Page 47

30 which extends throughout its lower course till it terminates in the lakes of Seistan. There the Helmand divides itself into many channels, forming, as it were, an inland delta, from which the waters are evaporated by the hot air, for there is no opening to the sea. The immediate banks of the river and the country within half a mile are nearly everywhere, with the exception of the great desert, fertile and in most places well-cultivated. Though fordable for the most of the year in the greater part of its length, the Helmand is still a formidable river. Even in the dry season it is breast-deep at the fords, but at the time of snow-melting, that is, early spring, it is very rapid, and fording is a dangerous task. Inflated skins and toteens (a kind of raft) are used in crossing this river at its mouth. The Helmand has frequently changed its course within historic times. Silting up its bed, it has always struck out new channels for itself. It has altered the face of the land so extens- ively and so often that it is rather difficult to prove the vast extent of its ancient agricultural wealth and the immensity of its population. Besides this, other forces of nature, which seem to be let loose on Seistan with peculiar violence and activity, have also been at work to change its topography. The sweeping blasts of the north-west wind, which rage through this part of Asia with a strength and persistence unknown in regions more protected by topographical features, are forming vast, smooth slopes to the windward side of every obstruction by smoothing off the rough angles of the gaunt bones of former buildings, and sometimes positively wearing them away by the force of attrition. Villages that flourish one year may be sand-buried the next; channels that now run free with water for crop may be chocked in a