ants, and
cultivated land to lapse into wilderness,[1365] while the Chilas to the
south pillaged the Astor Valley of Baltistan, carrying away crops and
cattle, enslaving women and children.[1366]

[Sidenote: Cattle-lifting.]

Marauding propensities are marked among all retarded mountain peoples of
modern times. The cattle-lifting clans of the Scotch Highlands, who
preyed upon the Lowlands, have their counterpart in the Pathans of the
Suleiman and Baluch mountain border who, till curbed by the British
power in India, systematically pillaged the plains of the Sind.[1367] The
forest Bhils of the Vindhyan and Satpura ranges are scarcely yet married
to agriculture; so when in time of drought their crops fail and the game
abandons the hill forests to seek water in the lowland jungles, the
Bhils cheerfully revert to their ancestral habit of cattle-lifting.[1368]

The Caucasus was long a breeding place for robber tribes who made their
forays into the pastures and fields of southern Russia. Robbery was part
of the education of every Circassian prince, while one group of the
Abassines conferred their chieftainship upon the most successful robber
or the man of largest family.[1369] The Kurdish hillmen of the Armenian
ranges descend with their herds of horses in winter to the warmer
plains, where they exhaust the pastures and subject the Armenian
villages to a regular system of blackmail.[1370] The wide grassy plains
about Koukou Nor Lake, near the Chinese border of Tibet, attract
numerous Mongol nomads with their herds; but these rich pastures are
exposed to the depredation of Si Fan brigand tribes, who have their
haunts in the deep, impenetrable gorges of the neighboring mountains,
and carefully guard all the approaches to the same. They are Buddhists,
but worship a special Divinity of Brigandage, to whom their lamas offer
prayers for the success of every foray.[1371] Hence, among mountain as
among desert peoples, robbery tends to become a virtue; environment
dictates their ethical code.

[Sidenote: Historical results of mountain raiding.]

These depredations reflect to a great degree the complementary relation
of highlands and lowlands. The plains possess what the mountains lack.
This is a fundamental fact of economic geography, and inevitably leads
to historical results. The marauding expeditions of mountain peoples
first acquire historical importance, either when the raids after long
continuance end in the conquest of the