ng their dominion down from the north to the Black Sea and the
Caspian, were checked and baffled for many years by the woods and
precipices that lay across the line of their march into Trans-Caspia.
The British, moving up by long strides north-westward across India,
came to a halt at the foot of the Afghan hills fifty years ago; and to
this day they have scarcely moved farther. Here they were met by races
almost identical in character and circumstances with the tribes of
Daghestan, fanatically attached to the faith of Islam, profoundly
influenced by religious preachers, prizing their liberty above their
lives, and looking down from their rugged uplands upon a great
military power that had swept away many principalities and subdued all
the cities of the plain below. If the British had pressed onward and
endeavoured to take possession of Afghanistan [which had indeed been
occupied by the Moghul empire in its prime] they would certainly have
been involved in a series of sanguinary conflicts, revolts, and costly
expeditions not unlike those which put so severe a strain upon the
Russian armies in the Caucasus. This, as we know, they did not do;
they adopted the alternative of asserting an exclusive protectorate
over the country; they were content to remain outside it so long as no
rival power was allowed to set foot in it. Yet we know that even this
much more prudent policy was carried out at a heavy cost. The British
army suffered at least one grave disaster by the total destruction of
a division in the retreat from Kabul in the winter of 1842-3. And the
Afghan War of 1878-80, with the massacre of the British envoy and his
escort at Kabul in 1879, showed us the perils and difficulties of even
a temporary and partial occupation.

At the present moment, however, the objects of our policy have been
satisfactorily fulfilled. The Russians have settled with us the
frontier line between their dominion and Afghanistan, and have bound
themselves to respect it. With the Afghan Amir we are on friendly
terms, and we have taken up our permanent position on his Eastern
border towards India, reserving to ourselves the control of the tribes
within a broad belt of territory, otherwise independent, between the
Afghan kingdom and British India. This tract is intersected by lofty
ridges running parallel for the most part to our frontier, with
precipitous slopes toward India, with a few practicable passes and
numerous gorges formed by the drain