Masjid, and certainly not beyond Landí Kotál. A soldier of the Khyber Rifles will be detailed to escort him to and fro. The journey is most conveniently made in a light cart. Horseback riding is not always pleasant in the crush of animals that occurs in the narrow portions of the defile. Each caravan has its guard of riflemen, and as soon as the way is open strings of camels, oxen and asses, laden with Manchester piece goods, Birmingham tinware and Sheffield cutlery, in bales and cases, begin the passage with all possible haste. The loads are adjusted more by balance than anything else, and it is consequently not a difficult matter to displace them. Where the road becomes narrow, the pack beasts jostle one another, with the inevitable result of upsetting their burdens, and creating delay and confusion.

The concourse includes elephants, horses and carriages. Porters, male and female, guards, caravan men, women, children, and wayfarers of every description, make up the throng on foot.

On either side rises the barrier of hills, and eagles circle overhead. As they penetrate into the depths of the pass something of the solemnity of the surroundings must impress the multitude, for the gesticulating and shouting subside, and all settle down to the steady march of thirty miles. But it is a journey full of incident. Horses bolt and camels shed their burdens; contests occur for right of way, and quarrels arise from one cause and another.

The pass lies up the bed of a torrent, and is subject to dangerous floods at certain times of the year. At Kadam is a colony of the fanatic múllahs, who keep the hill tribes in a state of mental ferment, and incite them to deeds of lawlessness and barbarity. These so-called "saints," successors in the matter of their habitations to Buddhist hermits of early days, occupy the many caves with which the hills about the village are pitted. They are a dirty, unbalanced breed, whose insane vaporings are accepted by the unsophisticated hillmen as the utterances of inspired prophets, and this despite the fact that events have time and again belied their predictions.

At Kadam the hills begin to close in, and about a mile beyond they form precipitous walls on either side, not more than three hundred and seventy feet apart. Between Kadam and Alí Masjid the road fluctuates from a breadth of two or three hundred feet to a comfortable carriageway. The hills on either side are about thirteen hundred feet in height, and vary from sheer ascents to gradients practicable for artillery.

In a sort of recess of the mountain wall stands the little white mosque, which gives the name of Alí Masjid to that place. Numbers drop out of the line of march to breathe a hurried prayer at the shrine of the ferocious soldier-saint who died in the pass, while bent on the errand of converting Hindustán to Islám by the approved method of fire and sword.

Upon the height above the mausoleum rests the "impregnable" fort, which has been carried by assault more than once, and was burned by the British after its last capture. No one of the many rock forts of India can boast a record of siege and storm equal to that of Alí Masjid.

At this point the pass has closed to a mere lane of forty feet, between perpendicular walls of bare black rock. At the Lálábeg Valley the way widens out to a breadth of over a mile and a half, but only a mile further on it has closed in to ten feet or less, a narrow slit between the summits of enclosing hills, showing a ribbon of sky above. At Landí Kotál the pass is narrow, rugged, steep, and in general the most difficult part of the road. The camel, and even the pony, find it hard to surmount; people in carts must dismount and walk; artillery can only be taken over by men with drag ropes.

At Jamrúd one is less than seventeen hundred feet above sea level; at Alí Masjid twenty-four hundred ; at Landi Kotál about thirty-four hundred, and at Dhaka, where the pass debouches upon the plains of Afghánistán, the elevation is only fourteen hundred feet above the sea.

CHAPTER II.

AMRITSAR.

SURPASSING Delhi and Lahore in the matter of wealth, and rivaling them in size and population, Amritsar has the further distinction of being the holy city of the Sikhs. Rám Dáo, the Guru, laid its foundation on a site granted by the tolerant Akbar. He also excavated the sacred tank, Amrita SarasPool of Immortality—from which the place derives its name, and in its centre he commenced the construction of a temple, which was to become the future centre of Sikh devotion. His son Arjan completed the edifice, and lived to see a flourishing town grow up around it. Then set in troublous times for the Sikhs and their Gurus. Arjan died a prisoner, and his son an exile, and the supporters of the Hindu Reformation, almost too weak for defence, were harried on every hand. Mának Shah had sown the religious seed deep and well, but it remained for Govind Singh, the tenth and last in apostolic descent from the founder, to organize the Sikhs into a military commonwealth, in which all men were equal, all were of one religion, and all were soldiers. The system,

which was a protest against caste and idolatry, developed a nation of hardy fanatics, in many respects resembling Cromwell's Ironsides.

Henceforth the character of the Sikh resistance changed; aggression took the place of defence. Amritsar became a storm centre, the scene of constant struggle. Time after time the Musalmán succeeded in capturing the Sikh capital, and each time the fanatic fervor of the young nation enabled them to regain their lost possession.

In the decade following 1710 the whole power of the Mughal Empire was exerted to crush the Sikhs, and they were well nigh exterminated. Banda, the last of the Gurus, who had preached a religious war against the Muhammadans, was captured, together with his son, and carried to Delhi. Tricked out in scarlet robes and cloth of gold, he was mockingly paraded through the city in an iron cage, to afford sport to the jeering populace. His son's heart was torn out of the living body before his eyes, and thrown into his face. Then, with red-hot pincers, his flesh was torn away in pieces, until he expired in

agony.

The Sikhs have never forgotten that demoniac cruelty, and the recollection of it was sufficient, if no other inducement had existed, to throw them upon the side of the British in the Mutiny. When the storming columns entered Delhi, the watchword "Remember Cawnpur!" was passed along the English lines,