THE KHYBER PASS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 188, 28 December 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE KHYBER PASS.

WHEN HISTORY WAS HADE. A very interesting article might 'be' written on the difference between Indian and English ideas of splendor. Shah Je'han of Delhi, and George V. of India alike show the instinct of stateliness in pageantry; yet how different would their ' festivals appear if put side by side on tile historic plains of Delhi. To the Eastern the idea is richness in detail and mass; and to the AVestern all would be spoilt if rich details were set incongruously side .by side with much that is poor and unworthy. The horse is the typical animal of the one—lit to show to the last hair ; of the other, the elephant—decorative in mass, but, as Dickens, says, he "employs the worst tailor in the worldj" and must not be looked at from behind, where his breeches are baggy. The .Oriental sees nothing incongruous in an ivory and silver howdah patched up with 'tin tacks and string. To him what.matters is the howdah; to us, what would matter would be the patching. But when, as at the Durbar, British attention to the last detail is joined -to Indian lavishness and labor, the rei suiting splendor is unique. And that is what one feels when looking at the most splendid thing India has to show. For if you must go far away from Delhi, farther still from babu-dom and Calcutta; away from steaming fertility to bareness and rocks, and a horizon of snow ridges; past Attock, where the foaming Indus drowned thousands of Greek invaders over twenty centuries ago; past a lonely pillar on a lonely lull that tells this is the land that made John Nicholson what he was; and then, at the foot of the Ivhyber Pass, you see it—the finest, most heart-stirring sight in India—the magnificent fighting regiments that British training has evolved from native pluck and grit. Ilavelock's words come to mind. ,; Out here we fight in earnest." There is no sign in India like the "men who carry the gun" up near the frontier, where one fighting division of the Imperial army stands ever ready for instant action, completely equipped to the la»t bootlace. Pass Uawiil I'iiuli. where you li:nl yourself wondering that there ;ire so many mules in the world; pass Akbar's frowning fort at Attock; pass (and do not fail to notice) that lonely pillar that speaks of the name of John Nicholson left in this wild tract; and landing from the railway at Peshawur, drive out ten miles to-the foot of the Khyber Pass.

It is unlike anything in India—in the ; world. A fort like a stately battleship i and two miles 'beyond, a' slit in the line; of hills, a glimpse or two of winding road beyond, a blockhouse perched high 011 a hill-top. In the nearer foreground, groups of walled and fortified villages, and those villagers are no subjects of ] Great Britain, but free to live their Rob Roy lives as they will, for a stone • that we have passed marks the frontier line of Britain, and now we are in Afridi territory, and there are Znka Khel villages. Whether, as one stands there, or as the peaceful bumpy tonga jogs ahead to take you half-way through the Pass, to the fort of the Musjid, you think of past, present or future, this is one of the great views of the world. I would, be sorry indeed for the mail who could visit Peshawur and feel' no stirring of the pulse, no sense that a great day in his life has come.

Think first of the present. Go down the thronged bazaars of Peshawur. You will be told by many that it is foolish to go there at all; 110 one knows the moment when some of these fanatical Mohammedans will go "ghazi," seeing red and longing only both to give :deathand take it. Do not show your money here; it is the easy work of a moment to raise a little scuffle. You go into a shop, and you notice with surprise that the windows are broken with bullets, which' have ripped up the floors and left trace? on this or that article of sale. Yes, the proprietor, will tell you calmly, a few nights ago word came that a gang of robbers was to raid this shop; and the police watched for them—and this is the.result of a pretty little battle. (This is a town of the British Empire!) And he will tell you that a few months back there was a riot here—the Hindoos happened to be keeping a festival when the Mohammedans were keeping a fast; and both marked the season by processions; and the processions met; and—that was enough for people always bitterly hostile; and this shop was sacked, and he lost a lakh of rupees' worth of goods. And it is all true, even, perhaps, the figure he names. Look at three -more scenes before you begin to think of past or future. Here is a road, the outer lines of the British cantonments. Beyond it is a flat, parched plain, though there are ten miles yet of British soil to the frontier. But at night, even in the dusk, life is unsafe there. Parties of fierce, hook-nosed Patlians will set upon even soldiers. And night by night, as men go with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets to stand sentry along that line, they know that they risk death. Behind them are bright lights reflecting out into the silence and dark but so stealthy and determined are the professional rifle thieves that many and many a night the quick stab comes before the quickest challenge. You may drive out quietly in the broad day (though nearly ever Englishman carries a loaded revolver if he does so), but be careful and be back well in time to see the sun set. You won't watch it much if you are out there; you will be watching for other things too nervously.

