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JUNE, 1917]
A THIRD JOURNEY OF EXPLORATION IN CENTRAL ASIA
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protection from any fanatical attempt on the part of less trustworthy elements among his new subjects who might have liked to embroil him by an attack upon us. But I confess that it also at first caused me serious misgivings as to the freedom which might be left to us for useful topographical work.
It was quite as much regard for such work, as the wish to avoid the excessive summer heat of the Indus gorges, which had caused me to ask that we might be taken to Darel by th: mountains at the heads of the Khanbari and Dudishal Valleys instead of the usual route, which leads through the former. It proved a difficult line of progress, even with such hardy porters for our baggage as Shah Alim had brought from the main Darel Valley. But its advantages for surveying operations were grea G. and fortunately I soon found that we were left full freedom to use them. The great spurs descending from the Indus-Gilgit watershed northward had to be crossed by a succession of high passes, between 13,000 and 14,000 feet, and these furnished exc. llent plane-table stations. The extensive views there obtained towards the great snowy ranges across the Indus and westwards on the headwaters of the Swat River permitted our positions to be fixed with accuracy from previously triangulated peaks. At the expense of much hard climbing we secured equally favourable conditions further on, and a protracted spell of fine weather made it easy to rse them. R. B. Lal Singh, in spite of his fifty-one years, an age which In.lians usually are apt to count as advanced, showed that he had lost none of his old zeal and vigour. Through his devoted exertions a fortnight's hard travel sufficed to map some 1200 square miles, on the scale of 2 miles to the inch, on ground which had never been surveyed or even seen by European eyes.
It was a pleasant surprise to find our tasks soon facilitated by the excellent relations we were able to establish with Mehtarjao Shah Alim and the band of Pakhtun Wali's trusted supporters who formed our ever-watchful guard. They were a strangely mixed crow, of distinctly shady antecedents, but all "handy" and pleasant to deal with. Most of these alert fellows were outlaws from Swat, Chitral, and the independeat Dard republics on the Indus, who, with hands already blood-stained, had joined Pakhtun Wali's fortunes at one time or other of his adventurous career. Their burley fair-haired commander Shahid, whose look of jovial ruffian curiously contrasted with his name, meaning "martyr," had from the beginning played a prominent part in all the mixed feuds and intrigues by which their capable chief had raised himself from the position of a hapless refugee in Tangir to that of absolute master of that once turbulent valley. The means and methods by which Pakhtun Wali, in true Condottiere fashion, had subsequently extended his sway over the neighbouring hill republics of Darel and Sazin, had been equally unscrupulous, and recalled times long gone by elsewhere. His was the most recent kingdom carved out in the Hindukush, a region probably less touched by historical changes than any other in the noi ih-west of India, and to glean first-hand information about the process employed was for me a very instructive and fascinating occupation. Nor did quick-witted Shah Alim and his band of intelligent henchmen fail me when it came to collecting exact data about local resources, population, etc., or raising or managing needful transport. Fully miliar with the ground, as their employment had made them, they yet kept a mental detachment from the local interests, regard for which would have induced reticence among more settled subjects.
The Khanbari River was found to drain an unexpectedly large mountain area, and in all the valleys splendid forests of pines and firs, quite untouched by the axe, were found to clothe the higher slopes. In the wider portions below old cultivation terraces, now abandoned, could be traced for miles. Judging from the size of the trees, the forest which has overrun them in most places dates back for centuries. There is an abundant supply of water for
