PRESENT STATE OF MIR VALI.

A year and a half ago Mir Vali (who drugs himself with charas = a preparation of hemp) got offended with Pahlivan, (probably on account of a difference of opinion in re Hayward);[102] went to Kandiá (road described elsewhere) and to Manikiál [not the village so often referred to in the account of the Wars] on the borders of Swat. Thence he went to Tall, Ramta, Berahmar and then to Beïkéy, the Akhûn of Swat, who asked him why he had come. Mir Vali said that Pahlivan had annoyed him and as the Akhun was a great Saint he had come to him, having no other friends. The Akhun entertained him for eight months, after which, on a Friday (when service takes place at noon instead of 2 P. M.) he told him to go back to Yasin, “for your heart’s desire has been accomplished.” Mir Vali at once started off on horseback, taking the bank of the Indus. On the third day he reached Ghorband; thence he went to Damtirey, Bilkái, Ranulia and Jajiál; there he crossed the river to Kúi; thence to Palus, Gagréy Khware (or in Gilgiti, Gabréga), Shogobind (a place for pasture) Jaglôth, Tekkegá, Parbáh (a place for pasture) Latór, Sazin, Dareyl, viz: Gayá, Samegial (where he stayed a week in order to consult Mulk Aman, who was there) Manekial, the Matrêt valley (pasture place for Gujers), and finally to Yasin. There he was well received by Pahlivan who could not understand why he had left and now the brothers love each other more than before. The rule is in the hands of Mir Vali who keeps up friendly relations with the Dogras and would strengthen these relations still further were it not for fear of Aman-ul-mulk, who is a great enemy of the Maharajah and who has ordered him to have as little to do with them or Isa Bahadur as possible. [Vide note on next page.]

MULK AMAN.

When Mulk Aman remembered his country, Yasin, he fell home-sick in Chitrál and begged Aman-ul-mulk to let him go and, if Aman-ul-mulk would assist him, he would fight the Sikhs or else die as a martyr. Aman-ul-mulk said that Mulk Aman could only do the latter, as he had no army left. “I advise you, he added, to go to Dareyl and ask the Maharajah’s forgiveness, who may give you some appointment. Serve him, he said, as Isa Bahadur has done and you may be restored to the throne of your ancestors.” Aman-ul-mulk said this in order to get rid of the importunities of Mulk-Aman, who left for Samegial. Baghdur Shah and Kuweti, the Maharajah’s agents, happened to be there and actually offered to intercede with the Maharajah on his behalf and to get him an appointment. Mulk Aman was delighted. The agents spoke in his favour to the Maharajah who cheerfully ordered him to present himself. They came to Samegial and brought Mulk Aman to Jammu. His Highness bestowed a dress of honour, a horse and Rs. 200 on him and a monthly salary of Rs. 100 for himself, Rs. 30 for his son and Rs. 50 for the rest of his family and requested him to live at Gilgit outside the fort. “Remain there for 7 years; afterwards I will give you Yasin.” This Mulk Aman did and built a house about 100 yards from the fort. He did not, however, for two years send for his family from Samegial where he had left them when he started for Jammu. When they came he continued serving Kashmir for four years more. Isa Bahadur, however, happened to tell Zoraweru last year (for Isa was the arch-enemy of Mulk Aman and feared his getting back to Yasin) that Mulk Aman intended to escape with his family to Chitrál, after which, as he had plotted with the Gilgitis, there would be a general revolt which would end in his sharing the Government of Yasin with Pahlivan. When Zoraweru heard this he consulted with Isa Bahadur, who advised him to seize Mulk Aman and send him and his family to Jammu at once, so as not to give him time to rouse the country. This pleased the Governor and a suitable hour was left to Isa’s discretion for surrounding the house and bringing Mulk Aman and his family before Zoraweru. Isa Bahadur at once went and selected 400 young men whom he ordered to be in readiness at four in the afternoon. Accidentally a friend of Mulk Aman overheard the conversation between Zoraweru and Isa Bahadur and at once informed him of what was contemplated and of the arrangements made by Isa. The friend advised him to flee at once into the mountains. Mulk Aman, greatly astonished, went to his house and ordered his family to get ready to start. Just as his women were coming out of the house, he saw Isa Bahadur with his soldiers all round it. Mulk Aman drew his sword, ran a-muck among the troops and after killing a few soldiers managed to escape alone into the mountains in the direction of Dareyl.[103] However swiftly pursued he could not be found; the Sikhs returned from the mountain and took the family prisoners. Mulk Aman, descending on the other side of the mountain, came to Samegial. Isa Bahadur then presented the women and children as hostages to Zoraweru who forwarded them to Jammu, where they still remain. Shortly afterwards the Maharajah heard that Mulk Aman was perfectly innocent of any conspiracy and had been got out of the way by the calumny of Isa Bahadur, the enemy of the house of Gauhar Aman from which he had suffered. The Maharajah was very sorry at what had taken place and ordered Muhammad Khan of Swat to bring the brave and unfortunate man back from Samegial under liberal promises of rewards and appointments. The Swati started and told Mulk Aman that he was responsible that no treachery was intended. All was in vain; he insulted Muhammad Khan and raved about the loss of honour, etc., which he had suffered at the hands of the Maharajah. “If he makes me his greatest Sirdar he can not wipe out the stain of having taken away my wife.” Muhammad Khan returned to Jammu from his fruitless expedition and told the Maharajah, who was very sorry. Twenty eight days after Muhammad Khan’s visit, Mulk Aman, considering himself unsafe, went to Harbenn, which is still Yaghistan [independent, wild]. Zoraweru then advised the Maharajah to send for him, as he had got among the Yaghis and might incite them to an attack on Gilgit. “Above all, make him satisfied.” When the Maharajah read Zoraweru’s letter, he again sent the Swati to Harbenn and told him to swear on the Koran, on his own behalf and that of His Highness, that it was all Isa’s fault and that he would give Mulk Amán his revenge for the wrong suffered and allow him double his former salary. This Muhammad Khan did and saw Mulk Aman at Harbenn to whom he brought a shawl as a present from himself. He told him, in private, after “salâming” to him at a public meeting, all that he was charged to say and took an oath in attestation of the sincerity of his promises. Mulk Aman replied that he would not fall a victim to treachery and that if he said another word or came again he would certainly kill him. So Muhammad Khan left and again had to report his failure. “Only an army can bring him, he said, back from Harbenn.” The Maharajah is hoping now that he will get tired of wandering about and come back of his own accord. During the last eight months he has sent nobody for him. Mulk Aman is very badly off and is now at Rimon (Dareyl) and I am quite sure that the Yaghistanis will never assist him. His brothers will not help him. His wife (Mahtar’s widow) is now at Jammu and reports have spread about her conduct.”

