Had one been travelling through northern Baluchistan in the spring of 1810, one might have observed a small party of armed men mounted on camels leaving the remote oasis-village of Nushki and making for the Afghan frontier. Ahead of them in the distance, vivid sheets of lightning lit up the blackened sky, while now and again in the surrounding mountains the rumble of thunder could be heard. A heavy storm seemed imminent, and instinctively the riders drew their cloaks about them as they headed into the desert.
One of the men stood out from the others, his skin being noticeably lighter than that of his companions. They believed him to be a Tartar horse-dealer, for that is what he had told them, and never having seen one before they had no reason to doubt him. He had hired them to escort him through the dangerous, bandit-infested country lying between Nushki and the ancient walled city of Herat, 400 miles to the north-west, on the Afghan–Persian frontier. There, the fair-complexioned one explained, he hoped to purchase horses for his rich Hindu master in far-off India. For Herat was one of the great caravan towns of Central Asia, and especially renowned for its horses. It also happened to be of considerable interest to those responsible for the defence of India.
The stranger had arrived in Nushki a few days earlier, accompanied by another man of like complexion whom he had introduced as his younger brother who worked for the same Hindu merchant. They had reached Nushki from Kelat, Baluchistan’s mud-built capital, after disembarking on the coast from a small native vessel which had brought them from Bombay. The journey up from the coast had taken them the best part of two months, for they had not hurried, asking many questions on the way, while trying not to appear too inquisitive. It was at Nushki that the two had separated, the elder heading for Herat with his escort, while the other struck westwards towards Kerman, in southern Persia, where he said he too hoped to buy horses for their employer.
Before going their own ways, the two men had taken leave of one another in the privacy of the native house they had rented for their brief stay in Nushki. They were most careful to ensure that they were neither observed nor overheard. Indeed, had an inquisitive person happened to peer through a crack he might well have been puzzled by what he saw and heard. For it was obvious that this was more than simply the parting of two brothers. With lowered voices and a careful eye on the door, the two men discussed, with an un-Asiatic degree of precision, the details of their respective routes, and last-minute arrangements should anything go amiss. They discussed other matters too which an eavesdropper would have had difficulty in following. For had the truth been known (and it would have meant instant death for both), neither of them was a horse-dealer, let alone a Tartar. Nor for that matter were they even brothers. They were young British officers engaged on a secret reconnaissance for General Malcolm through wild and lawless regions which had never previously been explored.
Captain Charles Christie and Lieutenant Henry Pottinger, both of the 5th Bombay Native Infantry, were now about to embark on the most dangerous and – to those who had sent them – the most valuable part of their mission. Already, during their apparently leisurely journey up from the coast they had managed to gather considerable intelligence concerning the tribes, their leaders and the numbers of fighting men they controlled. They had also taken careful note of the defensive possibilities of the terrain through which they had travelled. As strangers, even as Tartars professing the Muslim faith, they were looked upon with intense suspicion. More than once they had had to lie their way out of trouble by embellishing and improving their cover story to suit the circumstances. Had the fiercely independent Baluchis discovered what they were up to, it would immediately have been assumed that the British were exploring their lands preparatory to seizing them. But fortunately for Christie and Pottinger no one living in this remote region had ever set eyes on a European. So far nobody had penetrated their disguise – or so it appeared.
Nonetheless, as they parted, each wishing the other good luck, they were aware that this might be their last meeting. Assuming all went well, however, their plan was to meet up again at an agreed rendezvous, in the relative safety of the Shah’s domains, after completing their respective reconnaissances. If by a certain date one of them had failed to arrive, then the other should assume that he had either been forced to abandon the journey, or had been killed, in which case the one who did make the rendezvous would proceed to Teheran alone and report to General Malcolm. If either found himself in difficulties, he would try to get a message to the other, or to the British mission in Teheran, so that some kind of help might be organised.
After Christie’s departure with his men on March 22, Pottinger remained in Nushki preparing his own small caravan. Malcolm had given him the task of exploring the great deserts which were thought to lie to the west, presenting a major obstacle, it was hoped, to an advancing army. But on March 23 he received alarming news. A message sent by friends whom he and Christie had made in Kelat, the Baluchi capital, warned him that men had arrived there from neighbouring Sind with orders to arrest the two of them. They had told the Khan of Kelat that Christie and Pottinger were no more horse-dealers than they were, and that they had adopted this guise to survey the country for military purposes, a move which threatened both their peoples.
