Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/546

 THE BRITISH DOMINION IN ASIA mission of Russians and English in 1886 is plain evi- dence that the spheres of Russian and English influence, which have long been ap- proaching, have at last touched each other. It will be recol- lected, as an example of the delicate handling required by modern political machinery, that the first contact very nearly produced a collision and was felt in a vibration that reverberated through all the Cabinets of Europe. A slight difference in regard to the laying down of the boundary across the slopes of the Hindu Kush brought on a skirmish between Af- ghans and Russians at Pan j ah in 1885 and filled all Europe with rumours of war between England and Russia. Lord Dufferin, a diplomatist of great skill and invaluable experience, was then Viceroy of India, and the affair was compromised; but it showed the English, as by a sudden flash, where their true frontier lay, and what kind of possibilities were involved by its demarcation. The fact that for a breadth of some hundred miles between the disputed A PILLAR AT TIRUMALA NAYAKA, MADURA.