seven miles down the valley. It stands at the 

 mouth of a little stream on the right bank of the Kokcha, by the valley of which 



