arly all cases they have succeeded in their heroic toil. But the
work of pacification was disturbed in the year 1895 by a rising in the
Chitral Valley, which cut off in Chitral Fort a small force of Sikhs and
loyal Kashmir troops with their British officers. Relieving columns from
the Swat Valley and Gilgit cut their way through swarms of hillmen and
relieved the little garrison after a harassing leaguer of forty-five
days[351]. The annoyance evinced by Russian officers at the success of
the expedition and the retention of the whole of the Chitral district
(as large as Wales) prompts the conjecture that they had not been
strangers to the original outbreak. In this year Russia and England
delimited their boundaries in the Pamirs.

[Footnote 351: _The Relief of Chitral_, by Captains G.J. and F.E.
Younghusband (1895).]

The year 1897 saw all the hill tribes west and south of Peshawur rise
against the British Raj. Moslem fanaticism, kindled by the Sultan's
victories over the Greeks, is said to have brought about the explosion,
though critics of the Calcutta Government ascribe it to official
folly[352]. With truly Roman solidity the British Government quelled the
risings, the capture of the heights of Dargai by the "gay Gordons"
showing the sturdy hillmen that they were no match for our best troops.
Since then the "Forward Policy" has amply justified itself, thousands of
fine troops being recruited from tribes which were recently daring
marauders, ready for a dash into the plains of the Punjab at the bidding
of any would-be disturber of the peace of India. In this case, then,
Britain has transformed a troublesome border fringe into a
protective girdle.

[Footnote 352: See _The Punjab in Peace and War_, by S.S. Thorburn, _ad
fin._]

* * * * *

Whether the Russian Government intends in the future to invade India is
a question which time alone can answer. Viewing her Central Asian policy
from the time of the Crimean War, the student must admit that it bears
distinct traces of such a design. Her advance has always been most
conspicuous in the years succeeding any rebuff dealt by Great Britain,
as happened after that war, and still more, after the Berlin Congress.
At first, the theory that a civilised Power must swallow up restless
raiding neighbours could be cited in explanation of such progress; but
such a defence utterly fails to account for the cynical aggression at
Panjdeh and the favour