the inevitable military port of India, until, WHEN I sailed from Karachi in May, 1867, I had been struck by its open sea and dancing waves, and had pronounced it of all the towns in India the least Indian, and a pleasant place enough. I had seen the harbor works for the removal of the bar, and had expressed a doubt as to the completeness of their probable success, but no doubt as to the importance of Karachi, destined, I then thought, as soon as the Indus railway was finished, to make enormous strides, and, when the Persian Gulf route became a fact, to be the greatest route in any war in which Turkey hapest of all the ports of India, being on the straight line as against the wasteful curve. The wheat and cotton of the Punjab, and of Sindh, which was not at that time irrigated, I prophesied would flow down toward Karachi. In 1867, as I left Karachi, I had seen the ameers of Sindh come on board the ship to take leave of a great official. When in November, 1888, I again set eyes upon Karachi there were the same dancing waves on the open sea, the same pleasant softness of climate, a bar almost as evil, although one removed by incessant labor to a somewhat different place, an enormously extended town, and vastly increased shipping, evidences of every kind that, although the Persian Gulf route is no more advanced than it was twenty years ago, when the first edition of Greater Britain " appeared in November, 1868, the accomplishment of the smaller task, the Indus railway, has fulfilled my prophecies with regard to the growth of the port. Again uniforms came on board our excellent ship, but instead of the magnificence of the ex-ameers of Sindh, the plain khaki jackets of a travelling staff, Sir Frederick Roberts, and those with him. 66 The middle of the day I spent in looking round Karachi, a specially important place when considered from the point of view of those military interests which I had come out to study, inasmuch as it is pened to be friendly would be by the Euphrates, even supposing that railways ended at Bushire as we call it (that is Abushehr), or some port on the Persian Gulf, and that our troops had there to take sea again to reach Karachi. It is probable that the first railways to connect Europe with India will approach India from this side. The political difficulties of passing through Afghanistan are likely for long to be so formidable that the railways which will ultimately unite Persia with the European system will probably become the postal route, a fine harbor being made at first upon the gulf, possibly at Bushire, three or four days' steam from Karachi, possibly at Bunder El Abbas, or some port at the mouth of the gulf within a couple of days' steam from Karachi. Ultimately I think it probable that a railway will be made along the north shore of the Persian and Arabian Gulf to India, for the country is, when crossed in this direction and not from south to north, far from difficult. By Egypt, or much more by the Persian Gulf, Karachi is our nearest and therefore our most important military port, saving two days for northern India over Bombay, and four days for Quetta. The harbor is, as any other harbor on this coast would be, troublesome, and it is said that the sand which has been dredged out of it, had it not been gradually washed back again, would have sufficed to build up a sort of local Himalayan range. Still it is a sufficiently good harbor to be thoroughly useful for military purposes. On the evening of the day on which we reached Karachi we left it in the railway train of the commander in-chief, dining that night, breakfasting, lunching, and dining the next day in his carriage, and before breakfast on the second morning reaching the as yet untraversed line of the high-level broad-gauge route through the Bolan Pass. Dawn on the first morning showed me Sehwan, which I had seen in 1867, but a Sehwan and neighborhood greatly changed since I came down the Indus in that year, and now under that almost continual cultivation which in 1868 I had ventured to prophesy for it. The next day we found dawn at Sibi, a rapidly growing town where the two sides of the railway loop from Quetta meet, though only one side that by which we shall return through the Harnai Pass is at present open to traffic. Both lines are strategical lines, and the local trade, being chiefly trade which accompanies half-yearly migration of tribes, mainly fails to come by rail. It has, however, enormously increased through the peace which we have brought to the Bolan. For several years, not very long ago, the Bolan Pass was entirely closed by civil war. In 1875 Sir Robert Sandeman, then Captain Sandeman, was directed to report whether anything could be done to reopen it. It was impossible to open the pass without the co-operation of the khan of Khelat, and he was interested in closing it, as by closing it he forced the trade through his capital and obtained the duties, whereas in the Bolan he was obliged to share them with the local tribes. Sir Robert Sandeman came to an arrangement by which some of the wild Murrees were paid to keep the peace, and the policy was inaugurated of interesting the tribes in the protection of the passes, instead of attempting to hold them by a regular force. In 1878 the telegraph was carried through the Bolan, and the pass was used for the advance of troops. Fortified posts were built, and the pass was successfully