EXTERNAL POLICY 
 
 OF INDIA.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ^/ 
 
 %
 
 THE EXTERNAL POLI-CY OF INDIA.
 
 v_ 
 
 ^U^fM^
 
 ESSAYS 
 ON THE EXTERNAL POLICY OF INDIA. 
 
 By the late J. W. S. WYLLIE, M.A., C.S.I. 
 
 H.M. INDIA CIVIL SERVICE ; SOMETIME ACTING FOREIGN SECRETARY TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 
 
 EDITED, WITH A BRIEF LIFE, BY 
 
 W. W. HUNTER, B.A., LL.D. 
 
 H.M. INDIA CIVIL SERVICE. 
 
 LONDON : 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE. 
 
 1875.
 
 
 TO HIS PARENTS 
 
 THIS VOLUME OF JOHN WYLLIE'S ESSAYS 
 
 IS INSCRIBED.
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 
 
 Of a life which was not destined to complete itself, a brief 
 narrative is best. The writer of these essays lived long enough 
 to do good work for the State, to be recognised as the literary 
 exponent of one of the great lines of Indian policy, and to win 
 the lasting love and honour of many men. He died at the 
 age of thirty-four, with the plans of usefulness which he had 
 laid out for his future unfulfilled, and with the chill of a grievous 
 disappointment lying heavy on his heart. He left behind him 
 a memory brilliant, yet singularly tender, the memory of one 
 who at each stage of his career was felt by his fellows to be 
 their foremost man, but whose winning gentleness disarmed 
 jealousy, and inflicted no wound on self-love. He had the art 
 of being distinguished without being envied. Mr. Wyllie came 
 to India as one of the earliest members of a new service, of a 
 service grafted on a stem rich in a most honourable past, but 
 which had its own traditions to form. The bright vigour of his 
 mind and pen helped to influence in a noble sense the body of 
 men to whom he belonged. If the old traditions of unwatched 
 fidelity which they inherited from those who had gone before, 
 have been quickened by aspirations after a more sustained 
 intellectual life amid the discouragements of an Indian career, 
 they owe it in some measure to the example of him whose 
 work I now record.
 
 viii INTRODUCTORY AfEMOIR. 
 
 John William Shaw WyUie, eldest son of General Sir 
 William Wyllic, K.C.B., was born at Puna, in the Bombay 
 Presidency, on October 6, 1835. His mother was a daughter 
 of the late Richard Hutt, Esq., of Appley, in the Isle of 
 Wight, and a sister of the present Right Honourable Sir William 
 Hutt. His father entered the Bombay army in 18 19, com- 
 manded a field detachment in the Deccan in 1822, and another 
 in Gujarat in 1823. He was thanked in General Orders for his 
 gallantry on the heights of Jerun, and served with the Field 
 Force in Cutch in 1824 and the following years. In 1838-39 he 
 Avas brigade-major with the Bombay column of the Army of 
 the Indus under Lord Keane, and was present at the storming 
 of Ghaznf, and during the occupation of Kabul. He next served 
 as Assistant Adjutant-General to the Force under Sir Thomas 
 Wiltshire, and accompanied the storming party at the capture 
 of Kildt (Khelat). He held the same post on the staff of Sir 
 Richard England in Sind and Bcluchistan in 1841-42, being 
 present at both attacks on the heights of Hykulzye, the forcing 
 of the Kojack Pass to and from Kandahar, and other operations. 
 He was again Assistant Adjutant-General to the Forces in Sind 
 and Afghanistan under Sir Charles Napier, and was danger- 
 ously wounded at the battle of Mcdnf. In 18^4-45 he com- 
 manded the troops on the sea coast of the Southern Konkan in 
 the Marhattd rebellion. General Wyllie is now Colonel cf 
 Her Majesty's 103rd Regiment of P'oot. 
 
 The father being absent on a campaign, the mother brought 
 home John with her other two children to England in 1841,' 
 His mother's letters of those days give one the impression of her 
 eldest son as an amiable and intelligent child, who entertained 
 the rather original idea that in receiving his lessons from 
 
 ' Francis Rol)crt Shaw Wyllic, now of the Bombay Civil Service; and 
 Kmily, married to the Kiglit Hon. William P. Adam, of Hlair Adam, M.P. 
 To the former I owe the materials for this sketch, and valuable assistance 
 in editing the Essays.
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. ix 
 
 her ^he was the obliging, and not the obliged party. After 
 some time with a private tutor, he was sent to the Edinburgh 
 Academy. Here he met boys destined in after life to distinguish 
 themselves in the service to which he himself eventually be- 
 longed ; among them Mr. A. M. Monteath,' now Director- 
 General of the Indian Post Office, and Mr. J. D. Gordon, C.S.I., 
 Judicial Commissioner in Mysore. On his father's return to 
 India after furlough, John Wyllie was placed with his brother 
 Frank at Cheltenham College. The head master at that time 
 was the Rev. William Dobson, under whose able administration 
 the school rose from comparative obscurity to a high rank among 
 the educational establishments of the kingdom. As a proof of 
 Mr. Dobson's careful training of his head form, I may mention 
 that at this period in three successive years, boys direct from 
 Cheltenham obtained the Balliol scholarship, while Wyllie 
 himself got a scholarship first at Lincoln, then at Trinity. 
 Wyllie early won a position for himself in the school. Although 
 shortsighted, and debarred in consequence from cricket, he 
 worked his way up into the football * twenty ' before he left, 
 and was one of the founders of the athletic sports which now 
 form an annual feature of the college. As regards scholastic 
 distinctions, each year brought him some success, and to quote 
 a paper in the College Magazine, the ' school records show him 
 to have gained the prize in almost every class where it was 
 possible to do so.' His pleasing and amiable manners made 
 him a popular boy, and a schoolfellow records that 'at the 
 yearly meeting for speeches and distributing the prizes, John 
 Wyllie's name was always sure to be received with a loud 
 clapping of hands.' 
 
 His father had intended him for the India Civil Service, 
 and hoped to obtain a nomination for him through his brother- 
 in-law, Sir William Hutt,' then an active Liberal member of the 
 ^ Vice-President of the Board of Trade, 1860-1865.
 
 X INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 
 
 House of Commons. The head master, however, begged his 
 parents to send Wyllie to the University, and predicted for him 
 a distinguished academical career. The following letter to his 
 mother discloses the feelings with which John received the news 
 of the change in his destination (act. 17). 
 
 ' I for my part do not know whether to be sorry or glad at 
 what has happened. At first I was cruelly disappointed ; for 
 though I had often wished to go to college, I had so thoroughly 
 made up my mind that my future fate was to be in the India 
 Civil Service, that I felt almost frightened at first at the ground 
 being completely cut from under my feet. But still with 
 exertion (and nothing can be done in any line without exertion), 
 I think I should stand a little (Dobson says a very good) chance 
 of success at the University. And if that were certain, I should 
 infinitely prefer going to Oxford or the Bar to taking the writer- 
 ship. But to go to college I must obtain some scholarship to 
 defray part of the expenses ; and if working hard will gain me a 
 scholarship, a scholarship I will get. But still I labour under 
 peculiar disadvantages in going up for any scholarship, in con- 
 sequence of having been born in India, for the majority of the 
 Oxford scholarships (and it is to Oxford I .should prefer to go) 
 are restricted to the natives of some particular county in England. 
 So the only scholarships I could enter for would be the open 
 ones, which are on that very account the most hotly contested, 
 and this it is which gives such I'clat to the scholars of Balliol 
 and Trinity Colleges. However, I am still quite young, have 
 moderate abilities, and can and will work hard. Dobson had a 
 long and very kind palaver with me to-day, in which he was 
 profuse of praise and encouragement, the sum and substance 
 of which was that I must take to Greek, cut Hindustani, and in 
 the course of a couple of years go up for an open scholarship at 
 Oxford.' ' 
 
 ' February 37, 1852.
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. xi 
 
 He did work hard, and in June 1853 went up to Oxford to 
 compete for an open scholarship at Lincoln College, which he 
 promptly won. He remained at school, however, until the end 
 of December, and commenced his University career at the 
 beginning of 1854, aet. 18. It had been the ambition of his 
 school days, if ever he went to Oxford, to compete for a Balliol 
 scholarship. The Rector of Lincoln very judiciously pointed 
 out, however, that he could not now be permitted to compete for 
 a Balliol scholarship unless he threw up that which he already 
 held. So during six months Wyllie hesitated to give up a 
 certainty for the chance of carrying out his own private ambition. 
 In June 1854, however, he decided to run this risk by competing 
 for one of the open scholarships at Trinity. This he gained 
 (aet. 19), and thenceforward resided at that college while at the 
 University. 
 
 The brief records of his Oxford career are precisely those 
 which a well-nurtured youth would like to leave behind him. 
 The Rev. Mr. North Finder, late Fellow and Tutor of Trinity, 
 speaks of his * diffidence and modesty '; and this testimony is the 
 more pleasing as it is combined with other tributes from friends 
 and brother scholars at Trinity to his energy and talent. He 
 had the gift of popularity, and his late head master and parents 
 watched with a certain fear the temptations to which it exposed 
 him. Their letters of those days disclose this anxiety, and they 
 also disclose that Wyllie's good sense and modesty steered him 
 clear of the peril. In 1855 he obtained his first class in 
 Moderations, and everything seemed to promise the academical 
 successes which the head master of Cheltenham had predicted. 
 
 But in this same year (1855) the new system of appointing to 
 the India Civil Service by open competition was inaugurated. An 
 intimate friend of Wyllie's (a brother scholar at Trinity) suc- 
 ceeded in winning an appointment, and about the same time 
 Colonel Wyllie lost the command of his brigade on promotion
 
 xii INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 
 
 to the rank of major-general. John began to grow restive at the 
 idea of continuing to be a burden, however slight, on his father, 
 and turned his eyes wistfully to the Indian service. At any 
 rate he thought he would like to try his luck in the open com- 
 jKtition, and the long vacation of 1856 found him in London 
 with that view. ' My chance,' he wrote to his mother, ' is small 
 this time ; but I have still two or three years before me in case 
 of failure.' What between anxiety and an unfortunate period 
 of ill-health, he, like many other young men in the same cir- 
 cumstances, worked his mind up to an absolute expectation of 
 failure, and perhaps did not do so well as he might otherwise 
 have done. However, he took a creditable place, passing 
 eleventh out of about twenty-two men who gained appoint- 
 ments {tsX. 21). 
 
 He sailed for India the same year, and having his choice of 
 Presidencies, selected Bombay as that in which his father was 
 still ser\'ing. He arrived in November 1856. At that time 
 the young civilians in the Bombay Presidency were not, as now, 
 appointed Assistant-Collectors on arrival, but lived under the 
 supervision of the Collectors in various parts of the Presidency, 
 until they had qualified in the native languages. John VVyllic 
 easily obtained permission to reside at Satdrd, where his parents 
 were living. In this interesting district, on the Inner slopes of 
 the Ghats, he rejoined them after an eight years' separation from 
 his father, and in the hot weather accompanied them to the 
 Mahabaleshwar hills, the summer retreat of the Presidency. It 
 was a happy time with him, and one to which he always looked 
 back with fondness. He enjoyed to the full the gaieties of the 
 hill capital, and among other developments commenced his 
 literary career by a critical notice of Mrs. Speir's (Manning's^ 
 ' Life in Ancient India,' for tlic Bombay Quarterly Rnnciv. The 
 article is clever and lucid, but Mr. Wyllle came to the writing of 
 it with the usual defect of a beginner in literature, namely, an
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. xiii 
 
 imperfect knowledge of his subject. However, the culture and 
 general ability which pervaded the essay, covered his unac- 
 quaintance with Sanskrit, and made it one of the most popular 
 articles in the number. It brought him into public notice, and 
 on passing his examinations in the vernacular languages, Lord 
 Elphinstone, then Governor of Bombay, selected him for political 
 employment, and sent him as an Assistant to the Political Agent 
 in Kathidwdr. 
 
 This was a little out of the usual course, young civilians in 
 Bombay being as a rule required to go through a training in the 
 Revenue Department before being employed in other branches. 
 His appointment bears date January 25, 1858, and he remained 
 an Assistant in Kathiawar until August 31, i860. The nature 
 of his employment and the character of his work may be 
 gathered from the note below. ^ 
 
 ^ Memo, of Mr. Wyllie's services in Kdthidwar furnished by the Political 
 Agent. 
 
 * Mr. J. W. S. WyUie was appointed Third Assistant Pohtical Agent in 
 K^thidwdr on January 25, 1858; promoted as Acting Second Assistant 
 May 30, i860 ; left for Oudh August 31, i860. 
 
 'On his joining his appointment in February 1858, the Acting Pohtical 
 Agent sent him out into the district with the Second Assistant, in order 
 that he might become acquainted with the nature of the duties he would be 
 required to perform. He was subsequently chiefly employed in making 
 translations of Gujardti papers into English, and the then Political Agent 
 stated that he was " always very attentive to the work he had to do, and 
 performed it in a manner exceedingly creditable to him." 
 
 ' He held the Magisterial charge of the Regulation District of Bhaunagar 
 from June 1859 to August i860. 
 
 ' In February 1859 he was deputed by Government to meet the British 
 and Portuguese Commissioners, to attend to their suggestions in fixing the 
 boundary between the Junaghar and Diu territory. 
 
 ' On his departure for Oudh, the Acting Political Agent brought to the 
 notice of Government " the able and efficient manner in which he had per- 
 formed his duties, and the regret he personally felt at the loss of Mr. Wyllie's 
 valuable services." 
 
 ' He prepared a translation of Colonel Lang's collection of Mulk Sherishta, 
 or Common Law of KdthiAwdr for Mr. Forbes, who speaks of him as " an 
 officer whose services would be zealously rendered, and will be found most 
 valuable." '
 
 xiv INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 
 
 In June 1858 he went to Surat to pass an examination. 
 While there he was prostrated by a severe attack of Gujarat 
 fever, to which he nearly succumbed. It left his constitution 
 permanently impaired, and in the opinion of those who knew 
 him best, left the seeds which afterwards germinated so fatally. 
 For many weeks in each subsequent year his life was a struggle 
 with the rheumatic affections, ague, diarrhoea, and other painful 
 and depressing sequela of an Indian fever. 
 
 Meanwhile, on his recovery, he thoroughly enjoyed the 
 combination of open-air tent life with incisive intellectual work, 
 which docs so much to reconcile young civilians to exile 
 and the discomforts of a tropical climate. His day-dream was 
 employment in Persia or Afghdnistdn, ' Kdthiawdr being in 
 these days,' he writes to his mother, ' mild work ;' with an Arabic 
 professorship at Oxford as a ' pleasant nook to end one's days 
 in.' His studies in Persian or Arabic were destined, however, 
 never to go verj' far ; doubtless choked off, as many another 
 young civilian's aspirations after learning have been, by promotion 
 and the ever-rising tide of official work which accompanies it. 
 
 In the more immediate duty of perfecting himself in the 
 vernaculars, he made good progress. Up to that time no effort 
 had been made to systematise the judicial customs and 
 varying land-laws of the 224 native States of Kathiawar. 
 As late as 1863 the Political Agent (or chief British Adminis- 
 trator of the Province) officially declared that ' up to the pre- 
 sent time no State in Kdthidwar has any judicial system, any 
 written law, or any recognised civil or criminal court' ' In 
 another book' I have narrated the measures which remedied 
 this state of things. Mr. VVyllie contributed to the coming 
 work of reform. During his year and a half in Kathiawar, he 
 
 ' Political Agent's circular to the chiefs of KdthiAwdr, dated .September 4, 
 1863. 
 
 * Life of Lord Mayo, vol. i. 215 ct scq.
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. xv 
 
 devoted himself with characteristic vigour to the study of native 
 usages and rights ; left behind him a body of papers which he 
 translated from the vernacular, and prepared an English version 
 of Colonel Lang's Mulk SherisJita, a Gujarati collection of 
 materials illustrating the unwritten laws of the 224 native States 
 which in i860 made up the province of Kathiawar.' He did 
 his current duties well, as the official records testify. But his 
 bright vigour of mind, once he had got rid of the Surat fever, 
 found for itself a hundred fresh outlets in the study of the people. 
 On leaving the province, he published an account of it in the 
 Calcutta Review (December i860), and obtained for it a degree 
 of public attention which aided the advocates of reform, and 
 strengthened the hands of the Political Agent in his great set- 
 tlement of Kathiawar a few years later. Although immature in 
 style and thought, it helped in a good cause, and will be found 
 somewhat condensed at the end of this volume. On August 31, 
 i860, John Wyllie left Kathiawar and the Bombay Presidency 
 for service in Northern India (aet. 25). 
 
 Among the administrative reforms which followed upon the 
 suppression of the Mutiny was the formation of the Province 
 of Oudh into a Commissionership. This measure involved an 
 immediate increase in the strength of the Bengal section of the 
 India Civil Service. John Wyllie was among those who received 
 the offer of one of the newly-created appointments. A letter to 
 his mother, dated August 20, 1 860, records the conflicting con- 
 siderations which determined him to accept this proposal. On 
 the one hand there was the climate of Bengal, which he dreaded 
 with a prophetic foresight ; besides the separation from the 
 Presidency which he had originally chosen, and which was 
 endeared to him as the scene of his father's career and by the 
 presence of his brother Frank, also in the Civil Service. But on 
 
 * The number is given at 224 by Mr. Wyllie in i860 ; it is now returned 
 at 187.
 
 xvi INTRODUCTORY MEAfOlR. 
 
 the other hand ' My chief inducement to go is of course the 
 wider sphere which Bengal offers for action. If I am ever to do 
 any good, or rise to any distinction in my generation, the 
 opportunities arc incomparably finer there than here. Then, 
 too, I like the idea of Oudh ; there is real hard work to be done 
 there, not merely routine, but such that the doer of it will leave 
 his mark behind him, whether for good or ill, for some time to 
 come.' Accordingly, he accepted the appointment, and with 
 it the permanent transfer of his services to the Bengal Estab- 
 lishment. Henceforward his Indian career belongs to his adopted 
 Presidency, although his name continued to remain on the 
 Bombay List. 
 
 After a hasty visit to his brother at Tanna, he sailed for 
 Calcutta. On his arrival in Oudh he was posted as an Assistant- 
 Commissioner to the District of Bara-Banki, and was shortly 
 afterwards transferred, in the same capacity, to Lucknow. Early 
 in 1 86 1 he was appointed Assistant-Secretary to Sir George 
 Yule, then officiating as Chief Commissioner of the Province. 
 In May 1862 the dream of his early ambition was realised. 
 He was selected for the Calcutta Secretariat, where in one 
 department or another he remained as Under-Secretary, and for 
 a short time as Acting-Secretary, to the Government of India, 
 until he finally quitted the service. 
 
 He had made his mark in Oudh, doing good official work, and 
 shrinking from no extra duty that might come in his path in 
 addition to his regular labours. Among other things, he had 
 greatly exerted himself in raising subscriptions for the monument 
 to Sir H. Lawrence, the hero of the Lucknow siege. He not 
 only distributed circulars among Englishmen over the whole 
 of India, but he also wrote frequent articles in the newspapers 
 in advocacy of the scheme. His efforts were successful, and 
 on December 31, 1861, he could write 'Rs. 15,000 (1,500/.) 
 have been obtained by subscriptions, and Government will.
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. xvii 
 
 perhaps, give as much more ; so the monument will be worthy of 
 its hero.* 
 
 With reference to his introduction to the Secretariat of the 
 Government of India in Calcutta, he was always anxious that it 
 should be known that he obtained it * of his own good fortune,' 
 and without the aid of private interest. The proposal to appoint 
 him to officiate in the Foreign Office originated with Mr. 
 Aitcheson and Sir H. Durand, the two officials immediately 
 concerned, who knew nothing of him except by the reputation 
 which he had earned in Oudh. Sir George Yule bade him 
 good-bye in friendly words : ' If ever I get anyone again to 
 work as well as you have done, I shall be the luckiest man 
 in India.' 
 
