Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1885 — AN ANCIENT CITY. [ARTICLE]

AN ANCIENT CITY.

The Central Point for Much Furious Fighting. [From,the Chicaeo Tribune.] It may not be uninteresting to take a glance at famous Herat, which has once again loomed up before the sight cf the world as the bone over which the Lion and the Bear are growling. Herri, as it was anciently called, from its contiguity to the Herri Rood River, has a record beyond the pen of accurate history, and, according to Afghan traditions, it had an existence close to the time when the world was miraculously evolved from chaos. In the Zoroastrian annals of the “Vendidad Sade," it appears as “Hariwa,” or the country of the Aryans, and as the founder of the Gebir or Fireworshiper faith is supposed to have lived contemporaneously with Moses, it follows that its ancient inhabitants may have been contemporaneous ' with the patriarch Abiaham when he was grazing his flocks among the deserts of Mesopotamia. There seems to be no reason to doubt that Alexander the Great encamped at Herat in the famous campaign which Xenophon describes in his Anabasis, and that it occupied a certain Oriental magnificence contemporaneous with that period of Graeco romance when the names of Bacchus, Semiramis, and Hercules became so fulgent as to shine down through the centuries to the present day. In the East there exists a tradition that the Afghans are really the offspring of the lost tribe of Israel—a tradition to which color is lent by the remarkably strong Jewish type of feature that characterizes the Afghan race—and that it was that Israelitish tribe which gave outward splendor to Herri as a city. Whatever truth there may be in all this, it is certain that Herat rose its battlements in the mists of antiquity, and that where the trading provindah now leads his camels through its toiiuous, narrow streets to-day Aryans lived and died who have since given their cognomen to a conspicuous division of the human race. XJWhile Herat possesses immense interest historically, it occupies a geographical importance of such a nature as has for many centuries made it the central part for furious fighting among tribesmen and nations. Again and again it has been made the focus for Persian fury and ambition, and it is only by continual hard fighting that it now remains in the hands of the Ameer of Afghanistan. When England obtained, Ijy intrigue, chicane, and hard fighting, the dominant control of Hindostan she fully recognized Herat as one of the points d’appui from which an enemy may threaten that dominance, and hence it became the fashion to name the city “The Gate of India." Situated picturesquely upon a sour of the Hindoo Koosh range, and surrounded by a bewildering network of deeply irrigated rice-fields—so bewildering that cavalry operations are made impossible with any feedojn of action—Herat is at the same time powerfully fortified artificially. Recent Russian travelers have averred that nowhere in the East is the art of canalization carried out so thoroughly or on so vast a scale as it has been in the Velley of Herat, where the waters of the Herri Riood are utilized to the utmost extent. This state of circmstancos naturally makes Herat a valuable basis of supplies for any army that may be fortunate enough to obtain possession of it. It is, therefore, no wonder that Herat has become a singularly important point of Central Asian commerce, roads forking from it into Persia, to Kabool, to Kandahar, to Beloochistan, and northward through the Merve oasis and Turkestan, more especially that part of Turkestan which is known as Bokhara. The city is nearly quadrangular, with faces about a mile long, and the high inner wall of defense is pierced by four gates pointing toward the different great cities with w£qch it has communication. Thus, for instance, the great gates in the celebrated walls of Delhi were known as the Lahore Gate, the Cashmere Gate, and so on. The stupendous earthwork upon which Herat is built has been the wonder of modern times, being, according to Sir Henry Rawlinson, the great English authority on Eastern matters, 250 feet in width at the base, fifty feet high, crowned by a wall twenty-five feet high and fourteen wide at the base, and supported by no fewer than 150 circular towers, which again are protected by a ditch forty-five feet wide and fifteen in depth. There have been disputes about the true strength of the fortress. In 1846 Gen. Ferrier of the British army gave it as his opinion that the place was only an immense redoubt which a European army could reduce in twenty days, but it is significant that in 1837, with the assistance of two English Engineer Lieutenants, the Heratese successfully held at bay for.ten months a Persian army of 35,000 men supported by fifty pieces of artillery, which were in many cases directed by expert Russian officers. The mosques of Herat are made exceedingly picturesque by bluish-tessellated tiles, the bazaars are rich, and swarm day and night with motley groups of men drawn from every part of Central Asia, Afghanistan, and India; and bearing in mind all these facts, together with the fortuitous geographical position of Herat, it s is no wonder that the famous city is coveted both by Russia and England. It possesses the unenviable reputation of being one of those cities so happily situated by nature that it must become perpetually the object of every powerful nation placed in its vicinity.