Under the absolute Amir

by Frank A. Martin

(From a drawing by the Author.)

[To face p. 240.

There is little or no rainfall in the country, but in the winter snowstorms are frequent, and the melting of the snow on the mountains gives the water required for the crops during spring and summer, the water being led over the land by means of channels for the necessary irrigation. These irrigation channels are cleaned out every spring, and on the day appointed for clearing the stream, all the men who use the water are called together by drum and fife (or an instrument similar to it), and they work up stream each day in a body, clearing away weeds, and deepening the channel where it has silted up until the whole is finished.

There are frequent fights among cultivators about the first use of the water from the subsidiary channels, for it frequently happens that the smaller ones do not carry enough water to irrigate the land on both sides at once, and naturally quarrels ensue as to who shall have the water first. Long handled spades are generally in the hands of those who are quarrelling, and these are used, and men are killed at times, for the spade inflicts a heavy blow and cuts deeply. The quarrels also frequently lead to one man firing the other’s crops in revenge, and then lawsuits, with numbers of paid witnesses on both sides, result.

The mills for grinding flour are fixed at convenient points on the irrigation streams, and are worked by water-wheels, which, however, have a very low efficiency, less than a quarter of the power available being transmitted to the mill. The mills are of a very old type; one stone revolves on a fixed lower one, and the grain is fed in at a hole pierced near the centre of the upper stone. The flour from the first grinding is very coarse, and it is reground two or more times, according to the degree of fineness required.

There is a great want in Afghanistan of some cheap and speedy means of carrying freight. At present the cumbersome method of carrying all things by pack-animals is the only means at disposal, and the time occupied in getting over a short distance necessarily makes the system a costly one, for it takes a week for them to travel a hundred miles, and the cost of doing so works out at about eighteen shillings a hundred-weight for that distance, and this in a country where all things are cheap. The weight and size of any article carried is also limited to the carrying capacity of the horse or camel employed.

The Koochee people do most of the carrying of goods from place to place, and they are a hardy race, similar to gipsies in having no fixed home. They move about in caravans of fifty to a hundred animals, which include camels, horses, donkeys, and sheep, for sheep have to carry small packs too. The women and children travel with the caravan wherever it goes, and the household pots and pans, with a few fowl, are carried on the top of a donkey, the fowl, with their feet tied to prevent escape, sitting on the top of the pack, and the baby, if there is one, wrapped in a shawl, and carried in a bundle beside them. They often have a large number of sheep with them, and when the lambs are too young to stand the journey the boys and girls carry them in their arms. When they stop for a while at any place they rig up rough huts, composed of sticks covered with mats or grass, but at other times the shelter of a tree or rock suffices. They are a finely built people, with free, graceful movements, due, no doubt, to the open-air life they lead and the constant exercise, and as no sickly child could live such a life, it is a case of the survival of the fittest.

One such caravan passed me one day while I was standing near a road I was constructing through a ravine, and the reports from some blasting going on near by made one of the young camels bolt. In doing so he collided with a full-grown girl of the caravan, and she was thrown some distance, landing with a good deal of force on some sharp jutting boulders and stones. I started forward, thinking she must be killed; but the girl, after a few moments, sprang up, brushed the dust from her clothes, and walked on unconcernedly. The Koochee women are not purdah, though they cover their faces with a shawl as they pass an Englishman. During the harvest months, when the heat of the lowland plains is too great for the pack-animals, and there is little carrying work done, the Koochee people move from one place to another, working as harvesters, and when the crops of one district are cut and in, they go on to another; for owing to differences in altitude the harvesting time in different districts varies. The men who look after the camels fasten them at night-time in a circle, so that the camels, in a way, form a wheel, with bodies as spokes, and noses pointing to the hub. The man, when he sleeps, lies down in the centre under the necks of the camels, and rests there unmolested by them.

Tea is imported into the country through India. Generally speaking, the Chinese green tea only is consumed, and it is shipped from China to Bombay, and thence railed up to Peshawar for the Kabul merchants, and to Quetta for the Kandahar and Herat merchants. From Peshawar to Kabul, and from Quetta to Kandahar it is carried on by camels. A large quantity of tea is imported annually, and only the very poor use the Indian hill tea, as they cannot afford the other, which sells at three shillings to five shillings a pound. I once tried to introduce an Indian green tea into Kabul; but they did not care for its flavour, and the fact of it being Indian tea was sufficient to condemn it in their opinion.

Other articles imported are cotton goods, cloth, silks, and velvets. Of the latter two, large quantities are used by the women, and at one time men and boys dressed a good deal in silks and velvets also; but the new court fashion is black cloth, so the demand for them is getting less with the men. Saddlery and leather goods, old clothes, sugar, and other household necessaries, are brought up by merchants from India; but the trade in them is very small.