 John Wyllie joined the Government of India as officiating 
 Under-Secretary in the Foreign Department in May 1862, but 
 was forced to go on a month's leave to the Nilgiri Hills in 
 September, to recruit his health which had been much shaken 
 by a fresh attack of fever. Sir Henry Durand (his immediate 
 superior) and the Viceroy recorded their regret at temporarily 
 losing him. On his return he officiated for a month in the 
 Home Department, and on November i8th was appointed 
 Under-Secretary in the Financial Department. In March 1863 
 he was re-transferred as Under-Secretary to the Home Office, 
 where the work was more congenial to his tastes, and where he 
 remained until his health compelled him to take sick leave, in 
 1864. The hard work of the Secretariat, and the enervating 
 climate of Lower Bengal, seriously impaired a constitution which 
 had already received a rude shock, and his trip to the Hills had 
 resulted in disappointment. But whenever he was not actually ill, 
 his high spirit carried him through everything. He thoroughly 
 enjoyed the charms of Calcutta society, making friends, as was 
 his wont, everywhere ; and especially securing a reputation for 
 industry and brilliancy among his immediate superiors. He
 
 xviii INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 
 
 thus fully accomplished what was his main object during these 
 early days of his career, viz., to establish such a position in 
 Bengal as would never cause him to regret having left his own 
 Presidency. His reward was not long in coming. While he 
 was on leave in Europe, the Under-Secretaryship to the Govern- 
 ment of India in the Foreign Department fell permanently 
 vacant, and although not on the spot he was at once nominated, 
 on the recommendation of Sir Henry Durand, to that post the 
 one which he had been most ambitious of obtaining. 
 
 He left Calcutta on April 23, 1864, and remained at 
 home until October 1865. He resolved to read up his old 
 studies, and complete his residence at the University for the 
 purpose of taking his degree. With this object he made one of 
 an autumn reading party in Scotland in company with his friend 
 George Trevelyan, and in October went up to Oxford and 
 resided at his old College of Trinity, where his name still 
 lingers among a new generation of scholars. In December he 
 passed his examinations and took his degree, and subsequently 
 took also his M.A. The remainder of the winter he spent in 
 Italy, chiefly at Rome, accompanied by an old Oxford friend 
 who had also entered the India Civil Service. In May he 
 returned to London, which he made his head-quarters until 
 his departure for India. In July there occurred a general 
 election, and he managed to see both his friend, G. Trevelyan, 
 elected at Tynemouth, and his brother-in-law, Mr. Adam, in 
 Kinrosshire. His brother Frank also came home from India 
 this summer, and in September the two travelled together as 
 far as Homburg, where it was thought advisable for John Wyllie 
 to stop a fortnight to drink the waters. While there he oc- 
 cupied himself in reading books on Egypt, and on continuing 
 his journey he .spent a second fortnight in that country. His 
 special object was to visit the works of the Suez Canal, which 
 were then unfinished, grave doubts being entertained by many
 
 IN7 Ran UC TORI MEMOIR. xix 
 
 persons regarding the ultimate success of the enterprise. The 
 result of this visit was an article written to wile away the 
 tedium of the sea voyage in the Indian Ocean, which appeared 
 in the Cornhill Magazine of March 1866. 
 
 On his arrival in India, he found Sir William Muir Foreign 
 Secretary, under Sir John Lawrence as Viceroy, and he soon 
 established himself on good terms with his new superiors^ 
 About this time he made his first appearance as a public 
 speaker, on the occasion of the Oxford and Cambridge dinner at 
 Calcutta, at which he was selected to return thanks for the Civil 
 Service. He took the precaution of learning his speech by heart, 
 and sent home his MS. copy to his mother. It boldly uttered 
 his dissatisfaction with the present system of competition for 
 Indian appointments, in so far as it tends to shut out candidates 
 from a University education. This dissatisfaction became more 
 deeply rooted in Wyllie's mind as the number of University 
 men year by year diminished in the list of the successful 
 competitors, and received its final expression in a printed letter 
 from him to Sir Charles Trevelyan. I believe that every 
 member of the service, and indeed all who have had practical 
 experience of the working of the system in India, take the same 
 view. In Wyllie's case such sentiments are particularly worthy 
 of notice ; for they are not the utterance of one who was calling 
 up, after the lapse of a considerable interval, the transfigured 
 memories of his undergraduate days, but of one who had volun- 
 teered to undergo his final University examinations at the 
 mature age of thirty-one. 
 
 Immediately after his arrival the climate of Calcutta began 
 to resume its unfavourable influence upon his health and spirits. 
 However, on the approach of the hot weather, he accompanied 
 the Viceroy to Simla, and while there the circumstances of his 
 official life combined with the mountain air to restore the wonted 
 energy of his mind. He now for the first time gained the abso- 
 
 a 2
 
 XX INTR0DUC20RY MEMOIR. 
 
 lute confidence of the new Governor-General. The absence of the 
 Foreign Secretary for a few days caused some important 
 business to be thrown entirely into his hands, and he proved 
 himself equal to the emergency. The Cornhill for March 
 reached India at this time also, and his article on the Suez Canal 
 met with a good deal of praise. Sir J. Lawrence was glad 
 to avail himself of the services of one who both by inner know- 
 ledge and literary talent was so well qualified to undertake 
 in the press the defence of his foreign policy in Central Asia, 
 which was then the object of much criticism. Accordingly, at the 
 express request of the Viceroy, he commenced his article ' On the 
 Foreign Policy of Sir John Lawrence,' an article destined to 
 become in one sense the turning-point in his career. ' It is very 
 pleasant and interesting labour/ he wrote to his aunt. Lady Hutt, 
 on June i, 1866, 'but rather exhausting. An article worth 
 reading is not written easily or quickly, and the ordinary work 
 of the office must still be carried on. So here I sit writing, 
 without pause, day after day, from breakfast time till it is too 
 dark to see. I leave myself barely time to dress for the ceaseless 
 round of dinner-parties and balls, which keep one up until two 
 or three in the morning. However, when I do get to bed, I sleep 
 intensely hard, and the climate of the place is delicious,' 
 
 This article, it may be mentioned, was originally intended 
 for the Quarterly Rcviciv. The Editor, however, refused it, on 
 the sufficient ground that it was in direct antagonism to an 
 article which had appeared in that Review twelve months 
 previously, and it was immediately accepted for the next number 
 of the Edinburgh (January 1867). Wyllie was now thirty-one, and 
 ' The Foreign Policy of Sir John Lawrence ' may be taken as a 
 fairly-matured expression of his mind. It formed a skilful popular 
 exposition of the views of those who were opposed to drawing 
 closer the relations of the British Government in India with the 
 trans-frontier Asiatic States ; and as a strong party will always
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. xxi 
 
 exist in favour of this policy, Mr. Wyllie's essay has a permanent 
 interest. At the time of its publication it won a great and 
 deserved success, and it stands first in the following collection 
 of his Essays. 
 
 In November 1866 Wyllie accompanied the Viceroy on his 
 tour to Delhi and Agra. A grand Darbar was held at the latter 
 place, all the arrangements for which fell upon the shoulders 
 of the Under-Secretary in the Foreign Department, For his 
 conduct on this laborious occasion, Sir William Muir, the Chief 
 Secretary, wrote to him a special letter of thanks, adding that it 
 was only in keeping with the able administration which had uni- 
 formly characterised his work in the office. Wyllie then returned 
 to Calcutta and, Sir W. Muir taking a three months' leave, was 
 appointed to officiate as Secretary in his place. On his vacating 
 this post the Viceroy, in an official Minute, 'deemed it right to 
 place on record his entire satisfaction with the manner in which 
 the work had been performed by him.' It was Sir William 
 Muir's duty to forward him a copy of this Minute, and in the 
 private letter which accompanied it he wrote ' Even in the few 
 days I have been back I have seen enough to convince me of 
 the devotion, ability, and strength which you brought to bear on 
 your working of the office.' In March, when the climate of 
 Calcutta had again begun to tell on his health, he was allowed 
 a month's privilege leave to Simla, and on the arrival of the 
 Government at that place continued to conduct the duties of 
 his office, as Under-Secretary in the Foreign Department, till 
 November. On the return of the Government to Calcutta, 
 Wyllie found himself compelled to accept the course which his 
 medical advisers had pressed on him early in the year, and to 
 take the three years' furlough, to which the length of his Indian 
 service then entitled him. During the preceding year he had 
 had in contemplation a great amount of literary work. In a 
 letter, April 4, i Z^J, he refers to an intention of writing a sort of
 
 xxii INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 
 
 Burke's Peerage of the Princes and Chiefs of India who are 
 recognised as feudatories of the Queen of England. But these 
 projects were beaten back by repeated attacks of ill-health ; and 
 during his last months in India poor Wyllie had to recognise 
 that his strength was unequal to anything beyond the ordinary 
 work of his office. He did, however, manage to send home in 
 November an article on 'Western China,' which was published 
 in the Edinburgh Review of April 1868, and procured for 
 him the acquaintance of Sir Roderick Murchison and Lewd 
 Strangford. 
 
 The spring and summer of 1868 were spent in London, and 
 his thoughts were speedily diverted from Indian matters by 
 home politics, The defeat of Mr. Disraeli's Government upon 
 the Resolutions proposed by Mr. Gladstone concerning the Irish 
 Church, had rendered certain a dissolution of Parliament in the 
 coming autumn. Amid the general demand at that time for 
 new men, John Wyllie was persuaded by his uncle, Sir William 
 Hutt, to give up his Indian career and stand for Parliament. 
 Sir William Hutt had taken a great interest in John from 
 early childhood ; and in a matter of this kind his counsel 
 was of great weight, for he had himself occupied a seat in the 
 House of Commons during forty-one years, and held office as 
 Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Paymaster-General. 
 Acting on his uncles advice, John Wyllie went down to the 
 city of Hereford, where it was hoped that the second seat might 
 be wrested from the Conservatives, The task thus marked out 
 for him was no slight one. The sitting members, Mr. George 
 Clive and Sir Richard Baggallay, had both considerable influence. 
 The former, a Liberal, was the head of a county family connected 
 with Hereford for generations, and had moreover been at one 
 time Under-Secretary in the Home Office. Sir R. Baggallay, 
 though not locally connected with the constituency, had made 
 liimself very popular, personally, during his four years' rcpresen-
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. xxiii 
 
 tation of it, and now brought with him all the prestige which 
 followed from his recent appointment as Solicitor-General by 
 the Conservative Ministry. John Wyllie had neither wealth, 
 nor local influence, nor English reputation. He had never 
 attempted to address a public audience on political questions, 
 and like most Indian officials had enjoyed no opportunity of 
 acquiring the art of public speaking. Moreover, he was still 
 suffering from the effects of the Bengal climate. But he plunged 
 into the contest with his usual energy and courage. He went 
 down to Hereford armed with a few letters of introduction from 
 the chiefs of the Liberal party in London, and was at once 
 accepted, both by the local leaders and at an enthusiastic public 
 meeting. His address attracted attention from the principles 
 which it enunciated, and from the style in which they were 
 expressed. Amongst other supporters. Colonel Allen Johnson, 
 an Indian friend, and Sir Henry James, an old school -fellow, 
 came down to Hereford to help him. And he presently found 
 not only that his usual facility in winning friends had not 
 deserted him, but that he had obtained a popularity with the 
 mass of the electors which fairly astonished himself The result 
 of the poll was officially declared as follows : 
 
 Votes. 
 
 , Mr. G. Clive . . 1055 
 Liberals 
 
 { 
 
 Mr. J. Wyllie . . 1015 
 
 ( Sir R. Baggallay . 983 
 Conservatives \ 
 
 I Major Arbuthnot . ^jz 
 
 John Wyllie thus achieved his first success in England with 
 the same rapid step as he had advanced to promotion in India. 
 But as in India, so now, he was not destined to enjoy the honours 
 which he had won. He took his seat in the House of Commons, 
 voted at least once, and asked a pertinent question of the Under- 
 Secretary for India. But his Parliamentary career was speedily 
 interrupted by a petition being presented against the return o{
 
 xxiv INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 
 
 the two members for Hereford. They were both charged with 
 bribery and treating, and the election of John Wyllie was further 
 alleged to be invalid on the ground that he held a place of pro- 
 fit under the Crown as a member of the India Civil Service. 
 
 With regard to this last ground of disability it would not be 
 necessary to say much, as it never came up for legal decision, if 
 it had not directly led to his resignation of the service. It 
 suffices to mention that the Act of Queen Anne, which creates 
 this disability, is of notoriously difficult interpretation, and that 
 there was a precedent in the case of another member of the India 
 Civil Service, Lord William Hay, whose election under similar 
 circumstances had not been questioned. An Indian civilian, 
 moreover, when on furlough, is regarded as holding no substan- 
 tive appointment. The difficulty had first been suggested some 
 days prior to the election, when Sir R. Baggallay had pledged his 
 legal reputation to the opinion that Wyllie was disqualified, and 
 that, con.sequently, all votes for him would be thrown away. John 
 Wyllie immediately resolved, with the approval of his family, 
 to send in his resignation, which was accepted at the India 
 Office as from the day on which it was tendered. That day was 
 the 14th of November, and the poll was not taken till the 17th. 
 His case, therefore, was strong, and he was himself desirous that 
 this point should be taken first ; his opponents, however, com- 
 menced with the charges of bribery and treating, and the petition 
 was tried at Hereford, before Mr. Justice Blackburne. All who 
 knew cither of the successful candidates were satisfied from the 
 first of their personal innocence of any malpractices. The 
 allegations of bribery were most satisfactorily refuted, but by a 
 cruel fortune the excessive zeal of an indiscreet supporter had 
 brought them within the ' treating ' clauses of the Act. It was 
 proved that a certain merchant of the city had on the polling 
 day given a breakfast to divers electors, and then driven them 
 to the booths to vote for the Liberal candidates. This amounted
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. xxv 
 
 to treating, and by construction of law it was also held by the 
 learned judge that this merchant must be considered as an 
 agent of both the sitting members. It was in vain urged on 
 behalf of Mr. Wyllie that he had never set eyes on the man, or 
 even heard his name, until the election was over. It could not 
 be denied that he had been deputed by the recognised Liberal 
 agents to act for them in certain matters connected with the 
 election, and that the Liberal candidates, after their return, had 
 written him a joint letter of thanks for his services. Perhaps 
 neither of these circumstances would by itself have been suffi- 
 cient, but taken together they formed the basis of the judge's 
 finding that the sitting members had been by their agent guilty 
 of treating, and that their election was therefore null and void. 
 The effect of this decision was to render the unseated members 
 ineligible to stand for Hereford during the term of the existing 
 Parliament. It was thought at the time by some legal critics 
 that Mr. Justice Blackburne had laid down a hard rule. But 
 to Mr. Wyllie's honour it should be said that on all occasions 
 when the decision was impugned in his presence, he defended it, 
 alike in public and in private, as a necessary and logical inter- 
 pretation of the Act. He did not, however, feel the blow the 
 less severely. It was not only that the hypersensitive purity of 
 official life in India had ill-prepared him to endure even the 
 shadow of a stain. He had forsaken the Indian service for a 
 career that now sunk under him ; he had burnt his ships, and 
 could not return. Above all, he saw himself condemned to a 
 life of inaction for some time to come, for it was beyond hope 
 that a second seat in the Parliament then sitting would fall to 
 him. 
 
 Before retiring into private life, he found one more opportunity 
 of doing a service to his party, and of showing that he could 
 work for others as energetically as he had fought for himself. 
 A new election was forthwith ordered for Hereford. The new
 
 xxvi INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 
 
 Liberal candidates were Colonel Clive and Mr. Wren Hoskyns, 
 who were returned by a majority which closely corresponded 
 to the votes of the previous election. John Wyllie stayed at 
 Hereford during their canvass, and by his speeches, and in other 
 ways, contributed materially to the result. At a large meet- 
 ing subsequently held in the city the Liberal electors presented 
 him with an address, thanking him for his services to the cause, 
 and expressing a hope that his connection with the constituency 
 would some day be re-established. 
 
 The sympathy which he met with from every quarter, and 
 at this time he received letters from many distinguished persons 
 outside the political world, could not, however, prevent his 
 fretting at the disappointment. Though suffering from no actual 
 organic disease, he had never recovered the strain to which the 
 Surat fever and subsequent attacks in India had subjected his 
 constitution, and throughout the summer of 1869 he was in 
 poor health. On June 2 the Crown appointed him a Companion 
 of the Star of India, as a reward for his Indian services. It was 
 not, however, until the winter that his spirits revived, and his 
 interest was re-dirccted to Indian affairs. He now wrote his 
 article in TJie Fortnightly, entitled 'Masterly Inactivity,* which 
 is, perhaps, the best known of all his writings. It was signed 
 with his name, and being no longer hampered by official re- 
 sponsibility, he was better able to indulge the natural brilliancy 
 of his style. During the month of December The Times news- 
 paper contained one or two letters from him on the affairs of 
 Central Asia, and in The Daily News he took part in a contro- 
 versy on the same subject. The companion article in The Fort- 
 nightly, called ' Mischievous Activity,' was also written at this 
 time, though not published till March 1870. In a letter to his 
 brother, dated December 10, 1869, he says, ' I shall stay in 
 London until about the middle of January, in order to see 
 "Mischievous Activity" through the press. Then I go to
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. xxvii 
 
 Paris, where I mean to remain till after Easter, I shall try, 
 if possible, to get admission to some French family, and live 
 wholly among French people.' 
 
 This visit to Paris was carried out, but not precisely in the 
 mode anticipated. He established himself at the Hotel Vouille- 
 mont. Rue Boissy d'Anglas, and regularly took lessons in 
 French. His object was not only to improve his knowledge of 
 the language, but also to study French politics at first hand. 
 Affairs were at that time in a very critical condition. The health 
 of the Emperor was a constant source of anxiety ; Emile 
 Ollivier was trying his experiment of a Constitutional Govern- 
 ment ; and H. Rochefort had just been imprisoned for his writ- 
 ings in The Marseillaise. John Wyllie was a constant attendant 
 at the debates of the Corps Ldgislatif, and daily read and analysed 
 the varied contents of the French press. The diary which he kept 
 at this time is mainly composed of comments upon political sub- 
 jects, but it also shows how widely his sympathies and his position 
 permitted him to enjoy Parisian society. He made many ac- 
 quaintances in the French literary world, and among others 
 struck up a warm friendship with M. Charles Yriarte, the 
 well-known man of letters. Introductions to Renan, Prevost 
 Paradol, &c., brilliant dinner-parties, and receptions at the house 
 of Guizot and elsewhere, flit through his diary. The following 
 extracts from a letter to his brother, dated March 4, 1870, 
 disclose his frame of mind and mode of life at this time. ' My 
 health is infinitely better than it has been for years past ; and 
 having now got rid of my chronic diarrhoea, I hope to keep 
 clear of it during the London season. I shall return to town 
 about Easter, or, perhaps, not before the end of April. After the 
 close of the season I don't know what I may do. There is not 
 the least chance of my getting into Parliament again beforf 
 
 the next general election I have been to a ball a*- 
 
 the Tuileries, and to some other entertainments. The peopL
 
 xxviii INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 
 
 are very civil, and I see quite as much society as I care for. 
 When I am not dining out, I generally go to the table d'hote 
 at the Grand HOtel, where I always come across people I know, 
 English or others. Then men friends from town are constantly 
 passing through Paris, and, on meeting, we make up a little 
 party at a Restaurant.' 
 
 This was destined to be the last letter which he wrote to his 
 brother. Before its arrival in India a Reuters telegram had 
 announced in the Bombay press the death in Paris of a Mr, J. T. 
 Wylie {sic). The error, however, in the name scarcely deceived 
 any of his friends. His health had long been a source of deep 
 anxiety to them, the more so as his buoyant indifference about 
 himself and his hunger after work tempted him to rush into 
 new labours the moment that the pressure of actual illness was 
 removed. A week before his death his father and mother, 
 then in London, were not aware that he was unwell. He 
 had always been a good correspondent, and a week's silence 
 caused them some anxiety. Then came a letter to say that he 
 was laid up with a bad cold. It was written by a nurse, but 
 there was a re-assuring postscript from himself which bade them 
 not to be alarmed for he was much better. A telegram of 
 similar purport followed. His parents were no longer young, 
 and his mother was in feeble health. It was thought advisable 
 to await further news. The first intimation of his alarming 
 state did not reach them till Monday, March 14, when there 
 came a telegram from the medical man, saying ' Mr. Wyllie 
 continues dangerously ill, and some one should come.' His 
 father and mother, accompanied by his uncle. Sir William 
 Hutt, at once started for Paris. But when they arrived all 
 hope was gone. He was unconscious, and never fully recog- 
 nised them. On the morning of Tuesday, before their arrival, 
 he had said to his nurse, when pressed to take some nourishment, 
 ' I cannot take any more. I should have liked to have gone
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. xxix 
 
 to my mother, but it is too late now. Do not think that I am 
 afraid to die. I die in Christ' So on March 15, 1870, 
 the first anniversary of the day on which his election had been 
 declared void, John Wyllie finished his short life of 34^ years. 
 
