THE TRAVELS OF THE AFGHAN COMMISSION"
LIEUTENANT Yarn, who is apparently not the famous Captain Yate, though we presume he is his brother, says he has taken as "the basis" of his book the letters he wrote to various journals, English and Indian, from the Afghan Boundary Commission camp. The first and most obvious criticism to offer on his volume from the merely literary point of view, is that it is a matter for regret that he bad not adhered better to his " basis " theory ; in other words, that, instead of repro- ducing his letters very much as they most have appeared in the journals to which they were supplied, he had rewritten and other- wise boiled them down into one continuous narrative. Referring more particularly to the route taken by Colonel Ridgeway and his party from Nuehki to Herat, and to Badkia generally, he calls his book " a description of travels through country that is practically unknown to the civilised world." That is quite true, and poli- tics apart—especially the politics of this book—Lieutenant Yate is a sufficiently vigorous writer, though his interests and enthusiasms are almost, if not altogether military. But surely there should be an air of action about a book of travel, at all events of travel that is now practically history. But when one ploughs through letters descriptive of every day's sayings and doings, one feels as if he were getting " no forrarder." Here is a specimen of the literary fatty matter that Lieutenant Yate ought to have got rid of, or at least to have greatly reduced :— " As a token of the heat, I may mention that the thermometer now (3 p.m.) stands at 1022° in my room. Imagine what it is to be out all day in the sun ! As for the flies, they worry from morn to night. They rouse you from your well-earned rest at daybreak, and they leave you in peace only when the shades of night are falling. And when their innings is over, the sand-flies go in at you, and happy is he who, between sand-flies, the loading of camels, and the whistling and shunting on the railway, has enjoyed one night'e perfect rest here. Can you wonder that the prospect of a speedy departure is welcomed by all ?"
This specimen passage ought to have been condensed into a line. When the Commission has to retreat after the affairs Penjdeh, • England and Russia E. to race in Asia Travels with the Afghan Boundary Commission. By Lieutenant A. 0. Irate, Bombay BMA Corp. Edinburgh and London William Blackwood and Sons. 1887.
Lieutenant Yate bethinks him of Xenophon, and.of the
Retreat of the Ten Thousand. It is a pity that had not taken a dip into Xenophon before he began his book ; he might, in that case, have introduced into it a little of the realism of Xenophon's parasangs, which, ',whatever may be said in disparagement of it, is conducive to " go." Lieutenant "fate's imperfect application of his own " basis " theory to the preparation Elf this volume has injured it in another way. By way of frontispiece/ he presents us with por- traits of what we may call the Afghan Boundary Commission cast,—Sir Peter Lnmsden, Sir Joseph Ridgeway, General Komaroff, and Captain Yate. We should have preferred that Lieutenant Yate had allowed, his readers to draw their own portraits of his heroes from seeing them, so to speak, in• action. He does not give one the chance of doing anything of the kind. The members of the Afghan oast are not so much men, as trees walking. This unfortunate result is due mainly, we are con- vinced, to the plan adopted by Lieutenant Yate when revising, or rewriting, his book.
It would serve no purpose to look at this volume from the purely political point of view, to ask what it proves, to discuss once more the pro's and con.'s of Penjdeh. Lieutenant Yate has, and is entitled to, his opinions. They are not ours, but they are obviously sincere, and they are not unduly thrust forward. But Lieutenant Yate can hardly help being a partisan, and looking at the relations between Great Britain and Russia from the military and Anglo-Indian point of view. When, therefore, he says that " all evidence goes to prove that the attitude of the British Government in connection with the demarcation of the Afghan frontier was from the first weak and indecisive," all the answer that need be given is that all evidence goes to show that there are considerations of in haute politique of which Lieutenant Yate has no conception. But a military man who has been on the spot, and doubtless has digested the views of more ex- perienced professional brethren, is entitled to be heard on the military aspects of the Central Asian problem. Take, for example, what Lieutenant Yate says of Herat, as to which be hazards the declaration that enough has been done to secure it from being carried by a coup de 'Main :— " In their present condition, Rent and its valley are not of the value usually accredited to them. The neighbourhood of Herat is now to a great extent denuded of inhabitants, and a great part of the soil of its fertile valley lies uncultivated. It has been estimated lately that the population of Herat City does not now exceed 12,000, and of the entire valley, which is some forty miles long by twenty broad, 50,000. To suppose that the Herat Valley could, in its present condition, support a Russian army powerful enough to advance to attack with a certainty of success (for Russia could not afford to risk defeat) the army that India would mass on the Helmand, or some other point in advance of Kandahar, is a mistake. Possibly 20,000 or 30,000 men could now be supported on the produce of the Herat and Ghorian Valleys, with the assistance of the supplies that would be brought up by the Tranacaspian Railway. To render Herat a really valuable base, whence an advance can be made on India, it must be carefully administered by Russia for a good many years."
