ENGLISH OFFICIAL EXPLORATION—BROADFOOT

In the year 1839 and in the month of October Lieut. J. S. Broadfoot of the Indian Engineers made a memorable excursion across Central Afghanistan, intervening between Ghazni and the Indus Valley, which resulted in the acquisition of much information about one of the gates of India which is too little known. No one has followed his tracks since with any means of making a better reconnaissance, nor has any one added much to the information obtained by him. It is true that Vigne had been over the ground before him, but there is no comparison between the use which Broadfoot made of his opportunities and the geography which Vigne secured. Both took their lives in their hands, but Vigne passed along with his Lohani khafila in days preceding the British occupation of Afghanistan. There was no fanatical hostility displayed towards him. On the contrary, his medical profession was a recommendation which won him friends and good fellowship all along the line. A few years had much changed the national (if one can use such a word with regard to Afghanistan) feeling towards the European. From day to day, and almost from hour to hour, Broadfoot felt that his life hung on the chances of the moment. He was told by friends and enemies alike that he would most certainly be killed. Yet he survived to do good service in other fields, and to maintain the reputation of that most distinguished branch of the military service, the Indian Engineers. Broadfoot was but typical of his corps, even in the scientific ability displayed in his researches, the clearness and the soundness of the views he expresses, the determined pluck of his enterprise, and his knowledge of native life and character. Durand, North, Leach, and Broadfoot were Lieutenants of Engineers at the same time, and their reports and their work are all historical records.

Previously to his start on the Gomul reconnaissance Broadfoot had the opportunity of reconnoitring much of the country to the south of Ghazni bordering the Kandahar-Ghazni route. He had, therefore, a very fair acquaintance with the people with whom he had to deal, and a fairly well fixed point of departure for his work. His methods were the time-honoured methods of many past generations of explorers. He took his bearings with the prismatic compass, and he reckoned his distance by the mean values obtained from three men pacing. Consequently, he could not pretend, in such circumstances as he was placed (being hardly able to leave his tent in spite of his disguise), to complete much in the way of topography; but his clear description of the ground he passed over, and the people he passed amongst, furnishes nearly all that is necessary to enable us to realise the practical value and the political difficulty of that important line of communication with Central Afghanistan.

From Ghazni southwards to Pannah there is nothing but open plain. From near Pannah to the Sarwandi Pass, which crosses the main divide (the Kohnak range) between the Helmund and the Indus basins, there is much of the ridge and furrow formation which distinguishes the north-western frontier, the alignment of the ridges being from N.E. to S.W., but the Gazdarra Pass over the Kattawaz ridge is not formidable, and the road along the plain of Kattawaz is open. In Kattawaz were groups of villages, denoting a settled population, and as much cultivation as might be possible amidst a lawless, crop-destroying, and raiding generation of Ghilzais.

"Kattasang, as viewed from Dand" (on the northern side) "appears a mass of undulating hills, and as bare as a desert; it is the resort in summer of some pastoral families of Suliman Khels." Approaching the main divide of Sarwandi by the Sargo Pass two forts are passed near Sargo, which sufficiently well illustrate the characteristics of perpetual feud common to clans or families of the Ghilzai fraternity. The forts are close to each other; one of them is known as Ghlo kala (thieves' fort), but they are probably both equally worthy of the name. The inhabitants of these forts absolutely destroyed each other in a family feud, so that nothing now remains. Their very waters have dried up.

Near the Sargo, on the Ghazni side of the Sarwandi Pass, is Schintza, at which place Vigne also halted, and from Schintza commences the real ascent to the Sarwandi. The ascent, and indeed the crossing altogether, are described by Broadfoot as easy. Vigne does not say much about this. From the foot of the Sarwandi one branch of the Gomul takes off, and from that point to the Indus the great trade route practically follows the Gomul on a gradually descending grade. It is a stony, rough, and broken hill route, now expanding into a broad track of river-bed, now contracting into a cliff-bordered gully, occasionally leaving the river and running parallel over adjoining cliffs, but more often involving the worry of perpetual crossing and re-crossing of the stream. Here and there is an expansion (such as the "flower-bed," Gulkatz) into a reed-covered flat, and occasionally there occurs a level open border space which the blackened stones of previous khafilas denote as a camping-ground. Wild and dreary, carving its way beneath the heat-cracked and rain-seared foot-hills of Waziristan, strewn with stones and boulders, and disfigured by leprous outbreaks of streaky white efflorescence, the Gomul in the hot weather is not an attractive river. In flood-time it is dangerous, and it is in the hottest of the hot weather months that the route is fullest of the moving khafila crowds.

In Broadfoot's time the worst part of the route was between the plateau and the Indus plains. This is no longer so, for a trade-developing and road-making Government has made the rough places plain, and engineered a first-class high-road thus far. And there is this to be noted about that section of it which still lies beyond the ken of the frontier officer and which as yet the surveyor has not mapped. Not a single camel-load in Broadfoot's khafila had to be shifted on account of the roughness of the route between Ghazni and the Indus, and not a space of any great length occurred over which guns might not easily pass. The drawback to the route as a high-road for trade has ever been the blackmailing propensities of Waziris and cognate tribes who flank the route on either side. Broadfoot's khafila lost no less than 100 men in transit; but this was at a time when the country was generally disturbed. In more peaceful days previously Vigne refers to constant losses both of men and property, but to nothing like so great an extent.

Broadfoot still stands for our authority in all that pertains to the central Afghan tribes-people—chiefly the Suliman Khel clan of Ghilzais—who occupy the Highlands between Waziristan and Ghazni. Under the iron heel of the late Amir of Afghanistan no doubt much of their turbulent and feud-loving propensities has been repressed, and with its repression has followed a development of agriculture, and a general improvement throughout the favoured districts of Kattawaz and the Ghazni plain. Here the climate is exceptionally invigorating, and much of the sweet landscape beauty of the adjoining districts of Wardak and Logar (two of the loveliest valleys of Afghanistan) is evidently repeated. Several fine rivers traverse these uplands, the Jilgu and the Dwa Gomul (both rising from the central divide near to the sources of the Tochi) having much local reputation, and claiming a crude sort of reverence from the wild tribes of the plateau which is only accorded to the gifts of Allah. The Suliman Khel are not nomads—though like all Afghans they love tents—and their villages, clinging to wall-sides or clustering round a central tower, are well built and often exceedingly picturesque. The Ghilzai skill at the construction of these underground irrigation channels called karez is famous throughout Afghanistan. It is, however, the more westerly clans who especially excel in the development of water-supply. The Suliman Khel and the Nasirs take more kindly to the khafila and "povindah" form of life, and this Gomul route is the very backbone of their existence. It is a pity that we know so little about it.