CHAPTER II.
Arrival at Kabul.
Arrival at Jelalabad. Reception by the Governor. The Palace. The Town. The Plain. Quarters in the Guest Pavilion. The friendly Khan. Tattang and the gunpowder factory. The Royal gardens at Nimla. The Suffêd Koh mountains. Arboreal distribution in Afghanistan. Gundamuk. Assassination of Cavagnari: details of the plot. The “Red bridge.” Commencement of mountainous ascent to Kabul. Jigdilik. Massacre of British in 1837. Former dangers of the valley of Katasang. Enterprising peasants. Tomb in the Sei Baba valley. Burial customs. The Lataband Pass and the Iron Cage. Distant view of Kabul. The Amîr’s projected road at Lataband. The approach to Kabul. The Lahore Gate.
We arrived at Jelalabad about the middle of the afternoon. The town is fortified; surrounded by a high wall, with bastions and loopholes; and is in a good state of repair. We entered one of the massive gates, rode through the bazaars to the Palace. The bazaars, like those of Kabul, are roughly roofed over to keep out the glare of the sun.
The Governor of Jelalabad received us in the Palace gardens: seats were placed in the shade: fans were waved by the page boys to keep off the flies; and a crowd of people stood around. Sweets were brought—chiefly sugared almonds—then tea and cigarettes, and bouquets of flowers.
We rested for a while, and as we smoked the Governor made the usual polite Oriental speeches. Then he invited us to see the interior of the Palace. It is a large white building, standing in the midst of well laid out gardens, in which are many varieties of Eastern and European fruit-trees and flowers. The Palace was semi-European in its internal decoration. It was unfinished at this time. There was a large central hall with a domed roof, and smaller rooms at the side: a separate enclosure was built for the ladies of the harem: near by were kitchens, rooms for the Afghan bath, and a Guest house or pavilion in a garden of its own.
Jelalabad.
The town of Jelalabad is between ninety and a hundred miles from the Indian frontier town Peshawur, and contains, in the summer, a population of from three to four thousand inhabitants. There is one chief bazaar or street with shops. The other streets are very narrow. Though much smaller it resembles in style the city of Kabul, which I will describe presently.
The spot was chosen by Bâber Bâdshah, the Tartar king, founder of the Mogul dynasty of Afghanistan and India. He laid out some gardens here, but the town of Jelalabad was built by his grandson, Jelaluddin Shah, also called Akbar, in 1560 A.D., just about the time when Queen Elizabeth came to the throne. The place is interesting to us from the famous defence of Sir Robert Sale during the first Afghan war, when he held the town from November, 1841, to April, 1842.
The river which runs near the town is here broad and rapid, though shallow and with low banks. All along the river for miles the plain is marshy and overgrown with reeds. In the summer when the swamp is more or less dried up, one rides through the reeds rather than keep to the glare and heat of the road. The plain of Jelalabad, nearly two thousand feet above the sea, is about twenty miles long, that is, from east to west, and four or five miles wide. Wherever it can be irrigated from the Kabul river it is delightfully fertile, but everywhere else it is hot barren desert. The climate of Jelalabad is much more tropical than that of Kabul—more resembling the climate of Central India; and in the winter the nomadic Afghans of the hills in the Kabul province pack their belongings on donkeys or bullocks, and with their whole families move down to Jelalabad, so that the winter population of the town is enormously greater than that of the summer.
Palm trees and oranges grow out in the gardens: pomegranates and grapes in great quantities; and there are many kinds of tropical as well as sub-tropical flowers. His Highness the Amîr had an idea a short time ago of establishing a tea plantation here. It is doubtful, however, whether it would be successful, for in the summer there is the dust storm and the scorching wind—the simûm.