Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎38v] (77/312)

baud playing out the warriors to scrimmage rmdi
plunder to the tune of " Rule Britannia." The j
remarkable repertoire of the musicians provoked
inquiry, and it was then discovered that the I
leader of the band was a deserter from a native!
regiment at Peshawur, who had taken service
with the chief of Kuram, but who had forgotten
all his tunes except the two specified above, and
a few bars of " The girl I left behind me."
This was usually given at " tattoo."
From the fort the travellers advanced through
the valley, here from eighteen to twenty miles in
width, and crowded with orchards and cornfields,
j interspersed as usual with embattled villages,
I and, as nsual also, inhabited by lawless villains,
i In the extensire groves of mulberries here met
with silkworms are reared in such numbers
that the silk forms a staple of the local trade.
The next halt was at Habib Killa, picturesquely
situated at the foot of the Sita Ram peak of the
Sufaid Koh. Towards its base this superb
I mountain is densely covered with a growth of |
oak and olive, above which in a broad dark
cincture run belts of pine and cedar, while over
j all springs up the great snow-capped peak. The
i village is otherwise remarkable as containing a
large Hindu population, who engage in an ex-!
j tensive trade between the cities of India and
! Afghanistan. During the halt rumoiars got
afloat that the Jaji tribe had mustered in force
on the other side of the hill and meant mischief,
much to the delight of the Toris on thiis side,
who hoped that their hereditary foes might by
creating a disturbance incur official wrath, and
that they themselves might be able to step in,
after the chastisement of the authorities had
sufficiently weakened and cowed the Jajis, to
inflict private vengeance upon them. Such far-
seeing malignity would have been remsarkable
among other races, but the Jaji and Tori
nourish so deadly a hatred of each other that
no member of either tribe dares to cross the hill i
that separates them! The Mission, however,
apprehended no danger, and, marching through j
the splendid Alpine scenery, were concerned |
only with the beauty of the landscapei, when
suddenly the ominous yell of a pipe, followed by
the sounds of a drum—the war music of
the Jajis—burst upon their ears. Immediately
afterwards upon their sight burst a band of fifty
men, brandishing wildly the formidable Afghan
knives they carried and changing a war song. As
if to make a murderous attack upon the Mission,
they leapt forward to within a few yards, but
the escort dashed forward, interposing them
selves between the uplifted weapons, and the Jajis
quietly allowed the cavalcade to file by unmo- '
lested. The next instant two black bears,
startled from their lair by the noise, came
out upon the path, and one of the :
party fired. The bears were doomed
in any case, for the escort soon cut them down !
with their swords; but the shot, misconstrued by
the savage Jajis as a taunt, resulted in a camp
follower who had lagged behind being hacked to
pieces. Though the atrocious act was committed
in full sight of the baggage escort, punishment
was impossible, for the Jajis leapt away over
and among the rocks with the speed of monkeys,
and disappeared from sight as suddenly as they
had come. Another illustration of the excep
tional savagery of the tribe is afforded by the
nature of their huts. These are square struc
tures of stone and mud, erected on log plat
forms and profusely loopholed. The entrance is |
from beneath, by a trap-door and rope ladder, i
which is drawn up when the inmate is housed.
When neighbouring families are at feud, they :
keep such a vigilant eye on their "shooting
boxes " that not unfrequently they are shut up
mutually for weeks together.
Towards the Mission they continued obsti
nately hostile, and at Ali Khail a tragedy seemed
hourly imminent. The camp had been pitched
in the midst of a Jaji village, and all day long
knots of the wild-looking savages danced and
yelled round their tents and escort, in the
hope that the guards would be provoked into :
giving offence by the insults and taunts they
never ceased to pour out upon them. On every
eminence in the neighbourhood circles of J ajis
were revolving wildly to the music of the pipes
and drums, flourishing their knives and yelling in
encouragement or response to each other. In
the camp itself a more serious order of perform
ance obtained, for there the Jajis, armed to the
teeth, tramped in columns round and round the
tents, chanting a strange sonorous war song.