The two Englishmen were to be seized and taken back to Hyderabad, the capital of Sind, where they would be severely dealt with. The armed Sindians, the message warned, were on their way to Nushki, a distance of only fifty miles across the desert. He and his companion, it advised, should leave while there was still time, as the Sindians made no secret of the fact that they were to be bastinadoed. Aware that this was the least of the fates he might expect in Hyderabad, Pottinger made plans to leave immediately. The following morning, with an armed escort of five Baluchis, he hastily set off westwards, profoundly grateful to their friends at Kelat who had endangered their own lives to protect his and Christie’s.
Meanwhile, oblivious to all this, Christie had encountered another hazard as he and his small party approached the Afghan frontier. Not long after leaving Nushki he had been warned by a friendly shepherd that thirty armed Afghans were planning to rob him, and were at that moment waiting in ambush in a gully some distance ahead. To add to Christie’s discomfort, the storm which had been brewing as he rode out of Nushki now broke with a vengeance, soaking everyone to the skin, as well as their possessions, and forcing them to seek what little shelter they could find in that barren landscape. It was hardly an encouraging start to an unimaginably lonely assignment. But by the following morning the storm had passed, and so too, it transpired, had their foes. Nonetheless the fear of raiders in this lawless realm was a perpetual trial to both Christie and Pottinger, as it would be to all subsequent players in the Great Game.
In the hope that it might offer him some protection against bandits, Christie decided to abandon his horse-dealer’s guise and adopt that of a pious hadji, or Muslim pilgrim returning from Mecca. In his account of his journey he does not go into details, but this transformation appears to have been conducted with the help of an Indian merchant to whom he bore a secret letter, and between the signing off of one escort and the acquisition of another. His new cover, however, was not without its own problems and dangers, and he soon found himself embarrassingly out of his depth when a mullah engaged him in a theological discussion. He managed to avoid exposure by explaining that he was a Sunni Muslim and not, like his interlocutor, a Shiite. Christie must have been an exceptionally resourceful individual for at one point he managed to obtain a forged laissez-passer, purportedly from the tyrannical local khan and bearing his genuine seal. With the aid of this he ensured himself a warm welcome from the khan of the neighbouring region who even entertained him in his palace.
By now Christie was within four days of his goal, the mysterious city of Herat which only one other living European had dared to visit. It lay on Afghanistan’s frontier with eastern Persia, astride the great network of trans-Asian caravan routes. Its bazaars displayed goods from Khokand and Kashgar, Bokhara and Samarkand, Khiva and Merv, while other roads led westwards to the ancient caravan cities of Persia – Meshed, Teheran, Kerman and Isfahan. But to the British in India, fearing invasion from the west, Herat possessed a more ominous significance. It stood on one of the traditional conqueror’s routes to India, along which a hostile force could reach either of its two great gateways, the Khyber and Bolan Passes. Worse, in a region of vast deserts and impenetrable mountain ranges, it stood in a rich and fertile valley which – or so it was believed in India – was capable of provisioning and watering an entire army. Christie’s task was to discover the truth of this.
On April 18, four months after he and Pottinger had sailed from Bombay, Christie rode through the principal gateway of the great walled city of Herat. He had abandoned his disguise as a holy man and had reverted to that of a horse-dealer, for he carried with him letters of introduction to a Hindu merchant living in the town. He was to remain there for a month, taking careful notes of all that caught his soldier’s eye, or ear. ‘The city of Heerat’, he observed, ‘is situated in a valley, surrounded by lofty mountains.’ The valley, running from east to west, was thirty miles long and fifteen wide. It was watered by a river which rose in the mountains and ran the length of the valley which was intensively cultivated, with villages and gardens stretching as far as the eye could see. The city itself covered an area of four square miles, and was surrounded by a massive wall and moat. At its northern end, raised up on a hill, was a citadel built of baked brick, with a tower at each corner. Surrounding this was a second moat, spanned by a drawbridge, and beyond this another high wall and a third moat, albeit dry. Spectacular as all this appeared to anyone approaching the city, it failed to impress Christie. ‘On the whole,’ he wrote, ‘it is very contemptible as a fortification.’
