A POINT OF HONOUR. T HOSE who draw their knowledge of
India from the reports of the National Congress and the speeches and writings of people who hold that India is the victim of a cold-hearted conspiracy formed among the English upper classes, are apt to think of the peninsula as filled with a mild, industrious, intelligent, and preternaturally virtuous population, who but for the oppressions of the European Civil servants, would be living in what Mr. Lear calls in one of his books of "acute nonsense," a condition "of abject and rural happiness." Unfortunately, this beautiful picture of millions upon millions of men of mild manners and an infinite capacity for gassy declamation is not one which will stand the cold hard light of facts. India is not merely an affair of Bengalee Baboos, and if the well-smoked spectacles of the Congressmen are removed, it will be found that there are still a considerable number of persons between- the Ganges, the Indus, the mountains, and the ocean, who have left in them a spice of the old Adam,—men of the kind whose fathers " rode with Nawab Ameer Khan in the old Mahratta war," who filled the armies of the Lion of the Punjab, and who are of the kidney of the old Rajah who grimly remarked that if only the English would take them- selves off, he would send a body of his horsemen into Bengal, and "within six months there would not be a virgin or a two- anna piece left in the whole province." We have no desire to defend turbulent gentlemen of this sort, or to speak as if it were anything but entirely good that their predatory and anarchic instincts should be held strongly in check by the Pax Brilannica. Still, it is just as well to remember their existence, and not to talk as if everything in India but the University graduate were a neglectable quantity. The native gentleman who remarked to Lord Roberts that if the English were to give up India to the Indians, the result would be the domination of "the tiger from the North," was not far out. To borrow a phrase from Gibbon, "The teeth and claws have been cut, but the nature of the tiger is the same ; " and it may be added that, if left to themselves, those teeth and claws would soon grow again. It must not be supposed, however, that because the fierce, hardy, and warlike men of North-Western India have by nature so great a capacity for subjugating the men of the low, flat, level valleys, therefore they are without any human virtues. On the contrary, they were, and are, possessed of many of those qualities which made the High- land chiefs and their retainers of two hundred years ago so eminently attractive. If examples are needed of knightly honour, of chivalry, of romantic courtesy, and of courage allied with clemency, they can be found nowhere more easily than in the annals of the Indian Border. A splendid instance of what we mean is to be found in a story of native chivalry told in the Pioneer Mail of July llth,—a story which, by the way, we have independent means of knowing to be well founded. The tale is one of comparatively modern times, of not more, that is, than sixty years ago, yet it is one which is as romantic as anything in Scott. If Sir Alfred Lyall or Mr. Rudyard Kipling would tell it in verse the world would say that no better theme for a ballad of war had ever been known.
In a mountain district in the Punjab, the land of the five rivers which flow down from their mountains to form the mighty flood of the Indus, stand the ruins of the hill-fort of Kussak, the last stronghold of a warrior tribe. The castle on the hill is only not to be described as "a fortress framed to freedom's hands," because the robber lord who occupied it would have been the last person to encourage the democratic ideal. Any one who has ever driven down the valley of the Hinter-Rhein from Thusis to Chnr has passed one after another the holds of the predatory Barons who once held sway in the Grisons. From the mountain-wall which forms one side of the valley juts out a spur of rock. The sides of the spur are precipitous cliffs, and the spur is only connected with the mountain by a razor-edge of rook. On the levelled top is set, like a hawk's nest, the Baron's castle. Such, but on a greatly magnified scale, was, and is, the position of the fort of Kussak. A buttress of sandstone is thrown out from the mountain barrier, and only joined to it on the north by a razor-edge. South and east and west the sides of the buttress fall sheer away into the valley,— sometimes in precipices of six or seven hundred feet. The only access to the fort is by a narrow zig-zag path which winds up the least difficult face of the hill, and ends at what was once a wicket-gate, situated at the re-entering angle of two great flanking walls,—walla built to complete the fortifications which Nature had begun on so magnificent a scale. This zig-zag path and wicket-gate formed absolutely the only approach to the stronghold. Here, or not at all, friend and foe must enter, for other access there was none. No amount of bravery will enable men to climb sheer walls of rock. About sixty years ago the castle on the rock was held by Sultan Fatteh Mahommad Khan, the last of the Lords of Kussak, and of twenty.seven villages in the plain. Here the Lord of Kussak lived like the High- land chieftain he was. He feared no man, was ever ready for the fight. His purse was open to his friends, and his house and hospitality to the stranger. But the Lord of Kussak was not like many of the men who held the hill-forts of India at the beginning of the century, the children of the war and anarchy which followed the break-up of the Mogul Empire. He could boast a descent purer and more certain than any reigning house in Europe. For twenty centuries his fathers had held the castle of Kussak, and heard from their hawk's nest the drums and tramplings of a hundred conquests. They were at Kussak before Alexander broke in upon the seclusion of India. They had seen the steel-clad phalanx of the Macedonians march past in the plain below them, had watched Nearchus organise his flotilla, had heard the wild horsemen of Timur thunder by, and had seen the fugitives return from the three battles at Panipat. A descendant of the Lords of Kussak might still be holding his fort as a nominally Sovereign Prince, embalmed, as it were, in the amber of the Pax Britannica, had it not happened that Runjeet Singh determined to subjugate the stronghold. The Lord of Kussak had acknowledged in some sort the overlordship of Runjeet, but soon a dispute arose over the question of certain agreement of the day before. They had water enough to salt-duties. The Sikh Governor of the district considered that last