Henry Walter Bellew

“ We left this hill tract by a very narrow ravine, between banks of conglomerate and ridges of friable slate, and descended a long stony slope on to the plain of Samnán, and crossing its bare, parched, stony desert surface, camped at a kárez stream under the shade of some mulberry-trees to the north of the town. The plain wears a desolate uninviting look, and is suggestive of unpleasant heat in summer. ”

“ The appearance of the city is not so fine as I had expected, but the general view of the landscape, backed as it is by the snowy range of Alburz, with Damavand’s fleecy peak standing sentry over it, is very fine; whilst the bright gardens and happy villages nestling in the inequalities of the slope at the foot of the range add a charm to the scene delightfully in contrast with the bare plain that cuts the horizon to the southward. ”

“ The general aspect of this tableland, bounded on all sides by hills, is singularly wild, and at this season its climate is bleak and inhospitable. A cold north wind swept down from the hills in numbing blasts, and howled over the wide waste dismally. Beyond the three little castellated hamlets in our vicinity, not a vestige of habitation or cultivation was anywhere to be seen. Yet in summer, we were assured, the now deserted pastures are covered with nomad tents, and swarm with teeming flocks of goats and sheep and camels. ”

“ The river flows in a brisk stream, that winds tortuously over a wide channel full of thick jangal, in which the tamarisk, willow, poplar, and acacia are the most prominent trees.
The desert stretches away towards the south-west in a great undulating waste of firm gravelly soil, thickly covered with pasture plants, now sprouting into leaf, and here and there dotted with shallow pools in the hollows of the surface. It supports great herds of wild asses and gazelles, and swarms with lizards, snakes, and scorpions. ”

“ Men, women, and children were eating from whisps of unripe corn, plucked from the roadside fields, to stave off the bitter end that was fast creeping upon them. There is nobody to help them, and they themselves are past begging.
At about half-way we passed Mandarabad, a collection of twenty or thirty huts round fortified walls enclosing an ancient tumulus, and covered with storks’ nests. Here we found the corpse of a woman lying across the road, at the edge of a kárez stream supplying the village with water. ”

“ North-westerly gusts of wind raised clouds of dust, and drove it in eddying drifts across the plain, till a thunderstorm with a smart fall of rain cleared the atmosphere, and allowed the sun to shine out a while before setting for the day. ”

“ On our way through the city we passed a bloated corpse in a horrible state of putrefaction lying in the street, and by it stood a couple of men about to drag it into concealment amongst the broken walls and crumbling huts that here and there separate the occupied houses, and assail the passengers with the most sickening stinks. The view of Alburz and Damavand from the south side of the city is very fine, whilst the wide plain of Veramín, with its numerous villages and gardens, wears an aspect of prosperity and plenty, cruelly belied by the hard reality of their misery and poverty. ”

“ Júlagah is evidently the diminutive form of júlangah, which means a plain suited to military exercises, or any level ground for horsemanship.
Kakhak seems to have suffered severely during the famine, but the accounts we received as to the extent of loss were so contradictory that it was impossible to get at the truth or an approximation to it. Numbers of beggars, sickly, pale, and emaciated, wandered timidly about our camp, craving in piteous tones a morsel of bread. Poor creatures! nobody cares for them, even the small coins we give them are snatched away by the stronger before our eyes. ”

“ Our host, the Saggid, always joined us at the repast, and generally produced some home-made sweetmeats as a bonne bouche at the close of the meal. We enjoyed these al fresco breakfasts thoroughly. The cleanliness and excellence of the Afghan cookery made full amends for the want of variety in the fare. The simple food was, to my mind, far preferable and more wholesome than the doubtful compounds prepared by our Indian servants in imitation of the orthodox English dishes that commonly load our tables in India. In the roasting of a fowl the Afghan certainly excels. ”

“ The villages, empty and still as a house of mourning, were invaded by troops of dogs, who contested with the survivors the possession of the dead. Loud were his lamentations for Persia. “The country is gone,” he said. “There is neither religion, justice, nor mercy to be found in the land. We (he was a Shia) in Kabul look to Persia as the centre of all that is good in Islám, but Afghanistan, with all its faults, is a better country to live in.” ”

