Part 19

Next day, having crossed the Attock or Kabul river, they arrived at Akora, where Forster entered a spacious cool mosque to escape the intense heat of the sun, spread his bed, and laid himself down quite at his ease. Here he remained until the time of evening prayer, when he was summoned by the moollah, or priest, to prepare himself for the ceremony. Persons who adopt a fictitious character commonly overact their part, and thus frequently render themselves liable to suspicion; but Forster’s error lay on the other side, which was perhaps the safer; for, although it drew upon him the charge of negligence, it by no means disposed his associates to regard him as an infidel, their own practice too generally corresponding with his own. In the present case, upon his excusing himself from performing the accustomed prayer on account of the debilitated state of his body, the moollah replied, with extreme contempt, that it was the more necessary to pray, in order to obtain better health. The honest Mohammedan, however, like the priests of Æsculapius in Aristophanes, used, it seems, to make the tour of the mosque at midnight, and compel his miserly brethren to perform an act of charity in their sleep, by disposing of a part of their substance for the benefit of the establishment. From our traveller the contribution attempted to be levied was his turban; but happening unluckily to be awake, he caught the holy marauder by the arm, and demanded who was there. The poor man, utterly disconcerted at this unseasonable wakefulness, replied, in a faltering voice, that he was the moollah of the mosque,—the same man, apparently, who had so rudely reprehended the stranger for his neglect of prayer.

On the morrow a body of Afghan cavalry encamped in the environs of Akora. This event spread no less terror and consternation through the country than if a hostile army had suddenly made an incursion into it; for the licentious soldiery, devouring and destroying like a swarm of locusts wherever they appeared, conducted themselves with insufferable insolence towards the inhabitants. It must be observed, however, in mitigation of the enormity of their transactions, that they are in a measure compelled to subsist themselves and their horses in this manner; for their ignorant and unreflecting sovereign, in need of their service, but unwilling to reward them, suffers them in peaceful times to be reduced to such distress, that they are frequently constrained to sell their horses, arms, and even apparel, to purchase a morsel of bread.

In three days from this they arrived at Peshawer, a large, populous, and opulent city, founded by the great Akbar. Of all the places visited by our traveller in Northern India, none appeared to suffer so intense a heat as this city; but by skirting round the northern limits of the Punjâb he avoided Lahore, where he would probably have found an atmosphere equally heated with that of Peshawer. Other cities, he observes, may be afflicted with a too-great warmth; hot winds blowing over tracts of sand may drive their inhabitants under the shelter of a wetted screen; but here the air, during the middle of summer, becomes almost inflammable. Yet, notwithstanding this burning atmosphere, the inhabitants enjoy exceedingly good health, and are but little liable to epidemical disorders. This fact may easily be accounted for. The air of Peshawer, like that of the deserts of Arabia, in which the finest Damascus blades may be exposed all night without contracting the slightest rust, is extremely dry; and it would appear that heat, however intense, is not, when free from humidity, at all subversive of health. Another circumstance greatly tended to increase the salubrity of this city; provisions were excellent and abundant, especially the mutton, the flesh of the large-tailed sheep, said to have been first discovered in South America.

There being no caravansary at Peshawer, Forster took up his residence in an old mosque, where he continued several days, melting in perpetual perspiration. While at Kashmere he had converted a part of his property into a bill of five hundred rupees on Kabul, which, in order to secure it from rain and other accidents, he enclosed in a canvass belt which he wore as a girdle. On examining the condition of this bill some days after his arrival in this city, he found that the writing had been so entirely obliterated by perspiration that no one could read, or even conjecture its subject, as from beginning to end it was literally black. The discovery much disquieted his mind, as he began to be apprehensive he might be reduced to want money on his journey. But his temperament was sanguine; and in order to afford melancholy as slender an opening as possible, he flew into society and laughed away his cares.

Still, the apprehension of a diminution in his finances rendered him anxious to proceed; and meeting with a man with whom he had travelled during the early part of his journey, it was agreed they should move on together, unite their means, and protect each other. On inquiring into the state of his companion’s finances, it appeared that he possessed in cash one rupee, on which himself, a boy, and a horse were to be subsisted until his arrival at Kabul, a journey of twelve or fourteen days. As it seemed clear that when this extraordinary fund should be expended the Mohammedan would apply to Forster, the latter, aware of the inconvenience and danger to which a disclosure of the real amount of his property might expose him, pretended to be but little richer, and producing three rupees, the whole was considered common stock; and his companion, with a face brightened by faith and zeal, exhorted him to be of good cheer, for that true believers were never deserted in the hour of need.

