dumped down on this frontier, and that this accounts for its
unattractive appearance. There is one more range of hills to surmount
before we reach the plains of India. We have toiled up a rocky path,
from the bare stones of which the rays of the summer sun are reflected
on all sides, without any relief from tree or shrub, or even a tuft of
green grass, till the ground beneath our feet seems to glow with as
fierce a heat as that of the blazing orb above us. We have reached
the summit, and the vista before us changes as if by magic. Five
hundred feet below us is the broad plain of India, irrigated in this
part by the vivifying waters of the Kurram River, which, liberated
from the rock-bound defile through which they have wandered for the
last thirty miles, now dashing over their stony bed, anon hemmed
in by dark overhanging cliffs, are at last free to break up into
numberless channels, which, guided by the skill of the agriculturist,
form a labyrinth of silver streaks in the plain below us. As far as
the life-giving irrigation cuts of the Kurram River extend are waving
fields of corn, sugar-cane, maize, rice, turmeric, and other crops,
spread in endless succession as far as the eye can reach.

Scattered among the fields are the teeming villages of the Bannuchies,
partly hidden in their groves of mulberries and figs and their
vineyards, as though Cornucopia, wearied by the barren hills above
them in Afghanistan, had showered down all her gifts on the favoured
tribes below. Such is India as it appears to the Pathans inhabiting the
hills on our North-West Frontier, and when we see it thus after some
time spent with them in their barren and rocky hills, we can readily
understand that two thoughts are dominant in their minds. The one is:
"Those rich plains have been put there, in contiguity to our mountains,
because God intended them to be our lawful prey, that when we have
no harvest we may go down and reap theirs; and when we are hard up,
and have a big fine to pay to the British Government, we may lighten
some of the wealthy Hindus of the money that they have accumulated
through usury and other ways which God hates." The other thought is:
"What possible reason has the British Government, the overlord of such
rich lands, for coming and interfering with us in our mountain homes,
which, though nothing but rocks and stones, are still our homes for all
that, where we resent the presence and interference of any stranger?"

The