Pathans good government, schools, hospitals, pure water, and sanitary redemption generally, Russia, the pure philanthropist, is pushing her frontiers southward with the sole object of evangelizing the Khanates and bringing these people out of spiritual darkness.
Through the efforts of Colonel Warburton, for twenty years the political agent at Peshawar (and a worthy successor of those other splendid examples of the British official, Lawrence, Edwards, and Nicholson, and those rare men of earlier border and Mutiny days), the marauding tribesmen were taken in firm hand when their independence was guaranteed. The Afridis themselves were made to guard and guarantee the safety of travelers in the Khyber, one of the most remarkable examples of setting a thief to catch a thief that was ever known. From 1879 to 1897 the government paid an annual subsidy of eighty thousand rupees to the Afridi and Shinwari clans on condition that they keep open and guard the caravan track through the pass, live in peace, and do not raid British territory. By tolls levied on each camel and vehicle passing Jamrud, the Indian government raised annually an amount sufficient to pay off part of the subsidy and maintain "Colonel Warburton's road," as the tribesmen call it. Following easy grades, this road could be as easily traversed by an artillery train as by light tum-tums; although, to avoid expensive cuttings and tunnels, the projected railway into Afghanistan will follow the track of Alexander the Great along the Kabul River and through the Michni Pass.
