tent raids of its tribes into the Russian plains, and to secure
control of its passes. The state of Kashmir, guided by a purely local
policy, for years tried to conquer the robber tribes on its northwestern
frontier, merely to protect its own border provinces. Then the British
authorities of the Indian Empire began the same process, but from a
radically different motive. They saw the Gilgit and Hunza valleys, like
the Chitral to the west, as highways through a mountain transit land,
whose opposite approaches were held by the Russians.[1376]

Such conquests, whatever be their motive, profit the vanquished in the
end more than the victor. They result in the systematic and intelligent
development of the mountain resources, and the maintenance of ampler
social and economic relations between highland and lowland through the
construction of roads, which must always represent the reach of the
governing authority. The conquest of mountain peoples means always
expensive and protracted campaigns. The invader has always two enemies
to fight, Nature and the armed foe. There is a saying in India that "In
Gilgit a small army is annihilated and a large army starves to death."
Hunger is king in high altitudes, and comes always to the defense of
mountain independence. Moreover, the inaccessibility of such districts,
the difficulty of maintaining lines of communication, ignorance of
by-paths and trails which forever offer strategic opportunities to the
natives or escape at a crisis, all serve to protract the war. The
independent spirit of the mountaineer, his endurance of hardships, his
mastery of mountain tactics, and his obstinate resistance after repeated
defeat, give always a touch of heroism to highland warfare.
Consequently, history abounds in examples of unconquered mountain
peoples, or of long sustained resistance, like that which for sixty
years under the heroic leadership of Kadi Mulah and Shamyl used up the
treasure and troops of Russia in the impregnable defiles of the
Caucasus. In the end, however, the highland tribes succumb to numbers
and the road-making engineer.

[Sidenote: Political dismemberment of mountain peoples.]

Political dismemberment, lack of cohesion due to the presence of
physical barriers impeding intercourse, is the inherent weakness of
mountain peoples. Political consolidation is never voluntary. It is
always forced upon them from without, either by foreign conquest or by
the constant menace of such conq