Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/500

444 ruler of singular ability and merciless severity. During the following years the frontiers of this kingdom were laid down. The demarcation of its northwestern boundary, from the Oxus River to the confines of Persia, was undertaken by a joint commission of Russian and English officers; but a dispute over one section of the line caused a collision between Russian and Afghan troops at Panjdah, which brought England and Russia to the verge of a rupture in 1885, at a moment when the Amir was a guest of the Viceroy (Lord Dufferin) in his camp in North India. When that peril had been averted, the whole northwest frontier adjoining Russian possessions was settled by an international convention; and the next measure was to define the Afghan frontier on its eastern side, where a belt of tribal highlands is interposed between the Amir's territory and British India.

The general effect of all these measures has been of the highest importance to our dominion in India. During the nineteenth century Afghanistan has been a foreign kingdom which the English, who have no desire to possess, are nevertheless imperatively compelled to protect, and which must be retained at all risks and costs within the orbit of British influence, since its independence is essential to the security of any rule or dynasty in India. Under the Moghuls this country was a province of their empire; under the British system it is a protectorate; the Afghan mountains are still the necessary barrier against irruptions into the Indian plains. Since 1880, when the formal promise to defend