Brilliant Book

I WAS put on to E F Knight's Where Three Empires Meet by a passing reference to it in Peter Fleming's News From Tartary.

The book's subtitle, A Narrative Of Travel In Kashmir, Western Tibet, Gilgit And Other Adjoining Countries, hints at the three empires in question, which are British, Russian and Chinese.

Great read

Knight was a barrister who gave up lawyering to become a journalist, specialising in wars and travel.

He toured Kashmir and neighbouring lands in the early 1890s, just in time to for a minor campaign on the Northwest Frontier, during which he was put in charge of a contingent of native troops.

Knight has views that even in his day were probably regarded as old-fashioned, as in the following description of a region where polyandry (the female version of polygamy) was the rule.

It was then that her miserable slave and magpa [dogsbody, ie minor husband] slouched up, and she proceeded to heap abuse on him in a shrill voice all the while we were at breakfast, as if the accident had been his fault, poor wretch. He wisely replied nothing to the scold who ruled him. He looked like a man whose spirit had been completely broken by much ill-usage. If I were he, I should try and summon up sufficient courage to beg her - since she evidently no longer loved her poor magpa - to give me the customary parting rupee or sheep, and discharge me. It was a sad sight, and set one thinking to what depths women's rights, as advanced by some extreme ladies at home, would drag down the hapless male. Unless we look to it we shall all be magpas some day.

But it soon becomes clear Knight is often writing tongue-in-cheek, as in the following passage two pages later.

At Bazgo I saw a praying-waterwheel for the first time, a cylinder full of rolls of prayers fixed across a stream upon an axle, and turned by the running water. It is indeed strange, if these people really believe in the efficacy of their praying-machinery, as they are said to do, that they put up so few of these waterwheels. The traveller in Ladak seldom comes across them, and yet, revolving day and night as they do unceasingly, it stands to reason that they must perform more work than the praying-flags and hand-wheels. An enormous amount of praying power is wasted in the rushing Indus, which, properly utilized, might be made to insure Nirvana on death to every soul in the country. Good missionaries from Lasa should see to this.

The book climaxes with a British-led campaign in the Gilgit area of north Kashmir, during which two VCs are won.

This is one of the most entertaining books I have read for a very long time.