In connexion with the Sazîni’s account, which in all particulars relating to the tribes is very trustworthy, may be read the following statements of S... S... of Kûner, on the borders of Kafiristan, now a Christian. He relates that he was once a Sepoy in the Maharajah’s Army and started on one of the Gilgit expeditions [1860?] with 300 Affghans and 3,000 Dogras, etc., under the command of Samund Khan, Ata Muhammad, Badam Singh, Man Singh and Dula Singh. He believes that Wazir Pannu was with the forces. At any rate, the attack on Gilgit was mere child’s play. The Kashmîr troops bombarded it for two or three days, but the Dards had no cannon with which to reply. Wahháb, the Wazir, looked out of one of the fort loopholes and was shot and so was a Bhishti. Wahháb’s body was stripped and hung to a tree. S... S... adds, “We were well entertained by the people who treated us to curds and we found grapes and wallnuts in abundance at Sher Kila’. The women of the country cooked our food, but our soldiers repayed the hospitality which they received by plundering and ill-treating the inhabitants. I remained behind, but when my company came back they told me that the Sikhs wanted to dig out the body of Gauhar Aman, but were prevented from doing so by their own Muhammadan comrades. We found caverns in the mountains which were filled with food for the use of the enemy. It is the custom of this people to heap up food in caverns to which the owners only know the way. After entrusting Sher Kila’ (a fort as big as that of Gilgit and constructed of wooden beams and stone) to the administration of native partisans, we went to Gao-Kutsh, where we found plenty of sport. Gauhar Aman used to sell captured Sepoys for hunting dogs.” (This story is repeated from so many trustworthy quarters that it seems to deserve credence. I heard it from many at Gilgit in 1866. The kidnapping propensities of Gauhar Aman were great and one of my own retainers, a petty Chief, had been dragged off for sale, when he escaped by sliding down a mountain side. Yet the people of Gilgit preferred his rule to that of Kashmir and revolted in his favour, when oppressed by Santu Singh in 1852). “We had two Hindustani rebels of 1857 with us and there were also several with the petty Rajahs.” [This important statement can be somewhat confirmed by me. What I understood to be the fourth Light Kashmir Cavalry was said to be almost entirely composed of rebels of 1857. I found many of the stations in charge of Swatis and numbers of soldiers of that race at Gilgit. One of the Maharajah’s Sepoys, who came to see me, admitted that he was formerly at Hyderabad and then had joined the rebels.]

I can also confirm the statements of the Sazîni with regard to the atrocities committed in the War with Dareyl. In order to be able to report victories, men, said to be innocent of complicity in the war, were hanged and women were dragged into captivity in order to fill the Zananas of the Kashmîr Sepoys. I saw the body of a tall, and powerfully built Dareyli, which had evidently been hacked about a good deal, suspended on a tree by the way-side. It was said to be the body of a man who was quietly returning to Sai, which had long been in the undisturbed occupation of the Maharajah. A little further on near Jaglôth [which is also in long-occupied territory] there is a bridge on one of the poles of which I saw the skeleton head of a Lumberdar of the place, said to be perfectly innocent of all participation in the war with Kashmir. The roofs of the houses in Gilgit had been blown off, and most of the inhabitants had fled into the mountains (vide “dance at Gilgit” page 36). On the other hand, dreadful stories were related of the retaliation of the Dard tribes. Sepoys had been sold by hundreds into Badakhshan, etc.; others had been used as fireworks and blown to atoms for the amusement of the Kunjûtis. Personally, I found the Dards pleasant enough and consider them to be superior in many respects to either Dogras or Pathans, but it is by no means improbable that they have been guilty of many of the atrocities which are laid to their charge. At the same time, it must be remembered that the wanton cruelties of the Massacre of Yasin (vide page 69) and the fact that their country was invaded by a stranger and an “infidel”—in defiance of treaty obligations—is some palliation for their conduct. The Kashmîr troops, and more particularly the coolies sent with them, were also grossly neglected as regards food, clothing and shelter by their own authorities. It is said that out of 12,000 Kashmiris, impressed for the purpose of carrying loads, only 600 survived in the expedition of 1866. The roads were strewn with the skeletons of horses, etc. I saw men in the most emaciated condition and ready to eat “unlawful” food. Three Mussulmans in a dying condition whom I met below the “Acho” summit,[104] were ready to take a tin containing pork and could scarcely be restrained till “lawful” food was brought to them by my servants. Men were forced to go with the troops. One Hakím Ali Shah, a teacher at Amritsar, was compelled to serve as a physician, a post to which he had no other claim, except that his name happened to be “Hakím.” I rescued him. A virulent fever was destroying the troops at Gilgit, who, even after the siege of the fort had been raised, were liable to be shot down by prowlers from the tribes within a few yards of the fort. I ordered the fort, etc., to be cleaned and, although myself in danger of life from my Kashmîr friends, if not from the tribes, I insisted on my order being obeyed, the assumption of an authoritative tone being often a traveller’s only chance of safety among Asiatics. I distributed medicine among the troops and was afterwards told in Durbar by the Maharajah that some medicine which I had sent to Wazir Zoraweru, who was then on his Dureyl expedition, had saved his life.

Since then, the Dards have made the acquaintance of diseases for which there was not even a name in 1866. I refer chiefly to cholera and syphilis, which Kashmiri and Indian troops have introduced. Simultaneously, the indigenous methods of treatment, which are full of lessons for the impartial learner, are dying out. Industrial handicrafts, historical superstitions or reminiscences, national feasts which existed in 1866 exist no longer, and what exists now will soon vanish before the monotony of orthodox Muhammadanism and the vulgarity of so-called European civilization. “Und der Götter bunt Gewimmel, Hat sogleich das stille Haus geleert.” The fairies and prophetesses of Dardistan are silent, the Tham of Hunza no longer brings down rain, the family axes are broken, the genealogists have been destroyed, and the sacred drum is heard no longer. The quaint computations of age, of months, seasons, years and half-years, and the strange observations of shadows thrown at various times are dying out or are already dead. Worse than all for enquiry into ancient human history, the languages which contain the words of “what once was,” are being flooded by foreign dialects, and what may survive will no longer appeal to the national understanding. This result is most lamentable as regards Hunza, where the oldest human speech still showed elementary processes of development. I fear that my attempt to commit, for the first time, to writing, in an adapted Persian character, the Khajuná language, has only been followed in a document of honour which the venerable Chief of Nagyr sent me some years ago. Already do some European writers call him and his people “ignorant” when their own ignorance is alone deserving of censure. I deeply regret that the friendship of so many Dard Chiefs for me has made them unsuspicious of Europeans, and may have thus indirectly led to the loss of their independence, but I rejoice that for over twenty-five years I have not attracted the European adventurer to Dardistan by saying anything about Pliny’s “fertilissimi sunt auri Dardæ,” except in Khajuná Ethnographical Dialogues in the “Hunza-Nagyr Handbook,” which exploiters were not likely to read. Now others have published the fact, but not the accompanying risks.

