[Sidenote:  Slight power of mountain chiefs.]

Small size is sometimes coupled with monarchical rule, degenerating occasionally into despotism among aggressive robber tribes.  The inaccessible Hunza Valley is occupied on opposite sides of its deep gorge by two rival states, the Hunzas and the Nagaris, whose combined population amounts to scarcely 25,000 souls.  Hostile to each other, they unite only to resist an invading force.  While the Hunza Thum is a tyrant, the Nagari ruler has little voice in the government.  The Tibeto-Burman hill folk of the eastern Himalayas are divided into clans, and concede a mild authority to a chief who rules a group of clan villages, but only rarely is able to secure power over a larger district.  The Khasia Hills of Assam are broken up into twenty-three petty states, each under its own Rajah or chief, who has, however, little authority beyond the administration of justice.[1389]

Everywhere in mountain regions appears this repugnance to centralized authority.  Protection by environment obviates the necessity of protection through combination.  The spirit of clan exclusiveness, the absence of a common national sentiment, characterize equally the tribesmen of mountainous Albania, of Persian Luristan,[1390] and highland Kurdistan.  Along the rugged upheaved area which forms the western boundary of India from the Khaibar Pass to the sea, British officials have had to negotiate with the native Pathan and Baluch “jirgahs,” assemblies of the chief men of the countless clans into which the tribes are divided, as the only visible form of authority tolerated.[1391] Combination must be voluntary and of a type to exact a modicum of submission.  These requirements are best answered by the confederation, which may gradually assume a stable and elaborate form among an advanced people like the Swiss; or it may constitute a loose yet effective union, as in the famous Samnite confederacy of the central Apennines; or a temporary league like that of the ancient Arcadians, or the group of confederated sheiks of Bellad el Kobail, the “Country of the Highlanders” in mountainous Yemen, who in 1790 established a republican form of union for defense against their more powerful neighbors.[1392]

[Sidenote:  Mountain isolation and differentiation.]

The power of mountains to protect makes them asylums of refuge for displaced peoples.  This fact explains the confused ethnology which often characterizes these isolated regions, especially when they lie near or across natural highways of human migration.  As a tide of humanity sweeps around or across the mountains, a branch stream turns into a side valley, where it is caught and held.  There it remains unaltered, crystallizing in its seclusion, subjected for ages to few modifying influences from without.  Its people keep their own language and customs, little affected by a totally different race stock similarly placed in a neighboring alcove of the mountains.  Lack of communication engenders an endless multiplication of dialects, as we find them in the Alps, the Caucasus, in Kafirstan of the Hindu Kush and in Nepal.  Diversity of speech, itself a product of isolation, reacts upon that political and social aloofness of mountain folk, to emphasize and fix it.