OROGRAPHY. 



5 



parting between the basins of the Helmand and Kabul river-systems 

 on the one side and the northward-flowing tributaries of the Oxus on 

 the other. It was probably this feature that led Professor Suess to 

 assume tbat the Koh-i-Baba was the direct continuation of the Hindu 

 Kush (29, 293). Strictly speaking, however, this assumption is not 

 justified from either a geological or a purely geographical point of view. 

 The crest lines of the two ranges are in no sense continuous ; the line of 

 water-parting connecting the two lies on the Shibar pass, which is merely 

 a broad saddle running transversely to the strike of its component rocks. 

 The true easterly continuation of the Koh-i-Baba is found in the 

 complicated series of ridges to the south of the Ghorband valley, whilst 

 the westerly continuation of the Hindu Kush is the Koh-i-Ghandak 

 and the range between Bamian and Saighan. This view corresponds not 

 only with the actual topographical features but also broadly with the 

 distribution of the stratigraphical series forming the respective ranges. 



Although it is not admissible to regard the Koh-i-Baba as strictly 

 the continuation of the Hindu Kush, both ranges are no doubt parts 

 of a single teutonic system, and have been treated as such by Colonel 

 Burrard (3, 100), who offers two alternative interpretations of the 

 orographical relationships of the Afghan water-parting. In one of 

 these he refers the whole mass embracing the Hindu Kush proper, 1 the 

 Paghmau, Sanglakh and Koh-i-Baba ranges, to two parallel ranges, a 

 northern and a southern Hindu Kush. The northern, which corre- 

 sponds with the Hindu Kush proper, he regards as the water-parting 

 between the Oxus on the one side and the Indus and Helmand on the 

 other. To the west of Ghorband and the Shibar pass, however, this 

 water-parting is no longer the Hindu Kush proper, but shifts southward 

 to the Koh-i-Baba, which is shown as the continuation of the so-called 

 Southern Hindu Kush. The other interpretation {op. sit., Chart XXI), 

 offered by Colonel Burrard, is that from Tirich Mir westwards the 

 1 Hindu Kush is in reality the name of a pass between Ghorband and Khinjan, 

 which, according to local folklore, was so named in consequence of the murder (Pers. 

 huslitan - to kill) of a Hindu for the sake of his postin (sheep-skin coat). Sir 

 Thomas Holdich gives a different, and perhaps more probable, origin for thefname 

 L" India ", p. 05 (1904) ]. 



