EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY IN ASIA 491

ousies of commercial companies, and instead of desul- tory wars between rival settlements or against native princes, we have the greatest military powers of the world Russia, France, and England feeling their way toward each other across wide deserts, difficult moun- tain ranges, and the debatable lands that skirt the Oxus A SACRED POOL AT TIRUPARANKUNDRAM NEAR MADURA. in the north or the Mekong River on the far southeast of the Anglo-Indian Empire. To those, indeed, who demand permanency for ter- ritorial borders in Asia, it may have been instructive to follow, throughout the events and transactions rap- idly sketched in the foregoing pages, the adventures of successive Anglo-Indian governments in search of a stable and scientifically defensible land frontier. The English have usually begun by projecting a political