CHAPTER I.
We left Multán by the morning train on the 26th December 1871, and after a ride of near an hour, alighted at Sher Sháh Ghát on the river bank. Here we took leave of our kind host, Colonel Stuart Graham, Commissioner of the Division, and embarked on board the river steamerOutram. By noon we had loosed our moorings, and theOutram, wedged in between two unwieldy flats lashed to her one on either side, was fairly started down-stream of the river Chenáb.
We had hardly proceeded two hours when we were brought to a stand-still by “something” wrong with the engine. Whatever this mysterious “something” may have been, it necessitated our mooring alongside the river bank for the rest of the day. A stout plank thrown across from one of the flats served to communicate with the shore, which is here a dead level of loose sand, evidently a recent deposit by floods. The banks here are very low, so too is the stream between them at this season, as we soon discovered, to the no small trial of our patience. They—the banks—are of loose sand, flush with the general surface of the plain as far as the eye can reach on either side. They are perpetually sucking up moisture from the stream washing them, and then, becoming overweighted, subside into the river, to be restored again in the succeeding year’s floods.
By seven o’clock next morning we had cast off fromour moorings, and were drifting down mid-stream, fairly started for a good day’s run. But we had hardly proceeded half-an-hour when a smart bump announced our stoppage by a sandbank. A little delay presently revealed the unpleasant fact that theOutramwith her flats was jammed in a shallow channel with only two and a half feet of water. Anchors were thrown out, first on one side, then on the other; the engine was backed astern, and then turned ahead. TheOutramwas hauled first this way and then that; she was worked now backwards and again driven forwards; and so on in alternation for upwards of seven hours. Finally, about three o’clock, our unwieldytria juncta in unowas wriggled out of the strait into free water four feet deep.
But we were not yet clear of our difficulties. A few hundred yards farther on we were again stranded on a sandbank; and not being able to get off it at sunset, anchored for the night in mid-stream, having during the day increased our distance from Multán by four miles more than it was on the previous evening. We did not get fairly off this bank till noon of the following day. And so we went on, with like obstructions daily, entailing more or less delay, till we reached Bakrí at sunset of the 30th. Here next morning we transhipped to the river steamerDe Grey, the cargo being transferred during the night, and making a good start, arrived at Cháchá, a little below the junction of the Chenáb with the Indus, on the morning of the second day of the new year. Here our only fellow-traveller, the Rev. T. V. French, of the Church Missionary Society, left us for Baháwalpúr.
TheDe Greyfared only a little better than theOutram. We experienced many delays from shoal water and narrow channels, and at sunset of the second day ran on to a sandbank. The shock of the concussioncaused one of the flats to break away from its attachments and crush against the stern of the steamer. The whole night was employed in securing the flat and working the steamer off the bank. By eight o’clock next morning we got off into free water, and making a good day’s run, at sunset moored for the night at Rodhar, a little hamlet of reed huts close on the river bank, and about forty-eight miles above Sakkar.
During the day, we saw immense numbers of water-fowl of all sorts. Ducks in great variety, coolan, wild geese, herons, cranes, and paddy-birds were the most prominent in point of size and numbers. Porpoises hunted up and down the stream, alligators on the sandbanks lazily basked in the sunshine, and wild pigs cautiously issued from the thick coverts on either side for a wallow in the shallows and puddles bordering the river’s stream.
In one of these shallows, formed by an overflow of the river, we witnessed a curious sight—an interesting fact for the naturalist. A large fish floundering about in the shallow water had attracted the attention of a buzzard flying overhead. The bird made one or two stoops at the fish, when a jackal, looking on from the edge of the jangal, came forward to contest its possession. He boldly went some twenty paces into the water, and after a sharp struggle seized the fish and brought it to land. Here he laid it on the sand to take breath and look around, and the buzzard, seizing the opportunity, again made a stoop at the fish, but was driven off by the jackal, who made a jump into the air at him. This was repeated two or three times, after which the jackal, taking up his prize, with head aloft proudly trotted back to his covert. The fish appeared to be at least twenty inches long.
