Raiders of the Sarhad

I asked them why their new friends had not helped them to oppose me, with advice if with nothing else? And, if these friends had really been sweeping victoriously on to overcome the British Raj, why they were not there with them?

Jiand, Halil Khan, Shah Sawar and Mahommed-Hassan all expressed their keen regret at what had occurred, promised that they would return to their old allegiance, and that, instead of fighting me any more, they would help me to restore order in the Sarhad. They also promised to bring Juma Khan and his Ismailzais to book.

I then explained my plans for the immediate future. I told them of my intention to retain Khwash as a pledge for their good behaviour, and until such time as a benign Indian Government might see fit to return it to them. But I promised that I would send in a faithful report of their repentance for their past misdeeds, and of their promise to assist us in the future, and told them they might rest assured that the Government would do all that was right and fair.

The following day we marched out once more with the object of attacking Juma Khan at Galugan, leaving the head of the Reki clan (I think his name was Mirza Khan) in command of Khwash, with a few of his own tribe, and five of my nine infantrymen who could handle a rifle. Not, it will be considered, a very formidable garrison to leave in charge, but it was impossible to spare any more men.

We marched in the following order: Shah Sawar and his men were in front as advance guards, Halil Khan and the Gamshadzais on the left flank, and Jiand and his Yarmahommedzais on the right flank. Our infantry went with the baggage, and the guns and ammunition brought up the rear. The cavalry and a few infantrymen formed my personal escort.

I hoped by this arrangement to keep the various Sarhadi Chiefs well apart so that they might be unable to compare notes. My own small force was kept in the rear, and well together.

I was asked by the Raiders why I was making all these careful arrangements to protect my camels.

I replied that in war one had to be prepared to meet any emergency, and that I was not at all satisfied with what I had heard concerning the conduct of the Khan of Bampur, for there had been rumours that he might be foolish enough to try conclusions with me.

Bampur is situated in Persian Baluchistan, fully six marches away to the South of Khwash, and is overlooked by the Koh-i-Bazman. Bampur, it will be remembered, was the old capital of Baluchistan, but to-day it is only a squalid collection of mud-built huts and deserted gardens, clustered round a semi-ruined fort standing in an unhealthy, malarial district.

It was held at this date by a Baluchi Chief, apparently as cowardly as he was arrogant. The fear I expressed of his intention was to lull any possible suspicion of the Sarhadi Chiefs – nominally my prisoners – as to the formation of my battle array; but there remained a modicum of truth behind the reason given.

When we halted that night Landon, the Sarhad-dar, Idu and myself, as usual, took counsel as to the next day's movements, and finally decided to send two of Landon's spies to Bampur. Arrived there they were to tell the Khan that they had run away from us to warn him, because my mighty army, now on the march, might possibly take Bampur in its stride. In addition they were to tell him that, whilst it was true that the General commanding had given out that he was only going to march along the borders of the Bampur district in order to reach Galugan, where he intended to crush Juma Khan, they fully believed this to be only a blind, and that Bampur was to be first destroyed. Khwash itself had recently been threatened, and had only escaped destruction by surrender. It was now left in charge of five hundred of the British General's best troops, with ample supplies for a month.

It was only later on that I learned the success of this mission. The two spies arrived on a certain night at about one a.m. and did their part so well that, by two a.m., the terrified Khan had mounted his camel, and set forth for Makran.

Makran is an arid region lying along the shores of the Persian Gulf, and stretching inland for a distance of about sixty miles. It is filled with bare, dry mountains, and hills with curiously serrated edges. From the more fertile parts large quantities of dates are grown and exported.

Arrived at the headquarters of the British political officer, Colonel Dew, the Khan flung himself on his mercy, and implored him (so I have been told) not to allow General Dyer to attack him, though I have never seen Colonel Dew since to obtain an authentic account of the interview.

But this was another potential enemy cleared from our path, at any rate for the moment, and this was all that mattered to us.

On, or about, the 15th of April we continued our march towards Galugan, and on the second day came in view of the Koh-i-Bazman, an extinct volcano. This is an imposing mountain of between ten and eleven thousand feet, covered with snow and rising, a sheer, solitary peak, out of the plain.

At one point on the march Idu asked me whether I would like to see a curious hole in the ground lying only a little way off our line of route.