In company with this cheerful Islamite he departed from Peshawer, and, uniting themselves to a kafilah proceeding in the same direction, they pushed forward towards the west. During the second day’s march he discovered that rashness is not always a mark of valour; for, advancing before the kafilah with about thirty horsemen, who all appeared by their whiskers to be men of desperate courage, they were met and plundered by a small body of Afghans, who seemed no way disturbed when the larger body of the kafilah appeared in sight, but slowly retreated with their booty.

During this part of the journey it was for many reasons judged expedient by the leaders of the kafilah to travel by night. But if they by this means diminished the danger of falling a prey to the plundering Afghans, they found in return that they had other perils to encounter; for, boisterous weather having come on, and the rain descending in torrents, every hollow of the mountains became the bed of a torrent, which, rushing down impetuously through its steep channel, rolled along stones of a vast size with a noise which, in the stillness of night, resembled thunder. The sky, meanwhile, was overcast with black clouds; and the roaring of the torrents heard on all sides created in the mind of the traveller a certain horror mingled with awe, and disposed him involuntarily to consider this grand scene of nature with sentiments of profound reverence.

On approaching one of these mountain streams, which had been greatly swelled by the recent rains, the commander of the kafilah escort, who was accompanied by one of his favourite women, placed her on a powerful horse, and, that she might not be incommoded by the crowd, attempted to convey her over first; but she had no sooner entered the water than she was carried off among the black whirling eddies of the current, and drowned. The Mohammedan, thus suddenly deprived of his mistress, at once forgot all thoughts of resignation to the decrees of fate, and, throwing himself upon the ground in the bitterness of his affliction, lamented his loss like a giaour. This melancholy event occasioned the immediate halt of the whole kafilah, the tragical fate of the lady having impressed their minds with a salutary terror. Next morning, on searching along the margin of the torrent, the body was found covered with mud, and was interred upon the spot with such ceremonies as time and place permitted. The kafilah then crossed the stream, and continued its march.

The road now lay through a black and desolate track, scooped into hollows by torrents, or yawning with natural chasms. It next entered a wide plain well watered and interspersed with walled villages, in the midst of which stands Kabul, the capital of the Afghan empire, where they arrived safely on the evening of the 2d of August. Here Forster took up his abode with a Georgian named Bagdasir, to whom he had brought a letter of introduction from his countryman in Kashmere. To this man, as to the person most likely to render him aid in such an affair, he showed his bill for five hundred rupees; but when it was found that not one single letter in it was legible, the man shook his head, as well he might, and predicted that no one would be found to discount it. However, after application had in vain been made in every other quarter, Bagdasir himself purchased the bill for half its real amount, which, its extraordinary condition being considered, was fully as much as it was worth.

Not many days after his arrival at Kabul our traveller was seized by a malignant fever, which for several days menaced him with a much longer journey than the one he had undertaken. Hot and cold fits succeeded each other with singular violence; he was tormented by insatiable thirst, and, as he endeavoured to quench this by the constant drinking of cold water, a most profuse perspiration was maintained, which probably saved his life. His whole body was covered with spots of a very bright colour, shaded between purple and crimson, which he should have beheld, he says, with pleasure, supposing that such an eruption would diminish the force of the disease, but that some of his neighbours regarded them as signs of the plague. This created a general alarm, and they were about to exclude him from their quarter, when he confidently asserted that the fever of the plague always produced its crisis in three days, whereas his had now continued seven; which, together with the conduct of Bagdasir, who never deserted him, somewhat assuaged their terrors, and induced them to suffer his presence. His disorder continued three weeks, and at length, when it disappeared, left him so weak that he could with difficulty crawl about the streets.

The religious toleration which prevailed at Kabul, where Turk, Jew, and Christian lived equally unmolested, induced him in an evil hour to throw off his Mohammedan disguise and profess himself a Christian; not considering, that however tolerant the Afghans of this capital might be, the remainder of his road, until he should reach the Caspian, lay among bigots of the most desperate stamp, who regarded the professors of all heterodox religions with abhorrence, and reckoned it a merit to revile and persecute them.

Having remained a full month at Kabul, he hired one side of a camel, on which a pannier was suspended for his accommodation, and on the 1st of September joined a party proceeding to Kandahar. The mode of travelling which he had now adopted is peculiar to that part of the world, and deserves to be particularly described. The camel appropriated to the service of passengers, he observes, carries two persons, who are lodged in a kind of pannier laid loosely on the back of the animal. The pannier, in Persian _kidjahwah_, is a wooden frame, with the sides and bottom of netted cords, of about three feet long and two broad. The depth likewise is generally about two feet. The provisions of the passengers are conveyed in the kidjahwah, and, the journey being commonly performed in the night, this swinging nest becomes his only place of rest; for on the kafilah’s arrival at its station he must immediately exert himself in procuring provisions, water, and fuel, as well as in keeping an eye over his property.

