From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

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 Pass viâ Bágh 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 and proceeded 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 of júár (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 seven A.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 old men, 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, marauding Brahoes 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 Kachi pat, 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, called juloh, 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 around them we recognised the mango, jujube, sweet lime, vine, date-palm, apricot, cordia myxa, banhinia variegata, sizygium jambolanum, and acacia siris.