EARLIEST ENGLISH EXPLORATION--CHRISTIE AND POTTINGER
The Arabs of the Mediæval period, whose footsteps we have been
endeavouring to trace, were after their fashion true geographers and
explorers. True that with them the process of empire-making was
usually a savage process in the first instance, followed by the
peaceable extension of commercial interests. Trade with them (as with
us) followed the flag, and the Semitic instinct for making the most of
a newly-acquired property was ever the motive for wider exploration.
With the Chinese, during the Buddhist period, the ecstatic bliss of
pilgrimage, and the acquirement of special sanctity, were the motive
power of extraordinary energies; but with this difference of impulse
the result was much the same. Arab trader and Chinese pilgrim alike
gave to the world a new record, a record of geographical fact which,
simple and unscientific as it might be, was yet a true revelation for
the time being. But when Buddhism had become a memory, and Arab
domination had ceased to regulate the affairs of the Indus valley;
when the devastating hordes of the Mongol swept through Afghanistan to
the plains of India, geographical record no longer formed part of the
programme, and exploration found no place in the scheme of conquest.
The Mongol and the Turk were not geographers, such as were the Chinese
pilgrim and the Arab, and one gets little or nothing from either of
geographical record, in spite of the abundance of their historical
literature and the really high standard of literary attainment enjoyed
by many of the Turk leaders. That truly delightful historical
personage Babar, for instance, "the adventurer," the founder of the
Turk dynasty in India, good-looking, intellectual, possessed of great
ability as a soldier, endowed with true artistic temperament as
painter, poet, and author, the man who has left to all subsequent ages
an autobiography which is almost unique in its power of presenting to
the mind of its reader the impression of a "whole, real, live, human
being," with all his faults and his fancies, his affections and
aspirations, was apparently unimpressed with the value of dull details
of geography. He can say much about the human interests of the scenes
of his wanderings; he can describe landscape and climate, flowers and
fruits (especially melons); but though he doubtless possessed the true
bandit's instinct for local topography (which must, indeed, have been
very necessary in many of the episodes of his remarkable career) he
makes no systematic attempt to place before us a clear notion of the
geographical conditions of Afghanistan as they existed in his time.
His literary cousin Haidar is far more useful as a geographer. To him
we owe something more than a vague outline of the elusive kingdom of
Bolar and the limits of Kafiristan, but he merely touches on
Afghanistan in its connection with Tibet, and says little of the
country with which we are now immediately concerned.
The one pre-eminent European traveller of the thirteenth century
(1272-73), the immortal Marco Polo, hardly touched Afghanistan. He and
his kinsmen passed by the high valleys of Vardos and Wakhan on their
way to Kashgar and Cathay, but his geographical information is so
vague as to render it difficult (until the surveys of these regions
were completed) to trace his footsteps. The raid of Taimur into
Kafiristan early in the fifteenth century, when it is said that he
reached Najil from the Khawak Pass over the Hindu Kush, will be
referred to again in dealing with Masson's narrative; but even to this
day it is doubtful how far he succeeded in penetrating into
Kafiristan, although the geographical inference of a practicable
military line of communication between Andarab and the head of the
Alingar River is certain. Three hundred and thirty years after Polo's
journey another European traveller passed through Badakshan and across
the Pamirs. This was the lay Jesuit, Benedict Goës, a true
geographer, bent on the exploration of Cathay and the reconnaissance
of its capabilities as a mission field. He crossed the Parwan Pass of
the Hindu Kush from Kabul to Badakshan and journeyed thence to
Yarkand; but he did not survive to tell his story in sufficient detail
to leave intelligible geography. We find practically no useful
geographical records of Afghanistan during many centuries of its
turbulent history, so that from the time of Arab commercial enterprise
to the days of our forefathers in India, when Afghanistan began to
loom large on the political horizon as a factor in our relations with
Russia and it became all important to know of what Afghanistan
consisted, there is little to collect from the pages of its turbid
history which can fairly rank as a record of geographical exploration.
It took a long time to awaken an intelligent interest in trans-Indus
geography in the minds of India's British administrators. But for
Russia it is possible that it would have remained unawakened still;
but early in the nineteenth century the shadow of Russia began to loom
over the north-western horizon, and it became unpleasantly obvious
that if we did not concern ourselves with Afghan politics, and secure
some knowledge of Afghan territory, our northern neighbours would not
fail to secure the advantages of early action.
