BURNES

No traveller who ever returned to his country with tales of stirring adventure ever attracted more interest, or even astonishment, than Lieut. Alexander Burnes. He published his story in 1835, when the Oxus regions of Asia were but vaguely outlined and shadowy geography. It did not matter that they had been the scene of classical history for more than 2000 years, and that the whole network of Oxus roads and rivers had been written about and traversed by European hosts for centuries before our era. That story belonged to a buried past, and the British occupation of India had come about in modern history by way of the sea. England and Russia were then searching forward into Central Asia like two blind wrestlers in the dark, feeling their ground before them ere they came to grips. A veil of mystery hung over these highlands, a geographical fog that had thickened up, with just a thinner space in it here and there, where a gleam of light had penetrated, but never dispersed it, since the days when Assyrian and Persian, Skyth, Greek, and Mongul wandered through the highest of Asiatic highways at their own sweet will.

In the present year of grace and of red tape bindings to most books of Asiatic travels, when the best of the geographical information accumulated by the few who bear with them the seal of officialdom is pigeon-holed for a use that never will be made of it, it is quite refreshing to fall back on these most entertaining records of men who (whether official or otherwise) all travelled under the same conditions of association with the natives of the country they traversed, accepting their hospitality, speaking their language, assuming their manners and dress, and passing with the crowd (and with the crowd only) as casual wayfarers. The fact of their European origin was almost always suspected, if not known, to certain of the better informed of their Asiatic hosts, but they were seldom given away. It was nobody's business to quarrel with England then. A hundred years ago the military credit of England stood high, and the irrepressible advance of the red line of the British India-border impressed the mind of the Asiatic of the highlands beyond the plains as evidence of an irresistible power. Russia then made no such impression. She was still far off, and the ties of commerce bound the Oxus Khanates to India, even when Russian goods were in Asiatic markets. The bankers of the country were Hindus—traders from the great commercial centre of Shikarpur. It is strange to read of this constant contact with Hindus in every part of Central Asia in those days, when the hundi (or bill) of a Shikarpur banker was as good as a letter of credit in any bazaar as far as the Russian border. The power of England in India undoubtedly loomed much larger in Asiatic eyes before the disasters of the first Afghan war, and Englishmen of the type of Burnes, Christie, Pottinger, Vigne, and Broadfoot were able to carry out prolonged journeys through districts that are certainly not open to English exploration now. Even were English officers to-day free under existing political conditions to travel beyond the British border at all, it is doubtful whether any disguise would serve as a protection.

The day has passed for such ventures as those of Burnes, and we must turn back a page or two in geographical history if we wish to appreciate the full value of British enterprise in exploring Afghanistan. Undoubtedly Burnes ranks high as a geographer and original pioneer. The fact that there is little or nothing left of the scene of his travels in 1830-32 and 1833 which has not been reduced to scientific mapping now, does not in any way detract from the merit of his early work; although it must be confessed that the perils of disguise prevented the use of any but the very crudest methods of ascertaining position and distance, and his map results would, in these days, be regarded as disappointing. Sind and the Punjab being trans-border lands, there were always useful and handy opportunities for teaching the enterprising subaltern of Bombay Infantry how to travel intelligently; with the natural result that no corps in the world possessed a more splendid record of geographical achievement than the Bombay N.I.

Burnes began well in the Quartermaster-General's department, and was soon entrusted with political power. Full early in his career he was despatched with an enterprising sailor, Lieut. Wood, on a voyage up the Indus which was to determine the commercial possibilities of its navigation, and which did in fact lead to the formation of the Indus flotilla—some fragments of which possibly exist still. It is most interesting to read the able reports compiled by these young officers; and one might speculate idly as to the feelings with which they would now learn that within half a century their flotilla had come and gone, superseded by one of the best paying of Indian railways. Their feelings would probably be much the same as ours could we see fifty years hence a well-established electric train service between Kabul and Peshawar, and a double or treble line of rails linking up Russia with India via Herat. We shall not see it. It will be left to another generation to write of its accomplishment.

