ON THE ROAD—_continued_
Method of fishing in the rivers—Route through Khilat and
Mukur to Ghazni and distance from Kandahar—Cold and snow on
journey—Ghazni—Robberies and murders on roads before Amir Abdur
Rahman’s time—Villages and cultivation _en route_—Arrival in
Kabul and reception of Sirdar Nasrullah by Amir.
After spending a few days in the city of Kandahar the prince went out
to a garden a few miles up the river to spend a couple of days in
fishing. On the evening of our arrival the prince told his suite that
the following day all must appear in Afghan costume, and that any one
who came in English dress would be thrown into the adjoining river. The
river was a shallow one, so it meant a ducking only. One of the men there
suggested that I should be included, but was ruled out on the grounds
that I wore the costume of my country. In order to afford amusement and
please the prince, one or two men did go the next day in English dress,
and were ducked, much to the merriment of all there.
About midday, the weather having cleared, the prince and the rest of us
started up the river, walking along the banks, while horses were led
by syces for fording branches of the river, or the river itself when
required. Two fishermen, casting their circular nets as they went, waded
up the river, the party on the banks keeping well behind them so as not
to disturb the fish before the nets were thrown. The bed of the river
was covered with shingle and stones, with boulders jutting out here and
there, and the water did not seem to exceed more than four feet in depth
at any place, and, being the time of low water, it was perfectly clear.
There was a good catch of fish, which in appearance very much resembled
trout, some of them being four to five pounds in weight, but the flavour
of the fish had little to recommend it.
The circular nets used by the fishermen are similar to those used by
natives in India. They are ten to fourteen feet in diameter, and weighted
round the circumference at short intervals with leaden pellets, while
between the pellets are pockets into which a fish swimming under the net
in an endeavour to escape gets his head, and his body too if not a large
one, and is so prevented from escaping. To the centre of the net a long
cord is attached.
The method of using the net is this: the end of the cord is fastened
round the right wrist by a slip knot and the rest of the cord gathered up
in coils which are held in the right hand. The net is then held up by the
cord so that it may hang in regular folds, and one half of these folds
are arranged consecutively over the left arm and the rest over the right,
both arms being held out to carry them, and care being taken to avoid
one fold entangling with another. The hands grip the folds nearest them,
and then, after one or two preliminary swings, the net is thrown forward,
and outward, in such manner as to spread out and cover as large an area
as the net is capable of before striking the water. On striking the water
the weighted periphery sinks at once and encloses any fish within its
area.
The principle of landing the fish netted may be explained by supposing a
circular cloth with its circumference weighted at short intervals spread
out on a table. If the centre of the cloth is taken and slowly lifted,
the circumference of the cloth will drag in over the table towards the
centre until it becomes massed together just before it is lifted clear.
In the case of the net the weights round the circumference press against
each other sufficiently to prevent fish falling through while it is
lifted clear of the water on to the bank.
It is no easy matter to use this net without a good deal of practice,
the gathering of the folds over the arms preliminary to throwing being
particularly awkward, and seeming at first to require three hands at
least. The Afghan fishermen are very expert in throwing it, and can
make it assume circular, oblong, or triangular shapes, according to the
requirements of the river or stream in which they are fishing and the
rocks and other obstacles it is necessary the net should avoid when
cast. But that is a refinement in throwing which requires some years’
experience.
In nets for catching large fish the weights are necessarily heavier than
those intended for small ones, but a couple of hours’ fishing with a
light net will be found sufficient exercise for one day for those not
accustomed to them. Those who find it necessary to fish for the sake of
the catch and not for sport will find these nets useful.
The prince, after spending a couple of days in the garden, returned to
the city, but not liking the house he had occupied there he went the next
day to stop at the Munzil Bagh, a new palace the Amir had built a year or
so before just outside the city walls. I was given a tent pitched in the
adjoining garden, because the rooms of the place were large and few, and
sufficient only for the accommodation of the Shahzada and his personal
attendants.