“ Our Afghan companion, however, Saggid Núr Muhammad Sháh, went over to pay his devotions at the shrine of the Imám Báezid, which he described as an unpretending pile of loose stones, raised by the contributions of passing pilgrims. The saint is held in great veneration, and the simplicity of his tomb is out of deference to his dying injunction that no mausoleum should be built over his grave. In an humble grave near the shrine rest the mortal remains of the late Amir Muhammad Azím Khán, the usurper of the throne of Kabul. ”

“ The dome has a very dilapidated look from the falling off here and there of the coloured tiles that cover it, whilst those that are still left make the disfigurement the more prominent by their bright glaze. Where uncovered, the mortar is honeycombed by the nests of a colony of blue pigeons, which have here found a safe asylum even from their natural enemies of the hawk species. The interior is occupied by a central tomb, under which repose, in the odour of sanctity—though those surrounding it are anything but sanctified—the ashes of the first and greatest of the Durrani kings. ”

“ From Kotra we marched to Pír Chhatta, nine miles. The path winds through a jangal of wild caper, mimosa, and salvadora to the Míloh ravine, on the bank of which we found a collection of twelve or fourteen booths of the Kambarání and Syáni Brahoe, who are occupied as camel-drivers between Calát and Shikárpúr. Their dwellings were mere sheds of tamarisk branches covering a loose framework supported on slender poles, and altogether appeared a very inefficient and temporary sort of shelter. I noticed that the women, though equally exposed to the weather, were much fairer and comelier than the men. ”

“ Beyond this we skirted the hill range on our left, and arrived in our camp at Myánmay just in time to escape the fury of a thunderstorm with hail and rain, and the cold raw blasts of a north-west wind.
Myánmay is a considerable village at the head of a long valley, which towards the east is continuous with that of Júwen. To the northward the valley is separated from Jájarm by a range of bare hills, through which are several passes. The hill skirt is dotted with flourishing-looking villages, whilst the valley itself is a wide uncultivated pasture tract. ”

“ From Ghazni westward, all along the valleys of the Tarnak and the Helmand, down to the basin of Sistan, the whole country is covered with the ruins of former cities, obliterated canals, and deserted cultivation—all assigned to the devastation of the Tartars under Changhiz and Tymúr in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The country has never recovered the havoc created by these curses of the human race. Since the destruction of the Arab rule overthrown by them, the country has known no stable government, and has been a stranger to peace, order, and prosperity alike. ”

“ At five miles on we passed Pírastír and its gardens and corn-fields, and at another five miles came to an ábambár where the road branches. That to the left goes W.S.W. by Námen and a succession of deserted villages on the edge of the salt desert to Mazinán. It is a fearful road, and how any one could take it, with the option of a better, is a mystery. Not a particle of vegetation was to be seen; the whole vista was one of aridity and salt, blinding with a dazzling glare, and great heaps of drift-sand half buried the little castles lining the route. ”

“ The region lying between the Russian conquests in Central Asia and the British Empire in India is now the barrier that separates these two forms of civilisation. It cannot always remain so. It must sooner or later succumb to the one form or the other; and for this reason it is that the region claims from us a more than ordinary interest, and, I may say, sympathy too, by way of reparation for the wrong we inflicted in the Afghan war—a wrong the fruits of which are yet abundant, as anybody who has served on our north-west frontier can testify. ”

“ From the Dashtí our road turned northward again, and led down a rough and stony defile to Sariáb in the valley of Shál. To the left the land is covered with a forest of gwan trees, and rises rapidly to the foot of the Chihltan range, and close on our right is the Koh Landi ridge, which separates us from the caravan road from Sariáb to Saribolán. In front of us is the plain of Shál. It lies at a considerably lower level, and wears a very bleak and wintry look, with its leafless gardens and bare fields, girt around by a mountain barrier topped with snow. ”

“ The summer sun in Persia is too hot to admit of travelling during the day, and consequently our marches latterly have commenced an hour or two after midnight, an arrangement that admitted of our reaching camp before the cattle could suffer from the heat, which, however, is nothing in comparison with that of India. We had no cause to complain on this score, and even where it was hot, always enjoyed the luxury of ice, of which the Persians are very fond, and which they use freely. Every village almost has its yakhchál, or ice-pits, stocked from the winter snows. ”

