Phased at it's gentlest, the traveller's lot in British India in the 1820's was not easy. All methods of travel were onerous. Passage of travel was slow and tiresome, going overland meant riding horseback or being carried three of four miles a day in a palanquin. The latter usually involved buying a litter, hiring bearers, and making arrangements with the postal service or dak, which delivered people as well as mail on well-travelled routes with dak bungalows spaced every fifteen to fifty miles. The normal team consisted of eight palkeeburdars, or palanquin-bearers, and two bhangy-burdars, or luggage porters.
Just how it felt within a palanquin was graphically described by Captain Richard Francis Burton, not yet the celebrated explorer but a serving Indian Army officer in the 1840s: "Between your head and the glowing sun, there is scarcely half an inch of plank, covered with a thin mat, which ought to be, but never is, watered. After a day or two, you will hesitate which to hate most, your bearers' monotonous, melancholy grunting, groaning chaunt, when fresh, or their jolting, jerking, shambling, staggering gait, when tired. In a perpetual state of low fever you cannot eat, drink, or sleep; your mouth burns, your head throbs, your back aches, and your temper borders on the ferocious."
To escape the sweltering summer heat it was necessary to travel at night, which meant hiring mussalchees, or torch-bearers, as well. The total cost was about a shilling a mile, then a considerable sum, yet even so, as Burton dourly complained, "we cannot promise you much pleasure in the enjoyment of this celebrated Oriental luxury."
With all that in mind, one begins to grasp the audacity of William Moorcroft's great journey to the Punjab, Ladakh, Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Bokhara, all beyond the comparative security of British India, a five-year trip that reached remote lands no Englishman had seen since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. His journey started in May 1819, when Moorcroft was 52, then a grandfatherly age to lead a small army over mountains and deserts, without diplomatic credentials. Of his affronts to his superiors, perhaps none was more insufferable than how near Moorcroft came to triumphant success.
Moorcroft's preparations took nearly a year and involved the logistical headache of assembling eight tons of supplies, including chintz hangings, mosquito nets, and "portable necessary-houses". It also required a careful selection of a military escort, orderlies, cooks, carpenters, and grooms, plus transport-horses, mules, and camels. Moorcroft's previous journeys gave him a valuable roster of recruits. Joining the expedition was the Persian interpreter, Mir Izzat-Allah, the "native gentleman of talent and industry" whom Moorcroft had sent on alone to Bokhara in 1812. Another tested companion was an Afghan, Ghulam Hyder Khan, the "stout soldier and faithful servant" on his Tibetan trip. But Moorcroft's riskiest choice proved his wisest. He invited 19year-old George Trebeck, a recent arrival in Calcutta, to be second in command, charged with choosing routes and keeping geographical logs.
Trebeck was also a lawyer and advised Moorcroft on writing a will to provide for his wife, Mary, whom he had left behind in London, and his common-law Indian wife, Purree Khanum, the mother of his children, Anne and Richard. Both spouses were provided with capital trusts, the balance passing on their deaths to the children. One yearns to know more. In his voluminous journals and letters, Moorcroft was conspicuously reticent about his personal affairs, which was not unusual in British India. Until British memsahibs arrived in greater numbers, what Europeans called amours with native spouses produced offspring known variously as Eurasians, East Indians, IndoBritains, half-castes, and (in this century) Anglo-Indians. Victorian historians generally drew a curtain around these households, and in biographies of notable East India Company officers, Indian spouses tended to become invisible.
The prevailing practice was described by Burton, who during his seven years in India acknowledged three amours:
"The Bibi (white woman) was at the time rare in India; the result was the triumph of the Bubu (coloured sister). I found every officer in the corps more or less provided with one of these helpmates. We boys naturally followed suit. . . [The Bubu] is all but indispensable to the student, and she teaches him not only Hindostani grammar, but the syntaxes of native Life. She keeps house for him, never allowing him to save money, or, if possible, to waste it. She keeps the servants in order. She has the infallible recipe to prevent maternity, especially if her tenure of office depends on such compact. She looks after him in sickness, and is one of the best of nurses, and, as it is not good for a man to live alone, she makes him a manner of home."
That Moorcroft's eye roved as much as his feet was evident in his admiring remarks on the attractiveness of Asian women. He was even described as a voluptuary by Victor Jacquemont, a French traveller who followed in his steps a decade later. "I live like a hermit," Jacquemont wrote home from Kashmir, "and my virtue is the subject of universal admiration. Mr Moorcroft did not set a like example of European continence here. His principal occupation was making love, and if his friends are surprised that his travels were so unproductive, they may ascribe it to this cause." However, others testified that Jacquemont was no hermit, suggesting that travellers in India were not under oath in writing home.
