No. MCXXVII.

IN the far far North, where the great artery of the NorthWestern State Railway of India has its terminus-or had rather before they pushed forward a little bit of strategic line to no-one-quite-knows-where in

robber-haunted No-man's-land beyond the Border,- hard by that strange city which gathers the flotsam and jetsam of the Middle East, stretch the Green Links of Peshawur, a pleasing picture after the sun-baked drab of the Punjab plains. Here, indeed, is a paradise alike to the lover of games and to the lover of Nature. A great verdant basin, girt by a grassy racecourse picked out with gleaming white furlong posts and the rails at the finish, intersected by water-cuts, shaded here and there by willows or mulberry-trees, flanked on the west by woods, in spring the tenderest of greens, in autumn

VOL. CLXXXVI.-NO. MCXXVII.

the most flaming vermilion; on the east by the massive bastions of the Fort and the distant towers and minarets of the city itself-and all around the bounteous Vale of Peshawur, fat lands bearing two crops a year-the whole framed by the everlasting hills of the Frontier. Once, not many years ago, this tract, which to-day holds two first-class polo grounds, a racecourse, and a golf links, was a vast swamp, the home of duck and snipe, bittern and curlew. A careful system of drainage has left it sufficient moisture to keep its grass green and fresh, and the importunate little springs which bubble up every here and there are sternly led into orderly channels. The still unreclaimed "Artillery jhil," where in the season of the year you may get your thirty couple of snipe and jack, is only half a

X

mile away, and many an errant snipe finds his way thence to the Golf Links, and will rise with harsh betraying cry and jink away in a fluster before the harmless necessary niblick raised gun-wise. Indeed there is abundant pabulum for the naturalist in this pleasant spot. Although snakes do not actually look out of the holes at youso common an occurrence, I am told, in Southern India-yet these abound, harmless for the most part; but I have myself seen the splendid yellow and black of the Russell's viper and the grey twinkling haste of the deadly little karait. The watercuts teem with newts and strange little bottle-nosed fish and creeping things innumerable; the woods with finches; great gaudy butterflies flop across your path; while overhead you may tell the coming and going of the cold weather by the passing battalions of demoiselle crane (kulan) and wild-geese, and by the movements of the Kabuli crows.

Here, too, you are in an atmosphere of History in the making. The ceaseless problem of Border administration, involving, as it does, the wider issue of Afghan politics, upon which in turn depend largely the relations between India and the Great Power in the North, centres here. The harsh rugged hills of the Border, over which the sun rises to light the enthusiastic morning golfer, and behind which it sets, casting black shadows on his most critical put, harbour those incorrigible peace-breakers the Utmankhel, the Mohmands,

That queer

and the Afridis. little encampment near the polo pavilion, with tentes d'abris of filthy patchwork propped on sticks, contains a Mohmand kadda (family), who have come down from their wintry hills to pick up a precarious livelihood in British territory by roadlabour, dead-leaf-gathering, and larceny. Those merry swaggering fellows on the fifth puttinggreen, with velvet zouaves and chrysanthemums stuck in their black turbans, are Afridis from the Lancers. How picturesque they are!-but how tiresome is their habit of leaving a pile of well-chewed sugar-cane beside the hole! Only a year ago, on these peaceful links, we could hear distinctly the big guns of the Mohmand Field Field Force speaking in anger hard by Shabkadr and Mutta, but twenty miles away. Here fanaticism is rampant, and the assassin's knife is often wet. The City itself, with its heterogeneous masses of credulous, cruel barbarians, at one moment insolent with sedition, at another panic-stricken with plague, is a volcano. Raiders and rifle - thieves from without, cause nightly alarms and excursions; and fever and cholera take their toll. And what is the upshot? tremendous a neighbourhood you may think men would have little time for aught but their work and their prayers. Far from it-a jollier, merrier station does not exist in India; and the bitterness of a short put missed, or the joy of a clean-hit brassy shot, is neither the greater nor the less for this

In so

tense environment-which only demonstrates anew the ancient truth that the complete golfer is, as the gods, self-sufficient, self-absorbed, regardless of the touch of circumstances, except in so far as they may baulk him of his stroke, or give him an excuse for bungling. And such things are not wars or rumours of wars, but lesser and more intolerable matters, such as the song of larks, the buzz of honey-laden bees, or the thunder of galloping hoofs.

What a pleasant afternoon's recreation the Peshawur Links afford! Shaking off the cobwebs of office worry, we jump into the cart and leave the little bungalow, clad in mardan rose and passion - flower, with its trim lawns edged with beds of violets and purple iris. It is not far to go, and the mare makes little of the wide avenue of the jhil road, with its shade of noble shishams. As we bowl past the quarter-guard of the Scinde Rifles-with its breasthigh walls dotted with mud balls intended to resemble sepoys' heads, and thus haply to confuse the fire of rifle-thief or raider-the guard spring to attention in conformity with the courteous practice of the Indian Army. At the great North Circular Road, the highway to Kabul and Bokhara, we are stopped by the passing of a mighty kafila (caravan) of great slouching hairy camels, with their rosy-faced attendant ghilzais, clad in far-smelling sheepskin coats, on their way to-day from the historic Khyber. For it is by this route that

"The snow-bound trade of the North comes down

To the market square of Peshawur town."

