May 1, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



361 



the Khyber and Kuram passes. From Kabul 

 to Peshawar (190 miles), the road leads by 

 the Khurd Kabul or Lutaband passes to the 

 Jagdalak Pass. It was in these narrow defiles 

 that the English arm}' was slaughtered by the 

 Afghans in 1842. Thence by Ganclamak and 

 Jalalabad, on the Kabul River, the road runs to 

 Lai pur a. There it leaves the river, and follows 

 two mountain streams over the Khyber Pass 

 (3,000 feet), to Peshawar. This route was 

 followed by Elphinstone and Pollock in the 

 first Afghan war ; and, now that the terminus 

 of the Punjab railway is at Peshawar, it is the 

 most important route from India to eastern 

 Afghanistan, although Gen. (now Sir Fred- 

 erick) Roberts, in 1879, led his army over the 

 more southern Kuram Pass to Kabul. 



Kandahar, the great trade-centre of the 

 south, tying on the direct road from India to 

 Herat, is likely to be of more importance in 

 case of a war between England and Russia. 

 It is situated in a small plain between the 

 Arghand-ab and Tarnak rivers, and commands 

 the road through the Tarnak valley, b}~ Ghazni, 

 to Kabul (318 miles). Sir John Keane took 

 this route on his march to Kandahar in 1838 ; 

 Xott marched b} r it in 1842, to aid Pollock in 

 avenging the massacre of Elphinstone's ex- 

 pedition ; and it was by this road that Sir 

 Frederick Roberts made his famous march 

 from Kabul to the relief of Kandahar in 1880. 

 The railroad from India to Kandahar leaves 

 the main line from Karachi to Lahore, at 

 Sukkur on the Indus ; thence by Shikarpur 

 and Sibi to Rindli, at the entrance of the Bolan 

 Pass. Here the railway stops ; but a good car- 

 riage-road has been constructed, at least as far 

 as Quetta. Unfortunately no bridges were 

 built over the streams, the} T being crossed hy 

 fords ; and this has made it impossible to lay a 

 light military railway along the road. Indeed, 

 it has been stated that a thoroughly built rail- 

 way could not be opened to Quetta in less than 

 two years. Quetta, or Shal, is situated between 

 the head of the Bolan Pass and the Pishin 

 valley. It commands the road, and is there- 

 fore a place of very great military importance. 

 The Bolan Pass and Quetta are in Baluchistan ; 

 but the English acquired b}^ treaty, in 1876, the 

 right to hold and use the pass and town for 

 militar}- purposes, and Quetta is now the most 

 advanced English outpost. The road leads 

 thence through the Pishin valle}', and over the 

 Kojak or Gwaja passes to Kandahar. From 

 the end of the railway at Rindli, to Kandahar, 

 is somewhere between 200 and 260 miles. 

 Authority has been given to complete it to the 

 Pishin valley within a hundred miles of Kan- 



dahar. That city r was occupied by the English 

 from 1839 to 1842, and again from 1879 to 

 1881 . The trade-route thence to Herat, nearly 

 370 miles away, leads by two strong positions, 

 — Kushk-i-Nakud, the scene of Burrows's 

 defeat in 1880, and Girishk, — and over several 

 mountain passes. But the importance of this 

 road, and of Kandahar itself, has been les- 

 sened by the discoveiy of a much longer, but 

 nevertheless good, route from Quetta to Herat 

 without passing Kandahar. It was by this 

 road that Gen. Lumsden's Indian escort, over 

 1,300 strong, and with a train of 1,300 camels 

 and 400 mules, marched at an average rate 

 of eighteen miles a day to meet him on the 

 frontier. 



Herat (Heri) is situated on a fertile plain, 

 near the river Hari-Rud (river of Heri or 

 Herat), between the western extremities of 

 the spurs of the Hindu Kush, above men- 

 tioned. Its importance, both commercial and 

 strategic, is due to the fact that it dominates 

 the best road from the Caspian by Mash-had, 

 to the Indus by Kandahar. The position of 

 the city itself, from a military point of view, 

 is not good ; because its defences are, as Gen. 

 Grodekoff pointed out, commanded by a 

 neighboring hill. 



The Hari-Rud rises in the heart of Afghan- 

 istan, and flowing almost due west along the 

 northern base of the Paropamisus Hills, within 

 a few miles of Herat, strikes the Persian fron- 

 tier seventy miles beyond that city, at Kusan. 

 There it abruptly turns north, and, passing 

 Zolfikar, — a name given to a ford, but more 

 correctly, perhaps, to a neighboring pass in the 

 hills, — reaches Pul-i-Khatun. At this point 

 it receives its principal affluent, the Kashaf 

 Rud, from the west. The Kashaf and Hari- 

 Rud, after leaving Pul-i-Khatun, take the name 

 of Tajand, and, passing Sarakhs, become desic- 

 cated in the Turkoman Steppe. The oasis thus 

 formed lies between Merv and Persia, and for 

 this reason has been nearly uninhabited until 

 the recent Russian advance upon Merv. 



The river Murgh-ab rises to the south of the 

 Paropamisus Hills,, and, flowing in a general 

 northerly direction, passes the Afghan strong- 

 hold of BalaMurghab, on the road from Herat 

 to Maimana and Afghan Turkestan : thence 

 it flows by Meruchak (where, according to the 

 Russians, the north-western boundary of Af- 

 ghanistan crosses the river) , by Panj Deh and 

 Yulatan, to Merv, where it loses itself in the 

 irrigation canals of that oasis. 



A few miles below Panj Deh the Murgh-ab 

 receives from the west the river Kushk. which 

 rises to the north of the water-parting not far 



