We shall return to the Mamund Valley and have a
further opportunity of studying its people and natural features.
CHAPTER XIII: NAWAGAI
"When the wild Bajaur mountain men lay choking with their blood,
And the Kafirs held their footing . . ."
"A Sermon in Lower Bengal," SIR A. LYALL.
Few spectacles in nature are so mournful and so sinister as the
implacable cruelty with which a wounded animal is pursued by its
fellows. Perhaps it is due to a cold and bracing climate, perhaps to a
Christian civilisation, that the Western peoples of the world have to a
great extent risen above this low original instinct. Among Europeans
power provokes antagonism, and weakness excites pity. All is different
in the East. Beyond Suez the bent of men's minds is such, that safety
lies only in success, and peace in prosperity. All desert the falling.
All turn upon the fallen.
The reader may have been struck, in the account of the fighting in the
Mamund Valley, with the vigour with which the tribesmen follow up a
retreating enemy and press an isolated party.
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