 The immediate cause of his death was a cold, caught as he 
 came out of a hot caf6 into the chill night air. Inflammation of 
 the lungs supervened, then his old malarial fever, and finally 
 inflammation of the brain. He was buried at Montmartre, 
 with the intent to remove the body on a future occasion to 
 England. The German war and the siege of Paris quickly 
 followed, and it was not till after the restoration of peace that 
 his remains were removed to their final resting place in Kensal 
 Green. 
 
 It is not often that so young an Indian ofiicer attracts the 
 attention of the English public. Men who have slowly won 
 fame in the East often come home to find themselves relegated 
 to obscurity. The death of John Wyllie was noticed at con- 
 siderable length and with strong expressions of regret by almost 
 all the London newspapers. In Hereford, Conservatives as 
 well as Liberals manifested their sorrow, and the city voted an 
 address of condolence to his father and mother. The entire 
 Indian press united in paying its tribute to his memory. A 
 memorial tablet, erected in the School Chapel at Cheltenham, 
 bears his effigy in marble, graven by Woolner. It is placed on 
 one side of a doorway. On the other side is a medallion, by the 
 same artist, in memory of the Rev. W. Dobson, the head master 
 by whom he had been taught, and who had predicted his 
 distinction. His friends and old schoolfellows have founded 
 a scholarship to commemorate his career, to be held by Chel- 
 tenham boys proceeding to Trinity College, Oxford. The annual 
 income from the fund amounts at present to 70/. 
 
 It would be idle to quote from the letters of condolence 
 which from all sources poured in upon his parents. Words of
 
 XXX INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 
 
 sympathy and of respect, however tenderly uttered, could do 
 little to allay that grief, nor would they give the reader a 
 truer picture of the man than that afforded by his own works. 
 But they disclose the loving estimation in which he was held by 
 men and women of very diverse character, and in widely different 
 spheres of life. The charm of his nature lay in his modesty. 
 One felt that his brilliancy of talent and his social graces en- 
 titled him to a sort of precedence which he would never accept. 
 The Essays now collected show him in part ; but only those who 
 personally knew him can understand why he was so loved, or 
 how deeply he has been lamented. His was a life which only 
 too faithfully represents the debt which India owes to England. 
 There are many others who, devoured by their own restless 
 energy, beat out their lives in unknown work on the burning 
 plains or among the malaria-smitten jungles of Hindustan. His 
 sphere of action was merely placed on a more conspicuous stage. 
 That, however, which singled him out among his compeers, and 
 which this slight memoir would in vain attempt to pourtray, was 
 the tender charm which he shed upon all with whom he mingled, 
 and the grace of his blameless life. 
 
 * Mnltis illc bonis Jlcb His occidit'
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 ESSiY PAGE 
 
 Introductory Memoir vii 
 
 I. The Foreign Policy of Lord Lawrence {Edinburgh 
 
 Review^ January 1867) . . . . . . i 
 
 Note by the Editor 69 
 
 II. Masterly Inactivity {J^orinightly Review, December i, 
 
 1869) 70 
 
 Note by the 'Ehitoyl to Masterly Inactivity . . .119 
 
 Note by the Editor to Mischievous Activity . . 121 
 
 III. Mischievous Activity {Fortnightly Review, March i, 
 
 1870) 125 
 
 IV. Western China {Edinburgh Review, April 1868) . 174 
 
 Note by the Editor, recent relations with Eastern 
 TurkestAn 230 
 
 V. The Rao of Kutch and his Kindred . . . 245 
 
 VI. KathiawAr and the Waghars {Calcutta Review, De- 
 cember i860) . . . . . . . .320 
 
 Note by the Editor 358 
 
 Index 365
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 25, line 14, for Ufzal read Afzal. 
 52, 31. ^^^^g-^^'^ Usde^ States lu. 
 342, ^6, Zanjvta 7^>yV/-
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 ON THE 
 
 EXTERNAL POLICY OF INDIA. 
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LA WRENCE} 
 
 The Government of India is divided into six great depart- 
 ments Foreign, Home, Legislative, Military, Finance, 
 and Public Works. Every order issued from any of 
 these departments runs in the name of ' The Governor- 
 General in Council.' And in the earlier days of the 
 Anglo-Indian empire, when all cases used to be submitted 
 for the collective consideration of the Governor-General 
 and each member of his Council, this formula was a cor- 
 
 1 Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1867. 
 
 1. Parliamentary Blue Books relating to Bhutan. 1865 and 1866. 
 
 2. Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, No. XXIV. 
 New Series. Bombay : Printed for Government at the Bombay Education 
 Society's Press. 1856. 
 
 3. Diary of a fourney across Arabia in the Year i8ig. By Capt. G. 
 Forster SadHer, of Her Majesty's 47th Regt. Compiled from the Records 
 of the Bombay Government. Bombay : Printed at the Education Society's 
 Press, BycuUa. 1866. 
 
 4. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society. Volume the Thii'ty-ffth. 
 Article XV., A Visit to the Wahdbi Capital, Central Arabia. By Lieu- 
 tenant-Colonel Lewis Pelly, Her Majesty's Political Resident, Persian Gulf. 
 London : 1865. 
 
 5. Reports on the Political Condition of the Province of Turkistdn, and 
 the Financial Resources of Tashkend,from the Governor-General of Orcnbuig 
 to the Russian Minister of Finance, published in the ' Invalide Russe ' of the 
 20th November, 1865.
 
 2 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 rect description of the mode in which the machinery of 
 government actually worked. But as time advanced, 
 bringing with it additions of territory, improved adminis- 
 tration, and better means of communication, it became 
 impossible for so cumbrous an organisation to bear the 
 strain of the enormously increased correspondence. At 
 length Lord Canning remodelled the Council into the 
 semblance of a Cabinet, with himself as president. 
 Each member of the Government now holds a separate 
 portfolio, and despatches the ordinary business con- 
 nected with it upon his own responsibility, only reserving 
 matters of exceptional importance for the opinion of a 
 colleague or the decision of the assembled Council. The 
 particular branch of administration which Lord Canning, 
 Lord Elgin, and subsequent Governors-General have 
 successively reserved for their own special charge, is the 
 Foreign Office of India. 
 
 The Indian Foreign Office is entrusted with the 
 duty of directing our diplomatic relations first, with 
 all neighbouring foreign Powers beyond the limits of 
 Hindustan ; and, secondly, with all the dependent princes 
 and chiefs of India. These two functions are obviously 
 of supreme importance, for on these more than on any 
 other departments of the State the maintenance of peace 
 and the general policy of the empire depend. They arc, 
 however, necessarily secret in their operation, and they 
 usually become known to the public by their results. 
 Indeed, it may be affirmed that a large portion of the 
 important diplomatic transactions in which the Governor- 
 General of India is engaged never attract the notice of 
 Parliament or of the British public. On some of these 
 questions we are about to lay before our readers com- 
 plete information. We shall not at present enter upon
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 3 
 
 the controverted subject of the relations of the Supreme 
 Government of India with the princes and chiefs who have 
 retained some show of independence in that country, ex- 
 cept to remark that Sir John Lawrence is a firm adherent 
 of the non-intervention poHcy of the present day. But 
 our object is to carry the reader beyond the frontiers of 
 India to those less known regions in which we have to 
 encounter the independent and barbaric races of the 
 Asiatic continent. 
 
 Of course, in dealing with independent principalities 
 and powers beyond the bounds of India, the Governor- 
 General must act in concert with the English Cabinet 
 whenever he is dealing with a European State or with 
 any oriental nation, such as Persia and China, at whose 
 Court there is a diplomatic representative of Her Majesty. 
 But, even subject to this limitation, the Indian Foreign 
 Office yet remains the focus of politics for half Asia the 
 storehouse of the romance of all the East. Murmurs of 
 Dutch aggression in far Sumatra, and whispers of piratical 
 prahs lurking amid the unexplored isles of the Malayan 
 Archipelago ; rumours of French enterprise in the feverish 
 rice-swamps of Cochin-China, and quaint glimpses of 
 Burmese life at the Court of the golden-footed monarch 
 of Mandalay, such are the varied contents of a mail- 
 packet from the southern seas. Out of the west come 
 tidings of pilgrim-caravans at Mecca, of pearl-fishers in 
 the Persian Gulf, or of burning slave ships on the coast 
 of equatorial Africa ; the outrages of the Christian em- 
 peror in Abyssinia are not omitted, nor those of the 
 Wahabi fanatic at Riad overlooked. North-eastward, 
 down the Himalayan passes of Bhutan and Nepal, the 
 life that slowly stirs among the lamas and monasteries of 
 Thibet sends now and then a faint pulsation into Bengal ;
 
 4 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 and lately the valley of Kdshmi'r afforded a passage to 
 envoys from the uncouth khans of Chinese Tartary. 
 Finally, in the furthest north, beyond Afghdnistdn and 
 the deserts of the wandering Turkomans, looms the 
 giant form of steadily-advancing Russia. In fact, it 
 would be hardly an exaggeration if the English vice- 
 roy's political range of vision were to be described in the 
 sonorous syllables of Milton : 
 
 * His eye might there command, wherever stood 
 City of old or modern fame, the seat 
 Of mightiest empire, from the destined wall 
 Of Cambalu, seat of Cathaian Can, 
 And Samarcand by Oxus, Temir's throne, 
 To Paquin of Sina^an kings ; and thence 
 To Agar and Lahor of Great Mogul, 
 Down to the golden Chersonese ; or where 
 The Persian in Ecbatan sat, or since 
 In Hispahan ; or where the Russian Ksar 
 In Mosco ; or the Sultan in Bizance, 
 Turchestan-born ; nor could his eye not ken 
 The empire of Negus to his utmost port, 
 Ercoco, and the less maritime kings, 
 Mombaza and Quiloa and Mclind.' 
 
 Descending, however, to the prose of current events, 
 we find that the questions of external policy which at 
 present chiefly command attention from the Government 
 of India lie in the direction of Arabia and Central Asia. 
 These, therefore, must be the main subject of our inquiry. 
 But before we proceed to discuss our relations with either 
 Mr. Palgrave's interesting friends, the Wahdbis, or the 
 picturesque ruffians in Afghdnistdn, there is another 
 matter which, though of less importance, deserves a 
 cursory notice, if only that the erroneous accounts of 
 it which have reached England may not pass alto- 
 gether unchallenged. We allude to the recent war with 
 Bhutdn.
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LA IVRENCE. 5 
 
 The facts are very simple. In December 1863, just 
 a month before the accession of Sir John Lawrence to 
 viceregal power, it was found necessary to send an envoy 
 into Bhutan to demand reparation for a long series of 
 injuries inflicted on our frontier villages. The mission 
 failed ; the envoy was subjected to gross insult, and 
 compelled to sign a treaty re-adjusting the whole boun- 
 dary between British India and Bhutan, and making 
 other preposterous concessions to the Bhutan Govern- 
 ment. This crowning outrage was more than could be 
 endured. Sir John Lawrence instantly repudiated the 
 document extorted from his envoy, and took measures 
 for chastising the offenders. Of the tract of territory 
 lying at the southern foot of the Bhutan hills, and 
 known generally as the Dwdrs, the eastern portion, or 
 the Assam Dwdrs, had hitherto been a kind of a de- 
 bateable land that is, the British Government occupied 
 the ground, but annually allowed 10,000 rupees, or one- 
 third of the revenue, to the Deb and Dharm rajas as 
 their share. Sir John Lawrence now announced to the 
 Bhiitdn Government that this payment, as also the rent 
 of another patch of land held by us in farm from Bhutan, 
 had ceased for ever. Further, he demanded the restora- 
 tion of all British subjects who, within the last five years, 
 had been kidnapped by the Bhiitias ; and he threatened 
 that, unless the demand were fully complied with by the 
 1st of September, it would be enforced at the point of the 
 sword. The Bhutan Government allowed the interval 
 of grace to pass by without taking advantage of it. Ac- 
 cordingly, Sir John Lawrence, who had already extin- 
 guished all Bhiitia rights in the seven Assam Dwars, 
 now issued a proclamation, dated the 12th November, 
 1864, by which the Western or Bengal Dwars, eleven
 
 6 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 in number, were likewise definitively incorporated into the 
 Queen's Indian dominions, and the British frontier was 
 advanced even beyond the plains, so as to include certain 
 hill forts, and give us the command of the passes through 
 which the Bhutids had been wont to descend in their 
 predatory incursions. The proclamation was, in fact, a 
 declaration of war. But the Governor-General still 
 looked to peace the final aim of every war. A well- 
 equipped force had by this time been assembled on the 
 frontier, but it was not allowed to move until the terms 
 upon which Bhutan might again be received into amity 
 had been carefully settled and fully notified to all con- 
 cerned. Within six weeks of the column being set in 
 motion, every position in Bhutan which our programme 
 had marked for occupation was in our keeping. The 
 Bhutids made little resistance, and it was thought they 
 had abandoned the contest. Suddenly, in January 1865, 
 they debouched in force along almost our whole line. At 
 Diwdngiri the surprise was complete : an unreasonable 
 panic arose among the garrison, and the post was dis- 
 gracefully abandoned with the loss of two mountain train 
 guns. But this disaster of a subordinate officer the only 
 one that occurred throughout the entire campaign was 
 soon retrieved in gallant style by General Tombs ; and 
 after the reoccupation of Diwangiri in April, not a 
 Bhutid appeared in arms against us. Upon the cessa- 
 tion of hostilities, the Bhutid authorities gave frequent 
 indications of a desire for peace. Their overtures were 
 invariably met by a reference to the terms still open to 
 them which had been offered in the previous November, 
 and by an assurance that unless those terms were accepted 
 before the opening of the cold season, they would see an 
 advance of British troops upon their capital, Piinakha.
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 7 
 
 Convinced at last, by the preparations made by Sir John 
 Lawrence and Sir William Mansfield, that we were in 
 earnest in what we said, they signified their willing- 
 ness to treat. Their overtures were favourably re- 
 ceived. The surrender of the treaty which had been 
 extorted from our envoy, and a humble letter of apology 
 for the insults to which he had been subjected, formed 
 the commencement of the negotiations. Afterwards, on 
 the nth of November, 1865, a treaty of peace was con- 
 cluded upon the identical basis which the Government of 
 India had from the outset held in view. The Bhutan 
 Government formally ceded to us all the eighteen Dwars 
 and the rest of the territory taken from them, and agreed 
 to liberate all our kidnapped subjects ; in return for these 
 concessions the British Government undertook to pay the 
 Deb and Dharm rajas annually, subject to the condition 
 of their continued good behaviour, an allowance begin- 
 ning at 25,000 rupees, and rising gradually to a maxi- 
 mum of twice that amount. Also, by a separate 
 agreement simultaneously executed, the Bhiitan Go- 
 vernment engaged to procure restitution to us, by the 
 loth of January, of the two guns lost at Diwangiri. 
 These guns had fallen into the possession of a power- 
 ful Bhutia noble known as the Tongso Penlo. He 
 refused to give them up, in the hope that, by playing 
 upon the desire of the British Government to recover 
 trophies of war, and upon the desire of his own Govern- 
 ment for peace, he might get himself constituted the 
 channel through which the British allowance to Bhiitan 
 should be paid. The Deb and Dharm rajas sincerely 
 endeavoured to fulfil their engagement, but the coercion 
 of their refractory vassal was beyond their ability. The 
 task, therefore, was undertaken by a British force. Our
 
 8 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 troops started on the 3rd of February, but they had not 
 made many marches towards Tongso when the Penlo, as 
 had been anticipated, gave up the game, and submissively 
 sent the guns into our camp. 
 
 So ended the Bhutan war. Its conclusion was 
 greeted with a chorus of disapprobation from the Indian 
 press. The honour of England, it was said, had been 
 betrayed by a pusillanimous Government. We ought to 
 have marched into the heart of Bhutdn, humbled the 
 rdjas in their capital, and exacted a condign retribution. 
 Instead of doing so we had slunk back to the plains 
 foiled in purpose, and content to purchase a dishonourable 
 immunity from future aggressions at the cost of paying 
 black mail to a crew of barbarous caterans. Divested of 
 all rhetoric, the accusation seems to be that the conditions 
 of the treaty were improperly lenient to Bhutan. It has 
 been above explained that these conditions were the same 
 as had been offered to the Bhutids before hostilities 
 commenced. Sir John Lawrence, therefore, cannot be 
 charged with having lost heart in the struggle. The 
 utmost that can be said is, either that in the original 
 selection of a punishment for the Bhiitlas their offences 
 were too lightly judged, or that, as the fray pro- 
 ceeded, it became due to the honour of the arms tarnished 
 at Diwdngiri to wreak an increased vengeance on the 
 foe. Neither of these suppositions will stand the test of 
 cool inquiry. With regard to the first, it is certain that, 
 short of the absorption of their whole country, the annexa- 
 tion of the Dwars was as severe a penalty as could have 
 been inflicted on the Bhutids. Their State had hitherto 
 been mainly supported from this fertile tract, Bhutdn 
 Proper being a very poor country. In truth, the prin- 
 cipal reason for allowing them to retain a beneficial
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 9 
 
 interest in the Dwdrs was that, unless some such sub- 
 stitute for their usual means of maintenance were granted, 
 they would be driven by sheer want to the very habits of 
 depredation which the war was undertaken to suppress. 
 But though originating in a sentiment of humanity, the 
 measure was also recommended to the Government by 
 considerations of policy. It was obviously desirable to 
 secure some guarantee for the future good conduct of the 
 Bhutias, and the power of diminishing or altogether 
 withholding an allowance which was essential almost to 
 their bare existence, offered the very hold upon them that 
 was wanted. Accordingly it was specially provided by 
 the 5th Article of the treaty that the British Government 
 should be at liberty, at any time when the conduct of 
 the Bhutias might give cause for dissatisfaction, to 
 suspend payment of the allowance either in whole or in 
 part. 
 
 In reply to the second charge namely, that the 
 disgrace incurred at Diwangiri demanded to be wiped 
 out in further slaughter we prefer quoting the words of 
 Sir William Mansfield, the then Commander-in-Chief in 
 India : 
 
 * Was it to be supposed that a people which, however bar- 
 barous and untaught, at least possessed the attribute of animal 
 courage, would submit to the loss of a slip of territory which, in 
 their eyes, was probably as valuable as the territory that re- 
 mained to them I say, was it to be supposed that a people in 
 such circumstances would not stand up and fight for their own 
 property ? Surely nothing else could be expected, and the 
 Bhutias are hardly to be blamed on that account. Yet that 
 was the head and front of their offending, which raised such a 
 cry for more punishment. They stood up and fought ; and I 
 can only say that they are, in my opinion, to be respected for so 
 doing. People clamoured for more punishment for what .'' 
 Because the Bhutias came and reoccupied a few posts. What
 
 lo THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 really took place ? The first duty I had to perform on assuming 
 my command was to receive the reports of the heavy blows 
 delivered by Generals Tytler and Tombs at Bala and Diwdngiri. 
 I am justified in attributing that character to them, because, 
 when the small number of the Bhiitdn population is considered, 
 the actions they fought, with respect to the losses they incurred, 
 must have assumed in their eyes such proportions as in great 
 European contests would be attributed to pitched battles. This 
 is undoubtedly true, notwithstanding that to us such actions 
 appear as insignificant skirmishes. I say it with confidence. 
 The numbers of Bhutids reported to have been killed in 
 General Tombs' affair having been reported to be 200, I ask 
 with confidence if this was not a terrible retribution, with regard 
 to the numbers of the Bhutan population, for the check sus- 
 tained by our arms at Diwdngiri } I am happy to say that 
 such was the opinion of your Excellency's Government. If we 
 had further pressed this miserable people, for the purpose of 
 inflicting a still greater summary punishment, we should have 
 laid ourselves open throughout the civilised world, both in India 
 and in Europe, and even with those who had been most impa- 
 tient at our assumed inaction, to a charge of inhuman oppression, 
 and, I think I may say, cruelty. I am happy to think that this 
 Government has escaped such a stigma.' 
 
