INTRODUCTION.

A GOODLY portion of Colonel Gardner's eventful life was spent in the Panjab kingdom or province during the palmy days of Ranjit Singh. His adventurous travels were in the regions adjacent to or beyond the Panjab frontier. The early years of my own active service were passed in the Panjab, and I was accustomed, indeed obliged, to study the affairs of the regions beyond its northwest frontier, even though I had no chance of travelling in them. Thus the names mentioned by Gardner in his Memoirs regarding countries beyond the Panjab have long been known to me from anxious study. The names of men and places mentioned by him in the Panjab are still better known to me- those of men either from personal acquaintance or very near tradition, those

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of places either from frequent visits or from actual residence. Major Pearse has now arranged these stirring and interesting Memoirs in a lucid and satisfactory manner; and I willingly comply with his request that I should write a brief Introduction. It is indeed hard for me to describe to an English reader the memories which a perusal of these Memoirs summons up in my imagination, potent figures whom I used to see moving on the historic stage, now described by one who knew them even more intimately than I did; the workings of human nature in the most mountainous regions of the earth, which I often heard narrated by many an Asiatic, now recorded in my own language by one who saw them in their very midst; the tremendous events, on which I constantly pondered while standing on the very spots or places where they occurred, now depicted by one who was a witness of, or participator in, them!

As is often the case in the men who live a daring, dashing life that sustains nervous tension and excites the imaginative faculties, Gardner evidently possessed a power of narration and description in a high degree-clear in facts, graphic in touches of detail, picturesque invari

ably-applicable equally to human motive, action, and habit-appreciative towards others, modest respecting himself - indicating that presence of mind, whether in distress or in peril, whereby his aptitude for accurate observation never for an instant failed him. In the middle and later part of his career he must have been a fairly diligent writer. Had he been able to preserve all his papers, and if, after the loss of some among them, he had been at the pains of bringing out all he had, under his own eye, with the requisite supplements, a capital record would have been handed down to us. The tale of his career would have been as good as that which Othello told to Desdemona. As it is, his life-story is something of that nature, and though not so complete as it might have been under the auspices of the narrator himself, has yet been made sufficiently so by Major Pearse's good care and skill. It well deserves the attention of our rising manhood in the British Isles. Though relating not to the British dominions nor to the British service, it shows what men of British race can do under the stress of trial and suffering. It illustrates that self-contained spirit of adventure in individuals which has done much towards found

ing the British Empire, and may yet help in extending that Empire in all quarters of the globe.

To the Memoirs also are appended some useful memoranda regarding the several European officers employed together with Gardner in the service of Ranjit Singh.

Alexander Gardner was born in 1785 in North America, on the shore of Lake Superior, and died at Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, in 1877. His father was a Scottish emigrant to the then British colonies of North America, who took part in the War of Independence. His mother was an Englishwoman resident in South America, and had an admixture of Spanish blood. Her distinguished son wrote of her in terms of the highest admiration. He inherited an adventurous disposition. from both sides, paternal and maternal. He sought first for a position in the Russian service, but accidentally lost it on the eve of attainment. Then he crossed the Caspian Sea, and entered on a career of adventure in Central Asia, from Kokan across the Hindu Caucasus to Herat, amidst ambuscades, fierce reprisals, hairbreadth escapes, alternations between brief plenty and long fasting - amidst episodes sometimes of brutality and

cruelty wellnigh inconceivable, at other times of hearty charity and fidelity unto death. For some time he was prominent in the service of Habibulla Khan, the first Afghan opponent of the great Dost Muhammad Khan. During two years he actually enjoyed a term of domestic happiness, when he was peaceful indoors though generally at war out-of-doors. This was the one oasis in the wild desert of his whole life. To the last he could never refer to it without tears, casehardened as he was, with his memory seared by many horrors, and his visage hardened by looking at terrors in the face. It met with a bloody and piteous termination; and then for some time he had to get through an existence fraught with extremity of hardship and of crisis, during which he was preserved by his own intrepidity and penetration. At length he succeeded in entering the Panjab, being engaged in the service of the Afghan chiefs who held Peshawar, and who were subdued by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. While there he received a command to enter Ranjit Singh's service, and proceeded to Lahore. He was employed in the Maharaja's service as commandant of artillery for several years. Then he was transferred to the service of Dhyan Singh, the Prime Minister, a