But if he was not struck by Herat’s capacity to defend itself against attack by an army supplied with modern artillery, like that of Napoleon or Tsar Alexander, Christie was much impressed by its obvious prosperity and fecundity, and capacity therefore to support and supply any invading army into whose hands it might fall. In the surrounding countryside there was excellent grazing, an ample supply of horses and camels, and an abundance of wheat, barley and fresh fruit of all kinds. The population of Herat and its suburbs Christie put at 100,000, including 600 Hindus, mainly wealthy merchants.
On May 18, satisfied that he had nothing more of value to discover, Christie announced that before returning to India with the horses he proposed to buy for his employer he would make a brief pilgrimage to the holy city of Meshed, 200 miles to the north-west, in Persia. He was thus able to leave Herat without having to buy the horses which his cover story demanded. The following day, with considerable relief, he crossed into eastern Persia. After months of lying and subterfuge, he at last felt reasonably safe. Even if it was discovered that he was an East India Company officer in disguise, Britain’s now good relations with Persia would ensure that no serious harm befell him. Nine days later he turned off the old pilgrim road to Meshed, striking south-westwards across the desert to Isfahan, which he calculated Lieutenant Pottinger should by now have reached.
During the two months since they had parted company at Nushki, much had happened to his brother officer. Without a map to guide him (none then existed), the 20-year-old subaltern had set off on a 900-mile journey across Baluchistan and Persia. He chose a route which for a further century no other European was to attempt, though earlier invaders had passed that way. The journey was to last three months and take him across two hazardous deserts, with only local guides to steer him between wells and the bands of murderous brigands.
Despite sickness and other hardships, he maintained a surreptitious but detailed day-to-day record of all he saw and heard which could be of value to an invading army. He noted down wells and rivers, crops and other vegetation, rainfall and climate. He pinpointed the best defensive positions, described the fortifications of villages along the route, and detailed the idiosyncrasies and alliances of the local khans. He even recorded the ruins and monuments he passed, although not being an antiquarian he had to rely on the dubious stories of the locals as to their age and history. In addition, he secretly charted his route on a sketch map, which later was turned into the first military map of the approaches to India from the west. Just how he managed to do this without detection he did not disclose in his otherwise detailed account of the journey, perhaps wishing to retain his secret for subsequent use.
On March 31, after skirting the south-eastern corner of the mighty Helmund desert, whose existence and approximate location were thus confirmed, Pottinger and his five-man party struck into the first of the two deserts they were now forced to cross. The presence of such vast natural obstacles astride an invader’s path, Pottinger knew, would be extremely welcome news to those responsible for the defence of India. He was soon to discover for himself why these deserts enjoyed so ill a reputation among the Baluchis, for within a few miles they ran into a succession of near-vertical dunes of fine red sand, some of them twenty feet high. ‘Most of these’, he recounts, ‘rise perpendicularly on the opposite side to that from which the prevailing wind blows . . . and might readily be fancied, at a distance, to resemble a new brick wall.’ The windward side, however, sloped gently to the base of the succeeding dune, leaving a pathway between them. ‘I kept as much in these paths as the direction I had to travel in would admit of,’ he added, ‘but had nevertheless exceeding difficulty and fatigue in urging the camels over the waves when it was requisite to do so, and more particularly where we had to clamber up the leeward face of them, in which attempt we were many times defeated.’ The next day conditions got worse. Their continuing battle with the sand dunes was, in Pottinger’s words, ‘trifling compared with the distress suffered, not only by myself and people, but even the camels, from the floating particles of sand.’ For a layer of abrasive red dust hovered over the desert, getting into their eyes, noses and mouths, and causing extreme discomfort, not to mention thirst, which was aggravated by the intense heat of the sun.
