AFGHANISTAN

61

variety of plain and mountain scenery for 12,400 feet to
the great reservoirs of the “roof of the world.” The
Oxus level at Khamiab is about 1000 feet above sea ; at
Lake Victoria it is 13,400 feet. Although the Oxus is
not actually beyond the pale of Indian polity, it is so far
removed from the Indian frontier that a consideration of
the physical characteristics of the river itself would carry
us too far afield. One noticeable feature may, however,
claim a passing reference. Within historical periods this
great central Asian waterway has shifted its course. A
short distance south of Khamib the ancient bed may be
traced through the shifting sands which surround Tash
Kuduk, but whether it ever debouched into the Caspian
Sea is still a matter of dispute amongst geographers. The
Caspian has itself so changed its outline as to leave the
nature of the connection uncertain. It is, however, probable
 that the gradual evolution of an elevated ridge, or
anticlinal, which appears to be in process of formation
through the plains of Afghan Turkestan parallel to the
Oxus has affected the hydrography of the country. Rivers
flowing northward from the mountains intervening between
the Oxus plains and the Afghan highlands no longer reach
the Oxus, They are lost in the great swamps and marshes
which surround Akcha, or in the cultivated districts of
Mazar-i-Sharif.
All the great plain lying between the Oxus and the
central Afghan mountain system of Hindu Kush and its
continuation westwards to the Band-i-Turkestan, is known
as Afghan Turkestan. Beyond it on the north-east lies
Badakshan, and beyond Badakshan, the Pamir region.
The northern Turkestan province of Afghanistan is so far
removed from the rest of the kingdom by the central
mass of intervening mountains that it will be convenient
to note some of its most prominent characteristics before
following the Afghan boundary farther.
The western portion of Afghan Turkestan, which lies
on the northern slopes of the Koh-i-Baba (intervening
between Kushk and Herat), and of the Tirband-i-Turkestan,
is a broken mass of rolling downs and Chol country easily