of
an ambitious Pathan. At first he toils with zeal and thrift as an
agriculturist on that plot of ground which his family have held since
they expelled some former owner. He accumulates in secret a sum of
money. With this he buys a rifle from some daring thief, who has risked
his life to snatch it from a frontier guard-house. He becomes a man to
be feared. Then he builds a tower to his house and overawes those around
him in the village. Gradually they submit to his authority. He might now
rule the village; but he aspires still higher. He persuades or compels
his neighbors to join him in an attack on the castle of a local khan.
The attack succeeds. The khan flies or is killed; the castle captured.
The retainers make terms with the conqueror. The land tenure is feudal.
In return for their acres they follow their new chief to war. Were he to
treat them worse than the other khans treated their servants, they would
sell their strong arms elsewhere. He treats them well. Others resort to
him. He buys more rifles. He conquers two or three neighboring khans. He
has now become a power.

Many, perhaps all, states have been founded in a similar way, and it is
by such steps that civilisation painfully stumbles through her earlier
stages. But in these valleys the warlike nature of the people and their
hatred of control, arrest the further progress of development. We
have watched a man, able, thrifty, brave, fighting his way to power,
absorbing, amalgamating, laying the foundations of a more complex
and interdependent state of society. He has so far succeeded. But
his success is now his ruin. A combination is formed against him. The
surrounding chiefs and their adherents are assisted by the village
populations. The ambitious Pathan, oppressed by numbers, is destroyed.
The victors quarrel over the spoil, and the story closes, as it began,
in bloodshed and strife.

The conditions of existence, that have been thus indicated, have
naturally led to the dwelling-places of these tribes being fortified. If
they are in the valley, they are protected by towers and walls loopholed
for musketry. If in the hollows of the hills, they are strong by their
natural position. In either case they are guarded by a hardy and martial
people, well armed, brave, and trained by constant war.

This state of continual tumult has produced a habit of mind which recks
little of injuries, holds life cheap and embarks on war with careless
levity, and the tribesme