discovered that the hill was not isolated, as was supposed, but connected with the main range by a ridge, up which the enemy safely scuttled when they had beaten back the attack. On a later occasion, in the autumn of 1877, our troops twice entered the Jowaki hills by a narrow mountain-torrent bed, and suffered some casualties in consequence, in utter oblivion that not a mile off was a broad and easy pass up which a cavalry regiment could have advanced at a trot. The mouth of this pass was only seven miles from the Kohat cantonments and two from the main road!
Notwithstanding the timidity of our border policy, we have in the last thirty-five years on fifteen occasions launched punitory expeditions into the hills, and the opportunities thus presented have been invariably used to their fullest extent by the officers of the Frontier Survey Department of India. The blank spaces in our trans-border maps have thus been gradually reduced, until by the end of 1882, upon the immediate border of this district – a huge slice of country, about 30,000 square miles – the mountain-mass often collectively termed the Takht-i-Suliman, and regions beyond, alone remained a terra incognita. That for thirty-five years no peak of that gigantic wall which dominates this border to an average height of 10,000 feet for a stretch of 20 miles, and which lies quite close to that border, should have been ascended by an Englishman, is creditable to the discipline of the officers of Government, but discreditable to that Government itself. Russian officers, when they read this statement, will have some ground for believing that the spirit of enterprise and adventure has departed from Englishmen; whereas the fact is, that but for the knowledge that even successful exploration is visited by the grave displeasure of Government – as, for instance, in the case of Mr Macnair, who last year penetrated into Kafiristan[1] – the Takht-i-Suliman mountain would long ago have become the happy hunting-grounds of many a British subaltern. Had Government from the first encouraged a bold but cautious intercourse between ourselves and our hill-neighbours, and held small but frequent camps of exercise upon or even beyond the frontier itself, instead of occasionally marching our Piffer regiments to large distant camps cis-Indus, perpetual contact with us, and the material benefits derived therefrom, would have done more in a few years to soften and civilise the mountaineers on our North-west frontier than has been effected by the stiff procedure of nearly two generations.
It has been the practice of viceroys, instead of openly relaxing the severity of the rule which proscribes the country beyond the border to British officers and even subjects generally, rather to encourage trans-border exploration by inducing officers to break the rule at their own risk. The understanding was, that if successful they would receive praise and reward; if unsuccessful, censure. Shortly before the late Afghan war began, the accomplished but rash and unfortunate Colonel (afterwards Sir George) Colley visited all our frontier stations and outposts from Quetta to Peshawur, and excited the spirit of adventure amongst our officers by proclaiming that it
- ↑ A region hitherto untrodden by European foot, and regarded as "the great mystery of Central Asia."
