[Tappan Introduction]
AFGHANISTAN was conquered by Alexander the Great, and from
his time until the middle of the eighteenth century, indeed, almost to the present day, it
has been constantly changing masters. The conqueror of the eighteenth century, Nadir Shah,
was assassinated, and succeeded by one of his officers. Since that time the country has
been independent, but her annals have been a story of anarchy, revolt, and warfare. In
1838, England restored an exiled shah. The result was a bitter war between the Afghans and
the British, followed a few years later by a second struggle, in which the British were
successful. An Afghan revolt was put down by General Roberts's march to Kandahar, which
won for him his title of Lord Roberts of Kandahar. Since then the land had been
practically under British control. In 1838 war broke out between Afghanistan and England.
Four years later, the British army was destroyed while retreating through the Kurd-Kabul
Pass. The visit to the "Hill of Bones," described in the text, took place in
1878, during the second war.
WHILE we lay at Gundamuk it was but natural that our thoughts often went back to the
sad episodes of the former Afghan campaigns of 1841 and 1842. Not very far from our
campCperhaps four or five milesCthe people of the country still pointed out the remains of
"Burnes Sahib's" camp, a few mud walls standing to mark the spot where our
forces, when going up to Kabul, were cantoned for a while. Among them were Sir Alexander
Burnes, Macnaughten, Elphinstone, and others. Then, after a period of garrison in Kabul,
there came the sudden and fierce rising of November 2, 1841, when Macnaughten was
treacherously slain while holding a parley with Akbar Khan in view of the British garrison
who were on the walls of the city. After this came the episode of retreat. The force,
diminished in number and weakened by sickness, were promised safe conduct through the
passes if they would give up the city they had defended so long and retire to India. They
did so, or essayed to do so. And then the arch-traitor, Akbar Khan, who knew no honor,
lined the cliffs en route with his overwhelming numbers. They hung upon the flanks of the
retreating army, harrying them, and cutting off the stragglers day after day. Some sixteen
thousand souls, of whom perhaps forty-five hundred were fighting men, the rest servants
and camp-followers, left Kabul. On they struggled with desperate valor, almost at the
outset having to abandon their baggage. It was winter-time, and the snow lay thickly on
the road. Thus while the multitudes dropped under the fire which ever poured upon them
from the high rocks which lined the Pass, many, very many, perished from the cold, lying
down at night in their bed of snow, and rising not again at morning dawn. At last, when
bullet, sword, and cold had ended the struggles of almost all the native soldiers and
camp-followers, the miserable remnant of the force, consisting mainly of men of the
Forty-fourth, a few Artillery men, and a score or so of officers, and numbering, all told,
barely a hundred fighting men, with two or three hundred camp-followers, reached the
vicinity of Gundamuk, or at least a spot some eight miles from our present camp. The day
before they had crossed the stream called the Surkh Ab, or "Red Water," fighting
hand-to-hand with their foe for the passage. And now what more could they do? Strength was
gone, and hope was almost dead. Six officers were chosen and sent to ride as hard as their
miserable ponies would carry them to Jellalabad, some thirty-five miles off, where Sale
and Havelock were gallantly holding out, to seek help. It was a forlorn hope, for the
journey was fraught with fearful peril. How could six worn-out men ever anticipate a safe
ride through a wild country swarming with fierce tribesmen?
But they started. Meanwhile the handful of fighting men who remained gathered on the
summit of a round-topped hill. And there, a desperate band, they resolved to fight, and,
if no help came, to die, selling their lives as dearly as possible. And they did it.
Standing shoulder to shoulder in old heroic British fashion, surrounded by a perfect sea
of Ghilzai tribesmen, and the fierce warriors of Akbar, they held their foe at bay till
all their ammunition was gone. Then the waves of the sea closed in and swept on and over
them, for every man had fallen in his tracks.
