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The year 1891 saw an important work undertaken in advance of Quetta, the Khojak tunnel being then driven through a range close by the Afghan frontier, while an entrenched camp was constructed near by for the storage of arms and supplies.
It occupied Sibi and the Khojak Pass; and on January 8, 1879, General Stewart and the vanguard reached Candahar, which they entered in triumph. The people seemed to regard their entry with indifference. This was but natural. Shere Ali had ruined his own cause. He now discovered his error.
Under the guidance of my host, however, a pleasant trip was made to the Khojak tunnel. The tunnel, which runs due east and west, is, or will be, two miles and a half in length and three hundred and sixty-five feet in depth at the deepest part from the earth's surface. From the eastern end only sixty-five miles over a firm and level plain separates it from Kandahár.
The rivers on the Quetta-Kandahar route do not present much impediment to the passage of troops in dry weather, but in flood they become serious obstacles and cannot be passed until the waters retire. The ascent from the east through the Khojak Pass is easy, the descent on the west very precipitous.
The Ameer, Abdur Rahman, irritated by the making of the Khojak tunnel, was soothed by Sir Mortimer Durand's Mission in 1893; and in return for an increase of subsidy and other advantages, he agreed that the tribes of the debatable borderland the Waziris, Afridis, and those of the Swat and Chitral valleys should be under the control of the Viceroy.
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