Proceedings
of the
Royal
Geographical Society (Great Britain)
Norton Shaw, Francis
Galton, Clements Robert Markham, William Spottiswoode,
Henry Walter Bates, John Scott Keltie
Published 1879
The Basin of the Helmand.
By C. E. MARKHAM, C.B., Secretary K.G.S.
(Read
at the Evening Meeting, February 24th, 1879.)
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Page 191
The western portion of Afghanistan includes
the inland basin of the River Helmand, and the smaller
inland basin of the Abifitada Lake. It is comprised in
one of those river systems without any outlet to the sea,
which occupy a vast area in the interior of Asia, where
the drainage flowing from a circle or semicircle of
mountains is formed into a lake or morass at the lowest
level it can reach. Such are the basins of the Caspian
and the Aral, of the Balkhash and Baikal, of Lake Lob and
the Tibetan plateau, of the Hari-Rud and the Murghab, of
the Helmand and the Abistada Lake. The two latter forms
the subject of the present paper. They are surrounded,
except to the westward where the Helmand drainage is
emptied into the Seistan morass, by a vast amphitheatre
of lofty mountains. To the eastward is the great chain of
the Western Sulimani is, forming the water-parting
between Afghanistan
and India. To the north is the ridge connecting the Hindu Kush with the
Sulimani, and the continuations of the Hindu Kush mountains,
known as the Koh-i-Baba and the Siah-Roh. To the south
are the Rhoja-Amran Range and the desert of Baluchistan,
and to the west is the depression of the Persian desert
and the Lake of Seistan, which receives the surplus
waters of the Helmand Basin. These limits enclose a
mountainous region which is 420 miles in length by about
250 in its greatest breadth. The basin of the Helmand is
classic ground, and is the scene of many of the ancient
Persian tales as related in the pages of Ferdosi. The tyrant Zohak
(Zahhak), who overthrew the Persian monarchy then
represented by Jamshid, was in turn overthrown and driven
out of Iran. His memory is preserved in the castle of
Zohak near Bamian
(Bamiyan), and his
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