Under the absolute Amir

After spending a few days in the city of Kandahar the prince went out to a garden a few miles up the river to spend a couple of days in fishing. On the evening of our arrival the prince told his suite that the following day all must appear in Afghan costume, and that any one who came in English dress would be thrown into the adjoining river. The river was a shallow one, so it meant a ducking only. One of the men there suggested that I should be included, but was ruled out on the grounds that I wore the costume of my country. In order to afford amusement and please the prince, one or two men did go the next day in English dress, and were ducked, much to the merriment of all there.

About midday, the weather having cleared, the prince and the rest of us started up the river, walking along the banks, while horses were led by syces for fording branches of the river, or the river itself when required. Two fishermen, casting their circular nets as they went, waded up the river, the party on the banks keeping well behind them so as not to disturb the fish before the nets were thrown. The bed of the river was covered with shingle and stones, with boulders jutting out here and there, and the water did not seem to exceed more than four feet in depth at any place, and, being the time of low water, it was perfectly clear. There was a good catch of fish, which in appearance very much resembled trout, some of them being four to five pounds in weight, but the flavour of the fish had little to recommend it.

The circular nets used by the fishermen are similar to those used by natives in India. They are ten to fourteen feet in diameter, and weighted round the circumference at short intervals with leaden pellets, while between the pellets are pockets into which a fish swimming under the net in an endeavour to escape gets his head, and his body too if not a large one, and is so prevented from escaping. To the centre of the net a long cord is attached.

The method of using the net is this: the end of the cord is fastened round the right wrist by a slip knot and the rest of the cord gathered up in coils which are held in the right hand. The net is then held up by the cord so that it may hang in regular folds, and one half of these folds are arranged consecutively over the left arm and the rest over the right, both arms being held out to carry them, and care being taken to avoid one fold entangling with another. The hands grip the folds nearest them, and then, after one or two preliminary swings, the net is thrown forward, and outward, in such manner as to spread out and cover as large an area as the net is capable of before striking the water. On striking the water the weighted periphery sinks at once and encloses any fish within its area.

The principle of landing the fish netted may be explained by supposing a circular cloth with its circumference weighted at short intervals spread out on a table. If the centre of the cloth is taken and slowly lifted, the circumference of the cloth will drag in over the table towards the centre until it becomes massed together just before it is lifted clear. In the case of the net the weights round the circumference press against each other sufficiently to prevent fish falling through while it is lifted clear of the water on to the bank.

It is no easy matter to use this net without a good deal of practice, the gathering of the folds over the arms preliminary to throwing being particularly awkward, and seeming at first to require three hands at least. The Afghan fishermen are very expert in throwing it, and can make it assume circular, oblong, or triangular shapes, according to the requirements of the river or stream in which they are fishing and the rocks and other obstacles it is necessary the net should avoid when cast. But that is a refinement in throwing which requires some years’ experience.

In nets for catching large fish the weights are necessarily heavier than those intended for small ones, but a couple of hours’ fishing with a light net will be found sufficient exercise for one day for those not accustomed to them. Those who find it necessary to fish for the sake of the catch and not for sport will find these nets useful.

The prince, after spending a couple of days in the garden, returned to the city, but not liking the house he had occupied there he went the next day to stop at the Munzil Bagh, a new palace the Amir had built a year or so before just outside the city walls. I was given a tent pitched in the adjoining garden, because the rooms of the place were large and few, and sufficient only for the accommodation of the Shahzada and his personal attendants.

While here, I fell ill with fever and dysentery, and having no English medicines with me I might have fared rather badly. The prince, however, on hearing that I was ill, sent his own hakeem, or doctor, to attend me, and this man did his best, and gave me every attention. I was not quite as grateful at the time as I ought to have been, for three times a day he brought me medicine in a two-pint glass filled to the brim with some bitter concoction and sat there while I drank it, and as part of his treatment was also to starve me until the disease passed, I felt in rather a hurry to get better. Towards the end of my illness, however, I persuaded him to send the medicine to me and not to put himself to the trouble of bringing it, and then I found a convenient crack in the dry earth under my bed which absorbed the bulk of the liquid better than I could, and I am inclined to think that taking medicine in the Afghan manner is more or less an acquired habit. When I was convalescent, this hakeem selected all food that was to be cooked for me, and did so in such generous quantities that, after my enforced fast, I was in danger of getting ill in other ways. I really ought to have been more grateful, for he was very conscientious, and liberal too, and took the greatest interest in my case.

