MOST ROMANTIC GATEWAY IN THE WORLD

Hokitika Guardian, 27 February 1928, Page 1

MOST ROMANTIC GATEWAY IN THE WORLD

(By Sir Pereival Phillips). PESHAWAR (North-West Frontier), December 28, It is no more than a slender, black and white wooden pole, hinged in cement sockets and laid across a dirt road in the bed of a rock-bound valley. It lies there in the wilderness for no apparent reason, alone, save lor a little stone bungalow a few yards away on your side, and on the other, still further beyond it, a white, square-faced building like a Canadian farmhouse. You see it with a feeling of disappointment and look instinctively for a monument or at least a placard that shall proclaim its fame. For it is the most romantic gateway in the world. It stands on the very edge of India, where she touches the mysterious North, and meets the great high road that comes down from Afghanistan and Central Asia. It is the frontier post that keeps the Khyber Pass. The road it bars is steeped in memories of a bloody past. If has been trodden by armies throughout the ages. Conquering hosts have swept clown to tho rich plains, and sometimes swept back again broken in defeat. The British soldier—of another generation—has marched through it to fresh glory. Caravans flow forward and hack as incessantly as the tides of the sea. Strange adventurers have set forth from it to court fortune in the bleak hills beyond. The Russia that was, dreaming of the conquest of India, thought always of the Khyber. The Russia of to-day; no less bent on her subjugation, finds the same harrier blocking her schemes for invading the minds of llie people. Tt is as lonely a spot as you can possibly imagine. Utter silence, except for the eerie cries of distant birds. No human habitation save tho little bungalow of the British frontier guard, and the unlovely headquarters of the Afghan post office a quarter of a mile away. Perched dizzily on one slope above you are a few native huts, and. far beyond them, on the peak of a crag that seems inaccessible, is a walled fort, the very last British stronghold, that peers down into Afghanistan. It seems to he part of it, for it is two miles ahead of the harrier, hut the frontier crosses the Pass diagonally, and on the right it is thrust ahead of the road.

Like Port Said and Shanghai and Dover, the other halfway houses on the highways of the world, this frontier post—called Tor Khan—is a place where one sees curious under-currents of humanity and hears incredible stories of intrigue and daring. And like those other watch houses of the world’s police, it is a place where the good and bad of the human currents are sifted and divided for the world’s good. But the Scotland Yard detective on Dover Pier has a child’s task compared with that of supervising the traffic in the Ivhyher. The thousand and one types that make up a caravan, the ingenuity with which the Asiatic of one breed can make himself look like the specimen of another, even the cunning of certain crafty Europeans who merge their identity in .that of a fanatic Moslem from Turkestan, are sufficient to tax the skill and experience of a super Holmes. Tt would seem impossible to a casual visitor to the Pass that any human being could sift the straggling trains of bullocks, camels, and donkey carriers that come down with their motley crew of men, women, and children twice a week from Kabul. The travellers look so much alike. The men are all hawk noses and fierce whiskers, and their garments so many unmeaning bundles of dirty clothes. The women are swathed in dusty, rusty black draperies. All of them are grimy and foul in thc> extreme. But somehow the frontier officials do succeed in picking out undesirables and setting their faces towards the north, from which they have come. And here, too, come Europeans of all kinds, an occasional geologist, a stray sculptor now and then (they puzzle the frontier guards), road surveyors, and independent adventurers bent on making their fortune at the expense of the King, leave their cards, so to speak, at the harrier beyond the Pass. They depart reluctantly from the last clean bed and the last paved street of civilisation at Peshawar and pass through Tor Khan towards the doubtful hospitality of their first resting place at Jellnlalmd. Come likewise weary diplomats and tlieir more weary wives and childieu who have travelled halfway round the world, and who have still a journey of more than 200 miles by motor ear before they reach the comparative comforts of Kabul. The sentry at the gate sees many studies in expression. T7p-l>ound travellers of European nationality vanish gloomily into the Afghan end of the vallcv. Those hastening towards Peshawar wait with cheerful smiles until the harrier is hoisted and they can begin the last lap, an hour and a half long, of the imirnev to the fringe of civilisation. Come also occasionally weird human derelicts, oree European, vitu tales of suffering and adventure in the North that Kipling might have imagined. Men sunk to the level of the caravan in which they shelter; so changed by privation and the careless life of tile road that they might easily pass one of their countrymen •unnoticed. Some such submerged wastrels actually clear Tor Khan and get as far as the Serai at Landi Kotai. where the Examining Officer sits in judgment. One who came recently was a little Polish shoemaker, a deserter from his country’s army, who made his way through Russia into Turkestan and so to Kabul. There lu spent 14 months in prison. Another was n CzecLo-Slovakian named Shimek, whom the Serai gave up to a relentless inquisition. He told a strange story of having conic from China. This being manifestly untrue, he confessed he thought such an itinerary would he more pleasing to the British than the real one, which began at Moscow. Investigation showed that he* possessed a really wonderful international record in crime, dating from his post-war discharge from the Austrian army, and including a term of imprisonment in New York, and another in Russia for stealing gold roubles. These men are in prison in Peshawar as European rogues and vagabonds. You cannot play fast and loose with Khyber.