THROUGH THE HEART OF HINDUSTAN 



ago and was played in India long before 

 the English, smashing the Spanish Ar- 

 mada which barred the water-gate to the 

 opulent East, gave impetus to imperial- 

 ism by founding the East India Com- 

 pany. 



The cantonment is the place where the 

 visitor sleeps and eats, and where he ob- 

 tains permission to traverse the gash in 

 the barren hills through which the Cen- 

 tral Asian commerce ebbs and flows. 

 But for interest he drives or, better, plods 

 along the two-mile dusty road which 

 leads to the native city, composed, like its 

 Central Asian counterparts, of mud walls 

 and mud houses, with an added story, 

 which is often nothing more than a wattle 

 fence plastered with mud, on the roof. 

 Here live the womenfolk, and hither the 

 natives climb when the hot breathlessness 

 of the dark rooms below drives them to 

 a summer refuge beneath the stars. 



VIVID PICTURES IN THE STREETS OF" 

 PESHAWAR 



Peshawar's streets are always of inter- 

 est. One's eyes are entranced by rich 

 carpets from Bokhara and Merv and 

 Afghanistan, bright copper trays, the 

 high color of geometrically piled fruit, 

 the white veils, shaped like collapsed cir- 

 cular tents, beneath which the Moslem 

 women seem struggling to extricate 

 themselves; the Navajo savagery of the 

 painted pottery and the silken sheen of 

 the bright-colored lungis, which, bound 

 round a pointed red or gold skull-cap, 

 transform ordinary-looking Punjabis or 

 Pathans into supermen. 



The turbans of India, like the sheep- 

 skin shakos of Turkestan and the som- 

 brero of the cowboy West, are magical 

 headgear which make heroic figures of 

 commonplace men. After these sturdy 

 men of the frontier hills, the fat Bengali 

 will be a comic figure. 



The grain market in Peshawar is like 

 the one in Samarkand, although it has 

 less color. The beautiful lungis, or tur- 

 bans, of soft tones, with bright bands of 

 a contrasting hue across the free end, 

 alternate with solid-colored ones of yel- 

 low, lemon, pink, or white. The coats 

 reveal much of the khaki of war times, 

 although many a Pathan wears a foreign- 

 style vest over a long white shirt hanging 

 outside full trousers, which are gathered 



up on the inside of the leg so that they 

 hang in concentric folds looped down- 

 ward from the knee. 



BAGPIPES HERALD CHRISTMAS MORNING 

 NEAR THE KHYEER PASS 



I had gone out to the Khyber the day 

 before Christmas, and on a cold, clear 

 morning which needed only snow to re- 

 mind one of reindeer and sleigh-bells in- 

 stead of camel caravans and dusty roads, 

 we were wakened by the sound of bag- 

 pipes outside the hotel. This inoppor- 

 tune method of Christmas caroling first 

 made me think that some Scotch troopers 

 from the army lines had come to sere- 

 nade some of the officers who were in 

 Peshawar for the holidays. But when I 

 saw the two squirrel - cheeked Indian 

 lads crushing wheezy, melancholy moans 

 from the bloated bag, I thought of that 

 English joke impregnated with Amer- 

 ican slang, "Why do bagpipers stride up 

 and down while they play? Do they 

 think it will make a hit ?" "No ; they 

 think it will make them harder to hit." 

 Sleep was out of the question. 



Leaving the cantonment, we passed the 

 railway station, where the Calcutta mail, 

 starting its 1,600-mile dash, was belching 

 forth a pearly cloud into the leaden sky, 

 and swung into the dusty road which 

 leads to the native city. 



The heavy mist, which still hung low, 

 softened the hard lines of the Oriental 

 scene. Across a field where grain had 

 been, great arching trees showed dimly 

 through the haze and a white-clad tailor, 

 squatting beside a steaming irrigation 

 brook, added a fairy touch to the scene. 

 Farther on a satiny canal shimmered in 

 the morning sun, curving away from the 

 path of Phoebus into a silvery distance in 

 which crude mud walls and a slender 

 minaret took on a beauty worthy of the 

 day. 



As the dark shadows of a row of small 

 arches grew out of the haze, a long line 

 of Bactrian camels, thick of neck and 

 slow of foot, emerged from a city gate 

 and made their way to a muddy drinking 

 place, their uncouth drivers muffled in 

 heavy cloaks, but with their dark-brown 

 ankles bare above rough slippers with 

 pointed heels and loop-the-loop toes. 



Walking through narrow streets be- 

 tween blind walls of monotonous same- 



