The wild and savage altitudes of Badakshan and Kafiristan by no means exhaust the unexplored tracts of Afghanistan. We have the curious feature of a well-surveyed route connecting Ghazni with Kandahar, one of the straightest and best of military routes trodden by armies uncountable from the days of Alexander to those of Roberts, a narrow ribbon of well-ascertained topography, dividing the two most important of the unexplored regions of Afghanistan. North-west of this road lies the great basin of the central Helmund. South-east is a broken land of plain, ribbed and streaked with sharp ridges of frontier formation, about which we ought to know a great deal more than we do. Up the frontier staircases and on to this plain run many important routes from India. The Kuram route strikes it at its northern extremity and leaves it to the southward. The Tochi valley route, and the great mercantile Gomal highway strike into the middle of it, and yet no one of our modern frontier explorers has ever reached it from one side or the other. We still depend on Broadfoot's and Vigne's account of what they saw there, although it is only just on the far side of the rocky band of hills which face the Indus.
About midway between Ghazni and Bannu is the water-parting which separates the Indus drainage from that of the Helmund, and at this point there are some formidable peaks, well over 12,000 feet in height, to distinguish it. The Tochi passage is easy enough as far as the Sheranni group of villages near the head of its long cultivated ramp, but beyond that point the traveller becomes involved in the narrow lateral valleys which follow the trend of the ridges which traverse his path, where streams curl up from the Birmal hills to the south and from the high altitudes which shelter the Kharotis on the north. It is a perpetual wriggle through steep-sided rocky waterways, until one emerges into more open country after crossing the main divide by the Kotanni Pass. The hills here are called Jadran, and it is probable that the Jadran divide and that of the Kohnak farther south are one and the same. Beyond the Kotanni Pass to Ghazni the way is fairly open, but we know very little about it beyond the historical fact that the arch-raider, Mahmud of Ghazni, used to follow this route for his cavalry descents on the Indian frontier with most remarkable success. The remains of old encampments are to be seen in the plain at the foot of the Tochi, and disjointed indications of an ancient high-road were found on the hill slopes to the north of the stream by our surveyors.
Of the actual physical facts of the Gomul route we have only the details gathered by Broadfoot under great difficulties, and a traveller's account by Vigne. What they found has already been described, and the frontier expedition to the Takht-i-Suliman in 1882 sufficiently well determined the position of the Kohnak water-parting to give a fixed geographical value to their narratives. But we have no topography beyond Domandi and Wana. We know that the ever-present repellent band of rocky ridge and furrow, the hill and valley distribution which is distinctive, has to be encountered and passed; but the route does not bristle with the difficulties of narrow ways and stony footpaths as does the Tochi, and there is no doubt that it could soon be reduced to a very practicable artillery road. The important point is that we do not know here (any more than as regards the upper Tochi) a great deal that it concerns us very much to know. We have no mapping of the country which lies between the Baluch frontier and Lake Abistada, the land of the stalwart Suliman Khel tribes-people, and it is a country of which the possible resources might be of great value to us if ever we are driven again to take military stock of Afghanistan.
But the importance of good mapping in this part of Afghanistan is due solely to its position in geographical relation to the Indian frontier. It is different when we turn to the stupendous altitudes of the high Hazara plateau land to the north of the Ghazni-Kandahar route. With this we are not likely to have any future concern, except that which may be called academic. In spite of the reputation for sterile wind-scoured desolation which the uplands hiding the upper Helmund valleys have always enjoyed, it is not to be forgotten that there are summer ways about them, and strong indications that some of these ways are distinctly useful. Our knowledge of the Helmund River (such knowledge, that is to say, as justifies us in mapping the course of the river with a firm line) from its sources ends almost exactly at the intersection of the parallel of 34° of North latitude with the meridian of 67° East longitude. For the next 120 miles we really know nothing about its course, except that it is said to run nearly straight through the heart of the Hazara highlands.
Two very considerable, but nameless, rivers run more or less parallel to the Helmund to the south of it, draining the valleys of Ujaristan and Urusgan, the upper part of the latter being called Malistan. What these valleys are like, or what may be the nature of the dividing water-parting, we do not know, nor have we any authentic description of the valley of Nawar, which lies under the Gulkoh mountain at the head of the Arghandab, but apparently unconnected with it. Native information on the subject of these highly elevated valleys is excessively meagre, nor are they of any special interest from either the strategic or economic point of view. Far more interesting would it be to secure a geographical map of those northern branches of the Helmund, the Khud Rud, and the Kokhar Ab, which drain the mountain districts to the east of Taiwara above the undetermined position of Ghizao on the Helmund. These mountain streams must rush their waters through magnificent gorges, for the peaks which soar above them rise to 13,000 feet in altitude, and the country is described as inconceivably rugged and wild. This is the real centre and home of the Hazara communities, and, in spite of the fact that there are certain well-ascertained tracks traversing the country and connecting the Helmund with the valley of the Hari Rud, we know that for the greater part of the year they must be closed to all traffic. They are of no importance outside purely local interests. The comparatively small area yet unexplored which lies to the north of the Hazara mountains, shut off from them by the straight trough of the Hari Rud and embracing the head of the Murghab River of Turkistan, is almost equally unimportant, although it would be a matter of great interest to investigate a little more closely the remarkable statements of Ferrier which bear on this region.