It is strange to recall the fact that we are indebted to the Emperor
Napoleon Buonaparte for the first exploration made by British
officers into the trans-frontier regions of Afghanistan and
Baluchistan in British political interests. Nearly a century ago (in
1810) the uneasiness created by the ambitious schemes of that most
irrepressible military freebooter resulted in the nomination of two
officers of Bombay Infantry to investigate the countries lying to the
west of what was then British India, with a view to ascertaining the
possibilities of invasion. The Punjab and Sind intervened between
British India and the hinterland of the frontier, and their
independence and jealous suspicion of the expansive tendency of the
British Raj added greatly to the difficulties and the risks of any
such trans-frontier enterprise. The Bombay Infantry has ever been a
sort of nursery for explorers of the best and most famous type, and
the two young gentlemen selected for this remarkable exploit were
worthy forerunners of Burton and Speke. The traditions of intelligence
service may almost be said to have been founded by them. The rule of
exploration a century ago admitted of no elaborate preparation: a
knowledge of the languages to be encountered was the one acquisition
which was deemed indispensable; and there can be little doubt that the
knowledge of Oriental tongues was an advantage which in those days
very rapidly led to distinction. It was probably less widespread but
much more thorough than it is at present. Captain Christie and
Lieutenant Pottinger started fair in the characters which they meant
to assume during their travels. They embarked as natives in a native
ship, and from the very outset they found it necessary to play up to
their disguise. The port of Sonmiani on the north-eastern shores of
the Arabian Sea was the objective in the first instance, and the rôle
of horse-dealers in the service of a Bombay firm was the part they
elected to play. How far it really imposed on Baluch or Afghan it is
difficult to say. One cannot but recollect that when another gallant
officer in later years assumed this disguise on the Persian frontier,
he was regarded as a harmless but eccentric European, who injured
nobody by the assumption of an expert knowledge which he did not
possess. He was known locally for years after his travels had ceased
as the English officer who "called himself" a horse-dealer.
Sonmiani was a more important port a century ago than it is now that
Karachi has absorbed the trade of the Indus coast; but even then the
mud flats which render the village so unapproachable from the coast
were in process of formation, and it was only with favourable
conditions of tide that this wretched and long overlooked little
seaport could be reached. Sonmiani, however, may yet again rise to
distinction, for it is a notable fact that the facility for reaching
the interior of Baluchistan and the Afghan frontier by this route,
which facility decided its selection by Christie and Pottinger, is no
less nowadays than it was then. The explanation of it lies in the fact
that the route practically turns the frontier hills. It follows the
extraordinary alignment of their innumerable folds, passing between
them from valley to valley instead of breaking crudely across the
backbone of the system, and slips gently into the flat places of the
plateau land which stretch from Kharan to Kandahar. The more obvious
reason which presented itself to these early explorers was doubtless
the avoidance of the independent buffer land of Sind. They experienced
little difficulty, in spite of many warnings of the dangers in front
of them, when they left Sonmiani for Bela. At Bela they interviewed an
interesting and picturesque personality in the person of the Jam, and
were closely questioned about the English and their proceedings.
Apparently the Jam was prepared to accept their description of things
European generally, until they ventured to describe a 100-gun warship
and its equipment. Such an astounding creation he was unable to
believe in, and he frankly said so. From Bela the great northern
high-road led to the old capital, Khozdar, through a district infested
with Brahui robbers; but there was no better alternative, and the two
officers followed it. On the whole, the Brahui tribespeople treated
them well, and there was no serious collision. Khozdar was an
important centre in those days, with eight hundred houses, and certain
Hindu merchants from Shikarpur drove a thriving business there.
Nothing was more extraordinary in the palmy days of Sind than the
widespread commercial interests of Shikarpur. Credit could be obtained
at almost all the chief towns of Central Asia through the Shikarpur
merchants, and it was by draft, or "hundi," on Hindu bankers far and
wide that travellers were able to keep themselves supplied with cash
as they journeyed through these long stages.