As Kandiá is learned, Nagyr pious, Chilás puritanical, and all true Dard tribes essentially peaceful and virtuously republican, so, no doubt, Hunza was the country of free love and of raiding, that had ceased in 1865, which we practically revived (see Appendix I.). I doubt, however, whether picturesque vice, which, unfortunately, may form part of indigenous associations, is as reprehensible as the hypocrisy of those hired knights of the pen, who, not practising the virtues which they preach, take away the character of nations and of Chiefs, merely because they are opposed to us, and falsify their history. I do not, for instance, palliate the old Hunza practice of lending one’s wife to a guest, or of kidnapping good-looking strangers in order to improve the race, though the latter course may be preferred by a physiologist to a careless marriage, but I do find a reproach on European or Indian morality in the fact that not a single Hunza woman showed herself to the British or Kashmîri invaders, although the men, once conquered, freely joined them in sport and drinking bouts. Europeans have a worse reputation among Orientals than Orientals among Europeans, and, in either case, ignorance, prejudice, want of sympathy and disinclination to learn the truth, are probably among the causes of such regrettable preconceptions. At any rate, it shall not be said that the races which I, so disastrously for them, discovered and named, shall suffer from any misrepresentation so far as I can help it, although the political passions of the moment may deprive my statements of the weight which has hitherto attached to them as authoritative in this speciality. Væ victis et victoribus—for history now marches rapidly towards the common disaster. Finis Dardarum. “It has been decided that Chilás is to be permanently held, and consequently the present strength of the garrison in the Gilgit district will be increased by one native regiment, while the 23rd Pioneers will complete the road through the Kaghan Valley to Chilás, and will then remain for duty on the advanced frontier. This strengthening of the garrison in the sub-Himalayan country will effectually secure British influence over Chitral where an Agent is to be permanently stationed; it will also insure the control of the Indus Valley tribes” (Times telegram of the 8th July, 1893—the italics are mine). Alas that British influence should so destroy both itself and the freedom of ancient races!

Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat. Considering the promises of redress of all grievances made by the Great Northern Emancipator of Oppressed Nationalities,[105] whose lightest finger is heavier than our entire yoke, it would be a great mistake on our part to still further reduce the independence of Native States, the troops of which are already at our disposal. Even as regards Kashmir, against the mismanagement of which I have protested for so many years, and the Agents of which made several attempts on my life in order to prevent my exposure of their frontier encroachments in 1866, I am bound to say that our procedure has been a great deal too peremptory, if not altogether illegal. The following Treaty between Kashmir and the British Government shows alike that Kashmir had no right to encroach on Chilás and Gilgit (see preceding pages), and still less on Hunza-Nagyr, and that the Government of India has no right to convert Kashmir into a “semi-independent State” as called by the Times of the 8th July, 1893. Kashmir is an independent State, whose independence has been paid for and must be protected by our honour against our ambition, as long as it is loyal to the British Government:

Article I.

The British Government transfers and makes over for ever, in independent possession, to Maharajah Golab Sing and the heirs male of his body, all the hilly or mountainous country, with its dependencies, situated to the eastward of the River Indus and westward of the River Ravee, including Chumba, and excluding Lahul, being part of the territories ceded to the British Government by the Lahore State, according to the provisions of Article IV. of the Treaty of Lahore, dated 9th March, 1846.

Article II.

The eastern boundary of the tract transferred by the foregoing Article to Maharajah Golab Sing shall be laid down by Commissioners appointed by the British Government and Maharajah Golab Sing respectively for that purpose, and shall be defined in a separate Engagement after survey.

Article III.

In consideration of the transfer made to him and his heirs by the provisions of the foregoing Articles, Maharajah Golab Sing will pay to the British Government the sum of seventy-five lakhs of Rupees (Nanukshahee), fifty lakhs to be paid on ratification of this Treaty, and twenty-five lakhs on or before the first October of the current year, A.D. 1846.

Article IV.

The limits of the territories of Maharajah Golab Sing shall not be at any time changed without the concurrence of the British Government.

Article V.

Maharajah Golab Sing will refer to the arbitration of the British Government any disputes or questions that may arise between himself and the Government of Lahore or any other neighbouring State, and will abide by the decision of the British Government.

Article VI.

Maharajah Golab Sing engages for himself and heirs to join, with the whole of his Military Force, the British troops, when employed within the hills, or in the territories adjoining his possessions.

Article VII.

Maharajah Golab Sing engages never to take, or retain in his service, any British subject, nor the subject of any European or American State, without the consent of the British Government.

Article VIII.

Maharajah Golab Sing engages to respect in regard to the territory transferred to him, the provisions of Articles V., VI., and VII., of the separate Engagement between the British Government and the Lahore Durbar, dated March 11th, 1846.

Article IX.

The British Government will give its aid to Maharajah Golab Sing in protecting his territories from external enemies.

Article X.

Maharajah Golab Sing acknowledges the supremacy of the British Government, and will, in token of such supremacy, present annually to the British Government one horse, twelve perfect shawl goats of approved breed (six male and six female), and three pairs of Cashmere shawls.

This Treaty, consisting of ten Articles, has been this day settled by Frederick Currie, Esquire, and Brevet-Major Henry Montgomery Lawrence, acting under the directions of the Right Honourable Sir Henry Hardinge, G.C.B., Governor-General, on the part of the British Government, and by Maharajah Golab Sing in person; and the said Treaty has been this day ratified by the seal of the Right Honourable Sir Henry Hardinge, G.C.B., Governor-General.