We left Rodhar early next morning, and proceeded without obstruction. We passed a number of small hamletsclose on the river bank on either side. They were composed of reed cabins supported on slender poles eight or ten feet high. Each cabin was a neat pent-roofed box, about ten feet long by six wide, and as many high at the sides. They belonged to Sindhí Jats, who live by fishing, cutting wood for fuel, and by tending cattle.
The country here is wooded close to the water’s edge by a thick jangal of Euphrates poplar, tamarisk, and mimosa, and here and there are great belts of tall reeds, eighteen to twenty feet high. The approach to Sakkar is very fine and unique of its kind. It presents a charming contrast to the dead level of the scenery on either side the river above it as far as Multán. The island fortress of Bakkar in mid-stream, with the many-storied houses and lofty palm groves of Rorhí, on one side, and the high rocks and sunburnt town of Sakkar on the other, are the characteristic features of this peculiar spot. We steamed through the channel between Rorhí and Bakkar, and then, making for the opposite shore, moored under the town of Sakkar at about one o’clock. It thus took us nearly eleven whole days to perform the journey by river from Multán to Sakkar. In the hot season, when the river is in full flood, the same journey is usually accomplished in one third of the time.
Cattle for our baggage and camp equipage having been collected here by previous arrangement, we left our servants to follow with them, and at half-past three set out for Shikárpúr in a buggy kindly placed at our service by Captain Hampton, Superintendent of the Panjab Steam Flotilla. At Mangráni, the half-way stage, we mounted camels sent out for us, and in four hours from Sakkar, arrived at Shikárpúr. The road is excellent throughout, and laid most of the way with long reed grass to keep down the dust. The country is flat,crossed by many irrigation canals, and covered with jangal patches of tamarisk and mimosa. In the last five miles from Lakkí to Shikárpúr, cultivation is general, and large trees become more abundant.
In the morning our obliging host, Colonel Dunsterville, Collector of Shikárpúr, took us for a drive to see the place. In the public gardens called Shákí Bágh is a small menagerie and the Merewether pavilion. The latter, built after the design of those useless decorated structures one sees at English watering-places and pleasure gardens, is a striking object, absurdly at variance with all its surroundings. But it is characteristic of our prejudices and tastes in matters architectural. We unaccountably neglect the encouragement of the oriental architecture, with its elegant designs, elaborate detail, and durable material, for the nondescript compositions, incongruous mixture of colours, and inferior material of the public buildings and monuments we have spread all over the country. We seem to forget that what is suitable to the climate, conformable to the scenery, and acceptable to the tastes of the people of Europe, may be the reverse in each instance when introduced into this country without modification or adaptation to its circumstances. The town of Shikárpúr is clean for an oriental city, and wears an air of quiet and prosperity. The environs are well stocked with large trees, such as thením(melia azadirachta),sirras(acaciaelata),sissú(Dalbergia sissoo), palm, &c., and the roads are everywhere covered with a layer of reeds to keep down the dust. The people are clad in bright-coloured garments, and appear a very thriving commercial community. The bazaar is covered with a pent-roof, and has a cool look, which alone must be a boon in this hot climate. There is a very useful charitable dispensary here, and a jail for five hundredprisoners. I observed that the convicts were clad in fur jackets (postín), a luxury very few of them ever possessed in their free state.
We left Shikárpúr at two o’clock, and drove to Sultán di Gót, where we found camels awaiting our arrival. The one intended for my riding took fright at the buggy, tore away from his nose-ring, and, luckily for me, escaped into the jangal. This I say advisedly; for had the frisky creature been recaptured, I could not have declined to ride him, and the consequences might have been anything but agreeable. I was unaccustomed to this mode of travelling, and knew little about the handling of a camel. Had he bolted with me on his back, there is no knowing where he would have stopped, and the jolting—well! it is lucky I escaped the chance of its consequences.
After a short delay, a pony having been procured from the village, we set off, and at half-way passing the staging bungalow of Humáyún, arrived at Jacobabad at seven o’clock. The road is excellent, and is bordered by an avenue of large trees nearly the whole way, and is crossed by several irrigation canals. Jacobabad is the headquarters of the Sindh Irregular Force, and is a flourishing frontier station, luxuriant in the vigour of youth. It was laid out, planted, and watered, not a score of years ago, by the talented officer whose name it commemorates, on a bare and desert tract, near the little hamlet of Khangarh, on the very verge of the desert. It affords a striking example of what the energy and judgment of a determined will can effect.
