190 AFGHAN BOUNDARY COMMISSION. 



Yusuf* was surveyed by Sub-Surveyor Ata Mahomed, and is similar 

 in most characteristics to the Balkh Ao. 



Haibakf is a picturesque place with a small hill fort overlooking 

 the bazaar and the overcrowded little town. Round about the 

 plain are the sharp square-cut cliffs which are ever the distinguishing- 

 feature of all the plateau, and a mile to the south, across the well 

 cultivated fields, is the mouth of the well known and picturesque 

 Dara-i-Zindan (mentioned by Burnes) leading to Bamian. Neat 

 white-walled villages overlooking the rippling stream, well built 

 bridges, closely-set orchards, and meadows with grass lawns sloping 

 to the river, and above all the crags and many-coloured walls of 

 the precipitous cliffs on either side combined to form a picture of 

 which the beauty was doubly impressive to the eyes of officers 

 accustomed to the sterile wastes of Turkistan. The Buddhist ruins 

 and rock- cut stupa called Takkt-i-Rustam in the neighbourhood of 

 Haibak were examined by Captain Talbot, who has written an 

 account of them as well as of the better known Bamian remains. 



The Ab-i-Surkh, as the upper valley of the Kunduz is called, 

 is not distinguished by such remarkable defiles and gorges as that in 

 the Khulm and Balkh Ao. South and east of it one comes upon the 

 Hindu Kush system, and every pass to the southward crosses 

 a succession of spurs of that great range. The local nomenclature 

 makes the Hindu Kush terminate at the head of the Ghorband 

 valley, east of Bamian, so that the Irak pass to Bamian from Kabul 

 does not cross the true Hindu Kush, but a connecting water-shed 

 between it and the Koh-i-Baba. 



With regard to the Hindu Kush range, Colonel Holdich notices 

 that the same feature prevails as is observable in the case of the 

 Himalaya?, i.e., that the central or main water-shed is not defined 

 by the most prominent peaks, which rise high above it from the 

 ridges of gigantic lateral spurs. There is, too, a remarkable 

 similarity in the general altitude and appearance of these granite 

 giants, and at a distance they are difficult to recognise distinctively. 

 The same may be said of the mountain mass of the Koh-i-Baba, 



* This route is most important and leads past the remarkable hill fort of Valishan, 

 which was besieged by the Mughals, as described in Ravevty's 'fabakat-i-Nasiri, 

 p. 1023. Raverty calls it Walkh and is inclined to identify it with Zuhak in the 

 Bamian valley, but Sir If. Rawlinson shows it is more probably the \Yulee=han of 

 Mir Izznt Ollah and the Valej or Yal-valej of the old geographers. 



f Curiously enough, Haibak is omitted from the late Sir Charles Macgregor's great 

 work, the Gazetteer of Central Asia (Afghanistan). 