The route to Kalat passed by Sohrab and Rodinjo, and the two wayfarers
reached Kalat on February 9, 1810. The cold was intense; they were
quite unprepared for it, and suffered accordingly. Living with the
natives and putting up at the Mehman Khana (the guest house) of such
principal villages or towns as possessed one, they naturally were
thrown very closely into contact with native life, and learned native
opinions. The views of such travellers when dealing with the social
details of native existence are especially valuable, and the opinions
expressed by them of the character and disposition of the people
amongst whom they lived, and with whom they daily conversed on every
conceivable subject, are infinitely to be preferred to those of the
state officials of that time who lived in an artificial atmosphere.
Thus we find very considerable divergence in the opinions expressed
regarding Baluch and Afghan character between such close observers as
Pottinger or Masson and such eminent authorities as Burnes and
Elphinstone. The splendid hospitality and the affectation of
frankness which is common to all these varied types of frontier
humanity, combined with their magnificent presence, and very often
with a determined adherence to certain rules of guardianship and the
faithful discharge of the duties which it entails, are all of them
easily recognizable virtues which are much in the minds and mouths of
official travellers with a mission. The counteracting vices, the
spirit of fanatical hatred, of thievish malevolence, and the utter
social demoralization which usually (but not always) distinguishes
their domestic life and disgusts the stranger, is not so much _en
evidence_, and is only to be discerned by those who mix freely with
ordinary natives of the jungle and bazaar. As an instance, take
Pottinger's estimate of Persian character; it is really worth
recording as the impression of one of the earliest of English soldier
travellers. "Among themselves, with their equals, the Persians are
affable and polite; to their superiors, servile and obsequious;
towards their inferiors, haughty and domineering. All ranks are
equally avaricious, sordid, and dishonest.... Falsehood they look on
... as highly commendable, and good faith, generosity, and gratitude
are alike unknown to them. In debauchery none can exceed them, and
some of their propensities are too execrable and infamous to admit of
mention.... I feel inclined to look upon Persia, at the present day,
to be the very fountainhead of every species of tyranny, cruelty,
meanness, injustice, extortion, and infamy that can disgrace or
pollute human nature, and have ever been found in any age or nation."
These are strong terms to use about a people of whom we have been
assured that the basis of their youthful education is to "ride, to
shoot, and to speak the truth!" and yet who is it who knows Persia who
will say even now that they are undeserved? May the Persian parliament
mend their morals and reform their methods--if, indeed, such a "silk
purse" as a parliament can be made out of such crude material as the
Persian plebs!
In spite of endless vexations and much spiteful malevolence, which
included endless attempts to trip up Pottinger in his assumed disguise
(and which, it must be admitted, were met by a not too strict
adherence to the actual truth on Pottinger's part), he does not
condemn the Baluchi and the Afghan in such terms as he applies to the
Persian; but he illustrates most forcibly the dangers arising from
habitual lawlessness due to the semi-feudal system of the Baluch
federation, and consequent want of administrative responsibility. In
spite, however, of endless difficulties, he finally got through, and
so did Christie; and for the getting through they were both largely
indebted to the vicarious hospitality of village chiefs and heads of
independent clans.
At Kalat they found it far easier to get into the timber and mud
fortress than to get out again, and this difficulty repeated itself at
Nushki. At Nushki begins the real interest of their adventures.
Christie (after the usual wrangling and procrastination which attended
all arrangements for onward movement) took his way to Herat on almost
the exact line of route (_via_ Chagai, the Helmund, and Seistan) which
was followed seventy-three years later by the Russo-Afghan Boundary
Commission. Pottinger made what was really a far more venturesome
journey _via_ Kharan to Jalk and Persia. The meeting of these two
officers eventually at Ispahan in the darkness of night, and their
gradual recognition of each other, is as dramatic a story as the
meeting of Nearkhos with Alexander in Makran, or of Nansen with
Jackson amongst the ice-floes of the Far North.
Christie gives us but small detail of his adventures. He necessarily
suffered much from thirst, but met with no serious encounters. Beyond
a well-deserved tribute to the sweet beauty of that picturesque
wayside town of Anardara in his careful record of his progress
northward from Seistan, where he made Jalalabad (which he calls
Doshak) his base for further exploration, he says very little about
the country he passed through. Incidentally he mentions Pulaki
(Poolki) as a very remarkable relic of past ages. He describes the
ruins of this place as covering an area of 16 square miles. Ferrier
mentions the same place subsequently, and locates it about a day's
march to the north of Kala-i-Fath (which Christie did not visit), and
it must have been one of the most famous of mediæval towns in Seistan.
