10 



THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



come in and sit up meekly and beg a crust of bread, and 

 even a perennial fare of village moorgee cannot induce me 

 to issue the order for their execution and conversion into 

 pie. But, if such considerations cannot lead, the struggle 

 for existence should drive a man in this country to learn 

 the ways of his border tribes. For no one, I take it, who 

 reflects for an instant, will deny that a small mosquito, with 

 black rings upon a light ground, or a sparrow that has 

 finally made up its mind to rear a family in your ceiling, 

 exercises an influence on your personal happiness far beyond 

 the Czar of all the Russias. It is not a question of scientific 

 frontiers the enemy invades us on all sides. We are plun- 

 dered, insulted, phlebotomized under our own vine and our 

 own fig-tree. We might make head against the foe if we 

 laid to heart the lesson our national history in India teaches, 

 namely, that the way to fight uncivilized enemies is to en- 

 courage them to cut one another's throats, and then step in 

 and inherit the spoil. But we murder our friends, extermi- 

 nate our allies, and then groan under the oppression of the 

 enemy. I might illustrate this by the case of the meek and 

 much-suffering musk-rat, by spiders, or ants ; but these 

 must wait till another day. 