 But enough of Bhutan. We must hasten to scenes 
 of more immediate interest in Western Asia. On the 
 moot question whether Mr. Palgrave's book added any- 
 thing to the stock of Information already available to the 
 general public regarding the past history of the WahabI 
 power in Arabia, we have no desire again to enter. Our 
 sympathies are certainly on the side of the author, whose 
 amusing narrative recently drew our attention to the 
 subject. But there can be no doubt that the contempo- 
 raneous chronicles of the Indian Foreign Office, of the 
 local Government at Bombay, and of the Residency at 
 Bushire, do contain materials of a more detailed and 
 trustworthy character than any it was in Mr. Palgrave's
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE, ii 
 
 power to consult. During the last fifty years the Anglo- 
 Indian agent in the Persian Gulf has been in frequent 
 contact with the Wahdbis of Nejed for the Indian 
 Government has good reason to watch with peculiar in- 
 terest the proceedings of that sect. The fact is, that 
 the same tenets which reign at Riad in an independent 
 monarchy are scattered through the length and breadth 
 of India in the far more dano^erous form of secret confra- 
 ternities, inspired with the most bigoted detestation of 
 the infidel Feringhi. The Ambeyla campaign of 1863 
 affords an illustration in point. On that occasion it cost 
 the army 847 men killed and wounded to subdue a small 
 band of marauding fanatics on our far north-west frontier ; 
 and it has since been conclusively established that the 
 head-centres of the band were the Wahabi priests of 
 Patna men of irreproachable respectability, who had 
 been accounted, up to the moment of their detection, 
 among the most inoffensive citizens that the unwarlike 
 neighbourhood of Calcutta could produce. 
 
 Presuming that Mr. Palgrave's work has rendered 
 our readers sufficiently familiar with the story of the 
 Arabian Wahdbis, it may now be worth while to notice 
 briefly the salient points in the past relations of British 
 India with the Nejedi dynasty. Three different sets of 
 circumstances have from time to time brought the two 
 powers into contact first, the audacious piracies carried 
 on in the Persian Gulf, under the protection and encou- 
 ragement of the Wahdbis, by several maritime Arab 
 tribes, especially the Joasmis ; next, our interest in the 
 two great invasions of Nejed by the Egyptians ; and in 
 the last place, our obligation to extend moral support to 
 the kingdom of Oman and the chiefship of Bahrein against 
 the encroachments incessantly directed against both of
 
 12 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 them from Dereyiyah and Riad. Throughout all these 
 complications the distinctive principle of our policy has 
 been a desire to have as little to do with the Wahabis 
 as possible, consistently with the necessity of maintaining 
 the maritime peace of the Persian Gulf ; and, above all, to 
 avoid a downright collision with them. Thus, when a naval 
 expedition was despatched against the Joasmi pirates in 
 1809, the full effect of the blow was certainly marred by 
 the forbearance which the officer in command was ordered 
 to show towards the Wahabis. Again, when the Imam 
 of Muscat, or, as he is more properly called, the Sultdn 
 of Oman, shortly afterwards entreated our assistance 
 against the Wahdbis, he was told that the British Go- 
 vernment had no particular interest in the quarrel, and 
 that he had better make what terms he could with his 
 adversaries. Next came the first Egyptian invasion of 
 Nejed a cause of great relief to the Sultan. It was 
 now the turn of the Wahdbi Amfr to raise signals of 
 distress. He sent an envoy to the British Residency at 
 Bushire, proposing to enter into a treaty of amity and 
 free trade with us. But his suit was as unsuccessful as 
 that of the Sultdn had previously been ; we politely de- 
 clined giving him any countenance. When the news 
 reached India, in 1818, that Ibrahim Pasha had captured 
 and destroyed Dereyiyah, and was meditating an ad- 
 vance to the shores of the Persian Gulf, the Marquis 
 of Hastings conceived the design of allying the English 
 arms by land and sea with the Egyptian conqueror, and 
 so making a clean sweep of all the littoral nests of piracy, 
 whether Joasmi or Wahdbi. Captain Sadlier, of Her 
 Majesty's 47th Regiment, was the officer selected to con- 
 duct the necessary negotiations with Ibrahim Pasha. In 
 quest of the Pasha, whose camp was at Medina, and
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 13 
 
 afterwards In his company, Captain Sadlier, as is well 
 known, traversed the breadth of the Arabian peninsula 
 from Katif, on the Persian Gulf, to Yambo, on the 
 Red Sea. Politically, however, the enterprise was a 
 failure. Ibrahim Pasha, so far from desiring to push 
 his conquests further east, was content to rest on his 
 laurels, and had, in fact, begun his march homewards 
 before Captain Sadlier arrived. He sailed from Jeddo 
 for Suez at the same time that Captain Sadlier, re infectd, 
 took his departure for Bombay. The year 1834 brought 
 a renewal of the question ^ whether our treaty engage- 
 ments with the Sultan of Oman did not demand the 
 interposition of British force to save him from the Wa- 
 habis. Lord William Bentinck repudiated any such 
 liability. He even went so far as to contemplate, un- 
 moved, the contingency of the Wahabis seizing the 
 port of Muscat and making it a base for the renewal of 
 piracy in the Gulf: 'It would be much easier,' he said, 
 * and cheaper to chastise them then, than to take up the 
 matter as it stood, and constitute ourselves the guardians 
 of the Sultan's possessions against all comers.' 
 
 Once more, the aid which the Sultan could not obtain 
 from England, came to him indirectly through an Egyp- 
 tian diversion. Khurshid Pasha in 1836 advanced with 
 a large force from Medina, and in two years made him- 
 self master of all Nejed, Hasa, and Katif. But this 
 time India had no welcome for the Egyptian commander. 
 The policy of the Indian Government was no longer 
 coloured by exclusively oriental considerations, but had 
 to take its tone from Lord Palmerston, who at this junc- 
 
 ^ By Article II. of the Treaty of 1798, the friends and enemies of either 
 Government are to be the friends of the other. But in practice this pro- 
 vision has always been a dead letter for both parties.
 
 14 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 ture was carrying through, in conjunction with the 
 Northern Powers, his determination to reduce Muhammad 
 AH, the too powerful Pasha of Egypt, to subordination 
 as a vassal of the Porte. That ebullition of hostility 
 to Eg}'pt and to France produced a singular indirect 
 result on the politics of Arabia. Instead of viewing the 
 downfall of Wahabi fanaticism, and the rise of semi- 
 civilised Egypt in its stead, with complacency, the Indian 
 Government omitted no effort of diplomacy to counteract 
 Khurshid Pasha's progress. Strong remonstrances were 
 addressed to Muhammad All by the English Consul- 
 General at Cairo. The result was, that in May 1840 the 
 Egyptians yielded to our pressure and evacuated Arabia. 
 Within three years after their departure the Wahdbis 
 were once more an organised power under their rightful 
 Amir, Faizul. 
 
 One of Faizul's first acts was to address a communi- 
 cation to the Resident at Bushire, begging for the friend- 
 ship of the British Government. His advances met with 
 a civil reply ; but it was at the same time significantly 
 remarked that our presence in his vicinity had no other 
 object than the preservation of peace on the waters of the 
 Persian Gulf. Almost simultaneously with the exchange 
 of these barren courtesies, the preponderating influence 
 which Faizul had acquired at Bahrein and elsewhere on 
 the coast began to inspire the Bombay Government with 
 uneasiness. But Lord Ellcnborough, to whom the ques- 
 tion was referred, declined to interfere, and in 1844 his 
 successor. Lord Hardinge, took the same view. The 
 latter, however, consented, the following year, to a naval 
 demonstration off the Batinah coast on behalf of the 
 Sultdn of Oman, whose territories had been invaded by 
 the Wahdbis in considerable numbers. Not a shot was
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 15 
 
 fired from the British ships, but their presence enabled 
 the Sultan to purchase peace from Faizul at the cost of 
 an annual tribute. 
 
 Similar demonstrations were made for the protection, 
 in 185 1, of Bahrein, and, in 1853, of Oman for the second 
 time. The invasion, checked in the latter instance, was of 
 a very serious character. It was led by Faizul's son, 
 Abdullah, who did not retire until he had extorted from the 
 Sultdn a large sum of ready money, and an agreement to 
 pay double the former tribute. In 1859 it required the 
 presence of the whole English squadron before Katif 
 to induce Faizul's deputy at that place to abandon his 
 designs on Bahrein and sue for pardon ; but on this, 
 as on previous occasions, a threatening attitude proved 
 sufficient for our purpose. Once only in 1861 did the 
 British Government commit itself to actual hostilities 
 with the Wahabis, and even then it was rather the 
 semblance than the reality of war that we displayed. 
 Faizul, influenced probably by sentiments of Arab hos- 
 pitality, had refused to comply with our demand that he 
 should expel from his fort at Daman a political refugee, 
 whose intrigues for sixteen years had kept Bahrein and 
 all its neighbourhood in a ferment. The Resident, there- 
 fore, proceeded to obtain satisfaction by force. An hour's 
 distant firing from a steamer, to which the twin forts of 
 Daman and Katif made no response, and which termi- 
 nated without a man being touched on either side, gave 
 the Wahabi Governor a decent excuse for expelling the 
 obnoxious chief; and there the dispute ended. This in- 
 cident gave rise to a remarkable proceeding on the part 
 of the Turkish Governor-General of Bagdad. That func- 
 tionary entered a formal protest against the Resident's con- 
 duct, on the ground that Faizul was only the Porte's vice-
 
 i6 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LA WRENCE. 
 
 gerent in Nejed, and that the fort of Daman was an integral 
 part of the Turkish empire. The protest was disallowed 
 by the English consul-general at Bagdad ; for, although it 
 is not improbable that since the second Egyptian invasion 
 the Wahdbi Amir has remained tributary to the Turk- 
 ish authorities at Mecca the tribute being regarded as 
 an offering to the head of his religion there is no contro- 
 verting the fact that the practical authority of the Porte 
 in Nejed is nil. The incident, however, is deserving of 
 remark, because the Wahdbis, when it suits their pur- 
 pose, are rather given to making parade of their nominal 
 dependence on Constantinople. 
 
 We now proceed to narrate transactions of a more 
 recent date, to which the foregoing occurrences formed a 
 necessary introduction. In the interior of Oman, about 
 lOO miles west of Muscat, there is a fort and district called 
 Rostak, the charge of which, two years ago, was held by 
 Sayyid Ges, a kinsman of the Sultan. Sayyid Ges becom- 
 ing restive, the Sultan marched out of Muscat to coerce 
 him. Opposition was offered, and while the Sultdn was 
 still besieging the fort, Turki bin Ahmad Sadairi, the 
 commandant of the Wahdbi stronghold at Bereymah, 
 came up in force, and insisted on the contending parties 
 accepting his mediation. The Sultdn was consequently 
 obliged to abandon the siege, and return humiliated to 
 Muscat. No sooner had the troops of Oman disappeared 
 than the Wahdbi seized the fort he professedly had come 
 to rescue, ravaged the surrounding territory, killed some 
 of the inhabitants, and extorted from the rest a large 
 pecuniary ransom. Intelligence of this outrage reached 
 Bushire in December 1864. The Residency was at that 
 time, and is still, held by Colonel Lewis Pelly, an officer 
 who, during his previous employment in Sind, had
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 17 
 
 acquired the entire confidence of the Governor of Bombay, 
 and also was not unknown to the Anglo- Indian public 
 for the two dissimilar reasons, that in 1858 he wrote a 
 foolish book, and in i860 had the enterprise to travel 
 from Teheran through Herat, Kandahar, and Beluchistan, 
 to the British frontier in Sind. Colonel Pelly now, on 
 his own responsibility, determined to visit the Wahabi 
 Amir at Riad. He started from the Port of Koweit on 
 the 1 8th of February, 1865, accompanied by a naval 
 officer, Lieutenant Dawes, and the Residency surgeon. 
 Dr. Colvill. Faizul received the party civilly, and during 
 their short stay at Riad, Lieutenant Dawes succeeded in 
 ascertaining the latitude and longitude of the city, and 
 Dr. Colvill, we believe, procured some interesting geo- 
 logical and botanical specimens. But otherwise the ex- 
 pedition was without any result. Returning from the 
 interior, Colonel Pelly emerged^ on the i8th March near 
 Bahrein, and from thence embarked for Bushire, where 
 he arrived before the end of March. Very soon after- 
 wards he came to England on leave for six months. 
 During his absence fresh indignities befell the Sultan of 
 Oman. First of all, a delegate from Faizul arrived at 
 Muscat, demanding four times the amount of the usual 
 tribute. Then Abdul Aziz, a brother of the Sadairi, 
 
 ^ The security with which Colonel Pelly visited Riad has at times been 
 quoted in disparagennent of Mr. Palgrave's adventures. Some critics have 
 even gone so far as to imply that there was no necessity for Mr. Palgrave to 
 have stooped to the immorality of disguise. These people forget that Colonel 
 Pelly travelled with all the prestige attaching to the well-known office of 
 Resident at Bushire, and that it is not given to everyone to enjoy so redoubt- 
 able an advantage. Besides, even if, for argument's sake, it be conceded 
 that Mr. Palgrave, in a shooting coat, would for twelve months have been as 
 safe as Colonel Pelly was for one month in a scarlet uniform, there needs 
 very little experience of the East to know that no recognised European ever 
 has a chance of obtaining such an admission to the inner life of the people 
 as it was the principal object of Mr. Palgrave's wanderings to obtain. 
 
 C
 
 1 8 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 who in the preceding year had harried Rostak, made his 
 appearance as a Wahdbi agent among the Beni Bii Ah' 
 and Jenubah tribes in the southern province of Jaalan, 
 and, with the assistance of these disaffected Arabs, be- 
 sieged and captured Sur, a port about 80 miles below 
 Muscat, plundering the bazaar and shooting some of the 
 inhabitants. Lastly, a threatening cloud of Wahabis 
 gathered about Ras-ul Khaimd in the Joasmi territory, 
 north of Oman. In short, when Colonel Pelly returned 
 to India towards the close of 1865, there was a general 
 disorder along the whole frontier, and the Sultan's pros- 
 pects looked as gloomy as they had ever been during the 
 Wahdbi irruption of 1853. 
 
 Colonel Pelly arrived at Muscat on the 25th Novem- 
 ber, bringing with him apparently carte blanche from the 
 Bombay Government to do whatever he might think best 
 for the Sultdn's protection. The first intelligence that 
 reached him was that Faizul, the famous Wahdbi 
 Amir, was undoubtedly dead, though Abdullah, who 
 had succeeded to the throne, was doing his best to keep 
 the event secret. The Government of Nejed was still 
 carried on in Faizul's name, and Abdullah even shrank 
 not from the irony of putting his father's seal to des- 
 patches which declared the writer to be, ' by the blessing 
 of God, in good health.' Faizul's disappearance from the 
 scene was unquestionably a great point in the Sultdn's 
 favour. Colonel Pelly urged the Sultdn to take advan- 
 tage of the confusion to which it had given rise among 
 the enemy. Bereymah was the keystone of the Wahdbi 
 power for annoyance, and this place Colonel Pelly thought 
 the Omani troops might take by land, while by sea Eng- 
 lish co-operation might perhaps undertake the blockade 
 of the Wahdbi ports. The latter part of the scheme
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 19 
 
 was not, however, easy of execution. Irrespective of the 
 Resident's steam yacht, the * Berenice,' there was only 
 one EngHsh man-of-war in the Gulf the 'Highflyer' 
 and Captain Pasley, who commanded the latter vessel, 
 was under orders to return to Bombay as soon as pos- 
 sible. Under the pressure of this difficulty. Colonel Pelly 
 conceived that he had no alternative but summary action, 
 such as he had not at first contemplated. He addressed 
 a communication to the Amir of Nejed, demanding in 
 peremptory terms a written apology for the late Wahabi 
 outrages in Oman, and also payment of 2 7, 700 dollars as 
 compensation for the Hindu-British subjects residing 
 at Siir whose property had been plundered by Abdul 
 Aziz. This ultimatum was delivered by Captain Pasley 
 to the Shaikh of Katif on the 12th of January for 
 despatch to Riad, and seventeen days from that date 
 were allowed for compliance with the terms. On the 
 30th the 'Highflyer' returned to Katif for an answer. 
 The Shaikh had no answer to give; and thereupon, in 
 accordance with instructions received beforehand from 
 Colonel Pelly, Captain Pasley commenced hostilities 
 against the place. The shallow waters of the bay re- 
 fused admittance to his ship, and his heavy boats were 
 unable to approach within 1,200 yards of the shore. 
 The native agent, however, who, in Colonel Pelly's 
 absence at Muscat, acted as political adviser to the 
 expedition, assured Captain Pasley that the fort of 
 Daman was defended by only twelve men ; and, upon 
 this representation, it was determined to take the crews 
 of two light cutters to the assault. Even these boats 
 grounded a long distance from the beach, so that 
 Lieutenant Long and his thirty gallant followers had 
 
 to wade tlirough 300 yards of mud and sand before 
 
 c 2
 
 20 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 they found themselves in the presence of the enemy. 
 They carried the lower storey of the fort with a rush, 
 but this success only showed them that to attempt any- 
 thing more was hopeless. Gates and walls, manned by 
 marksmen far more numerous than their own small party, 
 still separated them from the principal towers. There 
 was nothing to do but to retire to the boats. They did 
 so in good order, but with a loss altogether of two sea- 
 men killed, and one officer and two seamen wounded. 
 After this affair, the unfortunate issue of which must be 
 ascribed to the deficiency of the local information at 
 Captain Pasley's command, and to the imprudence 
 with which the enterprise was attempted, the 'High- 
 flyer' returned to Muscat, and being there joined 
 by the * Berenice,' the two vessels proceeded southwards 
 to Siir, the scene of the Jenubah insurrection. Arriv- 
 ing at Siir on the 1 1 th of February, Colonel Pelly gave 
 six hours' notice to all non-combatants to clear out of the 
 forts and the neighbourhood of the shipping. The 'High- 
 flyer,' then opened fire, and after three hours' bombard- 
 ment, reduced the forts to ruins. The next morning her 
 boats went up the Sur creek, and destroyed or confis- 
 cated every vessel belonging to the Jenubahs. With 
 this measure of chastisement, active operations termi- 
 nated. The 'Highflyer' started for Bombay on the 
 13th, and Colonel Pelly the same day returned up the 
 Gulf towards the telegraph station at Cape Mussendom. 
 
 That very day there was enacted at Sohar a tragedy, 
 before which, to borrow an expression from Colonel 
 Pelly, the horrors of Macbeth must pale. Sohar is on 
 the Batinah coast, north of Muscat, and not far from 
 the inland fortress of Bereymah. Mr. Palgravc's friends 
 will remember it as the port of his departure on the
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 21 
 
 unlucky coasting voyage in which he was wrecked. 
 Hither had come Sultdn Thoweyni, in order to or- 
 ganise a campaign against the Wahdbis at Bereymah. 
 On the fatal 13th of February he lay down in an upper 
 chamber to sleep his * custom always in the afternoon.* 
 Stealing upon his secure hour, his son, Sayyid Sali'm, with 
 a Wahabi attendant named Beshari, crept up the stair- 
 case, entered the chamber, and silently closed the door 
 from the inside. Beshari drew a double-barrelled pistol 
 from under his cloak. Sali'm signalled him to fire. But 
 Beshari handed the weapon to the prince, and drew his 
 dagger, intimating by a noiseless gesture that if the pistol 
 failed to do its work, he would *mak' sikker' with cold 
 steel. Salim then fired both barrels into his father's fore- 
 head, and all was over. Thoweyni had passed from 
 sleep to death without a struggle. The murderers threw 
 a sheet over the corpse, and hurried downstairs. Their 
 first care was to seize Sayyid Turki, the late Sultan's 
 brother, and throw him heavily ironed into a dungeon. 
 It was then given out in the town that Thoweyni had 
 died of fever. At nightfall the body was secretly buried 
 under the floor of an inner room, and the parricide rode 
 off with his accomplices to take possession of the kingly 
 power at Muscat. 
 