another six months, and why should they yield. The the Lord of Kussak was not paying enough, and summoned Lord of Kussak refused. His word was pledged, and his him to appear at Find, the local capital, and explain his honour forbade him to break faith. Accordingly, the Lord Elation. Needless to say, the old chief rejected the order of Kussak gave up his fort, and forfeited for a point of with scorn, and told the Governor that if he had anything honour all that he valued most in the world,—became from to say he should come to Kussak and say it there. To an independent chieftain with a pedigree of two thousand this course the Governor agreed. Soon after he arrived years, a pensioner to the Sikh. before the castle with a strong escort. The Governor and The splendid story of the Indian Highlands, which we have twenty men were admitted to the fort. The rest remained thus condensed, was told to the writer in the Pioneer Mait below. The Sikh was, however, not a good diplomatist. by the descendants of the Lord of Kussak. Sitting within Something was said or done at the interview which fired the ruined fort they told the strangely mingled tale of the blood of the Lord of Kussak, and on a sudden impulse treachery and chivalry. One seems to realise in the story the the old man bade his retainers seize the Sikhs, tie them vast gulf that yawns between Asia and Europe. No " perfect back to back in pairs, and hurl them down the eastern gentle knight" of our world could have done better than did precipice. Think of what this meant for the men waiting the Lord of Kussak when he spared the life of the leader of below. They had seen their chief go through the wicket- the forlorn hope ; or than when he kept his plighted word gate an hour or two before, and now the castle spewed even though Fate had so suddenly and so completely varied their bodies over the great precipice. Horror-stricken, the nature of the contract. Not merely no hero, and no they fled to bear the news to Runjeet. The reader will knight, but no man with a spark of human feeling, could perhaps say, " What a cold-blooded, treacherous murder, have taken the men who had come unarmed into his castle what a scoundrel to have touched unarmed men." Let and thrown them down the cliff. To our feeling, that was them wait before they altogether condemn the murderer almost a worse deed than the breaking of a plighted word. of the Sikhs. The Lord of Kussak knew what he was That it seemed otherwise to the Lord of Kussak shows how to expect, and made his preparations. He sent his far the East is from the West. What is it that makes the women folk to the castle of a neighbouring chief and difference P We will not do more than hazard a guess. The relation, summoned his vassals and retainers to his aid, and Asiatic does not feel mere cruelty a crime as we do. What we provisioned his fort. The water was already there, for the term humanity, the word which covers so much and recog- winter's rains had been copious, and had filled to the brim nises a tie between ourselves and every other man, friend the enormous tanks hewn out of the rock. Runjeet soon and foe, is not felt in anything like the same degree. A appeared in person to summon the fort, and at his back man as snob, and in isolation, has no rights in the eyes of the twelve regiments of infantry, a brigade of cavalry, and fighting Asiatic. Unless he has come into some special rela- eighteen guns. Remember that Runjeet's guns were no tion which endows him with rights, he may be killed like a barbarous tubes of brass, but as splendid a park of artillery dog. The plea of "our common humanity "—one which is a. as the world could show, organised by Europeans,—men who little Pecksniffian in sound, but which is nevertheless a good had fought at Marengo and Jena and Waterloo, and who had one—does not hold good in Asia. A man's life may be sacred learned the art of war under the greatest of artillery officers, because he is your guest, or because you have passed your as of commanders. But the fort of Kussak was impregnable word to him or because he is exceptionally brave, but not to bombardment. When bombardment had failed, Runjeet merely because he is a man. If you want to kill you may tried to carry it by assault. This effort was equally futile. kill, provided that there is no good reason to the contrary. Three times he hurled the bravest of the Khalsa against it, Yet another excuse may perhaps be found for the Lord of and three times they were driven back. During the third Kussak. Insult in the East, and, indeed, in all uncivilised attack, however, occurred an incident worthy of the best countries, justifies far more than it does with us. In the East, days of chivalry,—an incident which the men who wrote the if the insulter goes too far he frees the insulted from all Romances of the Arthurian Cycle would have eagerly recorded restraints. The civilised European only feels this in a less for the wonder and delight of the knights and dames of the degree, but even he feels it sometimes. There are certain Court of the hero of Crecy. Six times did the leader of the insults which a cowboy will always answer with a revolver. Sikh forlorn hope rally his men and press up the zig-zag path; But to fully explain in words how it was that the Lord of but every time the attacking column was swept away by the fire Kussak was at once a true knight and no knight is probably from the fort. The seventh and Iast charge was still more impossible. Those who know the East will perhaps say that desperate, and the leader, a standard-bearer, and a bugler some- the explanation can only be felt, not expressed. Mrs. Gamp how managed to pass harmless through the torrent of bullets, once declared, " What I knows I knows, and what you don't and found themselves alive and unhurt before the wicket- you don't." Those who know the difference between East and gate. One might have expected that the men who threw the West know it, and those who do not, do not. There are Governor and his attendants from the cliff, would have shot plenty of distinctions which are entirely real, and yet wholly them down like dogs. Instead, the fire from the fort suddenly incommunicable. ceased, the wicket-door swung open and the Lord of Kussak and a score of his warriors stood in the entrance, and wel- SQUIRRELS AT THE ZOO. coined the men who had thus miraculously reached the gate.
The two chiefs gravely saluted. "Return," said the Lord of and my brethren know how to respect a hero like you." The two gallant soldiers then shook hands, and the Sikh returned unharmed. The chance of taking the fort seemed more remote
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