ical conditions. It would be a costly and difficult operation to extend administrative control over this tribal zone, yet no other effective remedy of chronic disorder has hitherto been discovered, and the problem still awaits solution.
The war with Bhotan, in 1864, was forced upon the British government by similar causes and circumstances. Bhotan is a small state within the exterior ranges of the Himalayan mountains, lying east of Nepal, inhabited by a poor and ignorant people, accustomed to make predatory incursions into the province of Bengal. In one of these raids some British subjects had been carried off into captivity by the Bhotias, and a mission had been dispatched to the capital of the state with instructions to demand their release; but the request was contemptuously rejected, and the envoy was treated with gross insolence and threats of personal violence. It became necessary to send an armed force into the country to exact reparation and to rescue the captives. The troops, at first unskilfully handled in a region of hills and jungles, suffered a reverse which compelled them to retreat in some confusion; but the Bhotias anticipated a fresh advance in greater strength by submitting to terms which imposed upon them the penalty of ceding a strip of lands along the base of the Himalayas; and they have since given no further provocation. As Bhotan is under a ruler with some general authority recognized over a definite area, it was easier to effect some durable settlement with him than in the case of the ungovernable tribes in the Northwest.
