ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA--MOORCROFT
One of the most disappointing of the early British explorers of our
Indian trans-frontier was Moorcroft. Disappointing, because he got so
little geographical information out of so large an area of adventure.
Moorcroft was a veterinary surgeon blessed with an unusually good
education and all the impulse of a nomadic wanderer. He was
Superintendent of the H.E.I. Company's stud at Calcutta, and his views
on agricultural subjects generally, especially the improvement of
stock, were certainly in advance of his time, although it seems
extraordinary that he should have sought further inspiration in the
wilds of the then unexplored trans-Himalayas or in Central Asia. The
Government of India were evidently sceptical as to the value of such
researches, and he received but cold comfort from their grudging
spirit of support, which ended in a threat to cut off his pay
altogether after a few years' sojourn in Ladak whilst studying the
elementary principles of Tibetan farming. Neither would they supply
him with the ample stock of merchandise which he asked for as a means
of opening up trade with those chilly countries; and when, finally, he
assumed the position of a high political functionary, and became the
vehicle of an offer to the Government of India of the sovereignty of
Ladak (which certainly might have led to complications with the Sikh
Government of the Punjab) he was rather curtly told to mind his own
business.
On the whole, it is tolerably clear that the Government represented by
old John Company was not much more favourable to irresponsible
travelling over the border and political intermeddling than is our
modern Imperial institution. However, the fact remains that Moorcroft
showed a spirit of daring enterprise, which led to the acquirement of
a vast amount of most important information about countries and
peoples contiguous to India of whom the Government of the time must
have been in utter ignorance. When he first exploited Ladak, Leh was
the _ultima thule_ of geographical investigation. What lay beyond it
was almost blank conjecture, and a residence of two years must have
ended in the amassing of a vast fund of useful information.
Unfortunately, much of that information was lost at his death, and the
correspondence and notes which came into the hands of his biographer
were of such a character--so extraordinarily discursive and frequently
so little relevant to the subject of his investigation--as to leave an
impression that Moorcroft was certainly eccentric in his
correspondence if not in more material ways. We get very little
original geographical suggestion from him; but his constant and
faithful companion Trebeck is much more consistent and careful in such
detail as we find due to his personal observation, and it is to
Trebeck rather than Moorcroft that the thanks of the Asiatic map-maker
are due. With the Ladak episodes of Moorcroft's career we have nothing
to do here, beyond noting that there is ample evidence that he never
reached Lhasa, and never resided there, in spite of the persistent
rumours which prevailed (even in Tibet) that a traveller of his name
had lived in the city. It is exceedingly difficult to account for this
rumour, unless indeed we credit the authors of it with a confusion of
ideas between Lhasa, the capital of Tibet proper, and Leh, the capital
of little Tibet.
The interest of Moorcroft's adventures so far as we are now concerned
commences with his journey from Peshawar to Kabul, Badakshan and
Bokhara in 1824, when he was undoubtedly the first in the field of
British Central Asiatic exploration. He owed his safe conduct from
Peshawar (which place he reached only after some most unpleasant
experiences in passing through the Sikh dominions of the Punjab) to a
political crisis. Dost Mahomed Khan was consolidating his power at
Kabul, but he had not then squared accounts with Habibullah the son of
the former governor, his deceased elder brother Mahomed Azim Khan; and
certain other members of his family (his brothers, Yar Mahomed, Pir
Mahomed, and Sultan Mahomed), who were governors in the Indus
provinces, thought it as well to step in and effect an arrangement. It
was their stately march to Kabul which was Moorcroft's opportunity.
Those were days when an Englishman was yet of interest to the Afghan
potentate, who knew not what turn of fortune's wheel might necessitate
an appeal for the intervention of the English.
Moorcroft did not love the Afghans, and between the unauthorised
robbers of the Kabul road and the official despoilers of the city he
paid dearly for the right of transit through Afghanistan of himself
and his merchandise. It was this assumed rôle of merchant (if indeed
it was assumed) that hampered Moorcroft from first to last in his
journeys beyond the frontier of British India. There was something to
be made out of him, either by fair means or foul, and the rapacious
exactions to which he was subjected were probably not in the least
modified by his obstinate refusals to meet what he considered unjust
demands. Invariably he had to pay in the end. His account of the road
to Kabul is interesting from the keen observation which he brought to
bear on his surroundings. He has much to say about the groups of
Buddhist buildings which are so marked a feature at various points of
the route, and his previous experiences in Tibet left him little room
for doubt as to the nature of them. It is strange that locally there
was not a tale to be told, not even a legend about them, which even
indefinitely maintained their Buddhist origin.
