Lord Mayo vigorously addressed himself to the solution of both the external and the internal problem of Baluchistan. His action led to the demarcation of a political boundary between Afghanistan and Persia; which practically put an end to the aggressions of the latter. He displayed not less vigour in trying to help Baluchistan to evolve from her conflicting factions a stable and permanent central power. The task proved a most difficult one. Each of the great parties in Baluchistan had a real basis of right on which to found its claims. The nobles could show that they had frequently controlled the Khan, and compelled him to act as the head of a confederacy of Chiefs rather than as a supreme ruler. The Khan could prove that although he had from time to time succumbed to his rebellious barons, yet that he had only done so after a struggle, and that he had exercised his royal authority whenever he again found himself strong enough. The question resembled the worn-out discussion as to whether England was or was not a limited monarchy under the Plantagenets. The constitutional difficulties in Baluchistan were embittered by wrongs both great and recent on both sides; and at the time of Lord Mayo's death, its consolidation into a {132} well-governed kingdom yet remained to be accomplished. He lived, however, to see his efforts bear fruit in a period of unwonted rest to its unhappy population, and to place the whole problem in a fair train for settlement. Before his sudden end, he had the satisfaction of being able to authorise a high British officer to act as arbitrator between the Khan and the tribal Chiefs. Due north of India, beyond Kashmir and the Himalayas, another State made pressing claims on Lord Mayo's attention. This State was known as Eastern Turkestan. It owed its origin to one of those revivals, partly religious, partly political, which at that time threatened to dismember the Chinese Empire. The Panthays had proved the efficacy of such a revival by the establishment of an independent Muhammadan State in the south-west of China. The Chinese Musalmans of the Desert of Gobi on the far north-western frontier followed their example, and ended by raising their rebellion to the dignity of a holy war. The Chinese authorities were expelled and all who supported them were massacred. In 1864 the new Musalman Power, composed of very heterogeneous elements, found itself in possession of Eastern Turkestan. After a further struggle among the victors, Yakub Kushbegi, a brave soldier of fortune, emerged in 1869 as the Ruler of the vast central territory which stretched eastwards from the Pamir Steppe to the Chinese Frontier, and from the British-protected State of Kashmir on the south to {133} the Russian outposts on the Shan and Muzart ranges on the north.