ACROSS AFGHANISTAN TO BOKHARA—MOORCROFT

One of the most disappointing of the early British explorers of our Indian trans-frontier was Moorcroft. Disappointing, because he got so little geographical information out of so large an area of adventure. Moorcroft was a veterinary surgeon blessed with an unusually good education and all the impulse of a nomadic wanderer. He was Superintendent of the H.E.I. Company's stud at Calcutta, and his views on agricultural subjects generally, especially the improvement of stock, were certainly in advance of his time, although it seems extraordinary that he should have sought further inspiration in the wilds of the then unexplored trans-Himalayas or in Central Asia. The Government of India were evidently sceptical as to the value of such researches, and he received but cold comfort from their grudging spirit of support, which ended in a threat to cut off his pay altogether after a few years' sojourn in Ladak whilst studying the elementary principles of Tibetan farming. Neither would they supply him with the ample stock of merchandise which he asked for as a means of opening up trade with those chilly countries; and when, finally, he assumed the position of a high political functionary, and became the vehicle of an offer to the Government of India of the sovereignty of Ladak (which certainly might have led to complications with the Sikh Government of the Punjab) he was rather curtly told to mind his own business.

On the whole, it is tolerably clear that the Government represented by old John Company was not much more favourable to irresponsible travelling over the border and political intermeddling than is our modern Imperial institution. However, the fact remains that Moorcroft showed a spirit of daring enterprise, which led to the acquirement of a vast amount of most important information about countries and peoples contiguous to India of whom the Government of the time must have been in utter ignorance. When he first exploited Ladak, Leh was the ultima thule of geographical investigation. What lay beyond it was almost blank conjecture, and a residence of two years must have ended in the amassing of a vast fund of useful information. Unfortunately, much of that information was lost at his death, and the correspondence and notes which came into the hands of his biographer were of such a character—so extraordinarily discursive and frequently so little relevant to the subject of his investigation—as to leave an impression that Moorcroft was certainly eccentric in his correspondence if not in more material ways. We get very little original geographical suggestion from him; but his constant and faithful companion Trebeck is much more consistent and careful in such detail as we find due to his personal observation, and it is to Trebeck rather than Moorcroft that the thanks of the Asiatic map-maker are due. With the Ladak episodes of Moorcroft's career we have nothing to do here, beyond noting that there is ample evidence that he never reached Lhasa, and never resided there, in spite of the persistent rumours which prevailed (even in Tibet) that a traveller of his name had lived in the city. It is exceedingly difficult to account for this rumour, unless indeed we credit the authors of it with a confusion of ideas between Lhasa, the capital of Tibet proper, and Leh, the capital of little Tibet.

The interest of Moorcroft's adventures so far as we are now concerned commences with his journey from Peshawar to Kabul, Badakshan and Bokhara in 1824, when he was undoubtedly the first in the field of British Central Asiatic exploration. He owed his safe conduct from Peshawar (which place he reached only after some most unpleasant experiences in passing through the Sikh dominions of the Punjab) to a political crisis. Dost Mahomed Khan was consolidating his power at Kabul, but he had not then squared accounts with Habibullah the son of the former governor, his deceased elder brother Mahomed Azim Khan; and certain other members of his family (his brothers, Yar Mahomed, Pir Mahomed, and Sultan Mahomed), who were governors in the Indus provinces, thought it as well to step in and effect an arrangement. It was their stately march to Kabul which was Moorcroft's opportunity. Those were days when an Englishman was yet of interest to the Afghan potentate, who knew not what turn of fortune's wheel might necessitate an appeal for the intervention of the English.

Moorcroft did not love the Afghans, and between the unauthorised robbers of the Kabul road and the official despoilers of the city he paid dearly for the right of transit through Afghanistan of himself and his merchandise. It was this assumed rÔle of merchant (if indeed it was assumed) that hampered Moorcroft from first to last in his journeys beyond the frontier of British India. There was something to be made out of him, either by fair means or foul, and the rapacious exactions to which he was subjected were probably not in the least modified by his obstinate refusals to meet what he considered unjust demands. Invariably he had to pay in the end. His account of the road to Kabul is interesting from the keen observation which he brought to bear on his surroundings. He has much to say about the groups of Buddhist buildings which are so marked a feature at various points of the route, and his previous experiences in Tibet left him little room for doubt as to the nature of them. It is strange that locally there was not a tale to be told, not even a legend about them, which even indefinitely maintained their Buddhist origin.

