Page:Science vol. 5.djvu/388

 iog tribute to the Afghans only when compelled by an armed force. According to the London rimes, the amir of Afghan did not ocenpy thie disputed territory uniii lHH:i, wben he i-e- ceived a map from the viceroy of India, with the bonndarj-line now claimed.

The Riiaaians claim tbat the EngHsli bave furnished the Afghans with maps, pUina of fortification a, money to build and equip these forts, ftud engineers to superintend the con- structioD, and that tbese acts arc a. breach of goodfuithon the part of England. The English claim that Russia has sent an armed force into the disputed territory', occupj-ing at least two towns, and that these acts area breach of good faith on the part of Russia.

The English policy in India has been the same as that of Russia. It was found neces- sary, and proved sucecssfnl, to the maintenance of order ; and there is every reason to believe that a ainiilnr policy will produce like rcsnlts. Garuinek G. IIubbakd.

��ROADS FROM INDIA TO CENTRAL ASU.

Dost Muha.vimaI), one of the most famous amirs of Afghanistan, is reported to have said that he could not understand why the masters of the riches of India ever should have de- signed "occupying such a country as Kabul, where there is nothing but rocks and stones." It was a shrewd i-emark ; and Afghanistan owes its importance, not to the fertility of its soil or to any othec natural advantages, but to the fact that the great trade and military routes of cen- tral Asia lie within its borders. Afghanistan — using the word in its broadest sense, as including all the territorj' under the rule of the present amir — ^ takes the form, roughly speak- ing, of an immense square, with sides of about six hundred miles in length. On the west a well-defined boimdary separates it from Persia. To the south the dividing-line between the ter- ritories of the amir and those of the khan of Kelat, as the ruler of Baluchistan is often called in English books, is not so well marked ; but, as a large portion of it runs through an un- inhabitable salt desert, this is not of much importance. On the east the Sutimnn and other mountain ranges form a natural frontier between Afghanistan and British India. At one time this mountain barrier was supposed to be impracticable for the movement of large masses of troops. To-day it is ceitain that such is not the case ; for, in addition to the well-known Khyber, Knram,and Bolan passes, more than two hundred other paths cross these

��mountains in every direction. In fact, the barrier is no barrier at all, and would offer but little resistance to an enterprising general. It is on the north, however, that Afghanistan ift most vulnerable. True, the Amu Dai-ia or Oxus River, from its source 13,900 feet above the sea, in Lake Sir-i-Kuld, in the highland of Great Famir, to Khoja Saleh, separates the Afghan provinces of Badaksban and Turkestan from the Russian dominions of Ferghana and Bokhara. But a river is, at best, a jKwr tmund- ary, from a military pointof view ; and, besides, from Khoja Saleh to the Persian frontier, on the Hari-Rtid, the line, wherever run, must bo purely artificial.

More unfortunate still, the Iliudu Kush. with its outlying spurs — the Khor-i-Baba, Safed Kur (White Mountains), and Siah Kur (Black Mountains) — running from oast to west, divide* Afghanistan into two unequal parts. The lor- ritory lying north of these mountains belongs, physically speaking, to the basin of the OxoB (Aralo-Caspian basin), or, in other words, to Russian Asia. In addition, llicse mountains, together with their offshoots to the south, pre- vent, during five months in each year, all direcl communication between Kabul, the chief city of the east, and Herat, the equally important emporium of the west. The main route be- tween these two places is through Kandahar, which thus lies at the southern apex of a nearly equilateral triangle, with sides of three hOndred and three hundretl and thirtj'-five miles. The position of these places once tlioroughly grasped, there is no difficulty in understanding the base of the English oiierations in Afghan- istan.

From Karachi (Kurrachee) on the Arabian Gulf, and near the mouth of the river Indus, a railway runs along that river by Ilaidarabad to Sukkur. At this point it crosses the Indus, and, passing by Multan, joins the line ftom Calcutta and Bombay at Lahoie. The latter road runs thence by Rawal Pindi, crossing the Indus near Attock, to Peshawar at. the eulnuice of the Khj^ber Pass. The last of this riulway- system — 'the missing link from Multan to Laliore ' — was open to traffic in 1878,

Kabul, the chief political city of Afghanis- tan, contains a population of between fiffy and sixty thousand. It is situated on the Kabul River, not far from its confluence with the Logar, and is the convei^ing point of the trade- routes from Afghan Turkestan, and the couU' tries beyond the Oxus, over the dilScult monn- taiu passes, eleven and twelve thousand feet high, of the Hindu Kush: from Persia and Bahichistan by Kandahar: and fixtm India bjr

��I I

��I

�� �