While here, I fell ill with fever and dysentery, and having no English
medicines with me I might have fared rather badly. The prince, however,
on hearing that I was ill, sent his own hakeem, or doctor, to attend
me, and this man did his best, and gave me every attention. I was not
quite as grateful at the time as I ought to have been, for three times a
day he brought me medicine in a two-pint glass filled to the brim with
some bitter concoction and sat there while I drank it, and as part of
his treatment was also to starve me until the disease passed, I felt in
rather a hurry to get better. Towards the end of my illness, however, I
persuaded him to send the medicine to me and not to put himself to the
trouble of bringing it, and then I found a convenient crack in the dry
earth under my bed which absorbed the bulk of the liquid better than I
could, and I am inclined to think that taking medicine in the Afghan
manner is more or less an acquired habit. When I was convalescent, this
hakeem selected all food that was to be cooked for me, and did so in
such generous quantities that, after my enforced fast, I was in danger
of getting ill in other ways. I really ought to have been more grateful,
for he was very conscientious, and liberal too, and took the greatest
interest in my case.
When I was well again I rode about the country around a good deal and
found plenty of partridge and quail shooting, and I heard that deer could
be got further away; but as it involved the trouble of camping out for a
night or two I did not think it worth while to try my luck, and camping
out with a small escort was hardly advisable.
One day I came across an abandoned gold mine, which I had previously
heard the people speak of as yielding large quantities of gold in its
time. A huge hole had been blasted out of the mountain-side, and heaps of
_débris_ were scattered about, in some parts entirely filling up previous
excavations. The quartz veins had been mined in all directions, but the
gold had evidently been in a “pocket,” and there was nothing further to
be had. I had a great desire for an opportunity of thoroughly trying
the place myself, and while I pottered about the sowar escort with me
broke up lumps of quartz to see what they might find. Gold exercises a
fascination over most people.
A sowar escort of seven men, with their duffedar (sergeant), had been
appointed to attend me wherever I went from the day I crossed the
frontier, and, as the penalty, should a fanatic attack and kill me, was
death to themselves, they kept very close to me and left nothing whatever
to chance.
The prince spent about a month in Kandahar and was getting rather gloomy
at the thought of being kept there for the winter, for it was getting
on towards the end of November, when one evening I went to pay my
compliments, or salaam him, as they call it, and met him coming into the
durbar room as I got there. I saw that he was very pleased and excited,
and he called out, “How do you do?” (almost all the English he knew) when
he saw me, and shook hands, which was a thing he seldom did, and then
told me that the Amir’s firman had been received, and he was to go on at
once to Kabul. I made a remark about it being rather cold weather for
travelling, and he assured me pleasantly that on the march it would be
twenty times colder than in Kandahar. As the water in my tent froze every
night I saw nothing to congratulate myself upon; however, the prospect of
being on the move again was exhilarating.
That evening the prince had some musicians brought in. They played upon
instruments made of some sort of cane or bamboo, which rather resemble
the flute, and although Afghan music is not usually soothing to the
Western ear, I found the music these men played rather pleasant and
lively. The instruments they used are peculiar to Kandahar, I was told,
and the prince wanted one of the men to accompany him to Kabul; but the
man was not attracted by the idea, and managed to evade the invitation.
The Shahzada left Kandahar the following week, the intervening time being
taken up in preparations for the journey, although such preparation might
easily have been completed in half the time; but it is not the habit
of the people to rush things. Their custom is, instead, to put off all
they can until to-morrow, or the day after, that for preference. The
first day’s camp was only twelve miles or so out of Kandahar, for it is
customary always to make the first day’s march a short one, in order
to prepare the horses and pack animals for the ensuing journey, and it
affords a means of testing the arrangements of the march generally.
