Camp at Bassawal.
After resting, we rode on through some hot pebbly valleys, with no sign of vegetation, until we reached Bassawal, where we camped. The tents were put up, sentries posted, and the servants lit wood fires to prepare dinner. It soon became dark, for the twilight is very short. We were advised to have no light in our tent, lest the tribes near might take a shot at us; and we dined in the dark. It was the first night I had ever spent in a tent, and to me it seemed a mad thing to go to bed under such circumstances. I remember another night I spent near here some years afterwards, but that I will speak of later.
On this occasion the night passed quietly.
The next morning they woke us before daybreak. The cook had lit a fire and prepared breakfast—fried eggs, tinned tongue, and tea. As soon as we were dressed the tents were struck, and while we were breakfasting the baggage was loaded up. We had camp chairs and a little portable iron table, but its legs became bent, and our enamelled iron plates had a way of slipping off, so that we generally used a mule trunk instead. The baggage was sent off, and we sat on the ground and smoked. Starting about an hour afterwards, we rode along through fertile valleys with cornfields in them: here water for irrigation could be obtained. In March the corn was a foot high. Then we rode across a large plain covered with a coarse grass. It was not cultivated because of the impossibility of obtaining water. We camped further on in the Chahardeh valley, which was partly cultivated and partly covered with the coarse grass. The tents were put up near a clump of trees, where there was a well. Unfortunately, there was also the tomb of some man of importance, and other graves, near the well. The water we had from it tasted very musty and disagreeable. Next day we went through other cultivated valleys to the mountains again. The river here made a curve to the south, and the mountains came close up to the bank. The road, cut out of the face of the mountain, ran sometimes level with the bank, sometimes a hundred feet or more above it. It was much pleasanter than the Khyber Pass, for to the north (our right) there was the broad Kabul river, with cultivated fields on its northern bank, and though the scorching heat of the sun was reflected from the rocks there was a cool breeze blowing. I thought it was a wonderfully good road for native make, but I found, on enquiry, that it had been made by the British during the Afghan war.
After rounding a shoulder of the mountain, where the road was high above the river, we could see in the distance the Jelalabad Plain and the walled city of Jelalabad. However, it was a long way off and we had to ride some hours before we reached it.
When on a journey in Afghanistan it is not usual to trot or canter, in fact, the natives never trot. They ride at a quick shuffling walk: the horse’s near-side feet go forward together, and his off-side feet together—a camel’s walk. It is an artificial pace, but very restful.
Advantages of Cultivation.
There was a shorter route which we could have taken from Bassawal, avoiding Jelalabad altogether, but it was mostly over pebbly hills and desert plains, and was exceeding hot. From Dacca we had kept fairly close to, though not actually in sight of, the Kabul river. It makes a vast difference to one’s comfort in a tropical or semi-tropical country to travel through cultivated land where, if only at intervals, there is something green to be seen. Few things are more fatiguing than the glare of a desert and the reflected heat from pebbles and rocks; we, therefore, chose the longer but pleasanter route.
