The Botany of the Afghan Delimitation Commission, Vol. 3 (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The Botany of the Afghan Delimitation Commission, Vol. 3 The expedition left the vicinity of Quetta, in the extreme north-east of Baluchistan, on the 2zud of September, 18841, marching westwards almost parallel with its northern boundary, along the edge of and partly across the great desert, to the Helmand river at Hadj-ali. In this part of our journey our marches were very long and accomplished with great rapidity, chie¿y during the night, as the days were still very hot. As there were no traces of a road of any sort to direct us we were guided at night by large fires, acting as beacons, and during the day by the marks of a plough which had been taken across the country, making a furrow for this special purpose. The season of the year was against any good collections being made, so that the little I did collect were mere scraps, most of which, however, have been identified by comparison with my subsequent collections. The physical features of Northern Baluchistan consist of great gravel and clay plains, bordered by ranges of limestone and trap hills, intersected by numerous dry water-courses, and of undulated expanses of sand, which are said to be continuously shifting through the action of wind. Between Kani and Gaz-i-cha we saw the effects of the wind, the sand having been driven up against the face of a pre cipitous cliff to the height of 300 feet, and the range looked as if it would soon disappear altogether beneath this great shifting sea of sand. There are neither rivers nor streams, the vast drainage of the country being wholly swallowed up in the thirsty gravel beds. In traversing this desert we were informed that water was only to be procured at certain localities this was no doubt true in the sense that water was only exposed at those localities, but it was evident that with a little trouble it was pro curable close to the surface in many more places, for on no occasion was the water found at a greater depth than ten feet, often much less. Luckily the few dilapidated botanical specimens that I was able to collect on this portion of our travels, despatched at Hadj-ali on the Helmand for Kew, arrived safely at their destination, and from them I am able to give the general features of the more permanent or shrubby vegetation of Northern Baluchistan. At this season of the year the little vegetation to be seen may be divided, naturally, into that on the hills and on rock-formations, that on the gravel and clay plains, that of the sand-dunes, and, lastly, that where there was water during the whole year. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.