British territory ends, and that the true British frontier is not at Jamrud, but at Lundi Khana." Yet the political agent would not let us go even to that edge of India and look over; would only guarantee our safety to and let us drive as far as Ali Masjid, half-way to Lundi Khana. A merely hypothetical frontier that of Ali Masjid, and Jamrud nothing but the administrative frontier.
The native officer on duty at the Jamrud gates took our passes and presented the visitors' book, in which register it was written and underscored: "Gentlemen visiting Khyber Pass are requested not to give money to the sowars, as it is setting a dangerous precedent"—advice which seemed reasonable when my special military escort for the day appeared, climbed up promptly on the back seat of a tum-tum, and laid his Enfield rifle across his knee. We felt the need of arms ourselves when we saw that handsome, evil, reckless-looking young bandit playing knight-errant for the day, tidily dressed in brown khaki unifonn, his fine turban-cloth fringed with gold, and his lean, Israelitish face lighted with the evil eye of generations of robber ancestors.
Low ridges before us rose to hills, and they to mountains, and three miles away at Kadam is the real entrance, the beginning of the pass that leads to Afghanistan and the mystic lands of Central Asia, through which a procession of conquerors have come. Out there have gone only the British, bent on punitive expeditions and to the questionable triumphs of what Sir Charles Dilke calls, "thrashing the Afghans into loving us."