Our servants with the camp equipage did not arrive at Jacobabad till daylight of the next day. We halted here a day to complete the final arrangements for our journey across the border, and to decide on the route we were to take.
The affairs of Balochistan had for some time been in an unsettled state, owing to differences that had arisen between the ruling chief and some of his most powerful feudal barons. Matters had grown worse, and, at the time of our arrival here, several of the tribal chiefs were in open rebellion, and had taken the field against the Khán of Calát, over whose troops, it appears, they had gained the advantage in more than one encounter. Owing to these disturbances, the direct and ordinary route through Balochistan by the Bolán Pass was closed. There were two alternative routes, namely, that by Tal Chhotiyálí, to the north of the Bolán, and that by the Míloh Pass to its south. The first is described as an easy road, and has the advantage of leading direct into the Peshín valley; moreover, it is a route hitherto untraversed by Europeans. But these advantages and desiderata were annulled and counterbalanced, as far as we were concerned, by the perilous nature of the route in the vicinity of Mount Chapper, occupied by the lawless and savage tribe of Kákarr, notorious robbers, who are restrained by the fear of neither God nor devil, and much less of man. The Míloh Pass route, although nearly a hundred and ninety miles longer than that by the Bolán, was consequently, thanks to the sound judgment of Sir William Merewether (for which we subsequently found good reason to be grateful), decided on as the road for us to proceed by.
Our camp having gone ahead at daylight, under escort of two native commissioned officers and forty troopers of the Sindh Irregular Horse, we set out from the hospitable mansion of Sir William Merewether, Commissioner of Sindh, at nine o’clock in the morning of the 8th January 1872, and clearing the station, presently entered on a vast desert plain. At about three miles wecrossed the line of the British frontier, and at two miles more reached Mumal, the first habitation in the territory of the Khán of Calát or Kelat. It is a collection of eighteen or twenty mean hovels, the occupants of which were the personification of poverty and wretchedness. Here we bade adieu to Captain R. G. Sandeman, Deputy Commissioner of Dera Gházi, who, with a party of Mazári horsemen, accompanied us thus far, and mounting our camels, set out at a swinging trot across the desert towards Barshori, thirty miles distant, turning our backs upon civilisation, and hurrying into the regions of discord and barbarism. We were accompanied by Pír Ján, son of Muhammad Khán, the Khán of Calát’s agent at Jacobabad, and eight of his horsemen.
The desert is a wide smooth surface of hard dry clay, as level as a billiard-table, and bare as a board. Not a single pebble, nor even a blade of grass, was anywhere to be seen. The caravan track lying before us was the only distinguishable feature on the dull surface of bare clay. After travelling thus for about two and a half hours, we sighted two lofty mounds set together in the midst of the desert, with shrubby bushes fringing pools of water at their bases, all remarkably clear and distinct. “That,” said Pír Ján, “is theLúmpáni áb, or ‘the lustre of the minstrel’s water,’ so named from the tradition of a travellingLúm, or ‘minstrel,’ who, seeing such abundant signs of water, emptied the cruse under whose weight he was toiling, and perished in the desert from thirst.” As we approached nearer, the illusion disappeared, and the semblance dissolved to the reality—two heaps of clay on the sides of a dry well-shaft, a few scattered saltworts, and a patch of soda efflorescence. This was the most perfectsihráb(magic water) or mirage I had ever seen. We rested here awhile, to allow the baggage to get on toour camp ground; but after half-an-hour, finding the midday sun too hot, we remounted our camels and resumed our track across the desert, and overtook the baggage a little way short of Barshori, where we arrived at sunset.
