From the Black Mountain to Waziristan: Being an account of the border countries and the more turbulent of the tribes controlled by the north-west frontier province, and of our military relations with them in the pastWylly, H. C. (Harold Carmichael)
History
From the Black Mountain to Waziristan: Being an account of the border countries and the more turbulent of the tribes controlled by the north-west frontier province, and of our military relations with them in the past
Of that portion of the Khyber which is under our own control the
following description is given by Warburton: “The main road from
Peshawar to Kabul passes through Jumrud, going almost due east to west.
After leaving Jumrud it passes through an easy country, having low hills
on the left hand side, and about the third mile it enters the hills at
an opening called Shadi Bagiar. A ridge from the lofty Ghund-ghar on the
left runs down to the road, and faces a similar ridge coming down from a
prolongation of the Rhotas Range. The highway runs for a short distance
through the bed of a ravine, and then joins the road made by Colonel
Mackeson in 1839–42, until it ascends to the Shagai Plateau on the left
hand side, and here Ali Musjid is seen for the first time. Still going
westward the road turns to the right, and by an easy zigzag descends to
the stream and runs along its side, and below Ali Musjid goes up the
waterway. The new road along the cliff was made by us in 1879–80, and
here is the narrowest part of the Khyber, not more than fifteen feet
broad with the Rhotas hill on the right hand fully 2000 feet overhead.
Still progressing, at about 400 yards from Ali Musjid, on the left hand
side, three or four large springs issuing from the rock give the whole
water supply to this quarter. Between two and three miles comes the
Malikdin Khel hamlet of Katta Kushtia; soon after Gurgurra is reached,
and then we are in Zakha Khel limits in the real Khyber proper, until we
come to the Shinwaris of Lundi Kotal, or more properly Loargai. The
valley now widens out, and on either side lie the hamlets and some sixty
forts of the Zakha Khel Afridis. Here, there is no stream, and the
residents have to depend on rainwater collected in tanks. The Loargai
Shinwari Plateau is some seven miles in length, and there is its widest
part. Just here above Lundi Khana, the old road was a very nasty bit....
From Shadi Bagiar to Lundi Khana the pass cannot be more than twenty
miles in a direct line. When the first detachment of our troops returned
from Kabul,[104] they marched from Ali Musjid along the bed of the
stream, by Lala China, Jabagai, Gagri, Kaddam, ‘the real gate,’ and Jam,
villages of the Kuki Khel Afridis, to Jumrud; but Colonel Mackeson,
finding this way extremely difficult and unsuitable for guns and wheeled
traffic, made an excellent road from Ali Musjid to Fort Jumrud through
the hills, the same that we now use.”
[Sidenote: The Trans-Frontier Khyber]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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