"For example, one gang of 25,000 Afghan horsemen swooped down upon the sacred city of Muttra during a festival, while it was thronged with peaceful Hindu pilgrims engaged in their devotions. 'They burned the houses,' says the Tyrolese Jesuit Tieffenthaler, who was in India at that time,' together with their inmates, slaughtering others with the sword and the lance; hauling off into captivity maidens and youths, men and women. In the temples they slaughtered cows,'the sacred animal of the Hindus, 'and smeared the images and pavement with the blood.' It is needless to quote further from the tale of Afghan atrocities in the last century. They went on year after year, the Afghans being too loosely organized to serve as a barrier against the hosts from Central Asia, and always ready for an Indian invasion on their own account The border-land between Afghanistan and India lay silent and waste ; indeed., districts far within the frontier, which had once been densely inhabited, and which are now again thickly peopled, were swept bare of inhabitants."