Part 39 (1/2)
It is true that the Indus line will be no easy one to make. To bridge the river at Mithun Kote or even at Kotree would be difficult enough, and were it to be bridged at Sukkur, where there is rock, and a narrow pa.s.s upon the river, the line from Sukkur to Kurrachee would be exposed to depredation from the frontier tribes. The difficulties are great, but the need is greater, and the argument of the heavy cost of river-side railroads should not weigh with us in the case of lines required for the safety of the country. The Lah.o.r.e and Peshawur, the Kotree and Moultan, the Kotree and Baroda, and the Baroda and Delhi lines, instead of being set one against the other for comparison, should be simultaneously completed as necessary for the defense of the empire, and as forming the trunk lines for innumerable branches into the cotton-and wheat-growing districts.
One of the branches of the Indus line will have to be constructed from the Bholan Pa.s.s to Sukkur, where we lay some days embarking cotton.
Sukkur lies on the Beloochistan side; Roree fort--known as the ”Key of Scinde,” the seizure of which by us provoked the great war with the Ameers--on an island in mid-stream; and Bukkur City on the eastern or left bank; and the river, here narrowed to a width of a quarter of a mile, runs with the violence of a mountain torrent.
Sukkur is one of the most ancient of Indian cities, and was mentioned as time-worn by the Greek geographers, while tradition says that its antiquities attracted Alexander; but towns grow old with great rapidity in India, and, once ancient in their look, never to the eye become in the slightest degree older.
In Sukkur I first saw the Scindee cap, which may be described as a tall hat with the brim atop; but the Scindees were not the only strangely-dressed traders in Sukkur and Roree: there were high-capped Persians, and lean Afghans with long gaunt faces and high cheek-bones, and furred merchants from Central Asia. It is even said that goods find their way overland from China to Sukkur, through Eastern Persia and Beloochistan, the traders preferring to come round four thousand miles than to cross the main chain of the Himalayas or pa.s.s through the country of the Afghans.
In ancient times there was considerable intercourse between China and Hindostan; at the end of the seventh century, indeed, the Chinese invaded India through Nepaul, and captured five hundred cities. It is to be hoped that the next few years may see a railway built from Rangoon to Southern China, and from Calcutta to the Yang-tse-Kiang, a river upon which there are ample stores of coal, which would supply the manufacturing wants of India.
After viewing from a lofty tower the flat country in the direction of s.h.i.+kapore, we spent one of our Sukkur evenings upon the island of Roree watching the natives fis.h.i.+ng. Casting themselves into the river on the top of skins full of air, or more commonly on great earthenware pitchers, they floated at a rapid pace down with the whirling stream, pus.h.i.+ng before them a sunken net which they could close and lift by the drawing of a string. About twice a minute they would strike a fish, and, lifting their head, would impale the captive on a stick slung behind their back, and at once lower again the net in readiness for further action.
Sukkur, like seven other places that I had visited within a year, has the reputation of being the hottest city in the world, and the joke on the boats of the Indus flotilla is that Moultan is too hot to bear, and Sukkur much hotter; but that Jacobabad, on the Beloochee frontier, near Sukkur, is so hot that the people come down thence to Sukkur for the hot season, and find its coolness as refres.h.i.+ng as ordinary mortals do that of Simla. Hot as is Sukkur, it is fairly beaten by a spot at the foot of the Ibex Hills, near Sehwan. I was sleeping on the bridge with an officer from Peshawur, when the crew were preparing to put off from the bank for the day's journey. We were awakened by the noise; but, as we sat up and rubbed our eyes, a blast of hot wind came down from the burnt-up hills, laden with fine sand, and of such a character that I got a lantern--for it was not fully light--and made my way to the deck thermometer. I found it standing at 104, although the hour was 415 A.M. At breakfast-time, it had fallen to 100, from which it slowly rose, until at 1 P.M. it registered 116 in the shade. The next night, it never fell below 100. This was the highest temperature I experienced in India during the hot weather, and it was, singularly enough, the same as the highest which I recorded in Australia. No part of the course of the Indus is within the tropics, but it is not in the tropics that the days are hottest, although the nights are generally unbearable on sea-level near the equator.
At Kootree, near Hydrabad, the capital of Scinde, where the tombs of the Ameers are imposing, if far from beautiful, we left the Indus for the railway, and, after a night's journey, found ourselves upon the sea-sh.o.r.e at Kurrachee.
CHAPTER XVI.
OVERLAND ROUTES.
Of all the towns in India, Kurrachee is the least Indian. With its strong southwesterly breeze, its open sea and dancing waves, it is to one coming from the Indus valley a pleasant place enough; and the climate is as good as that of Alexandria, though there is at Kurrachee all the dust of Cairo. For a stranger detained against his will to find Kurrachee bearable there must be something refres.h.i.+ng in its breezes: the town stands on a treeless plain, and of sights there are none, unless it be the sacred alligators at Muggur Peer, where the tame ”man-eaters” spring at a goat for the visitor's amus.e.m.e.nt as freely as the Wolfsbrunnen trout jump at the gudgeon.
There is no reason given why the alligators' pool should be reputed holy, but in India places easily acquire sacred fame. About Peshawur there dwell many hill-fanatics, whose sole religion appears to consist in stalking British sentries. So many of them have been locked up in the Peshawur jail that it has become a holy place, and men are said to steal and riot in the streets of the bazaar in order that they may be consigned to this sacred temple.
