The king himself as a Roman Catholic secretly opposed and also doubted the wisdom and practicability of this "thorough" policy of repression.
Ultimately the question resolves itself into one of commercial practicability.
Access to Chitral from the north is therefore but a matter of practicable tracks, or passes, in two or three directions, and the measure of practicability under any given conditions can best be reckoned from Chitral itself.
In 1886 experiments were conducted, under certain restrictions, and the plant was grown in Norfolk, Kent and other counties with sufficient success to prove the entire practicability of raising tobacco as a commercial crop in England.
If the political results of the mission were nil, the value to geographical science was immense; for though no geographer himself, Sadlier's route across Arabia made it possible for the first time to locate the principal places in something like their proper relative positions; incidentally, too, it showed the practicability of a considerable body of regular troops crossing the deserts of Nejd even in the months of July and August.