As Kandiá is learned, Nagyr pious, Chilás puritanical, and all true Dard tribes essentially peaceful and virtuously republican, so, no doubt, Hunza was the country of free love and of raiding, that had ceased in 1865, which _we_ practically revived (see Appendix I.). I doubt, however, whether picturesque vice, which, unfortunately, may form part of indigenous associations, is as reprehensible as the hypocrisy of those hired knights of the pen, who, not practising the virtues which they preach, take away the character of nations and of Chiefs, merely because they are opposed to us, and falsify their history. I do not, for instance, palliate the old Hunza practice of lending one’s wife to a guest, or of kidnapping good-looking strangers in order to improve the race, though the latter course may be preferred by a physiologist to a careless marriage, but I do find a reproach on European or Indian morality in the fact that not a single Hunza woman showed herself to the British or Kashmîri invaders, although the men, once conquered, freely joined them in sport and drinking bouts. Europeans have a worse reputation among Orientals than Orientals among Europeans, and, in either case, ignorance, prejudice, want of sympathy and disinclination to learn the truth, are probably among the causes of such regrettable preconceptions. At any rate, it shall not be said that the races which I, so disastrously for them, discovered and named, shall suffer from any misrepresentation so far as I can help it, although the political passions of the moment may deprive my statements of the weight which has hitherto attached to them as authoritative in this speciality. _Væ victis et victoribus_—for history now marches rapidly towards the common disaster. _Finis Dardarum._ “It has been decided that CHILÁS is to be _permanently_ held, and consequently the present strength of the garrison in the GILGIT district will be _increased_ by one native regiment, while the 23rd Pioneers will complete the road through the Kaghan Valley to Chilás, and will then _remain for duty on the advanced frontier_. This strengthening of the garrison in the sub-Himalayan country will effectually _secure British influence_ over CHITRAL where an Agent is to be _permanently_ stationed; it will also insure the _control of the Indus Valley tribes_” (_Times_ telegram of the 8th July, 1893—the italics are mine). Alas that British influence should so destroy both itself and the freedom of ancient races!