The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-10-09
THE SIEGE OFKUssAK.

 flow down from their mountains to form
 the mighty flood of the Indus. stand
 the ruins of the nill-fort of Kussak,
 the last stronghold of warrior tribe.
 The castle on the hill Is only to be des-
 cribed as "a fortress framed to free
 dom's hands," because the robber lord
 who occupied 1t would have been the
 last person to encourage the democratic
 ideal.
 Any one who has ever driven down
 the valley of the Hinscr-Rhein from
 Thusis to Chur has passed one after
 another the holds of the predatory
 harons who once held sway In the Gris.
 ons. From the mountain wall which
 forms one side of the valley juts out
 0 spur of rock. The sides of the spuJ
 are precipitous cliffs. and the spur ts
 only connected with the mountain by
 razor-edge of rock On the lcvelled top
 is set. like hawks nest, the barns
 castle. s;uch, Eut on Q greatly magni-
 fed scale, was, and is, the position Of
 the fort of Kussak. X buttress 1f sand
 stone Is thrown out from the moun-
 tain barrier, and only joined to 1t on
 the north by a razor-edge. South ana
 east and west the sides of the buttress fall sheer away into the valley-some-
 times in precipices of six or seven hum dred' feet. The only access to the fort is by q narrow zigZag path which winds up the least difficult face Of the hill, and ends at what was once a wicket gate, situated at the reentering angle of two great fanking walls-walls built to complete the Qualifications which na- ture had begun on so magnificent a scale. This zigzag path and wicket gate formed absolutely the only ap- proach to the stronghold. Here, or not at all, friend and foe must enter, for other access there was none. No amount of bravery will enable men to climb sheer walls of rock.
 About sixty years ago the castle on the rock was held by Sultan Fatteh Mohammed Khan, the last of the lords of Kussak and of twenty-seven villag- es in the plain. Here the lord of Kus- sak lived like the highland chieftain he was He feared TO man, was ever ready for the fight. His purse was open to his friends, and his house and hospitality to the stranger. But the lord of Kussak was not like many of the men who held the hill-forts of In- dia at the beginning of the century, hA oh rF nd opnt1 which followed the breakup of the Mogul empire. He could boast de- scent purer and more certain than any reigning house in Europe. For twenty centuries his fathers had held the cas- tie of Kussaky and heard from their hawks nest the drums and tramplings of hundred conquests. They were at Kussak before, Alexander broke in upon the seclusion of India. They had cedonian march past in the plain be- low them, had watched Nearchus or ganize his flotilla, had heard the wild horsemen of Timur thunder by, and had seen the fugitives return from the three battles at Panipat. A descendant of the lords off Kussak might still be holding his fort as a nominally sover- eign prince, en1balmed, as it were, in the amber of the Pax Britannica had 1t not happened that Runjeet Singh determined to subjugate the strong hold.
 The lord of Kussak had acknowledged in some sort the overlordship of Run jeet, but soon dispute arose over, the question of certain salt duties. The Sikh governor of the district consid- cred that the lord of Kussak was not paying enough, and summoned him 10 appear at Pind, the local capital, and explain the action. Needless to say, the old chief rejected the order with scorn, and told the governor that if he had anything to say he should come to Kussak and say it there. To Ethis course the governor agreed. Soon af- ter lie arrived before the castle with a 4 strong escort. The governor and twen- \ ty men were admitted to the fort. The rest remained below. The Sikh was however, not good diplomatist. Some thing was said or done at the inter- view which fired the blood of the lord OI NuSSdh, Iilu ou A SuuueH lLHpulSe the old man bade his retainers seize the Sikhs, tic them back to back in pairs, and hurl them down the eastern precipice. Think of what this meant l for the men waiting below. They had seen their chief go through the wicket l gate and hour or two before, and now the castle spewed their bodies over the great precipice. Horror-stricken, they fled to bear the news to Runjeet. The reader will perhaps say, What a cold blooded. treacherous murder, what a I scoundrel to have touched unarmed men," Let them wait before they alto gether condemn the murderer of the | Sikhs.' The lord of Kussak knew what l he was to expect and made his prepa- l rations. He sent his women folk to the castle of a neighboring chief and rela- 1 tion, summoned his vassals and re- tainers to his aid, and provisioned his fort. The water was already there, for the winter rains had been copious, and had filled to the britn the enormous tanks hewn out of the rock.
 Runjeet soon appeared in person to summon the fort; and at his back twelve regiments of infantry, g. brigade of cavalry, and eighteen guns. Re member that Runjeet's guns were no barbarous tubes of brass, but as splen- did a park of artillery as the world could show, organized by Europeans men who had fought at Marengo and Jena and Waterloo. and who had learn ed the art of war under the greatest of