Chapter I. We passed through the wire entanglement, and spent the heat

of the day talking to the native officer and soldiers in charge. In the afternoon we set out again, and marched along the bed of the Kurram River, which we had to ford six times, so that before we reached our night camp it had become quite dark. Taking advantage of the dark, some light-fingered Wazir thieves managed to steal the tent carpet off the back of a camel without our catching sight of them. Our camp was in a Wazir village, built on a cliff overhanging the river. The people were rather excited, as another Wazir clan had been up during the day and made off with twenty head of cattle. However, there were some old patients among the people, so we got a hearty welcome. They made us some tea, and set some of their number to watch round our beds with their Martini-Henrys ready loaded in case enemies should come during the night. The Mullah of the place came and had a talk with us, and then we were soon all fast asleep.

Next morning we were up betimes, and I found my bed surrounded by a number of women with squalling babies. One mother wanted me to see her baby's eyes, another the stomach of hers, another the ears; in fact, all the babies seemed to have made common cause to delay my departure as long as possible. However, after doling out various lotions and pills, and giving the mothers many instructions, which, I fear, were only heard to be forgotten, we managed to get the camels loaded and started. Now, however, a new difficulty confronted us. During the night there must have been heavy rain higher up the valley, for the river was in flood and unfordable. I knew by experience how strong yet deceptive the currents of the river are when it is in flood, for a few weeks before I had been out on a bathing excursion with some of our schoolboys in another part of the same river. I had dived into a deep pool, when I found myself in a return current, which was carrying me back under a small waterfall, where the water was sweeping over an obstruction like a mill-race, with a fall of about four feet. As soon as I got to the fall I went down, down, down, till I thought I was never coming up again. However, I did come up, only, however, to be pulled back at once under the waterfall and down into the depths again. The third time I came up I got a momentary glimpse of two of the boys trying to throw me the end of a pagari. They were, however, much too far away for me to reach it, and I was pulled under again before I had time to get even one good breath. As I went down I wondered if I should ever see the boys again, and how many times I should come up before it was all over. Then all at once it struck me that I was very foolish trying to get out at the surface, where the current was beyond my strength, and I must change my tactics; so I turned over and dived down till I felt the boulders at the bottom, and then crept along the bottom with the aid of the current--which there, of course, was flowing downstream--as long as I could. When I could do so no more, and had to strike upwards, I found, to my delight and thankfulness, that I was out of the eddy and going downstream. So it was clearly impossible to keep along the river, even if we had not had laden animals with us. We were obliged, therefore, to make a long détour through the hills, which took us nearly all day. So rough and precipitous was the path that we had the greatest difficulty in getting the camels along, and had several times to unload them in order to get them over bad places.

During the afternoon we saw a party of fifteen or sixteen armed Wazirs hastening towards us. At first we thought they were coming to loot us, and one of the Wazirs with us told us to stop, while he went forward and called out, "Are you friends or enemies?" When they replied "Friends" he went up to them, and then called us on to join him, when I found that they were a party of outlaws who had fallen foul of the Government, and, therefore, had made their escape across the frontier. They got me to sit down with them in the shade of a rock and write down a list of their grievances for them, so that they might propitiate the Political Officer and obtain permission to return to British India. I was very happy to render them this service, and we parted good friends. I noticed, however, that the Wazirs with us seemed uncomfortable, and kept their rifles ready cocked till they had disappeared behind a turn in the defile. I make it a principle never to carry any arms myself, and think I am much safer on that account, but the villagers who accompany me always go well armed; in fact, across the border few Afghans can go out of their houses without their rifles on their shoulders ready for use, so terribly prevalent are the blood-feuds and village quarrels. We spent that night in a Wazir village, where we saw a number of patients and made fresh friends. The head man of the village apologized next morning for not accompanying us more than half a mile. He said that he had blood-feuds with most of the villages round, and could not, therefore, venture farther. The fame of the Bannu Mission Hospital, however, was our best escort, and passport too, and we got a welcome at almost every village we passed, through the mediation of numerous old patients, who had recounted in all the villages the kind treatment they had received at the hands of the feringis (Europeans) in Bannu.

