river is fordable for artillery during six months of the
year ; but from a point about 30 miles lower, the stream,
having: received the Kunduz river on the left, and the
Kafirnihan on the right, may be considered unfordable
at all seasons throughout the remainder of its course.
A s for ferries, I see on my Russian map one marked
above the Surkhab at Kunda-Ghuzar, and others below,
near the mouths of the Kafirnihan, and Surkhan, at
the Karakhamar ferry near Chuska Hazar, and at
Kilif. K ilif is a village o f about 40 houses on the
main road from Bokhara to Balkh. It was here that
both Timur and Nadir Shah crossed, on bridges of
boats, the river being only 334 yards wide, and the
current not too swift to be crossed by swimmers.
The banks, of equal height, are of calcareous schist.
From K ilif to the mouth of the Amu, a distance of
about 700 miles, the river has been scientifically surveyed
by Russian topographers.*
After the little Shirabad river, flowing into the Amu
near Kilif, no more tributaries attain thereto. In the
Bactrian plain, that is, after leaving the mountains,
the river runs between uninhabited, barren, flat
banks formed of loess and alluvial soil deposited by
* In 1876, Kostenko says, at the request of the Emir of Bokhara, a
survey was made from Chaijui to Kilif, and levels taken of the country
round with a view to the construction of new irrigation canals, but the
levelling did not give encouraging results. Thirty-three miles below
Kilif is Khoja Saleh, where Burnes crossed in 15 minutes, in a ferry
drawn by swimming horses. He gives the width of the river as upwards
of 800 yards, and its depth from 7 to 20 feet. The last European
author, I believe, who has visited this portion of the Amu, is Dr. Capus,
who touched the stream near the mouth of the Surkhan. Dr. Capus
claims, and apparently justly, with M. Bonvalot, to have been the first
to visit the entire ruins of the Surkhan valley. Termez and Shahr-gul-
Gula, he says, were known, but not the more important group of
Shahri-Sa*nan. They took sketches there of the most characteristic
substructures, made a map of the vast necropolis of Shahri-Saman,
and took down several legends.
the water, which holds in suspension also a large
quantity of granitic sand. Dr. Capus describes the
deposit as of dull sandstone which contains many thin
layers of mica. It gives to the Amu a characteristic
grey colour, which becomes yellowish where the banks
are formed of loess and clay.
Below Khoja Saleh the Amu leaves Afghanistan,
and, turning to the north-west, cuts off on the left a
riparial strip of Bokhariot territory. West of this is the
Turkmenian desert, continuing to the Khivan oasis.*
Concerning the navigation by steam of the Upper
Oxus, I was told at Petro-Alexandrovsk that the
Russians had proceeded from thence up the river to
Afghanistan between April 20th and May 19th (O.S.),
and a letter concerning a similar journey appeared in
the Russian naval journal called the Yacht, t
This was at the time o f high water. Another
favourable opinion on the navigability of the Oxus
is that of General Grotenhielm, who, in the year
before (1877), made the journey, he told me, from
* A few poor Turkoman families here and there cultivate a saline
soil, and there are a few inhabited points on the road from Bokhara to
Maimene at Kerki on the left bank where Vambery crossed. He describes
the river at the ferry as twice as wide as the Danube at Pesth, and
Kerki as a fortified town. Burnes mentions between Termez or the mouth
of the Surkhan and Charjui, nearly 300 miles distant, 15 ferries, few
of them having more than 2 boats; but on my Russian map I do not
find more than n , and I know of 9 only between Chaijui and Petro-
Alexandrovsk. Thirty miles below Kerki is another ferry, and still
lower, on the right bank, is Burdalik, whence there is a route north to
Bokhara, and east to Karshi. Thirty miles beyond, on the right bank,
is Narizim, connected by a route with Karshi; and rather less than
this distance, beyond, on the left bank, is the oasis of Charjui.
t It stated that the ss. Samarkand (drawing, I understand, 3 feet
of water, and of 24-horse power), commanded by Captain Briukhoff,
left Petro-Alexandrovsk on the 26th of August, 1878, and on the 8th
September, after it had passed the Afghan frontier, at Khoja Saleh, it
turned back, returning to its starting-point on the 18th September. In
the captain’ s report it said: “ The Oxus presents no difficulties to