Forster soon found reason to regret his ill-timed abjuration of the prophet. The camel upon which he was stowed like a bale of merchandise was the worst conditioned of the whole drove; and to comfort him during his ride, a shrill-tongued old woman and a crying child took up their quarters in the opposite pannier, and contrived, the one by shrieking, the other by scolding, effectually to chase away his dreams. An old Afghan lady, with a very handsome daughter and two grandchildren, occupied the panniers of another camel. The rest were loaded with merchandise. This old dame soon began a contest with Dowran, the conductor of the kafilah, respecting the mode in which the movements of the caravan should be regulated; and after some desperate skirmishes, in which the force of her lungs and the piercing shrillness of her voice stood her in good stead, victory declared on her side, and the party fell under petticoat government.

Being now a declared infidel, and regarded by every person as an unclean beast, whom it would be pollution to touch, and worse than adultery to oblige by any kind offices, our traveller enjoyed many of the preliminaries of martyrdom, was hourly abused, laughed at, mocked, and derided; and still further to enhance the contempt which every person already entertained for him, Dowran maliciously insinuated that he was not even a Christian, but a Jew. When the party arrived at their halting-place no one could be tempted to assist him, not even for money; imagining, I presume, that the gold which had lurked beneath his “Jewish gaberdine,” like that derived by Vespasian from a tax on urinaries, which his son Titus jocosely smelled in order to discover its scent, must be accompanied by an unsavoury odour, which might cleave to a true believer, and exclude him after death from the arms of the houries. He was therefore daily compelled to go himself in search of water and dried camels’ dung to boil his tea-kettle, and, what was much worse, to endure the smoke which it emitted when first lighted, which entered his eyes, and made him think that some Mohammedan devil had transformed himself into smoke for the purpose of tormenting him.

In the midst of this _gehannum_, which gave him the more pain from its being of his own creating, he received some consolation from the protection of the Afghan lady, whose good-will he had won by fondling the children and giving them sugar. Thus fortified, he began by degrees to laugh at Dowran’s beard; and if he did not return him the compliment of being of the race of Abraham, it was more from want of reflection than from apprehension of danger.

On the 26th of September they arrived at Ghizni, the residence of the munificent and magnanimous Mahmood, the patron of Firdoosi, and one of the splendid princes whose actions adorn the annals of the East. But “the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples” of Ghizni had long been trodden under foot by time; and, save some scattered masses of misshapen ruins, not a trace was to be seen of its former grandeur. The tomb of Mahmood, however, still remains in the neighbourhood of the city; and to this resting-place of genius numerous pilgrims resort from distant lands to say their prayers. The surrounding country is interspersed with low hills, and, excepting in some few cultivated spots, produces little else than a prickly aromatic weed, which, with balls of unsifted barley-paste, constitutes the common food of the camel.

The kafilah arrived on the 5th of October at Kandahar, a flourishing and populous city, where he remained three days, and then departed for Herat. His camel companion now was a noisy, disputatious theologian, who not only regaled him on the road with menaces and arguments, but deterred a poor half-starved Arab tailor, whose services Forster had engaged, from eating the bread of an infidel, though he saw clearly the poor man had no other to eat.

In this agreeable position he continued until the 2d of November, when they arrived at Herat, where he determined once more to invest himself, if possible, with the cloak of Mohammedanism. At the caravansary, where he had been deposited by the kafilah, with an ample tradition of his faith and practice, so desirable a disguise was impracticable; but he no sooner quitted the purlieus of his lodgings than he became a grave hypocritical Mussulman, and partook of the enjoyment of all his privileges. Nor did he entertain any great fear of detection, it being easy, in so motley a population as that of Herat, to maintain successfully the most extraordinary disguise. He daily frequented the eating-houses, where all the talk of the day was circulated, and chiefly fabricated, in conjunction with the barbers’ shops, which in Herat have a neat appearance. In the centre of it stands a small stone pillar, on the top of which is placed a cup of water in readiness for operation, while the sides of the shop are decorated with looking-glasses, razors, and beard-combs. In one great source of amusement Herat was at this time deficient,—there were no dancing girls. However, notwithstanding this remarkable desideratum, our traveller, who was an accommodating person, and contentedly put up with the blessings within his reach, contrived to pass his time agreeably enough when absent from the caravansary.