 Vague rumours of what had happened at Sohar 
 reached Colonel Pelly at Cape Mussendom on the 20th. 
 He lost no time in coming to see for himself how matters 
 stood at Muscat. Calling at Sohar on his way, he suc- 
 ceeded in effecting the release of Sayyid Turki. At 
 Muscat, where he arrived on the 2nd March, he found 
 everything in confusion. Sayyid Sali'm had thrown himself 
 into the hands of the Wahabi faction, and was the mere 
 creature of their behests, On the 6th, Colonel Pelly
 
 2 2 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 obtained intelligence that the Sali'm had a plot on foot 
 for suddenly attacking the ' Berenice ' that night, as she 
 lay at anchor. Whatever may have been the amount of 
 truth in this report, there is no doubt that the * Berenice' 
 had not the means of defending herself if attacked, and 
 that all the Hindus of Muscat were in utter panic. 
 Colonel Pelly therefore acted as prudence dictated, and, 
 after having taken on board all persons who had any 
 claim to British protection, steamed quietly out of the 
 harbour. 
 
 All these events from the first appearance of the 
 ' Highflyer' in the Gulf up to the * Berenice's' retirement 
 from Muscat had followed one upon another in such 
 quick succession, that there had been little time for the 
 Bombay Government to refer for instructions to Calcutta. 
 In judging, therefore, of Sir John Lawrence's foreign 
 policy, it must be understood that he is not responsible 
 for any of Colonel Felly's proceedings. But we must be 
 permitted to observe that the British agent at Bushire 
 appears to have not always acted with discretion ; and it is 
 painful to reflect how little control it is possible for the 
 Government of this country or of India to exercise over 
 its officers in these remote regions, while perhaps irre- 
 parable mischief has been done. The very first oppor- 
 tunity that the Government of India obtained for in- 
 terposing its authority arose out of the arrival at Bombay 
 of envoys from Sayyid Sali'm. These envoys were the 
 bearers of a letter, in which their master protested against 
 the recent deportation of Hindu merchants from Muscat 
 in the * Berenice,' and pointed to the perfect safety of all 
 the property which had then been abandoned as a proof 
 that he had been unjustifiably discredited by Colonel 
 Felly's apprehensions. Sir John Lawrence decided that
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 23 
 
 this letter should be answered in terms of frigid civility. 
 It was impossible to continue to Sayyid Salim the relations 
 of personal friendship which our officers had cultivated 
 with his father ; but it was equally undesirable that the 
 diplomatic relations of two States mutually necessary to 
 each other should be suddenly and completely broken off 
 for the crime of an individual. It was no part of the 
 duty of the British Government to avenge the death of 
 the late Sultdn of Muscat, or to punish the guilt of his 
 successor. 
 
 While this question was being discussed in India, 
 affairs in the Gulf had righted themselves with singular 
 rapidity. The inducements which usually led the British 
 Government to assist, and the Wahdbis to attack, Oman, 
 had alike been much weakened by recent events. The 
 new ruler had no title to our regard, while, on the other 
 hand, he was the publicly declared ally of the Wahdbi 
 Governor at Bereymah. A further reason why the 
 Wahabis should, for a time at any rate, show a peace- 
 able bearing to their neighbours, was the fear lest our 
 unsuccessful attack on Katif might only be the prelude 
 to more serious hostilities. The Amir Abdullah re- 
 garded this contingency with alarm. He took early 
 measures for averting the storm by the despatch of two 
 emissaries from RIad one to entreat the mediation of 
 his suzerain at Constantinople, and the other to patch up 
 a peace with the English representative at Bushire. The 
 first messenger, though he carried with him two Nejedi 
 horses as a present for the Sultan, advanced no fur- 
 ther than Bagdad, being turned back by the Turkish 
 Governor-General of that province. The second has 
 recently (1866) engaged in negotiations with Colonel Pelly, 
 and the conciliatory spirit he displays gives reason to
 
 ?4 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LA WRENCE. 
 
 hope that the several causes of dissatisfaction which ihe 
 British Government has against the Amfr of Nejed are 
 in a fair way of adjustment. It only remains to be added 
 that all is quiet again at Muscat, and that the traders 
 who fled have now returned to their former avocations. 
 
 From the glittering waves of the Persian Gulf we must 
 now take flight to the bare steppes and snow-capped moun- 
 tains of Central Asia. In that inhospitable region, the 
 State which, from its geographical position, must always 
 be viewed with the greatest interest by England, is Af- 
 ghdnistdn. This kingdom, during the last years of Dost 
 Muhammad's reign, presented the appearance of as com- 
 pact and independent a government as even the authors 
 of the Afghan war could ever have hoped artificially to 
 create on our north-west frontier. Dost Muhammad's last 
 feat, performed when he must have been close on 
 eighty years of age, was to wrest Herat from Persian 
 influence. He died on the 9th June, 1863, twelve days 
 after he had taken the city by storm. From that moment 
 the Nemesis of Muhammadan polygamy, in the usual form 
 of children by different mothers scrambling for the inherit- 
 ance, has laid its curse of anarchy and civil war heavily 
 on Afghdnistdn. 
 
 The old Amir left sixteen sons. Four of these 
 were too young at the time of his death to have acquired 
 any personal influence ; but of the elder twelve, every 
 single man aspired, if not to sole supremacy as his father's 
 successor, at any rate to a separate principality indepen- 
 dent of any brother's control. Those whose ambition 
 aimed at the entire kingdom were five in number ^ 
 
 * The most prominent of the seven chiefs figuring as partisans rather 
 than principals were Wali Muhammad, Faiz Muhammad, and Aslam Khdn. 
 In this same class may Ix; also ranked two grandsons of Dost Muhammad,
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 25 
 
 namely, Afzal and Azim Khdn, sons of one mother ; 
 and Sher All, Amin Khdn, and Sharif Khan, sons of 
 another and more highly-born lady. 
 
 Afzal Khan, aged fifty-two, the eldest of Dost Muham- 
 mad's sons, bore the reputation of being also the bravest ; 
 his conquests in the north had added considerable territory 
 to the Afghan dominions, and for some time past he 
 had been governing with vigour and popularity the whole 
 tract lying between the Hindu Khiish and the Oxus. 
 (This province, known to the Afghans as Tiirkistdn, we 
 shall prefer to speak of as Balkh, in consequence of the 
 Russians having appropriated the former name for the 
 districts of their southern frontier.) The head-quarters 
 of Ufzal Khan's Government were fixed at Takhtapul, 
 a city which has risen on the ruins of the ancient and 
 more familiar Balkh, or Bactra. Perhaps it was this 
 proximity to Bokhara that first suggested the matrimonial 
 connexion subsisting between his son and daughter and a 
 daughter and son of the King of Bokhara. Afzal Khan 
 was still at Takhtapul when Herat fell and Dost Muham- 
 mad died. 
 
 Azim Khdn is described by Dr. Bellew, who saw him 
 in 1857, as a middle-aged man of very tall stature and her- 
 culean frame, with a dignified and commanding mien. 
 Little, if at all, inferior to Afzal Khan as a soldier, he 
 was incomparably Afzal Khan's superior in statecraft. 
 Without any real love for the English, Azim Khdn had 
 yet established a strong claim upon our goodwill by the 
 
 Fathi Muhammad and Jaldl-ud-dfn Khdn, sons of the famous Akbar 
 Khdn, who murdered Sir William Macnaghten. Fathi Muhammad had 
 courage and ability, and Jaldl-ud-din Khdn deserves notice because a 
 recent journey through India to Mecca and Constantinople had inspired him 
 with apparently a sincere regard for the English, such as no other Barukzaj 
 S^rddr pretended to feel,
 
 26 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 course he adopted in 1857, when the whole Afghan 
 nation clamoured to be led down the passes that they 
 might join the mutineer sepoys in a meritorious extermi- 
 nation of the infidel English. Dost Muhammad would 
 perhaps have been unable to resist the popular cry but for 
 Azi'm Khdn's steadfast and openly declared advocacy of 
 the English cause. The eastern districts of Khiirm and 
 Khost, bordering upon the Indian frontier, were Azi'm 
 Khan's charge, but he had left them to follow the Afghan 
 army to Herat. 
 
 All the three princes forming the second group of 
 competitors had likewise accompanied their father to 
 Herat. The youngest of the trio, Sharif Khdn, aged 
 thirty, held the south-western districts of Farrah and 
 Ghirishk. Not wanting in military courage, he probably 
 shone best as a civil administrator. He had somehow 
 accumulated more treasure than any of his brothers, but 
 he marred this important advantage by a fickleness of 
 spirit extraordinary even in an Afghdn ; unstable as 
 water, he was the Reuben of these Beni-Israel, foredoomed 
 not to excel. 
 
 Very different in character was Amfn Khan, Gover- 
 nor of Kandahar, in the south a bold impetuous man, 
 who always took the shortest road to his object, and suf- 
 fered no temptation or obstacle to baulk his purpose. 
 
 Sher All, forty years of age, was perhaps not equal 
 to Afzal Khan as a general, or to Azim Khdn as a 
 statesman, but he was, nevertheless, an adept in the arts 
 both of peace and of war, as understood among his 
 countrymen ; and if it had not been that his many fine 
 qualities were alloyed by an ungovernable temper, which 
 at times entirely swamped his judgment, he might well 
 have been recognised by others besides his father as the
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 27 
 
 flower of the family. Sher All's political proclivities had 
 hitherto been towards a Persian rather than an English 
 alliance. 
 
 Sher Ah it was whom Dost Muhammad, some time 
 before the expedition to Herat, had publicly selected as 
 his successor, passing over the claims of both the elder 
 princes, Afzal Khan and Azi'm Khan. The selection, 
 according to family custom, was authoritative. Sher Ali 
 ever since had borne the designation of heir-apparent ; and 
 when Dost Muhammad died, none ventured to question 
 his title to succeed. Even Azim Khan himself in that first 
 hour of confusion was fain to join in the general homage 
 due to Sher All as rightful Amir of Afghanistan. 
 
 Signs of disaffection to the new ruler soon showed 
 themselves. First Amin Khan, then Sharif Khan, 
 and lastly Azi'm Khan, abruptly quitted Herat, and re- 
 tired to their respective fortresses in Kandahar, Ghirishk, 
 and Khiirm. The Amir himself began his return 
 march towards Kabul on the 5th of July, leaving his third 
 son, Yakub Khdn, as Governor of Herat. He reached 
 Ghazni on the 24th of August, and halted there in order 
 to ascertain what Azi'm Khan was about in the neigh- 
 bouring district of Khiirm. His inquiries elicited very 
 unsatisfactory intelligence. He therefore diverged east- 
 ward with his whole force into Khiirm, and compelled 
 Azi'm Khan, who was hardly prepared for such prompt 
 action, to tender a formal submission. The two brothers 
 then embraced : Azi'm Khdn swore fealty to the Amir, 
 and in return obtained a confirmation of all the dignities 
 and emoluments he had enjoyed during the late reign. 
 The Amir, having thus scotched his snake, recom- 
 menced the march to Kabul, which city he finally reached 
 on the 9th of September. Before the end of the year he
 
 28 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 had the satisfaction of receiving regular recognition from 
 the British Government as successor to Dost Muhammad's 
 vacant throne. 
 
 The winter passed away without any event of import- 
 ance ; even Barukzai restlessness is not proof against 
 ' the mesmeriser snow.' But with the first genial breath 
 of spring both Afzal Khan and Azfm Khan were up and 
 doing. The former, notwithstanding that he had begun 
 by sending in letters to Herat replete with protestations 
 of the most devoted loyalty to Sher All, now scrupled 
 not to proclaim himself throughout Balkh as Amir of 
 Afghanistan : indeed, his preparations for making good 
 the claim by force of arms were already well advanced. 
 The latter was busily organising an insurrection in 
 Khiirm ; but he hesitated to engage in any overt out- 
 break, being anxious that all the odium of the intended 
 rupture might fall upon the Amir. With this object he 
 left his fort of Gurdez with a garrison so insufficient as 
 to invite attack. The bait took. One of the Amir's 
 officers indiscreetly pounced on the fort in his sovereign's 
 name, and Azfm Khdn was at once provided with a 
 pretext for rebellion. The Amir met the double danger 
 boldly. On the 20th of April 1864, he despatched the 
 best soldier in his kingdom, Muhammad Rafik, to crush 
 Azim Khdn In the south-east, while he himself marched 
 northwards to meet Afzal Khdn's more formidable In- 
 vasion. Fortune favoured his tactics. As soon as 
 Muhammad Rafik entered Khiirm, Azi'm Khdn's ven- 
 ture utterly collapsed. Abandoned by his troops, Azi'm 
 Khdn on the i6th of May fled for refuge Into British 
 territory, and became a pensioner of Sir John Lawrence 
 at Rdwal Pindi. 
 
 In the meantime the armies of the Amfr from Kabul
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LA WRENCE. 29 
 
 and of Afzal Khan from Takhtapul had come face to 
 face in the mountain defiles of the Hindu Khush near 
 Bamian. On the 3rd of June an indecisive but hotly- 
 contested action took place between the advance guards 
 of either host, at a place called Bajgah. The Amir's 
 troops in this engagement were commanded by his eldest 
 son, the heir-apparent, who displayed great gallantry, 
 killing two of the enemy with his own hand. Two days 
 afterwards the Amir was reinforced by the arrival 
 of Muhammad Rafik with the troops which had been 
 employed in suppressing Azi'm Khan's disturbances 
 in Khiirm. Such a concentration of the Amir's whole 
 strength was more than Afzal Khan was prepared to 
 meet ; he had calculated that Azim Khan would have 
 found full employment for half the Kabul army. On the 
 other hand, family traditions, as well as the nearly equal 
 strength of the opposing force, disposed the Amir to 
 avoid further bloodshed. With these sentiments prevail- 
 ing in either camp, the natural result was peace. The 
 Amir and Afzal Khan publicly embraced one another 
 on the 29th of June ; and the reconciliation which fol- 
 lowed was, to all outward appearance, perfect. It was 
 agreed that the two armies should proceed peaceably 
 together into Balkh, and that, after having seen some- 
 thing of the province with his own eyes, the Amir 
 should then define Afzal Khan's future position in the 
 State. In pursuance of this arrangement, the brothers 
 proceeded harmoniously to Tashkurghan, a town about 
 forty miles south-east of Takhtapul. Here, on the 9th 
 of August, Afzal Khan's claims were settled to his satis- 
 faction by nearly the whole of his former government 
 being restored to him. For yet another fortnight all 
 went merry as a marriage bell, and then came a sudden
 
 30 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 crash. The conduct at Takhtapul of Afzal Khan's son, 
 Abdul Rahman, having given rise to some suspicion, 
 the Amir summoned the young chief to his presence. 
 Abdul Rahman, instead of obeying the summons, fled 
 across the Oxus into Bokhara. Perhaps the Amir 
 wanted an excuse for long-meditated treachery; perhaps 
 his ordinary principles of action were overwhelmed in a 
 sudden tempest of anger ; but whatever may have been 
 the motive, he visited the sins of Abdul Rahman on his 
 father, Afzal Khan. In public darbar he called up one 
 of his kinsmen, gave him a pair of leg-irons, and bade 
 him seize and fetter Afzal Khdn. The Sardar had the 
 independence to remonstrate, and begged that, if the 
 Amir persisted in his determination, some one else 
 might be found to do his bidding. Almost beside him- 
 self with passion, the Amir turned to a more complaisant 
 courtier, General Shaikh Mir, and insisted on being 
 obeyed. The general took the irons and repaired with 
 them to Afzal Khan's quarters. Placing them respect- 
 fully before the old prince, he informed him of the 
 Amir's order. Afzal Khdn said, 'It is God's will;' 
 and, spitting three times on his own beard, stretched out 
 his legs, when the general affixed the irons and left him. 
 
 Intense excitement followed this coup ddtat. The 
 Afghan nobles had seen the Amir only two days pre- 
 viously at the tomb of one of their holiest saints swear 
 fidelity to Afzal Khan solemnly on the Kurdn ; and the 
 fresh remembrance of that scene effectually destroyed their 
 faith in the Amir, and devoted all their sympathy to his 
 wronged prisoner. Several of them hurried across the 
 Oxus to join Abdul Rahman in Bokhara ; others fled 
 to Amfn Khdn at Kandahar; those that still stayed by 
 the Amir held aloof from personal contact with a
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 31 
 
 temper which they had now greater cause than ever for 
 mistrusting. As for the gallant army which, under Afzal 
 Khdn, had so well held its own against the Amir in 
 the passes of the Hindu Khiish, it melted away like a 
 snowdrift. Some small portion accepted a service of 
 doubtful fidelity under the Amir, and one body of 800 
 regular troops made good its retreat to Kandahar ; but 
 the majority dispersed in plundering parties over the 
 northern districts. From Tashkurghan the Amir pro- 
 ceeded to Takhtapul. There the confiscation of Afzal 
 Khan's property, and the deportation of his zanana to 
 Kabul, occupied some time. Early in October, the Amir 
 appointed his nephew, Fathi Muhammad, Governor of 
 Balkh, and turned his own steps southwards to the 
 capital. He entered Kabul in triumphal procession on 
 the 14th of November. 
 
 Meanwhile the fugitive Abdul Rahmdn had been 
 received with open arms by his father-in-law, the King 
 of Bokhara. The tale of Afzal Khan's wrongs, con- 
 firmed as it was by the production of the Kuran bearing 
 the seal of the perjured Amir, moved general indigna- 
 tion. The King laid the case before his College of 
 Divines, and when the learned men replied by pronoun- 
 cing sentence of excommunication against the Amir, he 
 declared to the assembled Court his royal intention of 
 espousing Abdul Rahman's quarrel at the head of an 
 army of 10,000 men. 
 
 Nor was it from the north alone that danger threat- 
 ened the Amir. The signs of the times were equally 
 menacing in the south. Amin Khan for months had 
 been exerting all his energies to put Kandahar in a 
 state of defence, and now, just as his plans for throwing 
 down the gauntlet to the Amir approached maturity, he
 
 32 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 obtained the important assistance of Sharff Khdn's 
 money bags. Sharif Khan and he, with their nephew, 
 Jaldl-ud-din, as a subordinate member of the triumvi- 
 rate, entered into a compact to stand by each other against 
 the Amfr to the last extremity. 
 
 It must have been an anxious time, therefore, that 
 winter of 1864-65, at Kabul, though the severity of the 
 Afghdn chmate guaranteed the Amir immunity from 
 any immediate attack. Snow still lay deep over all the 
 country, when the ball was opened in the Kandahar direc- 
 tion by a forward movement on the part of Jalal-ud- 
 dfn to capture the important fortress of Khilat-i-Ghilzai, 
 on the road towards Ghaznf and Kabul. The attempt 
 was unsuccessful ; Jaldl-ud-di'n, after a six weeks* siege, 
 being obliged, on the 28th March, 1865, to abandon 
 the siege and fall back on Julduk, a place thirteen miles 
 to the south. But as a signal for malcontents to bestir 
 themselves, Jaldl-ud-din's efforts were by no means 
 labour lost. Azfm Khdn, whose intriguing correspond- 
 ence with the Kandahar chiefs had been a source of 
 incessant trouble to his hosts throughout the ten months 
 of his sojourn in British territory, now recrossed the 
 border ; and betaking himself to his old haunts of Khurm 
 and Khost, raised a standard of revolt, to which numbers 
 of the wild Waziri tribe were very soon attracted. 
 He had alreadj' received considerable aid in money from 
 Afzal Khdn's wife, a princess of masculine courage and 
 energy ; and about this time she sent him 25,000 
 rupees, with a message that now or never was the time 
 to show his manhood ; if he had none to show, he had 
 better spend the present remittance in buying a shroud, 
 for he would get no more from her. 
 
 Still the Amir rose to face his various foes un-
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 33 
 
 dauntedly. Recurring to the plan of campaign which 
 last year had served his turn so well, he dispatched 
 Muhammad Rafik against Azim Khdn, with instructions 
 to disperse the Khurm insurgents as soon as possible, 
 and then join the main army, which he intended himself 
 to lead against Candahar. 
 
 Muhammad Rafik, thus limited as to time, was unable 
 to accomplish much in Khurm. Azim Khan at his 
 approach fled to the Waziri Hills, and the Amir's orders 
 allowed no leisure for a pursuit. All that Muhammad 
 Rafik could do was to offer a large reward for the 
 capture of the rebel prince, hastily pacify the disturbed 
 tract, and then make the best of his way to the Amir's 
 camp. 
 