When I was well again I rode about the country around a good deal and found plenty of partridge and quail shooting, and I heard that deer could be got further away; but as it involved the trouble of camping out for a night or two I did not think it worth while to try my luck, and camping out with a small escort was hardly advisable.

One day I came across an abandoned gold mine, which I had previously heard the people speak of as yielding large quantities of gold in its time. A huge hole had been blasted out of the mountain-side, and heaps of débris were scattered about, in some parts entirely filling up previous excavations. The quartz veins had been mined in all directions, but the gold had evidently been in a “pocket,” and there was nothing further to be had. I had a great desire for an opportunity of thoroughly trying the place myself, and while I pottered about the sowar escort with me broke up lumps of quartz to see what they might find. Gold exercises a fascination over most people.

A sowar escort of seven men, with their duffedar (sergeant), had been appointed to attend me wherever I went from the day I crossed the frontier, and, as the penalty, should a fanatic attack and kill me, was death to themselves, they kept very close to me and left nothing whatever to chance.

The prince spent about a month in Kandahar and was getting rather gloomy at the thought of being kept there for the winter, for it was getting on towards the end of November, when one evening I went to pay my compliments, or salaam him, as they call it, and met him coming into the durbar room as I got there. I saw that he was very pleased and excited, and he called out, “How do you do?” (almost all the English he knew) when he saw me, and shook hands, which was a thing he seldom did, and then told me that the Amir’s firman had been received, and he was to go on at once to Kabul. I made a remark about it being rather cold weather for travelling, and he assured me pleasantly that on the march it would be twenty times colder than in Kandahar. As the water in my tent froze every night I saw nothing to congratulate myself upon; however, the prospect of being on the move again was exhilarating.

That evening the prince had some musicians brought in. They played upon instruments made of some sort of cane or bamboo, which rather resemble the flute, and although Afghan music is not usually soothing to the Western ear, I found the music these men played rather pleasant and lively. The instruments they used are peculiar to Kandahar, I was told, and the prince wanted one of the men to accompany him to Kabul; but the man was not attracted by the idea, and managed to evade the invitation.

The Shahzada left Kandahar the following week, the intervening time being taken up in preparations for the journey, although such preparation might easily have been completed in half the time; but it is not the habit of the people to rush things. Their custom is, instead, to put off all they can until to-morrow, or the day after, that for preference. The first day’s camp was only twelve miles or so out of Kandahar, for it is customary always to make the first day’s march a short one, in order to prepare the horses and pack animals for the ensuing journey, and it affords a means of testing the arrangements of the march generally.

The route to Kabul lay through Khilat, Mukur, and Ghazni. The road as far as Khilat, which took four days’ journey, runs in a north-easterly direction, and mostly alongside the river, which flows down towards Kandahar from the mountains beyond. The track rises gradually over a rather flat country, but there are mountain ranges at a little distance on both sides. Beyond that to Mukur, another four days’ journey, the road skirts the foot of some mountain ranges, and forms a fair road for travelling without any difficult passes to get over.

From Mukur to Ghazni it runs over a high table-land, with mountain ranges on either side, which, running in the same direction, give it the appearance of an immense roadway. It took four days to cross this and get to Ghazni, and it was by far the coldest part of the journey, for the wind was icy, and its keenness such that it pierced the thickest clothing I had. Although the sun was bright during the day it had no warmth, and the surrounding mountains were covered with snow, but it was not until the day before we reached Ghazni that snow fell, and made sleeping under canvas more unpleasant than it had been. It came on at night, and when I awoke in the morning I found it covering the boxes in my tent and my bed too, for the wind had blown the flap of the tent open and allowed the snow to drift in. It was chilly dressing before the sun was up, and as my clothes, which I had thrown over a chair, were also covered with snow, I had to get dry ones out of my boxes, the while being lightly clad in a night-suit and slippers.

That day’s march to Ghazni was a trying one. Before this the days had been bright and the air dry, but the moisture given out by the snow made the wind still more biting, and we had to dismount occasionally to bring some feeling into hands and feet, and to rub noses and ears to prevent frostbite. Many of the Afghans wore hoods shaped like Balaklava caps which left only the eyes exposed, and I thought them a very sensible protection against such severe weather, and wished I had one.

The snow made the ground very slippery, and many horses fell. The camels were worse off in that respect than the horses, for their broad flat feet, which slide in all directions on a wet road, are ill-adapted for travelling over snow, and, being also heavily laden, they sooner or later came down, some of them breaking their legs and having to be killed. As, however, camel flesh is an article of diet they were not a literal dead loss to their owners.

