Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/111

1885.] to-morrow, and have left an ever-lasting monument of our power for all Central Asia," some one remarked.

As the Dabarrah rock is known to most Powindahs, and they travel annually backwards and forwards in tens of thousands between all parts of Khorasan and India, and even as far as Bokhara, the removal of the rock would have been noised abroad to our credit through Central Asia. The Zao defile, up to some seventy or eighty years ago, was the safest and easiest caravan route through the Suliman range on this border; but the fall of the great rock has almost closed it.

That evening the road was reported to be practicable. Although there was hardly any moon, the Nasar carriers volunteered to march through with their loads during the night. They did their best. About 300 camels were through by eight on the following morning, but those clumsy bhoosa-loads stuck. When I pushed on in the early morning, hoping against hope to be able to return with a line clear report to the General, I found a jam of camels and bhoosa-loads in several places, and the Nasars sitting helplessly by warming their numbed fingers round little fires they had made. There was no help for it. Another halt was ordered, and all that day sepoys and officers toiled like navvies at piece-work in negotiating camels and loads, step by step, up that grim cleft of a pass, until they jammed again below the ramp which led to the narrow opening between the Dabarrah rock and the cliff. Many of the camels were unloaded at the foot of this ramp, and one by one hustled through by a score of sepoys, pulling, pushing, and half lifting them; their loads were then carried up by the sepoys; the terrified animals were next caught, and made to sit, and then reloaded. The camel is rightly considered the most mal-odorous, unintelligent, and unattachable brute yet subjugated to man's uses, and certainly the vast majority of them were provokingly stupid and cowardly before that Dabarrah rock. But a score or so quite belied their evil reputations. Those few seemed to take in the situation at a glance, calmly walked up the lower part of the ramp, which was an inclined plane, until they came to that portion which, owing to its steepness, had been made like a stair in steps. Here each intelligent animal knelt down, thus keeping her load fairly on the horizontal, and pushed herself up, step by step, by her extended hind-legs. The passage of that Dabarrah rock took twenty-six hours, the troops working by relays at it in splendid style up to 10 P.M., and recommencing next day at 4 A.M. When the last load was through, our satisfaction was intense. We now all looked forwards hopefully to the accomplishment of our undertaking, although we knew that the unexpected check in the pass had seriously reduced our supplies, and that there were many days of hard work in front of us before we could return. If the clouds would hold off for a fortnight more, and that Pazai spring should not prove a myth, we must succeed. We were now on the wrong side of the Suliman range, with only ten days' supplies in hand, and completely cut off from all communication with British territory by that awful defile, which a few hours of rain or a dozen resolute men could absolutely close against all comers for a couple of days at least. However, onwards was the word. A long march brought us to a deep basin in the hills immediately below the northern peak of the Takht, which pierced the thin air 6000 feet