The route to Kabul lay through Khilat, Mukur, and Ghazni. The road as
far as Khilat, which took four days’ journey, runs in a north-easterly
direction, and mostly alongside the river, which flows down towards
Kandahar from the mountains beyond. The track rises gradually over a
rather flat country, but there are mountain ranges at a little distance
on both sides. Beyond that to Mukur, another four days’ journey, the
road skirts the foot of some mountain ranges, and forms a fair road for
travelling without any difficult passes to get over.
From Mukur to Ghazni it runs over a high table-land, with mountain
ranges on either side, which, running in the same direction, give it the
appearance of an immense roadway. It took four days to cross this and get
to Ghazni, and it was by far the coldest part of the journey, for the
wind was icy, and its keenness such that it pierced the thickest clothing
I had. Although the sun was bright during the day it had no warmth, and
the surrounding mountains were covered with snow, but it was not until
the day before we reached Ghazni that snow fell, and made sleeping under
canvas more unpleasant than it had been. It came on at night, and when I
awoke in the morning I found it covering the boxes in my tent and my bed
too, for the wind had blown the flap of the tent open and allowed the
snow to drift in. It was chilly dressing before the sun was up, and as my
clothes, which I had thrown over a chair, were also covered with snow, I
had to get dry ones out of my boxes, the while being lightly clad in a
night-suit and slippers.
That day’s march to Ghazni was a trying one. Before this the days had
been bright and the air dry, but the moisture given out by the snow made
the wind still more biting, and we had to dismount occasionally to bring
some feeling into hands and feet, and to rub noses and ears to prevent
frostbite. Many of the Afghans wore hoods shaped like Balaklava caps
which left only the eyes exposed, and I thought them a very sensible
protection against such severe weather, and wished I had one.
The snow made the ground very slippery, and many horses fell. The camels
were worse off in that respect than the horses, for their broad flat
feet, which slide in all directions on a wet road, are ill-adapted for
travelling over snow, and, being also heavily laden, they sooner or later
came down, some of them breaking their legs and having to be killed. As,
however, camel flesh is an article of diet they were not a literal dead
loss to their owners.
Outside Ghazni the Shahzada was met by the officers and officials there,
who brought him presents of cloth, horses, and money, and when the city
was reached the royal salute was fired by the artillery, which, with
several horse regiments, was drawn up to receive him. He afterwards went
into the city, where he held durbar for a couple of hours before coming
on to the camp, which was pitched outside the walls.
Ghazni is situated in a small valley almost surrounded with low hills.
It is a very small place, and is enclosed by a high wall, as all towns
and villages in Afghanistan are. It has nothing about it to show that
it was once the royal city and the home of emperors. There are no fine
buildings, and its streets are very narrow and dirty, and the bazars
far from good. It boasts a bala-hisar (high fort) which commands
the surrounding land, but which itself could be commanded from the
neighbouring heights with the guns of the present day.
[Illustration: SIRDAR MAHOMED OMAR KHAN AND STAFF.
[_To face p. 24._]
Up to Ghazni the march was forced in order to get over the worst part
of the journey before the middle of December, when the heavy falls of
snow usually commence, for the table-land which has to be crossed before
reaching Ghazni is well known to those who travel that way, and many have
been overtaken by snow and perished there. Consequently each day’s march
was a fairly long one, and one day was close on forty miles, which for a
Shahzada is looked upon as a good distance. I had been unused to riding
for some months before, and at first was rather saddle-sore, but soon got
hardened.