But as collective ruins covering an area of 500 square miles have been
noted by Mr. Tate, the surveyor of the late Seistan mission, who
camped in their midst to the north of Kala-i-Fath, the exact site of
Pulaki may yet require careful research before it is identified.
Seistan is the land of half-buried ruins. No such extent of ruins
exists anywhere else in the world. It seems probable, therefore, that,
like the sites of many another ancient city of Seistan, Pulaki has
been either partially or absolutely absorbed in the boundless sea of
desert sand, which envelops and hides away each trace of the past as
its waves move forward in irresistible sequence before the howling
blasts of the north-west.
Christie's route through Seistan followed the track connecting
Jalalabad on the Helmund with Peshawaran on the Farah Rud in dry
seasons, but which disappears in seasons of flood, when the two hamúns
or lakes of Seistan become one. Pushing on to Jawani he passed
Anardara on April 4, and reached Herat on the 18th. His description of
Herat is of a very general character, but is sufficient to indicate
that no very great change took place between the time of his visit and
that of the 1883 Commission. He was fairly well received, and
remained a month without any incident worthy of note, leaving on May
18 for Persia.
This century-old visit of a British officer to Herat is chiefly
notable for its revelations as to the attitude of the Afghan
Government and people towards the English at the time it was made.
With the exception of the risk inseparable from travel in a lawless
country infested with organised bands of professional robbers, there
appears to have been no hostility bred by fanaticism or suspicion of
the trend of British policy. Afghanistan was socially in about the
same stage of development that France was in the days of Louis XI.--or
England a little earlier; and it is only the solidity conferred on
Afghan administration by the moral support of the British Government
which has effected any real change. Were England to abandon India
to-morrow there would be nothing to prevent a lapse into the same
condition of social anarchy which prevailed a century ago. India would
become the bait for ceaseless activity on the part of every Afghan
border chief who thought he had following sufficient to make a raid
effective. A thin veneer of civilization has crept into Afghanistan
with motors and telegraphs, but with it also has arisen new incentives
to hostility from dread of a possible loss of independence, and (in
the western parts of Afghanistan) from real fanatical hatred to the
infidel. Thus Afghanistan is actually more dangerous as a field of
exploration to the individual European at the present moment than it
was in the days of Christie and Pottinger. At the same time, British
military assistance would not only be welcome nowadays in case of a
conflict with a foreign enemy, but it would be claimed as the
fulfilment of a political engagement and expected as a right.
Christie's stay at Herat seems to have been quite uneventful, and when
he left for Persia no one barred his way. The Persian frontier then
seems to have been rather more than 20 miles distant from
Herat--Christie places it a mile beyond the village of "Sekhwan," 22
miles from the city. The only place which appears to correspond with
the position of Sekhwan now is Shakiban, which probably represents
another village. Making rapid progress westward through Persia, he
eventually reached Ispahan, where he rejoined Pottinger on June 30. It
must have been a hot and trying experience!
Lieutenant Pottinger's adventures after leaving Nushki (from which
place he had considerable difficulty in effecting his departure) were
more exciting and apparently more risky than those of Christie. He
selected a route which no European has subsequently attempted, and
which it would be difficult to follow from his description of it were
it not that this region has now been completely surveyed. He struck
southwards down the Bado river, which leads almost directly to Kharan
and the desert beyond it stretching to the Mashkhel "hamún" or swamp.
He did not visit Kharan itself, and he apparently misplaces its
position by at least 50 miles, unless, indeed (which is quite
possible), the present site of the Naoshirwani capital is far removed
from that of a century ago. I am unaware, however, that any evidence
exists to that effect.
Until the desert was encountered there was no great difficulty on this
route, but the horror of that desert crossing fully atoned for any
lack of unpleasant incident previously. It would even now be regarded
as a formidable undertaking, and we can easily understand the deadly
feelings that beset this pioneer explorer as he made his way in the
month of April from Kharan on a south-westerly track to the border of
Persia at Jalk. His description of this desert, like the rest of his
narrative, is full of instructive suggestion. The scope of his
observation generally, and the accuracy of the information which he
collected about the infinitely complex nationality of the Baluch
tribes, renders his evidence valuable as regards the natural phenomena
which he encountered; and no part of this evidence is more interesting
than his story of the Kharan desert, especially as no one since his
time has made anything like a scientific examination of its
construction and peculiarities. He describes it as a sea of red sand,
"the particles of which were so light that when taken in the hand
they were scarcely more than palpable; the whole is thrown into an
irregular mass of waves, principally running from east to west, and
varying in height from 10 to 20 feet. Most of them rise
perpendicularly on the opposite side to that from which the prevailing
wind blows (north-west), and might readily be fancied at a distance to
resemble a new brick wall. The side facing the wind slopes off with a
gradual declivity to the base (or near it) of the next windward wave."
