The Afridis as Marksmen.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXX, Issue 1521, 5 July 1898, Page 3

The Afridis as Marksmen.

The Afridi \says the British officer writing in Macmillan's Magazine for May) is by nature and training a skilful skirmisher and a splendid shot; his very life depends upon his being both. Bare, indeed, is it that the tribes are noi afc open hostility among themselves, while within the tribe, and even within the family, blood feuds are so common that every At'ridi has lar more enemies than friends. A strict code regulates the prosecution of these feuds. During seed-time and harvest, or during the progress of a jehad (a sacred wnr) all quarrels are laid aside; and at all times the persons of women and children are inviolate. But with these exceptions their feuds are prosecuted with a yindictiveness«to which the history of the Scottish Highlands in the wildest times can oiler no parallel. An Orakzai, who owued a house just below a spot which my picquot occupied for some time on the Sampagher Bass, one day poiuted out to me another house within 20 paces of his own. There, he said, lived his enemy, and then he went on to describe with the utmost pride how he had killed the father of the present owner, after waiting uine whole months in his tower for a shot, his food and water being brought him by the women ot his household, who also were responsible for the proper tending ot the fields and cattle of the estate, until this somewhat protracted stalk had been biought to a successful issue. It is this state of affairs which makes the possession of a good rifle the dearest ambition of a frontier tribesman, a good Government Martini being always worth over 300 rupees, an immense sum of money to a people as poor as the A f rid is.