No affluents of any consequence join either stream. Either separate or together they make their way with straight determination westward towards Herat. South of this curious ditch rise the many streamlets which work their way, sometimes through comparatively open valleys where the floor level has been raised by the centuries of detritus, sometimes through steep and narrow gorges where the harder rock of the plateau formation presents more difficulties to erosion, into the great Helmund basin. These are affluents of the Adraskand, the Farah Rud, and the Helmund, all of which have the same bourne in the Seistan depression. High up between the Farah Rud and the Helmund affluents isolated rugged peaks and short ranges crease and crumple the surface of the inhospitable land of the Hazaras, who occupy all the highest of the uplands and all the sources of the streams, a hardy, handy race of Mongols, living in wild seclusion, but proving themselves to be one of the most useful communities amongst the many in Afghanistan. We have some of them as sepoys in the Indian Army. Lower down in the same river basins, where the gentle grass-covered valleys sweep up to the crests of the hills, cultivation becomes possible. Here flocks of sheep dot the hill-sides, and the land is open and free; but there are still isolated and detached ribs of rocky eminence rising to 11,000 and 12,000 feet, maintaining the mountainous character of the scenery, and rivers are still locked in the embrace of occasional gorges which admit of no passing by. This is the land of that very ancient people, the Taimanis.
The fierce and lawless Firozkohis live in the Murghab basin on the plateau north of the Hari Rud, the Jamshidis to the west of them in the milder climate of the lower hills, into which the plateau subsides.
Whilst we are chiefly concerned in tracing out the mediæval commercial routes of Afghanistan, we may briefly summarize the events which prove that those traversed between Herat and the central kingdoms were important routes, worn smooth by the feet of armies as well as by the tread of pack-laden khafilas. They are still very rough and they present solid difficulties here and there, but in the main they are passable commercial roads, although little commerce wends its way about them now.