Done at Umritsur, this Sixteenth day of March, in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Forty-six, corresponding with the Seventeenth day of Rubbee-ool-awal 1262 Hijree.

(Signed) H. Hardinge

(Signed) F. Currie.
” H. M. Lawrence.

By order of the Right Honorable the Governor-General of India.

(Signed) F. Currie,
Secretary to the Government of India, with the Governor-General.

Note on the Genealogy of the divine Rajas of Nagyr (given to me by Raja Habibulia Khan of Nagyr in 1886).—At Doyur, near Gilgit, on the mountain-top, three fairy-brothers shot at a calf, which only the youngest (Azru) hit and was induced to eat, thereby losing his fairy-hood. The two others flew away and settled on another mountain, but the crowing of a cock betrayed them to the people of Gilgit who made one of them, Tura Khan, Raja of Gilgit; the other, Chalis Khan, becoming Raja of Nagyr. [This account is incorrect as Azru became Raja of Gilgit, because he had become man by eating meat (incarnation), but it is interesting as showing the desire of Nagyris to be connected with the Historical Legend of the origin of the neighbouring and more civilized Gilgit. Some say that Chalis Khan had no son, but that the Rajas of Nagyr are the descendants of the Makpon rulers of Little Tibet (from which the Makpon-i-Shang-rong—see page 107—takes its name). Others say that Alladad was a son of Chalis Khan: at all events, the founders of the Hunza-Nagyr Dynasty, Girkis-Mogholot, two brothers, whether descended from Mogholot or Chalis, are called Mogholoti, Girkis becoming the Tham of Hunza, and Mogholot that of Nagyr. As for Alladad, he was succeeded by Kamal, whom Rahim and Babar (or tiger) followed in turn. Babar’s son was Ferdûs, and his son Alif Khan was the father of the present reigning Chief, Zafar Khan, whose progeny is very numerous]. [The above account, although very deficient and confused, supplements, as regards Hunza-Nagyr, the important “historical legend of the origin of Gilgit,” which will be found on pages 9 to 16, and which chronicles the change in the Shîn rule in Dardistan. The mystery in the Hunza-Nagyr dynasty fitly entitles it to be called “ayeshó,” or “heavenly.” I can quite understand that the Chief of Hunza, unable to convince European disbelievers of his divine origin, should have claimed a descent from Alexander the Great, faute de mieux, since the more terrestrial chiefs of Badakhshan and other neighbouring countries claim to be descended from that conqueror.] (See note on page 55 and page 69.)

Colonel Biddulph gives the following interesting version of the above story:

“The ruling family of Hunza is called Ayeshé (heavenly), from the following circumstance. The two States of Hunza and Nager were formerly one, ruled by a branch of the Shahreis, the ruling family of Gilgit, whose seat of government was Nager. Tradition relates that Mayroo Khan, apparently the first Mahommedan Thum of Nager, some two hundred years after the introduction of the religion of Islam in to Gilgit, married a daughter of Trakhan of Gilgit, who bore him twin sons, named Moghlot and Girkis. From the former the present ruling family of Nager is descended. The twins are said to have shown hostility to one another from their birth. Their father, seeing this, and unable to settle the question of succession, divided his State between them, giving to Girkis the north, and to Moghlot the south, bank of the river.

Age did not diminish their enmity, and Girkis, while out hunting, was one day killed by an adherent of Moghlot, a native of Haramosh, named Mogul Beg, who, under pretence of a quarrel with Moghlot, took service with Girkis, and persuading him to look up at some game on the cliff above him, drove an arrow into his throat. Girkis left only a daughter, who, according to the custom of the country, became Queen or Ganish of Hunza. Her first care was to avenge her father’s death. The tradition relates that having sworn to tear the murderer’s liver with her teeth, she carried out her vow to the letter. Left without a chaperon, she was not long without getting into a scrape, as young ladies in similar circumstances are apt to do. The young prince Kamal Khan of Nager, a younger son of Moghlot, crossed the river by night, serenaded her and won her heart. Night after night the lovers met, unknown to the rest of the world, till serious consequences ensued; and one fine day it was announced in Hunza that, though Providence had not yet provided the princess with a husband, it had seen fit to bless her with a son. Morals in Hunza are not of the strictest even now, so that few questions were asked, and the good people generally contented themselves with beating their drums, dancing, and the usual festivities proper on the occasion of the birth of the Prince Chiliss Khan. Kamal Khan seems to have ‘behaved badly’ all through, as the above story is concealed in Hunza under the fiction that a prince of Shighnan became the husband of the princess, but that his name being forgotten he is known only as Ayeshó (Heaven-sent), from which the present ruling family of Hunza takes the name. The present Thum of Hunza is Ghazan Khan” (1880).

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX I.
HUNZA, NAGYR, AND THE PAMIR REGIONS.[106]

I wish to record how from small beginnings, owing to carelessness, exclusiveness, and official desire for promotion, Northern India may be lost and British interests in Europe and Asia become subordinate, as they have often been, to Russian guidance; how statesmanship has laboriously invited dangers which physical barriers had almost rendered impossible; and how it may still be practicable to maintain as independent States the numerous mountain strongholds which Nature has interposed between encroachment and intrigue from either the Russian or the English sphere of action in Asia, much to the benefit of these two Powers and of the peace of mankind.

When, after an enormous expenditure of men and money and during campaigns which lasted over thirty-six years, Russia had conquered independent Circassia—a task in which she was largely aided by our preventing provisions and ammunitions from reaching by sea the so-called rebels, although we ourselves were fighting against her in 1856, quorum pars parva fui, it was easy to foresee that our conduct, which some called chivalry, others loyalty, and some duplicity or folly, would give her the present command of the Black Sea and lead to the subjugation of Circassia. The same conduct was repeated at Panjdeh, and may be repeated on the Pamir, much to the personal advantage of the discreet officers concerned. We have also recently discovered that the holding of Constantinople by a neutral Power is not essential to British interests, as we had long ago found out that neither Merv nor Herat were keys to India. Indeed, as we give up position after position, a crop of honours falls to those who bring about our losses and, like charity, covers a multitude of political sins of ignorance or treason.

