{"book":"adl0957","page":47,"text":"30\n\nwhich extends throughout its lower course till it terminates in\nthe lakes of Seistan. There the Helmand divides itself into many\nchannels, forming, as it were, an inland delta, from which the\nwaters are evaporated by the hot air, for there is no opening to\nthe sea.\n\nThe immediate banks of the river and the country within\nhalf a mile are nearly everywhere, with the exception of the\ngreat desert, fertile and in most places well-cultivated. Though\nfordable for the most of the year in the greater part of its length,\nthe Helmand is still a formidable river. Even in the dry season it\nis breast-deep at the fords, but at the time of snow-melting, that\nis, early spring, it is very rapid, and fording is a dangerous task.\nInflated skins and toteens (a kind of raft) are used in crossing\nthis river at its mouth.\n\nThe Helmand has frequently changed its course within\nhistoric times. Silting up its bed, it has always struck out new\nchannels for itself. It has altered the face of the land so extens-\nively and so often that it is rather difficult to prove the vast\nextent of its ancient agricultural wealth and the immensity of its\npopulation. Besides this, other forces of nature, which seem to\nbe let loose on Seistan with peculiar violence and activity, have\nalso been at work to change its topography. The sweeping blasts\nof the north-west wind, which rage through this part of Asia with\na strength and persistence unknown in regions more protected by\ntopographical features, are forming vast, smooth slopes to the\nwindward side of every obstruction by smoothing off the rough\nangles of the gaunt bones of former buildings, and sometimes\npositively wearing them away by the force of attrition. Villages\nthat flourish one year may be sand-buried the next; channels\nthat now run free with water for crop may be chocked in a","chars":1827,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00047.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/47","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/47","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."}}