At Kootree, near Hydrabad, the capital of Scinde, where the tombs of the Ameers are imposing, if far from beautiful, we left the Indus for the railway, and, after a night‘s journey, found ourselves upon the sea-shore at Kurrachee.
CHAPTER XVI.
OVERLAND ROUTES.
OF all the towns in India, Kurrachee is the least Indian. With its strong southwesterly breeze, its open sea and dancing waves, it is to one coming from the Indus valley a pleasant place enough; and the climate is as good as that of Alexandria, though there is at Kurrachee all the dust of Cairo. For a stranger detained against his will to find Kurrachee bearable there must be something refreshing in its breezes: the town stands on a treeless plain, and of sights there are none, unless it be the sacred alligators at Muggur Peer, where the tame “man-eaters” spring at a goat for the visitor‘s amusement as freely as the Wolfsbrunnen trout jump at the gudgeon.
There is no reason given why the alligators’ pool should be reputed holy, but in India places easily acquire sacred fame. About Peshawur there dwell many hill-fanatics, whose sole religion appears to consist in stalking British sentries. So many of them have been locked up in the Peshawur jail that it has become a holy place, and men are said to steal and riot in the streets of the bazaar in order that they may be consigned to this sacred temple.
The nights were noisy in Kurrachee, for the great Mohammedan feast of the Mohurrum had commenced, and my bungalow was close to the lines of the police, who are mostly Belooch Mohammedans. Every evening, at dusk, fires were lighted in the police-lines and the bazaar, and then the tomtom-ing gradually increased from the gentle drone of the daytime until a perfect storm of “tom-a-tom, tomtom, tom-a-tom, tomtom,” burst from all quarters of the town, and continued the whole night long, relieved only by blasts from conch-shells and shouts of “Shah Hassan! Shah Hoosein! Wah Allah! Wah Allah!” as the performers danced round the flames. I heartily wished myself in the State of Bhawulpore, where there is a license-tax on the beating of drums at feasts. The first night of the festival I called up a native servant who “spoke English,” to make him take me to the fires and explain the matter. His only explanation was a continual repetition of “Dat Mohurrum, Mohammedan Christmas-day.” When each night, about dawn, the tomtom-ing died away once more, the chokedars—or night watchmen—woke up from their sound sleep, and began to shout “Ha ha!” into every room to show that they were awake.
The chokedars are well-known characters in every Indian station: always either sleepy and useless, or else in league with the thieves, they are nevertheless a recognized class, and are everywhere employed. At Rawul-Pindee and Peshawar, the chokedars are armed with guns, and it is said that a newly-arrived English officer at the former place was lately returning from a dinner-party, when he was challenged by the chokedar of the first house he had to pass. Not knowing what reply to make, he took to his heels, when the chokedar fired at him as he ran. The shot woke all the chokedars of the parade, and the unfortunate officer received the fire of every man as he passed along to his house at the farther end of the lines, which he reached, however, in perfect safety. It has been suggested that, for the purpose of excluding all natives from the lines at night, there should be a shibboleth or standing parole of some word which no native can pronounce. The word suggested is “Shoeburyness.”
Although chokedars were silent and tomtom-ing subdued during the daytime, there were plenty of other sounds. Lizards chirped from the walls of my room, and sparrows twittered from every beam and rafter of the roof. When I told a Kurrachee friend that my slippers, my brushes, and soldier‘s writing-case had all been thrown by me on to the chief beam during an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge the enemy, he replied that for his part he paraded his drawing-room every morning with a double-barreled gun, and frequently fired into the rafters, to the horror of his wife.
In a small lateen-rigged yacht lent us by a fellow-traveler from Moultan, some of us visited the works which have long been in progress for the improvement of the harbor of Kurrachee, and which form the sole topic of conversation among the residents in the town. The works have for object the removal of the bar which obstructs the entrance to the harbor, with a view to permit the entry of larger ships than can at present find an anchorage at Kurrachee.
The most serious question under discussion is that of whether the bar is formed by the Indus silt or merely by local causes, as, if the former supposition is correct, the ultimate disposition of the ten thousand millions of cubic feet of mud which the Indus annually brings down is not likely to be affected by such works as those in progress at Kurrachee. When a thousand sealed bottles were lately thrown into the Indus for it to be seen whether they would reach the bar, the result of the “great bottle trick,” as Kurrachee people called it, was that only one bottle reached and not one weathered a point six miles to the southward of the harbor. The bar is improving every year, and has now some twenty feet of water, so that ships of 1000 tons can enter except in the monsoon, and the general belief of engineers is that the completion of the present works will materially increase the depth of water.