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INDIA

stan exclusively. The Afghan represents the ruling race
amongst a mixed agglomeration of tribes of varied Asiatic
nationalities who divide the country between them. The
Afghan speaks of his own country as Khorasan, and he
distinguishes himself as Durani—or Ben-i-Israel—leaving
the name ¢ Afghan” to be applied to him by foreigners,
ie. by the majority of the inhabitants of Afghanistan.
The plateau of Afghanistan is rough and uneven, and it is
scored with mountain ranges. These, again, are intersected
 by valleys, elevated and narrow in the Kohistan
(the hill districts) of the north, but which widen out into
broad areas towards Kandahar and Herat on the south
and west, forming the wide ¢dasht” so familiar to the
records of our Afghan campaigns. Chief amongst these
ranges are the Hindu Kush, itself but the northern section
of that great trans-continental watershed, which extends
from the Himalayas of the Pamirs across Afghanistan and
Persia to the Caspian.
From its Himalayan origin to the Dorah Pass (connecting
 Badakshan with the Chitral river basin) the Hindu
Kush range has been sufficiently described as the boundary
of Afghanistan. From the Dorah, westward and southward,
 till lost in the hills of the Koh-i-Baba, south-west of
Kabul, it is the northern bulwark of the Kabul province.
From its geographical axis great snow-fed tributaries descend
 through the unmapped maze of Kafiristan and the
more open valleys that lie west of Kafiristan, to the Kabul
river, forming almost without exception the only practicable
 lines of approach through the otherwise impassable
mountains of Kohistan and Kafiristan.
Somewhere amongst the show-bound fastnesses of the
higher peaks of Kafiristan the Hindu Kush loses its flatbacked
 formation, and develops into a double system of
parallel ranges, forming two long narrow lateral valleys
which, draining from opposite directions to a junction,
eventually find an outlet through the southernmost ridge
to the broken plains of the Koh Daman (the «skirts of the
mountains’) north of Kabul. These two valleys are the
Panjshir and the Ghorband respectively, whose waters