Outside Ghazni the Shahzada was met by the officers and officials there, who brought him presents of cloth, horses, and money, and when the city was reached the royal salute was fired by the artillery, which, with several horse regiments, was drawn up to receive him. He afterwards went into the city, where he held durbar for a couple of hours before coming on to the camp, which was pitched outside the walls.

Ghazni is situated in a small valley almost surrounded with low hills. It is a very small place, and is enclosed by a high wall, as all towns and villages in Afghanistan are. It has nothing about it to show that it was once the royal city and the home of emperors. There are no fine buildings, and its streets are very narrow and dirty, and the bazars far from good. It boasts a bala-hisar (high fort) which commands the surrounding land, but which itself could be commanded from the neighbouring heights with the guns of the present day.

Up to Ghazni the march was forced in order to get over the worst part of the journey before the middle of December, when the heavy falls of snow usually commence, for the table-land which has to be crossed before reaching Ghazni is well known to those who travel that way, and many have been overtaken by snow and perished there. Consequently each day’s march was a fairly long one, and one day was close on forty miles, which for a Shahzada is looked upon as a good distance. I had been unused to riding for some months before, and at first was rather saddle-sore, but soon got hardened.

On some of the longer marches the prince rode most of the distance on camels, and on those occasions I went on ahead to escape the dust and discomfort of the extra pace, for a riding camel’s trot is very trying to keep up with on horseback. Being ahead, I was able to trot or canter over the best bits of road and walk the others, but the disadvantage of forcing the pace lay in having to wait three or four hours after reaching camp for the baggage animals to come in with tents and servants, and then another hour or so for food to be prepared. Usually, I got my lunch any time between four and nine o’clock in the evening, and I found that waiting about in a bitter wind for several hours without tent or food was very cold work, particularly when tired after a long ride. While riding, my feet were generally so numbed with cold that they had no feeling, and in camp in the evenings the coldness increased to such an extent that water thrown on the ground froze immediately, and my khansaman showed me that knives dipped in water came out with a thin film of ice on them, so that after nightfall when the wind was at its bitterest, as the temperature fell lower and lower, one was glad to get into bed as soon as possible to get warm.

One evening I had a hole dug in the floor of the tent and a fire made in it, but in less than two minutes I was outside, coughing, while my eyes were streaming, and I had to wait outside in the cold for some time until the wind had cleared the tent of smoke. After that I got a munkal, or iron dish that stands on four legs, and had a fire made in that outside the tent, and when the wood had burnt away until nothing but glowing cinders were left, I had it brought inside, and found that it made the place more comfortable. Before going to sleep, when nothing but hot ashes were left in the munkal, I used to put it under the bed, and found a material increase in warmth there, for I had no mattress, and slept on rezais (quilted coverlets), which were not altogether impervious to the icy wind which came in under the walls of the tent and played under the bed.

We passed several villages on the way, some perched halfway up a mountain and some in the valley below, but all surrounded by high walls for protection. Gardens and cultivated land lay outside the villages, and as we rode past, some of the big Afghan dogs, which rather resemble a St. Bernard, would come tearing out, barking, and looking savage enough and big enough to eat one. They are fierce brutes, and often try to pull a passing traveller out of the saddle; but they need be big and savage, for they are used principally as sheepdogs, and on occasion have to attack and kill wolves.

The people in the country are mostly robbers, and in the days before Amir Abdur Rahman took the country in hand, travellers fared badly, unless they kept together in bands of thirty or more, for even poor men travelling alone have been known to be killed for the sake of the clothes they wore.

There are many stories told of the treatment offered travellers by villagers in outlying districts, and one case was that of a poor man who was going along carrying a sack on his shoulders, and was seen by one of these robbers, who, thinking that the sack must contain something valuable, waited behind a rock until the man got within range, and then fired and killed him; but on the robber going over to his victim, and opening the bag, he found in it nothing but dried dung (used as fuel by the poor classes), whereupon, bewailing the waste of his cartridge, he kicked the body and strode off. I was told of another case where thirteen men who were travelling during the winter were stopped and robbed of all they possessed, the villagers even stripping them of the clothes they had on, and leaving them to perish in the cold.

The Amir’s method of putting this sort of robbery and murder down was simple and effective. If a man was robbed or killed, all villages within a radius of about ten miles of the place where the crime was perpetrated were fined from twenty to fifty thousand rupees, and if the people failed to pay up promptly, two or three regiments of soldiers were sent and quartered on them until payment was effected. When an Afghan soldier is quartered on any one, he takes the best of everything in the house, the best bed, best room, and best food, and if there are no fowl or sheep the man of the house must procure them at once, even if he has to sell all he has to get them. If he does not do this, then the butt end of a rifle is applied to the small of his back, or even worse befalls. The villager has no redress, because it is a Government soldier doing his duty. In this way the Government fines are paid in as quickly as possible, for each day’s delay means a great loss to each house in the village.

