Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/427

Rh Gurkhas out of all their positions on the west. The Nepalese government was compelled to sign a treaty ceding a long strip of the lower Himalayas, with most of the adjacent forest lands, extending from the present western frontier of the Nepal state northwestward as far as the Sutlaj River. All the hill-country that now overhangs Rohilkhand and the Northwest Provinces up to the Jumna River, with the valuable belt of low-lying forest that skirts the base of the outer ranges toward India, thus fell into English hands.

By this cession of a Himalayan province the Anglo-Indian frontier was carried up to and beyond the watershed of the highest mountains separating India from Tibet or from Cathay; and the English dominion thenceforward became conterminous for the first time with the Chinese empire, whose government has ever since observed British proceedings with marked and intelligible solicitude. The Gurkha chiefs of Nepal, having thus been confined within a narrow belt of highland territory immediately overlooking England's most valuable province, have nevertheless maintained their system of military domination through several internal revolutions, and have sedulously pursued a policy of training their troops upon the European model by discipline and the importation of arms.

In the meantime the freebooting bands of Central India were increasing in numbers and audacity. The Pindaris, who were openly disowned and secretly encouraged by the Maratha chiefs, had made an inroad into certain districts of the Madras Presidency, carry-