The Gates of India: Being an Historical NarrativeHoldich, Thomas Hungerford, Sir
History
The Gates of India: Being an Historical Narrative
Holdich, Thomas Hungerford, Sir
Afghanistan -- Description and travel; Balochistan (Pakistan) -- Description and travel
As other travellers following in Moorcroft's footsteps at no great
distance of time fell also into the hands of Murad Beg, and
experienced very different treatment, it is useful just to note
Moorcroft's description of him. He says: "I scarcely ever beheld a
more forbidding countenance. His extremely high cheekbones gave the
appearance to the skin of the face of its being unnaturally stretched,
whilst the narrowness of the lower jaw left scarcely room for the
teeth which were standing in all directions; he was extremely
near-sighted." Not an attractive description! The spring had well
advanced, and it was not till the middle of February 1825 that
Moorcroft was able to resume his journey to the Oxus. He travelled
from Kunduz to Tashkurghan and Mazar, and from the latter place he
followed the most direct route to Bokhara _via_ the Khwaja Salar ferry
across the Oxus, reaching Bokhara on February 25. Here his narrative
ends, and we only know from Dr. Lord and Wood that he returned from
Bokhara to Andkhui, and died there apparently of fever contracted in
Kunduz. He was buried near Balkh. Trebeck died soon after, and was
buried at Mazar-i-Sharif. Burnes visited and described the tombs of
both travellers, but they have long since disappeared.
As a geographer there is much that is wanting in the methods of this
most enterprising traveller, who at least pioneered the way to High
Asia from British India but who never made geographical exploration a
primary object of his labours. He was true to the last to his trade as
a student of agriculture, and it is in this particular, rather than
in the regions of geography or history, that the value of his studies
chiefly lies. He was the first to point out the general character of
that disastrous road to Kabul which has cost England so dear, and he
is still, with Burnes and Lord and Wood, our chief authority for the
general characteristics of Badakshan and of the Oxus valley east of
Balkh. He did not, however, touch the Oxus east of Khwaja Salar, and
consequently did not see or appreciate the great spread of splendid
pastoral country which lies between the pestilential marsh lands of
Kunduz and the river.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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