Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/101

1885.] was infinitely preferable that some of them should be killed in doing the State service in the quest of useful information beyond the border, than by breaking their necks in pig-sticking or at polo. Following his advice, my immediate predecessor in the charge of this district – a Scottish gentleman, now the governor of a Scottish prison – made a bold attempt early in 1878 to penetrate to the Takht, but on being opposed, was obliged to return to British territory re infecta, as his little excursion had been undertaken without the formal sanction of Government. As he has since retired, the incident may be safely mentioned now.

Soon after, the war in Afghanistan having denuded this frontier of troops, a rumoured disaster to General Roberts in Khost, the preaching of a jehad (holy war) against the kâfir (infidel) English in the hills just beyond our border and north of the Takht-i-Suliman, and the story that the English had retired from Dera Ismail Khán, across the Indus, incited the Mahsuds – a barbarous but powerful independent tribe – to swoop down on the town of Tánk and burn it. For a few days all was confusion. Our own subjects joined the hillmen. The shops of the Hindus in many villages were looted and burnt. Our troops and police were either besieged or shut themselves up in their outposts. The British ráj (rule) was over; the Musalman ráj had returned; the hated money-lender, with his bonds, mortgage-deeds, and account-books, would lord it no more over the faithful, but must resume his skull-cap (sign of dependence) and wear the turban no more; the land was to be the people's once more, free and unencumbered. Such was the universal belief upon the Tánk border. A few days so, and then came swift vengeance. One struggle, in which eighty men – the whole fighting strength of the most fighting branch of a highland clan – were killed, taught subject and hillman alike that the British ráj was as vigorous as before. The invasion and insurrection were over, and all was quiet again. But the Mahsuds had yet to be punished. As no troops were available owing to the Afghan war, the offending tribe was blockaded – that is, excluded from British territory until an expedition could be sent against them. It was not until May 1881 that a force penetrated their fastnesses, and exacted, not vengeance, but redress for the outrages committed more than two years before. During the expedition the Mahsud hills were thoroughly explored and mapped. That work accomplished, the Surveyor-General, with his assistants and their field establishments, all now inured to hill-climbing from two years' experience in Afghanistan, were keen to scale the Takht, explore the whole valley beyond, and connect and check their Afghan reconnaissances and surveys with what had already been done inside and just beyond our border. How to induce Government to sanction the undertaking was the difficulty. The Liberals were once again in power. To them the Afghan policy of their predecessors was anathema. Cabul, the Khyber, and Candahar were abandoned; work on the Quetta Railway was stopped, the coolies scattered, the plant sent elsewhere; "masterly inactivity," and therefore the "close border" system, were once again in the ascendant from the Khyber to the Bolan. Clearly no expedition to