Turdi Kol and all the Kirghiz implored me, as the representative of the British Government, to make some arrangements for stopping these cruel raids. They said the Chinese would do nothing for them, and their only hope now was in the British. I was able to tell them that the Government of India was sending Captain (now Colonel) Durand to Hunza to see the chief of that country, and, amongst other things, to try to come to some understanding with him in regard to this raiding, and that for the protection of the trade route during the present year I was going to leave some Kashmir sepoys at Shahidula. But I also desired to explore the route from Shahidula by which the raids were committed, and I would ask, therefore, that guides should be furnished me to enable me to effect this. Turdi Kol himself at once volunteered to accompany me, and as he had been to Hunza before, and knew the road, his assistance was likely to prove most valuable.
These Khirghiz were not an attractive set of men. They were timid, irresolute, and shifty. It is true that their mode of life renders them rather liable to attack, for they live by their flocks and herds, and have to scatter themselves over the valleys wherever pasture for their animals can be found. They are, therefore, necessarily exposed to attacks from a compact body of raiders. But, on the other hand, these raiders had to come nearly two hundred miles through a difficult mountainous country ; and the Kirghiz, if they were worth anything at all, ought to have been able, in the defiles and passes of their country, to give the Kanjutis some sort of punishment, or to effect some little retaliation that might at any rate have checked the audacity of the raiders. But except Turdi Kol, who really had some pluck and nerve, they were a flabby lot, who, like parasites, preferred to hang on to some greater power and get protection from it rather than make any attempt at defence themselves. There were at the time
IIIF Color HighRes