It seemed, however, that there was one obscure corner which the official sidelight could not irradiate. Valley after valley, plateau after plateau, high mountains and difficult passes separate the populations of India from those of Central Asia. Innumerable languages and warlike races, each unconquerable in their own strongholds if their autonomy and traditions are respected, intervene between invaders from either side who would lead masses of disciplined slaves to slaughter and conquest. It is not necessary to draw an imaginary line on Lord Salisbury’s large or small Map of Asia across mountains and rivers, and dividing arbitrarily tribes and kingdoms whose ancestry is the same, call it “the neutral zone.” No sign-board need indicate “the way to India,” and amid much ado about nothing by ambitious subordinates and puzzled superiors settle to the momentary satisfaction of the British public that Russia can go so far and no farther. Where the cold, the endless marching over inhospitable ground, and starvation do not show the frontier, the sparse population, the unknown tongue, and the bullet of the raider will indicate it sufficiently, without adding to the number of generals or knights for demarcating impossible boundaries.

The reassurances given by Lords Lansdowne and Cross to the native Princes of India indicate the policy that should be adopted with regard to all the Mountain States beyond India proper. It is by everywhere respecting the existing indigenous Oriental Governments that we protect them and ourselves against invasion from without and treachery from within. The loyalty of our feudatories is most chivalrous and touching, but it should be based on enlightened self-interest in order to withstand the utmost strain. The restoration of some powers to the Maharaja of Kashmîr came not a minute too soon. Wherever elsewhere reasonable claims are withheld, they should be generously and speedily conceded. The Indian princes know full well that we are arming them, at their own expense, against a common foe who is not wanting in promises, and who is already posing as a saviour to the people of Raushan, Shignan, Wakhan, Hunza, and even Badakhshan, whose native dynasties or traditions we have either already put aside or are believed to threaten.

As for the small States offering a fruitful field for intrigue, their number and internal jealousies (except against a common foreign invader) are in themselves a greater safeguard than the resistance of a big but straggling ally, whose frontier, when broken through at one of its many weak points, finds an unresisting population from which all initiative has disappeared. The intrigue or treachery of a big ally is also a more serious matter than that of a little State. What does it matter if English and Russian agents intrigue or fraternize among the ovis poli, and the Kirghiz shepherds of the Pamir, or advocate their respective civilizations in Yasin, Chitrál, Wakhan, Nagyr, Hunza, etc. Ambitious employes of both empires will always trouble waters, in order to fish in them; but their trouble is comparatively innocuous, and resembles that of Sisyphus when it has to be repeated or wasted in a dozen States, before the real defences of either India or of Russia in Asia are reached. Indeed, so far as India is concerned, the physical difficulties on our side of the Himalayas or of the Hindukush, except at a few easily defensible passes, are insuperable to an invader, even after he has crowned the more approachable heights when coming from the North.

The only policy worthy of the name is to leave the Pamir alone. Whatever line is drawn, it is sure to be encroached upon by either side. Races will be found to overlap it, and in the attempt to gather the fold, as with the Sarik and Salor Turkomans, a second Panjdeh is sure to follow. Intrigues will be active on both sides of the line; and, as in Kashmîr, the worried people will hail the foreigner as a saviour, so long as he has not taken possession, when they find his little finger heavier than the whole body of the indigenous oppressor. I have suffered so much from my persistent exposure of the misrule and intrigues of Kashmîr by those who now hail the fait accompli of its practical annexation, that I may claim to be heard in favour of at least one feature of its former native administration. With bodies of troops averaging from 20 to 200, the late Maharaja, who foresaw what has happened after his death, kept the Hunza-Nagyr frontier in order. It certainly was by rule of thumb, and had no dockets, red tape, and reports. Indeed, his frontier guardians were, as I found them, asleep during a state of siege in 1866, or, when war was over, were engaged in storing grain outside the forts; but peace was kept as it will never be again, in spite of 2,000 Imperial troops, first-rate roads, and suspension bridges over the “Shaitan Naré,” instead of the rotten rope-way that spanned “Satan’s Gorge,” or of boats dragged up from Srinagar over the mountains to enable a dozen sepoys to cross the Indus at a time, or to convey couriers with a couple of bullets, some dried butter-cakes, and an open letter or two, who ran the siege at Gilgit and brought such effective reinforcements to its defenders!

Nor has our diplomacy been more effectual than our arms, as the encounter at Chalt with Hunza-Nagyr, hereditary foes, but whom our policy has united against us, has shown. To us Nagyr is decidedly friendly; but a worm will turn if trodden on by some of our too quickly advanced subalterns. That, however, the wise and amiable Chief of Nagyr, a patriarch with a large progeny, and preserving the keenness of youth in his old age, is really friendly to us in spite of provocation, may be inferred from the following letter to me, which does credit alike to his head and heart, and which is far from showing him to be our inveterate foe, as alleged by the Pioneer. His eldest son began to teach me the remarkable Khajuná language, which I first committed to writing in 1866, during the siege of Gilgit, and another son continued the lessons in 1886. The latter is a hostage in Kashmîr, to secure the good behaviour of his tribe, which is really infinitely superior in culture and piety to those around them. The father, who is over 90, writes in Persian to the following effect, after the usual compliments:—“The affairs of this place are by your fortune in a fair way, and I am in good health and constantly ask the same for you from the Throne which grants requests. Your kind favour with a drawing of the Mosque has reached me, and has given me much pleasure and satisfaction. The reason of the delay in its receipt and acknowledgment is due to the circumstance that, owing to disturbances (fesád) I have not sent agents to Kashmîr this year. After the restoration of peace, I will send [a letter] with them. In the meanwhile, I have caught your hem [seek your protection] for my son Habibullah Khan, a beloved son, about whom I am anxious; the aforesaid son is a well-wisher to the illustrious English Government.—Za’far Khan.” [The letter was apparently written in June last, when The Times reported a “rising,” because the British Agent was at Chalt with 500 men.]

It seems to me that none but a farseeing man could, in the midst of a misunderstanding, if not a fight, with us, so write to one in the enemy’s camp, unless he were a true man alike in war and peace, and a ruler whose good-will was worth acquiring. As for his son, I know him to be indeed well-disposed to our Government. He was very popular among our officers when I saw him in Kashmîr, owing to his modesty, amiability, and unsurpassed excellence at Polo. In fact, my friendship with several of the chiefs since 1866 has aided our good relations with them; and it is a pity if they should be destroyed for want of a little “savoir,” as also “savoir faire,” on our part.

