The one pre-eminent European traveller of the thirteenth century (1272-73), the immortal Marco Polo, hardly touched Afghanistan. He and his kinsmen passed by the high valleys of Vardos and Wakhan on their way to Kashgar and Cathay, but his geographical information is so vague as to render it difficult (until the surveys of these regions were completed) to trace his footsteps. The raid of Taimur into Kafiristan early in the fifteenth century, when it is said that he reached Najil from the Khawak Pass over the Hindu Kush, will be referred to again in dealing with Masson's narrative; but even to this day it is doubtful how far he succeeded in penetrating into Kafiristan, although the geographical inference of a practicable military line of communication between Andarab and the head of the Alingar River is certain. Three hundred and thirty years after Polo's journey another European traveller passed through Badakshan and across the Pamirs. This was the lay Jesuit, Benedict Goës, a true geographer, bent on the exploration of Cathay and the reconnaissance of its capabilities as a mission field. He crossed the Parwan Pass of the Hindu Kush from Kabul to Badakshan and journeyed thence to Yarkand; but he did not survive to tell his story in sufficient detail to leave intelligible geography. We find practically no useful geographical records of Afghanistan during many centuries of its turbulent history, so that from the time of Arab commercial enterprise to the days of our forefathers in India, when Afghanistan began to loom large on the political horizon as a factor in our relations with Russia and it became all important to know of what Afghanistan consisted, there is little to collect from the pages of its turbid history which can fairly rank as a record of geographical exploration. It took a long time to awaken an intelligent interest in trans-Indus geography in the minds of India's British administrators. But for Russia it is possible that it would have remained unawakened still; but early in the nineteenth century the shadow of Russia began to loom over the north-western horizon, and it became unpleasantly obvious that if we did not concern ourselves with Afghan politics, and secure some knowledge of Afghan territory, our northern neighbours would not fail to secure the advantages of early action.
It is strange to recall the fact that we are indebted to the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte for the first exploration made by British officers into the trans-frontier regions of Afghanistan and Baluchistan in British political interests. Nearly a century ago (in 1810) the uneasiness created by the ambitious schemes of that most irrepressible military freebooter resulted in the nomination of two officers of Bombay Infantry to investigate the countries lying to the west of what was then British India, with a view to ascertaining the possibilities of invasion. The Punjab and Sind intervened between British India and the hinterland of the frontier, and their independence and jealous suspicion of the expansive tendency of the British Raj added greatly to the difficulties and the risks of any such trans-frontier enterprise. The Bombay Infantry has ever been a sort of nursery for explorers of the best and most famous type, and the two young gentlemen selected for this remarkable exploit were worthy forerunners of Burton and Speke. The traditions of intelligence service may almost be said to have been founded by them. The rule of exploration a century ago admitted of no elaborate preparation: a knowledge of the languages to be encountered was the one acquisition which was deemed indispensable; and there can be little doubt that the knowledge of Oriental tongues was an advantage which in those days very rapidly led to distinction. It was probably less widespread but much more thorough than it is at present. Captain Christie and Lieutenant Pottinger started fair in the characters which they meant to assume during their travels. They embarked as natives in a native ship, and from the very outset they found it necessary to play up to their disguise. The port of Sonmiani on the north-eastern shores of the Arabian Sea was the objective in the first instance, and the rôle of horse-dealers in the service of a Bombay firm was the part they elected to play. How far it really imposed on Baluch or Afghan it is difficult to say. One cannot but recollect that when another gallant officer in later years assumed this disguise on the Persian frontier, he was regarded as a harmless but eccentric European, who injured nobody by the assumption of an expert knowledge which he did not possess. He was known locally for years after his travels had ceased as the English officer who "called himself" a horse-dealer.
