Proceedings
of the
Royal
Geographical Society (Great Britain)
Norton Shaw, Francis
Galton, Clements Robert Markham, William Spottiswoode,
Henry Walter Bates, John Scott Keltie
Published 1879
The Basin of the Helmand.
By C. E. MARKHAM, C.B., Secretary K.G.S.
(Read
at the Evening Meeting, February 24th, 1879.)
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up two out of the three rivulets
which are its sources, and thus formed the present river.
In the dry season it issues from the dam a stream 20 feet
wide and 2 deep, with a velocity of 5 feet per second. In
spring it is much larger. The dam, called
“Band-i-Sultan” consists of a wall of masonry
closing up a rocky valley, and when complete it was 300
yards long, and from 20 to 30 feet high. The outlet is
closed in autumn, and a lake fills the valley, 600 yards
across. In spring, the orifice is opened for irrigation,
and after a course of 10 miles the volume is much
reduced, water having been taken off to irrigate fields
on either side. Thence it flows, over a desolate tract,
impregnated with salt, to the Abistada Lake. The eastern
half of the Abistada Basin is occupied by the districts
of Zurmat and Katawaz.
Zurmat is a valley 40 miles long by
20. Near its northern extremity is a town called Gardez,
containing 250 houses of Tajiks, and still further north
is Michelga. The mountains which bound Zurmat on either
side furnish many khariz or underground watercourses for
irrigation, and a line of forts is built along these
khariz, and parallel to the bases of the hills. From
Gardez a good road crosses into the Logar valley and goes
thence to Kabul; and there is a more difficult one, by
Michelga, to Jalalabad. The Shutar-gardan Pass, from the Kurram
Valley, also opens upon Zurmat, and the road leads across
that district where water, forage and grain are abundant,
to Ghazni.
The River Jalgu waters the Valley of Zurmat, and falls
into the Ghazni.
Katawaz, also in the Abistada Basin
to the south of Zurmat, is 48 miles long by 24 in
breadth. This district consists of a level and open
plain, bounded on the east by the Western Sulimani Mountains,
on the west by the lower hills of Katasang, which bound
the valley of the Ghazni on the
east, and on the south by the Abistada Lake. Katawaz is entirely
occupied by the Suliman-Khel division of the Ghilzi tribe.
It is watered by the River Paltu which rises in the Western
Sulimanis, and has an independent course to the lake. Its
stream is about 20 feet wide and a foot deep. The Pass of
Paltu, at the source of the river, is reported by
Broadfoot to be difficult, and leads over the Sulimanis
into the country of the Karotis in the Gomul Valley.
Lake Abistada is 7050 feet above the
sea. It
was described by the Emperor Babur, and has been
visited during this century by Masson and Broadfoot. It
is 65 miles south-west of Ghazni, a
distance which nearly represents the length of the river,
and it receives the Ghazni River,
with its affluent the Jalgu, at its northern end; and the
Paltu River from the east. The lake is 17 miles long by
15 broad, and it has a trifling depth of 12 feet in the
centre. It is bounded by a gently shelving margin of
naked clay. Not a tree is in sight, nor even a blade of
grass. The water is salt and bitter, and the banks are
deeply encrusted with salt. The fish brought down by the Ghazni River,
on entering the salt part, sicken and die, and at the
point where the river
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