"I was last at Kotri in 1849. All that once was, is a dismal ruin, even the outer wall, which, loopholed and banquettéd, had driven off a host of Beloch swordsmen, headed by Mír Sháhdád. Who would fancy that the defence of that wall by the Light Company of H.M.'s 22nd Regiment, under Captain Conway, directed by Major Outram, had ever given rise to a treatise on the defence of field fortifications? Surely it would have been well, at the expense of a few rupees, to have kept up a place to which such mighty memories cling. The trees had grown, but everything else seems changed. I am now bound for my old home. Novelties meet my eye at every turn. In some places I find improvements."
On arriving he says—
"What a change! Some twenty-five natives, mostly negresses, haunt the houses which lodged our corps. The Mess-house, to which many recollections attach, still stands, thanks to its foundation of baked brick, but the front is converted into an open stable for human beings. There lived the actors in the famous Phuleli Regatta; there W—— hatched all the troubles which prevented us from feeling too happy. There is the house which fell down, nearly crushing me and my moonshee; the fireplaces are half filled up; the floor is grown with camel thorn. How small and mean are the dimensions, which loom so large in the picture stored within the brain! There I temporarily buried the 'young person'[2] when the police-master gave orders to search the house. There T—— played peeping Tom upon his father and mother-in-law. How strange are the tricks of memory, which, often hazy as a dream about the most important events of a man's life, religiously preserves the merest trifles! And how very unpleasant to meet one's self, one's 'dead self thirty years younger'! Adieu, old home! I shall not perhaps see you again, but it is not in my power ever to forget you."
We go on from Hyderabad to Sakhar and Shikárpúr, but first he recognizes the old artillery lines, the billiard-room, and John Jacob's house built on a graveyard, and then goes to the Tombs of the Kings at Kalhóra and Talpúr, which are very like those of Golconda (Jaypur marble, which the Rajput artists seem to handle like wax). The flutings of the open work are delicate in the extreme, and the general effect is a lacery of stone. We then visit New Hyderabad, and he is surprised at all the new buildings. He is very much distressed at the state of the Army; the Beloch element has gone out, and the Pathán, or Afghan, is taking its place. The men are no longer what they were, and the military authorities have only to thank their own folly. He says—
"There is a medium between the over-long and over-short service. A term of three years may make an intelligent and well-educated Prussian soldier, but the system has become a caricature as adopted by other nations. Before 1848 the Austrian army was the finest in Europe; see what the three years' service has done for it."
He dives into the Eastern mind, and shows you that the moment you begin to intrigue with an Oriental, he has you on his own ground, he beats you with your own weapons, and that the only way that you have the Oriental at your mercy is by being perfectly straightforward and honest. He shows you what value they set on good manners. Then we visit the field of Meanee. He describes the brisk way that Sir Charles Napier fought—a fierce mêlée, no quarter asked or given. He said the way to fight an Indian battle is to shake the enemy's line with a hot fire of artillery, charge home with infantry, and when a slight hesitation begins, to throw all your cavalry at the opposing ranks, and the battle is ended. Such was the battle of Meanee, when our 2800 thrashed 22,000 men. He greatly blames the yielding up of Afghanistan. Then we go to Husri, where, in old days, he surveyed and amused himself with cock-fighting—the scene of the death of "Bhujang," his favourite cock—and from thence to Sudderan Column, from whence he visited Mir Ibrahim Khan Talpur's village;[3] and then he goes on to the "Jats" country (the Gypsies), with whom he affiliated himself, and where he worked with the camel-men, levelling canals in the old days. Then we go on to Badhá and Unarpúr, Lakrá, and Sibt, wells in the desert, and here he translated the tale of Bári and Isa (Jesus). Whilst among the Belochs he wrote—
"THE TALE OF BÁRI AND ISA.
"Give ear, O ye sons of the Beloch,
Whilst I recount to you a true tale!
As Isa, the prophet of Allah,
Was travelling, Fakir-like, over the earth,
Seeing its wonders and its wastes,
He came into a desert land
Where no river nor Káríz was,
Nor green fields, nor waving crops.
Dreadful mountains rose on all four sides
Round a plain of sand and flint,
On which stood a stump (of tree) one cubit high,
And propped against it sat Bári, the hermit,
Meditating, with his shroud[4] over his head,
Upon the might of Rabb Ta'álá.[5]
Isa considered him awhile,
Then, advancing, he touched his shoulder,
Saying, 'Tell me truly, how dost thou live?
What eatest thou in this grainless place,
And what drinkest thou where no water is?'
Bári raised his head from his breast;
He was old and stone blind,
His knees were sore by continued kneeling.
And his bones, through fasting, pierced his skin.
Yet his heart was as the life of the seed
That dwells in a withered home.[6]
He comprehended the question, and thus replied,
Weeping and exclaiming, 'Wá wailá![7]
How can man doubt the Creator's might?
Sit down by me for awhile,
I show thee the power of Allah.'
Then the stump shot up till it became
A noble towering tree;
At morning prayers it began to grow,
And (presently) shadowed the ground beneath.
At midday berries appeared upon it,
Hanging in festoons like the young brab's fruit.
In the afternoon they became brightly red,
As the date when it falls from the tree;
Before the sun set they were ripe.
From each bough the bunches hung
Cool as water in a cavern,
Sweet as the sugar[8] in Paradise,
Fit for prophets and martyrs to eat.
Then said Bári, 'Thou seest Allah's might,
How he can feed His children in the waste!
Fruits grow upon the (withered) stump,
Waters flow from the rugged rock,
All things obey the Lord of all;
It is (only) man that doubts and disbelieves.'
As it happened unto him,
So, by my head! may it happen to me.
Such is the tale of the Dervish;[9]
Gentles, my song is done."
Leaving Unarpúr, we pass out of the Unhappy Valley into Sindia Felix, beginning at Gopang, Májhand, Sann, and Amiri, and here in 1876 rails have been laid and trollies were working. Thence we go to Lakkí, where he composed the poem on the "Legends of the Lakkí Hills," given above, and then to Séhwan. The road was a precipitous corniche, very narrow, with camels marching in Indian file. Séhwan is an important military and religious place, commanding the passage of the Indus, but intensely hot, with deleterious and deadly climate. This was the place where Richard in old days buried an old Athenæum sauce-pot, which he had painted like an Etruscan vase. He treated it with fire and acid, smashed it, and buried it in the ground, and took in a lot of antiquaries, who never forgave him; and when he was travelling in the land of the Turanian Brahúis, he drew up a grammar and a vocabulary, with barbaric terminations, and the Presidency rang for nine days with the wondrous discovery. That was in his boyhood, and he writes, "I now repent me in sackcloth and ashes, and my trembling hand indites 'Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.'"
We then go along the Aral stream for two days to Lake Manchar, and visit the Kirthár Mountains, with their two sanitaria, Char Yaru and the Danna Towers. Then to Lárkána, an Eastern influent of the Indus—eight stages. Lárkána is the centre of Sindia Felix. We go to Sakhar, to Bakar, and lastly to Rohri, and then make our way to Shikárpúr across a kind of desert, south of the Bolan Pass, and which is the main entrepôt of the Khorasán and Central Asian caravan trade with Sind and Western India, where, as usual, he visited everything and found the usual changes.