We did not visit Bostám, only four miles off, as the governor neither called on us nor made any advances towards the interchange of civilities. Our Afghan companion, however, Saggid Núr Muhammad Sháh, went over to pay his devotions at the shrine of the Imám Báezid, which he described as an unpretending pile of loose stones, raised by the contributions of passing pilgrims. The saint is held in great veneration, and the simplicity of his tomb is out of deference to his dying injunction that no mausoleum should be built over his grave. In an humble grave near the shrine rest the mortal remains of the late Amir Muhammad Azím Khán, the usurper of the throne of Kabul. After his final defeat at the hands of the reigning Amir, Sher Ali Khán, in the beginning of 1869, he fled to Sistan, and was on his way to the Persian capital, when he was cut short in his career by cholera at this place, about the 6th July. The Saggid, being an adherent of the opposite party, suffered severely at the hands of the usurper, who plundered his property at Kandahar to the extent, it is said, of fifty thousand rupees. He took this opportunity, however, to forgive him, and to offer up a prayer for his soul.
The day before our departure from this, a strange Afghan came to my tent, and, with looks of pleased recognition, said, “Saggid Mahmúd sends his salám, and begs you will give him some medicine to cure fever and dysentery. He is too ill to move, or he would himself have come to pay his respects.” A few words of explanation sufficed to inform me that my applicant was no other than our old friend of Ghazni, whom we so unexpectedly met at Barshori at the very outset of our journey. We went over to see him in his lodgings at the sarae, and found him in a truly wretched plight, so emaciated and weak was he from the combined effects of the hardships he had endured on his long journey, and the exhausting nature of his disease. He rose and received us at the door of his cell, with all the grace of that innate gentility well-bred orientals can so easily display, and ushering us in with a dignity enhanced by his handsome features and snow-white beard, motioned us to seats formed of hastily arranged rugs, with a composure and self-possession quite charming and wonderful under the circumstances. He ordered his servant to prepare some tea for our refreshment, and the while gave us an account of his travels. “Poor Cásim,” he said, the tears dimming his bright eyes, “tamán shud—he is finished. His remains,” he added with a consolatory sigh, “rest in the sacred soil of Karbalá. He was the son in whom my hopes centered, but God gives and God takes away—His will be done.” The details of his journey through Kúm were simply harrowing, and the scenes he witnessed appalling. Dead bodies strewed the roads and poisoned the air with their putrescence. The saraes were filled with the dying, whose wails and sufferings produced a scene impossible to describe. The villages, empty and still as a house of mourning, were invaded by troops of dogs, who contested with the survivors the possession of the dead. Loud were his lamentations for Persia. “The country is gone,” he said. “There is neither religion, justice, nor mercy to be found in the land. We (he was a Shia) in Kabul look to Persia as the centre of all that is good in Islám, but Afghanistan, with all its faults, is a better country to live in.” Poor old gentleman! he quite brightened up at the idea of moving on homewards, though he had one foot in the grave already, and was fully a thousand miles away from his home, and talked composedly of retiring into private life, and devoting the rest of his days to the worship of God and meditation on His laws. On our departure, the General, with characteristic kindliness and forethought, presented our pilgrim friend with a Kashmir scarf. The old man’s gratitude was touching, and he blessed us all round. I wonder if the old man ever did reach his home, though the chances were greatly against his doing so? But it is astonishing what distances these pilgrims do travel, and what hardships they endure on the way. Let us hope that the old man did complete his circle. When we met him on this second occasion, he had in the course of six months travelled from Ghazni to Kandahar and Shikárpúr and Bombay, thence by sea to Baghdad, and thence to Karbalá, and back to Baghdad, and thence by Kirmánshah and Kúm to Tehran, and on to this place. He has yet before him the inhospitable route from this to Mashhad, and thence to Herat and Kandahar, before he can reach his home at Ghazni. I gave the old man a small supply of medicines, and some hints for observance on the road; and with all good wishes for his onward journey, and a small sum to assist him on the road, we parted.
CHAPTER XII.
24th May.—Shahrúd to Dih Mullah, sixteen miles. We set out at 5.30 A.M., bidding adieu to Mr Bower of our party, who at the same time set out for Astrabad en route to London with despatches. If fortunate in catching the steamer and trains, he hopes to reach his destination in twenty days, viâ Astrakhan, Czaretzin, Berlin, &c. Were but Afghanistan an open country, Indian officers proceeding on furlough might with advantage take this route homewards. But as it is not an open country, and there is little use in speculating when it will become so, its peoples and mountains and deserts may yet for another generation maintain their isolation from the civilised world, and remain a country of interest to the politician, and a region of curiosity to the scientific man.
Our route led S.S.W., along a stony hill skirt by a well-beaten track, following a line of telegraph posts, a promising emblem of Western civilisation in this yet semi-barbarous land. The hills on our right belong to the Alburz range, that separates the Caspian basin from the tableland of Persia. The northern slopes are described as clothed with dark forests, the southern, however, are precipitous, and mostly bare, a few juniper-trees only dotting the rocks here and there, as little black specks on their rugged sides. The range is said to abound in wild goat and sheep, and the stag or gáwaz, called bárásinghá in India. The leopard and bear are also found on it, and on its eastern spurs a small species of lion, but not the tiger.
To the left of our route the land slopes down to a water-worn ridge of red clay. It separates the Shahrúd valley from the salt desert to the south. A range of hills rises out of the desert far away to the south. One of our escort called the range Jandak, and pointed out a prominent peak as Ahwand. Jandak is twenty farsakhs from this, and contains ten or twelve villages on the edge of the desert, where palm-trees grow in plenty, as my informant said. He was a very communicative man, and after volunteering scraps of information regarding the country we were traversing, took an early opportunity to enlarge on his own grievances.
“The present the sardár” (chief), pointing to Sir F. Goldsmid, “gave us sowars and sarbáz, has been taken from us by the governor,” he said. “We have been so many days out,” he added, “our horses are exhausted, and we are famished. Nobody cares for us, and the villagers have nothing we can take from them.” “It is hard,” I said, “but it is the custom of your country.” “Yes, it is the custom of the country,” was the ready reply, “and that is why our country is ruined.” “With the aid of the famine,” I add. “The famine! no that is a decree from God, and we must submit. No one can fight against what God ordains. But our governor is a very hard master. He is deeply in debt, and screws his subjects to pacify his creditors. Not a pul-i-siyáh (a copper coin) escapes his grasp; and there are many like him. Irán tabáh shud—Persia is ruined. Khyle, khyle sakht ast—it is very hard.”
And so it is really. We found the Afghan troops in every respect better off than those of Persia. They are physically finer men, are better clad, better armed, and better provided with shelter, carriage, and provisions, though there is room for improvement on all points.
At Dih Mullah we were accommodated in a double-storied summer-house, in an ornamental garden adjoining the village. Its shelter, such as it was, with doors and windows opening in every direction, was hardly so efficient as that afforded by our tents against the chill gusts of wind sweeping down from the hills to the north. The situation, however, afforded us a wide prospect of the country, which, from its nature, hardly compensated for the discomfort. To the south was an unlimited view of a vast salt desert, as unvaried as the horizon-girt ocean. To the north rose a barrier of bare rocks, tipped here and there by snow, and dotted above by black spots, like one with a mild attack of small-pox; and on either side lay a long gravelly valley, with a string of villages and gardens running down its central course.