Before long they reached the dry bed of a river, 500 yards wide, with a recently abandoned village beside it, its inhabitants driven out by the drought. Here they halted, and after much digging managed to obtain two skins of water. The nature of the desert now changed from sand to hard black gravel. Not long afterwards the air began to feel sultry and dust-devils or whirlwinds sprang up, followed shortly by a violent storm. ‘The rain fell in the largest drops I ever remember to have seen,’ Pottinger recounts. ‘The air was so completely darkened that I was absolutely unable to discern anything at the distance of even five yards.’ Yet this storm was mild, his guide told him, compared with those which sometimes struck the desert at the height of summer, when it was considered impassable to travellers. The furnace-hot wind which accompanied these storms was known to the Baluchis as the ‘flame’ or the ‘pestilence’. Not only could it kill camels with its violence, but it could flay alive an unprotected human being. According to Pottinger’s men, who claimed to have witnessed its effects, ‘the muscles of the unhappy sufferer become rigid, the skin shrivels, an agonising sensation, as if the flesh was on fire, pervades the whole frame . . .’ The victim’s skin, they assured him, cracked ‘into deep gashes, producing haemorrhage that quickly ends this misery’, although sometimes the sufferer might survive in agony for hours if not days. (That this was clearly a wild exaggeration may be obvious today, but in Pottinger’s time little was known about desert travel, and anything must have seemed possible in previously unexplored regions such as this.)
Since the desert was without landmarks of any kind, the guide plotted their course by means of a distant range of mountains. Once, however, when Pottinger decided to leave at midnight to avoid the terrible heat of the day, they quickly found themselves lost, not knowing in which direction to proceed. Concealed on him, Pottinger carried a compass. Unknown to his men, he surreptitiously produced this, and after forcing the glass from it, he managed to feel the needle with his thumb, thus establishing the direction they should be heading in. When at daylight this proved to be accurate, his men were astonished, and for days spoke of it ‘as wonderful proof of my wisdom’. Normally Pottinger only used his compass in secrecy to take bearings for his sketch map, but once or twice he was unable to prevent it from being seen. He would explain that it was a Kiblah nooma, or Mecca-pointer, which showed him the direction in which the Kiblah, or Muhammad’s tomb, lay so that he could prostrate himself towards it when praying.
That day they rode for nineteen hours, travelling forty-eight miles and exhausting both men and camels. Food and water were now running dangerously low, and Pottinger wanted to continue until they reached the mountains where at least there would be water. However his men were too fatigued to go on, so they halted for the night, sharing the remains of the water between them, but eating nothing. The following afternoon they approached the village of Kullugan, in a region known as the Makran, which was notorious for its lawlessness. Pottinger’s guide, who turned out to be married to the daughter of the Sirdar, or headman, insisted on entering the village first, explaining that it was customary with strangers in this dangerous region. Shortly afterwards he returned to say that Pottinger would be welcome, but that the Sirdar had ordered that, for his own security, he should adopt the guise of a hadji, otherwise he could not be responsible for his safety, even in his own house.
‘You are no longer in the Khan of Kelat’s territories,’ it was explained to him. He must not expect the same good order and security that he had enjoyed there. ‘We are now in the Makran, where every individual is a robber by caste, and where they do not hesitate to plunder brothers and neighbours.’ As a horse-dealer employed by a rich merchant in India he would be particularly vulnerable, for it would be assumed that he must be carrying money, even if it was not his own. Pottinger had been warned of Makran’s ill reputation by the Sirdar of Nushki, so he immediately assumed ‘the religious air and mien’ appropriate to his new calling.
On entering the village he halted and dismounted by the mosque where he was formally received by the Sirdar and other elders. Later he was conducted to his lodgings, a miserable hovel with two rooms, where food was brought for him and his men. This they fell upon with gusto and gratitude, not having eaten anything for thirty hours. Buying food for their onward journey proved more difficult. Because of the drought, it was explained, food was in very short supply and its price had risen astronomically as a result. All that could be spared, therefore, were a few dates and a little barley flour from the Sirdar’s own supplies.
Pottinger was warned that the next village on his 700-mile ride to Kerman was at war with Kullugan, its inhabitants having raided and plundered them only three weeks previously. Not only would it be suicide for him to attempt to travel there, but he would be ill-advised to proceed any further westwards without additional armed men. Indeed, his guide told him he was not prepared to proceed without such protection, offering instead to escort him back to Nushki. Pottinger reluctantly agreed to hire six more men armed with matchlocks for the next leg of their journey, and a new route, bypassing the hostile neighbour, was worked out.
