At dark we pitch our camp in a grassy hollow, where the horses are made happy with heaps of pulled bottom-grass. Neither trees nor houses are anywhere in sight; but the chief of the sowars and another man ride away over the hills, and late at night return with two men carrying bread and mast and fresh goat-milk enough to feed the whole hungry party.
We make a leisurely start next morning, the reason of the dalliance being that we are but a few farsakhs from Herat. The country develops into undulating, grassy upland prairie, the greensward being thickly spangled with yellow flowers. A two flours' ride brings us to a camp of probably not less than one hundred tents. Large herds of camels are peacefully browsing over the prairie, numbers of them being females rejoicing in the possession of woolly youngsters, whose uncouth but tender proportions are swathed in old quilts and nummuds to protect them from the fierce rays of the sun.
Sheep are being sheared and goats milked by men and boys; some of the women are baking bread, some are jerking skin churns, suspended on tripods, vigorously back and forth, and others are preparing balls of mast for drying in the sun. The whole camp presents a scene of picturesque animation.
From the busy nomad camp, the trail seems to make a gradual ascent until, on the morning of April 30th, we arrive at the bluff-like termination of a rolling upland country, and behold! spread out below is the famous valley of Herat. Like a panorama suddenly opened up before me is the charmed stretch of country that has time and again created such a stir in the political and military circles of England and Russia, the famous "gate to India" about which the two greatest empires of the world have sometimes almost come to blows. Several populous villages are scattered about the valley within easy range of human vision; the Heri Rood, now bursting its natural boundaries under the stimulus of the spring floods, glistens broadly at intervals like a chain of small lakes. The fortress of Herat is dimly discernible in the distance beyond the river, probably about twenty miles from our position; it is rendered distinguishable from other masses of mud-brown habitations by a cluster of tall minarets, reminding one of a group of factory chimneys. The whole scene, as viewed from the commanding view of our ridge, embraces perhaps four hundred square miles of territory; about one-tenth of this appears to be under cultivation, the remainder being of the same stony, desert-like character as the average camel-thorn dasht.
Doubtless a good share of this latter might be reclaimed and rendered productive by an extensive system of irrigating canals, but at present no incentive exists for enterprise of this character. In its present state of cultivation the valley provides an abundance of food for the consumption of its inhabitants, and as yet the demand for exportation is limited to the simple requirements of a few thousand tributary nomads. The orchards and green areas about the villages render the whole scene, as usual, beautiful in comparison with the surrounding barrenness, but that is all. Compared with our own green hills and smiling valleys, the Valley of Herat would scarcely seem worth all the noise that has been made about it. There has been a great amount of sentiment wasted in eulogizing its alleged beauty. Of its wealth and commercial importance in the abstract, I should say much exaggeration has been indulged in. Still, there is no gainsaying that it is a most valuable strategical position, which, if held by either England or Russia, would exercise great influence on Central Asian and Indian affairs. Such are my first impressions of the Herat Valley, and a sojourn of some ten days in one of its villages leaves my conjectures about the same.
A few miles along a stony and gradually descending trail, and we are making our way across the usual chequered area of desert, patches, abandoned fields, and old irrigating ditches that so often tell the tale of decay and retrogression in the East. These outlying evidences of decay, however, soon merge into green fields of wheat and barley, poppy gardens, and orchards, and flowing ditches; and two hours after obtaining the first view of Herat finds us camped in a walled apricot garden in the important village of Rosebagh (?).
Overtopping our camping ground are a pair of dilapidated brick minarets, attached to what Kiftan Sahib calls the Jami Mesjid, and which he furthermore volunteers was erected by Ghengis Khan. The minarets are of circular form, and one is broken off fifteen feet shorter than its neighbor. In the days of their glory they were mosaicked with blue, green and yellow glazed tiles; but nothing now remains but a few mournful-looking patches of blue, surviving the ravages of time and decay. Pigeons have from time to time deposited grains of barley on the dome, and finding sustenance from the gathered dirt and the falling rains, they have sprouted and grown, and dotted the grand old mosque with patches of green vegetation.
One corner of the orchard is occupied by a stable, to the flat roof of which I betake myself shortly after our arrival to try and ascertain my bearings, and see something of the village. High walls rise up between the roofs of the houses and divide one garden from another, so that precious little opportunity exists for observation immediately around, and from here not even the tall minarets of Herat are visible.
The adjacent houses are mostly bee-hive roofed, and within the little gardens attached the soil is evidently rich and productive. Pomegranate, almond, and apricot trees abound, and produce a charming contrast to the prevailing crenellated mud walls. A very conspicuous feature of the village is a cluster of some half-dozen venerable cedars.
The stable roof provides sleeping accommodation for the chief of the sowars, Kiftan Sahib, and myself, the remainder of the party curl themselves up beneath the apricot-trees below. During the night one of the sowars, an old fellow whose morose and sulky disposition has had the effect of rendering him socially objectionable to his comrades on the march from Furrah, comes scrambling on the roof, and in loud tones of complaint addresses himself to Kiftan Sahib's peacefully snoozing proportions. His midnight eruption consists of some grievance against his fellows; perhaps some such wanton act of injustice as appropriating his blanket or stealing his "timbakoo" (tobacco).