Here we found a large káfila scattered over a considerable surface of land about the village. As we passed by towards some clear ground on the further side of the village, we were surrounded by a noisy crowd of Afghans, who, with the utmost volubility and excitement, poured out a confused jumble of complaints and laments, and begged an immediate inquiry and redress for their grievances. Everybody speaking at once, the confusion of sounds prevented our understanding what was said; so we dismounted from our camels, and General Pollock directing the crowd to disperse, retained a few as spokesmen for the rest. We presently learned that the káfila had been attacked in the Bolán above Dádar by Mulla Muhammad, Ráisání, chief of Sahárawán, who, with others, is in open revolt against the authority of the Khán of Calát, and that they had fought their way through, with the loss of six men killed, fourteen wounded, and a hundred and fifty camels with their loads captured by the enemy. Whilst listening to these accounts, eight wounded men were brought forward. I examined and did what I could for them at the time. They were all severely wounded, six by gunshot and two by sword-cut. I was turning away, when a blustering fellow, loudly cursing the barbarity of the robbers, set an old woman in my path, and removing her veil, exclaimed, “Look here! they have not even spared our women; they have cut off this poor woman’s nose with a sword.” The miserable creature’s face was shockingly eaten away by disease. I raised my eyes from it to the speakers’,and was about to speak, when I was forestalled by the bystanders, who merrily said, “Take her away; that dodge won’t do, he knows all about it.” The effrontery of the whole proceeding was Afghan throughout.
The káfila, we were told, consisted of twelve hundred camels and eighteen hundred followers from Kandahar. The merchandise comprised a varied stock, such as wool, dried fruits, raisins, choghas, barrak, pashmína, specie, and jewels. The value of the whole was estimated at nine laks of rupees, of which about two laks had been plundered in the Bolán. Directing our informants to make their representations to the authorities of Jacobabad, we passed on to our own camp.
We were seated on our cots, watching the erection of our tents, when our attention was diverted to four men cautiously approaching us from the direction of the káfila. Their leader was a venerable greybeard, and by his side walked a delicate youth. As they neared us I observed, “Surely, I know those people;” when the elder, hastily glancing around to satisfy himself that he was unobserved by the káfila people, hurried forward, fell at my feet, then quickly rising, took my hands in his own, kissed them, and pressed them to his forehead, uttering all the while a rapid succession of prayers and congratulations on his good fortune in meeting me.
“Saggid Mahmúd of Sariáb, what has brought you here from Ghazni?” inquired I, after the customary interchange of salutations, so cordially initiated by himself. “Hush!” said he, in a low voice, turning to my ear. “We are going on a pilgrimage to Karbalá by Bombay, Basrah, and Baghdad, but are obliged to call it Makha for fear of the bigoted heretics composing our káfila. Yes,” continued he, in a louder tone, “we are going thehajto Makha. You see, poor Cásim is no better,though he has carried out all your directions, and finished all the bottles of that excellent medicine you were so gracious as to give him. It was really a most potent medicine, and acted quite like a charm. Cásim was nearly cured by it, and was fast recovering the use of his arm, when our messenger returned from Peshawar with your gracious epistle promising to send that magic chain for him, if I sent him back for it a month later. I did send him, but he never returned, and poor Cásim rapidly losing ground, soon became as bad as ever he was before he took your medicine. God’s will be done. We are all His servants. You did your best for us, and God prosper you.”
I must here digress a little to inform the reader of the circumstances of my former acquaintance with our pilgrim friend. Just two years ago, in the commencement of 1870, Saggid Mahmúd, bearing a recommendatory letter from the Amir of Kabul, came to me at Peshawar for professional advice regarding his son. I found the lad was afflicted with tubercular leprosy and a paralysed arm, and learned on inquiry that his sister and some cousins also were afflicted with leprosy. Like most natives of these parts my patients believed, or professed to believe, that I had only to feel the pulse, administer some physic, and prescribe a regimen, to ensure a speedy recovery. And great was their disappointment on my telling the old man that, as far as I was concerned, his son’s disease was incurable. They had travelled upwards of three hundred miles for a cure, and it was hard they should return without some sort of attempt towards the attainment of so desirable an issue. So I took the case in hand, and treated the lad for some months with little or no benefit. At length, the hot weather approaching, they returned to their home at Ghazni, with a large supply of medicine.In the following year Saggid Mahmúd wrote to me for a fresh supply of medicine and the galvanic battery I had employed on his son at Peshawar. The medicine I sent him by his messenger, and promised to get him a galvanic chain if he would send for it a month or so later. His messenger never came, and the chain remained with me.