 He effected a junction with the Amir at Mukhar, 
 forty miles south of Ghazni, on the 28th of May, and 
 the united army reached Khilat-I-Ghilzai about the 3rd 
 cf June. By this time Jalal-ud-din had been joined 
 by the other confederate sardars, Amin Khan and 
 Sharif Khan, and from Julduk the entire Kandahar 
 force had advanced to a position within two miles of 
 Khilat-I-Ghllzai. A collision was therefore imminent, 
 and the chances seemed not to be in favour of the Amir ; 
 for, although the two belligerent parties were about equal 
 in point of numbers (say 1 2,000 men with 20 guns on 
 either side), the Kandahar troops were better fed than 
 those of Kabul, and their morale was unquestionably 
 superior. The battle took place at Kujhbaz on the 6th 
 of June. One wing of the Amir's army, under the 
 command of his eldest son, attacked Ami'n Khan's bat- 
 talions, while Rafik Khan led the other against Sharif 
 Khan. After four hours' fighting the Kandahar troops 
 had gained ground considerably, and were pressing their 
 
 D
 
 34 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 advantage with vigour. At this moment the Amir 
 dashed up to his son's side, and taunted him with inca- 
 pacity for command. Stung by such a reproof, the gallant 
 heir-apparent put himself at the head of his men, and led 
 a charge of desperate valour, which carried everything 
 before it In the mclde the prince found himself face to 
 face with Amfn Khdn. A hand-to-hand combat ensued 
 between the uncle and nephew, each giving and receiving 
 some severe sword cuts. Suddenly Amin Khdn drew 
 a pistol from his girdle and shot the heir-apparent through 
 the head. Five Kabulis at once avenged their leader, 
 and Ami'n Khdn fell, riddled with bullets, by the side 
 of his brother's son. This was the turning-point of the 
 battle. The Kandahar army wavered, broke, and fled, 
 and the day was gained for the Amfr. Eighteen guns 
 and many prisoners (including Azim Khan's eldest son, 
 Surwar Khdn) fell into the Amir's hands. But, in the 
 words of his own despatch from the field of battle, grief 
 for the loss of his son ' clouded all the joy of victor)\' 
 For four days the Kabul troops remained inactive, allow- 
 ing Sharif Khdn and Jaldl-ud-di'n to take back their 
 shattered force to Kandahar without molestation. 
 
 Nevertheless, the blow at Kujhbaz had been decisive. 
 When the Amir at length advanced on Kandahar, the 
 two rebel chiefs, with their principal adherents, came out 
 to meet him : all surrendered their swords, and prayed to 
 be forgiven. So, without any further contest, the Amfr 
 entered the city a conqueror on the 14th of June. We 
 may pause here for a moment to remark the rapidity 
 and completeness of the Amfr's success. A year ago 
 he had been encompassed by four powerful rivals, any 
 one of whom might have been backed to oust him from 
 his inheritance. Where were they now ? Afzal Khdn
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 35 
 
 a captive, Sharif Khdn a defeated suppliant for pardon, 
 Amfn Khdn slain, and Azim Khdn a hopeless refugee 
 among the hills on the Indian frontier. 
 
 Fortune, however, was not always to smile on the 
 Amir. Already her face was darkening for him on the 
 northern horizon, beyond * the broad, clay-laden, lone 
 Chorasmian stream.' Abdul Rahman, with the nucleus 
 of an invading army procured under the auspices of his 
 royal father-in-law, left the Bokhara Court on the 22nd 
 of June, and reached the banks of the Oxus about the 
 15th of July.^ Faiz Muhammad, the commandant of 
 Akcheh, first allowed him to cross the river unopposed, 
 and then openly declared In his favour. Fathi Mu- 
 hammad, the Governor of Balkh, hastened out of Takhta- 
 pul to retrieve Faiz Muhammad's treachery ; but the dis- 
 cipline of the Balkh troops, numbers of whom had be- 
 longed to Afzal Khdn's old army, went to the winds in 
 the presence of Afzal Khdn's son sounding in their ears 
 
 ^ In what strength Abdul Rahmdn re-entered Afghdnistdn is uncertain ; 
 but the constitution of his force suggests a reminiscence of Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold's 'Sohrab and Rustum :' 
 
 ' The Tartars of the Oxus, the King's guard, 
 First, with black sheepskin caps and with long spears ; 
 Large men, large steeds ; who from Bokhara come 
 And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares. 
 Next the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south, 
 The Tucas and the lances of Salore, 
 And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands ; 
 Light men, and on light steeds, who only drink 
 The acrid milk of camels and their wells. 
 And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came 
 From far, and a more doubtful service own'd ; 
 The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks 
 Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards 
 And close-set skull-caps ; and those wilder hordes 
 Who roam o'er Kipchak, and the northern waste, 
 Kalmuks and unkemp'd Kuzzaks, tribes who stray 
 Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes, 
 Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere.' 
 D 2
 
 36 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 the popular war-cry of rescue for Afzal Khdn, and ven- 
 geance on the perfidious Amir. They rose in mutiny, 
 compelled Fathi Muhammad to fly for his life to Kabul, 
 and en masse transferred their allegiance to the invader. 
 Thus Abdul Rahman, without a blow, found himself 
 master of all Balkh. Flushed with success, he began pre- 
 pai-ations for an immediate descent on Kabul, leaving the 
 security of his base to the charge of Faiz Muhammad. 
 
 Now, Faiz Muhammad was full brother to Wall 
 Muhammad, whom the Amir, when starting for Kan- 
 dahar, had appointed Governor of Kabul. And Wall 
 Muhammad's own conduct had of late not been altogether 
 above suspicion. The Amir, therefore, had good ground 
 to be alarmed for the safety of his capital. His measures, 
 however, were not equal to the occasion. Grief for the 
 loss of his heir had deadened his perception ; and instead 
 of himself hurrying to the scene of action, he remained 
 sunk in supine gloom at Kandahar, and deputed the duty 
 of defending Kabul to his second son, Ibrahim Khan, and 
 his well-tried general, Muhammad Rafik. 
 
 These joint commanders, bringing with them a large 
 portion of the Amfr's army, arrived at Kabul on the 
 5th of September, and Ibrahim Khdn immediately re- 
 lieved Wali Muhammad in the office of Governor of the 
 city. Ibrahim Khdn's position, with troops clamouring 
 for arrears of pay, an empty exchequer, and not an 
 adviser near him on whose loyalty he could rely, would 
 have tried the resources of the most fertile genius ; and 
 Ibrahim Khdn was essentially dull and irresolute. Plan 
 after plan for stemming Abdul Rahmdn's advance was 
 devised only to be laid aside ; detachments started for the 
 passes of the Hindu Khush only to be recalled ; and at 
 last all hope of any greater strategy than a stand at bay
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 37 
 
 before the walls of Kabul was abandoned. As if to omit 
 no chance of ensuring his own ruin, Ibrahim Khdn must 
 needs take this opportunity to give mortal offence to his 
 colleague, Muhammad Rafik. Twenty-four hours after 
 the receipt of the insult, Muhammad Rafik rode out of 
 the capital with a large band of retainers to cast in his 
 lot with Abdul Rahman. So dangerous a defection 
 moved the Amfr even in his lethargy at Kandahar. He 
 sent off reinforcements to Kabul under the command of 
 the now pardoned Sharif Khan ; not that Sharif Khan 
 was altogether trusted ; the Amir seems rather to have 
 hoped, than to have trusted, that he would act faithfully. 
 Sharif Khan reached the environs of Kabul on the 
 30th of November. 
 
 That same day Azfm Khdn, who for the last six 
 months had been condemned by bodily sickness and want 
 of funds to lie quiet in his mountain retreat among the 
 Waziris, made his appearance in the camp of Abdul 
 Rahman at Bamian, where for some time past he had 
 been eagerly expected. The aid in men or money 
 which Azim Khdn could bring to the cause of the in- 
 vaders was insignificant ; but his commanding ability and 
 the prestige of his name at once gave him the lead in their 
 councils, even to the supersession of Abdul Rahman. 
 
 Supposing Sharif Khan had been quite sincere in his 
 new attachment to the Amir, it still would have been 
 but a poor fight that he and Ibrahim Khan could make, 
 when pitted against such antagonists as Azim Khan and 
 Muhammad Rafik. But Sharif Khan had no intention 
 of fighting. He deserted to the enemy ten days after 
 his arrival. Ibrahim Khan, thus left completely in the 
 lurch, was fain to have recourse to negociation. And he 
 was more fortunate in his efforts than might have
 
 38 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 been expected. The bitter cold of December stood him 
 in good stead. The Balkh army, though now within ten 
 miles of Kabul, and numerically far superior to Ibrahim 
 Khdn's garrison, had suffered severely from frost and snow, 
 and, so far from being in a condition to undertake the 
 siege of a large city, it urgently needed rest and shelter ; 
 consequently Azim Khan was almost as desirous of an 
 armistice as Ibrahim Khdn could be. Between them it 
 was soon arranged that there should be a suspension of 
 hostilities until the 19th of February, during which time 
 the Balkh army was to remain undisturbed in winter 
 quarters in the neighbourhood of Kabul, and Ibrahim 
 Khan was to use his best endeavours to obtain the 
 release of Afzal Khan and the other state prisoners 
 whom the Amfr had in confinement at Kandahar. 
 
 This lull in the troubled affairs of Kabul was employed 
 by Sharif Khdn in a succession of extraordinary intrigues. 
 He began by deserting from the confederates back 
 again to Ibrahim Khan. Then he made a dash at Kabul 
 on his own account, and, being detected in the attempt, 
 was expelled the city. His wealth enabled him to 
 obtain readmission, and eventually he settled down as a 
 nominal supporter of Ibrahim Khan, maintaining at the 
 same time the closest relations with the enemy outside 
 the walls. Ibrahim Khdn, for his part, beset by treason 
 in the palace, mutiny and desertion among the troops, 
 and anarchy and famine throughout the city, spent the 
 interval in despatching repeated entreaties to his father 
 either to release the state prisoners without delay, or to 
 repair in person to Kabul for the rescue of the sinking 
 kingdom. Querulous and futile orders to act more ener- 
 getically against the foe were the only answer he ever 
 received. Nothing would induce the Amir to stir from
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 39 
 
 Kandahar. Buried there in the seclusion of inner cham- 
 bers, he admitted none but a few personal attendants 
 within his sight ; and if at intervals he broke silence, it 
 was only to wish, with a burst of Nero-like ferocity, that 
 he could cut the throat of every man in Kabul and Kan- 
 dahar, or to declare in utter despondency that he should 
 depart out of Afghanistan, and learn to forget his home 
 and people in England, Russia, or the holy land of Arabia. 
 One night he jumped into a tank, and began groping 
 under water in search of his dead son ; his guards rescued 
 him, but he remained insensible for some time afterwards. 
 Altogether, there was only too good ground for the 
 rumour then prevalent throughout all the bazaars of 
 Central Asia, Persia, and India, that Sher All of Af- 
 ghanistan was mad. 
 
 The 19th of February, 1866, the day fixed for the ter- 
 mination of the armistice, arrived, and Azi'm Khan sent a 
 herald into Kabul to notify to Ibrahim Khdn that, as the 
 state prisoners were still unreleased, hostilities must 
 recommence. As the Balkh army approached, Ibrahim 
 Khdn's outposts, one after another, were treacherously 
 surrendered; and on the 22nd the main body of his 
 troops abandoned their camp, and dispersed, some to 
 their homes, and many more to a career of brigandage. 
 Azi'm Khdn took possession of the city of Kabul on the 
 24th, Ibrahim Khan retiring with a handful of faithful 
 followers into the citadel of the Bala Hissar. After some 
 days' bombardment, a guarantee of personal safety and 
 freedom induced Ibrahim Khan to capitulate ; and Azi'm 
 Khan, now completely master of the whole capital, en- 
 tered the Bala Hissar under a salute of forty-three guns 
 on the 2nd of March, and held a public darbar in the 
 Royal Garden.
 
 40 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 The fall of Kabul electrified the Amir. Roused in 
 a moment from his disastrous stupor, he addressed him- 
 self to the recovery of his long-lost kingdom with a fire 
 and determination which showed that he was thoroughly 
 himself again. Not a trace of his late eclipse hung about 
 him, except the deep mourning which he still continually 
 wore. The districts of Kandahar, Farrah, and Herat 
 supplied him with troops and money, and from morning 
 to night through all the month of March he laboured at 
 the equipment of his army. 
 
 At Kabul, the allied princes, Azfm Khdn and Abdul 
 Rahman, showed no backwardness in preparing for the 
 encounter. Strategic points of obvious importance were 
 the historic fortress of Ghazni, on the road to Kandahar, 
 and the town of Shaikhdbad, lying midway between Kabul 
 and Ghazni. Troops were therefore promptly thrown 
 forward to besiege Ghaznf, while the bulk of the con- 
 federate army took up a strong position at Shaikhabad. 
 
 The Amfr arrived at Khilat-i-Ghilzai, with a force 
 of 9,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry, and 25 guns, about the 
 20th of April. At his approach the enemy's corps before 
 Ghaznf raised the siege of that city, and fell back on 
 their supports at Shaikhdbdd without firing a shot. The 
 Amir entered Ghaznf on the ist of May, and halted 
 there for a four days' rest. His star apparently was again 
 in the ascendant. Fathi Muhammad, of whom we last 
 heard as being driven out of Balkh by Abdul Rahman's 
 invasion, and who subsequently had obtained the govern- 
 ment of Jaldlabdd, was now in arms for the Amfr, 
 marching manfully against Kabul from the east, and 
 raising all the adjacent clans in his progress. But even 
 more important than Fathi Muhammad's diversion was 
 the jealousy and contention prevailing among the heads
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 41 
 
 of the hostile camp. Abdul Rahman could not forgive 
 Azfm Khdn for having jockeyed him out of the leader- 
 ship. Muhammad Rafik sighed for the superior power 
 and consideration he had formerly enjoyed in the Amir's 
 darbdr. And the minor Sarddrs, such as Wali Muham- 
 mad and Aslam Khdn, chafed under the limitations 
 newly imposed by Azfm Khdn on their rapacity and am- 
 bition, and were only biding their opportunity to change 
 sides. The universal expectation was that in the coming 
 struggle the Amir would win. Veering as the wind 
 blew, that shameless weathercock, Sharif Khan, briskly 
 turned his back on the confederates and faced about for 
 the Amir : a pity he was not acquainted with the old 
 French proverb, * II n'y a rien de certain hors I'impr^vu.' 
 Leaving the state prisoners, Afzal Khdn and Sarwar 
 Khdn, at Ghaznf, the Amir marched northwards on 
 the 5th of May. He came up with the enemy at Shaik- 
 hdbdd late in the afternoon of the 9th. A cannonade 
 was immediately opened between the two armies, which 
 continued without much result till nightfall. Azfm Khan, 
 with the last detachment sent out from Kabul, was still 
 nine miles to the rear of the confederate camp ; but, 
 warned by the distant booming of artillery, he pushed on 
 with all speed to join Abdul Rahmdn and Muhammad 
 Rafik, and arrived in time to take part in the critical 
 engagement of the following day. Early in the morning, 
 the Amfr led in person a general assault against the 
 entrenchments behind which the northern army lay. The 
 latter were kept within their defences, and ordered not to 
 throw away their fire. In spite of this wary generalship, 
 by which the assailants were more than once repulsed 
 with heavy loss, the impetuosity of the Amfr and of that 
 portion of his troops recruited from Herat and Kabul
 
 42 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LOUD LAWRENCE. 
 
 might yet have carried the day, when suddenly, at his 
 greatest need, the whole of the men from Kandahar 
 abandoned their position, and went over in a body to 
 Ismail Khdn, a prince who held high command in the 
 confederate army, and who, as being the late Amin 
 Khdn's son, had special claim to the attachment of all 
 Kandaharis. The Amir now saw that his chance was 
 gone. He turned his horse's head, and fled with four or 
 five hundred Herat horsemen towards Ghazni. Sharif 
 Khan accompanied his flight. Almost all the rest of the 
 southern army made their submission to Abdul Rahmdn. 
 The Amfr's guns, elephants, and entire camp equipage 
 became prize of war to the victors. 
 
 As soon as the issue of the battle became known at 
 Ghazni, the false-hearted garrison released the state 
 prisoners who had been committed to their charge, and 
 shut their gates in the face of the Amir. The fallen 
 king had to pass on without drawing rein. He halted at 
 last at a small town called Nannf, twelve miles further 
 south. Here the country people brought him provisions, 
 and he was joined by straggling relics of his defeated 
 force, to the number of 2,500 men Kabulis, Heratis, 
 and Kandaharis. He could put no trust in the Kan- 
 daharis ; but, calling the others round him, he told them, 
 in tones of more than usual dignity, that what had hap- 
 pened was God's will, and that he knew not what might 
 be in store for the future ; that he was satisfied with their 
 services ; but that any who wished had his free permis- 
 sion to return to Kabul. For himself, he added, he was 
 still Amir of Afghdnistdn, and would relinquish the 
 right only with his life. The next night when the moon 
 rose he resumed his flight towards Khilat-i-Ghilzai and 
 Kandahar.
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 43 
 
 The confederate army made no attempt to follow up 
 their victory. Only Abdul Rahmdn, with a thousand 
 horsemen, hurried forward immediately after the battle 
 to meet the liberated state prisoners, and bring them in 
 triumph to the camp. 
 
 With Afzal Khan's resurrection to political life, the 
 constitution of the northern faction passed into a new 
 phase. Both Abdul Rahmdn and Azim Khan were 
 content to compromise their mutual jealousies, and to 
 waive their respective pretensions to the leadership, by 
 recognising as a common superior this third prince, who 
 stood in the relation of father to the one, and elder and 
 full brother to the other. The subaltern chiefs had no 
 choice but to follow suit, and the order of the day was 
 very agreeable to the veteran battalions from Balkh. 
 By reason of these influences, Afzal Khan passed at a 
 bound from captivity to kingly power. He received the 
 congratulations and homage of the assembled Sardars at 
 Shaikhabad on the i6th of May, and then the camp was 
 broken up, and the whole army returned to Kabul. Afzal 
 Khan was installed in the Bdla Hissdr as Amir of 
 Afghdnistdn on the 21st of May amid much clangour of 
 kettle-drums, a general illumination of the city, and a 
 salute of one hundred guns. 
 
 In the meantime the Amir Sher All made good his 
 retreat to Kandahar. He was well received by the in- 
 habitants, and, nothing daunted by his recent defeat, he 
 forthwith set to work collecting a fresh army for the 
 renewal of the contest. He has been incessantly engaged 
 upon this task during the past year (1866), and talked with 
 confidence of being able to take the field again in two 
 months' time. All the south and west, including the 
 districts of Khilat-i-Ghilzai, Kandahar, Ghirishk, Farrah,
 
 44 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 and Herat, were still in his possession. Sharif Khdn 
 was with him, and provided the sinews of war liberally. 
 His second surviving son, Yakub Khdn,^ could be 
 reckoned on to furnish a stout contingent from Herat. 
 Half the chiefs in Kabul continued in secret correspond- 
 ence with him. And, above all, the reputation of being 
 the ally of the British Government was a tower of strength 
 to him ; for though, since the commencement of the strife, 
 innumerable proofs have been given of our determination 
 to let the Afghans fight out their own battles without 
 the grant of a single musket or rupee to one side or 
 the other. Sir John Lawrence has taken no less pains to 
 let it be known throughout the length and breadth of 
 Afghdnistan that England does not depart lightly from 
 her engagements, and that no pretender can hope for 
 any countenance from her, so long as the prince whom 
 she has once recognised as sovereign retains any material 
 hold upon the country. 
 
