{"book":"adl0957","page":48,"text":"31\n\nmonth; and all the while the great Helmand, curving north-ward in its course, pours down its steady volume of silt brought from the highlands, carrying tons of debris into open plains where it is spread out, dried, wind-blown and swirled back again southward in everlasting movement.\n\nThe Helmand in Seistan is a different river from that of its early course. Its character changes from the point where it makes its great bend north towards its final exit into the lagoons and swamps of the Hamun. At Charburjak the Helmand is a wide, rippling stream when in flood. To its north lies the great flat, wind-swept Dasht-i-Margoo, about as desolate and arid a region as fancy could depict. To the south lies Dasht-i-Zirreh, with its innumerable sand-dunes resembling islands in a sea of sand.\n\nThe Arghandab.—This is a tributary of the Helmand, and takes its source in the Hazarajat country near Barhaq Pass. It flows in a south-westerly direction, and, after crossing Kilat-i-Ghilzai, it emerges into an open plain and irrigates the richest part of Kandahar province. It is a small stream in winter, but deep and rapid when fed by the melting snow.\n\nOther rivers of this group are : the Khash Rud the Farah Rud, and the Harat. All three rise in the Hazarajat, drain the south-western part of the country and ultimately empty themselves into the Hamun.","chars":1352,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00048.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/48","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/48","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."}}