ber, the climate begins to be delightful at Hoti Mardán, the temperature for that month having an extreme range from 57° to 98°, and a mean of from 70° to 80°. After that it rapidly approaches the results given for January, and becomes bracing as well as pleasant. I went out hawking with the officers one day, and we had some very fine sport, following the birds on horseback, and being much amused by a large black vulture-a pirate bird-which once or twice made its appearance just when the falcon had hunted down its prey, and proceeded to act on the principle of sic vos non vobis, which appears to be one of the fundamental characteristics of organic life. Apart from its cruelty (which need not be expatiated on, seeing that all action we know of involves cruelty) the action of the falcon was very beautiful as it steadily pursued its prey, a species of crane, I think, and swooping down upon it, struck it again and again on the base of the skull, sending out a small cloud of feathers at every stroke, until the brain was laid open and the bird succumbed. Some of the officers at Fort Mardán did not trouble themselves to carry arms, relying upon their sticks or heavy hunting - whips; but this was unwise. Fort Michni was in sight, and there Major Macdonald had a stick when Behram Khan and the Khan's brother went up to him and fired into him with guns from close quarters. A stick becomes a satire in such circumstances. Even arms, however, are not always a sufficient defence from Afghan assassins. Lieutenant Ommaney, a promising young officer in civil employ, was killed in Hoti Mardán by a scoundrel who presented him with a petition to read, * and then stabbed him suddenly when the Englishman was engaged in looking over the paper. In this case Mr M'Nab, the acting commissioner of the district, on hearing of the affair at night, rode immediately over from Peshawar to Mardán, a distance of over thirty miles, and had the murderer hanged next morning-possibly without a very strict regard to legal forms, but in a summary manner, which served to put a check, for the time at least, upon what was threatening. to become a too common Afghan amusement. The Panjab Guides is a rather peculiar regiment, being composed half of foot - soldiers and half of horsemen, most of whom are Afghans, and many from beyond our border. They are a splendid set of men, and the regiment has always been kept in an admirably effective state. In the Panjab Mutiny Report* it is said that at the outbreak of the great Indian Mutiny "the Guide Corps marched from Mardán six hours after it got the order, and was at Attok (30 miles off) next morning, fully equipped for service, 'a worthy beginning,' writes Colonel Edwards, of one of the rapidest marches ever made by soldiers; for, it being necessary to give General Anson every available man to attempt the recovery of Delhi, the Guides were not kept for the movable column, but were pushed on to Delhi, a distance of 580 miles, or 30 regular marches, which they accomplished in 21 marches, with only three intervening halts, and these made by order. After thus marching 27 miles a-day for three weeks, the Guides reached Delhi on 9th June, and three hours afterwards engaged the enemy hand to hand, every officer being more or less wounded.'" That shows the Lahore, 1859; para. 140. splendid state of efficiency in which the Guides were kept. They did something of the same kind in 1872, or the beginning of 1873, when sent to the camp of exercise at Hassan Abdul, and I doubt not they would do it to morrow if necessary. This regiment had only about half-a-dozen European officers when I saw it; but then it was pretty well beyond the reach of the so-called philanthropic influences which have weakened and are destroying our position in India. The officers were free to rule their men; and the consequence was, that the soldiers not only looked up to, but liked, and were proud of, their officers. I must repeat emphatically, that ability to rule wisely is the only condition on which we have any right to be in India at all, and that the instant we depart from that ground, trouble and disaster commence, whatever the character of that departure may be-whether it consist in having inferior English agents in the country or in curbing the hands of the capable ones-whether in stupid want of appreciation of the natives of India or in weak pandering to their insaner ambitions. Hoti Mardán, as well as the whole northern portion of our transIndus territory, is associated with the name of a very extraordinary man - General John Nicholson, who was mortally wounded at the siege of Delhi. No Englishman, at least of late years, appears to have left so powerful a personal impression upon the Afghan mind. I found it to be quite true that the Patháns of our district believe that they hear the hoofs of Nicholson's horse ringing over the trans-Indus plain at night, and that that country shall never pass from our possession so long as these sounds are heard. In the Institute at Delhi there is an oil-painting of him which was made after his death, partly from a small sketch and partly from memory. It represents him as having had a long head and face, with dark hair, and a very finely-formed white forehead. In some respects it reminded me of the portrait of Sir Harry Vane in Ham House, and suggested more a man of contemplation than of action; but that is not an unfrequent characteristic in the countenances of great soldiers. One of Nicholson's most splendid achievements was performed near this fort of Hoti Mardán. He was deputy commissioner of the district at the time of the outbreak of the Mutiny, when matters were in a most critical position, and the disaffected native soldiers were urged to move by the Hindusthani sepoys below, and were in correspondence with the Afghan and other fanatics of Swat and Sitana. If the Panjab saved India, it was our transIndus district, which was the most dangerous in the Panjáb, and it was John Nicholson, more emphatically than any one other man, who saved our trans-Indus possession. The place of the Panjáb Guides, when they were despatched to Delhi, was taken by the 55th Native Infantry and the 10th Irregular Cavalry, the first of which threatened to murder their officers, and the second to "roast" the civil officer of the station. A very small force was sent to Mardán to deal with them, and it was accompanied by Nicholson as political officer, and, on its approach, the 55th Regiment broke and took to the hills. It was in the end of the month of May, and he had been twenty hours in the saddle, under a burning sun, and had ridden seventy miles that day; * * See Panjáb Mutiny Report, para. 151. but, without a moment's hesitation, believe that Nicholson had great so; influence in leading him to do but how did he come to do that "this measure The