The New York Times, February 3, 1879, p.3:
LIFE ON THE FRONTIER OF INDIA.A FORTIFIED CITY OF THE EAST--
SINISTER ASSORTMANT OF RUFFIANS--
THE HILL TRIBES AND THEIR FEUDS--
MAJOR CAVAGNARI AND HIS SURROUNDINGS.
Peshawar Correspondence of the London News.
As the road approached Peshawar, which stands in the trough of a prehistoric lake, the characteristic of the adjacent scene altered. The ground of the lake's bed is fertile. Crops waved in the sunshine. The pleased eye rested upon veritable grass. Thick clumps of foliage and bushy trees studded the plain and girdled the cultivated clearings.
Villages were frequent; but not he straggling villages of Lower India, through whose frail wicker huts and inclosures a resolute bull might charge unobstructed, but compact villages, with substantial habitations of thick plastered mud, surrounded with mud walls which had at least the aspect of some strength. From the long faces of those mud walls rude loopholes looked out, through which in times still recent the muzzles of matchlocks and jezails have grimly warned off unwelcome approachers.
The people, too, differed in aspect from the people of the plain country. They were more warmly clad; they stalked with longer and freer strides, as if used to climb ascents springily; they carried their heads high, and their eyes met yours straight, with a certain pride of equal manliness--at times, as it seemed to me, with a glance of covert defiance...
The people seemed to have... a certain suggestion of ruthlessness in their aspect that somehow grew upon one without any conscious mental process. There was a steadfast fellness in the grim smile, with its gleam of lurid eye and flash of white teeth, that made one instinctively cast a glance down to the girdle in quest of poniards and daggers. A ready-handed relentless, cruel-hearted race, to all seeming, hot to anger, and recklesss in their anger.
The road passes the northern flank of the City of Peshawar. Over its brown walls of circumvallation the city looks imposing enough. The walls inclose eminences which are crowned with lofty houses, and the place has something of the aspect of one of the old Spanish cities.
At the north-western corner of it stands the fort whence once Avitabile, Runjeet Singh's Italian General, exercised his iron sway over the Peshawar Valley in the days of the Sikh domination. It is now a ginger-bread looking structure, with its trim, loopholed curtains and circular bastions of mud. Modern artillery would probably pulverize it in an hour, but it is kept in repair as useful for dominating the turbulent city, which contains a larger proportion of miscellaneous ruffianhood than perhaps any native city, not excepting Lucknow, Baroda, or even Hyderabad, in the Deccan. It also serves as an arsenal, and is garrisoned by a guard of a company detailed from one of the European regiments.
The cantonments of Peshawar lie to the west of the city, and, as one drives through them, appear built in the straggling fashion of most of our cantonments in India. But further acquaintance proves them exceptionally compact. The Peshawar cantonments were laid out under the régime of Sir Charles Napier, who thought a compound 24 feet square quite space enough for a bungalow and its surroundings.
The cantonments are environed by a "circular road," on the western face of which, fronting the hills of the Khybar [Khyber], are constructed the permanent barracks. These were originally intended to be built so as to form a prolonged defensive work, each block to be connected by a curtain having a broad raised banquet behind to afford a battery emplacement. This plan of construction has been in part carried out, but experience has shown that the want of free circulation it entailed overpowered the defensive advantages it promised, and it has not been carried out in its entirety, although the permanent barracks as they now stand form a sort of non-connected curtain facing to the west, the proper front of the cantonments.
At this season Peshawar is, for India, an exceptionally pretty station. In every compound there is a great wealth of foliage, hedges are green, and late roses are still blowing in profusion. But I am told that with the first cold rain in the valley, which occurs simultaneously with the first sprinkling of snow on the hills, the leaves fall, the trees become gaunt and bare, and Peshawar assumes an aspect of monotonous brown.
Peshawar, at present at least, has none of the sameness which is the leading characteristic of Indian military stations. As I ride along the Mall I encounter a little band of athletic hillmen, with flashing eyes and strongly-marked features, striding along in their postheons, with their long, venomous-looking jezails over their lean, broad shoulders. Some salaam with effusion, others stagger by with a swagger, not deigning to notice the Belatee Sahib save by a side glance from under the shaggy eyebrow.
"Why do they come into the station thus armed--these truculent-looking men?" I inquire. I am told that they are hillmen "coming in"--it is curious how phrases repeat themselves--this is the term applied to the Scottish Highlanders, who gradually became "reasonable" after the '45, and applied again to the participators in the Indian mutiny. I am told that they carry their arms because of the blood-feuds that rage between the hill tribes, and the chances are that if a hillman met his hereditary enemy unarmed even within the British lines, he would "go for him."
A man unaccustomed to frontier usages might suggest feebly that it might be advisable to compel these bloodthirsty gentlemen to worry out their blood-feuds according to the hill code of honor, strictly within the precincts of the hill country. But just now we are finding it our cue to be on the best of terms with these hillmen of the debatable land, and we must wink at their inter-social eccentricities.
On the slope of the house of Major Cavagnari, whose hospitality I am enjoying, there are gathered all day long great groups of these fierce-looking, formidably-armed barbarians. They lounge in select consultation parties, or they hold al fresco durbars, sitting in a circle on the grass in the most savagely picturesque attitudes, with the inlaid butts and stocks of their weapons glittering in the sun. They to into Major Cavagnari's room in detachments of twos and threes, leaving a select detachment of their friends along with their slippers on the mat in the veranda. They solemnly, after profuse salaams, take their seats on chairs round the Major's desk, and say their say with grave deliberate emphasis, stroking their bushy red-dyed beards.
Major Cavagnari tells me that these formidable-looking visitors of his, with party after party of which he is in consultation all day long, are headmen and chiefs of families from the hill tribes, who have come in to tender him the assurances of friendship and support in the approaching penetration into the passes. Some remain in readiness of service, some go back again, yet others stay as voluntary hostages for performance of pledges, and, having made their compact, take their way into the city, dwelling there at large, but none the less retaining the character of hostages.
It is pleasant to be told that all the hill tribes of the mountain strip intervening between the Peshawar Valley and Afghanistan proper are securely with us, and have engaged not only not to impede us, but actively to co-operate with us as we pass through their successive territory. Of their fidelity to these engagements Major Cavagnari entertains no doubt, and he ought to be an authority, since he has been engaged politically on this frontier almost since the mutiny. His capacity hitherto has been nominally that of Deputy Commissioner here, but now he is attached to Sir Samuel Browne's force on special political duty.
Our relations with these hillmen present a curious mixture of friendliness and hostility. Our officers have them as body servants, and they are faithful and trustworthy. There are whole companies of them in our frontier regiments, and they make among our best soldiers for every service, even service against their own people. A tribe becomes troublesome, and we go and give it a lesson with fire and sword, and, a few days after, its members are strolling about the Peshawar cantonments.
In the veranda of the house where I am writing there is sitting a gaunt hillman with an honest face. His name is "Mooltanee," and he is Sir Samuel Browne's body servant. He is an Afridi from the adjacent hill country. He had been Sir Samuel's servant for many years. When his master went on leave he went home, and had become a chief among his people.
The other day, when Sir Samuel was nominated to his present command, one of his first concerns was to communicate with Mooltanee, who promptly abandoned his chieftainhood and met his old master on his arrival here, prepared to fall readily into his old billet as his servant.
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