Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/507

Rh France. By a recent expedition to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, we have emphasized our determination to permit no encroachment of another European power upon the vast tracts of mountains and deserts that stretch from the Himalayas northward to the confines of Mongolia. Our policy is to keep clear of intrusion all the approaches to India, and to hold in our hands the keys of all its gates. Upon this system we have been obliged to multiply and throw forward our military outposts, and accept a great augmentation of sundry and manifold political responsibilities. The outer frontier of the British dominion that our policy now requires us to defend, has an immense circumference. Its southeastern extremity rests on the Gulf of Siam, whence it sweeps round Tibet on the north; it touches the Hindu Kush range of mountains and the Oxus; on the northwest it covers Afghanistan and Baluchistan, until it terminates at its western extremity on the shores of the Arabian sea. The consequence of this expansion of our spheres of political influence far beyond the area of our actual dominion is that the frontiers of the British empire are changing their character. The boundaries of India proper are naturally defined on three sides by an almost unbroken wall of mountains or by desert tracts and on the fourth side by the sea. But the political circumscription of our exterior frontier has now been formed by tracing artificial lines, settled by international agreements, across the slopes and valleys of the Central Asian highlands, and across desolate plains or rugged half-explored hill-tracts. These fixed lines of frontier