National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 |
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CH. II MALAKAND AND CHAKDARA 13
From the little station of Dargai, where the railway
line fitly ends within a fortified outwork, the tonga carried me up rapidly to the Malakand Pass, now crowned by frowning forts and walls. The Political Agent's Bungalow, where Major S. H. Godfrey, C.I.E., hospitably received me,
was full of cherished reminiscences from visits I had paid there to Colonel Deane before and after the last great tribal rising. Major Godfrey's kind forethought had arranged all details of transport and escort for the crossing of Swat and Dir. So there was little to discuss now, and plenty of time left to enjoy the glorious view which opens from the steep bare hillside into the rocky defile north of the Malakand and across the rich Swat Valley beyond (Fig. 1).
In all clearness I saw again the blood-drenched gorges
and slopes covered with huge boulders where the Pathan tribes had in that fateful summer of 1897 delivered their desperate attacks night after night. Crater Camp, then so heroically held in the face of overwhelming odds, has long ago been abandoned, death-trap as it was in truth. But delightfully mediaeval towers, with machicoulis and all the defensive contrivances which ' tribal-proof ' fortification has resuscitated, crown the rocky crests around; they would render a repetition of those frantic onslaughts impossible, whatever waves of fanaticism may pass in the future over Swat and the wild hill tracts beyond.
That civilization had set in fast on the Malakand was
brought home by the conspicuous appearance of its true pioneer on the Frontier, ' the British Baby.' Mrs. Godfrey's charming little children played about on the verandah with all the frankness and freedom of officially accredited babies. I heard that now even regular children's parties might be seen on the Malakand, where, in 1897, the existence of ladies and children had to be strictly kept from official knowledge. Other aspects of life, too, had softened. Beautiful roses and sweet peas were growing in little beds cut out with no small trouble from the rocky slopes near the Political Agent's Bungalow, and excellent strawberries were placed before me as proud produce of Malakand gardens !
After a final consultation about the Lowarai crossing,
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