Through India and Burmah with pen and brush

by A. Hugh Fisher

I again slept in the train that night and woke up in the Bolan Pass in British Baluchistan. At half-past nine in the morning the sky was very pale and although the shadows of the hill-clefts were clear they were not hard. On each side of the line there was a flat boulder-strewn plain which was stopped abruptly a quarter of a mile away by steeply rising heights of rock. Then suddenly the flat plain itself would be trenched and split into huge cañons, clefts going deep down into the earth. A few grey dried plants, almost the same colour as the stones, were the only visible signs of vegetation.

In the early morning at Sibi Junction I had branched off on the Western (or Quetta) arm of the great loop which extends from Sibi to Bostan Junction. By ten o'clock the train with two powerful engines was ascending a gradient of one in twenty-five beyond Hirok. From the window I could watch, upon the old Kandahar Road below, the old slow-creeping progress of a camel caravan. The pass was now narrowing, closing up on each side and the cliffs rose steeply where at a sharp turn I caught sight of a square block-house perched on a jutting crag.

At Quetta I had the double annoyance of missing luggage and of being taken, on account of my dark beard, for an expected French spy. The latter misunderstanding was put right by a subdivisional officer from Chaman (the present terminus of the railway beyond the end of the Kojak Pass) whither I was bound and where, having left the loop at Bostan Junction, I arrived the same evening to get a peep across the border into Afghanistan—to set foot in the Amir's country, that land of Mohammedan freebooters, waiting and waiting in vain for an autonomous India whereunto their co-religionists would be able to welcome an invading army.

Going out into the sunlight from the gloom of the dak bungalow everything seemed at first only brightness, as if the external world were like a cup brimmed with a throbbing intensity of light. Then, as my eyes accustomed themselves, I saw that near the bungalow were peach and apricot trees holding sprays of blossom, rose and white against the pale blue of the sky, and that in the distance on every side mountains rose out of the plain, not grey and cold but warm with faint tints of amethyst and delicate red, and that snow lay upon their higher peaks.

Chaman lies in the plain within a horseshoe of mountains, and the space of clearly seen country is so vast that the mountains look almost as if drawn upon a map. The little town is entirely of wattle and daub, a grey blanket colour with just a little paint and whitewash about a Hindoo temple, and here and there a peach tree in flush of blossom. The main street is very wide and in front of some of the shops there are tiny enclosures, five or six feet square like miniature front gardens. Two patriarchal looking old Pathans were walking along in front of the shops. They wore the same kind of stout leather boots, and from above the turban peeped the same type of conical head-covering that I had seen worn by pedlars in Ceylon and throughout the length and breadth of India. They were Achakzai Pathans and one, whose name was Malik Samunder Khan, said he was eighty years old.

Seeing the entrance of a caravanserai I was going in when Tambusami demurred. It was a long way truly from his home near Tuticorin, and he gave these Northern folk his favourite epithet calling them "jungle people." Seeing that I was going into the sarai in spite of his remonstrance, he said submissively, "Where you go I come," but added, "Where you not go I not go."

There were not many camels within, but in one corner some Afghans were pouring raisins into heaps, and inviting me to eat, gave me larger and finer dried grapes than I had ever seen. The raisins were called "abjush" and the men were Popalzais (Candaharis). Alas! we could exchange no talk but they made me welcome, and while we squatted silent in the sunlight and the clear delicious air, one, taking up a stringed instrument called a "rahab," sang to its accompaniment. It was certainly not a song of fighting: there was gladness in it—even passion now and then—but no fury—I think it was a love-song. It was not a song of fatherland: there was pride in it but no arrogance. Nor was it assuredly a song of religion: there was faith in it and adoration, but no abasement. Yes, I'm sure it was a love-song.

Quetta with its gardens and orchards, its fortified lines and its command, by reason of natural position, of both the Kojak and the Bolan Passes, is one of the most important of Indian Frontier posts. I returned to it from Chaman and drove and walked about its wide and well-metalled roads such as the "High School Road," the "Agent Road," and the "Kandahar Road." Trees, as yet bare of leaves, lined the sides, and fruit blossom looked gaily over walls and fences.

The "Holi" festival of the Hindoos coloured these days. The throwing of red powder or red-tinted water seemed pretty general, and hardly a white dhoti was to be seen that was not blotched with crimson or vermilion splashes. People danced in the streets, and one came suddenly on a crowd watching folk wild as bacchanals, both men and women dressed in gay finery, garlanded with flowers and dancing with strange fantastic gestures in obedience to the universal song of spring's new advent. I went early to bed in another dak bungalow, having somewhat of a fever about me since the blazing hours two days before at the Lansdowne Bridge, and awoke in the early hours. My great-coat had fallen down at one side of the charpoy, and I felt as if a cold plaster lay upon my chest. Tambusami was crouched in front of the fire and had fallen asleep covered in his blanket. From the blackened broken hearth a little acrid smoke puffed fitfully into the room. On the floor lay a torn and extremely dirty dhurrie which had once been blue. Between the dhurrie and the damp earth mildewed matting showed here and there through the holes. A decrepit looking-glass in a broken frame stood upon one rickety table against the wall, and on another an iron tray of uncleaned dinner-plates added to the general air of dirt and squalor.