to the Government of India alone for frontier administration and trans-frontier relations.  This post Lord Lytton told me, as much to my surprise as to my gratification, that he meant to offer to me, if his views were accepted by the Secretary of State.  It was above all others the appointment I should have liked.  I delighted in frontier life and frontier men, who, with all their faults, are men, and grand men, too.  I had felt for years what an important factor the trans-Indus tribes are in the defence of India, and how desirable it was that we should be on better terms with them than was possible so long as our policy consisted in keeping them at arm’s length, and our only intercourse with them was confined to punitive expeditions or the visits of their head-men to our hard-worked officials, whose whole time was occupied in writing long reports, or in settling troublesome disputes to the satisfaction of no one.

I now hoped to be able to put a stop to the futile blockades and inconclusive reprisals which had been carried on for nearly thirty years with such unsatisfactory results, and I looked forward to turning the wild tribesmen from enemies into friends, a strength instead of a weakness, to our Government, and to bringing them by degrees within the pale of civilization.  My wife quite shared my feelings, and we were both eager to begin our frontier life.

As a preliminary to my engaging in this congenial employment, Lord Lytton proposed that I should take up the command of the Punjab Frontier Force.  I gladly acquiesced; for I had been a long time on the staff, and had had three years of the Quartermaster-Generalship.  My friends expressed surprise at my accepting the position of Brigadier-General, after having filled an appointment carrying with it the rank of Major-General; but this was not my view.  I longed for a command, and the Frontier Force offered opportunities for active service afforded by no other post.

We were in Calcutta when the question was decided, and started very soon afterwards to make our arrangements for the breaking up of our home at Simla.  I took over the command of the Force on the 15th March, 1878.  My wife accompanied me to Abbottabad—­the pretty, quiet little place in Hazara, about 4,000 feet above the sea, which was to be henceforth our winter head-quarters.  For the summer months we were to be located in the higher hills, and my wife was anxious to see the house which I had purchased from my predecessor, General Keyes, at Natiagali.  So off we set, nothing daunted by being told that we were likely to find snow still deep in places.