Indeed, in delving through the archives of the Raj - sorted, indexed, and freely accessible at the British Library - one is continually aware how much was unwritten, or implied. The stated purpose of Moorcroft's mission, for example, was solely to acquire horses for the Military Department, which continued to pay his full salary. Yet his reports went straight to the Political and Secret Department. He was provided with documents bearing the Company's seal stating in English, Persian, Russian, and Chinese that he was an employee searching for horses. But when Moorcroft asked the Governor-General to provide a letter of introduction to the Emir of Bokhara, the request was rejected. As Charles Metcalfe explained, "it was never intended to accredit you or vest you with a public character," since in the event of trouble, the British Government would itself be committed, "unpleasantly and contrary to its design." In what was to become a general practice, the Company was entirely supportive of Moorcroft's expedition, so long as it could disown him the instant he left British India.
That moment arrived on March 6th, 1820, along the banks of the river Sutlej, whose winding course marked the boundary between British territory and the western Himalayas. In the absence of boats, the party crossed on inflated buffalo skins expertly paddled by ferrymen, causing Moorcroft to reflect that an entire army could become truly amphibious by carrying with it these portable skins. The passage took less than two hours for what resembled a small expeditionary force: 300 persons, including a trimly uniformed escort of 12 Gurkhas, 16 horses and mules, £4,000 worth of trading goods from Messrs. Palmer & Co. and Mackillop & Co. of Calcutta, and enough medical equipment to stock a field hospital.
The field hospital was Moorcroft's universal passport. His caravan was invariably greeted by a queue of the afflicted, especially villagers half-blinded by cataracts. Before he reached the Sutlej, his medical reputation had flown before him. Once he entered territory controlled by the Sikhs, still mostly unmapped, he needed the permission of their ruler, Ranjit Singh, to proceed. Moorcroft headed directly and separately for the Sikh capital, Lahore, leaving Trebeck and most of the party behind. While waiting for permission to enter Lahore, the doctor opened his clinic and with his needle addressed forty cataract cases, treated a woman with a cancer on her tongue and a man with hydrocephalus. "I was by no means dissatisfied with the general results," he remarks in his notebook, to which he appended clinical notes on the merits of operating in open air.
Ranjit Singh was then known to all as the Lion of Lahore. Illiterate and unlettered, this remarkable soldier-diplomat was only 17 when he began welding Sikh clans into an Indian kingdom whose might was rivalled only by the British Raj. European visitors were impressed by his one-eyed ugliness, his plain dress, his dislike of bloodshed, and his resilient use of mercenaries. In 1809, with equal resilience, the East India Company sent an able negotiator, Charles Metcalfe, to secure Ranjit Singh's promise of aid in the event that Napoleon, as widely rumoured, attempted an invasion of India. The Company also wanted the Maharajah to acknowledge British sovereignty over territories south of the Sutlej River. Ranjit Singh proved willing so long as the British for their part gave him a free hand north of the Stlej, a bargain sealed at Amritsar in a treaty that Metcalfe brought triumphantly back to Calcutta. This was all known to Moorcroft, who doubtless was briefed as well about Ranjit Singh's delight in women, boys, and strong liquor; his interest in horses and guns; and his habit of detaining guests for weeks or even months. As Moorcroft was about to discover, Ranjit Singh at 40 also feared his sexual powers were ebbing.
This medical aspect was divulged gradually, after Ranjit Singh, seated on his golden throne, greeted his visitor and expressed warm appreciation for Moorcroft's gifts, notably a brace of pistols and an elegant miniature cannon. When talk turned to horses, the Sikh ruler clapped his hands to summon his mounts, and a marvelling Moorcroft noted their rich saddles and bridles, and the variety of breeds - "Dhani and Ghep, the Lakhi Jangal, Rohtas, Atak, Kabul and Bokhara." The following day brought an equestrian display in which 50 horses, splendidly caparisoned but different from those he had already seen, executed complex movements in unison, yet, Moorcroft noted, "Not a single horse neighed, or was restive or vicious in the slightest degree, or was uneasy at mounting, or diverged from the path."
In successive audiences, the two discussed trade and Moorcroft's belief that the Punjab, with its fine soil, climate, and water resources, was destined to prosper. But it became apparent that Ranjit Singh was preoccupied by real or imagined ailments, and finally permission for a complete physical examination was given to Moorcroft, who could detect no organic faults. Prudently, the Englishman prescribed a placebo, dietary abstention, and avoidance of worry. In mid-May 1820, after 16 days as the Sikh ruler's guest, Moorcroft obtained the documents necessary to travel by way of the Kulu Valley to Ladakh and Yarkand, and from there to Bokhara. That he made a favourable impression in Lahore is evident in the pavilion in which he resided, facing the Shalimar gardens. A wall plaque, still visible to today's visitors, recalls the residence there of WILLIAM MOORCROFT, TRAVELLER.