We turned aside for a few hundred yards, and, on a plain as flat as a billiard-table, with a surface coated with hardened clay – obviously, at one time, the bed of a lake – we came upon it. The perfectly level, smooth lips of the hole offered no suggestion that it had been excavated by human agency. On the contrary, it gave the appearance of having been punched in the ground by some tremendous force. The hole was about one hundred and fifty feet long, one hundred and twenty feet wide, and about fifty feet deep, with absolutely perpendicular sides.

Idu asked whether I could suggest any explanation of this formation, and, after examination, I admitted I had none to offer, asking him in turn whether any tradition was attached to it.

He replied that the hole had once been only half its present size, but twice as deep, and that his grandfather remembered how and when the hole was made.

The old man had told him that, one night when he was a youth, something had exploded in the sky and fallen to the earth, punching a hole one hundred feet deep in the plain. Owing to weather and climatic conditions, the sides of this hole had gradually fallen in, hence its present width and shallowness.

There can, therefore, be little doubt that an enormous meteorite fell here, and that it lies buried at the bottom of this hole. Its locality is about seven hundred yards from a hill called Gwarko, and could easily be found by anyone interested in such phenomena.

This is not the only natural feature which would repay a visit from those interested in natural science, for, though I am no geologist or scientist myself, I was greatly interested in the numerous gorges in the vicinity of Kacha, a post in the hills near Robat, where, at certain seasons of the year, violent spates occur, and the rushing water has so burnished the sides of the rocks that they glisten in the sun like polished, variegated marble. The sections so made show a close mass of fossils, which, apparently, were once oysters, centipedes, crabs, etc.

CHAPTER VI

A FULL BAG OF PRISONERS

The march to Kacha – The food supply – Flowers in the Wilderness – Galugan – Repeated strategy – Juma Khan comes in – The bag is full – The throne of the dancing-maidens – Landon declines – Idu's doubts – Suspicions aroused – Halil Khan closes up – Kacha, oaths, and thumb-marks – The Chiefs depart – Bad news

The march from Khwash to Kacha was over constantly ascending ground, and the higher the altitude reached the more abundant did the vegetation become.

On the third day I noticed that a great many of the Raiders were carrying bunches of green stuff under their arms, plucked along the line of march, and I asked Idu what they were going to do with it.

He replied that they would eat it raw, and supplemented this information with the further news that, beyond a few dried dates, the surrendered Raiders had brought hardly any rations with them. Consequently, and very shortly, I should be called upon to feed them. This was an alarming prospect. We had left a generous supply of food behind for the garrison of Khwash, thus reducing our own rations to a bare sufficiency for the considerable distance to be covered.

I instructed Idu to ward off the evil day as long as possible, but told him that, in the last extremity, our food supplies would, of course, be fairly and evenly shared with the Sarhadis.

At this stage in the march we reached a height of some seven thousand feet, and I was struck with the beauty of the scene. Around us the slopes were covered with a profusion of flowers of every hue, forming, so it seemed, a vast, variegated carpet. Although I know nothing whatever of flowers from a botanical point of view the beauty of many of them struck me so much that, later in the year, I collected some of the seeds and preserved them carefully with the idea of home cultivation. These seeds remained with me in all my wanderings, but, unfortunately, on my journey home the pocket-book containing them was lost.

One plant in particular, the asefœtida (locally known as hing), is very striking, and most effective in the distance. The lower leaves are very big, and the plant throws up a tall, yellow shoot, two or three feet high, topped by a cluster of the most brilliant flowers of the same colour. This plant is much valued by the Baluchis, and I am told that large quantities are exported from this district to India.

We were lucky in finding cool camping places on the third and fourth nights of the march. On the fifth we commenced our last march on the plain to Galugan, the territory belonging to the Ismailzais under their leader, Juma Khan.

Galugan is like Kamalabad, a district only populated during certain seasons of the year, when the Ismailzais make a regular encampment there, live in jugis, and settle down for a time to the cultivation of their crops. The place is well watered, with a very fertile soil capable of bearing magnificent crops of wheat and barley.

As we approached the camping ground of Galugan our scouts came back to inform us that Juma Khan had deserted Galugan, and had gone, with all his tribe, into the high hills surrounding the place. He had heard of the defeat of Jiand at Koh-i-taftan, of his subsequent surrender, and of the capture of Khwash. He had also seen our forces approaching, and had no hope of success if he had remained to offer battle.

