The trans-frontier portion of the Khyber route to Kabul is described by Oliver as follows: “Over the Lundi Khana Pass, called the Kotal,[105] the road rises by a steep ascent between steep cliffs less than 150 feet apart, and down again till the Valley of the Kabul River is reached at Dakka.... At Jalalabad—ninety miles from Peshawar—the cross ranges of hills are, for a change, replaced by a well-watered fertile stretch of country, a score of miles long by a dozen wide, dotted with towers, villages and trees; and where the Kabul River—that has all along had to struggle through mere cracks—becomes a broad clear stream 100 yards wide. Thence the route lies through a thoroughly unattractive country again, over long stony ridges, across rocky river beds, varied with an occasional fine valley like Fathabad, or an oasis like Nimlah, to Gandamak, which, by way of comparison with what is beyond again, is a land flowing with milk and honey; for on by Jagdalak and the Lataband Pass, or Tezin and the Khurd Kabul, is a wild waste of bare hills, surrounded by still more lofty and forbidding mountains. The teeth become more closely set together; the road narrower; the stony ridges change to bleak heights from 7000 to 8000 feet high, the river beds, deep valleys, or narrow defiles, like the fatal Jagdalak, almost devoid of verdure, and into whose gloomy ravines the winter sun can hardly penetrate—these are the outworks that have to be negotiated before the gardens and orchards, the bazaars and forts of Kabul, can be approached.”
The _Aka Khel_ clan occupies the hills to the south-west of Peshawar between the Bara River and the country of the Adam Khels, also the Bara and the Waran Valleys. It was in the Waran Valley and in the house of that firebrand among the border clergy, Saiyid Akbar, that there was found, during the course of the Tirah expedition, the whole of the inflammatory correspondence which had passed between the Afridi maliks and mullahs prior to and during the Pathan revolt of 1897. This clan is Samil in politics and can put 4000 armed men in the field.
The _Adam Khel_ clan is located in the hills between Peshawar and Kohat, being bounded on the north and east by the Khattaks, on the south by the Bangash, and on the west by the Aka Khels (their deadly enemies), and by the Orakzais. They are one of the most powerful and numerous of the Afridi clans, have a great reputation for bravery, and can bring into the field 6500 fighting men, who, moreover, are unusually well armed, with rifles stolen from our cantonments and with those they manufacture themselves at their factories in the Kohat Pass. They are to a small extent cultivators, but their chief occupation is carrying salt from the mines; while the allowance they receive from the Indian Government for keeping open the Kohat-Peshawar road is an assistance to their revenues, an allowance which has been paid them since the days of the Sikh governors of Peshawar. The Adam Khels do not belong to either of the two great political factions. From the situation of the Adam Khel country, and owing to the fact that their very existence is dependent upon their trade with British territory, this particular clan is very susceptible to a blockade and can consequently be easily brought to terms. Nearly all the trouble we have had with the Adam Khels in the past has been due to disputes about the salt tax, or about the maintenance of a practicable road through the Kohat Pass. This short cut from Peshawar to Kohat has a certain strategic value; by this road the two frontier garrisons are no more than thirty-seven miles apart, and only ten of these are in independent territory, while round by railway, via Khushalgarh on the Indus, the distance is 200 miles. Two divisions of the Adam Khels are the actual keepers of the pass, and though we pay, and have paid for years, a considerable subsidy, until comparatively lately we were not allowed to make a road, or even to remove the boulders that obstructed the path. From about 1865 onwards the question of the construction of a road practicable for wheeled traffic was continually raised, and was as often dropped in face of tribal opposition. It was one of the main objects of the expedition of 1877, but was given up by Lord Lytton to avoid “breaking the spirit of the clan,” who evinced their gratitude the year following—that of the Afghan War—by threatening to close the road to us. This threat came, however, to nothing, and the pass formed, throughout the campaign, an unmolested and important means of communication between Peshawar and Kohat. Water is very scarce in the pass, the supply being dependent mainly upon tanks.