Moorcroft was still separated from the rest of his caravan as he proceeded during drenching rains in June through a patchwork of once independent hill-states, each with its own Hindu Rajah, and all unwilling vassals to Ranjit Singh. His first call was at the court of Rajah Sansar Chand in the Rajput kingdom of Kangra. The Rajah, then in his summer palace at Alampur, was known for his lavish hospitality. Here Moorcroft learned that Trebeck and the rest of his party were still unwillingly detained by Sikhs in the Punjab, requiring an appeal to Ranjit Singh, which meant a notunwelcome six-week delay at Kangra. Rajah Sansar Chand was close to Moorcroft's age and a friendship developed. They talked at length about schemes for economic improvement, a Moorcroft theme wherever he travelled. They examined the Rajah's choice collection of coloured drawings and played chess, while Moorcroft took time to record local alphabets for Calcutta's Asiatic Society. These diversions ceased abruptly when the Rajah's younger brother, Fateh Chand, was stricken by piles and symptoms of cholera. Moorcroft's radical but painful surgery proved effective, and the grateful Hindu ruler, in an act of symbolic adoption, exchanged headgear and addressed the English plebeian as "brother", the equivalent of adopting him into a royal house older (as Moorcroft proudly reported to a friend) than that of the Bourbons.
Small wonder that Moorcroft, being treated as a friend of kings, began to behave as if he were an envoy plenipotentiary. His hosts could never quite believe he was only authorised to buy horses, and assumed he possessed supernumerary powers, an impression that Moorcroft, it would appear, did not discourage. With enthusiasm and sympathy, he took up the causes of his hosts in his reports to Calcutta. Weeks of hearing how the Sikhs used their treaty-protected mastery north of the Sudej to extort produce and taxes reinforced his distaste for Ranjit Singh's tyranny over non-Sikhs. As he headed toward the Himalayas, far from the Company's scrutiny, Moorcroft by insensible degrees saw himself as a potential shaper as well as a chronicler of history. These folies de grandeur were surely encouraged by the matchless scenery unwinding before him. After braving monsoon rains over the Dulchi Pass in August 1820, Moorcroft descended into the Kulu valley, with its lush forests, streams, and terraced farms. "The bottom of the valleys glitter with ribands of water," Moorcroft remarks in a rare effusive passage. "Vast slopes of grass declined from the summits of the mountain in a uniform direction separated by clumps of cedar, cypress and fir. The surface of the ground was literally enamalled with small asters, anemones and wild strawberries." Arriving at Sultanpur, capital of the Kulu region, Moorcroft rejoiced to find "Mr Trebeck in good health and spirits and the rest of my party as well."
Moorcroft recruited more than a hundred additional bearers for the trek through Kulanthapitha, the valley's traditional name, meaning "the end of the habitable world". The terminus itself was Rohtang Pass, whose 13,300-foot height was first accurately calculated by Trebeck. The pass separated green hill country from Himalayan crags. Climbing zigzag past the gorges of the River of the Moon, the party reached a lofty saddle that opened out upon an enormous crescent of snowpeaked mountains. The caravan inched downward into the Lahul Valley and the Buddhist kingdom of Ladakh, where Moorcroft tried boldly to make history.
On the far side of the Rohtang Pass, the people were Buddhist, their culture Tibetan, the spareness of their landscape relieved by temples with tinkling bells, red-robed monks, prayer flags, and horizontal hillside dwellings. Moorcroft and Trebeck were among the first Europeans to reach the Lahul Valley, an old Asian trading route, and their reception was friendly. Local headmen provided porters, mules, and supplies, and as in Moorcroft's earlier trip through the Himalaya, two Indian pundits counted their paces to measure distances as they proceeded. Trebeck, by now an accomplished geographer, took compass bearings and, using a barometer and thermometer, calculated the altitude of passes.
News of the advancing caravan soon reached Ladakh, whose rulers had no prior contacts with the British but were well aware of the East India Company's unbroken sequence of conquests. A Muslim emissary was sent to appraise the newcomers, and it developed that Moorcroft's Persian interpreter, Mir Izzat Allah, had known the emissary's master, a pirzada, or holy man. This opened the way for Moorcroft's successful audience with a Ladakhi official, who provided the laissez-passer enabling him to become the first English official to enter a remote and reclusive country.