When we have finally struck a balance between our knowledge and our ignorance of that which concerns the landward gates of India, we shall recognize the fact that we know all that it is really essential that we should know of these uplifted approaches. They are inconceivably old—as old as the very mountains which they traverse. What use may be made of them has been made long ago. We have but to turn back the pages of history and we find abundant indications which may enable us to gauge their real value as highways from Central Asia to India. History says that none of the tracks which lead from China and Tibet have ever been utilized for the passage of large bodies of people either as emigrants, troops, commercial travellers, or pilgrims into India, although there exists a direct connection between China and the Brahmaputra in Assam, and although we know that the difficulties of the road between Lhasa and India are by no means insuperable. Nor by the Kashmir passes from Turkistan or the Pamirs is it possible to find any record of a formidable passing of large bodies of people, although the Karakoram has been a trade route through all time, and although the Chinese have left their mark below Chitral. Yet we have had explorers over the passes connecting the upper Oxus affluents with Gilgit and Chitral who have not failed, some of them, to sound a solemn note of warning.
Before the settlement of the Oxus extension of the northern boundary of Afghanistan, something of a scare was started by a demonstration of the fact that it is occasionally quite easy to cross the Kilik Pass from the Taghdumbash Pamir into the Gilgit basin, or to climb over the comparatively easy slopes of the flat-backed Hindu Kush by the Baroghel Pass and slip down into the valley of the Chitral. There was, however, always a certain amount of geographical controversy as to the value of the Chitral or of the Kilik approach after the crossing of the Hindu Kush had been effected. Much of the difference of opinion expressed by exploring experts was due to the different conditions under which those undesirable, troublesome approaches to India were viewed. Where one explorer might find a protruding glacier blocking his path and terminating his excursions, another would speak of an open roadway.
From season to season in these high altitudes local conditions vary to an extent which makes it impossible to forecast the difficulties which may obtrude themselves during any one month or even for any one summer. In winter, i.e. for at least eight months of the year, all are equally ice-bound and impracticable, and although the general spirit of desiccation, which reigns over High Asia and is tending to reduce the glaciers and diminish the snowfall, may eventually change the conditions of mountain passages to an appreciable extent (and for a period), it would be idle to speculate on any really important modification of these difficulties from such natural climatic causes. We must take these mountain passes as we find them now, and as the Chinese pilgrim of old found them, placed by Nature in positions demanding a stout heart and an earnest purpose, determined to wrest from inhospitable Nature the merit of a victorious encounter with her worst and most detestable moods, ere we surmount them. To the pilgrim they represented the "strait gate" and "narrow way" which ever leads to salvation, and he accepted the horrors as a part of the sacrifice. To us they represent troublesome breaks in the stern continuity of our natural defences which can be made to serve no useful purpose, but which may nevertheless afford the opportunity to an aggressive and enterprising enemy to spy out the land and raise trouble on the border. We cannot altogether leave them alone. They have to be watched by the official guardians of our frontier, and all the gathered threads of them converging on Leh or Gilgit must be held by hands that are alert and strong. It is just as dangerous an error to regard such approaches to India as negligible quantities in the military and political field of Indian defence, as to take a serious view of their practicability for purposes of invasion.
Beyond this scattered series of rugged and elevated by-ways of the mountains crossing the great Asiatic divide from regions of Tibet and the Pamirs, to the west of them, we find on the edge of the unsurveyed regions of Kafiristan that group of passages, the Mandal and Minjan, the Nuksan and the Dorah which converge on Chitral as they pass southward over the Hindu Kush from the rugged uplands of Badakshan. None of these appear to have been pilgrim routes, nor does history help us in estimating their value as gateways in the mountains. They are practicable at certain seasons, and one of them, the Dorah, is a much-trodden route, connecting what is probably the best road traversing upper Badakshan from Faizabad to the Hindu Kush with the Chitral valley, and it enjoys the comparatively moderate altitude of about 14,500 feet above sea-level. A pass of this altitude is a pass to be reckoned with, and nothing but its remote geographical position, and the extreme difficulty of its approaches on either side (from Badakshan or Chitral), can justify the curious absence of any historical evidence proving it to have witnessed the crossing of troops or the incursions of emigrants. For the latter purpose, indeed, it may have served, but we know too little about the ethnography or derivation of the Chitral valley tribes to be able to indulge in speculation on the subject.
What we know of the Dorah is that it is the connecting commercial link between Badakshan and the Kunar valley during the summer months (July to September), when mules and donkeys carry over wood and cloth goods to be exchanged for firearms and cutlery with other produce of a more local nature, including (so it is said) Badakshi slaves. It has been crossed in early November in face of a bitter blizzard and piercing cold, but it is not normally open then. The Nuksan Pass, which is not far removed from it, is much higher (16,100 feet) and is frequently blocked by glacial ice; but the Dorah, which steals its way through rugged defiles from the Chitral valley over the dip in the Hindu Kush down past the little blue lake of Dufferin into the depths of the gorges which enclose the upper reaches of the Zebak affluent of the great Kokcha River of Badakshan, (about which we have heard from Wood), is the one gateway which is normally open from year to year, and its existence renders necessary an advanced watch-tower at Chitral. Like the Baroghel and other passes to the east of it, it is not the Dorah itself but the extreme difficulty of the narrow ways which lead to it, the wildness and sterility of the remote regions which encompass it on either side, which lock this door to anything in the shape of serious military enterprise.