Identifier: india00surr (find matches)
Title: India;
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Surridge, Victor MacCormick, Arthur David, 1860- ill
Subjects: India -- History India -- History British occupation, 1765-1947
Publisher: London, Edinburgh : T. C. & E. C. Jack
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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en wars; but they have been waged either beyondthe boundaries of India Proper, as in Afghanistanand Burma, or with small and unimportant frontiertribes. Nor must we forget that that frontier isnever stationary. As the years roll by, fresh tractsof land are being added to, fresh tribes of hillmenbrought under, the dominion of the British Crown.A picturesque example of such a conquest occurredin 1864, when an Englishman, Ashley Eden byname, set forth with a few white companions andan escort of one hundred Sepoys on a delicate andhazardous mission. His destination was the countryof Bhutdn, and his task was to bring the rulers ofthat wild and lawless district to reason. For theBhutanese had long been a thorn in the side of theIndian Government. They are of a race distinctfrom all others in Hindustan—a mixture of Chineseand Tartars—and, as yet, the tide of western civilisa-tion—or, indeed, of any civilisation at all worthy thename—had failed to reach their bleak and inaccessible296
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Ashley Eden forced by tbe Bhutanese to sign a Treaty EPILOGUE land. The Eighth Commandment was by them morehonoured in the breach than in the observance;many villages had been despoiled of cattle andother property in the course of their freebootingraids; and it became necessary to impress uponthe populace the seemliness of restricting theirdepredations to districts outside the sphere ofBritish rule. The country of Bhutan lies to the north ofAssam and Bengal, shut in by the snow-peakedHimalayas. The Imperial Gazetteer of India describesit as a succession of lofty and rugged mountainsabounding in picturesque and sublime scenery. Theprospect between abrupt and lofty prominences isinconceivably grand; hills clothed to their verysummit with trees, dark and deep glens, and the hightops of the mountains lost in the clouds constitutealtogether a scene of extraordinary magnificence andsublimity. So it was not a very easy route that Ashley Edenhad to traverse. Nor was it rendered smoother bythe

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