akhoond or Mad Molla can inflame them and start them on a religious crusade against the infidel, and every little hill village has its saint or saint's tomb to make it a place of distinction and pious pilgrimage. It is even told of one clan of Afridis that, lacking such pious attraction in their village, they lured a saint their way, killed him, and set up a tomb worthy of neighborly envy.
"Nothing is finer than their physique, or worse than their morals," wrote Sir II. Edwards long ago; and Sir Richard Temple has said: "Now these tribes are savages, noble savages perhaps, and not without some tincture of virtue and generosity, but still absolutely barbarians, nevertheless. They have nothing approaching to government or civil institutions; they have, for the most part, no education; they have nominally a religion, but Mohammedanism as understood by them is no better, or perhaps is actually worse, than the creeds of the wildest races of the earth. In their eyes the one great commandment is blood for blood, and fire and sword for all infidels."
"We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master," said one of these turbulent turbans to Elphinstone; and the Amir was well rid of the lot when the Gandamak Treaty in 1879 declared these tribes independent, nominally under the political control of the British, who have vainly tried the policy of conciliation and subsidy varied with occasional thrashings. Only personal influence, and rough and ready, quick justice can
