Thanks to the energy of the naval authorities, the Muscat gun-trade would appear to have been scotched, but it is very far from being killed, while the operations in the Gulf have cost something like £100,000 each season. How, too, can any preventive service, however well organised, deal with cases such as that reported in August 1911 in the Indian papers—of a steamer of the Hansa Line which arrived in Bombay, having among its cargo a number of cases labelled “Loaf Sugar”—shipped at Hamburg, through Antwerp, for Koweit via Bombay? Unfortunately for the consignees, one of these cases was damaged in trans-shipment, when the “loaf sugar” was found to be magazine rifles, fifty in number, of ·203 bore, and with a quantity of ammunition to match. Mr. Lovat Fraser has told us that when he was on the north-west frontier in 1909, he tried to ascertain what proportion of the tribesmen were then armed with modern rifles. The lowest estimate was 80,000, and many frontier officers seemed of the opinion that there were probably 150,000 good rifles in possession of men of the border. “Not only,” says Mr. Lovat Fraser, “does this great influx of arms affect the character of our relations with the tribesmen, by giving them greater confidence in their offensive capacity, but it may also have very grave results should it ever be necessary for us to advance again into Afghanistan.”[148] [Sidenote: The Sultan of Oman] But coincident with the departure from Indian waters of Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Slade, whose vigorous measures have done so much during the last three years for the suppression of the arms traffic between Muscat and Mekran, comes the opportune announcement that the Sultan of Oman has happily decided to control the trade himself—hitherto protected by a treaty, dating back to the Second Empire, between the Sultan and the Government of the French Republic. The Sultan of Oman has come to the decision to store all arms and ammunition imported into his dominions in a bonded warehouse, from which they are not to be released except upon production of certificates of destination, while no such certificates are to be issued for the Mekran coast. If the supervision of the bonded warehouse is thorough, the traffic in arms should be effectively controlled, and a considerable relaxation of British naval activities should be possible; unfortunately, however, the continued existence of the trade benefits many others besides the men of the “Bloody Border”—Oriental officials and European manufacturers and exporters—and it is possible that, though the traffic is to all appearance dead, it may ere long be surreptitiously revived. APPENDIX B. TABLE OF EXPEDITIONS AGAINST THE FRONTIER TRIBES MENTIONED IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS. [Sidenote: Expeditions 1847–1908]