Memoir of William Watts McNair | Page 3

of learning and intelligence, to travel there and obtain all the information he could. It was curious to notice how faithful the report of his emissary was. The people of the country were described in the following words: "The Kafirs were celebrated for their beauty and their European complexions. They worshipped idols, drank wine in silver cups or vases, used chairs and tables, and spoke a language unknown to their neighbours." Their religion seems to have been a sort of debased Deism: they believed in a God; at the same time they worshipped a great number of idols, which they said represented the great men that had passed from among them; and he described a scene at which he had been present, when a goat or a cow was sacrificed, and the following prayer, pithy and comprehensive, although not remarkable for charity, was offered up: "Ward off fever from us. Increase our stores. Kill the Mussulmans. After death admit us to Paradise." Killing the Mussulman was a religious duty which the Kafirs performed with the greatest fidelity and diligence. In fact, no young man was allowed to marry until he had killed a Mussulman. They attached the same importance to the killing of a Mussulman as the Red Indians did to taking the scalp of an enemy. Their number did not appear to exceed 250,000. They inhabited three valleys, and small as their number was they were constantly at war with each other, and seized upon the members of kindred tribes in order to sell them as slaves. The women were remarkable for their beauty; and Sir Henry Rawlinson once said at one of their meetings that the most beautiful Oriental woman he ever saw was a Kafir, and that she had, besides other charms, a great mass of golden hair, which, let loose and shaken, covered her completely from head to foot like a veil. In order to show what was the state of our knowledge of the country down to 1879, he would read part of a paper by Mr. Markham on "The Upper Basin of the Kabul River." "This unknown portion of the southern watershed of the Hindu Kush is inhabited by an indomitable race of unconquered hill-men, called by their Muslim neighbours the Siah-posh (black-clothed) Kafirs. Their country consists of the long valleys extending from the Hindu Kush to the Kunar river, with many secluded glens descending to them, and intervening hills affording pasturage for their sheep and cattle. The peaks in Kafiristan reach to heights of from 11,000 to 16,000 feet. The valleys yield crops of wheat and barley, and the Emperor Baber mentions the strong and heady wine made by the Kafirs, which he got when he extended his dominion to Chigar-serai in 1514. The Kafirs are described as strong athletic men with a language of their own, the features and complexions of Europeans, and fond of dancing, hunting, and drinking. They also play at leap-frog, shake hands as Englishmen, and cannot sit cross-legged on the ground. When a deputation of Kafirs came to Sir William Macnaghten at Jalalabad, the Afghans exclaimed: 'Here are your relations coming!' From the days of Alexander the Great the Siah-posh Kafirs have never been conquered, and they have never embraced Islam. They successfully resisted the attacks of Mahmud of Ghazni, and the campaign which Timur undertook against them in 1398 was equally unsuccessful. But the Muslim rulers of Kabul continued to make inroads into the Siah-posh country down to the time of Baber and afterwards. Our only knowledge of this interesting people is from the reports of Mahommedans, and from an account of two native missionaries who penetrated into Kafiristan in 1865. Elphinstone obtained much information respecting the Kafirs from one Mullah Najib in 1809; and Lumsden from a Kafir slave named Feramory, who was a general in the Afghan service in 1857. Further particulars will be found in the writings of Burnes, Wood, Masson, Raverty, Griffith, and Mohun Lal." In recent years, Major Biddulph entered from Kashmir, through Gilgit, and made his way to Chitral, and Colonel Tanner advanced from Jalalabad a short distance into Kafiristan, among a portion of the people who had been converted to Mahommedanism, but who still retained many of the peculiarities of the Kafir race. Dr. Leitner had also taken great pains to obtain information about this ancient and unconquered people but Mr. McNair was the first European who had ever penetrated into Kafiristan.
Mr. McNair then read as follows:--
In the September number of this Society's "Proceedings," p. 553, under the heading "An Expedition to Chitral," allusion is made to my being accompanied by a native explorer known "in the profession" as the Saiad; it is to this gentleman that I am indebted for the partial success that attended our undertaking. I say