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
i 893.] THE MEHTAR AND HIS S URRO UNDINGS. 359
he told me if only he could have a boat like that he would take it every summer to the lake at the top of the Shandur Pass, and shoot ducks there. From the pictures, he and those of
his men who had been down to India were led on to talk of the various wonders which they had seen there, and I used
to encourage them to talk of such things, for it gave them an opportunity of appealing to me to corroborate, before their fellow-countrymen, the truth of their description. The Mehtar
had himself been down to Calcutta, and he complained that when he came back nobody would believe the stories he
told them. His old father, Aman-ul-Mulk, had believed him
up to a certain point ; he had believed about the railway and the telegraph, for he thought it might be possible that men
who could make such good rifles as the English did, might
also be able to invent some arrangements for sending men and messages rapidly along ; but when his son told him that
the English made ice in the middle of the hot weather, he said he could not possibly believe that, for God only could do such a thing. He said he drew the line there, and told his son he need not tell him any more of his stories !
When, however, the Mehtar or his men told such stories before me, and I corroborated them, the Chitralis gradually
çame to believe they were true ; and, both for the sake of
enlightening them about India, and of seeing what had specially struck those men who had been there, I used to en-
courage the Mehtar to talk of his experiences. I am inclined
to think that what he liked best was driving about in a " buggy " in Calcutta. He was allowed the free use of an
open victoria with a pair of horses, and he liked to drive about all day long, lying back in it and enjoying himself. He said he thought one day of making a road in Chitral, on the three or four miles of flat by the fort, and getting a carriage up in pieces and driving in it. The Mint, and the rows upon rows of guns laid up in the arsenal at Calcutta,
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