That night the village elders, including the Sirdar himself, descended on Pottinger’s lodgings to discuss with him various topics including, to his alarm, religion. For as a holy man his views were eagerly canvassed and respectfully listened to. Despite an almost total ignorance of Muslim theology, he managed to bluff his way through without inviting suspicion. Not only did he avoid making elementary mistakes, but he also settled a number of points at issue. One of these was over the nature of the sun and moon. One of the villagers maintained that they were the same. But if that was so, queried another, why was it that sometimes both could be seen simultaneously? Ah, replied the first, one was merely the reflection of the other. At this point the view of Pottinger was sought. He was now beginning to get irritated by this uninvited audience, and moreover wished to get to sleep, so he adjudicated in favour of the latter view, thus definitively settling a debate which, he feared, would have continued for some hours, the villagers having little else to do.
The following day the Sirdar suggested that before leaving Pottinger should attend prayers at the mosque. This was, Pottinger later wrote, ‘an act of duplicity I had hitherto evaded.’ But he was given little choice, for the Sirdar came to his lodgings to collect him. ‘I perceived there was no alternative,’ Pottinger relates, ‘so I simply went through the motions of prostration, keeping my eye fixed on the Sirdar, and muttering to myself.’ Amazingly, no one appears to have suspected him. The friendly Sirdar, who had suggested the new disguise, knew full well that he was not a holy man, but had no idea that he was a Christian and a British officer, assuming him to be a devout Muslim. Nor was this to be the last time that Pottinger’s disguise as a holy man would cause him intense anxiety. After riding all night they reached the village of Gull, where Pottinger was warmly welcomed by the mullah who invited him to breakfast. ‘I found four or five well-dressed and respectable men sitting on carpets spread under a shady tree, with bread and butter-milk in wooden dishes before them,’ Pottinger tells us. They rose to their feet to welcome him, and he found himself seated on the mullah’s right. After they had eaten, one of the men called upon Pottinger to say a prayer of thanksgiving. ‘This’, Pottinger recounts, ‘was as unexpected as it was unwelcome, and I was greatly perplexed for an instant.’ Fortunately, however, before leaving Bombay he had taken the trouble to learn a Muslim prayer or two from a servant, never dreaming that this would later save him from an unpleasant fate. He and Christie had intended to carry out their mission as horse-dealers, not as holy men, or he might have taken pains to learn these prayers more thoroughly. Desperately trying to remember one, Pottinger now stood up, uncomfortably aware that all eyes were fixed on him. ‘I assumed a very grave air,’ he recalled, ‘stroked down my beard with all imaginable significance, and muttered a few sentences.’ He was careful to pronounce – ‘rather distinctly’ – such words as Allah, Rusool (the Prophet) and Shookr (Thanks). These words were the most likely, he felt, to recur in a prayer of this kind. The risky subterfuge worked once again, for the unsuspecting mullah and his companions smiled benignly upon their pious visitor.
Pottinger’s next close shave occurred the following day, in another village. He was buying a pair of shoes in the market (for one of his had been carried off by a jackal during the night) when an old man in the crowd which had gathered round him pointed to his feet. Pottinger, he declared, was clearly not a man accustomed to a life of toil or poverty. ‘I instantly went to my shoes and put them on,’ Pottinger recounts, ‘for notwithstanding I had persevered in exposing my feet to the sun, I could never get them to assume the weather-beaten colour of my hands and face.’ Wishing to avoid further interrogation, he returned to his camel, followed closely by the man, and left the village rather hastily.
Two days later, Pottinger and his party entered the small, mud-walled village of Mughsee, where they had planned to halt for the night. But on discovering what was happening there, they decided not to linger. Only a few days earlier, they were told, a gang of armed brigands had murdered the Sirdar and his family and taken over the village. One of his sons had managed to escape, and at that very moment the brigands were laying siege to the house in which he was sheltering, and which was pointed out to Pottinger and his party. The unfortunate youth, whose father had refused to let the brigands cultivate land near the village, had been told that he might as well come out and be put to death like the rest of his family, for otherwise they would starve him out. None of the villagers attempted to go to his defence, and Pottinger’s small party was powerless to intercede. They had little choice but to continue on their way, leaving him to his fate.
Three days later, Pottinger was to find himself wondering if his own last moment had not come. He had arrived at the village of Puhra bearing with him a letter of introduction from the Sirdar of a previous village. This he presented to the Khan of Puhra, who called upon his mirza, or clerk, to read it aloud. To Pottinger’s acute embarrassment, it expressed the writer’s suspicion that this holy man who was passing through their territories was really an individual of high birth, possibly a prince even, who had forsworn a life of privilege to become a humble holy man. That it had been written with the best of intentions, to ensure that he would be well received, Pottinger had no doubt. But it was to lead directly, and dramatically, to his being exposed not only as a bogus pilgrim – an infidel Christian, moreover – but also as an Englishman. And his exposure came from a totally unexpected quarter.
