3-016-781 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Cattle-looting on the frontier of Scinde, 1864. 'The practice of cattle-stealing still flourishes in the hill districts of northern India. Our Illustration shows a party of these predatory mountaineers, who have made a descent upon the villages in the plains belonging to another tribe and are driving off all the cattle they can lay their hands upon, to the utter ruin...of the poor owners thus violently despoiled. It is but a few weeks since the mountaineers of the Murree Hills, on the frontiers of Scinde and Beloochistan, near the Bolan Pass, made an extensive raid into Cutch and the district of Gundava, where they were very successful in their cattle-lifting operations, having carried off 500 head of cattle and 800 camels. This exploit seems to have emboldened them; for Major Green, the acting political superintendent on the frontier, reports in a letter to the Commissioner of Scinde, that a strong body of the marauders, some mounted and some on foot, had since attacked the village of Poolagee, and were driving off all the cattle in the place; but some 300 men of the Munghals and Khyberees had been sent in pursuit and would, it was hoped, recover a portion of what had been taken and give the cattle-stealers a wholesome lessen for the future'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.