out the hills over which they were chased like sheep by the Singh, and young men show where their fathers fought and fell. Destruction was so certain that the few villages which from the extreme difficulty of their position were either passed by the enemy, or, resisting attack, were but partially destroyed, claimed a triumph, and came to be looked upon as invincible.
'But the people of this unhappy district did not enjoy peace even during the respites which the withdrawal of the Sikhs afforded them; and it is hard to say whether they suffered most from these terrible but passing invasions, or from the bitter feuds which followed them, arising out of hostile acts committed towards each other, either to find favour with the invaders or to gratify personal feelings of hatred and revenge; for, as is common with people in such a depraved condition, they had no scruple in betraying each other for such purposes, and as spies or informers in bringing the Sikh scourge upon their neighbours with a baseness from which their ancestors would have revolted. One of the terms on which the Chamkain chief held his tenure of the Sikhs was the annual production of twenty Afrídí heads, and the old man relates without a blush the treacherous methods he was sometimes compelled to adopt to fulfil the conditions of his tenure.'
In the Settlement Reports of Colonel Cracroft and Mr. E. L. Brandreth of the Ráwal Pindi and Jehlam districts, we read: —
'Anarchy had reigned for centuries, and from the oldest times the district had been overrun by hordes of invaders, from Greeks to Afgháns. They swept through it and disappeared. The temporary desolation, the plundered homes, the deserted homesteads, were all things of the hour, and are now forgotten. But it was the rule of the Sikh Kárdárs, too