And what about the forlorn hope? For a while fortune seemed to favor them. Half the
distance had been accomplished without molestation. But at the village of Futtehabad (nigh
unto the spot of our fight with the Kujianis a few weeks since) they turned asideCfatal
mistakeCand sought milk and refreshment from some of the villages. It was given. But while
partaking of it, all unsuspicious of treachery, the false villagers attacked them; and
though they defended themselves with desperate courage, five were slain. One only, Dr.
Brydon, an army surgeon, escaped. Fighting his way through the traitors, he gained the
open path, and though pursued for many a mile, with his broken sword he managed to beat
off his assailants and then distance them.
About midday on January 13, 1842, a sentry pacing the walls of Jellalabad called aloud
that he saw a mounted man slowly wending his way across the barren plain towards the city.
Many glasses were leveled, and they could just discern a European supporting himself on a
miserable country pony, faint with travel, and perhaps wounded too. Who could he be? they
asked one another, as a thrill passed over them; for the very sight of the solitary
stranger seemed to bring them forebodings of disaster. Slowly they led him through the
city gate, faint, bleeding, covered with wounds, grasping still the fragment of sword
which had been shattered in the conflict for life. It was Brydon, the sole survivor of the
force which had left Kabul to return to India, and, with the exception of the hostages who
were in captivity, the only living remnant of Elphinstone's army. Riding over the very
same pathway as poor Brydon, when I was going back to India, how vividly did I recall Miss
Thompson's marvelous picture, where with such strange fidelity she depicts the weary,
wounded man clinging to his worn-out, gasping pony. It is the same path today, as you look
out from the Kabul gate of Peshawar, with the selfsame solitary tree standing at the
corner where it bends away to the left.
With the various remembrances of this old dark page in our history all around us, it
was not strange that some of us desired to see a little more closely the very spots where
some of these events had taken place.
One morning accordingly two of us rode out beyond our lines, and towards the Jugdullok
Pass, accompanied by an old Kujiani who knew the country around, and every spot of
interest. The old fellow professed to remember well the time of the last campaign from
1839 to 1842. The names of our leaders then were familiar to him, Pollock and Sale,
Elphinstone, Burnes, and Macnaughten. For six miles he led us across the stony plain, and
by tortuous hill-paths, until we came out upon a broad stretch of country which led away,
we could see, to the entrance of one of the passes. And here on the flat ground, the hills
away in the distance, and no cover or protection near, we found the remains of the old mud
walls, and even the remnants of huts, which had once formed part of the cantonments of
Burnes. He was our envoy to the Court of Kabul, and a most distinguished Oriental scholar
and traveler. But for some time before proceeding to the capital he had been permanently
"cantoned" in this spot. With sad interest we moved along the broken walls, and
tried to imagine the scene of thirty-nine years ago, when in this spot the little European
force were located and lived, surrounded by tribes who were at any rate hostile in heart,
aliens in a strange land.
But there was more than this to see, and so we turned to our old guide, one of whose
accomplishments, very important to us, was that he could understand a little Hindustani.
"Larai ki jagah kahan hai, buddha?" "Where is the place of fight, old
man?" said we. And the old man said not a word, but pointing with his finger forward,
silently led us on. Away to our right, perhaps two miles off, we could see a conical hill
rising out of the plain, round-topped and solitary. The hill ranges were around it, but
distant. It stood alone, a monument itself! We did not say much as we neared it. Both my
companion and myself were thinking of the old tragedy and its consummation on that
hilltop. We thought of the devoted band who had struggled down the passes from Kabul,
fighting every inch of the way; men, women, camp-followers, and soldiers dropping in their
tracks under murderous fire or savage attack; or perchance lying down at night, weary of
life, to rise no more. We thought of them,Ca diminished band, indeed,Csixteen thousand
souls reduced to about five hundred; forty-five hundred soldiers to a bare
hundredCreaching the river four miles ahead and finding the ford and bridge barred by an
overwhelming host of savage foes. But they cut their way through, and came onCthus far.
