It is therefore most unwise to allow Native regiments to enter upon a war with so much smaller a proportion of British officers than is considered necessary for European regiments.
I have no doubt whatever of the fighting powers of our best Indian troops; I have a thorough belief in, and admiration for, Gurkhas, Sikhs, Dogras, Rajputs, Jats, and selected Mahomedans; I thoroughly appreciate their soldierly qualities; brigaded with British troops, I would be proud to lead them against any European enemy; but we cannot expect them to do with less leading than our own soldiers require, and it is, I maintain, trying them too highly to send them into action with the present establishment of British officers.[6] In the late autumn of 1891 our latest acquisition, the Zhob Valley, was included in my frontier tour, which I had the pleasure of making, for the greater part of the way, in the company of General Brackenbury.

He was prevented from getting as far as Quetta by an accident which laid him up for some time, but not, as he told me, before he had seen enough of the frontier to satisfy him that the tribes were a factor in our system of defence which could not be ignored, and that I had not exaggerated the importance of having them on our side.
During this winter the brilliant little Hunza-Naga campaign took place, which has been so graphically described in Mr.Knight's 'Where Three Empires Meet.' It was brought about by Russia's intrigues with the Rulers of the petty States on the northern boundary of Kashmir; and our attention was first roused to the necessity for action by two British officers, who were journeying to India by way of the Pamirs and Gilgit, being forced by Russian soldiers to leave what the leader of the party called 'newly-acquired Russian territory '[7]--territory to which Russia had not the shadow of a claim.
In addition to this unjustifiable treatment of Captain Younghusband and Lieutenant Davison, Colonel Yanoff crossed the Hindu Kush with his Cossacks by the Korabhut Pass, and, after reconnoitring the country on the borders of Kashmir, re-crossed the range by the Baroghil Pass.
As this was a distinct breach of the promises made by the Russian Government, and an infringement of the boundary line as agreed to between England and Russia in 1873, it was necessary to take steps to prevent any recurrence of such interference, and a small force was accordingly sent against the Chief of Hunza, who had openly declared himself in favour of Russia.

He made a desperate stand, but was eventually driven from his almost inaccessible position by the determined gallantry of our Indian troops, assisted by a Contingent from Kashmir.

Three Victoria Crosses were given for this business, and many more were earned, but of necessity there must be a limit to the disposal of decorations; and in an affair of this kind, in which all proved themselves heroes, each individual must have felt himself honoured by the small force being awarded such a large number of the coveted reward, in proportion to its size.
We reaped the benefit of having taken this district under our own control when Chitral required to be relieved, and the Hunza-Naga people afforded Colonel Kelly such valuable help.
On the 1st January, 1892, I received an intimation that Her Majesty had been graciously pleased to bestow a peerage upon me, and the same day the Secretary of State for India offered me a further extension of my appointment as Commander-in-Chief--an offer I would gladly have accepted, as I knew it had been made with the concurrence of the Viceroy, if I could have taken even a few months' leave to England.
But during a quarter of a century I had only been able to spend eighteen months out of India, and I felt the need of change of climate and a little rest after so many years of continued hard work.

Under the existing regulations a Commander-in-Chief could have no leave.
Lord Cross had tried to remedy this hard rule by bringing in the 'Officers' Leave Bill'; but as he informed Lord Lansdowne it was impossible to get it through the House of Commons that session, I was obliged very reluctantly to beg to be allowed to resign my command in the spring of 1893.
Before returning to Simla for really the last time, my wife and I made another trip to Burma as far as Mandalay, and after this was over we paid a most interesting visit to Nepal, having received the very unusual honour of an invitation to Khatmandu from Maharaja Bir Shumsher Jung Rana Bahadur.
Khatmandu is about a hundred miles from our frontier station of Segowli, by a very rough road over a succession of steep, high hills and along deep, narrow valleys, which would have been quite impossible for a lady to travel by but for the excellent arrangements made by the Nepalese officials; the last descent was the worst of all; we literally dropped from one rock to the next in some places.