 At Kabul nothing of any importance occurred after the 
 installation of the rival Amir, Afzal Khdn. But the 
 prospects of the party have sensibly deteriorated in the 
 interval. They hold nothing now but Kabul and Ghazni 
 (1866) ; for Faiz Muhammad, who was last year left in 
 charge of Balkh when the rest of the confederates marched 
 
 ' This is the young chief who, penetrating Dr. Vambdry's disguise as a 
 pilgrim from Constantinople, denounced that courageous traveller as an 
 Englishman, The incident occurred in November 1863, and Vambdry, in 
 mentioning it, portrays his interlocutor as ' a good-humoured, inexperienced 
 child.' During the three eventful years that have since elapsed, Yakub 
 Kh4n has fairly won a title to higher estimation. Not only has he securely 
 maintained himself in his difficult position as Governor of a newly-conquered 
 frontier city, but, whenever called on, he has always been able to spare 
 troops for his father's assistance. The fact is, the political atmosphere of 
 Afghanistan, surcharged with vicissitude and peril, acts as a forcing-house 
 on the intellects of the young Barukzais : they shoot up into statesmen and 
 soldiers before they have ceased to be boys.
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 45 
 
 to the capture of the capital, took advantage of the crisis 
 to declare that he holds that province independent of any 
 master. Afzal Khan himself, demoralised by his long 
 captivity, yielded to the temptation of sensual enjoyments, 
 and from four in the afternoon till next morning was too in- 
 toxicated to be seen by anyone. All power centred in the 
 hands of Azim Khdn, who ruled with a tight hand, feared 
 by many and loved by none. Abdul Rahman especially 
 chafed under his uncle's arrogance, and it was even 
 reported that he had quitted Kabul in disgust, at the 
 head of a force with which he meant to wrest Balkh from 
 Faiz Muhammad's grasp. 
 
 While the relations of the British Government with 
 the Amir Sher Ali remain, as we have already indi- 
 cated, on the old footing of mutual trust and goodwill, 
 the attitude Sir John Lawrence holds towards the oppo- 
 site faction at Kabul is equally clear and simple, though 
 at times it has been obscured by Azim Khdn's pertinacious 
 efforts to lure us from our fidelity to the Amir Sher All's 
 cause. Every wile within the compass of Azim Khdn's 
 crafty character has been exhausted in this attempt. His 
 first move, essayed immediately after the capture of the 
 capital in March last, was to work on the fears of the 
 Indian gentleman who, though a mere news-writer, hold- 
 ing no diplomatic powers of any kind, is, after a fashion, 
 the representative of the Governor-General at the Court 
 of Kabul. In full darbar, this Munshi being present, 
 Azim Khdn made it a practice to rail in unmeasured lan- 
 guage against the inhospitable and ungrateful English, 
 and to declare his intention of seeking an alliance through 
 Bokhara with Russia. The grudge of which he made such 
 parade, he was far from really feeling ; he knew well that 
 our policy, during his sojourn in British territory, in
 
 46 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE, 
 
 limiting the number of his followers, and insisting that he 
 should not abuse the privilege of asylum by intrigues 
 across the border, had proceeded, not from any lack of 
 goodwill to himself, but from a sense of duty towards 
 the established government of Afghdnistdn. His two 
 youngest sons were in fact still in the enjoyment of 
 British hospitality and protection. But he calculated 
 that by an affectation of deep resentment he might pos- 
 sibly entrap us into a policy of conciliation terminating in 
 actual alliance. And the ruse was not a bad one. With 
 the British Munshf it entirely succeeded. Fired with 
 the ambition of doing a brilliant stroke of diplomacy for 
 his employers, the Munshi opened negociations with 
 Azi'm Khdn, and the latter, after some show of coy reluc- 
 tance, consented to make overtures of amity to the 
 English Government. Sir John Lawrence, however, was 
 not so easily intimidated or hoodwinked. Under his 
 instructions, Azi'm Khdn's letter was answered by the 
 officer to whom it was addressed (the Commissioner on 
 the Peshdwar frontier), in that tone of unmeaning courtesy 
 which flowery Persian is well adapted to convey ; and the 
 Munshi received a severe reprimand, coupled with a 
 warning that the next time he stepped beyond his letter- 
 writing role he would infallibly be recalled to India. In 
 justice, however, to the Munshf, it must be added that 
 he was not the only one on whom Azfm Khdn's 
 vapouring imposed. The rumour of Russian influences 
 in the Kabul darbdr spread through Meshed to Teheran, 
 and the tale, as told in Persia, was that Abdul Rahmdn 
 had obtained, through the mediation of Bokhara, recog- 
 nition from the Russian Government as Amfr of Af- 
 ghdnistdn, on condition of vassalage to the Emperor 
 Alexander. The credulous Persians accepted this story.
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 47 
 
 ignorant of the intense jealousy with which every native 
 statesman in Central Asia views the advance of 
 Russia ; ignorant also that for ten months past Abdul 
 Rahman had not been north of the Oxus ; and forgetful 
 that Bokhara, through whom the unnatural alliance was 
 said to have been cemented, was at that very time locked 
 in a death-struggle with the battalions of the Czar. Azim 
 Khdn renewed his manoeuvres as soon as the successful 
 issue of the battle of Shaikhdbdd left him once more at 
 liberty to play on the Munshi's feelings. This time he 
 alternated direct offers of assistance with threats of down- 
 right war. First he pointed out the expediency of an 
 alliance between England and Bokhara against Russia, 
 and volunteered his services as a go-between to bring 
 about the arrangement. And then again he would drop 
 hints of having received an embassy from the Akhund of 
 Swat (that mysterious * old man of the mountain ' on the 
 Indian frontier) urging him to proclaim a religious war 
 against infidels in general and the English in particular. 
 But his promises and his threats were alike thrown away. 
 Sir John Lawrence would not hold up a finger for 
 Bokhara ; and as for Azim Khan presuming to fly in 
 the face of England and lead a fanatical descent upon 
 Peshdwar, at a time when the Amir Sher All was still 
 unconquered at Kandahar, and Faiz Muhammad in open 
 insurrection at Takhtapul, the idea was simply laughable. 
 Foiled at all points, Azim Khan was in the end obliged to 
 have recourse to a more straightforward proceeding. He 
 caused a letter to be written in the name of the titular 
 Amir Afzal Khdn to the Governor-General, making a 
 plain demand for the friendship of the British Govern- 
 ment. Sir John Lawrence's reply was as follows :
 
 48 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 ' To His Highness Sarddr Muhammad Afzal Khan, Wali of 
 Kabul, dated Simla, i lih Jidy, 1866. 
 
 * I have received your Highness's friendly letter, giving an 
 account of late events in Afghanistdn. It has been to me a 
 source of sincere sorrow that misfortunes such as your Highness 
 describes have befallen the great house of the Barukzais, and 
 that calamities so heavy and protracted have been experienced 
 by the people. It was, and still continues to be, the hearty 
 desire of the British Government that the Afghdn nation should 
 remain under the strong and united rule of the Barukzai family, 
 and that this family, endowed by the Creator of the world with 
 wisdom to be at peace among themselves, should be respected 
 both in their own country and by surrounding nations. Where- 
 fore it has been a source of distress and anxiety of mind to me 
 that strife and division have arisen among the members of your 
 Highness's family. 
 
 * My friend ! your Highness alludes to the friendship which 
 existed between your Highness's renowned father and the 
 British Government, and your Highness says that from this 
 Government your Highness expects similar treatment. It is the 
 earnest wish of the British Government that that friendship 
 should be perpetuated. But while I am desirous that the 
 alliance between the two Governments should be firm and 
 lasting, it is incumbent on me to tell your Highness that it 
 would be inconsistent with the fame and reputation of the British 
 Government to break off its alliance with Amfr Sher All Khdn, 
 who has given to it no offence, so long as he retains his authority 
 and power over a large portion of Afghdnistdn. That Amfr still 
 rules in Kandahar and in Herat. 
 
 ' My friend ! the relations of this Government are with the 
 actual rulers of Afghdnistdn. If your Highness is able to con- 
 solidate your Highness's power in Kabul, and is sincerely 
 desirous of being a friend and ally of the British Government, I 
 shall be ready to accept your Highness as such ; but I cannot 
 break the existing engagements with Amfr Sher AH Khdn, 
 and I must continue to treat him as the ruler of that portion of 
 Afghdnistdn over which he retains control. Sincerity and fair 
 dealing induce me to write thus plainly and openly to your 
 Highness.*
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LA WRENCE. 49 
 
 It remains to be seen what effect this frank avowal of 
 a preference for the Amfr Sher All will have in the 
 Kabul darbdr. Possibly Azi'm Khdn may yet, in des- 
 peration, make those advances to Russia which hitherto 
 he has only bragged of making. But we doubt his 
 doing so ; and we are confident that, if he does, he will 
 gain nothing by his motion beyond fair words. The 
 Russian outposts, even if they had reached Samarcand, 
 would still be 500 miles from Kabul, and the Czar, for 
 the present at any rate, seems neither inclined nor pre- 
 pared to push a man beyond the Oxus (1866). 
 
 Such, then, is the present condition of Afghdnistdn, 
 and of England's relations with the Barukzai chiefs con- 
 tending for her favour. The State which, after Afghan- 
 istan, has the best claim on English attention, is Bokhara; 
 but before we cross the Oxus to peer into the field of 
 Russia's principal activity, it may be worth while to spare 
 a glance sideways at Chinese Tartary. This region, lying 
 east of Afghanistan and north of the British dependency 
 of Kashmir, Is separated from the latter by the almost 
 impassable barrier of the Kuen Liin Mountains, and 
 from the former by the Pamir Steppe an extensive 
 tract of elevated table-land, known also as the Bam-i- 
 duniya, or Roof of the World, and occupied by the 
 black tents of the pastoral and freebooting Kirghizzes. 
 The vast level valley of Chinese Tartary, irrigated by 
 rivers and canals, and rich in various minerals, includ- 
 ing gold and coal, contains four provinces Kashgar, 
 Yarkand, Aksu, and Khoten. The population is com- 
 posed for the most part of a mixed breed, half Kirghiz 
 and half Persian ; besides these there are Kalmucks, 
 Chinese, and a race called Ti'inghanls, who, though by 
 extraction Chinese, arc by religion Muhammadans: all,
 
 so THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. \ 
 
 as a general rule, occupying fixed habitations and follow- 
 ing agricultural pursuits. On Kashgar, which from its 
 geographical position is marked out as a great centre 
 of future trade, the Czar's Government has long fixed 
 a covetous gaze ; and although the aggrandisement of 
 our powerful neighbour in this quarter Is not likely to 
 react injuriously on the British tenure of India, we must 
 still confess to a certain interest in the progress of 
 events, all steadily tending to pave the way for Russia's 
 appearance at the northern foot of the Kdrd Koram 
 Pass. Early in 1863 the Tunghdnis of Khoten rose 
 upon their Chinese masters, massacred numbers, and 
 compelled the remainder to become converts to Islam. 
 Their example was soon followed by the Muham- 
 madans of Yarkand, Aksu, and other cities, and in 
 this way the rule which the Court of Pekin had exer- 
 cised for a century was suddenly annihilated : Chinese 
 Tartary is Chinese now only in name. Kashgar has 
 fallen into the possession of a party of Kipchak refugees 
 from Kokand, who were driven from their home across 
 the mountains in the year 1865, when the King 
 of Bokhara overran Kokand and set up a nominee 
 of his own in the government, by way of counterblow 
 for the Russian capture of Tashkend. Yarkand is In a 
 state of utter anarchy (1866), the refugees from Kokand 
 and Andijan contending for the mastery with the native 
 Tunghdnis. Khotdn alone seems not to have suf- 
 fered from the expulsion of the Chinese : it boasts a 
 settled government, conducted despotically, but not un- 
 wisely, by the old chief who originated the revolution. 
 This Khdn Bddshdh, as he styles himself, has recently 
 been interchanging communications with the British 
 Government. Hearing last autumn that there was an
 
 [ THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 51 
 
 English officer (Mr. W. H. Johnson, of the Trigono- 
 metrical Survey) employed on scientific investigations 
 along the Kdshmfr frontier, he sent him an invitation 
 to come to Ilchi, the capital of the province. Mr. 
 Johnson, regardless of the fate which met the unfor- 
 tunate M. de Schlagentweit at Kashgar in 1857, boldly 
 accepted the invitation on his own responsibility. He 
 met with a cordial welcome from the Khan Bddshdh, 
 and after a stay of sixteen days (during which the 
 people of Yarkand sent a deputation to him entreating 
 him to come and be their king so wearied are they 
 of their intestine strife and confusion !) he^ returned 
 over the mountains in safety to Kdshmir. The 
 Khoten chief's object had been to obtain troops and 
 arms from India wherewith to defend himself against 
 the much-dreaded encroachments of Russia, and failing 
 to find his hopes in any way furthered by Mr. Johnson's 
 visit, he despatched a special envoy to the Governor- 
 General of India. The envoy arrived at Calcutta in 
 
 ^ Mr. Johnson's Report (No. 102, dated 22nd April, 1866, *to the address 
 of the Superintendent of the Trigonometrical Survey ') has recently been 
 brought under the attention of the Royal Geographical Society. But there 
 are two odd circumstances connected with Mr. Johnson's visit, which, as 
 they find no mention in that very interesting paper, we may casually notice 
 here. In the first place, a Persian Jew sought him out, and, professing to 
 have authority for the purpose, offered to provide him employment as a 
 Russian spy. And, secondly, Mr. Johnson imagines that the Islamised 
 Hindu whom he found at Khoten in command of the Khd^n Bddshdh's 
 infantry, is capable of identification as the infamous Ndnd Sdhib of Cawn- 
 pur. Mr. Johnson appears to have jumped to this belief from altogether 
 insufficient premises, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that he 
 is right. There is good reason for doubting whether the report of the Ndnd's 
 death, circulated in 1858, had any foundation ; it seems more probable that 
 he escaped from Nepdl into Thibet. And if he reached Thibet, he certainly 
 might have wandered on into Chinese Tartary. We may also take this 
 opportunity to observe that a valuable map of Central Asia, based on the 
 most recent surveys that have been made by British and Russian officers, 
 has just been issued by Colonel Walker, R.E., F.R.S., from the office of the 
 Indian Trigonometrical Survey. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 February 1866, bearing proposals for a defensive alliance 
 against Russia and China, and begging that artillery- 
 men, English officers to drill the native troops, and 
 artificers skilled in casting guns and making swords 
 and muskets, might accompany him back to Khoten ; 
 he was also very desirous to obtain the aid of Euro- 
 pean engineers competent to work the valuable mines of 
 his master's country. But the requests of the poor Khan 
 Bddshdh were not preferred at a favourable time. Other 
 viceroys might perhaps have been dazzled at the sight of 
 potentates from the end of the earth suppliant at their 
 footstool ; but Sir John Lawrence was used to strange 
 embassies of this kind. Already more than once it had 
 been his lot, either as Chief Commissioner of the Panjdb 
 or in his present more exalted capacity, to give audience 
 to semi-barbarian deputies from Central Asia, entreating 
 to be saved from the clutches of the all-absorbing Riis; 
 and to every such appeal, even though some of them came 
 before him during the excitement of the Crimean war, he 
 had, from motives of policy, persistently turned a deaf 
 ear. It was not likely, therefore, that he would take 
 other than a practical view of this latest application. 
 He dismissed the unlucky envoy with a civil but abso- 
 lute refusal on all points. 
 
 Turning our back now on Chinese Tartary, we may 
 proceed in a north-westerly direction over the Alai 
 Mountains into the Mdwar-u-Nahr, or the territory 
 between the rivers Oxus and Jaxartes, belonging to 
 Kokand and Bokhara, In the immediate vicinity, but 
 on the left bank of the Oxus, is Khiva. The three 
 Usbeg lie together, as it were in a semicircle, with Bok- 
 hara southernmost in the concave centre of the arc, 
 Khiva at the north-western extremity, and Kokand at
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 53 
 
 the north-eastern. All three, but especially Khiva and 
 Kokand, retain an independent existence only so long 
 as Russia pleases (1866). Two hundred navigable miles 
 of the Oxus are all that separate Khiva from the Rus- 
 sian flotilla on the Aral Sea ; and Kokand, at the other 
 extremity, is not a hundred miles from the large Russian 
 garrison at Tashkend. Bokhara, if it had behaved with 
 common prudence, might have remained unmolested for 
 some time to come ; but, unfortunately, the King of Bok- 
 hara pretends to rights of sovereignty acquired by recent 
 war over a great portion of the Kokand principality, in- 
 cluding the town of Tashkend, and he has not had the 
 sense to accept the inexorable logic of facts by which 
 Tashkend, from being Kokanian, has become Russian. 
 
 In July 1865, a month after the Russians had 
 captured the city, the King sent in an arrogant letter 
 to General Tcherniayeff, the military governor of Tur- 
 kistdn, calling on him to withdraw from Tashkend or 
 accept the alternative of a general war to be waged in 
 the name of the faith by all the Muhammadans of Central 
 Asia. At the same time he marched an army into the 
 province of Kokand, expelled the chiefs of the Kipchak 
 tribe from the capital, and delivered the government to 
 Khuda Ydr Khdn, a prince who, he thought, might be 
 trusted to keep Russian diplomacy at arm's length. 
 These inimical demonstrations were met at Orenburg 
 by the detention of a caravan of Bokhara traders. The 
 King then in turn retaliated on a Russian caravan. As 
 if to hedge, however, against a rather doubtful issue, he 
 qualified his challenge by despatching an ambassador 
 named Najum-ud-din Khan with valuable presents to 
 St. Petersburg, to demand the release of the Bokhara 
 subjects. He also addressed a letter to General Kry-
 
 54 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 janovski, the Governor-General of Orenburg, informing 
 that officer of the despatch of the embassy, and propos- 
 ing that, until the Czar's reply should be received, the 
 Russian troops at Tashkend should not cross the river 
 Chirchik. This endeavour to temporise altogether mis- 
 carried. The Russian general was in no mood to recog- 
 nise the King's assumption of lordship over Kokanian 
 territory. Besides, the rich transfluvial fields were really 
 wanted as a means of providing grain for the garrison of 
 Tashkend. A tract, therefore, of about twenty miles 
 square on the southern bank of the Chirchik, including 
 the forts of Kiriuchi, Niazbek, and Chinaz, was promptly 
 occupied by the Russian troops, without any regard 
 for the wishes of the Bokhara darbdr. Nor did the 
 embassy to St. Petersburg at first obtain any better 
 treatment. Najum-ud-din was put under restraint 
 as a hostage at Fort Cazala, and kept there several 
 weeks. 
 
 All at once a change came over the spirit of the Rus- 
 sian policy towards Bokhara. Perhaps the generals at 
 Orenburg and Tashkend on reconsideration concluded 
 that it would be both desirable and possible to convert 
 Bokhara into a friend ; perhaps their natural restlessness 
 felt the check of the Emperor's sincere desire for a period 
 of repose on the southern frontier. But whatever may 
 have been the cause, the defiant attitude of Russia was 
 transformed towards the close of the year into one of 
 conciliation. Notwithstanding that Russian traders were 
 still in confinement at Bokhara, and that the suspension 
 of traffic between the two countries continued in full 
 force, Najum-ud-dfn was released from Cazala and 
 allowed to proceed on his way through Orenburg to St. 
 Petersburg ; and in November a Russian officer, with
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 55 
 
 seven European attendants, arrived at Bokhara charged 
 with a mission to remonstrate against the King's pro- 
 ceedings in Kokand, and to make arrangements for a 
 treaty of amity and peace. Now, considering the 
 dubious character of the relations at the time subsist- 
 ing between Bokhara and Russia, and the notoriously 
 small sanctity which any ambassador's person has in the 
 eyes of a Central Asiatic despot, we doubt whether 
 General Tcherniayeff was altogether justified in staking 
 several valuable lives and all the prestige of the Imperial 
 Government upon the chances of the King of Bokhara's 
 temper. At any rate, the measure turned out ill. And 
 if there is any truth in the assertion of the ' Journal de 
 St. Petersbourg,' that General Tcherniayeff's action in 
 this matter was precipitated by the receipt of intelligence 
 that there were English emissaries at Bokhara intriguing 
 to secure an alliance prejudicial to Russian interests, no 
 better proof could be found that Russia no less than Eng- 
 land might be saved from many a blunder, if on the com- 
 mon ground of Central Asia the political intentions of either 
 party were more clearly understood by the other. There 
 was no foundation whatever for the Russian general's 
 apprehensions. Since the day in June 1842, when our ill- 
 fated countrymen, Stoddart and Conolly, were murdered 
 by a former king, there has been no English agent in- 
 vested with diplomatic authority of any kind at the Court 
 of Bokhara, nor, so far as the present affords a guide for 
 the future, is it likely that there ever will be one. India, 
 whatever her rulers may once have thought, has neither 
 part nor lot in Bokhara. The errand of the Russian 
 ambassador, M. Struve, who for some time past had been 
 employed in the double capacity of astronomer and poli- 
 tical agent on the southern frontier, was, so far as it might
 
 56 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 be intended to counteract the imaginary machinations of 
 the Anglo-Indian Government, as unnecessary as for 
 the reasons above-mentioned, it assuredly was hazardous. 
 The King of Bokhara, uninfluenced in the sHghtest 
 degree by England, rejected the Russian approaches, 
 and announced his determination to keep the ambas- 
 sador a prisoner at Bokhara until his own representative, 
 Najum-ud-di'n, should return in safety from Orenburg. 
 