On my leaving Peshawar for the journey before us, I packed the galvanic chain (it was one of Pulvermacher’s) in one of my boxes, on the chance of an opportunity offering to forward it to Ghazni. I now informed our visitors of this, and opening the box, produced the case containing the chain, and handed it over to Saggid Mahmúd, congratulating him on the good fortune that had enabled me to present it personally. He was completely taken aback at finding I had really got the chain for his son, and taking it in both hands, exclaimed, “This is wonderful! Who would have believed it? You are all true and just people, and deserve to be great. It is for such sincerity that God prospers you.” With many expressions of gratitude and prayers for our safe progress, our visitors took their leave. Six months later we met this old man again at Shahrúd, as will be hereafter related.
Barshori is an open village of about eighty houses on the edge of a dry water-course. Its inhabitants are Mánjhú Jats, and appear to be comfortably off. There is a good deal of corn cultivation around, judging from the wide extent of corn-stalks. Water, however, is limited in quantity, and very inferior in quality. It is derived from a number of small shafts, upwards of a hundred, sunk in the bed of the drainage channel above mentioned, and is very turbid and brackish. The road to the Bolán PassviâBágh and Dádar goes off northwards from this, and that to the Míloh Pass by Gandáva goes off to the west.
We left Barshori at nine o’clock next morning andproceeded westward over a wide level plain intersected by a number of dry superficial water-courses. The general surface is a bare, hard clay similar to the desert traversed yesterday, but here and there we found traces of cultivation, and at distant intervals came upon scattered patches of thin jangal. At about half-way we passed Kikri, a collection of twenty or thirty huts of Mánjhú Jats some little way to the right of the road; and at five miles farther on passed through Bashkú, a flourishing village of about two hundred houses, surrounded by jujube, mimosa, and tamarisk trees. It stands on the edge of a deep and wide water-course, in the dry bed of which we noticed a long series of wells. At a mile and a half further on we came to Sinjarani, and camped; the distance from Barshori, thirteen miles. Sinjarani is an open village, similar in size and situation to Bashkú. Both are inhabited by Sinjarani Jats, and in both we found the house-tops and courts piled with stacks ofjúár(Sorgham vulgare), the tall leafy stalks of which furnish an excellent fodder for cattle. The water here is very turbid, but not brackish. The wells, of which there are about two hundred in the water-course, are mere narrow shafts sunk in the clay soil. Water is tapped at about ten cubits, and oozes up in a thick muddy state in small quantities of a few gallons only to each well.
We started from Sinjarani at sevenA.M.on the 10th January, and at eight miles came to the village of Odhána, one hundred houses. At about a mile to the south of it is the Kubíha hamlet, of fifty houses. Both were attacked and plundered less than a month ago by the Brahoes, at the instigation of Mulea Muhammad, Ráisání, and Allah Dina, Kurd, who, with Núruddín, Mingal of Wadd, are in revolt against the Khán of Calát. They are now deserted except by two or three miserable oldmen, who came forward to tell us their pitiful tale. We dismounted at Odhána and went over its empty and desolate homesteads. The work of plunder had been most effectively done. The houses were empty, heaps of ruin, and nothing but bare walls remained standing. The doors and roof timbers had been carried away, and the corn-bins emptied. Some of these last were left standing in the courts. They resemble those seen in the Peshawar valley, and consist of tall wicker frames plastered within and without with a coating of clay and straw. The top is closed with a movable cover of the same material, and they are raised above the ground on short pedestals. They are impervious to rain and the ravages of rats, and are well adapted to the storing of grain. At the lower edge of the bin is an aperture fitted with a plug of rags. Through this the daily quantum of grain is withdrawn, as it is required for the mill. We found all empty. The whole village had been completely sacked, many of the people had been carried off, and the rest dispersed after being stripped of everything. The Brahoes did not even spare the women their mantles, nor the men their trousers, nor did they allow a single head of cattle to escape them.
