province has ever possessed at one time so many subordinates with talents applicable to so many branches, as the Board had for several years. Thus the Board owed something to its auspicious star, but still more to its own innate power and inherent aptitude. Apart from the general administration, some few measures may be noticed here as being peculiar to the Punjab. The first step after annexation was the disbandment of the late Sikh army. The men had been drawn chiefly from the class of peasant proprietors. They now reverted to the ancestral holdings, where their rights and interests were found to be secured by British arrangements. They were disarmed on being discharged, and no swords were left to be turned into ploughshares. But they settled down at once to agriculture, which was at that time more prosperous and profitable that it had ever been within living memory. Next, the people at large, by a disarming proclamation, were required to give up their arms. This they did without hesitation and almost without fail. Their minds had been overawed by the British victories and their spirit stupefied by recent defeat. This general disarming tended to the immediate pacification of the province, and ultimately proved of priceless advantage during the crisis which supervened eight years afterwards. If at that moment any men were disposed to raise their hands against us, they had no weapons to wield. Then, defensive arrangements were made for the Trans-Indus Frontier, running as it did for full eight hundred miles at the base of the mountains which surround the valley of Peshawur and then stretching southwards, separate India from Afghanistan. The British border, thus formed, was itself inhabited by wild Moslem races, and was subject to incursions from still fiercer tribes dwelling in the adjacent hills. To guard this long-extended frontier a special body of troops, some twelve thousand men horse and foot, was organised and styled “The Punjab Frontier Force”; and it was placed not under the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, but under the Board of Administration. This frontier service immediately became an object of ambition to the European officers of the army as affording a school for soldiers and a field for distinction. Consequently the Board were able to draw from the ranks of the regular army many of the most promising officers of the day. The Native soldiers were recruited from among the most martial tribes in the border mountains, and the Native officers were chosen for personal merit and social status. Indeed this Force became perhaps the finest body of Native troops ever arrayed under British banners in India. As will be seen hereafter, it was able within eight years from this time to render signal service to the empire during the War of the Mutinies. In these arrangements the experience and talent of Henry Lawrence were conspicuously valuable.