kept open throughout the war, the tribes standing steadily to our side from the moment that we had begun to pay them. The paying for the protection of a pass does more than protect the pass. It enables us to make arrangements to keep the peace in all its neighborhood, for, by coming into relations with the chiefs, our agents are able to hold assemblies of these leading warriors, and their decisions, which are generally sound, are obeyed without a question. Where necessary, pressure is brought to bear by the stoppage of "the service" of a particular tribe, and a perfect machinery of government and justice is established at small cost. The tribesmen not only guard the roads, but they arrest criminals, recover stolen property, carry letters, produce supplies, escort officers and survey parties, and generally perform all the duties of police in a wild country. As late as 1874 the Murrees were in the habit of raiding upon the Khelat plains, which geographically form part of the plain of India, and upon their neighbors upon both sides in the hills; and also in 1874 another Khelat tribe, the Brahoees, actually crossed the desert and invaded British territory in search of fugitive slaves. But so great and so rapid was the change, brought about in the manner that I have described, that even after Maiwand, when there were signs of trouble in India itself, and when beyond the Bolan there was a good deal of fighting with tribes lying between ourselves and the Afghans, the Bolan itself remained undisturbed. At small stations between Sibi and the mouth of the Bolan we began to see some splendid men, long-haired, white-robed, gipsy-faced Baluchis, looking very black for the most part by the side of the nearly white Kashmirians and Kandaharees and the brown Sikh police. Many of the men were over six feet three inches, and admirably built. The dogs crowded round the train, to which they had not yet become accustomed, licking the grease off the wheel-boxes; and it is said that when the railway is first introduced into one of these wild frontier districts the trains go over the legs of so many of the dogs that there is a chance of a new three-legged breed being introduced before they come to understand the starting signals. As we neared the mouth of the pass and began the ascent we met miles of camels, | buying all the goods of which they stand and thousands of people, with horses and in need for the coming year. In the spring asses and sheep, passing along the road. they will climb back into Baluchistan and It is hard to say how they manage to live southern Afghanistan by the Bolan, carryupon the march, for the country is abso-ing so little food that they seem to live lutely sterile, and they have to carry with them all supplies, except food for camels, for the camels live upon the thorns. On the middle day of our long railway journey the thermometer had stood at 90° in the shade, but before we had climbed far into the hills the yellow sheep-skin tunics -the famous poshteens from Kabul and Kandahar, similar to those which I had so often seen among the Russians - began to make their appearance, and we were shivering in a bitter wind. The enormous importance of the Bolan as a possible invader's route to India had long been known, and it led to the occupation of Quetta as a strong natural position upon the other side. The troubles with the tribes in, and on each flank of, the Bolan had afterwards led to the pressing forward of the double railroad to Quetta, giving alternative lines, of which the northern was already open and running, while the southern through the Bolan had been made as a narrow-gauge line, then taken up, and now remade as a broad-gauge line, at a high level less exposed to damage by water. This new line had not been surveyed for traffic, and I believe that in passing along it with our carriages we were breaking an Indian act; but military progresses know no law, and as no stones happened to tumble upon our heads no one was the worse. upon the stones. When we reached the picturesque portion of the pass we left our carrfages for an open truck placed at the head of the train in front of the two engines, and there we sat, with the forepart of the truck occupied by the paws and head of his Excellency's dog; next came the one lady of the party and Sir Frederick Roberts, and then myself and all the staff. The long-haired warriors and tribesmen, who occupied every place of vantage on the crags, doubtless thought, and have since told their fellow-tribesmen on their return, that the whole scene was devised to do honor to a dog. In one place the line was so steep that our two engines, after failing once with horrid puffings, had to take us back up an incline to make a run at the severe piece, which has been fitted with a cogged centre line for a German engine to pull up the heavy weights. In the tunnels umbrellas were freely opened, because the tunnels had not yet been lined, and the dropping of small stones as the train went through was a frequent incident. At the top of the pass an English station-master had planted willows, and amphibious Persicaria, and a kind of willow-herb, in the pools and tiny trickling stream; but willows, Persicaria, willow-herb and all, Thames vegetation though they be, could not make the Bolan look like the Thames valley, for it is stonier than the hills of Greece, stonier than Palestine, more evillooking