After the usual compliments in Pashtu, the equivalent more or less of the Cockney, "'Ave you bought the street, Bill?" we at length get past in a cloud of microbe-laden dust, and slip down the pretty lane to the Links. As we pull up a crowd of Pathan caddies run forward with cries of welcome. Their cordiality is in a great measure sincere, but it is in part dictated by a desire to secure clubs to carry rather than to be cast for the lot of fore-caddy—a sine qua non on the Peshawur course, with its water-cuts innumerable. The desire for lucre does not affect the case, as, by an arrangement which works admirably here, the boys are all servants of the Club, and for the humble remuneration of rupees two annas eight, or three shillings and fourpence a month, they carry all day and every day for any member playing. Of course they do, in fact, get a little backsheesh from the sahib whose clubs they habitually clean, but this is informal. What a cheery, pleasant lot they are! and the best caddies in the world, prompt, intelligent, interested in the game-often to the extent of a private wager of pice or even annas,-sound in advice, and truly wonderful in their power to find a ball submerged in the mud of a weed-grown water-course. All Pathans are fine fellows, manly and attractive, but Pathan boys are quite charming, full of laughter and fun before the

severer shadows of Love and Vendetta have darkened their lives. When I first knew these boys they were under the superintendence of a head groundman, universally called by them "Uncle," who was a mullah or clergyman in his leisure moments. But "Uncle" died of fever, and the long cross-eyed Jaffar Khan rules in his stead -a Maypole of a man, with a most villainous countenance, but efficient withal. In the days of "Uncle" there was a famous caddy whom we all called Shaitan, which means Satan, with a face like a ripe apricot, and the impudence of a street arab. He played golf really marvellously, and would doubtless have developed into a Vardon had cirumstances admitted. To-day, alas! he is a bazaar-loafing Khidmatgar in the house of some Commissariat sergeant. Shaitan had a younger brother, called by his parents Ata Muhammad, but tradition was too strong, and he inevitably inherited the name of Shaitan, together with a like genius for the royal and ancient game. A year ago he, too, left us and enlisted as a trooper in the Lancers, and when I last met him and said, "Hallo! Shaitan, how are you?" he implored me, almost with tears, never to call him by that name of shame again, and to prevent others from so doing, as he had been so unmercifully chaffed in his regiment on this account. A little after this poor little Shaitan was sent with his regiment to the Mohmand war; and one day as we listened to the guns talking on the Border,

a small rosy-faced, wizened man came up to me on the Links and, clasping my feet, said— "Sahib, I have (petition).

an arz

"Speak," said I. "What is your desire?”

"My son, whom you and

the other sahibs named in jest Shaitàn, has been sent to the battle, and I know he is dead. And if not, I pray your honour to summon him at once, and allow him to cut his name forthwith. For you are his father and his mother, and he has no protector but you."

I explained that as a civilian I was not in a position to recall soldiers from the front, and told him that I firmly believed that Shaitan was alive and well, and that he would doubtless earn great distinction in the campaign. I am happy to say that this was, in part at least, correct, and Shaitan returned to his anxious parent safe and sound.

Apart from the Shaitan dynasty there have been many other quaint personalities

among the Peshawur caddy coterie, but none more notable than that of Bahram, -naturally called Baa Lamb by the British subaltern, — a strange little figure,-uncouth, chinless, with head tapering like a cocoa-nut, and negro lips,-a caricature of a Pathan,

truly one of "Shah Shuja's mice." But of him it may be truly said that he is not such a fool as he looks; and for sound golfing advice in a club match, with money behind, I would as lief consult my little

face as Andrew Kirkcaldy himself.

Full of hope we stride to the first tee and confront the great earth-bunker and watercourse that yawn for us 130 yards away.

"R-r-ripper!" shouts Bahram, as my opponent's ball soars safely on to the smiling fairway, clear of all trouble. For Bahram has assimilated some useful English technical terms, of which he is not a little proud.

"Wah! wah!" cries my faithful Majid, as half-topped from the heel my miserable effort ends in the water. In a moment the fore-caddy is in the stream, knee-deep, groping with knowing hand in the retentive mud. A minute or two, and the ball, dislodged from slime and weed, bobs to the surface, and I drop behind with the penalty of a stroke. Sometimes, though seldom, the search is vain, and the ball is gone for ever. On such occa

dered in the hasty against the fore- caddy, even to the extent of unjust chastisement. But such practices are rare, and do not pass unnoticed.

On we press, with the shifting balance of fortune inclining now this way now that, past the high knoll with its ancient graves and tamarisk grove, past the grand stand, past the polo-ground with a match in full swing, past the little Mohmand encampment, and so to the ninth and last hole which lies, like Britain, waterguarded, a prize for the perfect iron shot. Pleasantly tired, we throw ourselves into long chairs on the lawn by the little golf-house, and with long cold "peg" and pernicious cigarette re-fight our battle over the Green Links, oblivious of the telegrams-StateUrgent - which await us at home, until the short twilight dying with a shiver reminds us of fever and the other realities of life in the East.