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0068 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 / Page 68 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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i6   THROUGH SWAT AND DIR

CH. II

little exploits is kept in view at all times. But the

frequent patrols and pickets we passed this afternoon were

probably a special safeguard provided by the active Levy

Jamadar of Chakdara who rode with my party.

The smart soldierly bearing of the men was evidence

of the progress made during the last eight years in the

organization of this useful local corps. Raised originally

partly with a view to give occupation to selected ` Bad-

mashes ' of these tracts and to keep the more fiery young

spirits out of mischief, the Levies had taken their share

in the fighting of 1897 round Malakand and Chakdara-

needless to say, on the wrong side. The composition of

the corps can scarcely have changed very much ; yet the

Martinis they now carried showed the increased reliance

placed on them. The Native Assistant for Dir, who was

to see me through to the Chitral border, proudly assured

me that since the new armament some two years before

no rifle had yet been abstracted. In appearance I was

glad to see the men still looked the tribesmen they are.

With the exception of fluttering white shirts, evidently

washed for once in my honour, and brand-new Pugrees of

red and khaki, there was no trace of a uniform.

Considering our late start from Chakdara, the march to

Sarai, the usual first halting-place, would have been enough

for the day. But good reasons had decided me to push on

to the Lowarai by double marches. It was getting on

towards 5 P.M. when we passed the Levy fort of Sarai ; yet

I could not forgo my intention of using what remained of

the day for my first piece of archaeological survey work. At

the hamlet of Gumbat, some two miles to the south-west of

Sarai, I had found in 1897 the comparatively well-preserved

ruin of an old Hindu temple, closely resembling in plan

and style shrines I had, in times gone by, surveyed in the

Salt Range of the Punjab. There had been no time then

to effect a proper survey, and now, too, Fate willed that

the work had to be done in a hurry. Luckily, Naik Ram

Singh was now riding along to assist me.

As our ponies scrambled up the terraced slopes of the

hillside, along the lively little stream which spreads fertility

here near the grove of Jalal Baba Bukhari's Ziarat, it amused