Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/48

24 MAHMUD OF GHAZNI steppes, they gradually added a powerful force of ele- phantry fit to confront the heavy arm that formed the first line of battle of an Indian host. Mahmud's success, however, was not won without hard fighting and sore privations. Man was more easily overcome than nature, and the endurance of the hardy and vigorous northmen was often tested almost to the breaking-point. When they set out in 1013 to invade "the capital of India," whose king had failed to pay his annual tribute of fifty laden elephants and two thousand slaves, they were checked at the frontier by deep snow; the mountains and valleys appeared almost level under the treacherous white mantle, and the army was forced to protect itself in winter quarters. Mov- ing onwards in the warmer weather, they wandered for months " among broad deep rivers and dense jungles where even wild beasts might get lost." At last they found " the King of India "probably one of the Sahi dynasty of Gandhara posted in a narrow pass with his vassals at his back. The veterans from the Oxus and the " devilish Afghan spearmen bored into the gorge like a gimlet into wood," but it took days of hard fighting before the place was carried. Then fol- lowed a weary march across the stern desert of Rajpu- tana to Thanesar, a day's journey from Delhi, and here again a local raja had to be dislodged from a steep pass, where he waited with his splendid troop of Cey- lon elephants behind a rapid river. But Mahmud was no novice in tactics. He forded the river and crowned the heights on either side, and while two detachments