The nights were noisy in Kurrachee, for the great Mohammedan feast of the Mohurrum had commenced, and my bungalow was close to the lines of the police, who are mostly Belooch Mohammedans. Every evening, at dusk, fires were lighted in the police-lines and the bazaar, and then the tomtom-ing gradually increased from the gentle drone of the daytime until a perfect storm of ”tom-a-tom, tomtom, tom-a-tom, tomtom,” burst from all quarters of the town, and continued the whole night long, relieved only by blasts from conch-sh.e.l.ls and shouts of ”Shah Ha.s.san!
Shah Hoosein! Wah Allah! Wah Allah!” as the performers danced round the flames. I heartily wished myself in the State of Bhawulpore, where there is a license-tax on the beating of drums at feasts. The first night of the festival I called up a native servant who ”spoke English,” to make him take me to the fires and explain the matter. His only explanation was a continual repet.i.tion of ”Dat Mohurrum, Mohammedan Christmas-day.”
When each night, about dawn, the tomtom-ing died away once more, the chokedars--or night watchmen--woke up from their sound sleep, and began to shout ”Ha ha!” into every room to show that they were awake.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The chokedars are well-known characters in every Indian station: always either sleepy and useless, or else in league with the thieves, they are nevertheless a recognized cla.s.s, and are everywhere employed. At Rawul-Pindee and Peshawar, the chokedars are armed with guns, and it is said that a newly-arrived English officer at the former place was lately returning from a dinner-party, when he was challenged by the chokedar of the first house he had to pa.s.s. Not knowing what reply to make, he took to his heels, when the chokedar fired at him as he ran. The shot woke all the chokedars of the parade, and the unfortunate officer received the fire of every man as he pa.s.sed along to his house at the farther end of the lines, which he reached, however, in perfect safety. It has been suggested that, for the purpose of excluding all natives from the lines at night, there should be a s.h.i.+bboleth or standing parole of some word which no native can p.r.o.nounce. The word suggested is ”s...o...b..ryness.”
Although chokedars were silent and tomtom-ing subdued during the daytime, there were plenty of other sounds. Lizards chirped from the walls of my room, and sparrows twittered from every beam and rafter of the roof. When I told a Kurrachee friend that my slippers, my brushes, and soldier's writing-case had all been thrown by me on to the chief beam during an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge the enemy, he replied that for his part he paraded his drawing-room every morning with a double-barreled gun, and frequently fired into the rafters, to the horror of his wife.
In a small lateen-rigged yacht lent us by a fellow-traveler from Moultan, some of us visited the works which have long been in progress for the improvement of the harbor of Kurrachee, and which form the sole topic of conversation among the residents in the town. The works have for object the removal of the bar which obstructs the entrance to the harbor, with a view to permit the entry of larger s.h.i.+ps than can at present find an anchorage at Kurrachee.
The most serious question under discussion is that of whether the bar is formed by the Indus silt or merely by local causes, as, if the former supposition is correct, the ultimate disposition of the ten thousand millions of cubic feet of mud which the Indus annually brings down is not likely to be affected by such works as those in progress at Kurrachee. When a thousand sealed bottles were lately thrown into the Indus for it to be seen whether they would reach the bar, the result of the ”great bottle trick,” as Kurrachee people called it, was that only one bottle reached and not one weathered a point six miles to the southward of the harbor. The bar is improving every year, and has now some twenty feet of water, so that s.h.i.+ps of 1000 tons can enter except in the monsoon, and the general belief of engineers is that the completion of the present works will materially increase the depth of water.
The question of this bar is not one of merely local interest: a single glance at the map is sufficient to show the importance of Kurrachee.
Already rising at an unprecedented pace, having trebled her s.h.i.+pping and quadrupled her trade in ten years, she is destined to make still greater strides as soon as the Indus Railway is completed, and finally--when the Persian Gulf route becomes a fact--to be the greatest of the ports of India.
That a railway must one day be completed from Constantinople or from some port on the Mediterranean to Bussorah on the Persian Gulf is a point which scarcely admits of doubt. From Kurrachee or Bombay to London by the Euphrates valley and Constantinople is all-but a straight line, while from Bombay to London by Aden and Alexandria is a wasteful curve.
The so-called ”Overland Route” is half as long again as would be the direct line. The Red Sea and Isthmus route has neither the advantage of unbroken sea nor of unbroken land transit; the direct route with a bridge near Constantinople might be extended into a land road from India to Calais or Rotterdam. The Red Sea line pa.s.ses along the sh.o.r.es of Arabia, where there is comparatively little local trade; the Persian Gulf route would develop the remarkable wealth of Persia, and would carry to Europe a local commerce already great. At the entrance of the Persian Gulf, near Cape Mussendoom or Ormuz, we should establish a free port on the plan of Singapore. In 1000 A.D., the spot now known as Ormuz was a barren rock, but a few years of permanent occupation of the spot as a free port changed the barren islet into one of the wealthiest cities in the world. The Red Sea route crosses Egypt, the direct route crosses Turkey; and it cannot be too strongly urged that in war time ”Egypt” means Russia or France, while ”Turkey” means Great Britain.