And here they paused awhile, and then climbed the hill yonder to die. We could see it all
again after a lapse of thirty-seven years. The little band toiling with painful effort up
the hillside, and forming up on the top shoulder to shoulderCat bay. The fierce tribesmen
gathering round, closing in more and more, the band of heroes lessening moment by moment;
and then the great wave of the human sea around surging over them and burying them away
out of sight unshaken in discipline, undaunted in spirit, faithful unto death!
We reached the bottom of the hill. My companion, who had brought his photographic
apparatus with him, and was anxious to get a view first from the base, waited to do it,
the Kujiani with him. I slowly ascended; my horse, which belonged to a hill breed,
climbing like a cat among the big rocks that covered the side. Soon I reached the summit,
and prepared to look upon the very spot where our gallant fellows had made their
death-stand. There it must be, I thought, towards the center. And I made my way towards
it. The summit of the hill was of fairly large extent; but as I came nearer the middle, I
saw that there the surface seemed strangely white. What could it be? I hurried forward;
and to my horror there I saw gathered together in a great heap the skeleton bones of that
heroic band. There, where the men had fallen, their remains had been lying for
thirty-seven long years, bleached by the sun, and swept by every tempest which had broken
on that hilltop. It was a ghastly sight. But it was not the ghastliness so much as the
sadness of it that struck me most of all. Alien feet had trodden around that hill summit;
the wild shepherds who tended their mountain sheep and goats, Kujiani and Ghilzai
tribesmen, all had looked upon that open sepulcher; but never before had foot of brother
Englishman been there, nor had friendly eyes lighted on the unburied remains. Here were
truly the "relics of a lost army." I shouted to my companion, who was still at
the bottom of the hill manipulating his camera, and waiting for a peep of brighter light
to get a good view.
The day had been gloomy, in consonance, I seemed to feel, with the sad sight on which I
had been gazing. I understood now why our Kujiani friend had been quite content to stay
below, while I went up alone. He knew what I should find; but he had told us nothing to
prepare us for the sight. In response to my shout, Burke, leaving his camera, came hastily
up, and looked with horror and amazement on what again revealed itself, as we together
came to the center of the hill. They were truly the remains of our poor fellows. Probably
when Pollock's avenging force, after relieving the "Illustrious Garrison" at
Jellalabad, had marched on up the passes towards Kabul, they had found the bodies here and
had buried them out of sight by covering them with a great stone cairn. This, no doubt,
had been subsequently rudely cast down by the Afghans belonging to the tribes around, and
the bodies left shamefully exposed; the Mussulman creed allowing them to desecrate the
place of sepulcher, but not the dead bodies themselves. This was the general opinion. And,
indeed, in connection with our own campaign we had cases where graves in which we had laid
some of our men to rest were rudely broken open,Coutrage enough, indeed,Cbut the remains
within not otherwise disturbed.
Burke brought up his camera, and from the top of a neighboring height took a picture of
the "Hill of Bones," as it afterward came to be called. It was a gloomy, weird
picture enough! All around were the mountain spurs reaching down to the barren plain, the
furthermost peaks still capped with snow. Yonder away the dark entrance to the Jugdullok
Pass. And here in the middle the one solitary round-topped hillCmonument and grave at
once. Two human forms could be discerned, myself and the old Kujiani, who had now been
induced to come up too; we two looking down sadly on the gathered bones of the brave men,
as they lay resting on God's earth, and looking up into the face of God's heaven.
When we returned to camp we unfolded the tale of what we had found, and arrangements
were made soon after for the reverent burial of the bones. A detachment was sent out, and
over the great grave they raised a tall obelisk, which no doubt still marks the spot.
Source
From: Eva March Tappan, ed., The World's Story: A History of the World in Story,
Song and Art, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), Vol. II: India, Persia,
Mesopotamia, and Palestine, pp. 275-282.
Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton.
Note: Many Western sources about Islamic countries exhibit what has
come to be known as orientalism. The terms used ("Mohammedan" for
instance rather than "Muslim"), and the attitudes exhibited by the writers need
to be questioned by modern readers.
This text is part of the Internet
Islamic History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and
copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history.