Lieutenant Yate—to whom, by the way, the securing of an alliance with Persia is what " Register " was to Sir Robert Peel —says that Russia would require an army of 200,000 men to invade India :— " I believe," he further says, " that a Hamden farce repulsed from before Herat would have a troublous time of it. The first Russian reverse would encourage Afghan, Persian, and Tarkoman alike ; there might even be a general revolt throughout Turkestan and Trans- oaspiana. And the nearer the Russian army was to the Helmand when defeated, the greater the probability of its total destruction. Pressed on during its retreat by the British army, harassed by thou- sands of Afghan guerillas, and its rear threatened by Persians and rebel Tarkomans, its position would be a most unenviable one."
The names of the leading chapters in Lieutenant Yate's book, " From Rindli to Nnahki," " Across the Desert," " From the Helmond to Herat," " From Herat to Kushan," "Kuehan to Bala Mnrghab," "In our Winter Quarters," "At Gulran," " The Penjdeh Crisis and the Retreat to Tirpnl "—indicate the familiar stages in the course of the Frontier Commission's pro- ceedings. There is no doubt as to the skill shown by the leaders, or of the capacity for endurance displayed by the rank andfile, of that body in its arduous and dangerous march. The heavy bag- gage of the Mission left Nushki on the evening of October let, and reached Kushan on the evening of November 17th. There Mr. Yate also calls a halt in his narrative, and says, and is perfectly justified in saying,—" To pilot a force of some 1,200 men, burdened with an abnormal amount of impedi- nwnta, through 220 miles of desert and some 540 miles of foreign territory, inhabited by races of whose neutrality,
far less friendliness, nothing certain could be predicated, without the loos of a man, beast, or load by neglect or careless. nese, and without once exciting the reputed fanatical spirit in- herent in the Afghan, argues at once good organisation, thorough discipline, untiring energy, and a great power of self-restraint and conciliation." The average length of the marches of the Mission, exclusive of halts, was rather over eighteen miles a day, and including halts, 14.6. To keep this average for forty- seven days was a most creditable achievement, and Mr. Yate has a right to compare it favourably even with the record of the celebrated march of Sir Frederick Roberts's force from Cabal to Caudal= in 1880,—an average of sixteen or seventeen miles kept up for some seventeen or eighteen days.
It is needless to say that the story of the travels of the Afghan Frontier Commission is deeply interesting; and full of ethnological, geographical, and other facts of importance. But from the manner in which it is told, we find it exceedingly difficult to indulge in what would otherwise •be the luxury of quotation. Besides, the Mission hurried so rapidly on its march, that almost no time was allowed for photography even in words. Here, however, is a fair example of Lieutenant Yate's style :— "Certain it is that the Persian officials were courteous in a marked degree. At Mashhad, the Commission were housed in splendid tents in a garden outside the town reserved for their sole use, and on their arrival some of the cooks of the Governor of Khorasan, Abdul Wabbab Khan, Asaf-ud-daulab, were sent down to prepare their breakfast, and the Governor's own band discoursed sweet music during the repast. This is progress. We may still hope to dine at a Persian regimental mess to the strains of a Persian regimental band ; and if only some pious Mohammedan could unearth an original and authentic copy of the Koran, in which those verses condemning the most moderate addiction to the juice of the grape (even in private) and extending to all good Mussulmans the Jewish abhorrence for the flesh of the pig, could not be found, the one barrier which prevents the Mohammedan from being a thorough good fellow and boon companion would be removed."
Again, here is some information well condensed ;— "The possession of the Bala Mnrghah Valley seems within the last thirty or forty years never to have rested long with the same tribe. In turn, the Hazaras, Jamehidis, and Firuzkuhis have all occupied it. It seems surprising that a locality so exposed to the raids of the Saruk Turkomans would have been so keenly contested. Its soil, however, is wonderfully productive. Now, all three tribes have settlements at Bala Murgbab, and the Jamehidis march with their old foes the Ranks near Karawulkhana, whose settlements extend thence to Yulatan and Kalah Wali, and in small numbers up the Khuehk Valley, and for pastoral purposes over Badkis. They number some 7,000 families, exclusive of about 4,000 under Russian rule, at Yulatan The Sarnia+, as a body, owe allegiance to no one man ; each tribe, however, and each section or subsection, acknowledges the leadership of some member of the tribe, section, or subsection, whether his influence be doe to hereditary claim, or personal influence acquired by ability and bravery. They also recognise the influence of certain re- ligious leaders, known by the title of Iehan and Khalifa. The following are some of the moat influential of their tribal, sectional, and religious chiefs Khalifs Rahman Verdi, Taj Nazar Ialmn, Baal, Awan. Galdi, Ak Mohammed Khan, Mohammed Usman Khan Mim- bashi, Soi Khan, Karaja Khan."
Lieutenant Yate writes like a young and lively officer ; but he is fair, cautious, and unpretentious, as his declining to claim any originality for his Herat topography demonstrates. His book, although it contains no startling geographical discoveries, may be reckoned as a safe guide to the regions of which it treats. As for certain high military and political transactions in these regions, Mr. Yate's opinions can always be corrected by the lumen eiecum of better-informed folks.
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