than Laghouat as bad as the Sinai Peninsula looks when seen from the Gulf of Suez. As we began to descend a little from the high level we found the Thousands bridges disturbing to the more nervous of upon thousands of white-robed Baluchis the party, for, while they were no doubt were trooping eastwards towards the Indian plains, coming down from their hill villages, and bringing with them their great tents, their camels, their wives, and children, to leave all these upon the Indus shore on British soil, and to travel by rail throughout India to Lahore, to Delhi, some even to Calcutta, selling carpets and As we rapidly began to rise we passed many "switchback railway" sidings, made to turn sharply up the hill, intended to save the trains from destruction if they should break away upon the steep inclines. The route now was literally swarming with the tribes. substantial as far as the passage of the train was concerned, they were not planked, and were neither pleasant to look down through nor convenient for the workmen to cross. All the many laborers employed upon the line had brought their families from the surrounding districts to see us pass, and all stood smiling at us, but none bowing except chiefs. Here and there Indian traders, passing along the road with the tribesmen, would leave the rest of the caravan and come close down to the railway line itself to bow in the usual Indian fashion, their salutes being duly returned by Sir Frederick Roberts. The signal-men spread their hands before them and salaamed to the ground at the passage of the train. At last, after the bare, wild scenery, such as may be found anywhere in the great dry line across the old world between the Morocco Atlantic coast and Tripoli, and again between the Suez desert and central India, we suddenly came out upon a splendid view over the plain of Quetta, bounded in the far distance by the Kwaja Amran frontier range, a view which reminded me of the first glimpse of the plain of the Great Salt Lake. Like Utah and Nevada, the plain of Quetta and the Pishin valley form what the Americans call a soda country, a flat, alkali-covered tableland with bare hills rising range upon range, like the Ruby Mountains, the Diamond Mountains, the Quartz Mountains, and the Humboldt range, that lie between the Great Salt Lake and California. We ran rapidly down the incline, and while I was at tea with Sir Charles Elliott, the minister of public works, in his carriage, which was attached to the rear of the train, we suddenly found ourselves, long before we expected it, drawn up in the red-carpeted station of Quetta, with my old friend Sir Robert Sandeman, in blue official uniform and civil cocked hat, solemnly bowing to his Excellency, who had changed from khaki into more European military costume, and was surrounded by a staff who had changed their clothes very quickly, nobody knew where and nobody knew when. A guard of honor of a hundred men in scarlet, with regimental colors also glowing brightly in the last rays of the setting sun, was upon the platform to receive the commander-in-chief, and in a minute more, under a capering, dancing, and galloping escort of picturesque Sindh horse, we were driving rapidly to Lady Sandeman's hospitality at the residency. Quetta is now one of the largest of our stations, in India I had almost said, but Quetta is not in India. On the way up by railway from Jacobabad you first run out of India into Khelat territory, wholly independent but for the fact that Sir Robert Sandeman as governor-general's agent in Baluchistan is all-powerful — all-powerful because, or chiefly because, he adminis ters justice on the advice of the nobles of Baluchistan, continually called together by him, and in the name of the ruler of Khelat, partly too because Sir Robert Sandeman is a born ruler of men, and one whom, exactly fitted by nature for the work which he has to do, it is not easy to disobey. He is, however, even more loved than he has ever been feared. The railway, after going out of British territory into Khelat territory, in which we police the line and two hundred feet from it each way, comes back again into territory which was ceded by Afghanistan to India in 1878 by the Treaty of Gandamak - territory known till recently as the "assigned districts" of Pishin and Sibi, and very lately indeed become a part of India. But at Quetta we had run out of this territory again into a Khelat district, a district not independent because it is administered as if it were part of India on a regular sys. tem, we paying rent for it to the khan of Khelat. Sir Robert Sandeman is chief commissioner of the new province, known as British Baluchistan, although ceded to us not by Baluchistan but by Afghanistan, which never, however, really occupied it except at two spots. As chief commissioner he rules British Baluchistan (as well as the Quetta rented district) from Quetta, not itself in British Baluchistan; and at Quetta he also carries on the duties of governor-general's agent for independent Baluchistan, and is able to wield powers such as he could not make use of if Quetta was an integral part of India. The Sandeman system takes from the people a sixth of their produce in return for peace and protection and retention of their customs and tribal rule. The judgments of chiefs are enforced, and a good deal of the money is paid back to the tribes for service, but there