Page:History of Aurangzib (based on original sources) Vol 1.djvu/157

CHAP. VII.] and to afford resting places to troops on the march. Patches of cultivation and walled hamlets dot the river banks in an otherwise desolate wilderness.

Qandahar proper is an open and well-watered district penned within hills and deserts. The Arghandab and the Tarnak, two tributaries of the Helmand, give fertility to its north-eastern corner beyond Kalat-i-Ghilzai, on the road to Ghazni. Numberless canals have drawn away water from the Helmand, and turned the environs of Qandahar into one long expanse of orchards and cornfields, vineyards and melon-beds. The Afghans of this part have used every contrivance that human ingenuity sharpened by want can suggest, to utilise the precious water of their few streams in irrigating their fields. Rightly do the people name their river Hirmand or "abounding in blesssings," because they owe their all to it. But the country is so bare of trees that firewood is very dear, and for lack of timber the people build their houses of sun-