1 68 THE ARMY OF THE PUNJAUB.
2 marches that none but the Turkoman Tartars
3 can perform. The distance from liahore to Pesha-
4 wur is 300 miles, and it has often been done in
5 eleven days. The Sikhs have, indeed, acquired,
6 from their remarkable pedestrian qualities, the
7 epithet of iron-legged.
8 It has been said above that the Sikhs are
9 arrogant and insubordinate ; it should be added,
10 that they are less so in the field than in garrison,
11 and it is only reasonable to conclude that even
12 in quarters they would be more tractable were
13 they governed by European officers. Hitherto
14 there has never been at any one time more than
15 twenty Europeans with the entire regular army
16 of seventy thousand men.
17 In addition to the regular and irregular army
18 the Lahore government has also in its pay a body
19 of irregular cavalry (to the number of between two
20 and three thousand) called Akalees. They are
21 religious fanatics, who acknowledge no ruler or
22 laws but their own ; think nothing of robbery, or
23 even murder, should they happen to be in the hu-
24 mour for it, Runjeet Singh himself having on more
25 than one occasion narrowly escaped assassination
26 by them. They are without any exception the
27 most insolent and worthless race of people under
28 the sun. They move about constantly armed to
29 the teeth, insulting everybody they meet, par-
30 ticularly Europeans, and it is not an uncommon