Colonel Warburton made levies of tribesmen, constituted them the Khyber Rifles, to police and guard the pass, and assigned them to six fortified posts between Jamrud and Lundi Kotal, A force of eight hundred infantry and thirty troopers were recruited from the wild robbers of the region and set to keeping off the other robbers. The infantry were paid nine rupees a month, the troopers twenty-six rupees, each man providing his own khaki uniform, and the trooper the keep of his own horse. Their commander. Colonel Islam Khan, who drilled and brought the corps to such efficiency and roused in these hill guerrillas the military pride that seemed to animate them when once inside the Queen's uniform, is a descendant of the former ruling Afghan family, and served with the British in the last Afghan war. On caravan days his sentries were stationed at every hundred yards along the pass, troopers patrolled it, and the Khyber was as safe as Broadway or Piccadilly,—safe until the sunset gun proclaimed the military day ended, and the Khyber sowars, dropping uniforms and rifles, became predatory tribesmen again, ready to loot a camel, cut a throat, steal the arras of any soldier, or make away with any stray man, horse, or camel found out after dark.
Bugle-calls and rifle-shots announced that the pass was open, the gates of the serai below Jamrud swung back, and some six hundred scornful and unhappy-looking camels, with great shags of fur on neck and legs, dragged their deliberate way out, and in single file went swaying along the road to Af-