On some of the longer marches the prince rode most of the distance on
camels, and on those occasions I went on ahead to escape the dust and
discomfort of the extra pace, for a riding camel’s trot is very trying
to keep up with on horseback. Being ahead, I was able to trot or canter
over the best bits of road and walk the others, but the disadvantage of
forcing the pace lay in having to wait three or four hours after reaching
camp for the baggage animals to come in with tents and servants, and
then another hour or so for food to be prepared. Usually, I got my lunch
any time between four and nine o’clock in the evening, and I found that
waiting about in a bitter wind for several hours without tent or food was
very cold work, particularly when tired after a long ride. While riding,
my feet were generally so numbed with cold that they had no feeling,
and in camp in the evenings the coldness increased to such an extent
that water thrown on the ground froze immediately, and my khansaman
showed me that knives dipped in water came out with a thin film of ice on
them, so that after nightfall when the wind was at its bitterest, as the
temperature fell lower and lower, one was glad to get into bed as soon as
possible to get warm.
One evening I had a hole dug in the floor of the tent and a fire made in
it, but in less than two minutes I was outside, coughing, while my eyes
were streaming, and I had to wait outside in the cold for some time until
the wind had cleared the tent of smoke. After that I got a munkal, or
iron dish that stands on four legs, and had a fire made in that outside
the tent, and when the wood had burnt away until nothing but glowing
cinders were left, I had it brought inside, and found that it made the
place more comfortable. Before going to sleep, when nothing but hot ashes
were left in the munkal, I used to put it under the bed, and found a
material increase in warmth there, for I had no mattress, and slept on
rezais (quilted coverlets), which were not altogether impervious to the
icy wind which came in under the walls of the tent and played under the
bed.
We passed several villages on the way, some perched halfway up a mountain
and some in the valley below, but all surrounded by high walls for
protection. Gardens and cultivated land lay outside the villages, and as
we rode past, some of the big Afghan dogs, which rather resemble a St.
Bernard, would come tearing out, barking, and looking savage enough and
big enough to eat one. They are fierce brutes, and often try to pull a
passing traveller out of the saddle; but they need be big and savage, for
they are used principally as sheepdogs, and on occasion have to attack
and kill wolves.
The people in the country are mostly robbers, and in the days before
Amir Abdur Rahman took the country in hand, travellers fared badly,
unless they kept together in bands of thirty or more, for even poor men
travelling alone have been known to be killed for the sake of the clothes
they wore.
There are many stories told of the treatment offered travellers by
villagers in outlying districts, and one case was that of a poor man who
was going along carrying a sack on his shoulders, and was seen by one
of these robbers, who, thinking that the sack must contain something
valuable, waited behind a rock until the man got within range, and then
fired and killed him; but on the robber going over to his victim, and
opening the bag, he found in it nothing but dried dung (used as fuel by
the poor classes), whereupon, bewailing the waste of his cartridge, he
kicked the body and strode off. I was told of another case where thirteen
men who were travelling during the winter were stopped and robbed of all
they possessed, the villagers even stripping them of the clothes they
had on, and leaving them to perish in the cold.
The Amir’s method of putting this sort of robbery and murder down was
simple and effective. If a man was robbed or killed, all villages within
a radius of about ten miles of the place where the crime was perpetrated
were fined from twenty to fifty thousand rupees, and if the people failed
to pay up promptly, two or three regiments of soldiers were sent and
quartered on them until payment was effected. When an Afghan soldier is
quartered on any one, he takes the best of everything in the house, the
best bed, best room, and best food, and if there are no fowl or sheep the
man of the house must procure them at once, even if he has to sell all he
has to get them. If he does not do this, then the butt end of a rifle is
applied to the small of his back, or even worse befalls. The villager has
no redress, because it is a Government soldier doing his duty. In this
way the Government fines are paid in as quickly as possible, for each
day’s delay means a great loss to each house in the village.
The effect of the Amir’s policy was to make each villager chary of
allowing his neighbour to molest a traveller, as all suffered alike
for the crime of one, and at the time I passed over the road, a single
traveller might go all the way from Kandahar to Kabul without being
unduly troubled. That is, provided he was not a foreigner, and Persians
and Hindustanis come under that category, for such have no friends to
make complaints to the Government and cause bothersome inquiries, and
are, therefore, looked upon as fair sport.
