nly support.

Winston S. Churchill

Cavalry Barracks,
Bangalore, 30th December, 1897

CHAPTER I: THE THEATRE OF WAR

The Ghilzaie chief wrote answer: "Our paths are narrow and
steep.
The sun burns fierce in the valleys, and the snow-fed streams run
deep;
. . . . . . . . . .

So a stranger needs safe escort, and the oath of a valiant friend."

"The Amir's Message," SIR A. LYALL.

All along the north and north-west frontiers of India lie the Himalayas,
the greatest disturbance of the earth's surface that the convulsions of
chaotic periods have produced. Nearly four hundred miles in breadth and
more than sixteen hundred in length, this mountainous region divides
the great plains of the south from those of Central Asia, and parts as
a channel separates opposing shores, the Eastern Empire of Great Britain
from that of Russia. The western end of this tumult of ground is formed
by the peaks of the Hindu Kush, to the south of which is the scene of
the story these pages contain. The Himalayas are not a line, but a great
country of mountains. By one who stands on some lofty pass or commanding
point in Dir, Swat or Bajaur, range after range is seen as the long
surges of an Atlantic swell, and in the distance some glittering
snow peak suggests a white-crested roller, higher than the rest. The
drenching rains which fall each year have washed the soil from the sides
of the hills until they have become strangely grooved by numberless
water-courses, and the black primeval rock is everywhere exposed. The
silt and sediment have filled the valleys which lie between, and made
their surface sandy, level and broad. Again the rain has cut wide,
deep and constantly-changing channels through this soft deposit; great
gutters, which are sometimes seventy feet deep and two or three hundred
yards across. These are the nullahs. Usually the smaller ones are dry,
and the larger occupied only by streams; but in the season of the rains,
abundant water pours down all, and in a few hours the brook has become
an impassable torrent, and the river swelled into a rolling flood which
caves the banks round which it swirls, and cuts the channel deeper year
by year.

From the level plain of the valleys the hills rise abruptly. Their steep
and rugged slopes are thickly strewn with great rocks, and covered with
coarse,