From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

From Duroh we marched twenty-seven miles in a north-westerly direction to Husenabad, where we camped. For the first sixteen miles our path led diagonally across the valley, and then followed up the course of a drainage gully bounded by hills of chlorite slate, through which at intervals projected masses of a dark close-grained granite. The soil of the valley is a firm gravel, thickly carpeted with plants in great variety. The ghích, wormwood, wild rue, and asafœtida were remarkably abundant, but the caroxylon and other saltworts found to the eastward were here altogether absent.

We halted for breakfast at the mouth of the gully, where is an artificial cistern called Cháhi Bannáh, from a few bannáh trees (Pistacia sp.) growing close by, and on the glistening chlorite mounds around found the wild rhubarb in some quantity. The gully winds a good deal, and narrows as it ascends, but the slope is gradual and the road not difficult. On the skirts of the hills on either side are a number of small heaps of clay produced by the disintegration of the rock; they are of different colours, as ash grey, bluish, fawn colour, and white, and from their bright hues form an attractive feature in the general scene.

At about three miles we came to a watershed called Gudari Mesham. Its elevation is about 4900 feet, and the ridge is composed of white magnesian limestone, which is almost entirely bare of vegetation.

On our way up this pass we met the first travellers it had been our lot to see or pass on all the road from Kandahar westward. They formed a small party of about twenty men, with double the number of asses and bullocks, and were on their way from Birjand to Sistan for grain, like Israel of old from Canaan to Egypt, for the famine was sore in the land. They were very poor and submissive-looking people, and, to our surprise, bowed respectfully as we passed. We had been so accustomed to the independent bearing of the Afghans, and their haughty indifference towards strangers, that we were unprepared for this voluntary mark of deference. One of their party, who lagged in the rear, appeared from his patchwork frock and dissolute looks to be a member of some order of religious mendicants, and, on seeing us, at once assumed the air of impudent defiance it is the privilege of his class to exhibit. As we approached he still kept the road, and shouted with stentorian voice, “Hacc! Hacc! Allah! Gushnaam! Bakhshi Khudá!” (or, “Just one! just one! God! I am hungry! the portion of God!”), the while stretching out his hands for contributions. Another noteworthy circumstance about these travellers was the fact of their being for the most part disarmed. None of them carried guns, and only two were armed with swords. I will not attempt to explain this custom of travelling unarmed, being insufficiently acquainted with the conditions under which the people live, and the internal state of the country. I may observe, however, that it explains the facility with which Afghan, Baloch, and Sistan marauders harry the country, and carry off its people into slavery in Afghanistan. I was informed on reliable authority, that most of the slave girls employed as domestics in the houses of the gentry at Kandahar were brought from the outlying districts of Gháyn.

Beyond the watershed, our path sloped down to a wide upland plain, similar to that of Duroh, and, like it, extending from north to south. We skirted the hills along its eastern border for some miles, and then turned off to the Husenabad fort in the centre of the plain.

The fort is a very neat little structure of apparently recent construction. At each of its four corners is a round bastion, and over the gateway is a turret; on each of two sides are neat rows of domed huts close under the walls, and around are some corn-fields, but no trees nor gardens. The water here is from a kárez, or, as the subterranean conduits are here called, canát, and though clear and fresh to look at, is so briny as to be almost undrinkable; yet the people use no other. We halted here a day, and during our stay got our supplies of water from a sweet spring at the foot of the hills across the plain to the east. Its site is marked by the ruins of an ancient castle called Caláta Cáimáb.

The plain of Husenabad is a wide pasture tract of light gravelly soil, covered at this season with a bright green carpet of short grass, on which we found some large flocks of goats and sheep at graze. Standing on the open plain, a couple of miles to the north-east, is the old fort of Husenabad. It appears in very good preservation, though it has been abandoned for some years owing to the drying up of its water supply.

Since we crossed the Afghan border at Cháhi Sagak, the weather has been more or less cloudy, frequent showers have fallen, and occasional storms have burst over the hills, topping the higher ones with a coating of snow. The climate here at this season is very delightful. The air is mild, light, and fresh, and the sun shines with an agreeable warmth, very different from the oppressive heat of its rays in Sistan. The elevation of Husenabad is about 4480 feet above the sea. In winter its climate is described as very severe, owing to the cold blasts of the north wind that sweep across the plain.

26th March.—Husenabad to Sarbesha, twenty-nine miles. We set out under a cold and cloudy sky, and proceeding in a north-westerly direction across the plain, and over an upland pasture tract, at about seventeen miles came to the Abi Ghunda Koh, a large pool of fresh water fed by a strong spring situated at the entrance of a gully in the hills.

On our way over the plateau we passed a number of Elyát tents, dotted in threes and fours over the surface, and saw large flocks of goats and sheep. Some of the women came out of their tents with platters of burning sipand, or Syrian rue, the spelanai of the Afghans, and harmal of the Indians, and raced across the mead, shouting in very unfeminine tones, “Pul bidih, gushnaem!” (“Give us money; we are starving!”), and a chorus of other complaints, which happily were easily appeased at the cost of a few kráns. These women, and some of the men who accompanied them, were neither young nor good-looking, but they had hardy features, and tough bronzed skins, and appeared to me physically inferior to the Afghan nomad, and certainly poorer.