Quote Originally Posted by cajunscot View Post
As an aside, Cabool, Missouri, which is about 80 miles to the east of Springfield, was named for Kabul, Afganistan -- the story goes that an ex-British soldier working as a surveyor for the railroad named the town because the hills around town reminded him of his time in Afganistan.

Several years ago there was a very interesting book entitled "The Man Who Would be King: The story of the First American in Afganistan" about a soldier-of-fortune named Josiah Harlan. It's worth adding to your reading list.

This thread has put one of Kipling's poems in my mind:

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!


Thanks for posting this, Kid.

Todd
Todd:

I've known about Alexander Burnes for quite a while now, at least since about 1996 when my interest in Central Asia really started to form. It's the interconnectedness that surprises me. Reading that Rabbie had been kin to him was a little shock---like when I read that Sir Francis Younghusband had corresponded with Roy Chapman Andrews about Mongolia and Korea.

I have, I suppose, an advantage when it comes to history, being from the American South. That whole Faulkner thing about the past not only not being dead, but not even being the past. (Or maybe that's just my excuse.)

In some ways, running into the same names over and over again, your Richard Burtons, your Alexander Burnes, your Fighting Bob Sales, it's almost enough to put one in mind of Foucault's Pendulum!