We made a short meal, for the Sakae live much as do the Southern Europeans—a light meal of bread and wine, with perhaps eggs the first thing in the morning, and a large breakfast at noon. I must say I longed for tea or some other suitable morning drink. Alcohol at that hour savoured too much of the rum with which we used to lace our cocoa for dawn battle stunts in the bad frozen frontier days to have any pleasant memories.
Kyrlos asked us how we had slept, and if we had all we wanted. We said we were more than comfortable in a good bed—their beds were good—after many weeks of hard marching. Firoz and Payindah were feeding with the soldiers, so we told Kyrlos of their prejudices in the matter of pork, and he said he would give orders on the point.
The Punjabis hit it off very well with the Sakae, whose mode of life was not unlike their own in many respects. In time they picked up some of the language with that facility which characterizes the people of India, accustomed all their lives to meeting men of different races. Some folk are of the idea that the inhabitants of India are one people, which may account for a lot of the idealistic rubbish we hear about the Indian nation. One might as well talk of the European nation. There is far more difference between the Punjabi and the Tamil than there is between the Russian and the Englishman, while the French are more akin to the Scotch than are the Mahrattas to the Sikhs. One meets more variety of languages, customs, religions, and, most of all, races, in India than in traversing Europe from Moscow to Dublin.
I asked where all the others had gone, and Kyrlos told me that they had ridden out to the villages to see the levies, and would be back with reports in the evening.
He said that he would be riding out himself directly to one of the border forts that covered an entry into his country, and asked if we would care to come. Wrexham and I said we should like very much to have a look at the country, but Forsyth announced that he intended to stop behind and learn something of the local language from Aryenis. He spent a very useful day, and when we came back he had long lists of words of some unknown language written out in Greek characters with the Greek equivalents.
Aryenis was evidently a good scholar, and Forsyth is a born linguist. He picked up their language amazingly quickly. As he had thought, it was not Greek at base, though there were many Greek words interlarded, especially as spoken by the more educated.
Much of the official written language was Greek, somewhat debased but comprehensible, and we discovered that a knowledge of the old tongue was a common possession of the upper classes, much as was Latin in mediæval Europe. He said the original language was quite unfamiliar to him, but had many and unmistakable traits pointing to its being some old Aryan dialect.
After we had finished the morning meal, horses were brought round for us, little stocky animals of the class of a small heavy-weight polo pony. The bridles were of deep leather, with single reins and a snaffle bit. The saddles were merely quilted pads with leather surcingles, and rather narrow stirrups, but comfortable enough to ride on.
The Sakae gave us the impression of a people to whom horses were a means of locomotion rather than a form of sport. But later we introduced polo, which was a succès fou among the young bloods.
As we rode out of the belt of trees surrounding the house and outbuildings, we had our first real view of the country, which seemed to consist of a succession of valleys and ridges of hill, some steep and rocky, others more rolling, and covered with trees and verdure.