IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
1889.] A KAN7UTI RAID.
days travelled one hundred and seventy miles of country in which no supplies, very little grass, and only roots for fuel could be obtained, and in those six days crossed, besides a minor pass of fifteen thousand feet, three others averaging seventeen thousand six hundred feet above sea-level. In just six weeks from the time of leaving the cantonment of Abbottabab my party was six hundred and forty miles in the heart of the mountains.
At Shahidula we were met by a deputation of Kirghiz, headed by Turdi Kol, the chief man, a quiet, careworn old gentleman, who, as he was himself present at the time of the raid, could give me a full and accurate account of it. What had happened was this. In the autumn of the previous year, a party of eighty-seven men of Hunza (Kanjutis), armed some with matchlocks, some with swords, and some with picks only, had come from the Shimshal Pass, one hundred and ninety miles distant, and had suddenly appeared near Shahidula. They had attacked a caravan and carried off a quantity of goods, and had captured, to take away as slaves, some stray Kirghiz, whom they had found about the valley tending their flocks and herds. They took some of these men, and on pain of death made them show where
Turdi Kol, their chief, was living, and compelled them to go up to the tent and call to him to come out, while the Kanjutis
lay hidden, ready to capture him directly he appeared. But
Turdi Kol told me he suspected something from the manner in which he was called, and from the fact that his men did
not usually stand outside and call him, but came in and
asked him. So he took care to lay hold of his rifle, an English one, and, pushing aside the door of the tent, caught
sight of the Kanjutis. He fired at them and they ran away ; but they took with them twenty-one Kirghiz, men and women, and these were only subsequently released on the payment of eighty rupees for each.
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