Sonmiani was a more important port a century ago than it is now that Karachi has absorbed the trade of the Indus coast; but even then the mud flats which render the village so unapproachable from the coast were in process of formation, and it was only with favourable conditions of tide that this wretched and long overlooked little seaport could be reached. Sonmiani, however, may yet again rise to distinction, for it is a notable fact that the facility for reaching the interior of Baluchistan and the Afghan frontier by this route, which facility decided its selection by Christie and Pottinger, is no less nowadays than it was then. The explanation of it lies in the fact that the route practically turns the frontier hills. It follows the extraordinary alignment of their innumerable folds, passing between them from valley to valley instead of breaking crudely across the backbone of the system, and slips gently into the flat places of the plateau land which stretch from Kharan to Kandahar. The more obvious reason which presented itself to these early explorers was doubtless the avoidance of the independent buffer land of Sind. They experienced little difficulty, in spite of many warnings of the dangers in front of them, when they left Sonmiani for Bela. At Bela they interviewed an interesting and picturesque personality in the person of the Jam, and were closely questioned about the English and their proceedings. Apparently the Jam was prepared to accept their description of things European generally, until they ventured to describe a 100-gun warship and its equipment. Such an astounding creation he was unable to believe in, and he frankly said so. From Bela the great northern high-road led to the old capital, Khozdar, through a district infested with Brahui robbers; but there was no better alternative, and the two officers followed it. On the whole, the Brahui tribespeople treated them well, and there was no serious collision. Khozdar was an important centre in those days, with eight hundred houses, and certain Hindu merchants from Shikarpur drove a thriving business there. Nothing was more extraordinary in the palmy days of Sind than the widespread commercial interests of Shikarpur. Credit could be obtained at almost all the chief towns of Central Asia through the Shikarpur merchants, and it was by draft, or "hundi," on Hindu bankers far and wide that travellers were able to keep themselves supplied with cash as they journeyed through these long stages.
The route to Kalat passed by Sohrab and Rodinjo, and the two wayfarers reached Kalat on February 9, 1810. The cold was intense; they were quite unprepared for it, and suffered accordingly. Living with the natives and putting up at the Mehman Khana (the guest house) of such principal villages or towns as possessed one, they naturally were thrown very closely into contact with native life, and learned native opinions. The views of such travellers when dealing with the social details of native existence are especially valuable, and the opinions expressed by them of the character and disposition of the people amongst whom they lived, and with whom they daily conversed on every conceivable subject, are infinitely to be preferred to those of the state officials of that time who lived in an artificial atmosphere. Thus we find very considerable divergence in the opinions expressed regarding Baluch and Afghan character between such close observers as Pottinger or Masson and such eminent authorities as Burnes and Elphinstone. The splendid hospitality and the affectation of frankness which is common to all these varied types of frontier humanity, combined with their magnificent presence, and very often with a determined adherence to certain rules of guardianship and the faithful discharge of the duties which it entails, are all of them easily recognizable virtues which are much in the minds and mouths of official travellers with a mission. The counteracting vices, the spirit of fanatical hatred, of thievish malevolence, and the utter social demoralization which usually (but not always) distinguishes their domestic life and disgusts the stranger, is not so much en evidence, and is only to be discerned by those who mix freely with ordinary natives of the jungle and bazaar. As an instance, take Pottinger's estimate of Persian character; it is really worth recording as the impression of one of the earliest of English soldier travellers. "Among themselves, with their equals, the Persians are affable and polite; to their superiors, servile and obsequious; towards their inferiors, haughty and domineering. All ranks are equally avaricious, sordid, and dishonest.... Falsehood they look on ... as highly commendable, and good faith, generosity, and gratitude are alike unknown to them. In debauchery none can exceed them, and some of their propensities are too execrable and infamous to admit of mention.... I feel inclined to look upon Persia, at the present day, to be the very fountainhead of every species of tyranny, cruelty, meanness, injustice, extortion, and infamy that can disgrace or pollute human nature, and have ever been found in any age or nation." These are strong terms to use about a people of whom we have been assured that the basis of their youthful education is to "ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth!" and yet who is it who knows Persia who will say even now that they are undeserved? May the Persian parliament mend their morals and reform their methods—if, indeed, such a "silk purse" as a parliament can be made out of such crude material as the Persian plebs!
In spite of endless vexations and much spiteful malevolence, which included endless attempts to trip up Pottinger in his assumed disguise (and which, it must be admitted, were met by a not too strict adherence to the actual truth on Pottinger's part), he does not condemn the Baluchi and the Afghan in such terms as he applies to the Persian; but he illustrates most forcibly the dangers arising from habitual lawlessness due to the semi-feudal system of the Baluch federation, and consequent want of administrative responsibility. In spite, however, of endless difficulties, he finally got through, and so did Christie; and for the getting through they were both largely indebted to the vicarious hospitality of village chiefs and heads of independent clans.