After the Sirdar’s letter had been read out, the crowd of villagers surrounding Pottinger had looked at him with new interest. It was at this moment that a small boy aged 10 or 12 suddenly raised his voice. ‘If he hadn’t said that he was a holy man, I would swear that he is the brother of Grant, the European, who came to Bampur last year . . .’ The sharp-eyed youngster had come within an inch of the truth. The previous year Captain W. P. Grant of the Bengal Native Infantry had been sent to explore the coastline of the Makran to see whether a hostile army would be able to advance towards India by this route (he had reported that it would). During his reconnaissance he had journeyed some way inland to the town of Bampur, in eastern Persia, which Pottinger was now approaching. By sheer ill-chance, this boy – perhaps the only one present ever to have set eyes on a European – must have seen him and spotted some resemblance between the two men.
Pottinger, badly shaken, tried to conceal his dismay. ‘I endeavoured to let the lad’s remark pass unnoticed,’ he wrote, ‘but the confusion of my looks betrayed me.’ Seeing this, the Khan asked him if it was true that he was really a European. To Pottinger’s relief, he went on to say that if he was he need not fear, for no harm would come to him. Realising that there was no point in further pretence, Pottinger confessed that he was indeed a European, but in the service of a rich Hindu merchant. Such a confession earlier in his journey would very likely have cost him his life, for it would immediately have been assumed that he was an English spy, but he was now quite close to the Persian frontier and consequently felt safer, although still not totally so. Moreover, his disguise had only been partially penetrated. His profession and the real purpose of his presence had not been detected.
The Khan, fortunately, was amused by the subterfuge, finding no offence in an infidel posing as a Muslim holy man. But Pottinger’s guide, who had clearly been made a fool of, was incensed. At first he refused to accept Pottinger’s confession and regaled the Khan and the crowd with accounts of the theological debates he had engaged in with the holy man. The Khan laughed heartily when he described how Pottinger had even taken him to task over points of religion, a religion it now transpired that he did not believe in. The guide’s anger and discomfiture were exacerbated by the claim of another of Pottinger’s men that he had known all along that he was no holy man, although he had not suspected him of being a European.
A furious argument now broke out, with the guide accusing the other man of being an accessory to Pottinger’s elaborate deception. In the end the good humour of the Khan, who pointed out that others including himself had also been deceived, saved the day, and by the time of their departure from the village forty-eight hours later Pottinger found that he had been forgiven by his guide. In the meantime he had become a celebrity, and his lodgings were besieged by what he described as ‘a concourse of idle and obstreperous Baluchis who harassed me with preposterous queries and remarks.’ That afternoon, however, a genuine holy man – this time a Hindu fakir – arrived, thus relieving Pottinger of ‘the task of entertaining the whole village’.
Five days later Pottinger rode into the nondescript village of Basman, the last inhabited place in Baluchistan to the east of the great desert he would have to cross before reaching the safety of the Shah’s domains. On April 21, after halting overnight in the village, Pottinger and his men headed towards the desert which they entered in the early hours of the following morning. There was no water or vegetation of any kind, while the heat, Pottinger recounts, ‘was greater and more oppressive than I had hitherto experienced since leaving India.’ They were also taunted by mirages or – as the Baluchis called them – the suhrab, or ‘waters of the desert’.
In the fashion of his day, Pottinger constantly underplays the hazards and discomforts of his journey, but in describing the desert crossing he for once allows the reader to share with him the hell of thirst. ‘A person may endure,’ he writes, ‘with patience and hope, the presence of fatigue or hunger, heat or cold, and even a total deprivation of natural rest for a considerable length of time.’ But to feel one’s throat ‘so parched and dry that you respire with difficulty, to dread moving your tongue in your mouth from the apprehensions of suffocation it causes, and not to have the means of allaying those dreadful sensations, are . . . the extreme pitch of a traveller’s calamities.’