At about three miles further on we came to another village of the same name. It too had been plundered, and was now deserted. Beyond this our path crossed a bare desert surface on which were the traces of a flood of waters. The plain itself cut the horizon, and resembled a great sea glimmering in the vapours of the mirage. As we were crossing this desolate tract our attention was drawn to a crowd of gigantic figures moving against the southern horizon. Our companion Pír Ján stopped his camel and begged us to rein up. He looked very grave, said the appearance was suspicious, maraudingBrahoes were known to be about, and that was just the direction in which the rebel Mingals might be looked for. He parleyed a while with his horsemen, then scrutinised the figures, then he parleyed again, and again scrutinised them, and so on for eight or ten minutes, himself and his men all the while capping their muskets, slinging their swords, and tightly securing their turbans in readiness for attack. Meanwhile the figures kept changing their positions and forms in the vapoury glare of the mirage. They were in turn pronounced to be horsemen, then camels at graze, then footmen, and finally cattle at graze. In this uncertainty Pír Ján directed one of his horsemen to gallop forward and solve the mystery. He did not, however, seem to see the advisability of the proposal, and whilst professing ready acquiescence, merely pranced his horse about within close reach of our party. By this time the figures emerged from the mirage, and we counted eight horsemen and two camels, making straight towards us. Pír Ján now sent forward three of his horsemen at a gallop towards them, and they in turn sent a like number to confront them. Our three then reined up, and so did the others, at about five hundred yards apart. Then a single cavalier from each side advanced, they approached together, stood a few moments, and then both galloped off to the party who had so alarmed us, and who were at a stand-still like ourselves. Presently the other two of our horsemen galloped off to them. “It’s all well,” exclaimed Pír Ján, with a relieved expression of countenance; “they are not enemies.” A little later our horsemen rejoined us, with the intimation that the authors of our diversion were not Mingals, only Magassis, a friendly tribe of Baloch, on their way to Bágh. So we went on, and the Magassis crossed our track some hundred yards behind us.
Beyond this desert tract the country is traversed by several irrigation canals, and presents signs of very considerable cultivation right up to Gandáva. At this season the whole country is dry, but during the summer rains it is inundated by the Nárí river, which rises in the hills about Dadur, and spreads its floods broadcast all over the desert tract extending from Gandáva to Jacobabad. Most of this water is allowed to run waste, and from want of care much is lost by evaporation. Under a settled government there is little doubt that most of this desert tract could be brought under cultivation, for the soil appears very good, and the facilities for irrigation during the summer months are at hand. But both are sadly neglected all over the Kachipat, the designation by which the great desert tracts of Kach are known.
Gandáva, the capital of Kach, is a decayed-looking town, and its fortifications are fast crumbling into ruin. It is the winter residence of the Khán of Calát, whose mansion is situated in the citadel, which overlooks the town from the north. The town has an extremely sunburnt and desolate appearance. The summer months here are described as excessively hot, and unbearable to all but natives of the country. During this season a poisonous hot wind, calledjuloh, prevails over the plain of Kach, and destroys travellers exposed to its blast. It proves fatal in a few hours, by drying up all the moisture of the body, and the skin of those killed by it appears scorched and fissured, and putrefaction at once takes place.
We rested here during the heat of the day in the Khán’s garden on the south of the town, to allow our baggage to pass on. The garden is a neglected wilderness of all sorts of trees crowded together, but to us proved a grateful retreat for the shade it afforded. In its centre are a couple of fine pipal trees (Ficus religiosa), and aroundthem we recognised the mango, jujube, sweet lime, vine, date-palm, apricot, cordia myxa, banhinia variegata, sizygium jambolanum, and acacia siris.
Proceeding from Gandáva, we left Fatupúr, conspicuous by its lofty domed tombs, to the left, and passing through a thick jangal of capparis, salvadora, and acacia, amongst which were scattered small patches of bright green mustard, came to the Garrú ravine, a wide drainage channel with a sandy bed, covered with a thick belt of tamarisk trees. Beyond this, at eight miles from Gandáva and thirty from Sinjarani, we came to Kotra, and camped at sunset.