And now we look across the hill's. JSfot high—we have not reached the giant Himalayas yet, bare, or dotted with scanty, stunted shrubs. Up there and in hidden valleys behind arc the haunts of daring bands of "bushrangers." It is for all the world like the old Highland days of raiding and fighting. Their skill is great; their pluck undoubted; their leadership often worthy of an army; the people help them either through fear or sympathy. Many of them are former soldiers of out own regiments and crack shots. And the good old picturesque method of the traditional bandit nourishes there.. He delights to capture a fat Hindoo merchant and hold him to ransom, sending along an ear or finger-joint from time to time as a reminder that he is waiting. And if you, a citizen of the world's mightiest Empire, wish to go up those hills and see these Doone valleys yon will first be told that you are quite to understand that if you —or rather, when you—are killed nothing will be done, 'it is better to take a hint so delicately expressed. For the third sight go back to the city; near the gates you will find a hospital, the gift of the Church to these fierce strangers within her gates. In charge of it is a man who knows Peshawur as few do, Dr. Lankester. There is not a more interesting hour to be spent in all India than in taking a walk round these roads with Dr. Lankester. It is quite common for Afridis to come in to have British bullets extracted. I saw in that hospital a man who had come all the way from Russian Turkestan to see the "Doctor Sahib;' and have an operation. And in the register of the hospital I saw the record that nearly 40 thousand men had been given medical treatment that year. This did not include women; and there are two branch hospitals also, so that the total of cases

if ever the people of those wild yet virile races learn the character of the God of Love, it will have been largely by the conclusions they drew from the acts of the "Doctor Sahibs" at Peshawur, who are there as His servants. And you, my reader, if you sneer at missions, tell me, if you can, why such men should be there, giving their lives, and why churchmen at home support them? Strange that a murdering, thieving Afridi brigand should be more ready to draw honest conclusions from facts that many a home-staying colonial, who will swallew any lie to the effect that missionaries ate all "on the make."

Mount your tonga (taking some care that it does not spill you out of the back) and start to drive for the famous pass. On your way through Peshawur you will see much to remind .you of the yesterday of India. There is the bouse of the noble soldier Herbert Edwardes, whose praise filled India in the troublous times of the Mutiny. He left his house to the Church Missionary Society, whose work he did so much to promote. One likes to recall how, when even John Lawrence lost heart a little, and wished to give ■Peshawui 1 to the Amur of Afghanistan, and make the Indus our frontier, from this house Edwardes wrote his stirring protests, quoting Nelson's "Anchor,. Hardy Anchor!" and carrying his point. He, Neville Chamberlain and Nicholson were here at the outbreak of the Mutiny; here was formed the famous "flying column" that kept the Punjab loyal, and at last went with Nicholson to take Delhi.

But is hardly of yesterday that one thinks as the mouth of the Khyber Pass comes in sight. Round and round within it winds the road, covered at every turn bv a fresh ihill. peak, crowned with a block-house. High lip on-the hill-tops are khaki-clad figures—the Khyber Rifles, guardians of the pass, men of the very race who would plunder and shoot at sight here. Two days only in the week is the pass open; on those days it is lined with these troops, and the caravans, back or forward, may pass through, a 20-mile stake from Jamrud to Lanili Kotal. On the (lav that I saw it, a caravan of nearly fifteen thousand .camels, and also a troop of some hundreds of foot pilgrims, passed through; and no sight could, be more picturesque; and so it lias'been through all the centuries back to the misty dawn of history. We are outside British territory now, though we maintain those block-houses and forts as far as Landi Kotal.. It is no longer ago than 1897 that the British were driven entirely out' of the pass, and their forts demolished. It is a,typical story. There was trouble all along the border, but the Afridis round the puss were quiet. At last, maddened by the jeers of their women, they rose. Landi Kotal was manned by their own brothers and cousins. What was to be done? They called to them to rev.olt and join the rising. "No," was the reply, with ff\v exceptions; "we are sworn soldiers of the Raj—we must light." And fight they did, and died.