From Kabul Moorcroft succeeded in getting free with surprisingly
little difficulty, though several members of his party declined to go
farther. He gradually made his way by the Unai and Hajigak passes to
Bamian, and thence to Haibak and Balkh. He was not slow to recognize
the connection between the obvious Buddhist relics of Bamian and those
which he had seen on the Kabul road; and at Haibak he visited a tope
called Takht-i-Rustam (a generic name for these topes in Central Asia)
of which his description tallies more or less with that of Captain
Talbot, R.E., who unearthed what is probably the same relic some sixty
years later. To Moorcroft we owe the identification of Haibak with the
old mediæval town of Semenjan, and he states that he was told on the
spot that this was its ancient name. No such name was recognised sixty
years later, but the evidence of Idrisi's records confirms the fact
beyond dispute.
We need not enter into details of this well-worn and often described
route. Moorcroft's best efforts were not directed to gazetteering, and
we have much abler and more complete accounts of it than his. After
passing the Ak Robat divide, Moorcroft found himself beyond Afghan
jurisdiction and within the reach of that historic Uzbek chieftain,
Murad Beg of Kunduz. Although Murad Beg was little better than a
successful freebooter, he is a personage who has left his own definite
mark on the history of days when British interest was just dawning on
the Oxus banks. Moorcroft fell into his hands, and in spite of
introductions he fared exceedingly badly. Indeed there can be little
doubt that the cupidity excited by the possibility of so much plunder
would have ended fatally for him, but for a happy inspiration which
occurred to him when his affairs appeared to be _in extremis_. With
great difficulty and at the peril of his life he made his way eastward
to Talikhan, where resided a saintly Pirzada, uncle of Murad Beg, the
one righteous man whose upright and dignified character redeemed his
people from the taint of utter barbarism and treachery. He had
discrimination enough to read Moorcroft aright, and at once
discountenanced the tales that had been assiduously set abroad of his
being a British spy upon the land; and he had firmness and authority
sufficient to deliver him from the rapacity of his truculent nephew,
and procure him freedom to depart after months of delay in the
pestilential atmosphere of Kunduz. Yet this grand old Mahomedan saint
patronised the institution of slavery, and was not above making a
profit out of it, though at the same time he firmly declined to
receive presents or have bribes for his good offices.
As other travellers following in Moorcroft's footsteps at no great
distance of time fell also into the hands of Murad Beg, and
experienced very different treatment, it is useful just to note
Moorcroft's description of him. He says: "I scarcely ever beheld a
more forbidding countenance. His extremely high cheekbones gave the
appearance to the skin of the face of its being unnaturally stretched,
whilst the narrowness of the lower jaw left scarcely room for the
teeth which were standing in all directions; he was extremely
near-sighted." Not an attractive description! The spring had well
advanced, and it was not till the middle of February 1825 that
Moorcroft was able to resume his journey to the Oxus. He travelled
from Kunduz to Tashkurghan and Mazar, and from the latter place he
followed the most direct route to Bokhara _via_ the Khwaja Salar ferry
across the Oxus, reaching Bokhara on February 25. Here his narrative
ends, and we only know from Dr. Lord and Wood that he returned from
Bokhara to Andkhui, and died there apparently of fever contracted in
Kunduz. He was buried near Balkh. Trebeck died soon after, and was
buried at Mazar-i-Sharif. Burnes visited and described the tombs of
both travellers, but they have long since disappeared.
As a geographer there is much that is wanting in the methods of this
most enterprising traveller, who at least pioneered the way to High
Asia from British India but who never made geographical exploration a
primary object of his labours. He was true to the last to his trade as
a student of agriculture, and it is in this particular, rather than
in the regions of geography or history, that the value of his studies
chiefly lies. He was the first to point out the general character of
that disastrous road to Kabul which has cost England so dear, and he
is still, with Burnes and Lord and Wood, our chief authority for the
general characteristics of Badakshan and of the Oxus valley east of
Balkh. He did not, however, touch the Oxus east of Khwaja Salar, and
consequently did not see or appreciate the great spread of splendid
pastoral country which lies between the pestilential marsh lands of
Kunduz and the river.
One would be apt to gather a pessimistic idea of lower Badakshan from
the pages of Moorcroft's story, which are undoubtedly tinted strongly
with the gloomy and grey colouring of his own unhappy experiences. Of
Balkh he has very little to say; he noted no antiquities about Balkh,
but he calls attention to the wide spaces covered with ruins which are
to be found at intervals scattered over the plains between Balkh and
the Oxus. It is a little difficult to follow his exact route across
the Oxus plains by the light of modern maps, but his Feruckabad is
probably our Feruk, and I gather that his Akbarabad is Akcha or
Akchaabad. The condition of Balkh, of Akcha, and of the ruin-studded
plains of the Oxus were evidently much the same in 1824 as they were
in 1884. Khwaja Salar (where Moorcroft crossed the Oxus in ferry-boats
drawn by horses) has since become historical. It was accepted in the
Anglo-Russian protocols defining the Afghan boundary as an important
point in the Russo-Afghan boundary delimitation, but it was not to be
found. Moorcroft gives a very good reason for its disappearance, by
stating that the place was razed to the ground just the day before he
arrived there. Since then the ruins of the old village have been
devoured by the shifting Oxus, and nothing but a ziarat at some
distance from the river remains as a record of the distinguished saint
who gave it its name.