Ebook Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier

This book is a valuable record of sixteen years' good work by an officer — a medical missionary — in charge of a medical mission station at Bannu, on the North-West Frontier of India.

Although many accounts have been written descriptive of the wild tribes on this border, there was still plenty of room for Dr. Pennell's modestly-related narrative. Previous writers — e.g., Paget and Mason, Holdich, Oliver, Warburton, Elsmie, and many others — have dealt with the expeditions that have taken place from time to time against the turbulent occupants of the trans-Indus mountains, and with the military problems and possibilities of the difficult regions which they inhabit. But Dr. Pennell's story is not concerned with the clash of arms. His mission has been to preach, to heal, and to save; and in his long and intimate intercourse with the tribesmen, as recounted in these pages, he throws many new and interesting sidelights on the domestic and social, as well as on the moral and religious, aspects of their lives and characters.

During a long career in India I myself have seen and heard a good deal about these medical missions, and I can testify to their doing excellent and useful work, and that they are valuable and humanizing factors and moral aids well worthy of all encouragement and support.