Campaigning on the Indian frontier is an experience by itself.Neither the landscape nor the people find their counterparts

in any other portion of the globe.Valley walls rise steeply five or six thousand feet on every side.The columns crawl through

a maze of giant corridors down which fierce snow-fed torrents foam under skies of brass.Amid these scenes of savage

brilliancy there dwells a race whose qualities seem to harmonize with their environment.Except at harvest time,when

self-preservation requires a temporary truce,the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war.Every man is a

warrior,a politician and a theologian.Every large house is a real feudal fortress made,it is true,only of sun-baked clay,but

with battlements,turrets,loopholes,drawbridges,etc.complete.Every village has its defence.Every family cultivates its

vendetta;every clan,its feud.The numerous tribes and combinations of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one

another.Nothing is ever forgotten,and?very few debts are left unpaid.For the purposes of social life,in addition to the

convention about harvest-time,a most elaborate code of honour has been established and is on the whole faithfully observed.A man who knew it and observed it faultlessly might pass unarmed from one end of the frontier to another.The slightest

technical slip would,however,be fatal.The life of the Pathan is thus full of interest;and his valleys,nourished alike by endless sunshine and abundant water,are fertile enough to yield with little labour the modest material requirements of a sparse

population.

Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts:the rifle and the British Government.The first was an enormous luxury and blessing;the second,an unmitigated nuisance.The convenience of the rifle was nowhere more

appreciated than in the Indian highlands.A weapon which would kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred