AFGHANISTAN 115 geography] in the plain that stretches to Butkak. The valleys of the Logar little indication of its mountain origin. Very little is known are amongst the richest and most picturesque of Afghanistan. The about the catchment areas of these two rivers. It is a vast united streams pass from the Kabul plain (6900 feet) through a wilderness of mountains, the gates of which are jealously guarded by precipitous gorge into the lower level of the Doaba to the north the Afghan Government; but the lower reaches of the Alingar pass of the Kabul-Lataband road, and do not touch the road again till through comparatively open plains, and are fringed with flourishthey pass Jalalabad. Meanwhile the volume of the river has been ing villages. The Laghman (or Lamghan) plain is important as swelled at Doaba by the Tagao, which carries the drainage of the indicating the ancient route from Kabul to India, which, instead eastern slopes of the Hindu Kush from the head of the Panjshir, of passing through Nangrahar and Jalalabad, followed the course at the Khawak pass (11,640 feet) to the sources of the Ghorband, of the Kabul river through thisr plain into the Kunar valley, and near the junction of the Hindu Kush with the Koh-i-Baba. Into thence passed into Bajaor, and w as carried by one of several frontier the Tagao fall the rivers and streams of the Koh Daman north passes into the plains of Peshawur. The Khaibar is a modern of Kabul, as well as those of a considerable section of Kohistan, route, regarded as a main line of communication. The southern which forms Western Kafiristan ; so that the Tagao affluents com- affluents of the Kabul river are insignificant; but two other great bined present probably a greater volume than the Kabul, at tributaries from the north—the Kunar, or river of Chitral, and the Doaba. Before reaching Jalalabad the Kabul receives another Swat (with its Panjkora affluent)—have been thoroughly examined. great contribution from the north in the united waters of the Only about one-third of the total length of the Kunar (270 miles Alingar and the Alishang, which, under the former name, join from Lake Karambar on the Hindu Kush to Jalalabad) is within in the Laghman plain. These two rivers between them drain all the limits of Afghanistan. The new political boundary crosses Central Kafiristan south of the Hindu Kush, and unite with the the valley at Arnawai, near the junction of the Bashgol river of main channel of the Kabul in a broad clear stream which gives Kafiristan with the Kunar. Above this point Chitral intervenes
between Afghanistan and the Gilgit province of Kashmir. Below it the eastern water-divide of the river shuts off Bajaor. The extreme narrowness of the river basin is remarkable, there being no considerable affluent from either side except the Bashgol, whilst the craggy ranges which intervene between the stream and the Panjkora on the east (or again between the Panjkora and Swat rivers), although of enormous altitude (from 12,000 to 15,000 feet), stand on a base which averages less than 25 miles. Nearly due east of Chitral the culminating peaks overlooking the soffrces of the Panjkora to the south, and those of the Gilgit river to the east, rise to nearly 19,000 feet of altitude. The Swat and Panjkora river basins belong to the Cis-Afghan independent territory, wdiich was largely exploited during the recent north-western expeditions. Their main characteristics are those of the Kunar; but they rise far to the south of the sources of that river, the range which forms the southern water-divide of the Upper Gilgit basin enclosing those small tributaries amongst its southern spurs, which swell into big affluents ere they join these two historic streams. Much of the northern parts of their basins, including the districts of Darel and Tangir, immediately south of Gilgit, still remains to be explored. Within historic times much of the Lower Swat, Panjkora, and Kunar valleys was occupied by Kafir tribes, the limits of their occupation being traceable by the
total absence of those Buddhist archaeological remains which abound on all sides of the sphere of paganism. That part of the basin of the Indus beyond the Kabul and its tributaries which appertains to Afghanistan is inconsiderable. It includes hardly more than the upper tributaries of the Gomul river, which rise in the plains between AVaziristan and Ghazni, but the area of Cis-Afghan independent territory which is drained by the Indus is both extensive and politically important. Kanjut, the glacial region which gives birth to the Hunza river ; the valleys of Yassin and of the Upper Gilgit; a long strip of territory adjoining the Indus—the region to which the name Kohistan is frequently given—all this independent territory forms a northern section of the Indus basin apart from the Kabul tributaries. Farther south the rivers of the frontier—the Kuram, the Tochi, the Gomul, and others between these, too many to enumerate^—all drain downwards from the Afghan frontier through the independent strip of mountain barrier to effect (where the intervening sands permit) a junction with the Indus. As all this country has been geographically surveyed, the outline of the disjointed hydrographical network which forms the western catchment of the Indus between Attok and the Gomul (where the political boundary of Baluchistan intervenes) may be best studied
