AFGHAN BOUNDARY COMMISSION. 187 



•winter storms darken the atmosphere in the course of a few minutes 

 and freeze the life-blood of men exposed to them ; in summer the 

 heat is almost more intolerable, and it is impossible to cross these 

 regions without special precautions. Two very distinctly marked 

 and isolated natural hills called Kara Tapa Khurd and Kara Tapa 

 Kalan formed two trigonometrical stations of great importance 

 owing to the unvarying features of the surrounding country. 



The Oxus at Khamiab is a majestic river, comparable to the Indus 

 below Dera Ismail Khan or the Brahmaputra in Assam. The 

 neighbouring settlements of the Ersaris offer a most marked contrast 

 with the usual Turkoman villages ; the houses are well built and 

 well kept, the roads are well defined, the irrigation channels kept 

 clear and clean, substantial bridges cross the canals, and the whole 

 atmosphere of the Khwaja Salor district is one of prosperity. The 

 Oxus continually carries away portions of its banks, and the positions 

 of its ferries and roads have materially shifted from time to time, 

 the principal ferry now being at Kilif, where the river narrows to 

 about 400 yards. A similar crossing is at Termez, some 30 miles 

 above Kilif, running between hard rocky banks, which will protect 

 its channel from further alteration through future ages. Through 

 the Ersari country wells were certainly more plentiful, and the 

 existence of old irrigation channels for 11 miles beyond Kilif points 

 to a time when this part of Afghan Turkistan must have been as 

 well populated as the great Balkh plain. The devastation effected 

 by that destroying angel of Central Asia, Chingiz Khan, who razed 

 Nishapur, Merv, Balkh, and Herat (once a large city of four times 

 its present size), doubtless changed the fair face of the country into 

 a wilderness in his time, and the modern raids of the Kara Turko- 

 mans, combined with the tendency of the Uzbeg people to emigrate 

 in order to avoid a tyrannous rule, have kept much of the land 

 unproductive. As a rule the Oxus flows through many channels 

 which shift and alter just as they do in other large rivers not 

 confined to a single bed by hard rocky banks. 



The ferry at Kilif has been often described, and is worked (as it 

 was 50 years ago) by a system of attaching horses to large clumsily 

 built boats and swimming them across stream. The Shor Tapa district, 

 which extends from Kilif for 36 miles to Chobash, is described by 

 Captain Peacocke as consisting of six smaller districts, each of 

 which has its own canal from the river lined on both banks with 

 the usual orchards, houses,- enclosures, and mulberry plantations, 

 and is occupied by some 6,000 families of Ersari Turkomans. At 