is profit on the whole. The governing by their own laws and customs wins for him and for us the love and attachment of the Baluch chiefs, and even of the southern Afghans. The institutions which he fosters are aristocratic, but very free, and certainly popular with the tribes; and the local levies which he raises for our service form excellent troops. We hear that we shall have an opportunity of seeing for ourselves a good deal of these levies, for he has called together the chiefs of western Baluchistan and of the districts to the north as far as the Punjab frontier to meet us in durbar at Loralai. The effects of Sir Robert Sandeman's rule in the neighborhood of Quetta have been extraordinary. But a very few years ago marauders were common, and officers | given to excess with the direct effects of were killed within sight of the town when they went out to shoot. A scrimmage in a border station - Now the country almost as far as Kandahar is so safe that an Englishman or a Hindu trader can jog about it if he chooses on a mule, and without a pistol. The Pishin valley is certainly more peaceful than almost any part of Europe. the hot sun or of the bitter wind. The sun and wind together so blister the skin that even the British officer and soldier, with all the inborn British horror of doing eccentric things, are forced to cover their faces thickly with various kinds of grease. Quetta conversations soon brought back reminiscences of far-off days. When I had last seen Sir Robert Sandeman it had been in London, during the discussion of the occupation of the Khojak position, in which I had sided with him, and I was able soon to brush up my recollections. We brought with us or found gathered The view from the residency is a lovely here all the men in India who best underone. The foreground was occupied by stand the problem of frontier defence — a stalwart Sikhs with the blue and red tur- very grave problem too. The British bans of the police of the Punjab, from Empire, enormously strong in some rewhich they were detailed for Quetta duty. spects, easily protected on most sides by Quetta stands on a flat plain, but three the mere expenditure of money upon the magnificent detached mountains are in fleet and its necessary coaling stations, is sight, and a portion of the remainder of vulnerable by land in two parts of the the landscape is filled in by a distant view globe; upon the Canadian southern fronof the far-off ranges. Five minutes after tier and upon the Indian western frontier. we had reached the residency the red sun. In each of these places Great Britain is a fires were glowing on the mountains and continental power; but in Canada our there was darkness in the plain. There neighbor is not a country with a standing are no finer crags anywhere than those army, not a country that, for many years which frown upon our great forward garpast, has shown a disposition to extend its rison town; but darkness fell and there was no more time left to look at them, and tea in a comfortable drawing-room with pleasant society had charms for those who after nearly four weeks of sea had gone through forty-five hours of railroad. A few years ago Quetta was looked upon as being out of the world. Now, thanks largely to the popularity of its rulers, it has become a station which many officers prefer to almost any of the regular Indian stations. There is plenty of water; in consequence there will soon be plenty of trees, willows especially having been planted in great numbers, and growing rapidly. The height of the plateau upon which Quetta stands, varying as it does between five and six thousand feet above the sea, makes the nights cool in the hot part of the year and gives a severe winter, tempered by dryness and a splendid sun; and if only means could be found to avoid the frontier fever, which fills the hospitals with regularity in October of every year, Quetta would be a most pleasant place. It is a curious evidence of the sun heat and of the night cold of Quetta that European soldiers are struck down at one and the same time by sunstroke and pneumonia. The sober men seem generally to come into hospital with fever, and those frontiers, or at all events not a disposition to extend them except when called by the neighboring population. The British troops have been withdrawn from British North America, except from the point of Halifax, valuable to the mother country as a coaling station and as the headquarters of a fleet. The Canadian Dominion has undertaken its own defence. It has a permanent force of trained militia, although too small a force. It has a large number of trained officers. It has laws which enable the whole population capable of bearing arms to be called out at once and drilled to take the field. It has in front of it practically only States militia, and the militia of States comprised in a federation which does not desire to possess itself of Canada unless a majority of the Canadian people should wish voluntarily to desert their connection with ourselves and to enter into political relationship with their neighbors. In India the problem is very different. Our neighbor, although not yet a very close neighbor, is the greatest military power in the world, possessing a peace army equal in strength to the German and the Austrian together, and given, to say the least of it, to territorial growth. There has been a marvellous change in |