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The ink with which it had been written was faded somewhat, but across the head of the first page was inscribed in bold, clear characters, evidently of later date than the rest: "Journal of Lieutenant J. B. Heatherstone in the Thull Valley during the autumn of 1841," and then underneath: This extract contains some account of the events of the first week of October of that year, including the skirmish of the Terada ravine and the death of the man Ghoolab Shah.
In achieving the ascent of these gigantic stairs all the expedients of road-makers have been resorted to: the zigzag, the trestle, the tunnel, the curve, have been pushed to their utmost applications; for five continuous miles on the Thull Ghát Incline there is a grade of one in thirty-seven, involving many trying curves, and on nineteen miles of the Bhore Ghát Incline there are thirty tunnels.
I have the narrative lying before me now, and I copy it verbatim. If it contains some matter which has no direct bearing upon the question at issue, I can only say that I thought it better to publish what is irrelevant than by cutting and clipping to lay the whole statement open to the charge of having been tampered with. Thull Valley, Oct. 1, 1841.
From the Indus valley into the interior of Afghanistan there are only four lines of communication which can be called military roads: first, from Peshawur through the Khaiber Pass to Kabul; second, from Thull, over the Peiwar and Shuturgurdan passes to Kabul; third, from Dera Ismail Khan through the Guleir Surwandi and Sargo passes to Ghazni; fourth, by Quetta to Kandahar and thence to Herat, or by Ghazni to Kabul.
These points are connected by a railway running east of the Indus, which forms a natural boundary to the Indian frontier, supplemented by a line of posts which are from north to south as follows: Jumrud, Baru, Mackeson, Michni, Shub Kadar, Abazai, and Kohut; also by fortified posts connected by military roads, Thull, Bunnoo, and Doaba.
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