iNb breach of the peace occurred, however, and
next morning the Mission prepared to continue
its journey towards Rokian. All night ominous
drums had been sounding, and it now appeared
that they had been summoning the tribes to a
general muster, and not without success, for an
army of 5,000 J ajis, under the leadership of,
an Akundzada (" wiseborn," a term applied •
only to those most revered for piety
or learning), had assembled to dispute
the passage of the defiles. A council was held,
and it was decided to send for succour to the
Kuram Fort and to Cabul, but for the latter jour
ney no one would volunteer. The short cut to the
capital would have taken a swift horseman four
days, while the population was eminently I
dangerous, and the mountain passes, from the
heavy snow still lying, frequently impracticable,
j Negotiations were, therefore, opened, the Jajis
receiving all overtures with fierce yella and
frantic leapings, while a chosen body continued
to intone their abominably impressive war chant.
But eventually they calmed down. The spokes
man of the Mission appealed to the savage
maniacs' honour—their honour as Afghans,
their honour as Afghan gentlemen—and the
appeal was irresistible, for it is a re
markable psychological fact that these
people, hardly human, know no oath so potent
as that on their " honour." Fifty of them had
thought nothing a few days before of setting
upon a single unarmed and inoffensive load-
carrier, of their own creed and race, and hacking
him to pieces with their knives; but they let the
Mission pass unscathed upon the argument that
their " honour " required it. But though they
did not murder the travellers, they cursed them
as they defiled past, in a low, rolling murmur of
j imprecations. It was fortunate, perhaps, for
i them that they allowed honourable feelings to
triumph, for a m^e further on the Mission fell
in with an Afghan chief of Ghilzais, who bad at
his call ten thousand cut-throats as bad as the
Jajis, with whom they were, of course, at
deadly feud. How hard, then, it must have
seemed to the Jaji mind when, six weeks later,
a Cabul army suddenly descended upon them,
and, in punishment for their rude behaviour to
the friends of the Ameer, billeted itself upon the
villages of the honourable folk for three months,
made the " wiseborn " person collect three thou
sand rupees Indian silver coin also widely used in the Persian Gulf. as a fine, and carried away with it
back to Cabul all their mules and cattle, and
many of the Jaji youths and maidens. From
Rokian to Hazra, through a noble game country,
as the numerous horns of ibex and markhor tes
tified, and so on by the " Defile of the Thousand
Trees " to the outpost of Katta Sang, the boun
dary between the Jaji and Ghilzai territories.
■ From here to Hazra or Ucha Murgha, forage
and food were for the first time scarce, but the
horses ate freely the wild wormwood which was
growing in profusion on all sides, while an
orchid with thick fleshy leaves, that was found
in abundance among the wormwood, was
eagerly sought for by the escort and camp fol
lowers as forming a favourite dish. Here, too,
| they encountered a company of nomads so
simple in the world's ways that they refused
money in exchange for fodder.
And thus, making new experiences as they
went, the Mission passed on over " The
Camel's Neck" into the valley of Logaa,
where the stream sparkled with the bright
hues of the porphyry, hornblende, and syenite
that formed its bed, and the village of
Khushi, or " All Delights," lies embosomed in
green meadows and orchards. Thence to Hisa-
rak, along a plateau bright with wild flowers,
red and yellow tulips, and orchids of several
kinds ; and from there by a succession of corn I
crops and fruit groves for twenty miles—a dis
trict of extraordinary plenty and thickly popu
lated—to Tangi Wardak, and down through
the Tangi defile, to Haidar Khail—a village
notorious, even in Afghanistan, for the auda
city and skill of its robber folk. Next Swara,
where the jerboa, " the two-footed mouse"
of the Persians, was seen in abund
ance, but never caught; and then
by the gorge of " The Lion's Mouth," and past
the tomb of the Sultan Mahmud, to Ghuzni of
fame in history. The fortress which was blown
up by Lord Keane in 1842 had been rebuilt, a
formidable-looking place with a citadel at the
north angle in a commanding situation, and
containing some four thousand houses. From
Ghuzni the route lay across a dreary treeless
expanse of plain to Yarghatti, notable for the
number of the subterranean aqueducts by
| which the people irrigate their fields, and the
i number of bloody quarrels that arise on ques-