From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

On our way through the city we saw sad evidences of the effects of the famine. Beggars, squalid and famished, were found in every street appealing pitifully to the passers for charity, and no less than three corpses were carried past us on the way to burial, in the great and densely packed graveyards that occupy much of the intramural area, and sensibly taint its atmosphere. The condition of the population is deplorable. The official returns for the past week represent the daily mortality within the city walls at two hundred souls, almost wholly victims to starvation and typhoid fever. This high rate cannot last long, it is to be hoped, though the prospect ahead is, from all accounts, gloomy in the extreme. Thousands of families, who have hitherto kept body and soul together by the sale of their jewellery and property, down to the clothes on their backs, are now reduced to a state of utter destitution, and have not the means of purchasing the food the ripening crops will soon render available. For these the future is indeed dark, unless the Government at the last moment comes forward to save its people from destruction. But as it has so far ignored the existence of a calamity that has well-nigh depopulated the country, there is little reason to hope that it will at the eleventh hour stultify its conduct, and stretch out an arm to save the country from ruin.

The Sháh, it is said, is kept in ignorance of the extent of the sufferings of his people, through the false representations of his ministers. He was at this time absent from the capital on a hunting excursion in the Shamrán hills, and as he did not return until after my departure from the capital, I did not enjoy the honour of being presented at His Majesty’s court.

At Tehran I made hasty arrangements for my return to India viâ Baghdad and the Persian Gulf, with our Indian camp establishment and despatches for Government. Through the kindness of Mr Ronald Thomson, chargé d’affairs, I was provided with letters to the Persian and Turkish authorities for my expedition on the road, and one of the mission ghuláms or couriers, Shukrullah Beg by name, was appointed to accompany me as guide.

On the 8th June, the camp having been sent ahead in the morning, I took leave of my chief, Major-General F. R. Pollock C.S.I. (now Sir Richard Pollock, K.C.S.I.), and of the Afghan commissioner, Saggid Núr Muhammad Sháh, of Sir Frederick Goldsmid, and the members of his staff, and at 4.30 P.M. set out from Gulahak accompanied by Mr Rozario, and one of the mission servants as guide to our first stage from the capital. Major Ewan B. Smith, Sir F. Goldsmid’s personal assistant, rode some way out with us, and then a “Good-bye—God bless you!” and we moved off in opposite directions.

On our way down the avenue leading to the city, we met two carriages-and-four, full of veiled ladies of the Sháh’s andarún, out for their evening drive. They were driven by postilions, and preceded by a number of horsemen, who with peremptory gestures motioned the people off the road, where they stood with their backs towards royalty till the carriages had passed. Our guide, seeing the carriages in the distance, tutored us in our conduct, and as they approached, we turned off the road, and respectfully turned our horse’s tails to where their heads ought to have been.

Our route through the city traversed its western quarters, and led out by the Darwaza Nao—“the new gate”—and then across the plain to Khanabad, where we were accommodated for the night in a summer-house situated in a very delightful garden belonging to Prince Ali Culi Mirzá. On our way through the city we passed a bloated corpse in a horrible state of putrefaction lying in the street, and by it stood a couple of men about to drag it into concealment amongst the broken walls and crumbling huts that here and there separate the occupied houses, and assail the passengers with the most sickening stinks. The view of Alburz and Damavand from the south side of the city is very fine, whilst the wide plain of Veramín, with its numerous villages and gardens, wears an aspect of prosperity and plenty, cruelly belied by the hard reality of their misery and poverty.

Khanabad was our nacl mucám or preparatory stage, hardly four miles from the city. Our servants had had the whole day to run backwards and forwards for the hundred and one things they had forgotten, or which the opportunity made them fancy they required for the journey, and when we arrived at nightfall, half of them were yet lingering there, taking a last fill of the pleasures it afforded them. Seeing this, I anticipated trouble and delay, but, to avoid the latter as much as possible, gave the order to march at midnight, and, as a first step, had the loads brought out and arranged all ready for loading, as a plain hint that I expected the absent muleteers to be present at the appointed hour. The measure proved successful, for after much running to and fro amongst the servants, our party was brought together by two o’clock in the morning, and we set out on our march half an hour later, but without the head muleteer and three of his men, who, having received their hire in advance, were indifferent on the score of punctuality.

Our route was W.S.W., by a well-beaten track, over a plain country, covered with many villages, and traversed towards the south and west by detached ridges of hill. At about eight miles we came to Husenabad, and passing through it, halted on apiece of green turf near the road for the baggage to come up. I had had no rest during the night owing to the bustle of our people and the noise made by the nightingales, and was here so overpowered with fatigue, that I stretched myself on the sward, and was fast asleep in a minute, dreaming where all the hundreds of mules and asses we had just passed on their way to the city with loads of green lucerne could have come from, since our Mirakhor had assured us that not one was to be procured in the country, and had, simply as a token of good-will, provided me with twenty of those that had brought us from Sistan, only at quadruple the former rates, half down in advance for the whole journey. Clever fellow! he at all events secured his mudákhil before losing sight of the muleteers.

From this we went on, and crossing the river Kárij by a masonry bridge, passed over a stony ridge from a hill on the right, and sloped down to Rabát Karím, where we found quarters in some of the many empty houses of the village, having come twenty-five miles from Khanabad. The population of this village was formerly reckoned at a thousand families. It does not now contain a fourth of that number, and a very wretched, sickly-looking set they are, with hardly a child to be found amongst them. And so it was with every place we came to on all the journey down to Kirmánshah.