At Kalat they found it far easier to get into the timber and mud fortress than to get out again, and this difficulty repeated itself at Nushki. At Nushki begins the real interest of their adventures. Christie (after the usual wrangling and procrastination which attended all arrangements for onward movement) took his way to Herat on almost the exact line of route (via Chagai, the Helmund, and Seistan) which was followed seventy-three years later by the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission. Pottinger made what was really a far more venturesome journey via Kharan to Jalk and Persia. The meeting of these two officers eventually at Ispahan in the darkness of night, and their gradual recognition of each other, is as dramatic a story as the meeting of Nearkhos with Alexander in Makran, or of Nansen with Jackson amongst the ice-floes of the Far North.
Christie gives us but small detail of his adventures. He necessarily suffered much from thirst, but met with no serious encounters. Beyond a well-deserved tribute to the sweet beauty of that picturesque wayside town of Anardara in his careful record of his progress northward from Seistan, where he made Jalalabad (which he calls Doshak) his base for further exploration, he says very little about the country he passed through. Incidentally he mentions Pulaki (Poolki) as a very remarkable relic of past ages. He describes the ruins of this place as covering an area of 16 square miles. Ferrier mentions the same place subsequently, and locates it about a day's march to the north of Kala-i-Fath (which Christie did not visit), and it must have been one of the most famous of mediæval towns in Seistan. But as collective ruins covering an area of 500 square miles have been noted by Mr. Tate, the surveyor of the late Seistan mission, who camped in their midst to the north of Kala-i-Fath, the exact site of Pulaki may yet require careful research before it is identified. Seistan is the land of half-buried ruins. No such extent of ruins exists anywhere else in the world. It seems probable, therefore, that, like the sites of many another ancient city of Seistan, Pulaki has been either partially or absolutely absorbed in the boundless sea of desert sand, which envelops and hides away each trace of the past as its waves move forward in irresistible sequence before the howling blasts of the north-west.
Christie's route through Seistan followed the track connecting Jalalabad on the Helmund with Peshawaran on the Farah Rud in dry seasons, but which disappears in seasons of flood, when the two hamúns or lakes of Seistan become one. Pushing on to Jawani he passed Anardara on April 4, and reached Herat on the 18th. His description of Herat is of a very general character, but is sufficient to indicate that no very great change took place between the time of his visit and that of the 1883 Commission. He was fairly well received, and remained a month without any incident worthy of note, leaving on May 18 for Persia.
This century-old visit of a British officer to Herat is chiefly notable for its revelations as to the attitude of the Afghan Government and people towards the English at the time it was made. With the exception of the risk inseparable from travel in a lawless country infested with organised bands of professional robbers, there appears to have been no hostility bred by fanaticism or suspicion of the trend of British policy. Afghanistan was socially in about the same stage of development that France was in the days of Louis XI.—or England a little earlier; and it is only the solidity conferred on Afghan administration by the moral support of the British Government which has effected any real change. Were England to abandon India to-morrow there would be nothing to prevent a lapse into the same condition of social anarchy which prevailed a century ago. India would become the bait for ceaseless activity on the part of every Afghan border chief who thought he had following sufficient to make a raid effective. A thin veneer of civilization has crept into Afghanistan with motors and telegraphs, but with it also has arisen new incentives to hostility from dread of a possible loss of independence, and (in the western parts of Afghanistan) from real fanatical hatred to the infidel. Thus Afghanistan is actually more dangerous as a field of exploration to the individual European at the present moment than it was in the days of Christie and Pottinger. At the same time, British military assistance would not only be welcome nowadays in case of a conflict with a foreign enemy, but it would be claimed as the fulfilment of a political engagement and expected as a right.
Christie's stay at Herat seems to have been quite uneventful, and when he left for Persia no one barred his way. The Persian frontier then seems to have been rather more than 20 miles distant from Herat—Christie places it a mile beyond the village of "Sekhwan," 22 miles from the city. The only place which appears to correspond with the position of Sekhwan now is Shakiban, which probably represents another village. Making rapid progress westward through Persia, he eventually reached Ispahan, where he rejoined Pottinger on June 30. It must have been a hot and trying experience!