AFGHANISTAN

70

gap in the encircling hills of Kabul, which occurs near
Charasia, we need follow it no farther. It turns the
western extremity of the Safed Koh, and passes over the
high level of the Afghan plateau, never dropping again
to a level much below 7000 feet above sea-level.
At the point where it debouches on to the Logar plains,
it is about equidistant from Kabul and from Ghazni, and
between neither of these important centres of Afghan
political authority is there any great physical obstacle
to be encountered. The great altitude of the Shutargardan
 Pass alone renders it a barrier to Afghan trade
with India.
The next gateway of importance between Afghanistan
 and India is afforded by the Tochi Valley, which is
based on the frontier station of Bannu or Edwardesabad.
The Tochi River is an affluent of the Kuram, which it joins
not very far from their united junction with the Indus.
[t takes its rise in the western slopes of the Waziristan
Mountains, and the Pathan people who occupy this mounfain
 district (called Waziris or Wazirs) intervene as an
'ndependent barrier between Afghanistan and India in
continuation of the Roh province which has been intersected
 by our occupation of the Kuram Valley.
Formerly, no doubt, the Tochi formed the shortest
Connecting link between the capital of Afghanistan, once
Centred at Ghazni, and those plains of India from whence
the material financial support of the unstable kingdom of
Afghanistan has ever been derived. It was down this
Pass (according to all local tradition) that Mahmud of
Ghazni used occasionally to sweep when Multan and
Sind rather than Peshawur and the Punjab were his
‘mmediate objective, followed by hordes of irregular
fAorsemen (undeserving the name of cavalry), and vast
Companies of Pathan freebooters who played the jackal to
his leading, during a series of raids which lasted through
the opening decades of the eleventh century. It is not,
and it never has been, a great trade route, and it is, in
part at least, still one of those unravelled knots 1n
frontier geography which require further investigation