The effect of the Amir’s policy was to make each villager chary of allowing his neighbour to molest a traveller, as all suffered alike for the crime of one, and at the time I passed over the road, a single traveller might go all the way from Kandahar to Kabul without being unduly troubled. That is, provided he was not a foreigner, and Persians and Hindustanis come under that category, for such have no friends to make complaints to the Government and cause bothersome inquiries, and are, therefore, looked upon as fair sport.

The road from Khilat is fairly level until it nears Ghazni, when it falls down towards it, and then beyond Ghazni it rises again over the Darwaza Ghazni pass, and beyond that falls again towards Kabul.

Between Ghazni and Kabul, the country, being at a much lower altitude than that already passed over, the weather was much milder; but there was snow on the hills around, and the temperature at night was below freezing-point. We were five days travelling over this part of the road, and the country passed through was rather hilly; but it was well cultivated in the valleys, and there were many small villages about.

The road from Chaman to Kandahar, and thence to Kabul, could readily be made fit for wheeled traffic, and would offer no difficulties to the construction of a railway, and the fact that the two heavy siege guns, presented to the Amir by the Indian Government, were taken that way and drawn by traction engines shows sufficiently the ease with which a good road might be made.

When we arrived at Kila Durani we were only ten or twelve miles from Kabul as the crow flies, but had to go on round by the pass some twenty miles farther on. Close by this village we passed over one of the English battlefields with mounds of stones piled up over those who had fallen. Seated on one of these mounds of stones I noticed a very old man rocking his body backwards and forwards and muttering to himself, and when I had gone on a little distance I heard one of the soldiers behind shout, and turning round saw this old man following me with a huge stone, which he could hardly carry. The sowars with me laughingly told him that the Amir Sahib would imprison him if he tried to kill me; but the old man said that the English had killed his son and he would kill an Englishman in return. It was more pathetic than laughable to see this poor old man gone mad through losing his son some years before, and carrying a stone he was unable to throw to take vengeance. It, however, typifies the character of the people.

When we reached Kila Kazee, which is about eight miles from Kabul, we had to camp there for three days so that the prince might ride into Kabul on the Sunday following, that being an auspicious day according to the astrologers, who are always consulted on these matters.

The day we got into camp Sirdar Habibullah Khan (the present Amir) rode out to see his brother, and spent the night with him, returning to Kabul the following day. Sirdar Mahomed Omar also came to see him, and as he is the son of the Queen-Sultana, and was about ten years old at the time, the prince ordered a display of fireworks that night in order to please him. Sirdar is the title, equivalent to prince, conferred on the Amir’s sons only, although the people use it when addressing other members of the royal family, as a term of respect.

On the Sunday the prince and his suite rode into Kabul, dressed in the best they had for the occasion, and all cheerful at the thought of being home at last. About halfway a large shamiana was erected, and here the Shahzada’s son, a little child of two years, together with the sons of Sirdar Habibullah Khan, were waiting to meet him. The prince seemed a good deal affected on seeing his child, which rather surprised me, as I had always thought him very unemotional. We spent an hour or so sitting under the shamiana while tea and refreshments were served, and then rode on.

Outside the city of Kabul, on an open space close to the workshops, several regiments and two or three batteries of artillery were drawn up, and in front of the troops was Sirdar Habibullah, together with the General commanding the Kabul troops, and other officers, who were waiting to receive the prince and accompany him to the Salaam khana. On the Shahzada’s approach the guns fired the royal salute, and then, when the different officers had come up and saluted the prince, they all rode on together towards the city. Thousands of people lined the roads to watch the tamasha, and soldiers were stationed at intervals to keep the people back and leave a clear road for the princes and others to pass.

The Amir was holding a public durbar to receive his son, safely returned after travelling so far, and on arrival the prince dismounted at the gate and walked through the gardens to the Salaam khan, where, having been announced to the Amir, he walked up the durbar hall and, kneeling, took his father’s hand in both his and, placing it on each eye in turn, kissed it, while invoking blessings and giving the usual salutations. The Amir, raising the prince, told him to be seated, and then for the rest of the day there were rejoicings, and all officials and officers came in turn to the durbar to salaam the Amir and give thanks for the safe return of his son.