ELD 131 — Camp of the Bengal Lancers at Khamiab

• Collection Afghan Boundary Commission, photographs ABC 160 and 161: same place. 
• Owen, Charles (1884-86): Transcript of diary and letters, p. 482: “28 May [1886] Marched at 3.25 am. for Kham-i-Ab. […] Our camp was pitched at edge of cultivation about a mile beyond Dev Kala. […]”; p. 483: “29 May [1886] […] We pitched our camp on our side of the boundary, between Bokhara and Afghanistan, which is a simple ditch. Russians came in about 9.00am and pitched t’other side. […]” 
• The Illustrated London News, Vol. 86 (1885/1), April 4, p. 347: sketch by Captain Peacocke shows a similar view, “At Khami-i-Ab, near Khoja-Saleh, where Captain Peacocke took his couple of Views, one looking west and the other looking east, the river is six or seven hundred yards wide.” 
• Yate, A.C. (1887): Travels with the Afghan Boundary Commission, p. 266: “[…] The river, which lower down at Khwaja Salar and Kham-i-ab flows in several channels in a flat bed and is flanked by marshy ground flooded in the hot weather, […].” 
• Yate, C.E. (1888): Northern Afghanistan or Letters from the Afghan Boundary Commission, pp. 226-230: stay at the camp in Khamiab, “We are now encamped on the banks of the Oxus, at the end of our boundary-line; but so far as I know, we are not a bit nearer the conclusion of a settlement than we were when we arrived here more than a fortnight ago. An earthen bank running in a long line between the Russian camp and ours marks the boundary here between Bokhara and Afghanistan, and never till now has there been the slightest disagreement about it. […] The country here is infinitely hotter than the Herat valley, where we were this time last year. The thermometer in our tents has ranged for some days past from 106° to 108° Fahr. [41-43 °C]; but fortunately the nights are comparatively cool, and consequently the heat does not tell on us as it otherwise would. The Oxus here is rather a slow-running river, apparently about a mile in width, with low-lying banks, and bordered on either side by a strip of thickly populated land well cultivated and well wooded. […]”; p. 243: “[…] Our life at Khamiab for the last fortnight was a very quiet one. I mentioned in my last letter how the sudden rise of the river was driving us out of our pleasant camp on the low grassy land near its banks, and within a day or two the whole of this tract was waterlogged. There was no sudden overflow, but the water slowly and surely rose up through the ground from below, and every little hollow and depression became a pool. […]” 
• Adamec, L.W. (1979): Mazar-i-Sharif and north-central Afghanistan, pp. 322-324: Khamiab or Kham Ab, “[…] The name Khamiab signifies ‘bend of the water’, in allusion to the winding nature of the river.”

You know more about this picture?

Write to us!