INTO BALUCHISTAN
STILL A WILD COUNTRY. (By William Archer, in London Daily News). "0 Lord," says a Persian proverb, "when you had Sibi and Dhadar, why did you trouble to create Hell?" And; indeed, even the cool of the morning at Sibi—say 5 a.m.—was quite sultry enough to meet the case of any ordinary sinner. I was, however, pretty well acclimatised, after a week in Southern India and a day in the Indus Valley, which was still hotter than the south. All the way up from Hyderabad (Sind) the sun had been like a great furnace door thrown open in heaven. The parched, putty-like landscape had nothing" to do but to reverbrate his blaze. Here and there a few aeres, or eren square miles, of verdure spoke of the magic of irrigation; but for the most part the grey, arid plain stretched out to infinity, sprinkled with no less grey and sapless 'shrubs, on which a few camels browsed while tbev baked.
I had all to myself a first-class railway carriage, designated, said an inscription, "To seat 8; to sleep 4." In other words, there were two longitudinal couches and two arm-chairs. Each of the couches was supposed to accommodate three by day, one by night, and by night two upper berths could be let down from the ceiling. THE LITTLE "BREAKFAST." Two electric fans whirred impotently day and night. The lavatory contained an excellent bath, refreshing, but scarcely cooling; for the water in the tank was sun-heated to a gree for which "tepid" was too mild a term. But the most convincing and distressing index to the temperatures was the behaviour of the ice in soda-water. A lump half as big as the tumbler melted . . like the snowflake on the river. One moment there, then gone for ever, and left the water'as tepid as that in the tank. Any heat is bearable when you can get a really cool drink; but when the sum defeats even the ice-box, your case is hard indeed.
At Sibi, however, stifling as was the air of the little refreshment room where I took my "chota hazri," I knew that the worst was over, for I should soon he rising to high levels. Talking of "chota hazri." I am not sure that this 'little hreakfast" hahit is not as deleterious as the old "peg" habit which is said to have declined so notably. The Englishmen in India (one must no longer say "Anglo-Indian," a term which lias 'been officially but ridiculously appropriated to the Eurasian community), the Englishmen in Isdia one must no longer start the day by pouring into himself a teapot full of black decoction, strong enough to blow his head off, ruinous to his nerves, and (one cannot but imagine) as destructive as alcohol to the liver. It were greatly to be desired that, in these days of a "better understanding" with Russia, the Russian method of tea-drink-ing might enter through the Himalayas. TO THE HILLS. Such were my reflections as the train began to climb up the mountain maze of Baluchistan—not by the celebrated Bolan Pass, leading direct to Queta, but by the Harnai loop line. Scarcely had we left Sibi behind, when the growing light revealed an amazing spectacle. Conceive an ocean of mud tossed into giant' waves by a tempest of preter-'; natural fury, and then suddenly petrified just as the typhoon was at its height. For an hour cr so we wound our way through this scene of desolation more absolute than any T had hitherto any sort of size. There were not even shrub, not a single_ blade of herbage of, any sort or size. There was not even rocks or boulders of any definable texture or shape. The whole country was (to all appearance) one homogeneous mass of curdled mud, tossed and torn into the most fantastic shapes. Range after range, spur after spur, looked for all the world like a great combing wave of mud. in the act of toppling into the valley beneath. As we slowly ascended the hills, ! though still bare as my hand, assumed i a more normal appearance. Their outline was bold and sometimes fantastic, but their material was more or less ordinary stratified rock. On the lower slopes, too. shrubs i*d various sorts of herbage offered anything 'out succulent pasture to a few herds of goats and fat-tailed brown sheep, following at the heels of brown and bearded shepherds in peaked turbans that had once been white. The valley bottom showed occasional patches of cultivation—the yellow plumes of maize or the brilliant green of luzern. At long intervals a sort of lump on the landscape, of the same drab color as all the rest, would resolve itself, on nearer approach, into a mud-walled village, the mud-built dome of a little mosque rising over the otherwise flat roofs. A NEW INDIA. At the stations it was plain that we had left India proper far behind. Here was no motley throng of different races, castes, creeds, sects, all announcing their disparities in their vesture and bedizenment. There was still some variety of costume and complexion; but women (in this Mohammedan country) were notably few. and the platforms were, for the most part, sparsely peopled with stalwart, black-bearded men, clad in voluminous dirty white garments, with bag-like trousers reaching to the ankle, and sometimes wearing gaudy waistcoats and outside their flowing drapery. On every platform stood a Sikh policeman in khaki, with blue and white peaked turban, his Enfield rifle, with bayonet fixed, carried at the slope.
Well on in the afternoon the train, with two engines, struggled up a sloping tunnel-gallery into a vast cleft or canvon where the mountain seemed to have broken in two. as you break a stick across your knee. This gorge led us into another valley, and there we presently alighted at a wayside station. After tea at n dak bungalow we mounted one of the low dog-cartsi of the country, elegantly denominated a turn-turn, and started on a thirty-mile drive into the hills. Behind us trotted an escort of two Sikh policemen, their carbines dangling at their horses' flanks; and as the moonlight conquered the wonderful rosy haze of sunset it glinted on their chain epaulets and other metal trappings, until one could have taken them for the mail-clad henchmen of a Border bnron. Rut the suggestion of Scotland in the bare hills and the jingyling men-at-arms was dissipated by the flitting past of an occasional camel, like a tall, grey ghost in the gloaming.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19130315.2.67
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 253, 15 March 1913, Page 2 (Supplement)
Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,090INTO BALUCHISTAN Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 253, 15 March 1913, Page 2 (Supplement)
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Taranaki Daily News. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.