Between the States of Nagyr and Hunza there exists a perpetual feud. They are literally rivals, being separated by a swift-flowing river on which, at almost regulated distances, one Nagyr fort on one bank frowns at the Hunza fort on the other. The paths along the river sides are very steep, involving at times springing from one ledge of a rock to another, or dropping on to it from a height of six feet, when, if the footing is lost, the wild torrent sweeps one away. Colonel Biddulph does not credit the Nagyris with bravery. History, however, does not bear out his statement; and the defeat inflicted on the Kashmîr troops under Nathu Shah in 1848 is a lesson even for the arrogance of a civilized invader armed with the latest rifle. The Nagyris are certainly not without culture; in music they were proficient before the Muhammadan piety of the Shiah sect somewhat tabooed the art. At all events, they are different in character from the Hunzas with whom they share the same language, and their chiefs the same ancestry. The Hunzas, in whom a remnant of the Huns may be found, were great kidnappers; but under Kashmîr influence they stopped raiding since 1869, till the confusion incidental to our interference revived their gone occupation. Indeed, it is asserted on good authority, that even our ally of Chitrál, who had somewhat abandoned the practice of selling his Shiah or Kalásha Kafir subjects into slavery, and who had so disposed of the miners for not working his ruby mines to profit, has now returned to the trade in men, “with the aid of our present of rifles and our moral support.” Nor is Bokhara said to be behind Chitrál in the revival of the slave-trade from Darwáz, in spite of Russian influence; so that we have the remarkable instance of two great Powers both opposed to slavery and the slave-trade, having revived it in their approach to one another. Nor is a third Power, quite blameless in the matter; for when we worried Hunza, that robber-nest remembered its old allegiance to distant Kitái and arranged with the Chinese authorities at Yarkand to be informed of the departure of a caravan. Then, after intercepting it on the Kulanuldi road, the Hunzas would take those they kidnapped from it back for sale to Yarkand!

As a matter of fact, we have now a scramble for the regions surrounding and extending into the Pamirs by three Powers, acting either directly or through States of Straw. The claims of Bokhara to Karategin and Darwáz—if not to Shignán, Raushan, and Wakhan are as little founded as are those of Afghanistan on the latter three districts. Indeed, even the Afghan right to Badakhshan is very weak. The Russian claims through Khokand on the pasturages of the Kirghiz in two-thirds of the Pamirs are also as fanciful as those of Kashmir or China on Hunza. As in the scramble for Africa, the natives themselves are not consulted, and their indigenous dynasties have been either destroyed, or dispossessed, or ignored.

In an Indian paper, received by to-day’s mail (29 Nov., 1891), I find the following paragraph: “Col. A. G. Durand, British Agent at Gilgit, has received definite orders to bring the robber tribes of Hunza and Nagar under control. These tribes are the pirates of Central Asia, whose chief occupation is plundering caravans on the Yarkand and Kashgar. Any prisoners they take on these expeditions are sold into slavery. Colonel Durand has established an outpost at Chalt, about thirty miles beyond Gilgit, on the Hunza river, and intends making a road to Aliabad, the capital of the Hunza chief, at once. That he will meet with armed opposition in doing so is not improbable.”

For some months past the mot d’ordre appears to have been given to the Anglo-Indian Press, to excite public feeling against Hunza and Nagyr, two States which have been independent for fourteen centuries. The cause of offence is not stated, nor, as far as I know, does one exist of sufficient validity to justify invasion. In the Pioneer and the Civil and Military Gazette I find vague allusions to the disloyalty or recalcitrance of the above-mentioned tribes, and to the necessity of punishing them. As Nagyr is extremely well-disposed towards the British, and is only driven into making common cause with its hereditary foe and rival of Hunza by fear of a common danger,—the loss of their independence,—I venture to point out the impolicy and injustice of interfering with these principalities.

I have already referred to a letter from the venerable chief of Nagyr, in which he strongly commends to my care one of his sons, Raja Habibulla, as a well-wisher of the English Government. Indeed, he has absolutely done nothing to justify any attack on the integrity of his country; and before we invade it other means to secure peace should be tried. I have no doubt that I, for one, could induce him to comply with everything in reason, if reason, and not an excuse for taking his country, is desired. Nagyr has never joined Hunza in kidnapping expeditions, as is alleged in the above-quoted paragraph. Indeed, slavery is an abomination to the pious and peaceful agriculturist of that interesting country. The Nagyris are musical and were fond of dances, polo, ibex battue-hunting, archery and shooting from horseback, and other manly exercises; but the growing piety of the race has latterly proscribed music and dancing. The accompanying drawing of a Nagyri dance in the neighbouring Gilgit gives a good idea of similar performances at Nagyr.

The country is full of legendary lore, but less so than Hunza, where Grimm’s fairy tales appear to be translated into actual life. No war is undertaken except at the supposed command of an unseen fairy, whose drum is on such occasions sounded in the mountains. Ecstatic women, inhaling the smoke of a cedar-branch, announce the future, tell the past, and describe the state of things in neighbouring valleys. They are thus alike the prophets, the historians, and the journalists of the tribe. They probably now tell their indignant hearers how, under the pretext of shooting or of commerce, Europeans have visited their country, which they now threaten to destroy with strange and murderous weapons; but Hunza is “ayeshó,” or “heaven-born,” and the fairies, if not the inaccessible nature of the country, will continue to protect it.

The folly of invading Hunza and Nagyr is even greater than the physical obstacles to which I have already referred. Here, between the Russian and the British spheres of influence in Central Asia, we have not only the series of Pamirs, or plateaux and high valleys, which I first brought to notice on linguistic grounds, in the map accompanying my tour in Dardistan in 1866 (the country between Kashmir and Kabul), and which have been recently confirmed topographically; but we have also a large series of mountainous countries, which, if left alone, or only assured of our help against a foreign invader, would guarantee for ever the peace alike of the Russian, the British, and the Chinese frontiers. Unfortunately, we have allowed Afghanistan to annex Badakhshan, Raushan, Shignan, and Wakhan, at much loss of life to their inhabitants; and Russia has similarly endorsed the shadowy and recent claims of Bokhara on neighbouring provinces, like Darwáz and Karategin.

It is untrue that Hunza and Nagyr were ever tributaries of Kashmîr, except in the sense that they occasionally sent a handful of gold dust to its Maharaja, and received substantial presents in return. It is to China or Kitái that Hunza considers itself bound by an ancient, but vague, allegiance. Hunza and Nagyr, that will only unite against a foreign common foe, have more than once punished Kashmîr when attempting invasion; but they are not hostile to Kashmîr, and Nagyr even sends one of the princes to Srinagar as a guarantee of its peaceful intentions. At the same time, it is not very many months ago that they gave us trouble at Chalt, when we sought to establish an outpost, threatening the road to Hunza and the independence alike of Hunza and Nagyr.

