From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

For the first half of our march the road crossed a wide sweep of alluvium, and then, at a bend of the river called ’Kárwán rez, rose on to the desert, which here abuts upon it in high bluffs. The river flows in a brisk stream, that winds tortuously over a wide channel full of thick jangal, in which the tamarisk, willow, poplar, and acacia are the most prominent trees.

The desert stretches away towards the south-west in a great undulating waste of firm gravelly soil, thickly covered with pasture plants, now sprouting into leaf, and here and there dotted with shallow pools in the hollows of the surface. It supports great herds of wild asses and gazelles, and swarms with lizards, snakes, and scorpions. Hares, foxes, and wild cats abound in its coverts, and in our passage over it we found numbers of bustard, sand-grouse, and plover of sorts.

Formerly this desert waste used to be frequented by nomad Afghans, but they have abandoned its pastures owing to the anarchy and insecurity that has prevailed here during the last ten years or so. As we found it, the whole surface is covered with pasture herbs and bushes suited for camels, horned cattle, and sheep. The principal plants are a dwarf mimosa called chughak, the wormwood, spiny astragalus, caroxylon, and other saltworts, called here lána, shorai, and zmai, a species of ephedra called hóm, two or three kinds of caryophyllæ, and a woody shrub bearing yellow flowers and thick fleshy leaves, and having a three-winged fruit. It is called mákoi in Pushto, and ghích in Persian, and is considered excellent food for camels and sheep. Its wood also furnishes good fuel.

Khúshkrodak is a wide and deep ravine with high banks of stiff clay. It drains the Calá Koh hills, and running across the desert plain in a southerly direction, joins the Farráh river some way below Lásh. Where the high road crosses it the banks are shelving, and present loose blocks of conglomerate rock, but the bed is a stiff clay charged with salines.

Our next stage was fifteen miles across the plain, first north-west and then north, to Calá Koh, or Káh, as it is usually pronounced, at the foot of a range of hills running east and west, and connecting those of Farráh on the north-east with those of Bandán on the south-west.

Calá Koh is the principal of a collection of fortified villages that extend for many miles along the foot of the hills. The others, from east to west, are Shúsh, Fareb, Calá Páyín, and Júrg. Interspersed amongst them are the ruins of several villages and forts that have been demolished by different invaders. Calá Koh, which was the residence of the present chief of Lásh up to 1851, was dismantled in 1863 by orders of the late Amir Dost Muhammad Khán, as a punishment for the contempt of his authority shown by its chief, Sardár Ahmad Khán, Isháczai, the present lord of Hokát.

Since the fall of the Saddozai family this chief had always maintained an independent attitude towards the Bárakzai rulers of Kabul and Kandahar, and was favoured by the isolation of his position in resisting their attempts to reduce him to submission. He was, moreover, estranged from them by reason of a blood feud existing between the families, Ahmad Khán’s grandfather, Sálih Muhammad, having taken part in the cruel butchery of the Wazír Fata Khán, the brother of the Amir Dost Muhammad Khán. On the occasion of Dost Muhammad’s move upon Herat he summoned Ahmad Khán to his camp at Farráh, but this Afghan noble, mistrustful of the Amir’s designs, and fearful of losing his independence, hastily left his domain and took refuge with the Persians at Mashhad. Consequently the Amir detached a force under his son Sardár Muhammad Sharíf Khán to destroy Calá Koh and plunder the district. The fort has remained in a dismantled state ever since.

The land about Calá Koh is irrigated from streams brought off from the Farráh river, and produces wheat and barley abundantly. The soil is very highly charged with salines, and in wet weather the roads are almost impassable by reason of the depth of mud. We had to cross a small patch of land that had been flooded by a break in the bank of an irrigation canal, and found the mud knee-deep and very tenacious. Many of our baggage cattle fell in it, and were extricated with considerable trouble.

We found the midday sun here had unusual force. The thermometer in our tents rose to 92° Fah. at three P.M., and sunk to 52° Fah. at daylight. The height of this place above the sea is about 2100 feet. Along the water-courses grows in abundance a strong thorny bush, much resembling the barberry, but different from it. Its local name is sag angúrak, or “dog’s grape.”

From Calá Koh we marched fifteen miles in a westerly direction, and camped on the bank of the Harút Rúd, the bed of which we found quite dry, though water in sufficiency was found by digging a few feet into its gravelly soil. Our route skirted the hills to the right, and passing through a gap in them, opened on the wide basin of the Harút river, which is a dismal wilderness without a trace of habitation or cultivation. The surface is covered with a thick growth of tamarisk bushes, caroxylon, and other saltworts, carthamus, wild almond, ghích, and a profuse variety of other plants, but the hills about are perfectly bare.