The weather was more or less cloudy all day. Towards sunset rain set in, and continued in a steady soaking drizzle far into the night. The evening temperature outside the tent was 54° Fah. By the aneroid, I calculated the elevation of this place at 1950 feet above the sea.
At the last stage, one hundred and fifty of our cavalry escort were sent back to Kandahar; and at this place we parted with our infantry escort and their commandant, Colonel Táj Muhammad, Ghilzai, as we are soon to enter Sistan territory, now in the possession of Persia.
I was sorry to lose the Colonel’s society, for he generally accompanied me on my deviations from the beaten track, and proved himself a very agreeable and intelligent companion. He obtained his promotion for good service at the siege and capture of Herat in 1863 under the late Amir Dost Muhammad Khán. He is one of the most intelligent and least prejudiced Afghans of his class I have met with, and in our rambles together gave me a fund of information regarding his people and the portions of the country he had visited. Like all Afghans, he was a keen sportsman, and with a common smooth-bore military musket, of the now nearly extinct Brown Bess pattern, made some remarkably good “pot shots” at eighty yards, considering his ammunition was home-made gunpowder, and roughly-rolled pellets cut from pencils of lead.
He took leave of us with many sincere expressions of regret at our separation, and committed us to “the protection of God” with all sorts of good wishes for our welfare and prosperity. Towards those he treats as his friends, the Afghan can make himself very agreeable, and in this phase his character is of the most winning kind. His straightforward friendliness, his independent bearing, and freedom from flattery and obsequiousness, coupled with unbounded hospitality and unceasing attention to the wants of his honoured guest, are sure to captivate the stranger, and blind him to the fact that he has a dark side to his character, and that a very trivial circumstance may serve to disclose it.
However, on this occasion, as the even tenor of our friendly relations was happily unmarred by a single contretemps, it is not for me in this place to enlarge on the proverbial fickleness of their character, nor to disclose the wolf that lurks in the Afghan heart. It is enough to speak of our friends as we find them; and in this light it is but fair to say, nothing could have excelled the genuineness of the cordiality that marked our conduct towards each other during our association on this march through the province of Kandahar.
28th February.—Landi Bárechí to Rúdbár, seventeen miles; route, W.S.W. After clearing the Landi cultivation, our path led under some projecting desert cliffs, on the most prominent of which are the ruins of a small fort, which, from its elevation, must command a wide prospect of the country on the east and west.
Beyond this, crossing the Rúdbár canal, we entered a wide gulf or reach of level land. It is now a perfect wilderness; and in its centre, on a low mound, are the ruins of Lát Calá, of the history of which nobody could tell us anything. The surface around is strewed to redness with bits of broken pottery, bricks, and glazed ware. Farther on, our path still skirting the desert cliffs on our left, we passed the ruins of Karbásak or Garshásap, and then veering towards the river on our right, crossed a bare pebbly tract down to Rúdbár, where we camped.
The pebbles on this tract, which is formed by the sinking of the desert in low undulations towards the river, are smooth, and close-set in the clay soil. They are of a dark brown colour, and in the morning sunlight shone with the lustre of frosted silver. Not a particle of vegetation was seen in this tract, though beyond it, in the vicinity of Rúdbár, there is a considerable extent of corn-fields, and a scattered growth of tamarisk and other trees.