in Baber’s “Memoirs,” in which he speaks of a place, and apparently a district, called Dehanah, which seems from the context to have lain in the vicinity of the Ghori, or Aksarai River.  There is still a village in the Ghori territory, called Dehanah.  Though this is worth mentioning, where the true solution is so uncertain, I acknowledge the difficulty of applying it.  I may add also that Baber calls the River of Ghori or Aksarai, the Dogh-abah. (Sprenger, P. und R. Routen, p. 39 and Map; Anderson in J.  A. S. B. XXII. 161; Ilch. II. 93; Baber, pp. 132, 134, 168, 200, also 146.)

NOTE 3.—­Though Burnes speaks of the part of the road that we suppose necessarily to have been here followed from Balkh towards Taican, as barren and dreary, he adds that the ruins of aqueducts and houses proved that the land had at one time been peopled, though now destitute of water, and consequently of inhabitants.  The country would seem to have reverted at the time of Burnes’ journey, from like causes, nearly to the state in which Marco found it after the Mongol devastations.

Lions seem to mean here the real king of beasts, and not tigers, as hereafter in the book.  Tigers, though found on the S. and W. shores of the Caspian, do not seem to exist in the Oxus valley.  On the other hand, Rashiduddin tells us that, when Hulaku was reviewing his army after the passage of the river, several lions were started, and two were killed.  The lions are also mentioned by Sidi ’Ali, the Turkish Admiral, further down the valley towards Hazarasp:  “We were obliged to fight with the lions day and night, and no man dared to go alone for water.”  Moorcroft says of the plain between Kunduz and the Oxus:  “Deer, foxes, wolves, hogs, and lions are numerous, the latter resembling those in the vicinity of Hariana” (in Upper India).  Wood also mentions lions in Kulab, and at Kila’chap on the Oxus.  Q. Curtius tells how Alexander killed a great lion in the country north of the Oxus towards Samarkand. [A similar story is told of Timur in The Mulfuzat Timury, translated by Major Charles Stewart, 1830 (p. 69):  “During the march ‘(near Balkh)’ two lions made their appearance, one of them a male, the other a female.  I (Timur) resolved to kill them myself, and having shot them both with arrows, I considered this circumstance as a lucky omen.”—­H.  C.] (Burnes, II. 200; Q.  R. 155; Ilch. I. 90; J.  As. IX. 217; Moorcroft, II. 430; Wood, ed. 1872, pp. 259,260; Q.  C. VII. 2.)

[1] It may be observed that the careful Elphinstone distinguishes from
    this general application of Dehgan or Dehkan, the name Deggan
    applied to a tribe “once spread over the north-east of Afghanistan,
    but now as a separate people only in Kunar and Laghman.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.