the influences of local geographic
conditions.

[Sidenote: Marauding tendencies in mountaineers]

The less civilized mountain peoples, whose tastes or low economic status
unfit them for emigration, solve the problem of a deficient food supply
by raiding the fields and stores of their richer neighbors. Predatory
expeditions fill the history of primitive mountain peoples, and of the
ancient occupants of highland regions which are now devoted to honest
industry. The ancient Alpine tribes were one and all, from the
Mediterranean to the Danube, "poor and addicted to robbery," as Strabo
says. He analyzes their condition with nice discrimination. "The greater
part [of the Alps], especially the summits of the mountains inhabited by
robbers, are barren and unfruitful, both on account of the frost and the
ruggedness of the land. Because of the want of food and other
necessaries, the mountaineers have sometimes been obliged to spare the
inhabitants of the plains, that they might have some people to supply
them."[1361] The freebooters usually descended into the lowlands of
Italy, Gaul and Helvetia, but the pass peoples lay in wait for their
prey on the mountain roads. Strabo described the same marauding habits
arising from the same cause among the mountaineers of northern
Spain,[1362] the Balkan range,[1363] and the highlands encircling the
Mesopotamian plains.[1364]

Hunger is usually the spur. The tribesmen who inhabit the Hunza gorge
were notorious robbers till their recent conquest by the British.
Despite the most careful terrace tillage, their country was much
overpopulated. The supply of grain was so inadequate, that during the
summer the people subsisted wholly on fruit, reserving the grain for
winter use. Therefore, when early summer opened the passes of the
Karakorum and Himalayan ranges, and caravans began to move over the
trade route between Kashmir and Yarkand, when the Kirghis nomads from
the plains sought the pastures of the Pamir, the Hunza tribesmen found
raiding caravans and herds, and pillaging the Gilgit Valley of Baltistan
the easiest means of supplementing their slender resources. Hardy
mountaineers as they were, and born fighters, they always conducted
their forays successfully, and returned to the shelter of their
fastnesses, laden with plunder and driving their captive flocks before
them. The perpetual menace of these Hunza raids caused large districts
in the Gilgit Valley to be abandoned by their inhabit