“ On approaching the town, a number of its people, headed by an athlete wielding a pair of huge wooden dumb-bells, came out to meet us, and merrily conducted us to our camp. Yúnasi is a collection of about two hundred and fifty houses round a central fort, and possesses a commodious sarae built of baked bricks. It stands on a small river flowing westward into the desert, and marking the boundary between the districts of Tabbas and Turbat Hydari. There are no gardens here, and a singular absence of trees gives the place a very forlorn look, quite in keeping with the aspect of the desert around. ”

“ It is delightfully situated amidst gardens and vineyards, and outwardly has all the surroundings of prosperity and plenty, but inwardly, within its houses and courts, who can tell the amount of misery and suffering that there reigns? We could only guess it from the number of poor men and women who, through fear of our escort, stealthily crept amongst the bushes to our resting-place, and in low voices begged a morsel of bread, whilst gathering up and munching the crumbs and bones thrown aside from our late repast. ”

“ In their present temper, anybody would be welcomed by the Kandaharis, even a fresh set of their own rulers would afford them a temporary relief; but a foreigner, whether British, Persian, or Russian, they would hail with delight, and their city would fall to the invader without even much show of resistance, for the garrison could look for no support from the people they had so hardly oppressed.
The Government of Kandahar, besides the city and suburbs, includes about two hundred villages. Altogether they yield an annual revenue of about twenty-two laks of rupees to the Amir’s treasury. ”

“ They are well clad, and present no signs of suffering from the famine. Both the men and women have remarkably fair complexions and ruddy cheeks, and what surprised me more was the decidedly Tátár cast of their features.
From this we went on down a narrow glen, that, widening gradually, at last expands on to the valley of Gháyn by a long and gentle slope, half-way on which is a roadside ábambár fed by a kárez stream. Before us lay a crowded mass of fruit gardens and mulberry plantations, all in full foliage, and above them rose aloft the high-domed mosque of Gháyn. ”

“ Next spring, as the camp marched through the gorge on its accustomed journey, the dragon, watching his opportunity, dashed into the midst, seized the boy from its mother’s arms, and disappeared with it over the hills, leaving that white track of its body as a memorial on the rock.
Such in substance was the Brahoe’s story. It explains, at all events, the comfortable circumstances of the faqírs attached to the service of the mausoleum of Pír Lákha. In such a country, the lot of these people—the priesthood—is really enviable. ”

“ On either side are vast arid deserts abutting upon the valley of the Farráh river and the Hokát basin in high cliffs of bare clay, whilst the low lands between, as far south as the eye can reach, present a dreary waste of ruined towns, dilapidated forts, and obliterated water-courses. The only objects varying the monotony of the dismal scene are the hills closing the view towards the north. ”

“ They know not who are their rulers, and in vain seek redress from one to the other, only to find themselves fleeced by each in turn. As my informant pathetically remarked, “There is no pleasure in life here. The bazaar you saw to-day is not the everyday bazaar. There is no trade in the place. How should there be any? The people have no money. It has all been taken from them, and where it goes to nobody knows. There is no life (or spirits) left in the people. They are resigned to their fate, till God answers their prayers, and sends them a new set of rulers.” ”

“ We unaccountably neglect the encouragement of the oriental architecture, with its elegant designs, elaborate detail, and durable material, for the nondescript compositions, incongruous mixture of colours, and inferior material of the public buildings and monuments we have spread all over the country. We seem to forget that what is suitable to the climate, conformable to the scenery, and acceptable to the tastes of the people of Europe, may be the reverse in each instance when introduced into this country without modification or adaptation to its circumstances. ”

“ We heard different accounts here of recent raids by the Turkmans, but the accounts were so conflicting that we could make nothing of them, more than that these slave-hunting freebooters were really on the road and somewhere in the vicinity. The people have such a terror of them that they cannot speak of them without evincing fear, and running off into extravagances as to their ferocity and irresistible prowess. ”

“ The valley everywhere bears the marks of former prosperity and population. Its soil is extremely fertile, and the command of water is unlimited. It only requires a strong and just government to quickly recover its lost prosperity, and to render it a fruitful garden, crowded with towns and villages in unbroken succession all the way from Sistan to Kandahar.
The present desolation and waste of this naturally fertile tract intensify the aridity and heat of its climate. ”