He further describes a phenomenon which he observed in the midst of
this sand sea, which I think has not been described by any later
traveller or surveyor. He says "the desert seemed at a distance of
half a mile or less to have an elevated or flat surface from 6 to 12
inches higher than the summits of the waves. This vapour appeared to
recede as we advanced, and once or twice completely encircled us,
limiting the horizon to a very confined space, and conveying a most
gloomy and unnatural sensation to the mind of the beholder; at the
same moment we were imperceptibly covered with innumerable atoms of
small sand, which, getting into our eyes, mouths and nostrils, caused
excessive irritation, attended with extreme thirst that was increased
in no small degree by the intense heat of the sun." This was only
visible during the hottest part of the day. Pottinger's explanation of
this curious phenomenon is that the fine particles of this dust-sand,
which are swept into the air almost daily by the force of the
north-west winds, fail to settle down at once when those winds cease,
but float in the air by reason of some change in their specific
gravity due to rarefaction from intense heat; and he adds that he has
seen this condition of sand-haze at the same time that, in an opposite
quarter, he has observed the mirage or luminous appearance of water
which is common to all deserts. Crossing the bed of the Budu (the
Mashkhel nullah--dry in April), he makes a curious mistake about the
direction of its waters, which he says run in a south-easterly
direction towards the coast. It actually runs north-west and empties
itself (when there is water in it) into the Mashkhel swamps. I must
admit, however, that, from personal observation, it is often
exceedingly difficult to decide from a casual inspection in which
direction the water of these abnormally flat nullahs runs. Shortly
after passing the Mashkhel, he encountered an ordinary dust-storm,
followed by heavy rain, which much modified the terrors of the awful
heat.
Pottinger has something to say about the hot winds that occur between
June and September in these regions, known as the Bad-i-Simun, or
pestilential winds, which kill men exposed to them and destroy
vegetation, but his information was not derived from actual
observation, and it is difficult to get any really authentic account
of these winds. Parts of the Sind desert are equally subject to them.
After losing his way (which was inexcusable on the part of his guide
with the hills in sight), he arrived finally at the delightful little
valley of Kalagan, near Jalk, where the terrors of nature were
exchanged for those of his human surroundings. Kalagan is one of the
sweetest and greenest spots of the Baluch frontier, and it is easy to
realize Pottinger's intense joy in its palm groves and orchards. He
was now in Persia, and his subsequent proceedings do not concern our
present purpose. He travelled by Sib and Magas to Pahra and Bampur,
maintaining his disguise as a Pirzada, or wandering religious student,
with some difficulty, as he was insufficiently versed in the tenets of
Islam. However, he acted up to his Moslem professions with a certain
amount of success till he reached Pahra, where he was at once
recognized as an Englishman by a boy who had previously met an English
officer exploring in Southern Persia. But he was excellently well
treated at Pahra, in strange contrast to his subsequent treatment at
Bampur, close by. He eventually reached Kirman, and passed on by the
regular trade route to Ispahan.
It is impossible to take leave of these two gallant young officers
without a tribute of admiration for their magnificent pluck, the
tenacity with which they held to their original purpose, the
forbearance and cleverness with which they met the persistent and
worrying difficulties which were set in their way by truculent native
officials, and the accuracy of their final statements. Pottinger
really left little to be discovered about the distribution of Baluch
tribes, and if his mapping exhibits some curious eccentricities, we
must remember that it was practically a compilation from memory, with
but the vaguest means at his disposal for the measurement of
distances. It was a first map, and by the light of it the success of
the subsequent explorations of Masson (which covered a good deal of
the same ground in Baluchistan) is fairly accounted for. Christie died
a soldier's death early in his career, but Pottinger lived to transmit
an honoured name to yet later adventurers in the field of geography.