West frontier. But they are apt to get sadly homesick if they are long on active service, and it is impossible to persuade many of them to leave the frontier. The children of the mountains are too free and independent to bear with any patience the restraints of civilization. But the Sikh is always the same; in peace, in war, in barracks or in the field, ever genial, good-tempered and uncomplaining: a fair horseman, a stubborn infantry soldier, as steady under fire as he is eager for a charge. The Sikhs, alone of our native troops, can be taken in large numbers and for long periods on foreign service, on the condition that they be well paid, for they have as keen a knowledge of the value of money, and as great a love of saving as the Scotch. They have served in Egypt, Abyssinia, Afghánistán, and China with great distinction; they have voluntarily taken service in the police and in local corps in Burma, a country which is especially distasteful to ordinary natives of India, and there is a local corps of Sikh police in Hong-Kong, where they are regarded with much confidence and respect. A Sikh escort is now with Mr. H. Johnston, the British Agent-General, fighting Arab slavers on Lake Nyassa. It is difficult to realize that the dignified, sober, and orderly men who now fill our regiments are of the same stock as the savage freebooters whose name, a hundred years ago, was the terror of Northern India. But the change has been wrought by strong and kindly government and by strict military discipline under sympathetic officers
