AFGHANISTAN

5%

The trade between Kandahar and India amounted to Rx.263,880 exports
from India, and Rx.329,920 imports into India in 1898-99. Three-fourths
of the exports from India consisted of cotton piece goods. Three-eighths
of the imports consist of raw wool, the remainder being chiefly fruit.

FROM the Gomal River which debouches on to the Indus
Valley plains (here called the Derajat) near Dera Ismail
Khan to the Malik Siah Koh Mountain, the frontier landmark
 of Southern Seistan, the boundary of Afghanistan
marches with that of Baluchistan already described.
From the Malik Siah Koh to the Helmund swamps
northward it was determined by the Seistan arbitration of
1872. This part of it consists of a direct (but undemarcated)
 line dividing Seistan, and trending north-east
till it touches the Helmund River just above the head
of the irrigation system which waters the plains about
Nasratabad. Nasratabad (the fortress of which place is
called Husainabad, and frequently gives its name locally
to the whole town) is the modern capital of Seistan, So
far, the boundary of Afghanistan runs for about eighty miles
through the flat alluvial districts formed by the Helmund
delta, all of which were once irrigated and trained into
one vast area of cultivation. The Afghan side of the line
is now bare of crops, a wilderness no longer fertilised
by the ancient irrigation which once distributed the
Helmund waters from the great « bund” (or dam) of
Kamal Khan by a central canal running westward past the
ancient city of Taraki. On the Persian side the natural
wealth of this whilom “granary of Asia” is fairly well
sustained. From the point where the boundary meets it,
the Helmund River itself becomes the boundary as far as
the final swamps into which its waters are merged, and
from these swamps northward for about 200 miles there
is no demarcated boundary.
The elevated plateau of the Perso-Afghan border
consists of open undulating plains of sandy formation,
varied by wide gravel-covered flats intersected at intervals
by short ridges and isolated peaks, the last south-westerly

* Recent changes in the river’s course have necessitated re-demarcation, and
% commission is at present engaged on this duty.