As a matter of fact we really did present quite an imposing appearance by this time. Our numbers had been augmented by small groups of Jiand's and Halil Khan's men who had joined us at intervals all along the route.

We accordingly marched, without any opposition, into Galugan, and found it, as reported, absolutely deserted, with the exception of one old woman who had utterly refused to desert her crops, and was eventually discovered hiding in a field.

As the threat of destruction to his crops had been so successful with Jiand we determined to try the same threat on Juma Khan. Accordingly, messengers were sent summoning him to surrender at once, with all his force, under a similar penalty. I told the messengers to impress upon him the fact that he and his tribe were now quite isolated, that the Gamshadzais and Yarmahommedzais had surrendered, but that they, and their leaders, had been well and generously treated, their lives and crops spared, and that the same generous treatment would be accorded to him if he delivered himself up without delay.

Very shortly he sent back a message to say that he realised he was in a hopeless position, and was quite prepared to surrender unconditionally. He also offered to restore all the plunder he had taken in the direction of Nasaratabad-sippi. But he asked for a definite guarantee that his life would be spared.

I sent back word that he need have no fear on that score. My mission was to make him see the error of his ways and to re-establish good relations between his tribe and the British; also, that he would be treated exactly as I had treated Jiand and Halil Khan.

That same evening he came into camp, with some thirty of his followers as a body-guard, and formally surrendered.

He was a somewhat different type from both Jiand and Halil Khan. Juma Khan was of medium height, and slightly built. He had a very pleasing, well-cut, high-bred face, always full of smiles and laughter, as though life were one huge joke.

Idu, who, as I have already said, knew all about the Sarhadi Chiefs and their characteristic points, said to me after I had interviewed Juma Khan, "If Juma Khan gives you his oath on the Koran he will keep it. He is well known throughout the Sarhad as a man who abides by his word. Any promise, therefore, that he makes to you he will faithfully keep."

I was especially glad that Juma Khan had come into line, and for a very good reason. The easiest route for German emissaries into Afghanistan lay through his territory. On all routes across Persia water-supply is one of the most vital considerations, the consequence being that many an otherwise convenient road had had to be abandoned owing to lack of water. Now the stream which runs from Galugan, piercing the hills and running into the Persian district of Narmashir, offers an excellent supply, so making this route an easy one for German agents – if not opposed by Juma Khan. But with Juma Khan on our side it would be practically impossible for such to get through the Sarhad. It was, therefore, my policy to treat him with special consideration. To be plain, I wished him, though an unwilling captive, to be a real convert to our interests.

All the Sarhadi Chiefs were now prisoners, but the problem arose as to the best and safest method of transporting them, and all their followers, back to Kacha, fully eighty miles distant. Our own food supplies were already running very short, yet I was obliged to promise the Raiders a fair and equal share of these. We were, therefore, immediately obliged to go on half rations.

To add to our troubles the weather was beginning to get very hot on these plains, and I well knew that, at any rate on some days – owing to water difficulties – it would be necessary to make long marches.

The first march out of Galugan proved to be heavy uphill work, our route lying up a steady, steep incline. But at night we found a suitable camping ground by the side of a stream. Here again the ground was covered by a mass of beautiful flowers. The following day we descended to the Duzd-ab plain, and had only crossed some five miles of it when a hill of such extraordinary appearance came into view that Landon and I simultaneously exclaimed. This looked for all the world like a huge mushroom with flattened dome and very thick stem – obviously a hill whose upper part was of a harder formation than the lower, thus resisting with better success the attacks of time and weather.

Idu cantered up on his pony and pointed to the hill with pride. "That, Sahib," he said, "is called the Takht-i-Jinikan" (throne of the dancing maidens).

"Why was it given that name?" I asked. "Do maidens live there alone?"

Idu grinned. "Listen, Sahib, and I will tell you the story of the Takht-i-Jinikan. On beautiful moonlight nights immortal maidens are supposed to dance on the flat top of this hill. If a young man is really very good he may climb to the top of the hill alone, while they are dancing, in the hope of obtaining a bride. But he must be very good to be sufficiently worthy to win the love of one of these immortal maidens. If he succeeds she becomes mortal, and they are married."