From Kabul Moorcroft succeeded in getting free with surprisingly little difficulty, though several members of his party declined to go farther. He gradually made his way by the Unai and Hajigak passes to Bamian, and thence to Haibak and Balkh. He was not slow to recognize the connection between the obvious Buddhist relics of Bamian and those which he had seen on the Kabul road; and at Haibak he visited a tope called Takht-i-Rustam (a generic name for these topes in Central Asia) of which his description tallies more or less with that of Captain Talbot, R.E., who unearthed what is probably the same relic some sixty years later. To Moorcroft we owe the identification of Haibak with the old mediÆval town of Semenjan, and he states that he was told on the spot that this was its ancient name. No such name was recognised sixty years later, but the evidence of Idrisi's records confirms the fact beyond dispute.

We need not enter into details of this well-worn and often described route. Moorcroft's best efforts were not directed to gazetteering, and we have much abler and more complete accounts of it than his. After passing the Ak Robat divide, Moorcroft found himself beyond Afghan jurisdiction and within the reach of that historic Uzbek chieftain, Murad Beg of Kunduz. Although Murad Beg was little better than a successful freebooter, he is a personage who has left his own definite mark on the history of days when British interest was just dawning on the Oxus banks. Moorcroft fell into his hands, and in spite of introductions he fared exceedingly badly. Indeed there can be little doubt that the cupidity excited by the possibility of so much plunder would have ended fatally for him, but for a happy inspiration which occurred to him when his affairs appeared to be in extremis. With great difficulty and at the peril of his life he made his way eastward to Talikhan, where resided a saintly Pirzada, uncle of Murad Beg, the one righteous man whose upright and dignified character redeemed his people from the taint of utter barbarism and treachery. He had discrimination enough to read Moorcroft aright, and at once discountenanced the tales that had been assiduously set abroad of his being a British spy upon the land; and he had firmness and authority sufficient to deliver him from the rapacity of his truculent nephew, and procure him freedom to depart after months of delay in the pestilential atmosphere of Kunduz. Yet this grand old Mahomedan saint patronised the institution of slavery, and was not above making a profit out of it, though at the same time he firmly declined to receive presents or have bribes for his good offices.

As other travellers following in Moorcroft's footsteps at no great distance of time fell also into the hands of Murad Beg, and experienced very different treatment, it is useful just to note Moorcroft's description of him. He says: "I scarcely ever beheld a more forbidding countenance. His extremely high cheekbones gave the appearance to the skin of the face of its being unnaturally stretched, whilst the narrowness of the lower jaw left scarcely room for the teeth which were standing in all directions; he was extremely near-sighted." Not an attractive description! The spring had well advanced, and it was not till the middle of February 1825 that Moorcroft was able to resume his journey to the Oxus. He travelled from Kunduz to Tashkurghan and Mazar, and from the latter place he followed the most direct route to Bokhara via the Khwaja Salar ferry across the Oxus, reaching Bokhara on February 25. Here his narrative ends, and we only know from Dr. Lord and Wood that he returned from Bokhara to Andkhui, and died there apparently of fever contracted in Kunduz. He was buried near Balkh. Trebeck died soon after, and was buried at Mazar-i-Sharif. Burnes visited and described the tombs of both travellers, but they have long since disappeared.

As a geographer there is much that is wanting in the methods of this most enterprising traveller, who at least pioneered the way to High Asia from British India but who never made geographical exploration a primary object of his labours. He was true to the last to his trade as a student of agriculture, and it is in this particular, rather than in the regions of geography or history, that the value of his studies chiefly lies. He was the first to point out the general character of that disastrous road to Kabul which has cost England so dear, and he is still, with Burnes and Lord and Wood, our chief authority for the general characteristics of Badakshan and of the Oxus valley east of Balkh. He did not, however, touch the Oxus east of Khwaja Salar, and consequently did not see or appreciate the great spread of splendid pastoral country which lies between the pestilential marsh lands of Kunduz and the river.

One would be apt to gather a pessimistic idea of lower Badakshan from the pages of Moorcroft's story, which are undoubtedly tinted strongly with the gloomy and grey colouring of his own unhappy experiences. Of Balkh he has very little to say; he noted no antiquities about Balkh, but he calls attention to the wide spaces covered with ruins which are to be found at intervals scattered over the plains between Balkh and the Oxus. It is a little difficult to follow his exact route across the Oxus plains by the light of modern maps, but his Feruckabad is probably our Feruk, and I gather that his Akbarabad is Akcha or Akchaabad. The condition of Balkh, of Akcha, and of the ruin-studded plains of the Oxus were evidently much the same in 1824 as they were in 1884. Khwaja Salar (where Moorcroft crossed the Oxus in ferry-boats drawn by horses) has since become historical. It was accepted in the Anglo-Russian protocols defining the Afghan boundary as an important point in the Russo-Afghan boundary delimitation, but it was not to be found. Moorcroft gives a very good reason for its disappearance, by stating that the place was razed to the ground just the day before he arrived there. Since then the ruins of the old village have been devoured by the shifting Oxus, and nothing but a ziarat at some distance from the river remains as a record of the distinguished saint who gave it its name.