The road from Khilat is fairly level until it nears Ghazni, when it falls
down towards it, and then beyond Ghazni it rises again over the Darwaza
Ghazni pass, and beyond that falls again towards Kabul.
Between Ghazni and Kabul, the country, being at a much lower altitude
than that already passed over, the weather was much milder; but there
was snow on the hills around, and the temperature at night was below
freezing-point. We were five days travelling over this part of the
road, and the country passed through was rather hilly; but it was well
cultivated in the valleys, and there were many small villages about.
The road from Chaman to Kandahar, and thence to Kabul, could readily be
made fit for wheeled traffic, and would offer no difficulties to the
construction of a railway, and the fact that the two heavy siege guns,
presented to the Amir by the Indian Government, were taken that way and
drawn by traction engines shows sufficiently the ease with which a good
road might be made.
When we arrived at Kila Durani we were only ten or twelve miles from
Kabul as the crow flies, but had to go on round by the pass some twenty
miles farther on. Close by this village we passed over one of the English
battlefields with mounds of stones piled up over those who had fallen.
Seated on one of these mounds of stones I noticed a very old man rocking
his body backwards and forwards and muttering to himself, and when I had
gone on a little distance I heard one of the soldiers behind shout, and
turning round saw this old man following me with a huge stone, which he
could hardly carry. The sowars with me laughingly told him that the Amir
Sahib would imprison him if he tried to kill me; but the old man said
that the English had killed his son and he would kill an Englishman in
return. It was more pathetic than laughable to see this poor old man gone
mad through losing his son some years before, and carrying a stone he was
unable to throw to take vengeance. It, however, typifies the character of
the people.
When we reached Kila Kazee, which is about eight miles from Kabul, we had
to camp there for three days so that the prince might ride into Kabul
on the Sunday following, that being an auspicious day according to the
astrologers, who are always consulted on these matters.
The day we got into camp Sirdar Habibullah Khan (the present Amir) rode
out to see his brother, and spent the night with him, returning to Kabul
the following day. Sirdar Mahomed Omar also came to see him, and as he is
the son of the Queen-Sultana, and was about ten years old at the time,
the prince ordered a display of fireworks that night in order to please
him. Sirdar is the title, equivalent to prince, conferred on the Amir’s
sons only, although the people use it when addressing other members of
the royal family, as a term of respect.
On the Sunday the prince and his suite rode into Kabul, dressed in the
best they had for the occasion, and all cheerful at the thought of being
home at last. About halfway a large shamiana was erected, and here the
Shahzada’s son, a little child of two years, together with the sons of
Sirdar Habibullah Khan, were waiting to meet him. The prince seemed a
good deal affected on seeing his child, which rather surprised me, as I
had always thought him very unemotional. We spent an hour or so sitting
under the shamiana while tea and refreshments were served, and then rode
on.
Outside the city of Kabul, on an open space close to the workshops,
several regiments and two or three batteries of artillery were drawn
up, and in front of the troops was Sirdar Habibullah, together with the
General commanding the Kabul troops, and other officers, who were waiting
to receive the prince and accompany him to the Salaam khana. On the
Shahzada’s approach the guns fired the royal salute, and then, when the
different officers had come up and saluted the prince, they all rode on
together towards the city. Thousands of people lined the roads to watch
the tamasha, and soldiers were stationed at intervals to keep the people
back and leave a clear road for the princes and others to pass.
The Amir was holding a public durbar to receive his son, safely returned
after travelling so far, and on arrival the prince dismounted at the gate
and walked through the gardens to the Salaam khan, where, having been
announced to the Amir, he walked up the durbar hall and, kneeling, took
his father’s hand in both his and, placing it on each eye in turn, kissed
it, while invoking blessings and giving the usual salutations. The Amir,
raising the prince, told him to be seated, and then for the rest of the
day there were rejoicings, and all officials and officers came in turn to
the durbar to salaam the Amir and give thanks for the safe return of his
son.