The _Adam Khel_ clan is located in the hills between Peshawar and Kohat, being bounded on the north and east by the Khattaks, on the south by the Bangash, and on the west by the Aka Khels (their deadly enemies), and by the Orakzais. They are one of the most powerful and numerous of the Afridi clans, have a great reputation for bravery, and can bring into the field 6500 fighting men, who, moreover, are unusually well armed, with rifles stolen from our cantonments and with those they manufacture themselves at their factories in the Kohat Pass. They are to a small extent cultivators, but their chief occupation is carrying salt from the mines; while the allowance they receive from the Indian Government for keeping open the Kohat-Peshawar road is an assistance to their revenues, an allowance which has been paid them since the days of the Sikh governors of Peshawar. The Adam Khels do not belong to either of the two great political factions. From the situation of the Adam Khel country, and owing to the fact that their very existence is dependent upon their trade with British territory, this particular clan is very susceptible to a blockade and can consequently be easily brought to terms. Nearly all the trouble we have had with the Adam Khels in the past has been due to disputes about the salt tax, or about the maintenance of a practicable road through the Kohat Pass. This short cut from Peshawar to Kohat has a certain strategic value; by this road the two frontier garrisons are no more than thirty-seven miles apart, and only ten of these are in independent territory, while round by railway, via Khushalgarh on the Indus, the distance is 200 miles. Two divisions of the Adam Khels are the actual keepers of the pass, and though we pay, and have paid for years, a considerable subsidy, until comparatively lately we were not allowed to make a road, or even to remove the boulders that obstructed the path. From about 1865 onwards the question of the construction of a road practicable for wheeled traffic was continually raised, and was as often dropped in face of tribal opposition. It was one of the main objects of the expedition of 1877, but was given up by Lord Lytton to avoid “breaking the spirit of the clan,” who evinced their gratitude the year following—that of the Afghan War—by threatening to close the road to us. This threat came, however, to nothing, and the pass formed, throughout the campaign, an unmolested and important means of communication between Peshawar and Kohat. Water is very scarce in the pass, the supply being dependent mainly upon tanks. During the risings of 1897–98 the Adam Khels remained perfectly quiet, and troops constantly used the pass, through which at last, in 1901, a metalled cart road was made. CHAPTER XII. AFRIDIS: OPERATIONS.[106] ADAM KHELS.