The walls of
the town and of its houses are of mud, and the roofs generally of
wood. The city is laid out in the form of a parallelogram
intersected by two main streets crossing in the centre.
The town of Ghazni (the ancient Ghizni) is another historical
landmark in a region famous for its evidences of former grandeur. It
stands about 230 miles northeast of Kandahar on the road to Kabul;
it is literally "founded upon a rock" at an elevation of 7,726 feet,
and its base is 280 feet above the adjacent plain. It has walls
thirty-five feet high, and a wet ditch, but is not considered in any
sense formidable by modern engineers, as it is commanded by
neighboring heights; it will always be a rendezvous for the natives,
and forms a station or an important line of communication between
the Indus and the Murghab. In the tenth century it was the seat of
an empire comprising the present territory of Afghanistan, and which
had in the space of seventy years absorbed thirty-eight degrees of
longitude and twenty degrees of latitude. Its decline dates from the
twelfth century, when the seat of government was transferred to
Lahore. From 1839 to 1880 it has been occupied alternately by the
British and the Afghans.
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