This is a collection of four villages close to each other, the residence of the members of the Iltáfzai family, whose head is the ruling Khán of Calát. They are surrounded by stately trees and productive gardens, watered by a brisk stream from a spring at Pír Chhatta. Some of the houses here appear very neat and comfortable residences. Altogether the place wears an air of prosperity, and is out-and-out the most picturesque and flourishing place we have seen since we left Jacobabad. Kotra is theentrepôtof the trade between Balochistan (Calát and Makrán) and Shikárpúr.
We arrived at Kotra just as the sun had set, and our baggage was yet far behind. After selecting a site for our camp, and waiting some time for its arrival, misgivings crept over us as to our evening meal, for it was already eight o’clock, and no signs of our baggage being near at hand were visible, and unpleasant suspicions of having to go supperless to bed forced themselves on our mind. All length I hinted to our companion Pír Ján—who, by the way, proved a very inefficient and indolent cicerone—that, in the event of our servants not coming up in time, he might be able to get us something to eat from the village before it became too late. He took the hint, and,after some delay, in the interim of which our camp arrived, at nearly nine o’clock, his messenger returned from the village with a bowl of mutton, stewed in its own broth, and some bannocks, which he said had been sent from Mír Khyr Muhammad’s house, with that Iltáfzai chiefs compliments, and excuses for not being able to see us this evening, a pleasure which he hoped to enjoy in the morning. We forthwith set to work with our fingers on the mutton, and ladled up the broth with successive spoons formed of shreds of bannock, which went the same way as their contents, until the fast “setting” grease of the cooling mess suddenly persuaded us that we had sufficiently taken off the keen edge of our appetites, and we gladly turned from the coarse bowl and soiled rag on which it stood. Though grateful for the entertainment, I must say I was disappointed in this experience of Baloch hospitality. Any Afghan peasant would have done the honours not only with better grace and substance, but spontaneously.
Whilst our tents were being pitched in the dim light of approaching night, a couple of rampantyábús, or baggage ponies, not satisfied with a march of thirty miles, broke away from the rest, and made an unwarrantable assault on our two Baloch mares—beautiful gazelle-eyed, gentle creatures—as they quietly stood, with saddles and bridles unremoved, waiting their turn to be picketed. There was immediately a grand row; the mares kicking and squealing desperately, and theyábúsrearing and roaring as the horses of this country only can. A dozen men rushed to the rescue from all directions, with shouts, threats, and imprecations. In two minutes all four bolted out of camp, and tore wildly out of sight into the jangal.
We got some men from the village to go in search ofthem during the night, and our departure was delayed till noon of the next day, pending their recapture. The animals were brought back none the worse for their mad career over such rough country as that between Kotra and the adjacent hills, but their gear was a good deal damaged, and one saddle was lost. From Kotra we marched to Pír Chhatta, nine miles. The path winds through a jangal of wild caper, mimosa, and salvadora to the Míloh ravine, on the bank of which we found a collection of twelve or fourteen booths of the Kambarání and Syáni Brahoe, who are occupied as camel-drivers between Calát and Shikárpúr. Their dwellings were mere sheds of tamarisk branches covering a loose framework supported on slender poles, and altogether appeared a very inefficient and temporary sort of shelter. I noticed that the women, though equally exposed to the weather, were much fairer and comelier than the men. Their dress was as rough and simple as their dwellings. A long loose shift of coarse cotton, with loose sleeves, was the only dress of some of the women; one or two of them wore besides a small sheet or mantle thrown loosely over the head and shoulders. The men wore capacious cotton trousers, gathered in at the ankle, and over these a short shirt with wide sleeves; round the head were wound a few folds of a twisted turban. Grazing about their settlement were a number of pretty little goats, the smallest I ever saw, hardly twenty inches high.
