Innermost Asia : vol.1 / 64 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0064	Innermost Asia : vol.1
極奥アジア : vol.1

to fix our positions accurately by intersections from peaks previously triangulated by the Survey
of India. In spite of the trying conditions and the severe strain of constant hard marching,
R. B. Lāl Singh displayed, as throughout our subsequent travels, his old zeal and vigour to the full.
His fifty-one years, an age which among Indians might otherwise count as advanced, had in no
way impaired his keen spirit or physical fitness. It was mainly through his devoted exertions
that it was possible in eleven days, all that I was able to spare for this ground, to map on the scale
of two miles to the inch nearly twelve hundred square miles of ground which had never been
seen by European eyes. The result is being duly utilized by the Survey of India for its maps.

A scion of
Khushwaqt
race. I consider it both an obligation and a pleasure to record here how much the tasks compressed
within this short space of time were facilitated by the excellent relations established from the
start with Mehtarjao Shāh ʻĀlam and the band of Pakhtūn Wāli's trusted retainers who formed
our ever-watchful guard. That we owed their ready help entirely to the chief's good will and to
his intelligent trust in the wholly non-political objects of my visit is certain. His young nephew,
Shāh ʻAlam (Fig. 25), showed all the quickness of intellect and the mountaineer's agility befitting
a scion of the Khushwaqt race. Notwithstanding its inherited proneness to internecine strife, with
its accompaniment of unscrupulous intrigue and violence, this race of hill chieftains has been able
by its nobler qualities to maintain for long centuries its hold upon the attachment of the people
settled about the head-waters of the Gilgit and Chitrāl rivers. I thought I was able to recognize
in the manner, energetic and yet pliant, of Mehtarjao Shāh ʻĀlam those qualities which, coupled
with indubitable personal courage, had enabled his uncle and master to establish his sway over
tribes alien in race and speech and accustomed to long periods of turbulent anarchy.

Pakhtūn
Wāli's men-
at-arms. His sharp-cut high-bred features of unmistakable ʻ Ghalchah ʼ or Homo Alpinus type would
alone have sufficed to distinguish Shāh ʻĀlam from the strangely mixed crew of Pakhtūn Wāli's
supporters placed under his orders (Fig. 10). Men of widely different breed, they were all of
distinctly shady antecedents, but ʻ handy ʼ and pleasant to deal with. Most of these alert fellows
were outlaws and cut-throats from adjoining portions of the Gilgit Agency, Mastūj, Chitrāl, or
from the independent tribal territories on the Indus and the Upper Swāt river, who, with hands
already bloodstained, had joined Pakhtūn Wāli's fortunes at different stages of his adventurous
career. Their commander was burly fair-haired Shahīd (Fig. 28), whose name, meaning ʻ martyr ʼ,
was curiously at variance with his look of a jovial ruffian. He belonged to Pāpat in Tangīr. He
had attached himself from the start to Pakhtūn Wāli's person and was credited with having been
a chief instrument in all the violent deeds accompanying the mixed feuds and intrigues by which
his capable chief, for years a hapless refugee in Tangīr and dependent on traditional charity, had
gradually made himself master of that once turbulent valley.

Rise of
Pakhtūn
Wāli's
fortunes. Established in this position Pakhtūn Wāli was able to secure a considerable annual revenue
from the sale of timber in the fine forests of Tangīr to Kāka-khēl traders from the Peshawar District.
These resources had allowed him to collect, arm, and maintain the small mercenary force that
helped him about 1909 to extend his sway over the tribal republics of Darēl and Sazīn. The
methods by which he had thus, in true condottiere fashion, carved out a new kingdom of his own,
were undoubtedly such as the history of the Hindukush valleys and the hill tracts farther south
must long have been familiar with.¹ But all the more interesting was it for me to get into direct

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