The Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume IX, No. 4 [‎206v] (83/172)

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THE SOUTHERN BORDERLANDS OF AFGHANISTAN.
stupendous depth. It is hard to imagine anything finer than some of
these gorges. Some of them, such as those in the ihowa and Kaha
rivers, & and especially those in the streams known as the Chuhar Khel,
Zao and Gat Dhanas, are really marvellous gorges, wild and gloomy in
the extreme. They are so narrow at the bottom that you can often
touch both sides with your hands. Their walls of massive limestone
rock rise perpendicularly upwards for several thousand feet. In places
the sky is seen through a small slit, as it were, overhead; in other places,
the walls overhang and so nearly meet overhead, that the sky is invisible
from below. It is naturally impossible to give any real idea of one of
these stupendous gorges in a photograph, but I will now show you a
photograph of a very much smaller one, from which you can perhaps
form your own impressions of the many other infinitely finer ones I have
referred to. Notwithstanding the high mountain ranges which have
stood in their way, these rivers reach the plains, and eventually find
their way by the Indus to the ocean.
Now let us look at the other river system—I mean the rivers flowing
into Afghanistan. You will see that they have not had the same
difficulties to contend with in finding their way to lower levels, as they
flow parallel, and not at right angles, to the mountain ranges. So far
all has gone well with them, but not for long. All well-conducted rivers
should reach the sea ; none of these ever do. Those to the north get no
further than the Ab-i-Stada lake, a wide sheet of water over 7000 feet
above sea-level. Others meet a similar fate, but at a lower level, in the
Lora Hamun; while the greater number join the Helmand, which, after
a long journey, deserving a better ending, comes at last to a standstill in
the lakes and swamps of Seistan. All these lakes are as salt as salt can
be, and many of them, like the Ab-i-Stada and God-i-zirreh, are enclosed
in wide margins of solid dry salt.
To revert to the highlands of Khorassan. We reached there in June,
1894, and thoroughly enjoyed the pleasing change of these cool breezy
plains after the heat of the deep confined valleys we had been in. By
the end of September, however, we began to find that the pleasant
coolness of the summer had changed to severe cold. Our nomad friends
dhe Kakars and Ghilzais had all departed east and west towards their
warmer winter quarters, and none but the few resident Lowanas were
deft, and we ourselves were glad to leave. The winter cold in these
parts is very severe, and the wide plains are swept by a cold wind,
which, if the natives are to be believed, is death to the unwary traveller
who may be caught by it away from shelter. The large heaps of
whitened bones we found here and there near the marks of old Lowana
• encampments marked the places where whole flocks of sheep and goats
.had been frozen to death during the exceptionally severe snowfall of
•the preceding winter.
Descending from these highlands by various deep river valleys, and