sell their strong arms elsewhere. He treats them well. Others resort to
him. He buys more rifles. He conquers two or three neighboring khans. He
has now become a power.

Many, perhaps all, states have been founded in a similar way, and it is
by such steps that civilisation painfully stumbles through her earlier
stages. But in these valleys the warlike nature of the people and their
hatred of control, arrest the further progress of development. We have
watched a man, able, thrifty, brave, fighting his way to power,
absorbing, amalgamating, laying the foundations of a more complex and
interdependent state of society. He has so far succeeded. But his
success is now his ruin. A combination is formed against him. The
surrounding chiefs and their adherents are assisted by the village
populations. The ambitious Pathan, oppressed by numbers, is destroyed.
The victors quarrel over the spoil, and the story closes, as it began,
in bloodshed and strife.

The conditions of existence, that have been thus indicated, have
naturally led to the dwelling-places of these tribes being fortified. If
they are in the valley, they are protected by towers and walls loopholed
for musketry. If in the hollows of the hills, they are strong by their
natural position. In either case they are guarded by a hardy and martial
people, well armed, brave, and trained by constant war.

This state of continual tumult has produced a habit of mind which recks
little of injuries, holds life cheap and embarks on war with careless
levity, and the tribesmen of the Afghan border afford the spectacle of a
people, who fight without passion, and kill one another without loss of
temper. Such a disposition, combined with an absolute lack of reverence
for all forms of law and authority, and a complete assurance of