Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. ON THE THRESHOLD OF INDIA. From the Amu Daria and the Turcoman steppes to the deserts of Beloochistan, from Persian Khorassan to the valley of the Indus, stretches the country of the Afghans. Men of renown and events of world-wide interest have been connected with its history. Its records tell of the murder of Cavagnari in recent times; of the tragedy of Elphinstone's command (1838-42); of Shah Nadir, the butcher of Delhi (1738-39); of Baber Khan, the founder of Mongolian rule in India (1520); of Timur, the assailer of the world (1398); of Genghiz Khan, the annihilator of the civilization of ancient Asia (1218-24); of the great ruler, Sultan Mahmoud (a. D. 1000); and yet earlier, of Alexander, " the divinely favored Macedonian." Afghan history dies away, in the hymns of the Indian Vedas, eighteen hundred years before the birth of Christ. The territory of Afghanistan?which is destined to be the arena of a great international duel?covers an area of 12,000 square miles, or a tract measuring from north to south 688 miles, and from east to west 736 miles. It is a mountainous country; a high plateau, 6,000 feet above the sea, overlooked by lofty mountain ranges which open out and sink toward the west and south. On the northit is bordered by the western ranges of the Himalayas, which reach to the Amu Daria; by the wall-like range of the Hindu Kush, some of whose peaks are 19,000 feet high ; and by several smaller ridges. Between the Kabul and Kuram rivers rises the snow-capped Sufeid Koh, the principal peak of which, to the south of Jelalabad, attains an altitude of 15,000 feet. To the south of this, in Southern Afghanistan, the Suleiman range, of an average height of 9,000 feet, falls rapidly toward the valley of the Indus. Between the Hindu Kush and the Suleiman ranges the...Read More