Searching the archives of the Royal Geographical Society for the story of Burnes the traveller (apart from the voluminous records of Burnes the diplomat), I came across a book with this simple inscription on the title-page: "To the Royal Geographical Society of London, with the best wishes for its prosperity by the Author." This is Vol. I. of Burnes' Travels. It is written in the attenuated, pointed, and ladylike style which was the style of the very early Victorian era. It hardly leads to an impression of forceful and enterprising character.

On January 2, 1831, Burnes made his first plunge into the wilderness which lay between him and Lahore, the capital of the Sikh kingdom, and he entered that city on the 17th. There he was most hospitably received by the French officers in the service of Ranjit Singh, Messieurs Allard and Court, and was welcomed by the Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who treated him with "marked affability." Burnes was accompanied by Dr. Gerard, and the two travellers were taken by Ranjit Singh to a hunting party in the Punjab, a description of which serves as a forcible illustration of the changes which less than one century of British administration has effected in the plains of India. Never will its like be seen again in the Land of the Five Rivers. The guests' tents were made of Kashmir shawls, and were about 14 feet square. One tent was red and the other white, and they were connected by tent-walls of the same material, shaded by a Shamiana supported on silver-mounted poles. In each tent stood a camp-bed with Kashmir shawl curtains. It was, as Burnes remarks, not an encampment suited to the Punjab jungles; and the hunting procession headed by the Maharaja, dressed in a tunic of green shawls, lined with fur, his dagger studded with the richest brilliants, and a light metal shield, the gift of the ex-king of Kabul (Shah Sujah, who, it will be remembered, also surrendered the Koh-i-Nor diamond to Ranjit Singh about this time), as the finishing touch to his equipment, must have been quite melodramatic in its effects of colour and movement. It was, as a matter of fact, a pig-sticking expedition, but the game fell to the sword rather than to the spear; such of it, that is to say, as was not caught in traps. The party was terminated by a hog-baiting exhibition, in which dogs were used to worry the captive pigs, after the latter were tied by one leg to a stake. When the pigs were sufficiently infuriated, the entertainment concluded with letting them loose through the camp, in order, as Ranjit said, "that men might praise his humanity."

Such episodes, however they might beguile the journey to the Afghan frontier, belong to other histories than that of Afghan exploration, and little more need be said of Burnes' experiences before reaching the Afghan city of Peshawar, than that he experienced very different treatment en route to that which made Moorcroft's journey both perilous and disheartening. In Peshawar the two brothers of Dost Mahomed Khan (Sultan Mahomed and Pir Mahomed) seem to have rivalled each other in courtly attentions to their guests, and Burnes was as much enchanted with this garden of the North-West as any traveller of to-day would be, provided that his visit were suitably timed. Burnes thus sums up his impression of Ranjit Singh: "I never quitted the presence of a native of Asia with such impressions as I left this man; without education, and without a guide, he conducts all the affairs of his kingdom with surpassing energy and vigour, and yet he wields his power with a moderation quite unprecedented in an Eastern prince."

On leaving Lahore Burnes received this salutary advice from M. Court, packed in a French proverb, "Si tu veux vivre en paix en voyageant, fais en sorte de hurler comme les loups avec qui tu te trouves." And he set himself to conform to this text (and to the excellent sermon which accompanied it) with a determination which undoubtedly served as the foundation of his remarkable success as a traveller. It cannot be too often insisted that the experiences of intelligent and cultivated Europeans in the days of close association with the Asiatic led to an appreciation of native character and to an intimacy with native methods, which is only to be found in India now amongst missionaries and police officers, if it is to be found at all. But even with all the advantages possessed by such experiences as those of Burnes and of the intrepid school of Asiatic travellers of his time, it required an intuitive discernment almost amounting to genius to detect the motive springs of Eastern political action.

It may be doubted (as Masson doubted) whether to the day of his death Burnes himself quite understood either the Afghan or the Sikh. But he vigorously conformed to native usages in all outward show: "We threw away all our European clothes and adopted without reserve the costume of the Asiatic. We gave away our tents, beds, and boxes, and broke our tables and chairs—a blanket serves to cover the saddle and to sleep under.... The greater portion of my now limited wardrobe found a place in the 'kurjin.' A single mule carried the whole of the baggage." Armed with letters of introduction from a holy man (Fazl Haq), who boasted a horde of disciples in Bokhara, and with all the graceful good wishes which an Afghan potentate knows how to bestow, Burnes left Peshawar and the two Afghan sirdars, and started for Kabul. It is instructive to note that he avoided the Khaibar route, which had an evil reputation.

