From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

Our next stage was thirty-six miles to Landi Bárechí, where we camped on the high bank of the river close to the fort. Our route, at first S.S.W., led through a wild uninhabited jangal tract for the whole distance. The road is a well-beaten track, and passes across a succession of deep bays or reaches of spongy saline alluvium, and for the most part follows the course of the river, the short bends of which now and again come close up to the road.

The reaches are separated from each other by promontories of the desert, which stretch forward up to the river bank. At about eight miles we came to a solitary mound on the Abdullahabad reach or bay. It is called Sangar, or “the breastwork,” and is said to be the first place seized from the Núrzai by the celebrated Baloch freebooter, Abdullah Khán, after whom the country is now named. This notorious robber was the chief of a small party of Sanjarání Baloch nomads, who are said to have come here from the Kharán and Núshkí districts in the troublous times following Nadír Sháh’s devastating march through the Garmsel in 1738. He pitched his tents here, and, with the aid of other Baloch mercenaries of different tribes, succeeded in ousting the Núrzai possessors after many encounters. During his lifetime he held all that portion of the left bank of the river extending from Mel Gudar to Rúdbár, as the summer pasture tract of his tribe, and annually, on the return from winter quarters in the desert, contested its possession with the Núrzai. Many tales are told of his prowess and lawlessness, but in a country where every man is a born robber, and acknowledges no other right but that maintained by might, his deeds of valour resolve themselves into petty successes against, and gradual encroachments on, the lands of individual nomad camps numerically weaker than his own, and distracted by intestine feuds that prevented a combination to expel the intruder. The plundering habits of these Baloch, and their constant hostilities with the neighbouring Afghan nomads, led to the abandonment of the Garmsel route from Kandahar to Sistan, and the country soon became a den of thieves, and the refuge of outlaws of all the surrounding provinces, who attached themselves to the Baloch chief as mercenaries and dependants.

From Sangar our path veered to the S.W., and, after a few miles, passed round the projecting desert cliffs by a narrow path between them and the river brink, and brought us into another bay or reach, called Khwájah ’Ali, from a mound and ruined tower in the midst of a sheet of broken pottery that covers its surface to redness. Whilst riding over this, we observed, as on a former occasion, that the ground gave a hollow sound under our horses’ feet, as if it were vaulted. Excepting the tower mentioned, not a wall nor vestige of any other building was discoverable above the flat surface.

Having come sixteen miles, we halted at this tower for breakfast; and took the opportunity to satisfy ourselves that there was really nothing to see here, except that the river bank on this side is high and vertical, and its wide bed full of tamarisk and willow forests, on the edge of which are the fresh prints of wild pig in the soft soil.

From this alluvial bay we passed into a similar one, by a very narrow path between the river brink and the abrupt cliffs of a promontory of the desert. It is called Dashtí Hadera, or “the plain of the graveyard,” and is about two miles across. Here, too, though no traces of walls or mounds were visible, the surface was coloured by the bits of red tile and glazed pottery thickly strewed over the level ground. Beyond this we rose on to the next promontory of the desert, and passed an extensive graveyard, from which the plain below derives its name.

From this elevation, the flat surface of which is a coarse gravelly sand bare of vegetation, we got a wide view of the desert, extending away to the south, as far as the eye could reach, in an unbroken waste of sandy undulations. We descended the farther side of this by a long sandy gully, and entered on the Pulálak alluvium, a reach similar to those already passed, but wider.

Here we passed the rains of the Pulálak huts, destroyed in the spring of 1869 by the usurper Muhammad ’Azím Khán, when he took this route to Persia, after his defeat at Ghazni in January of that year by pre-Amir Sher ’Ali Khán. Pulálak is said to be an abbreviation of Pul ’Ali Khán (the bridge or boundary of ’Ali Khán); but who ’Ali Khán was we could not clearly learn.

The ex-Amir, Muhammad ’Azím Khán, halted here to recruit his band of followers on the young growing crops and what supplies the place afforded. But meanwhile Sharíf Khán, the Nahroe Baloch of Sistan, being suspicious of ’Azím’s designs, suddenly marched from Burj Alam, surprised ’Azím, and put his followers to flight. He then received the fallen Amir as a refugee, and assisted him as far as Mashhad on his way to the Persian capital. The unfortunate Bárechí settlers, having been plundered by each in turn, left the country to join their clansmen in Shorawak, and their homesteads are now almost obliterated in a wilderness of jangal.

Beyond this, rounding some desert cliffs, we entered the alluvium of Landi Bárechí, and camped on the high river bank close to the fort. There is a good deal of cultivation here, and the level ground is dotted all over with little sandheaps topped by clumps of tamarisk, or bushes of a species of caroxylon and other salsolaceæ, which have been the cause of their formation. We had not seen this appearance before, and the number and size of these mounds attracted our attention. They are formed by drift sand collecting about the roots of scattered bushes, and gradually, as its quantity increases by fresh additions, raising them above the general level of the plain. Some of these mounds are eight or ten feet high, and of a blunt conical form. Landi is a small square fort, with a turret at each angle, and around it are some two hundred wattle-and-dab huts of the Bárechí Afghans. The river here flows in two or three streams between long island strips of tamarisk jangal.

I shot a large blue-backed and black-headed seamew here. The gull fell into the stream, and drifted to the opposite shore; but my servant, a native of Kandahar, retrieved it, fording the river with the water up to his neck. The stream was very still, and of clear blue colour. Here also I got specimens of the black cormorant, a grebe, and a small diver much resembling it, and another bird with similar features, but with a serrated bill, hooked at the tip.