Another curious scene took place one day when we were steaming down a reach in which the river made many sudden twists and turns. We had on board a merchant from the Persian Gulf, a devout Mohammedan. In the afternoon, he carried his praying-carpet on to the bridge between the paddle-boxes, and there, turning to the west, commenced to pray. The sun was on his left, but almost facing him; in an instant, round whirled the ship, making her course between two sand-bars, and Mecca and the sun into the bargain were right behind our worshiper. This was too much even for his devotion, so, glancing at the new course, he turned his carpet, and, looking in the fresh direction, recommenced his prayers. After a minute or two, back went the ship, and we began again to steer a southerly course. All this time the Persian kept his look of complete abstraction, and remained unshaken through all his difficulties. This seriousness in face of events which would force into shouts of laughter any European congregation is a characteristic of a native. It is strange that Englishmen are nowhere so easily provoked to loud laughter as in a church or college chapel, natives at no time so insusceptible of ridicule as when engaged upon the services of their religions.
The shallowness of the Indus, its impracticability for steamships during some months of the year, and the many windings of the stream—all these things make it improbable that the river will ever be largely available for purposes of trade; at the same time, the Indus valley must necessarily be the line taken by the commerce of the Punjaub, and eventually by that of some portions of Central Asia, and even of Southern China. Whether Kurrachee becomes our great Indian port, or whether our railway be made through Beloochistan, a safe and speedy road up the Indus valley for troops and trade is needed.
If we take into consideration the size of India, the amount of its revenues, and the length of time during which we have occupied that portion of its extent which we at present hold, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that not even in Australia have railways been more completely neglected than they have been in India. We have opened but 4000 miles, or one mile for every 45,000 people. Nothing has been touched as yet but the Grand Trunk and great military and postal routes, and even these are little more than half completed. Even the Bombay and Calcutta mail line and the Calcutta and Lahore lines are hardly finished; the Peshawur line and the Indus road not yet begun. While at home people believe that the Euphrates Valley Railway is under consideration, they will find, if they come out to India, that to reach Peshawur in 34° N. latitude they must go to Bombay in 18°, if not to Galle in 6°. Even if they reach Kurrachee, they will find it a month‘s journey to Peshawur. While we are trying to tempt the wool and shawls of Central Asia down to Umritsur and Lahore, the goods with which we would buy these things are sent round by the Cape of Good Hope and Calcutta.
It is true that the Indus line will be no easy one to make. To bridge the river at Mithun Kote or even at Kotree would be difficult enough, and were it to be bridged at Sukkur, where there is rock, and a narrow pass upon the river, the line from Sukkur to Kurrachee would be exposed to depredation from the frontier tribes. The difficulties are great, but the need is greater, and the argument of the heavy cost of river-side railroads should not weigh with us in the case of lines required for the safety of the country. The Lahore and Peshawur, the Kotree and Moultan, the Kotree and Baroda, and the Baroda and Delhi lines, instead of being set one against the other for comparison, should be simultaneously completed as necessary for the defense of the empire, and as forming the trunk lines for innumerable branches into the cotton-and wheat-growing districts.
One of the branches of the Indus line will have to be constructed from the Bholan Pass to Sukkur, where we lay some days embarking cotton. Sukkur lies on the Beloochistan side; Roree fort—known as the “Key of Scinde,” the seizure of which by us provoked the great war with the Ameers—on an island in mid-stream; and Bukkur City on the eastern or left bank; and the river, here narrowed to a width of a quarter of a mile, runs with the violence of a mountain torrent.
Sukkur is one of the most ancient of Indian cities, and was mentioned as time-worn by the Greek geographers, while tradition says that its antiquities attracted Alexander; but towns grow old with great rapidity in India, and, once ancient in their look, never to the eye become in the slightest degree older.
In Sukkur I first saw the Scindee cap, which may be described as a tall hat with the brim atop; but the Scindees were not the only strangely-dressed traders in Sukkur and Roree: there were high-capped Persians, and lean Afghans with long gaunt faces and high cheek-bones, and furred merchants from Central Asia. It is even said that goods find their way overland from China to Sukkur, through Eastern Persia and Beloochistan, the traders preferring to come round four thousand miles than to cross the main chain of the Himalayas or pass through the country of the Afghans.
In ancient times there was considerable intercourse between China and Hindostan; at the end of the seventh century, indeed, the Chinese invaded India through Nepaul, and captured five hundred cities. It is to be hoped that the next few years may see a railway built from Rangoon to Southern China, and from Calcutta to the Yang-tse-Kiang, a river upon which there are ample stores of coal, which would supply the manufacturing wants of India.
After viewing from a lofty tower the flat country in the direction of Shikapore, we spent one of our Sukkur evenings upon the island of Roree watching the natives fishing. Casting themselves into the river on the top of skins full of air, or more commonly on great earthenware pitchers, they floated at a rapid pace down with the whirling stream, pushing before them a sunken net which they could close and lift by the drawing of a string. About twice a minute they would strike a fish, and, lifting their head, would impale the captive on a stick slung behind their back, and at once lower again the net in readiness for further action.
Sukkur, like seven other places that I had visited within a year, has the reputation of being the hottest city in the world, and the joke on the boats of the Indus flotilla is that Moultan is too hot to bear, and Sukkur much hotter; but that Jacobabad, on the Beloochee frontier, near Sukkur, is so hot that the people come down thence to Sukkur for the hot season, and find its coolness as refreshing as ordinary mortals do that of Simla. Hot as is Sukkur, it is fairly beaten by a spot at the foot of the Ibex Hills, near Sehwan. I was sleeping on the bridge with an officer from Peshawur, when the crew were preparing to put off from the bank for the day‘s journey. We were awakened by the noise; but, as we sat up and rubbed our eyes, a blast of hot wind came down from the burnt-up hills, laden with fine sand, and of such a character that I got a lantern—for it was not fully light—and made my way to the deck thermometer. I found it standing at 104°, although the hour was 4·15 A.M. At breakfast-time, it had fallen to 100°, from which it slowly rose, until at 1 P.M. it registered 116° in the shade. The next night, it never fell below 100°. This was the highest temperature I experienced in India during the hot weather, and it was, singularly enough, the same as the highest which I recorded in Australia. No part of the course of the Indus is within the tropics, but it is not in the tropics that the days are hottest, although the nights are generally unbearable on sea-level near the equator.