From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

At the castle of Júrg we took leave of Sardár Ahmad Khán, who had accompanied our party since we first met on the march from Daki Dela to Cabri Hájí. He and his party then went on to pay their devoirs at the shrine of Imám Záhid, at the foot of a hill a couple of miles ahead. It is called Reg Rawán, from the “moving sand” on its slope.

A little later we ourselves were obliged to follow their path, owing to the land in our front being impassably deep in mud from the overflow of an irrigation stream. Imám Záhid we found to be a collection of fifteen or sixteen wretched huts round the shrine of that saint, and hard by are a few date-palms of stunted growth. Overlooking all, at a few yards to the north, is the reg rawán hill with its covering of loose red sand, which exactly resembles that we met with in the desert bounding the Garmsel on the south, and from which locality it has probably been drifted here at some remote period, for there is no similar sand anywhere in the vicinity.

The sand fills a wide concavity on the southern slope of a bare rocky ridge detached from the Calá Koh range, and forms an isolated mass, as remarkable from its position as from the sounds it emits when set in motion. As we passed on, our late companions on the march toilfully plodded their way up the sandy slope to the summit of the hill. Their steps set the loose particles of sand in motion, and their friction, by some mysterious acoustic arrangement, produced a sound as of distant drums and music, which we heard distinctly at the distance of a mile. The sounds were not continuous, but were only now and again caught by the ear, and much resembled those produced by the Æolian harp, or the wind playing on telegraph wires. These sounds are often emitted by the action of the wind on the surface of the sand, and at other times without any assignable cause. The phenomenon has invested the locality with a sacred character, and visitors to the shrine consider their devotions incomplete till they have toiled up the sands and repeated their prayers on the hill-top. There are similar collections of sand on other hills of this range some miles farther on, as we observed in the next march, but they are divested of interest to the natives since they produce no sound.

At the Harút river we found the sun hot, and a south wind blowing all day produced a sensible change in the climate. The bed of the river where we camped presented a shallow pebbly bed with low shelving banks, and the soil on either side was covered with great patches of white saline efflorescence. This river, after leaving the Anárdarrah valley, forms the western boundary of Hokát, and the hills bounding its basin to the west, joining the Nih Bandán range farther south, form the western boundary of Sistan. Beyond this range, to the west, is a long strip of desert, called Dashtí Náummed, which extends north and south, and forms the limit between Afghanistan and Persia.

22d March.—Harút Rúd or river to Cháhi Sagak, twenty-four miles. Our route was westward, by a well-trodden path, across a wide basin covered with thick jangal of two kinds of tamarisk, called gaz and tághaz, interspersed amongst a profuse growth of caroxylon, salicornia, spiny astragalus, wild almond, carthamus, mimosa, artemisia, Syrian rue, blue iris, tulips, and other bulbous plants, and various species of herbs.

Beyond this we passed through an interrupted chain of hills trending north and south, and entered on an undulating surface covered with a profusion of pasture plants, of which the asafœtida is prominent from its abundance. This plain is called Arwita, and extends northwards up to the Cháhi Shor, or “saline well” hills, beyond which, through the valley of the Harút river, it joins the Anárdarrah glen.

Crossing this, we passed through a gap in the Regoh hills, so named from an isolated drift of sand on the southern slope of its principal ridge, similar to that of the Reg Rawán already described, and entered on another pasture plain called Damdam. The Regoh hill is of red granite, and the soil of the plain is a firm gravel strewed with bits of cellular lava, with here and there some remarkable outcrops of white quartz resembling cairns.

Near one of these, on the roadside, we found a number of burrows or trenches, roofed over with the branches of bushes growing around, and covered over with soil. Each was only large enough to contain a man lying full length, and must have been entered feet foremost, as there was but one opening, and it only admitted of this mode of entry. They were formerly used as shelter from the weather by the shepherds tending their flocks here; but these pastures have been abandoned by the Afghan nomads for many years, owing to the insecurity of the country, although the whole tract up to Cháhi Sagak is their recognised pasture limit.

This road too, which from remote times has been the caravan route between India and Persia, by Kandahar and the Bolán on the one side, and Lásh and Birjand on the other, has long been abandoned as a trade route, owing to its unsafety, and the risks from plundering bands of Sistanis and Baloch on the one hand, and Afghans and Gháynís on the other.

At about midway on the march we halted at the Cháhi Damdam for breakfast. It is a wide-mouthed well or pit at the foot of a low hill, the southern slope of which is covered with a mass of loose red sand like Regoh and Reg Rawán, but of smaller size, and contains some coffee-coloured water of most uninviting appearance, but it was free from smell, and not bad tasted.