streams) conduct the hardy seekers for the
sun by easy routes up to the final mountain barriers. Finally, those
barriers, the Alps and the Hindu Koosh, are notched by passes that are
practicable for large armies, as has been seen now and again from the
times of Alexander the Great and Hannibal to those of Nadir Shah
and Napoleon.

In these conditions, physical and climatic, is to be found the reason
for the success that has so often attended the invasions of Italy and
India. Only when the Romans organised all the forces of their Peninsula
and the fresh young life beyond, were the defensive powers of Italy
equal to her fatally attractive powers. Only when Britain undertook the
defence of India, could her peoples feel sure of holding the North-West
against the restless Pathans and Afghans; and the situation was wholly
changed when a great military Empire pushed its power to the river-gates
of Afghanistan.

The friendship of the Ameer was now a matter of vital concern; and yet,
as we have seen, Lord Northbrook alienated him, firstly by giving an
unfavourable verdict in regard to the Persian boundary in the district
of Seistan, and still more so by refusing to grant the long-wished-for
guarantee of his dynasty.

The year 1873 marks a fatal turning-point in Anglo-Afghan relations.
Yakub Khan told Lord Roberts at Cabul in 1879 that his father, Shere
Ali, had been thoroughly disgusted with Lord Northbrook in 1873, "and at
once made overtures to the Russians, with whom constant intercourse had
since been kept up[293]."

[Footnote 293: Lord Roberts, _Forty-one Years in India_, vol. ii. p.
247; also _Life of Abdur Rahman_, by Mohammed Khan, 2 vols. (1900), vol.
i. p. 149.]

In fact, all who are familiar with the events preceding the first Afghan
War (1839-42) can now see that events were fast drifting into a position
dangerously like that which led Dost Mohammed to throw himself into the
arms of Russia. At that time also the Afghan ruler had sought to gain
the best possible terms for himself and his dynasty from the two rivals;
and, finding that the Russian promises were far more alluring than those
emanating from Calcutta, he went over to the Muscovites. At bottom that
had been the determining cause of the first Afghan War; and affairs were
once more beginning to revolve in the same vicious circle. Looking back
on the events leading up to the second Afghan War, we can now see that a
frank compliance with the demands of She