He declared it was not possible to come to terms, and that there was nothing left for him but to fight; that he had seven crores of rupees, every one of which he would hurl at the heads of the English, and he ended by giving orders for a _jahad_ (a religious war) to be proclaimed.
For the time being nothing more could be done with Afghanistan, and the Viceroy was able to turn his attention to the following important questions: the transfer of Sind from Bombay to the Punjab, a measure which had been unanimously agreed to by Lord Northbrook's Government; the removal from the Punjab government of the trans-Indus tract of country, and the formation of the latter into a separate district under the control of a Chief Commissioner, who would be responsible to the Government of India alone for frontier administration and trans-frontier relations.

This post Lord Lytton told me, as much to my surprise as to my gratification, that he meant to offer to me, if his views were accepted by the Secretary of State.

It was above all others the appointment I should have liked.

I delighted in frontier life and frontier men, who, with all their faults, are men, and grand men, too.
I had felt for years what an important factor the trans-Indus tribes are in the defence of India, and how desirable it was that we should be on better terms with them than was possible so long as our policy consisted in keeping them at arm's length, and our only intercourse with them was confined to punitive expeditions or the visits of their head-men to our hard-worked officials, whose whole time was occupied in writing long reports, or in settling troublesome disputes to the satisfaction of no one.
I now hoped to be able to put a stop to the futile blockades and inconclusive reprisals which had been carried on for nearly thirty years with such unsatisfactory results, and I looked forward to turning the wild tribesmen from enemies into friends, a strength instead of a weakness, to our Government, and to bringing them by degrees within the pale of civilization.

My wife quite shared my feelings, and we were both eager to begin our frontier life.
As a preliminary to my engaging in this congenial employment, Lord Lytton proposed that I should take up the command of the Punjab Frontier Force.