Turning to another part of the world, we find that the Afghan tribes commanding the passes of the Suleiman Mountains have long been accustomed to impose transit duties upon caravans plying between Turkestan and India.  The merchants have regularly organized themselves into bands of hundreds or even thousands to resist attack or exorbitant exactions.  The Afghans have always enforced their right to collect tolls in the Khaibar and Kohat passes, and have thus blackmailed every Indian dynasty for centuries.  In 1881 the British government came to terms with them by paying them an annual sum to keep these roads open.[1249] Just to the south the Gomal Pass, which carries the main traffic road over the border mountains between the Punjab and the Afghan city of Ghazni, is held by the brigand tribe of Waziris, and is a dangerous gauntlet to be run by every armed caravan passing to and from India.[1250] The Ossetes of the Caucasus, who occupy the Pass of Dariel and the approaching valleys, regularly preyed upon the traffic moving between Russia and Georgia, till the Muscovite government seized and policed the road.[1251]

[Sidenote:  Strategic power of pass states.]

The strategic importance of pass peoples tends early to assume a political aspect.  The mountain state learns to exploit this one advantage of its ill-favored geographical location.  The cradle of the old Savoyard power in the late Middle Ages lay in the Alpine lands between Lake Geneva and the western tributaries of the Po River.  This location controlling several great mountain routes between France and Italy gave the Savoyard princes their first importance.[1252] The autonomy of Switzerland can be traced not less to the citadel character of the country and the native independence of its people, than to their political exploitation of their strategic position.  They profited, moreover, by the wish of their neighbors that such an important transit region between semi-tropical and temperate Europe should be held by a power too weak to obstruct its routes.  The Amir of Kabul, backed by the rapacious Afridi tribes of the Suleiman Mountains, has been able to play off British India against Russia, and thereby to secure from both powers a degree of consideration not usually shown to inferior nations.  Similarly in colonial America, the Iroquois of the Mohawk depression, who commanded the passway from the Hudson to the fur fields of the Northwest and also the avenue of attack upon the New York settlements for the French in Canada, were early conciliated by the English and used by them as allies, first in the French wars and afterward in the Revolution.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XV

[1186] For physical effects, see Angelo Mosso, Life of Man on the High Alps.  Translated from the Italian.  London, 1898.

[1187] W.Z.  Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 463-465.  New York, 1899.

[1188] Strabo, Book IV, chap.  VI, 3.