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THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



tenets and doctrines of the creed he professes, and, even if he knew them, would in no way 

 be restrained by them in pursuit of his purpose. Whatever he may have been as a Buddhist 

 or as a fire-worshipper, he has now sunk to the lowest grade of civilisation, and borders upon 

 the savage. Entirely illiterate, under no acknowledged control, each man his own king, the 

 nation has dwindled down to a small community of less than 300,000 souls, mostly robbers and 

 cut-throats, without principles of conduct of any kind, and with nothing but the incentive of 

 the moment as the prompter to immediate action. Even among his own nationality (the 

 Pathan) he is accounted the faithless of the faithless, and is held on all sides to be the 

 most fierce and stealthy of all enemies. As we know him, merely in the character of an 

 independent neighbour, he is a wily, mistrusting, wolfish, and wilful savage, with no other 

 object in life but the pursuit of robbery and murder, and the feuds they give rise to." 



Photo by Messrs. Bourne & Shepherd] 



The writer of the above work (published in the year 1880), so well known to all students 

 of Indian ethnology, makes a remarkable prophecy with regard to these Afridis, and one which 

 a year or two ago was so completely fulfilled that we feel sure his warning will interest our 

 readers. He says: "The result of thirty years' contact with them has in no way attached the 

 people to us, nor has the example of British rule made any visible change in their condition, 

 except perhaps in enabling them, through our own neglect to protect ourselves manfully, to 

 become the best armed of any of our frontier tribes. We shall have some day to conquer 

 this people and annex the country, and we shall then find what a born race of marksmen can 

 do with our own Enfields and Sniders and Martini-IIenris in their hands, partly acquired by 

 a weakness the Afridi has for enlisting into our native army and then deserting, and quite 

 naturally taking his arms with him; but mostly by clever theft in the barracks of every 

 newly arrived regiment, European or native." 



On the southern slopes of the Hindu-Kush Mountains and near to Kashmir are the 