Despite its Tibetan character, Ladakh had no political ties with the Dalai Lamas ruling in Lhasa since the 15th century. To sustain their precarious autonomy, Ladakhis learned to tread softly in a difficult neighborhood. To the east lay China, whose nearest outpost was Yarkand, a thriving commercial centre in inner Asia. To the west lay Kashmir, an Afghan province only recently conquered by the Sikhs. Ranjit Singh now demanded from Ladakh the tribute money it had paid to the Afghans. Far to the north lay the Russian Empire, whose agent, a certain Aga Mehdi, was said to be making his way over the mountains to Ladakh to establish commercial relations.
Such was the situation in September 1820 as Moorcroft and Trebeck arrived in Leh, the capital of Ladakh. Wary but curious, the Rajah of Ladakh and his chief minister, or Khalun, prepared for a winter of parleying as the snows began sealing in their cloistered kingdom.
With its flat-topped houses, its cluster of gompas, or lamaseries, and an eightstory palace hugging the hillside, Leh was a smaller version of Lhasa. Moorcroft's party was quartered in a high-walled compound with solid gates that shielded it from the curious crowd without. Settling in, Moorcroft remarked on the bliss of resting comfortably "without hearing the rush of torrents or the crash of avalanches." During his extended stay, he compiled a veritable encyclopedia about Ladakh, describing its annual dance dramas, its abundance of "necessary houses" for the hygienic removal of night soil, and its medicinal but delicious crops, notably rhubarb. He also described a sarsinh tree with a fragrant yellow flower and an agreeable olive-like fruit, thereafter known scientifically as Eleagnus moorcrofiii. These and a hundred other topics filled his discursive letters, prompting Sir Alexander Cunningham, the author of a scholarly history of Ladakh, to observe a generation later that Moorcroft's accounts were "marked by great shrewdness of observation, and by the most scrupulous accuracy." As before, Moorcroft's field clinic attracted a procession of patients, including the high officials of Leh, the head lama of an important monastery, the imam of the local mosque, the master of horses at the palace, and Kashmiri merchants. He tried without success to promote the use of chimneys and to introduce smallpox vaccinations (the vaccine he so laboriously imported proved inert). His good works, his obvious respect for the Ladakhis, and his disarming manner added to the personal capital he now invested in a diplomatic gamble.
IT was not a small or hesitant gamble. He envisioned Ladakh as the trading crossroads of Central Asia and as a backdoor route to China - an ideal springboard, in a phrase, for British mercantile and political interests. Such a development had roots in history and law, he maintained, since Ladakh had once acknowledged the authority of Mughal emperors and paid tribute to Delhi, where a Mughal still nominally reigned. Thus Ladakh was British by inheritance. Hence it made sense for the Ladakh Rajah to refuse tribute to the Sikhs and to seek British protection. This was agreeable to the Rajah, who in May 1821, signed an "engagement" to establish ties with British merchants and permit their passage through Ladakh to China and Central Asia. This was joined to a formal request for British protection. As Moorcroft explained: "On the one hand I averted from an amiable and harmless people the oppressive weight of Sikh exaction and insolence, and on the other I secured for my country an influence over a state, which, lying on the British frontier, offered a central mart for the extension of her commerce to Turkestan and China, and a strong outwork against an enemy from the north, should such a foe ever occur in the autocrat of the Russians."
Brashly, Moorcroft sent his "engagement" to the British Resident in Delhi, along with a letter to the Governor-General from the Rajah of Ladakh offering formal allegiance. He enclosed a copy of a personal letter to Ranjit Singh censuring Sikh oppressions, asserting that Ladakh was part of Delhi's patrimony, and warning him not to meddle with Ladakh until he heard from the British Government "regarding the state of its intentions and affairs". This was bundled together with a lengthy report to Charles Metcalfe and dispatched in August 1821. But his friend Metcalfe was no longer head of the Political and Secret Service, he was now Resident in Hyderabad, and Ranjit Singh forwarded without comment Moorcroft's injudicious letter to an amazed Resident in Delhi, Sir David Ochterlony.
Moorcroft's enthusiasm clouded his judgment. The Company placed a high value on its alliance with Ranjit Singh, who had punctiliously honoured the 1809 treaty yielding up territories west of the Sutlej in return for a free hand to the east. So it was with "surprise and displeasure" that the Governor-General learned of Moorcroft's "height of indiscretion" in suggesting to Ranjit Singh that Britain could interfere in the affairs of Ladakh. Planted like a grenade in the letter Moorcroft received in March 1822 was the word "reprehensible". His "engagement" was repudiated, his salary suspended, and his bright hopes for Central Asian trade dismissed without a mention.