It would be interesting to trace Burnes' route from Peshawar to Bokhara, via Kabul and Bamian, were it not that we are dealing with ground already sufficiently well discussed in these pages. Moreover, Burnes travelled to Kabul in company which permitted him to make little or no use of his opportunities for original geographical research. After he left Kabul the vicissitudes and difficulties that beset him were only such as might be experienced by any recognised official political mission, and he experienced none of the vexatious opposition and delay which was so fatal to Moorcroft. En route he passed through Bamian, Haibak, Khulm, and Balkh; he visited Kunduz, and identified the tomb of Trebeck at Mazar; and by the light of a brilliant moon he stood by the grave of Moorcroft, which he found under a wall outside the city, apart from the Mussulman cemeteries. The three days passed at Balkh were assiduously employed in local investigation and the collection of coins and relics. He found coins, or tokens, dating from early Persian occupation to the Mogul dynasties, and he notes the size of the bricks and their shape, which he describes as oblong approaching to square; but he mentions no inscriptions.

At this time Balkh was in the hands of the Bokhara chief, and Burnes was already in Bokhara territory. The journey across the plains to the Oxus was made on camels, Burnes being seated in a kajawa, and balancing his servant on the other side. It was slow, but it gave him the opportunity of overlooking the broad Oxus plain and noting the general accuracy of the description given of it by Quintus Curtius. As they approached the Oxus it was found necessary to employ a Turkman guard. Burnes does not say from what Turkman tribe his guard was taken, but from his description of them, their dress, equipment, and steeds, they were clearly men of the same Ersari tribe that was found fifty years later in the same neighbourhood by the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission. "They rode good horses and were armed with a sword and long spear. They were not encumbered with shields and powder-horns like other Asiatics, and only a few had matchlocks.... They never use more than a single rein, which sets off their horses to advantage."

On the banks of the river they halted near the small village of Khwaja Salar. This was the same place evidently that Moorcroft visited, and which he described as destroyed in a raid; and it was here that Burnes made use of the peculiar horse-drawn ferry which has already been described. Fifty years later the ferry was at Kilif, and nothing was to be found of the "village" of Khwaja Salar. Burnes' astonishment at the quaint, but most efficient, method of utilizing the power of swimming horses to haul the great ferry-boats has been shared by every one who has seen them since; but he noted a fact which has not been observed by other travellers, viz. that any horse was taken for the purpose, no matter whether trained or not; and he states that the horses were yoked to the boat by a rope fixed to the hair of the mane. If so, this method was improved on during the next half-century, for the rope is now attached to a surcingle. "One of the boats was dragged over by two of our jaded ponies; and the vessel which attempted to follow us without them was carried so far down the stream as to detain us a whole day on the banks till it could be brought up to the camp of our caravan." The river at this point is about 800 yards wide, and runs at the rate of three to four miles an hour. The crossing was effected in fifteen minutes. Burnes adds: "I see nothing to prevent the general adoption of this expeditious mode of crossing a river.... I had never before seen the horse converted to such a use; and in my travels through India I had always considered that noble animal as a great encumbrance in crossing a river." And yet after two centuries of military training in the plains of India, we English have not yet arrived at this economical use of this great motive power always at our command in a campaign!

After passing the Oxus the chief interest of Burnes' story commences. His life at Bokhara and his subsequent journey through the Turkman deserts to Persia form a record which, combined with his own physical capability, his energy, and his unfailing tact, good humour, and modesty, stamp him as one of the greatest of English travellers. His name has its own high place in geographical annals. We shall never cease to admire the traveller, whatever we may think of the diplomat. But once over the Oxus his story hardly concerns the gates of India. He was beyond them, he had passed through, and was now on the far landward side, still on a road to India; but it is a road over which it no longer concerns us to follow him.