_A Visit to Kafiristan_. By W.W. MCNAIR.
(Read at the Evening Meeting, December 10th, 1883.)
[1] In order to let the reader see how perfect was the disguise of
McNair during his Kafiristan expedition, I have prefixed to this Memoir
a portrait of McNair, taken a year or two before his death, and to the
paper read before the Royal Geographical Society, the group attired as
on their journey, with McNair in the centre, and his Mahommedan friends
around him.
In introducing Mr. McNair to the meeting, the President (Lord Aberdare)
said that the paper he was about to read was an account of a visit he
had recently made to Kafiristan. Mr. McNair had resided in India for a
long time previous to his adventurous journey, and whilst in the
service of the Topographical Department in the North-west of India, had
been employed in surveys beyond the frontier of Afghanistan. His
attention was thus directed to the interesting country which the paper
would describe. Kafiristan was a country of very peculiar interest. The
name Kafiristan, or the "country of infidels," was a nick-name given by
the surrounding Mahommedans, and was not that by which it was called by
the natives. It had long been a reproach to English geographers that
the only accounts of Kafiristan had been obtained through Orientals
themselves, whose statements had never been tested by the actual visit
of Europeans to the country. The consequence was that a sort of mystery
surrounded Kafiristan,--so much so that Colonel Yule, when discussing
an interesting paper by Colonel Tanner, on a visit he made to the
borders of the Kafir country three years ago, said that when Kafiristan
was visited and explored the Royal Geographical Society might close the
doors, because there would be no more new work to be done. The veil had
at last been drawn aside. It might be asked why the country had been so
long held inaccessible. The explanation was that the inhabitants were
always at war with their Mahommedan neighbours, by whom they were
surrounded on all sides, and who had been extremely jealous of their
communication with European travellers. Mr. McNair had penetrated
Kafiristan in disguise. He (the President) had had an opportunity of
seeing the paper, and he found that Mr. McNair had not dwelt upon the
historical geography of Kafiristan, and therefore he would say a few
words on that subject. As long ago as 1809, Kafiristan attracted the
attention of one of the ablest public servants that England ever sent
out to India--Mountstuart Elphinstone--who was anxious to add to his
"History of Kabul" something about the people of Kafiristan; and
knowing that it was inaccessible to Europeans, he employed an Indian, a
man of learning and intelligence, to travel there and obtain all the
information he could. It was curious to notice how faithful the report
of his emissary was. The people of the country were described in the
following words: "The Kafirs were celebrated for their beauty and their
European complexions. They worshipped idols, drank wine in silver cups
or vases, used chairs and tables, and spoke a language unknown to their
neighbours." Their religion seems to have been a sort of debased Deism:
they believed in a God; at the same time they worshipped a great number
of idols, which they said represented the great men that had passed
from among them; and he described a scene at which he had been present,
when a goat or a cow was sacrificed, and the following prayer, pithy
and comprehensive, although not remarkable for charity, was offered up:
"Ward off fever from us. Increase our stores. Kill the Mussulmans.
After death admit us to Paradise." Killing the Mussulman was a
religious duty which the Kafirs performed with the greatest fidelity
and diligence. In fact, no young man was allowed to marry until he had
killed a Mussulman. They attached the same importance to the killing of
a Mussulman as the Red Indians did to taking the scalp of an enemy.
Their number did not appear to exceed 250,000. They inhabited three
valleys, and small as their number was they were constantly at war with
each other, and seized upon the members of kindred tribes in order to
sell them as slaves. The women were remarkable for their beauty; and
Sir Henry Rawlinson once said at one of their meetings that the most
beautiful Oriental woman he ever saw was a Kafir, and that she had,
besides other charms, a great mass of golden hair, which, let loose and
shaken, covered her completely from head to foot like a veil. In order
to show what was the state of our knowledge of the country down to
1879, he would read part of a paper by Mr. Markham on "The Upper Basin
of the Kabul River." "This unknown portion of the southern watershed of
the Hindu Kush is inhabited by an indomitable race of unconquered
hill-men, called by their Muslim neighbours the Siah-posh
(black-clothed) Kafirs. Their country consists of the long valleys
extending from the Hindu Kush to the Kunar river, with many secluded
glens descending to them, and intervening hills affording pasturage for
their sheep and cattle. The peaks in Kafiristan reach to heights of
from 11,000 to 16,000 feet. The valleys yield crops of wheat and
barley, and the Emperor Baber mentions the strong and heady wine made
by the Kafirs, which he got when he extended his dominion to
Chigar-serai in 1514. The Kafirs are described as strong athletic men
with a language of their own, the features and complexions of
Europeans, and fond of dancing, hunting, and drinking. They also play
at leap-frog, shake hands as Englishmen, and cannot sit cross-legged on
the ground. When a deputation of Kafirs came to Sir William Macnaghten
at Jalalabad, the Afghans exclaimed: 'Here are your relations coming!'
From the days of Alexander the Great the Siah-posh Kafirs have never
been conquered, and they have never embraced Islam. They successfully
resisted the attacks of Mahmud of Ghazni, and the campaign which Timur
undertook against them in 1398 was equally unsuccessful. But the Muslim
rulers of Kabul continued to make inroads into the Siah-posh country
down to the time of Baber and afterwards. Our only knowledge of this
interesting people is from the reports of Mahommedans, and from an
account of two native missionaries who penetrated into Kafiristan in
1865. Elphinstone obtained much information respecting the Kafirs from
one Mullah Najib in 1809; and Lumsden from a Kafir slave named
Feramory, who was a general in the Afghan service in 1857. Further
particulars will be found in the writings of Burnes, Wood, Masson,
Raverty, Griffith, and Mohun Lal." In recent years, Major Biddulph
entered from Kashmir, through Gilgit, and made his way to Chitral, and
Colonel Tanner advanced from Jalalabad a short distance into
Kafiristan, among a portion of the people who had been converted to
Mahommedanism, but who still retained many of the peculiarities of the
Kafir race. Dr. Leitner had also taken great pains to obtain
information about this ancient and unconquered people but Mr. McNair
was the first European who had ever penetrated into Kafiristan.