{"book":"adl0957","page":249,"text":"198\n\nThe combined stream then flows towards Tala and Barfak,\nthe famous coal mines. The road running parallel to the river\nenters another gorge, which terminates at the coal mines.\n\nFor the next eighty miles the road runs through the district\nof small hills, chiefly composed of earth. Some of the hills are\ncovered with small bushes. Remains of stupas and ancient cities\ncan be seen on all sides. At Doshi (224 miles from Kabul) the\nAndirab joins Shikari. At Puli-Khumri (254 miles from Kabul)\nthe road branches off ; one turning to the north-east to Beghlan,\nKhanabad, Kunduz, Hazrat-i-Imam, and finally to Bakhshan\nand Wakhan ; the other, turning to the left, enters an undula-\nting plain. At Rubatak the neighbouring hills are all covered\nwith pistachio trees. After crossing a small pass the traveller\nfinds himself in a vast plain, where lies the historic town of Aibak\n(or Haibak). The whole of the district is full of important\nremains, stupas, monastries, and forts. Capt. Talbot, during the\nAfghan-Russian border disputes, unearthed some fine relics in this\nlocality. A small irregular stupa made out of solid rock was\ndiscovered below ground level. It was surrounded by a ditch,\nand crowned by a small square-built chamber, which was also\ncut out of rock. Here he had the evidence of Buddhist occupa-\ntion and Buddist workmanship forming a distinct link between\nBalkh and Bamian, and marking one resting place of the weary\npilgrim.\n\nThe ditch-like valleys carved out of the wrinkled central\nhighlands of Afghanistan have existed as the focus of devout\npilgrimage, if not commercial activity, under the Bamian kings.\nAbove the surface of the plateau the long grey folds of the hills\nfollow each other in monotonous succession, with little relief\nfrom vegetation and unmarked by forest growth. It is generally","chars":1818,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00249.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/249","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/249","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}