Mutiny Report mentions mined on was deter so? he "hurled himself on the fugitives It has been well said that, at opposition of the condemned corps; under the strenuous their regiment; others advocated some had 'implicit confidence' in ated old Indians, who have their Of these infatucounterparts at the present day, one colonel shot himself when his regi-did he feel the disgrace. ment, the 99th, revolted, so much place; and though the acting comPeshawar is a very interesting missioner, Mr M'Nab, was absent on the border, I had met with him at Mardán, and received much information and great kindness from him as well as from Major Ommaney, another civil officer, as also from Mr Hughes of the Church Mission. Mr Ward, the superintendent of police, accompanied to Ali Musjid, the first campingme up the Khyber Pass, near ground on the way to Kaubul. dís, or Afreedees, of the fort of This is managed through the AfríJumrood, which stands on the sort of no man's land-the desolate strip between our territory and that of Kaubul. The Khyberís are a radoes not do to enter their territory pacious and sanguinary lot, and it without protection of some kind. They even annoyed Sher Ali, the visiting Lord Mayo in 1869; and ruler of Kaubul, on his return from when I was at Peshawar the Khyber route into Afghanistan was entirely closed, owing to the exactions practised on travellers by the tribes who occupy it. More recently Peshawar one night by stealth, and some of these people came down to carried off into their fastnesses the bandmaster of an English, or perhaps a Scotch, regiment, who had fallen asleep by the roadside on his way from the sergeants' mess to his own quarters, and held him to ransom for £700, but were finally induced to accept a smaller sum. So thirty-five of the armed Afridis and one piper marched with me up the Khyber Pass, "to plunder and to ravish," no doubt, if there had been anything to plunder. We saw some caves high above the place where we stopped for breakfast, but none of the natives of the pass appeared. We then had a shooting-match, in which even little boys, who carried matchlock and dagger, acquitted themselves very well, played our most insulting tunes in the face, or rather against the back, of the enemy,-and marched back again. The pass is so narrow, and the mountains on both sides of it are so high and precipitous, that the Khyber must be a particularly unpleasant place to be attacked in. The entire length of this wonderful gorge is nearly fifty miles; it runs through slate, limestone, and sandstone; and in wet weather the path becomes the bed of a torrent. Near Ali Musjid the precipices rise from this narrow path to the height of 1200 feet, at an angle of about 80°. This wild pass is said to be able to turn out 26,000 fighting men, and during the Afghan war many of our troops perished in it. But I must now draw these papers to a close. From Peshawar there was only the long drive across the Panjab to Lahore, and from Lahore the railway to Bombay. This was in the end of December; and all across the country of the five rivers, afar off, high above the golden dust haze, there gleamed the snowy summits of the giant mountains whose whole line I had traversed in their central and loftiest valleys. The next snow I beheld was on the peak of Cretan Ida; but I had seen. the great Abode of the Gods, where, "Far in the east HIMALAYA lifting high His towery summits till they cleave the sky, Spans the wide land from east to western sea, Lord of the Hills, instinct with Deity." F VOL. CXVII.--NO. DCCXVII. Ir would perhaps be a bold assertion to say that few ages have been so fond of historical investigations as our own. History, in all times in which the intelligence has been lively and free, has taken a first place among the subjects of interest which occupy at once the student and the more superficial reader, giving pleasure alike to the profound investigator of the past and to him who snatches his lesson as he hurries through those busy ways of common life which permit no lingering. It is almost the first of literary arts: for poetry, though she goes before the graver muse, has nearly always in her primitive efforts taken the form of chronicle, and occupied herself with a narrative of the deeds of men or gods, making of them a kind of sublimated history; and in every race which has maintained a place among the great community of nations the chronicler has been the first writer, the founder of literature. To record the deeds of those who have gone before us, for the sake of simple knowledge and natural interest in our fathers in the first place, and then by way of drawing from them models, examples of good or evil fortune, encouragement in our own exertions, is the first of intellectual movements, the beginning of all life which rises beyond the immediate requirements of to-day. But the further step of making that solid basis of history the object of our speculations, and of tracing through it great waves of purpose and meaning which probably the actors in it were totally unconscious of, is a development which comes much later. The philosophy of history is of modern growth; only long after the fact, in the safe distance which BOOKS. at once reveals its full proportions to us, and is silent, making no contradiction to anything we say, can mixed motives and cycles of meaning we frame elaborate theories of those vestigate. Naturally the tendency which the modern mind loves to inin one direction or another which lies under the mental activity of any distinct period, is but dimly perceptible to those who are carrying it out. know; but how these motives fit Our immediate motives we into those of others all moving in the same direction, and sweeping towards a larger result than can be achieved by any individual action, we are powerless to see until the play is played out, and the work accomplished. Therefore it is that contemporary narratives, precious as they are in themselves, acquire to the historical student a quite independent value as mémoires pour servir-materials for that great story which generation after generation works out with but partial knowledge of what it is doing, and which, only when the perfection of the past has rounded each individual chapter, falls into full rhythmic harmony and cadence with all that follows after, and with all that has gone before. ever, the philosophy which traces This final step in history, howacross the far-retiring champaign into the very horizon, those lines of meaning, those slowly-developed tendencies which have worked themselves out into the present infinite dangers to the student, to fabric of society, is attended with whom it is often so delightfully easy to fit the facts into his theory, after the fashion of that divinity of the Sunday schools, which proves all manner of doctrines by means of |