Progress was somewhat delayed by frequent calls to visit a sick person in one or another village, but openings for the Gospel were at the same time secured, and the lessons of the parable of the Good Samaritan imparted. By midday we reached Thal, which was for some days to be our field hospital. Here we pitched our tents, under the shade of some willows, by a small stream outside the town, and early the next morning started work. A large crowd of sick and their friends had collected from Thal itself and the villages round. I first read a passage out of the Pashtu Testament, and explained it to them in that language. The Gospel address over, I wrote out prescriptions for each one in order, which my assistant dispensed to them. After a minor operation or two, a fresh crowd had collected, another address was given, and they, too, were seen and attended to. In this way five lots of patients were treated, and about 200 or 300 people heard the Gospel story in their own language. Then, as evening was drawing on, we shut up our books and our boxes, washed off the dust of the day's work in the brook hard by, and proceeded to interest ourselves in the operations which the cook was conducting over an improvised fireplace, made of a couple of bricks placed on either side of a small hole in the ground. Dinner over, we had family prayers, and then fell soundly asleep.

An interesting town where we have sometimes stopped in our itinerations is that of Kalabagh. It is situated on the right bank of the River Indus where it finally breaks forth from the rocky gorge that has hemmed it in with high, often precipitous, sides, which rise at Dimdot to a sheer height of four hundred feet above the surging river, on to the boundless alluvial plain of the Panjab. In some of the bends between Attock and Kalabagh, it rushes at a great speed over rapids, where the boatmen warily guide their heavy river boats, lest they be drawn into some whirlpool, or dashed against the precipitous sides; at others there are deep, silent reaches where the bottom is two hundred feet from the surface. During the hot weather, when the river is in flood, it is an exciting experience to be ferried across its dark grey surging stream. At Kalabagh there are extensive quarries of salt of a beautiful pink and white colour and great purity; these bring in a considerable revenue to the Government. The town itself is built on the side of a hill of red salt marl, some of the houses being quarried out of the salt itself, so that the owner has only to chip off a bit of his own wall in order to season his cooking-pot. It is a standing grievance with the inhabitants that their own walls are Government contraband, and they are subject to a fine if they sell a brick from their wall without paying duty on it. The streets are narrow and winding, and being, many of them, roofed and even built over, are very dark, and in the hot summer nights insufferably close and hot, and at all times distinctly insanitary and malodorous.

The people are pale and anæmic, and nearly all suffer from goitre in a greater or less degree. They form a great contrast to the hardy mountaineers of the Bangi Khel Khattak tribe on the hills behind them. These form one of the great recruiting grounds of the Pathan regiments of the frontier, while from Kalabagh itself it would be hard to find a score of men who could pass the recruiting officer. In the sultry summer weather the inhabitants spend the day under a number of large banyan-trees (Ficus Indica) which are scattered along the edge of the river. Here, too, the civil officers of the district hold their courts, and I was encamped under a spacious banyan. Its spreading branches not only sheltered me and all the sick and visitors who thronged around me, but also the Deputy Commissioner of the district and his court, together with the crowd of suitors and applicants that always followed in his train; and the District Judge, with his court, and a crowd of litigants, pleaders and witnesses--and this all without incommoding one another.

The land away from the river is pulsating with the fervid heat of the summer sun, and the town itself is like an oven; but there is nearly always a cool breeze blowing on the bank of the river, and, when heated and dusty with the day's work, one can throw off one's clothes and cool oneself with a swim in the river, where the young men of the place are disporting themselves all their leisure time. They use the inflated skin of a goat or of a cow, and, supporting themselves on this, can rest on the deep, cool bosom of the river as long as they like without fatigue. The river is too rapid for them to travel upstream, but when business takes them downstream, they simply fasten their clothes in a bundle on their heads, lie across their inflated skin, and quietly drift downstream at about four miles an hour as far as they desire. On returning, they simply deflate their skin, and sling it over their shoulders.

We were usually thronged with patients here from morning to evening, and I have seen as many as three hundred in one day, the work including a number of operations. One day a noted Muhammadan Sheikh visited the place. He was a convert from Hinduism, and was travelling about the country preaching Islam and decrying the Christian and Hindu religions. He sent us a challenge to meet him in a public discussion on the respective merits of the Cross and the Crescent. I was reluctant, as such discussions are seldom conducted fairly or sincerely; but, finding my reluctance was being misunderstood, I consented, and we met one evening, a Muhammadan gentleman of the place being appointed chairman. It was arranged that we were each in turn to ask a question, which the other was to answer. He was given the first question, and asked how it was that we had not miraculous powers, seeing that the Bible said that those who believed in Christ should be able to take poison or be bitten of snakes without suffering injury. The catechist with me gave so lucid and categorical a reply that the Muhammadan disputant and chairman changed their tone, and said that, as the time was getting late, it would be better to postpone my question till another time. Needless to say, that more convenient time never came, and we were not again challenged to a discussion at Kalabagh, and the Sheikh left for fresh pastures a few days later.