As the road winds at one spot, overhanging a green patch of fertile soil by the bed of the torrent, the place is pointed out where the son of the great Haveflock was killed—he who merited his V.C. so many times over in the Mutiny. As an old man, and a general, he had i been at Landi Kotal during a campaign, I and was returning with his staff. At this point he said he knew a short cut, ; and told his staff to go round the other way. They demurred, but he made it 11 an order, and went on alone, and in a i few moments lay dead, stripped and ! mutilated, by the roadside. '"Out here . we fight in earnest"—his father was I right. [ From some spot a few miles up flic . pass turn and look back. There is the ■ mouth, and beyond it the flat plains of ; India. To how many an expedition has that view been the sight of the "pro- ; mised land" to wliich they had struggled , through mountain and snow! Down it ; in the earliest ages, five thousand years . ago, came a branch of the same stock , as ourselves, the joyous, nature-wor- ; shipping Aryans, singing the hymns of I r the sacred Vedas. Down it went, the II Persians of Darius, and down the similar ;] Malakhand close by went the greatest I soldier of history. Alexander, and his in- : vincible Greeks, to whom India had long • been the Tom Tiddler's ground of ro- ; mance, where they would find ants as big [ as foxes that burrowed in the ground ; and threw up gold-dust! Up the pass ; went the devoted missionaries of Budd- . hism, and down it came the travelling > Greek and Roman merchants, and bands of semi-Greek raiders. But the liorrors . of India began when Mohammed's religion of fire and sword had been proi claimed, suiting the taste of the fierce i Pathans, and year by year in the springj time ban-ds of shaggy, butchering, torturing mountain horsemen burst with fierce yells upon the plains of helpless, softened India, like jets of flame. Down the pass came Timour, most 'brave, most talented, most hideously cruel of all the wholesale murderers of history. Up and down it came and went Akbar and his great generals. Down it came Nadir Shah, who took back seventy million sterling of treasure from Delhi alone, including the Peacock Throne. And finally up and down it have gone our own soldiers and generals in our frontier and Afghan campaigns, including Roberts'expedition to Kabul And Kandahar. Perhaps there is no spot in the world over which have, passed so many soldiers, and through Wihicli have travelled so many epoch-making faiths and ideas. And what of the futuVc? In India there is a feeling that ere long we shall. find ourselves with another frontier campaign to fight, similar to the previous Tirah and Afridi and Swat expeditions. It is not that the tribes have any grievance. But fight they must and wilt; and when there is an accumulation of cartridges the guns begin to go off almost by themselves. Times have been i good. We pay heavy subsidies to keep the ,pass open; cartridges are getting too numerous. Of course, there is al- j ways some, expenditure of them in intervillage feuds. Every village over the frontier is fortified, having a heavy wall, with only one gate, and a watch-tower. The least thing is sufficient to start a row. Two men of different villages meet on a narrow mountain path. Neither will make way. Ali from village A shoves Jan from village B down the mountain, leaps behind a rock and cocks his rifle. Jan takes a pot-shot as soon as he alights. The villages 'hear, and come out; then there will be war. There are recognised times of truce. The villages may be only a couple of hundred yards apart, and use the same well; so at midday the women may go unmolested and draw water. And in some contests truce is kept for getting in the crops—but not in all. Moreover, the actual road through the Kvber Pass, and ten yards each side, is "out of bounds"; there must be no killing there. And so it may go on for years; and ituses up the surplus cartridges and satisfies the sporting instinct! 'But those who know say that ere long the tribesmen will feel that the time has come for a 'bigger affair, and challenge the rulers of India. Moreover, the tribesmen do not feel at all sure that they will not win! Among tribes in that state of society, the thing that counts most are the opinions that become the fixed ideas of the common people and pass round in the gossip of the hearth and fireside. So that I may reconversation we

border, who was in Peshawur. He said: "You English are cowards. You are frightened to go into Afghanistan. If you are not frightened, why don't you go ? But the way you have always done is to wait till two peoples are fighting one another, then you help one, then you help the other," till they are both weak, then you take the country. But we can beat you really." If that is the kind of thing the young men are telling one another—and there is shrewdness in it! —then before long it will be necessary to show that "we don't want to fight, but by jingo, if we do— —" One of the main causes of the great Mutiny was a similar conceit that spread among the Sepoy army, that is they had fought so well for the sahibs they might as well fight also against them. As to the invasion of India by Russia through the Kyber, it is entirely out of the range of possibilities, unless we lose all prestige, and are in a' death grapple for our Empire elsewhere. But there is plenty of trouble in sight for us on the frontier, in the periodical unsettlement and over-confidence of tribesmen "spoiling for a fight," and unable to understand that there is every reason for our not advancing except thai we arc afraid.—Rev. Stacey Waddy, M.A., in an exchange.