04

INDIA

receives the Helmund. The Taimani country has indeed
been fairly well explored, and il has been found to be
worth but little to the agriculturist. Nearly all the wealth
of Southern Afghanistan is concentrated about Kandahar.
The valleys of the Argandab and Arghasan, and the teeming
 Zamindawar district contain all the best of Western
Afghan soil, but in all of them there is little room for enlarging
 the borders of the cultivated land, so that we may
say that (so far as our geographical researches can tell
us) Afghanistan is already cultivated to nearly its fullest
extent. We must look then rather to the possible mineral
wealth of Afghanistan, and to its resources in silk, camelhair
 clothing, and wool, and to the further development
of its trade in horses, and possibly, too, in timber, for
those financial returns which will enable the country to
support itself and its own defences, A certain amount of
mineral wealth is known at present to be concentrated
in the mines of lapis-lazuli in Badakshan ; of copper in
several places ; of tin in the Panshir Valley ; and of lead in
Ghorband. Coalis to be found in Afghan Turkestan, and
gold was once worked from quartz veins near Kandahar ;
but this is not a very promising field in which to look for
contributions to the Kabul treasury, and it is on the
development of the commerce of the country with India
that Afghanistan must chiefly depend for future financial
advancement and final stability.
Instead of long strings of slow moving camels, which
sven now may be counted by the score toiling along the
road adjoining the line of the Quetta-Chaman railway—
still adhering with obstinate persistency to the old-world
tracks over the Khojak rather than give way to the pushing
and impertinent railway that has already thrust itself to
the edge of Afghanistan with its railhead pointing to
Kandahar—an extension of that same railway to Kandahar
is the first development needed. On the northern routes
Kabul and Peshawur must also be connected by rail, and
finally a far more direct and efficient linking up of the
iateral routes between Peshawur and Quetta must be
considered once again, With the impetus to the natural