Learning at length that a kafilah was about to proceed to Tursheez, a town of Khorasan, lying in the direction of Mazenderan, he entered into an agreement with the director for a conveyance, but with a confidential stipulation that he was to be received in a Mohammedan character, as an Arab. The kafilah departed from Herat on the 22d of November; and as it had been agreed that he was to form one of the family of the leader, he joined the party at the appointed place, and took his station on a camel, with a bag of rice on the opposite pannier. The advantages of his new character were soon visible. Having represented himself as a pilgrim going to the shrine of Meshed, he was treated with the greatest possible consideration by every passenger in the kafilah, all of whom courted his society, as if holiness, like the plague, were infectious. Our hajjî now rejoiced and stroked his beard, to the ample dimensions of which he owed a large portion of the veneration which was shown him; and as he moved along, caressed and admired by all who beheld him, he must have felt no small gratitude towards Mohammed for the sanctity which his religion had thrown round the person of a pilgrim. This extraordinary degree of respect exciting the kafilah conductor, who considered that at this rate he might possibly dwindle into nobody, even in the eyes of his own camels and mules, he whispered about that Forster in reality was no hajjî, nay, not so much as a member of the church at all. His information, however, was received with utter incredulity, and attributed to his envious disposition; so that no evil arose to the Meshed pilgrim.

It was now December, and the north wind, sweeping with irresistible violence over the plains of Khorasan from the frozen mountains of Tartary, brought along with it a deluge of snow, which in a few hours clothed the whole country in white. On arriving at the village of Ashkara, the snow fell in such great quantities that the roads were blocked up, while the winds, hurling it along in tremendous drifts, seemed to threaten the village itself with destruction. The whole party was admitted, after many earnest entreaties, into a small dark room in the fort, where they were furnished with an abundance of fuel; but when they began to make inquiries respecting provisions, they found with dismay that not a single article of food was on any terms to be procured. Yet, says the traveller, such cordial pleasures are inherent in society, that though pent up in a dark hovel, which afforded but a flimsy shelter against the mounds of snow furiously hurled against it, our good-humour with each other and an ample supply of firing produced cheerfulness and content. A Persian of more than ordinary education, and who possessed a taste for poetry, amused them with reading Jami’s story of Yousuf and Zuleikha, which, for its scenes of wondrously pathetic adventure, and the luxuriant genius of the poet, is admirably calculated to soften the rigour of a winter’s day.

At this village they remained four days, during which, though the fact is not stated, they must have found something more substantial to subsist on than Jami’s poetry; when, the storm having abated, they pushed forward in the direction of Tursheez. On arriving at this town, he found that every apartment in the caravansary was already occupied; but a small piece of money bestowed upon the gatekeeper introduced him to a small chamber, in which, by submitting to receive a partner in housekeeping, he might reside comfortably enough during his stay. Our traveller, on his part, regarded the companion with still greater satisfaction than the chamber, and it soon appeared that the feeling was mutual; for the stranger, accosting him with evident tokens of joy, observed, that the solitary life he had hitherto passed at Tursheez was exceedingly tiresome, and that he now anticipated a cordial relief by his company. It was immediately agreed that a joint board should be kept; that the stranger, being yet weak from a recent sickness, should conduct the culinary operations, while Forster was to furnish water; a laborious task, there being none that was good at a nearer distance than a mile. This man, a gloomy, mysterious person, soon departed for Herat; and the traveller, together with a new companion, contrived likewise to find a better apartment. This second associate was a moollah, whose profession it was to vend certain spells, which were powerfully efficacious in conferring every species of worldly happiness, and in excluding all evils. But

Nolint: atqui licet esse beatis.

The Persians of these parts had no taste for happiness; so that this modern Thermander was, when Forster met him, so thoroughly disgusted with his attempts at banishing all misery from among his countrymen, that he was willing, he said, to shut up his book should any other prospect of a maintenance be held out to him. When our traveller offered him a participation of his fare, he therefore joyfully quitted his profession as a wholesale dealer in happiness, and consented to superintend the labours of the kitchen, in which, by long practice, he had attained a remarkable proficiency. “The excellent services of my companion,” says Forster, “now left me at liberty to walk about the town, collect information, and frequent the public baths. In the evening we were always at home; when the moollah, at the conclusion of our meal, either read the story of Yousuf and Zuleikha, which he did but lamely, or, opening his book of spells, he would expound the virtues of his nostrums, which embraced so wide a compass that few diseases of mind or body could resist their force. They extended from recalling to the paths of virtue the steps of a frail wife, and silencing the tongue of a scolding one, to curing chilblains and destroying worms.”

While Forster and the moollah were enjoying this peaceful and pleasant life, a large body of pilgrims from the shrine of Meshed suddenly inundated every apartment of the caravansary; and as this motley group of vagabonds were proceeding towards Mazenderan, directly in his route, he was tempted to join them and continue his journey, leaving his poor companion to subsist once more upon the virtue of his spells.