After following the dry pebbly bed of the ravine for a little way in a southerly direction, we turned out of it to the right at a conspicuous dome over the grave of Mír Iltaf, the uncle of the present Mír of Kotra. By it flows a brisk stream, which, on its way to Kotra, turns three or four water-mills, the sites of which are marked by clumps of date-palm, jujube, and pipal trees. Fromthis point we turned towards the hill range, along which we had been travelling in a parallel course from Gandáva. They wear a wild, dreary, and inhospitable look, and the country at their skirt is rugged, and mostly bare of vegetation. At about four miles from the tomb, crossing two or three ridges of conglomerate rock, and the little stream winding between and round themen route, we came to the palm grove of Pír Chhatta, and camped on an open turfy spot amongst the trees, and near the spring-head of the stream above mentioned. The soil here is a powdery clay, white with efflorescent salines, and even the turf is stiff with white encrustations of soda salts. At the spring-head is a hermit’s cell, and close by, suspended on the boughs of a tree, is a peal of about thirty small bells, which thefaqírrattles every now and then to wake up the mountain echoes.
The spring on issuing from the rock forms a small pool. We found it absolutely crammed with fish from six to ten inches long. They looked, I thought, like spotted trout, except that the scales were like those of the salmon. These fish are held sacred, and most dire consequences are said to overtake the sacrilegist who should so far forget himself as to violate the sanctity of the pool of Pír Chhatta by feasting on its protected fish. We threw a few handfuls of grain into the pool to propitiate the saint, or his mean representative in the unwashed and unclad person of the hermit, who seemed no ways pleased at our unceremonious intrusion on his special domain. The surface of the pool was instantly a solid mass of fish, struggling for the grain, which disappeared in a marvellously short space of time. Whilst we thus amused ourselves, the hermit, probably fearful of our annexing a few of the fish for dinner, recounted some wonderful instances he knew of the agonised deaths producedby so rash an act. But he was eclipsed by an attendant orderly, who gravely assured us that a comrade of his—a trooper of the Sindh Irregular Horse—had on one occasion, when passing this way, taken one of these fish, cut it up, cooked, and eaten it. “And what happened?” angrily asked the hermit. “By the power of God,” he answered, “the wicked wretch was seized immediately after with the most excruciating pains in his internals. He rolled on the ground in agony, and repeatedtabasandastaghfirullahs(repentances and God forgive me’s) without number, calling on all the saints and prophets to intercede for him.” “And then he died!” chimed in the hermit, with a triumphant air. “No,” said the other; “God is great, and, such is His mercy, he got up and went amongst the bushes, groaning and moaning with agony. Presently he returned quite another being, perfectly well and happy, with the fish alive in his hand, and upbraiding him for his want of faith and veneration, and directing its restoration to its own element.” “God’s ways are inscrutable,” said the hermit; adding, with ineffable pride, “our pure prophet heard his prayers, our blessed saint of this sacred spot interceded for him; God, the Almighty, accepted his repentance.” Our narrator admitted on interrogation that he was not an eye-witness of what he had just related, but he knew several men who were. After this example—and it is one by no means uncommon amongst Muhammadans in these countries—of audacity and credulity, we strolled back to our tents speculating upon the mental organisation of a people who could, without an attempt at question, accept such absurdities. The blind credulity of the Muhammadan in all that concerns his prophet and saints, their sayings and their doings, their precepts and examples, affords an interesting field for inquiry to the psychologist. Suchinvestigation would, I believe, establish it as a fact that the obstinate yet passive resistance of Muhammedans to the free advance of Western civilisation amongst them is owing almost entirely to the spirit of bigotry created by their religion and cherished by their literature, for the one is a mere reflection of the other.
There is no habitation at Pír Chhatta, nor are any supplies procurable here. Our cicerone, Pír Ján, with his usual want of forethought, had himself made no arrangements for our supplies here, nor had he told us of the necessity of making any such arrangements, nor, when he found how matters stood, did he seem inclined in any way to stir himself to remedy them. So the General summoned him to his presence, and took him sharply to task for his carelessness. This had the effect of rousing him from the dull lethargy into which the perpetual repetition of his beads had thrown him, and he at last stirred himself to see what could be done to feed our cattle and camp-followers. There was not alternative but to send back some of our cattle with one of his men to purchase grain, fodder, &c., at Kotra. The evening was well advanced before they returned. The night air here was chill and damp, and a west wind setting in at sunset, reduced the mercury to 59° Fah., which was thirty degrees less than it stood at during the afternoon in the shade, and forty degrees less than the temperature of the air at twoP.M.