After the great Mutiny, the disturbed districts soon settled down to their normal calm. Discontent, if still existing, was concealed with Asiatic astuteness. The justice of our rule was evident, even if antagonistic to natural prejudices and antipathies. The extension of railways rendered rapid concentration of troops more possible, and the great increase in the permanent establishment of European troops soon impressed the native mind with the futility, for the time at least, of any further effort to upset the British rule. The danger to which India was to be exposed for the future was more external than internal, more political than domestic. The natural extension of the Empire had brought it into intimate connection with semi-savage peoples on the one hand, and, what was of more serious importance, had, through the rapid absorption by Russia of the Central Asian khanates, brought the frontiers of two mighty Empires within striking distance. Hence the military history of India since the Mutiny is composed of small punitive expeditions against the mountain tribes of the Himmaleyehs and Hindu Koosh, or political campaigns such as that in Afghanistan. Many of the former are too unimportant to mention, and reference will therefore be confined to those for which medals or clasps have been given, or whose names are borne upon the colours. But all spring from the same source. It is the contest, as old as the hills themselves, between the people of the mountains and those of the plain. To the former, rapine and plunder is a profitable pastime, and war an agreeable change. Like the Scottish Highlander of the time of “Roderick Dhu,” who looked on the Saxon or Lowlander as justifiable prey, and to whom to “spoil the Egyptians” was not merely right, but laudable, so all hill-tribe peoples feel with regard to the Lowlanders. Their own land provides little even of bare necessaries, still less of common luxuries. In many cases their condition necessitates, in their eyes, raids for slaves or wives; in all they know they will long enjoy comparative immunity from unpleasant consequences, provided their hostile acts are not too pronounced. They are aware, as are the military police and the government of the more peaceful districts, that to punish minor acts of theft is a costly, though rarely a dangerous, proceeding. Emboldened by immunity, and forgetful of past punishment, they grow bolder and bolder, until at length the patience of the other side is exhausted, and a second or a third punitive expedition is despatched. Even when, after such a one, superficial peace is established, the presence of foreign Residents, to see that that peace is kept, is often a constant source of danger. Some patriot more zealous or hyper-sensitive to the presence of the foreigner--all the more if he be a “Feringhi”--than the rest resents this apparent vassalage, and carries his resentment to its natural end with people whose fighting instincts are still strong.