Just as Nagyr is pious, so Hunza is impious. Its religion is a perversion even of the heterodox Mulái faith, which is Shiah Muhammadan only in name, but pantheistic in substance. It prevails in Punyál, Zebak, Darwáz, etc. The Tham, or Raja, of Hunza used to dance in a Mosque and hold revels in it. Wine is largely drunk in Hunza, and like the Druses of the Lebanon, the “initiated” Muláis may consider nothing a crime that is not found out. Indeed, an interesting connection can be established between the doctrines of the so-called “Assassins” of the Crusaders, which have been handed down to the Druses, and those of the Muláis in various parts of the Hindukush. Their spiritual chief gave me a few pages of their hitherto mysterious Bible, the “Kelám-i-Pir,” in 1886, which I have translated, and shortly intend to publish. All I can now say is, that, whatever the theory of their faith, the practice depends, as elsewhere, on circumstances and the character of the race.

The language of Hunza and Nagyr solves many philological puzzles. It is a prehistoric remnant, in which a series of simple consonantal or vowel sounds stands for various groups of ideas, relationships, etc. It establishes the great fact, that customs and the historical and other associations of a race are the basis of the so-called rules of grammar. The cradle, therefore, of human thought as expressed in language, whether of the Aryan, the Turanian, or the Shemitic groups, is to be found in the speech of Hunza-Nagyr; and to destroy this by foreign intervention, which has already brought new diseases into the Hindukush, as also a general linguistic deterioration, would be a greater act of barbarism than to permit the continuance of Hunza raiding on the Yarkand road. Besides, that raiding can be stopped again, by closing the slave-markets of Badakhshan, Bokhara, and Yarkand, or by paying a subsidy, say of £1,000 per annum, to the Hunza chief.

Indeed, as has already been pointed out, the recrudescence of kidnapping is largely due to the state of insecurity and confusion caused by our desire to render the Afghan and the Chinese frontiers conterminous with our own, in the vain belief that the outposts of three large and distant kingdoms, acting in concert, will keep Russia more effectively out of India than a number of small independent republics or principalities. Afghanistan may now be big, but every so-called subject in her outlying districts is her inveterate foe. As stated in a letter from Nevsky to the Calcutta Englishman, in connection with Colonel Grambcheffsky’s recent explorations:

“One and all, these devastated tribes are firm in their conviction that the raids of their Afghan enemies were prompted and supported by the gold of Abdur Rahman’s English protectors. They will remember this on the plateau of Pamir, and among the tribes of Kaffiristan.”

However colourable this statement may be as regards Shignán, Raushan, and perhaps even Wakhan, I believe that the Kafirs are still our friends. At the same time it should not be forgotten that, owing to the closing of the slave-markets in Central Asia, the sale of Shiah subjects had temporarily stopped in Chitrál. The Kafirs were being less molested by kidnapping Muhammadan neighbours; the Hunzas went back to agriculture, which the Nagyris had never abandoned; Kashmîr, India, and the Russian side of Central Asia afforded no opening for the sale of human beings. The insensate ambition of officials, British and Russian, the gift of arms to marauding tribes and the destruction of Kashmîr influence, have changed all this, and it is only by a return to “masterly inactivity,” which does not mean the continuance of the Cimmerian darkness that now exists as to the languages and histories of the most interesting races of the world, that the peace and pockets of three mighty empires can be saved.

In the meanwhile, it is to the interest of Russia to force us into heavy military expenditure by false alarms; to create distrust between ourselves and China by pretending that Russia and England alone have civilizing missions in Central Asia, with which Chinese tyranny would interfere; to hold up before us the Will-o’-the-wisp of an impossible demarcation of the Pamirs, and finally, to ally itself with China against India. For let it not be forgotten, that once the Trans-Siberian railway is completed, China will be like wax in her hand; and that she will be compelled to place her immense material in men and food at the disposal of an overawing, but, as far as the personnel is concerned, not unamiable neighbour. The tribes, emasculated by our overwhelming civilization, and driven into three large camps, will no longer have the power of resistance that they now possess separately.

Let us therefore leave intact the two great belts of territories that Nature has raised for the preservation of peace in Asia—the Pamir with its adjacent regions to the east and west, and the zone of the Hindukush with its hives of independent tribes, intervening between Afghanistan on the one side and Kashmîr on the other, till India proper is reached. This will never be the case by a foreign invader, unless diplomatists “meddle and muddle,” and try to put together what Nature has put asunder. What we require is the cultivation of greater sympathy in our relations with natives; and, comparing big things with small, it is to this feeling that I myself owed my safety, when I put off the disguise in which I crossed the Kashmîr frontier in 1866 into countries then wrongly supposed by our Government to be inhabited by cannibals. This charge was also made, with equal error, by one tribe against the other. Then too, as in 1886, the Indian Press spoke of Russian intrigues; but then, as in 1886, I found the very name of Russia to be unknown, except where it had been learnt from a Kashmîr Munshi, who had no business to be there at all, as the treaty of 1846, by which we sold Kashmîr to Ghulab Singh, assigned the Indus as his boundary on the west. Now, as to the question as to “What and where are the Pamirs?” I have already stated my view in a letter to the Editor of the Morning Post, which I trust I may be allowed to quote:

