Читать книгу At the Court of the Amîr - John Alfred Gray - Страница 4

Eccentricities of Rosinante.

By-and-bye, however, we descended and were in a stony valley, for the Pass varies in width from ten or twelve feet to over a hundred yards. Mr. Pyne suggested a canter. A canter! I knew the mare by this time, and I had on only a hunting bit. Off we went. Pyne had a good horse, a Kataghani that had been given him in Kabul, but we swept ahead, my bony mare and I, much to Pyne’s disgust—and mine, for I couldn’t hold her. Roads! what were roads to her? Away she went straight up the valley, and such a valley! The ground was covered with pebbles and big stones, and cut up by dry water-courses wide and narrow. The narrower gulleys she cleared at a bound, the wider she went headlong into and out of before I had time to hope anything. I soon was far ahead of the guard, only the Captain managed to keep somewhere in my wake, shouting, “Khubardar,” “Take care!” I yearned to khubardar with a great yearn, for in addition to the danger of breaking my neck was that of being shot. Sawing at the reins did not check her, and at last I flung myself back, caught the cantle of the saddle with my right hand, and jerked at the curb. I was tossed in the air at every stride, and my loaded revolver thumped my hip at each bound, but her speed diminished, and at last she gave in and stopped, panting and snorting. Then the Captain came clattering up, and I was obliged to turn the mare round and round or she would have been off again. The Captain smiled and said, “Khob asp,” “It is a good horse.”

“Bally,” I said, which means “Yes.”

We adjusted the saddle and waited till the others came up. Pyne remonstrated with me and told me I ought not to have done such a thing, it was not safe! He viewed it as a piece of eccentricity on my part.

About eight miles from Jumrûd, and where the defile is narrow and precipitous, is the Ali Musjid fort. This is built on a high, nearly isolated, rocky hill to the left or south of the road. The small Musjid, or Mosque, from which the place takes its name, stands by the stream at the bottom of the defile. It was erected, according to tradition, by the Caliph Ali. The fort, which is called the key of the Khyber, has at different times been in possession of Afghans and British. We hold it now. The last man we dislodged was General Gholam Hyder Khan, Orak zai, who was then in the service of Amîr Yakûb Khan. He is now Commander-in-Chief of the Amîr’s army in Kabul and Southern Afghanistan. He is a big stout man, about six feet three inches in height. When I saw him in Kabul he did not seem to bear any malice on account of his defeat. There is another General Gholam Hyder, a short man, who is Commander-in-Chief in Turkestan, and of whom I shall have occasion to speak hereafter.

At Ali Musjid we sat by the banks of the streamlet and hungrily munched cold chicken and bread; for Mr. Pyne had suggested at breakfast our tucking something into our holsters in case of necessity: he had been there before.

Beyond Ali Musjid the narrow defile extended some distance, and then gradually widening out we found ourselves on an elevated plateau or table-land, bounded by not very high hills. The plain was some miles in extent, and we saw Pathan villages dotted here and there, with cornfields surrounding them. The villages were fortified. They were square, surrounded by a high wall with one heavy gate, and with a tower at one or all four corners. The houses or huts were arranged inside in a row against the wall, and being flat roofed and the outer wall loopholed there was at once a “banquette” ready for use in case the village should be attacked.

The mountains and valleys of the Khyber range and of the other Indian frontier mountains are inhabited by these semi-independent Afghans called, collectively, Pathans or Pukhtana. There are many learned and careful men among the Government frontier officers who are at present investigating the origin and descent of the Pathan tribes.

Pathans; their Appearance and Customs.

The Khyberi Pathan whom I have described as the “guard” of the Pass is a fair type of the rest. The men are quarrelsome, are inveterate thieves, but are good fighters. Many of them enter the British service and make excellent soldiers. They are divided into a great number of different tribes, all speaking the same language, Pukhtu, or Pushtu, and bound by the same code of unwritten law, the Pukhtanwali. The neighbouring tribes, however, are jealous of one another and rarely intermarry. There is the vendetta, or law of retaliation, among them, and almost always an ancient feud exists between neighbouring villages. The women, unlike the Mahomedan townswomen, are not closely veiled; the head is covered by a blue or white cotton shawl, which, when a stranger approaches, is drawn across the lower part of the face. They wear a long dark-blue robe reaching midway between knee and ankle, decorated on the breast and at the hem with designs in red. The feet are generally bare, and the loose trousers are drawn tight at the ankle. Their black hair hangs in two long plaits, the points being fastened with a knot of many-coloured silks.

When one considers the nature of these mountaineers—hereditary highway robbers and fighters, crack shots, agile and active, and when one observes the unlimited possibility they have among rocks, valleys, and passes of surprising a hostile army and of escaping themselves—the advantage of a “subsidy” becomes apparent.

At the distant or west extremity of the plateau, where we saw the Pathan villages, is the Landi Kotal serai. An ordinary caravansary in Afghanistan is a loopholed enclosure with one gate, and is very like the forts or villages I have described. At Landi Kotal, in addition to the native serai, is one built by the Government. It is strongly fortified, with bastion, embrasure, and banquette, and any part of the enclosure commanded by the adjoining hills is protected by a curtain or traverse.

Hot, tired, and thirsty, we four rode into the fort, and were received by the British officer in charge. The Afghan guard took up their quarters in the native serai outside. Good as the road was it had seemed an endless journey. Winding in and out in the heat we had seemed to make but little progress, and the unaccustomed weight of the turban and the dragging of the heavy revolver added considerably to our fatigue; but the march, after all, was not more than five-and-twenty miles.

This time there was ample accommodation for us, and after an excellent dinner, the last I had in British territory for many a long month, we turned in.

The Shenwaris: Caravan of Traders.