After two days’ hard riding, usually at night to escape the heat, they reached the small Persian frontier village of Regan, on the far side of the desert. It was surrounded by a high wall, each of its sides 250 yards long, 5 or 6 feet thick at the base, and excellently maintained. The villagers, Pottinger learned, lived in permanent fear of the Baluchi tribesmen who, he tells us, ‘seldom fail to pay them, or some other part of the Persian domains, a hostile visit once or twice a year.’ In addition to the guards on the single gate, there were sentinels armed with matchlocks positioned at intervals along the wall who kept watch all night – ‘frequently hallooing and shouting to encourage each other and warn any skulkers who may be outside that they are on the alert.’
Pottinger’s unexpected arrival from out of the desert caused considerable consternation. ‘For none could divine’, he wrote, ‘how we had entered the country unperceived.’ The Khan, who received him warmly, expressed astonishment that the Baluchis had allowed him to pass through their country unmolested. Even so he had to spend the night outside the fort, for it was an absolute rule that no stranger should be allowed to sleep within its walls.
Pottinger now pressed on towards Kerman, the provincial capital, a large and heavily fortified town governed by a Persian prince and celebrated throughout Central Asia for its fine shawls and matchlock guns. It was here that he and Christie had agreed to rendezvous on the completion of their secret missions. Eight days later, after leaving the desert and riding through neatly tended villages and snow-capped mountain scenery, he arrived there, hiring himself a room in a caravanserai near the bazaar. Word of his arrival spread quickly, and soon the usual inquisitive crowd, this time several hundred strong, assembled at the door of his lodgings and began to pester him with questions. For although he no longer needed to conceal his identity, Pottinger was still dressed like a native in a faded blue turban, a coarse Baluchi shirt and a pair of filthy and tattered trousers which had once been white. But that evening, he tells us, having disposed of his inquisitors and purchased the best meal he had enjoyed in weeks, ‘ I lay down and slept with more composure than I had done any night for the preceding three months.’
On arrival he had sent a message to the Prince, seeking an audience. At the same time he had dispatched a courier to Shiraz where he believed (wrongly, as it turned out) his chief, General Malcolm, to be, advising him that he had come through safely and that his mission had been successfully accomplished. The Prince sent back a message welcoming him, and inviting him to his palace the following day. This presented Pottinger with a slight problem, for clearly he could not see the Prince in the clothes he had arrived in. Fortunately, however, he was able to borrow a change of dress from a Hindu merchant living near the caravanserai, and at ten o’clock the next morning he presented himself at the palace gates.
After crossing several inner courtyards, he was met by the Urz Begee, or Master of Ceremonies, who led him into the royal presence. The Prince, a handsome bearded man wearing a black lambskin cap, was seated at a window some ten feet above them, looking down into a small court with a fountain playing in the centre of it. ‘We made a low bow,’ Pottinger recounts, ‘then we advanced a few yards and made a second, and in like manner a third, all of which the Prince acknowledged by a slight inclination of the head.’ Pottinger had expected to be invited to be seated. ‘But my dress not being of the first order,’ he wrote afterwards, ‘I suppose I was not thought respectable enough for that honour, and therefore I was placed opposite the Prince in the courtyard, round the walls of which all the officers of government were standing, with their arms folded across their bodies.’ The Prince then called out ‘in a very loud voice to know where I had been, and what could have induced me to undertake the journey I had performed, or how I had escaped from the dangers that must have attended it.’
Although he could now safely admit to being a European, indeed an English officer, the real purpose of his journey could not be revealed, even to the Persians. He therefore told the Prince how he and another officer had been sent to Kelat to buy horses for the Indian Army. His companion had returned by another route, while he had travelled overland through Baluchistan and Persia where he hoped to join Malcolm. The Prince seemed to accept his story and after half an hour dismissed him. There was no sign yet of Christie, nor any word from him, so Pottinger decided to stay a little longer in Kerman before attempting to report to Malcolm. This the Prince agreed to, and Pottinger filled in the time usefully by garnering all he could about the character and customs of the Persians, and in particular the city’s defences.
