186 AFGHAN BOUNDARY COMMISSION. 



respects. Previously to Imam Sharif's explorations the exact 

 localities occupied by the Moghuls were unknown. There are 

 about 800 families living in Nili, Zerni, and Ghur Muskhan, who 

 speak a language strongly allied to Turki, and claim to have been 

 brought into the country by Chingiz Khan. 



The great plains of Afghan Turkestan lying south of the Oxus, 

 between Andkhui and Badakhshan, as well as the river itself, 

 were thoroughly reconnoitred. According to Griesbach, the vast 

 deposits of clays, gravel, and loose sandstone which form these 

 plains have been in process of accumulation since the pliocene era, 

 huge fano have been spread out at the points where the present 

 livers, the Kaisar, Saripul, Khulm, and Balkh Ao, enter the plains, 

 the finer deposits being carried to the furthest limits of the fans. 

 Over this base in belts of various widths are thick waves of blown 

 sand, wind-borne from the north-west, and occasionally spread out 

 so as to completely cover the fluviatile deposits below. Griesbach 

 suggests that the great swell in the plain in which the southern 

 tributaries lose themselves represents an anticlinal now in course of 

 formation, and that the river is, as it were, flowing along the crest 

 of a mountain range also in course of formation. 



None of the tributaries of the Oxus basin west of Kunduz 

 d raining from the mountain districts on the south find their way at 

 any season of the year to the river. During the flood season in 

 spring they often spill over their ordinary channels and form large 

 swamps and lagoons. Enormous masses of detritus and vegetable 

 matter are brought down from the channels of the hill streams, 

 which are thoroughly cleaned out of the year's vegetable growth, 

 ;::id the sweepings of the hill-sides of the Band-i-Turkistan, of the 

 Bazarajat, and tlieTurkistan high lands generally. The Oxus itself 

 I) ings dawn large quantities of vegetable matter, and during the 

 s-: miner months it becomes a rolling chocolate-coloured sea, bearing 

 even large trees on its tide. Similarly there is a vast amount of 

 s erviceable timber stranded along the lower course of the Tejend. 



To the north and north-west of Andkhui is a vast area of open 

 phun which is not sheer desert but consists of chol formation 

 modified by aerial deposit and converted into gently swelling downs 

 an I sandhills from which vegetation is never entirely absent. From 

 lime immemorial wells have been dug, yet in spite of their number 

 the supply of drinkable water is exceedingly scanty. The extremes 

 of temperature are described as something terrific ; the north-west 



