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Rh Hindu dynasty. But in 1831 the Indian government had been obliged to assume the administration, and retained it for fifty years. In 1881, however, the state was reconstituted under the rule of the descendant of the ancient Hindu family from whom it had been taken nearly a century earlier, under conditions that provided for the acknowledgment of the British sovereignty, and for the welfare of the Mysore people. These conditions have been faithfully observed, and this just and politic action of the British government was appreciated by all the native chiefs throughout India as a confirmation of the declared intention to uphold their territorial independence.

But while our relations with the feudatory states lying inside the external frontiers of India have been successfully maintained and strengthened, the course of affairs beyond those frontiers has been complicated by important events and their consequences. Our annexation of the Panjab in 1849 had extended the dominion up to the skirts of the Afghan mountains, and had thereby brought our border into immediate contact with the highlands inhabited by warlike tribes, who had been accustomed for ages to make plundering raids upon the plains below. For the protection of our own districts, and for the punishment of intolerable brigandage, many expeditions into these highlands had been made, but with little or no permanent effect upon intractable barbarians. In 1863 it became necessary to dispatch a strong force into the hills overhanging the Peshawar valley against a settlement of fanatic Mohammedans