“As some of the statements made at the Royal Geographical Society are likely to cause a sense of false security, as dangerous to peace as a false alarm, I write to say that ‘Pamirs’ do not mean ‘deserts,’ or ‘broken valleys,’ and that they are not uninhabitable or useless for movements of large bodies of men. They may be all this in certain places, at certain periods of the year, and under certain conditions; but had our explorers or statesmen paid attention to the languages of this part of the world, as they should in regard to every other with which they deal, they would have avoided many idle conjectures and the complications that may follow therefrom. I do not wish them to refer to philologists who have never been to the East, and who interpret ‘Pamir’ as meaning the ‘Upa-Meru’ Mountain of Indian mythology, but to the people who frequent the Pamirs during the summer months, year after year, for purposes of pasturage, starting from various points, and who in their own languages (Yarkandi, Turki, and Kirghiz) call the high plain, elevated valley, table-land, or plateau which they come across ‘Pamir.’ There are, therefore, in one sense many ‘Pamirs,’ and as a tout-ensemble, one ‘Pamir,’ or geographically, the ‘Pamir.’ The legend of the two brothers, ‘Alichur and Pamir,’ is merely a personification of two plateaux. Indeed, the obvious and popular idea which has always attached to the word ‘Pamir,’ is the correct one, whether it is the geographical ‘roof of the world,’ the ‘Bám-i-dunya’ of the poet, or the ‘Pamir-dunya’ of the modern journalist. We have, therefore, to deal with a series of plateaux, the topographical limits of which coincide with linguistic, ethnographical, and political limits. To the North, the Pamirs have the Trans-Altaic Mountain range marking the Turki element, under Russian influence; the Panja river, by whatever name, on the West is a Tadjik or Iranian Frontier [Affghan]. The Sarikol on the East is a Tibetan, Mongolian, or Chinese Wall, and the South is our natural frontier, the Hindukush, to go beyond which is physical death to the Hindu, and political ruin to the holder of India, as it also is certain destruction to the invader, except by one pass, which I need not name, and which is accessible from a Pamir. That the Pamirs are not uninhabitable may be inferred from Colonel Grambcheffsky’s account [which is published at length elsewhere in this issue of the Asiatic Quarterly Review]. A few passages from it must now suffice:—‘The Pamir is far from being a wilderness. It contains a permanent population, residing in it both summer and winter.’ ‘The population is increasing to a marked extent.’ ‘Slavery on the Pamir is flourishing: moreover, the principal contingents of slaves are obtained from Chatrar, Jasen, and Kanshoot, chanates under the protectorate of England.’ ‘On descending into Pamir we found ourselves between the cordons of the Chinese and Affghan armies.’ ‘The population of Shoognan, numbering 2,000 families, had fled to Pamir, hoping to find a refuge in the Russian Provinces’ (from ‘the untold atrocities which the Affghans were committing in the conquered provinces of Shoognan,’ etc.). ‘I term the whole of the tableland “Pamir,” in view of the resemblance of the valleys to each other.’

“The climate of the Pamirs is variable, from more than tropical heat in the sun to arctic cold in the shade, and in consequence, is alike provocative and destructive of life. Dr. G. Capus, who crossed them from north to south, exactly as Mr. Littledale has done, but several months in the year before him, says in his ‘Observations Météorologiques sur le Pamir,’ which he sent to the last Oriental Congress,—‘The first general fact is the inconstancy of severe cold. The nights are generally coldest just before sunrise.’ ‘We found an extreme amplitude of 61 deg. between the absolute minimum and maximum, and of 41 deg. between the minimum and the maximum in the shade during the same day.’ ‘The thermometer rises and falls rapidly with the height of the sun.’ ‘Great cold is less frequent and persistent than was believed to be the case at the period of the year dealt with’ (March 13 to April 19), ‘and is compensated by daily intervals of elevation of temperature, which permit animal life, represented by a fairly large number of species, and including man, to keep up throughout the winter under endurable conditions.’ Yet ‘the water-streak of snow, which has melted in contact with a dark object, freezes immediately when put into the shadow of the very same object.’ ... The solution of political difficulties in Central Asia is not in a practically impossible, and certainly unmaintainable, demarcation of the Pamirs, but in the strengthening of the autonomy of the most interesting races that inhabit the series of Circassias that already guard the safety alike of British, Chinese, and of Russian dominion or spheres of influence in Central Asia.”

Woking, Nov. 29.

It is not impossible that the tribes may again combine in 1892 as they did in 1866 to turn out the Kashmîr troops from Gilgit. The want of wisdom shown in forcing on the construction of a road from Chalt to Aliabad, in the centre of Hunza, as announced in to-day’s Times, must bring on, if not a confederation of the tribes against us, at any rate their awakened distrust. It is doubtful whether it was ever expedient to establish an outpost at Gilgit, and the carrying it still farther to the traditional apple of discord, the holding of Chalt, which commands the Hunza road, is still more impolitic. As in Affghanistan, so here, whatever power does not interfere is looked upon as the saviour from present evils. Once we have created big agglomerations under Affghanistan, or China, or Kashmir, we are liable to the dangers following either on collapse, want of cohesion, treachery from within, the ambitions of a few men at the respective courts, or, as with us, to serious fluctuations in foreign politics due to the tactics of English parties. The change, therefore, from natural boundaries to the wirepulling of diplomatists at Kabul, Peking, or Downing Street is not in the interests of peace, of our empire, or of civilization. Besides, it should not be forgotten that we have added an element of disturbance, far more subtle than the Babu, to our frontier difficulties. The timid Kashmîri is unsurpassed as an intriguer and adventurer among tribes beyond his frontier. The time seems to have arrived when, in the words of the well-known Persian proverb,[107] the sparseness of races round the Pamirs should bid us to be on our guard against the Affghan, the “bad-raced” Kashmîrî, and the Kambó (supposed to be the tribe on the banks of the Jhelum beyond Mozaffarabad). Perhaps, however, the Kambó is the Heathen Chinee; and the proverb would then be entirely applicable to the present question. After the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Russia will be able to exert the greatest pressure on China. The Russian strength at Vladivostok is already enormous, and when the time comes she can hurl an overwhelming force on what remains of Chinese Manchuria, before which Chinese resistance will melt like snow. Peking and the north of China are thus quite at the mercy of Russia. She will find there the most populous country of those she rules in Asia, and with ample supplies. China has a splendid raw material, militarily speaking; and Russia could there form the biggest army that has ever been seen in Asia, to hold in terrorem over a rival or to hurl at the possessions of a foe.

It is against such possibilities that the maintenance of “masterly inactivity,” qualified by the moral and, if need be, pecuniary or other material support of the Anglo-Indian Government is needed. This is the object of this paper, before I enter into the more agreeable task of describing the languages, customs, and country of perhaps the most interesting races that inhabit the globe.

The Times of the 30th November publishes a map of the Pamirs and an account of the questions connected with them that, like many other statements in its articles on “Indian affairs,” are incorrect and misleading. Having been on a special mission by the Panjab Government, in 1866, when I discovered the races and languages of “Dardistan,” and gave the country that name, and again having been on special duty with the Foreign Department of the Government of India in 1886 in connection with the Boorishki language and race of Hunza, Nagyr, and a part of Yasin, regarding which I have recently completed Part I. of a large work, I may claim to speak with some authority as regards these districts, even if I had no other claim. The point which I wish to specially contradict at present, is the one relating to the Russians bringing themselves into almost direct contact with “the Hunza and other tribes subject to Kashmîr and, as such, entitled to British protection and under British control.”