From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

Before us, to the northward, lay a great waste, on which, at about five miles off, stood the village of Gorú, with wide patches of white soda efflorescence scattered here and there over the plain. Far away to the north, the prospect is closed by the snowy mass of the Chihltan mountain, which separates Mastung from Shál.

After a halt of an hour and a half we proceeded, and passing the Sháwání cultivation and Gorú cemetery, at 3.30 P.M. arrived at our camping-ground. The valley dips gently to the northward, and presents a very dreary aspect. The soil is powdery, and surcharged with salines, which here and there form great sheets of snow-white encrustation. The cultivation is very scanty, and all khushkába, that is, dependent on the skies for irrigation. The fields are little square patches, banked up on all sides to catch and retain what rain showers upon them. Not a tree is visible on the plain; the Sháwání Brahoe huts are scattered over its surface in clusters of four or five together, but are mostly situated along the base of the Chuttok hills bounding the valley to the westward.

At Amánullah we pitched our camp in the hollows of some sandy undulations of the surface, by way of shelter from the north wind, which swept over the plain in gusts of chilling force. Hard by, lower down the course of the kárez, are the ten or twelve huts composing the village. They looked poor hovels, and were quite in keeping with the dreary and wintry aspect of the country.

We set out hence at 8.30 next morning, and marched nine miles to Mastung, where we arrived in two hours, and alighted at quarters prepared for us in the fort. The first part of our route was over the Amánullah cultivation, and across a deep kárez cut, on to an undulating waste, beyond which we came to the corn-fields and walled gardens of Mastung.

As we approached Mastung, a flight of blue pigeons settled on a ploughed field off the road, and I turned off and shot three of them, all very plump, and with their crops full of grain. Out of curiosity I opened the crop of one, and counted its contents. They were as follows, namely:—320 grains of barley, 20 of wheat, 50 of millet, 5 of peas or pulse, and several other smaller grains I did not recognise. The flight consisted of upwards of a hundred pigeons, and during the march we had seen several such flights. From these data, some idea may be formed of the loss inflicted on the farmer by these birds. One of our escort, who witnessed the process of investigation above described, expressed great astonishment, and observed that the birds had met a “justly deserved fate for robbing the widows’ store.” The meaning of the allusion is, I presume, that the general out-turn of the harvest being diminished by the depredations of these birds, the widows’ store would suffer in proportion.

At two miles from Mastung we were met by a party of fifty horsemen, headed by Náib ’Abdurrahmán, the governor of the district. He was a fine handsome man, of quiet and unassuming demeanour, but was poorly clad and badly mounted. His cavalcade, too, was a sorry collection of both men and horses. As regards the brute part of the gathering, this is surprising, for the country here is highly cultivated, and produces abundance of forage. The Náib conducted us through a succession of walled gardens to the quarters prepared for us inside the fort, in front of the gate of which were drawn up twenty files of infantry, with a band of three tin pipes and two drums, to receive us with military honours. As we came up, the commanding officer, with a wide sweep of his sword, brought its edge to the tip of his nose, and holding it there perpendicularly, exactly between the eyes, shouted, in a stentorian voice, “Generaylee saloot!” a summons that started a man from each end of the line six paces to the front, and fixed the rest, with gaping mouths and muskets held at all slopes, full gaze upon us. We now came abreast of the commanding officer, who all of a sudden missed the music, the band being intently absorbed in the spectacle of our procession; but a quick turn, and some violent gesticulations in their direction, immediately startled the three youths with the tin pipes into the perpetration of three shrill squeaks, which were accompanied by a rattle on the drums by their two juvenile comrades behind.

The General acknowledged the honour with a graceful salute, and we passed through the fort gate into a succession of narrow winding passages leading from courtyard to courtyard, all strewn with several inches of stable refuse and disfigured by dung-heaps, till at length we came to one larger than the others, though not a whit less filthy, where a guard of four soldiers drawn up opposite a portal informed us we had reached our quarters, and a salute of eleven guns announced the fact to the townspeople.

The interior, happily, was not in keeping with the exterior. The two rooms of which the house consisted had been swept, and clean carpets had been laid down for our reception, and, as we entered, fires were lighted to warm them. Altogether we were agreeably surprised, and found our lodging, despite the surroundings, a very comfortable shelter from the wintry blasts outside.

The northern part of the Mastung valley is highly cultivated, and populous villages, fruit gardens, and corn-fields follow each other in close succession, and extend in one unbroken stretch for several miles along the foot of the Hamách and Khark hills, separating the valley from the Dashtí Bedaulat. The gardens produce the grape, apple, apricot, quince, almond, plum, cherry, pomegranate, oleagnus, and mulberry. The pear and peach do not grow here, though they do abundantly in the adjoining valley of Shál. The fields produce wheat, barley, maize, millet, pulse, lucerne, madder, tobacco, and the common vegetables, such as carrots, turnips, onions, cabbages, &c., but not cotton. The inhabitants are Brahoe and Dihwár, with some Baloch and Afghan families and Hindu traders.