trained in the use of rifles, to do the advance guard and scouting work of a small force which was moving towards Chitral. Both chiefs immediately agreed to the proposal, and the Hunza chief said he would not send twenty-five, but fifty men, or, as far as that goes, a hundred or two hundred, if so many were necessary, and he would send his Wazir—his chief adviser—with them. In 1895 he again sent men with Colonel Kelly's force to the relief of Chitral, and Colonel Kelly has placed on record how useful these men were in scaling the heights and turning the enemy's position. In this manner the chiefs, recognizing that their interests are bound up with those of the British Government, have definitely thrown in their lot with the British, and by so doing have not diminished their dignity and importance nor lessened their independence, but, on the contrary, increased this independence, and placed their relations with the supreme power more on a basis of alliance with than of dependence on it. And the history of British rule in India shows that states which act on this principle most consistently retain their independence longest. The Sikh state of Patiala, in the Punjab, from the very first assisted the British Government, and there is now not even a British Resident in it. Lahore, on the other hand, attacked the British even after the state had once been defeated. It had, therefore, of necessity, to be subdued, and it is now British territory, and administered by British officials.
In the hands, then, of the rulers and people of little states, such as Hunza, lies the decision as to whether they shall remain dependent or be absorbed, and those officers who have had dealings with these states recognize best how much to the interest, both of the British Government and of the people, it is that they should be allowed to retain the amount of independence which Hunza, for instance, still possesses. Even from the point of view of picturesqueness, it would be
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