When he had been in Kerman for some days, he was able to observe Persian justice in action. Seated at the same window from which he had addressed Pottinger, the Prince passed both judgement and sentence on a number of men accused of murdering one of his servants. The city that day was in a state of great excitement. The gates were closed and all official business halted. The sentences were carried out on the spot, in the courtyard where Pottinger had stood, the Prince looking on with satisfaction at the horrifying spectacle. ‘Some,’ wrote Pottinger, ‘were blinded of both eyes, had their ears, noses and lips cut off, their tongues slit, and one or both hands lopped off. Others were deprived of their manhood, also having their fingers and toes chopped off, and all were turned out into the streets with a warning to the inhabitants not to assist or hold any intercourse with them.’ When dispensing justice, Pottinger was told, the Prince wore a special yellow robe called the Ghuzub Poshak, or Dress of Vengeance.
Not long afterwards Pottinger received first-hand experience of the Prince’s devious ways when he was paid a furtive visit by a middle-aged court official who asked to speak to him in private. No sooner had Pottinger closed the door than his visitor launched into a long oration extolling the virtues of Christianity, finally declaring that he wished to embrace it. Suspecting that the man was an agent provocateur sent by the Prince, Pottinger told him that regrettably he had neither the knowledge nor the authority to instruct him in this or any other religion. His visitor tried a new tack. There were at that very moment, he assured Pottinger, 6,000 men living in Kerman praying that the English would come and liberate them from the Prince’s tyrannical rule. When, he asked, might they expect the English army to arrive? Anxious to avoid being drawn into such a dangerous conversation, Pottinger pretended not to understand the question. At that moment another visitor arrived and the man hastily departed.
Pottinger had now been in Kerman for three weeks and there was still no sign or news of his brother officer. Hearing that a caravan was about to leave for Isfahan, he decided to join it. Eleven days later he reached Shiraz and after a further sixteen days entered Isfahan, only to learn that Malcolm was in Maragheh, in north-western Persia. While resting in Isfahan, luxuriating in the comforts of a palace set aside for important visitors, Pottinger was informed one evening that there was a man wishing to speak to him. ‘I went down’, he wrote later, ‘and as it was then quite dark I could not recognise his features.’ For several minutes he conversed with the stranger before it suddenly dawned on him that this shabby, travel-stained figure was Christie. Christie had learned on reaching Isfahan that there was another firingee, or European, in town, and had asked to be taken to him. Like Pottinger he at first failed to recognise his deeply tanned friend, dressed in Persian costume. But seconds later the two men were embracing, overwhelmed with relief and joy at the other’s survival. ‘The moment’, wrote Pottinger, ‘was one of the happiest of my life.’
It was June 30, 1810, more than three months since their parting at Nushki. In all, since first setting foot in Baluchistan, Christie had ridden 2,250 miles through some of the most dangerous country in the world, while Pottinger had exceeded this by a further 162 miles. These were astonishing feats of daring and endurance, not to say of discovery. Had it been twenty years later, when the Royal Geographical Society was founded, both men would certainly have won its coveted gold medal for exploration, which so many of their fellow players in the Great Game were to carry off for journeys equally perilous.
As it turned out, their enterprise and courage did not go unrecognised by their superiors who were delighted by the valuable intelligence they had brought back. Both were now earmarked as young officers of outstanding enterprise and ability. Lieutenant Pottinger, who was not yet 21, was destined for rapid promotion, a long and distinguished role in the coming Great Game, and eventually a knighthood. In addition to the secret reports that he and Christie had prepared on the military and political aspects of their journeys, Pottinger was to write an account of their adventures which thrilled readers at home, and which is today still sought after by collectors of rare and important works of exploration. For their adoption of a pilgrim’s robes to penetrate forbidden regions was undertaken nearly half a century before Sir Richard Burton won himself immortal fame by doing likewise.
Christie, sadly, was less fortunate than Pottinger, his days already being numbered. When Pottinger was recalled for duty in India, Christie was invited by General Malcolm to stay behind in Persia to help, under the terms of the new treaty, to train the Shah’s troops to withstand Russian or French aggression. Two years later, while leading Persian infantry he had trained against the Cossacks in the southern Caucasus, he was to die in singularly dramatic circumstances. But we are moving ahead of the narrative, for much was to happen before that. Early in 1812, to the immense relief of London and Calcutta, the alarming partnership between Napoleon and Alexander had broken up. In June of that year Napoleon attacked, not India, but Russia, and to the astonishment of the world suffered the most catastrophic reverse in history. The threat to India had been lifted. Or so it seemed to a wildly rejoicing Britain.