After Landi Kotal, the Khyber narrows up. We wound in and out round the fissures and water channels in the face of the mountain, and climbed up and down as before; but presently the guard unslung their carbines and closed in round us. It was the Shenwari country we were now traversing, and these Pathans, even by the Amîr’s soldiers, are considered dangerous; for what says the proverb, “A snake, a Shenwari, and a scorpion, have never a heart to tame.” The Amîr had, however, partly subjugated them even then, and a tower of skulls stood on a hill outside Kabul.

Then we came to a series of small circular dusty valleys surrounded by rocky mountains. There was nothing green, and the heat was very great, it seemed to be focussed from the rocks. Further on we caught up with a caravan of travelling merchants with their camels and pack-horses.

These men belong almost entirely to a tribe of Afghans called Lohani. They come from the mountains about Ghazni. In the autumn they travel down to India with their merchandise and go about by rail and steamer to Bombay, Karachi, Burma, and other places for the purposes of trade. In the spring they go northward to Kabul, Herat, and Bokhara. Under the present Amîr they can travel in Afghanistan without much danger, but in the reigns of Shere Ali and Dost Mahomed they had practically to fight their way.

They go by the name of Povindia, from the Persian word Parwinda, “a bale of merchandise.” When I was in Turkestan I became acquainted with one of these men. He was a white bearded old Afghan who had been, he told me, to China, Moscow, and even to Paris. He tried to sell me a small nickel-plated Smith and Wesson revolver.

We rode by the caravan of traders and reached Dakka, on the banks of the Kabul river. This is the first station belonging to the Amîr. The Colonel commanding came out to receive us, and conducted us to a tent on the bank, where we sat and drank tea. We were much interested in watching some Afghans swimming down the river buoyed up by inflated skins—“mussaks.” Grasping the skin in their arms they steered with their legs, the force of the current carrying them rapidly along. Two men took a donkey across. They made a raft by lashing four or five skins to some small branches; and tying the donkey’s legs together, they heaved him sideways on to the raft. Clinging to the skins they pushed off, and, striking out with the legs, they were carried across in a diagonal direction. By-and-bye some men floated by on a rough raft made of logs. They were taking the wood to India for sale.

The river here, though not very deep, is dangerous, on account of the diverse currents.

In the centre, to the depth of three or four feet, the current runs rapidly down the river; deeper it either runs up the river or goes much slower than the surface water.

A few years later I was travelling past here, one hot summer, with Mr. Arthur Collins, recently geologist to the Amîr, and we determined to bathe. Mr. Collins, who was a strong swimmer, swam out into the middle: I paddled near the bank where the current was sweeping strongly up stream. Mr. Collins, out in the middle, was suddenly turned head over heels and sucked under. He could not get to the surface, and, therefore, swam under water, happily in the right direction, and he came up very exhausted near the bank.

Camp at Bassawal.

After resting, we rode on through some hot pebbly valleys, with no sign of vegetation, until we reached Bassawal, where we camped. The tents were put up, sentries posted, and the servants lit wood fires to prepare dinner. It soon became dark, for the twilight is very short. We were advised to have no light in our tent, lest the tribes near might take a shot at us; and we dined in the dark. It was the first night I had ever spent in a tent, and to me it seemed a mad thing to go to bed under such circumstances. I remember another night I spent near here some years afterwards, but that I will speak of later.

On this occasion the night passed quietly.

The next morning they woke us before daybreak. The cook had lit a fire and prepared breakfast—fried eggs, tinned tongue, and tea. As soon as we were dressed the tents were struck, and while we were breakfasting the baggage was loaded up. We had camp chairs and a little portable iron table, but its legs became bent, and our enamelled iron plates had a way of slipping off, so that we generally used a mule trunk instead. The baggage was sent off, and we sat on the ground and smoked. Starting about an hour afterwards, we rode along through fertile valleys with cornfields in them: here water for irrigation could be obtained. In March the corn was a foot high. Then we rode across a large plain covered with a coarse grass. It was not cultivated because of the impossibility of obtaining water. We camped further on in the Chahardeh valley, which was partly cultivated and partly covered with the coarse grass. The tents were put up near a clump of trees, where there was a well. Unfortunately, there was also the tomb of some man of importance, and other graves, near the well. The water we had from it tasted very musty and disagreeable. Next day we went through other cultivated valleys to the mountains again. The river here made a curve to the south, and the mountains came close up to the bank. The road, cut out of the face of the mountain, ran sometimes level with the bank, sometimes a hundred feet or more above it. It was much pleasanter than the Khyber Pass, for to the north (our right) there was the broad Kabul river, with cultivated fields on its northern bank, and though the scorching heat of the sun was reflected from the rocks there was a cool breeze blowing. I thought it was a wonderfully good road for native make, but I found, on enquiry, that it had been made by the British during the Afghan war.

After rounding a shoulder of the mountain, where the road was high above the river, we could see in the distance the Jelalabad Plain and the walled city of Jelalabad. However, it was a long way off and we had to ride some hours before we reached it.

When on a journey in Afghanistan it is not usual to trot or canter, in fact, the natives never trot. They ride at a quick shuffling walk: the horse’s near-side feet go forward together, and his off-side feet together—a camel’s walk. It is an artificial pace, but very restful.

Advantages of Cultivation.

There was a shorter route which we could have taken from Bassawal, avoiding Jelalabad altogether, but it was mostly over pebbly hills and desert plains, and was exceeding hot. From Dacca we had kept fairly close to, though not actually in sight of, the Kabul river. It makes a vast difference to one’s comfort in a tropical or semi-tropical country to travel through cultivated land where, if only at intervals, there is something green to be seen. Few things are more fatiguing than the glare of a desert and the reflected heat from pebbles and rocks; we, therefore, chose the longer but pleasanter route.