 General Tcherniayeff, on learning this result, threat- 
 ened that unless the members of the Russian mission 
 were at once voluntarily set free, he would come and 
 deliver them by force. Still, the Bokhara Court persisted 
 in its contumacy ; whereupon the Russian general pro- 
 ceeded to put his threat into execution. The troops with 
 which he started from Tashkend at the beginning of 
 February 1866, numbered 14 companies of infantry, 600 
 Cossacks, and 16 guns, with 1,200 camels carrying pro- 
 visions for a month. On the i6th of February, as he 
 neared Juzak, a town fifty miles north of Samarcand, the 
 King of Bokhara sent him a letter dated from Samar- 
 cand, consenting to yield up the captives, and assuring 
 him that they had already started from Bokhara, and 
 would reach Samarcand on the 17th. There was no 
 truth in this communication ; for, as we shall presently 
 show, the envoy and his suite were still detained at Bok- 
 hara. It had the effect, however, of inducing General 
 Tcherniayeff to halt for a time where he was. On the 
 third day, finding that his expectations of obtaining sup- 
 plies of firewood and forage by peaceable purchase from 
 the inhabitants of Juzak were vain, and that the troops 
 were suffering severely from the want of these neces- 
 saries, he sent out a small column, composed of two 
 companies of infantry, 400 Cossacks, and two guns,
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 57 
 
 towards the outskirts of the town, with instructions to 
 help themselves to wood and hay, but not to use their 
 arms unless forced into an action. The contingency he 
 was anxious to avoid came to pass. The Bokhariot gar- 
 rison of Juzak gave battle to the foraging party, and 
 drove it back to camp with the loss of six men killed and 
 nineteen wounded. This disaster, taken with the insuf- 
 ficiency of his commissariat arrangements, compelled 
 General Tcherniayeff, on the 23rd of February, to begin 
 a retrograde movement towards Fort Chinaz, without 
 further waiting for the promised surrender of the Rus- 
 sian prisoners. For the first few miles of the retreat, 
 swarms of Bokhariot horsemen hung about his flanks and 
 rear, but occasional round shot kept them at a respectful 
 distance, and on the 26th the Russian field force reached 
 the banks of the Jaxartes in safety after an absence of 
 about three weeks. This account of the bootless expedi- 
 tion to Juzak we have taken from the columns of the 
 'Journal de St. Petersbourg,' and we see no reason to 
 question its candour and general correctness. The re- 
 ports which have reached India direct from Central Asia 
 are so manifestly exaggerated that we cannot afford them 
 any credence. 
 
 Meanwhile, as may readily be imagined, the position 
 of the unfortunate Russians at Bokhara had not been 
 improved by General Tcherniayeff's ineffectual effort to 
 enforce their liberation. Up to the ist of February the 
 ambassador and his suite had been kept within the four 
 walls of their residence, but otherwise they had encoun- 
 tered no indignity. On that day they were requested to 
 deliver up their arms. They refused. In the evening 
 the city magistrate surrounded the house with troops, and 
 repeated the demand. The small party of Russians, with
 
 53 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 more gallantry than prudence, declined to submit, and in 
 the fracas which ensued, the magistrate and five other 
 Bokhariots were severely wounded, and one of the pug- 
 nacious diplomatists was hurt. Attracted by the disturb- 
 ance, the populace assembled in crowds about the house, 
 and clamoured for the destruction of the infidels. The 
 Russians were then in imminent danger of being torn 
 to pieces by the mob. They escaped this fate by at 
 last making timely surrender to the constituted autho- 
 rities. The following day they were sent off manacled in 
 a cart to Samarcand, where the King had already taken 
 up his quarters at the head of a considerable army. 
 
 On these events becoming known at St. Petersburg, 
 the Czar, we believe, expressed his strong disapproval of 
 the line of conduct pursued by his enterprising lieu- 
 tenants ; he despatched a special aide-de-camp to Oren- 
 burg to insist on the adoption of a less ambitious policy ; 
 and both General Kryjanovski at the central seat of 
 government, and General Tcherniayeff in Turkistdn, 
 were recalled from their respective commands. The 
 months of March and April appear to have been spent 
 by the King of Bokhara in braggart proclamations of a 
 religious war, so that the Russian outposts south of the 
 Chirchik were kept in a state of continual alarm. On 
 the 1 2th of April a reconnoitring party, which General 
 Romanovski, the successor of General Tcherniayeff, had 
 sent out twelve miles on the road to Khojend, encoun- 
 tered a body of some 400 Bokhariot horsemen, escorting 
 large flocks of sheep towards Oratepe. The Bokhariots 
 were routed, and their sheep, to the number of 15,000 
 head, carried off as prize of war by the Russians. Beyond 
 this insignificant skirmish there seems to have been little 
 pr no fighting in April. By the commencement of the
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LA WRENCE. 59- 
 
 following month the Russian preparations for retrieving 
 the laurels lost by General Tcherniayeff were complete. 
 
 According to the Russian official account of the 
 campaign, the estimate of 53,000 men given by the 
 ' Levant Herald ' as the strength of General Romanovski's 
 army proves to be a considerable exaggeration. The 
 battle in which the King of Bokhara was routed took 
 place on the 20th of May ; and the Russian troops en- 
 gaged in it consisted only of a detachment from Fort 
 Chinaz, numbering 14 companies of infantry, 500 Cossacks, 
 and 20 guns. The Bokhariots were totally defeated ; all 
 their artillery was captured, and the King fled in panic 
 to Samarcand. The Russian loss was twelve men 
 wounded. The scene of the engagement was Idjar a 
 place not, as we had been led to believe, on the road to 
 Juzak and Samarcand, but on the left bank of the Jaxartes, 
 thirty miles above Chinaz. From Idjar General Ro- 
 manovski, reinforced by a detachment from Fort Kiriuchi, 
 advanced up the river, and captured, on the 26th May, 
 Naou, and afterwards the important city of Khojend, 
 thereby completely isolating Kokand from the sister state 
 of Bokhara, and establishing eighty miles of the Jaxartes, 
 from Chinaz to Khojend, as a frontier in advance of 
 Tashkend. At this point the expedition terminated. 
 The Russian envoy, M. Struve (who seems to have been 
 detained at Samarcand until after the battle of Idjar), was 
 given up, and the King of Bokhara sued for peace. Our 
 latest intelligence is that M. Struve has returned to the 
 scene of his seven months' captivity in order to settle 
 what the terms shall be, and that the terrified King of 
 Bokhara has despatched envoys to Calcutta and Con- 
 stantinople, in the vain hope of obtaining help from the 
 English and Turkish Governments (1866).
 
 6o I'HE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 After the extraordinary stories which have appeared 
 in the Indian newspapers of the capture of Samarcand, 
 and the presence of Russian troops as far south as Shdhr- 
 i-sabz and Karshi, it is curious to find that General 
 Romanovski's operations were confined to the valley of 
 the Jaxartes, and that he has throughout been separated 
 from Samarcand by about 1 50 miles of country, including 
 a long waterless steppe and the Ak Tau Mountains. 
 Russia clearly has no present wish to annex any part 
 of Bokhara. Her next appropriations will probably be 
 Kokand and Andijan, so as to reach the Thian Shan 
 Mountains south of Lake Issyk Kul, and give the pro- 
 vince of Turkistdn its natural development over that 
 space between the meridians of 68 and 76, in which 
 the most recent Russian maps leave the boundary of the 
 empire still a blank. They are based on reports received 
 through Afghanistan a channel which, under existing 
 circumstances, cannot be altogether depended on for 
 either fulness or accuracy of intelligence. The Afghdn 
 chiefs, wrapped up in their own internal quarrels, have 
 no leisure to inquire about the blaze in their neighbour's 
 dwelling ; and what little news dribbles down spon- 
 taneously to Kabul, Azim Khdn takes good care to 
 manipulate before passing on to the Indian Munshi. 
 The party now in power at Kabul is, as we have already 
 explained, bent on enticing the British Government into 
 an alliance ; and in this spirit it is Azfm Khdn's regular 
 practice to paint the progress of Russia in portentous 
 colours, and scatter mysterious insinuations as to her 
 widespread plots for the conquest of India. 
 
 Is it then potent still, this phantom of a Russian in- 
 vasion, that Azfm Khdn should choose to conjure with 
 it ? Are Englishmen still haunted by the vague alarm
 
 ; THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 6i 
 
 which a quarter of a century ago hurried us into the 
 blunder, guih, and miserable discomfiture of the Afghdn 
 war ? We answer that the old feeling still undoubtedly 
 survives in the minds of many of our countrymen. The 
 class fortunately is more numerous in India than in 
 England. It includes, besides ' the panic-mongers of the 
 press, ' military men whose professional instincts lead 
 them to snuff the battle afar off, and to mistrust our 
 existing frontier line, whether along the Indus or at the 
 foot of the Khaibar and Bolan Passes beyond that river, 
 as false to the principles of the art of war. These are 
 they who, to prove the possibility of invasion, cite the 
 conquests of the Macedonian Alexander, of Timur, and 
 of Nddir Shdh, and who, in the so-called will of Peter 
 the Great, the traditional policy of his successors, the 
 treaty with Napoleon at Tilsit, and the immense develop- 
 ment southward which the Siberian boundary has un- 
 doubtedly received, find cumulative evidence of Russia's 
 determination to make the possibility an accomplished 
 fact. According to these alarmists, what we have to 
 expect is as follows : In a very short time the Russians 
 will have military colonies on the Oxus at Charjui and 
 at Takhtapul. From Charjui troops will be thrown 
 across the desert to Merv, and from Merv the fertile 
 banks of the Murgab offer easy access to Herat. Simul- 
 taneously a smaller column will proceed through Takhta- 
 pul and the defiles of the Hindu Khush to occupy 
 Kabul. Persia, of course, will act in alliance with the 
 invaders, and at Herat the force from Charjui will be 
 joined by large Russo-Persian reinforcements marching 
 in from the shores of the Caspian Sea and the districts of 
 Khorasan. Some delay must occur at Herat, for that 
 city, as the key of the position, will have to be fortified
 
 62 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 and provisioned, and a chain of smaller forts on either 
 side will have to be established, stretching as far as 
 Takhtapul in the north and Lake Seistan in the south. 
 But the interval will be well redeemed by disarming the 
 hostility and securing the co-operation of the Afghdns. 
 The darling dream of the whole nation is to plunder 
 India, and Russia will offer them that guerdon, and the 
 restoration of their old provinces of Peshdwar and Kash- 
 mir to boot. Then some fine morning in early spring 
 unless timely measures of prevention are adopted on a 
 scale far above the present Government's capacity to 
 comprehend or courage to undertake forty thousand 
 disciplined troops of Russia and Persia, in conjunction 
 with a countless horde of wild Afghan auxiliaries, will 
 be launched, resistless as an avalanche, upon the doomed 
 plains of the southern El Dorado, and there at once is 
 an end of our Eastern empire. Language like this is, 
 we can assure our readers, by no means uncommon in 
 India ; and the practical remedies recommended by such 
 speakers extend to an immediate reoccupation of all 
 Afghdnistdn. 
 
 Politicians of another and far higher stamp, while they 
 see clearly that any immediate or even proximate danger 
 of a Russian invasion is chimerical, nevertheless look for- 
 ward with uneasiness to the inevitable day when the 
 Russian and English empires shall be conterminous, 
 and the presence of a first-class European state on our 
 border shall have power at any time to fan into a flame 
 those elements of sporadic disaffection which of necessity 
 are ever smouldering in any country won and held, as 
 India was and is, by an alien sword. For political 
 reasons of obvious weight, they believe that it would be 
 in the last degree dangerous, should war arise, to have
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LA WRENCE. ^z 
 
 India as a battle-field; and on grounds of military strategy, 
 they are convinced that, sooner or later, we ought to occupy 
 certain positions beyond our present frontier as outworks 
 of the empire. Therefore, advancing from Jacobdbad, 
 which now is our uttermost station on the Scinde border, 
 they would proceed up the Boldn Pass through Shawl 
 into Afghanistdn, and, leaving Kabul and Ghazni un- 
 touched, they would take possession of Kandahar and 
 eventually also of Herat, and establish at these two points 
 fortresses of exceeding strength, to be to India what the 
 Quadilateral has been to Venetia, strongholds such as no 
 invader would dream of trying to mask. And the long 
 process of a regular siege would, It is argued, be an almost 
 hopeless undertaking in consequence of the natural poverty 
 of the country, the distance of the enemy from their base, 
 and the previous destruction of the crops by the besieged. 
 These opinions deserve to be received with the greatest 
 respect, for they have been advocated not only by high 
 authorities like Sir Justin Shell and the late General John 
 Jacob, but also, we believe, by Sir Henry Rawlinson, who, 
 besides his large general experience of war and policy in 
 the East, stdLiids facile priiiceps, as Dr. Vambery has justly 
 testified, among all who profess a special knowledge of the 
 present condition of Central Asia. 
 
 The majority of the British public appear to favour 
 a third view of the question. Under the inspiration of a 
 generous optimism, rather than from any discriminate 
 appreciation of the dangers to which the Indian empire is 
 exposed, they scout Russophobia as an exploded fal- 
 lacy. In the interests of humanity they rejoice that a 
 dayspring of Christian civilization is spreading through 
 the horrible blackness of barbarism In which Central Asia 
 has hitherto been wrapped ; and they positively grudge
 
 64 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 the Interval that must yet elapse before India can have a 
 neighbour whose dealings with her will be conducted on 
 the clear principles of European good faith, and whose 
 settled government will offer new openings for trade. 
 Their vision of the future is the Cossack and the Sepoy 
 ly.ng down like lambs together on the banks of the Indus. 
 Lord Lawrence, the Governor-General of India, has 
 been steeped too long in the rough practice of actual 
 statesmanship to have much faith in the advent of that 
 political millennium when 
 
 ' The common sense of most shall keep a fretful realm in awe, 
 And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.' 
 
 But his opinions with respect to Russia, so far as they 
 can be inferred from his public acts, tend clearly towards 
 the conclusion which the quietists would advocate a 
 masterly inactivity. And we are rejoiced that this is the 
 case, for any other course, we are convinced, would be 
 inappropriate to the requirements of the occasion. 
 
 Were the Russian frontier pushed forward from the 
 line of the Jaxartes to the foot of the Hindu Khush 
 were there war in Europe between England and Russia, 
 or even if both these contingencies came upon us at the 
 same time, there still would be many grave reasons for 
 pausing before we fairly committed ourselves to the pro- 
 ject of defending the British boundary by means of an 
 advance into Afghdnistdn. In the first place, there is 
 the nature of the country and its inhabitants, both so 
 untractable that, except in the last resort, the task of 
 dealing with them had far better be left to a rival or an 
 enemy than undertaken by ourselves. It is a land, in 
 Lord Wellesley's contemptuous phrase, of ' rocks, sand, 
 deserts, ice, and snow ;' and the men it breeds are war-
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 65 
 
 like, turbulent, fanatical, and perfidious. Take a small 
 force into the country, and you are beaten ; take a 
 large one, and you are starved. Then there is the 
 financial argument to be considered. The army that made 
 its way up the Bolan Pass in 1839, all counted, was only 
 19,000 strong ; yet the Afghdn war cost us from first to 
 last fifteen millions sterling. Whence is to come the money 
 for a repetition of the experiment ? As it is, the finances 
 of India are with difficulty kept at a bare equilibrium, and 
 the ways and means for any extraordinary expenditure 
 could only be provided either by an increase of taxation, 
 or an addition to the public debt. The latter alternative 
 manifestly hampers the resources of the empire for a 
 future time of, perhaps, sorer need ; and the dangers of 
 popular discontent arising from the former are so great 
 that, sooner than incur them, Lord Canning declared his 
 readiness to dispense with the services of 10,000 English 
 soldiers. Lastly, there can be no question that, however 
 desirable from a strategical point of view the establish- 
 ment of outworks at Kandahar and Herat might be, there 
 are, per contra, certain solid advantages in the present 
 concentration of our strength on the hither side of the 
 passes which would be forfeited, and some perilous re- 
 sponsibilities which would have to be incurred, in con- 
 nexion with the proposed advance. For instance, the 
 troops now quartered on our frontier are available equally 
 for the repulse of foes from without, and for the suppres- 
 sion of insurrection from within ; whereas every red-coat 
 despatched beyond Jacobabad, and committed a hostage 
 to fortune among an unfriendly race, would be so much 
 strength taken from, so much anxiety added to, the internal 
 garrison of India. That garrison would have to be largely 
 increased. And whence are the men to be obtained ? 
 
 F
 
 66 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 It is no easy matter to find sufficient recruits for the 
 English army on a peace footing, and we may well doubt 
 whether England at any time, much less with a war on her 
 hands in Europe, could afford to add a unit to the 70,000 
 men who constitute the standard of India's requirements 
 according to existing arrangements. 
 
 But in the recent proceedings and present position of 
 the Russians we can see nothing to call for a counter- 
 demonstration from the Indian Government. We believe 
 that the Emperor Alexander, apart from the necessities 
 for quiescence imposed on him by an embarrassed exche- 
 quer, discontent in Poland, and the difficulties of carrying 
 through the emancipation of the serfs, is positively desir- 
 ous of refraining from further conquests, in order that he 
 may have time for the consolidation of his power through- 
 out the vast area stretching from the Aral Sea to Lake 
 Issyk Kill. At all events, the imperial professions of a 
 wish for peace have been openly vindicated by the dis- 
 grace of the two generals who contrived that war with 
 Bokhara should be unavoidable. After General Tcher- 
 niayeff's repulse from Juzak and the imprisonment of the 
 ambassador at Bokhara, Russia had no choice but to take 
 active measures for the redress of the national honour ; 
 and the march of General Romanovski to Juzak is no 
 more to be wondered at than our own advance two years 
 ago, under somewhat similar circumstances, Jnto Bhutan. 
 From the slender data at our command it would be idle 
 to speculate on the extent of the penalty which General 
 Romanovski is likely to inflict on Bokhara ; but we should 
 not be surprised if he retired to Tashkend without insist- 
 ing on any considerable cession of territory. Perhaps it 
 may be objected that our view of Russia's pacific tenden- 
 cies is good only for the life of the present autocrat.
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 67 
 
 The objection cannot be gainsaid ; and, when another 
 Emperor may arise, reproducing- possibly the traditions 
 of the ambitious Nicholas, we shall be prepared to admit 
 the necessity of keeping a jealous watch on Russian 
 doings. But in the meantime we would deprecate the 
 exhibition of a temper unwarranted by the aspect of the 
 actual conjuncture. Moreover, if we may venture to add 
 our contribution to those forecasts of the future which 
 time invariably belies, we must confess to a certain scep- 
 ticism as to the probabilities, at any period within the 
 coming half-century, of Russia's penetrating south of the 
 Hindu Khush, either in warlike or peaceful guise. If 
 we in India find it difficult, expensive, and dangerous to 
 advance further from our resources, so must Russia. In 
 the desolate sandy plains of Turkistan, and among the 
 Usbegs of the Mdwar-u-Nahr, she has a more awk- 
 ward country in which to operate, and poorer and fiercer 
 people with whom to deal, than we have in India. She 
 cannot afford to subsidise, and she must tax, if it is only 
 to feed her soldiers. All the passions and prejudices of 
 Islam are arrayed against her, and the nearer she ap- 
 proaches India, the worse will be her entanglement. 
 Even those to whom she is the greatest bugbear admit 
 by implication that it will be impossible for her to reach 
 Herat in any appreciable strength without the active 
 assistance of Persia, and to our thinking the day when 
 the Shah shall have been induced into so suicidal a 
 course will not be seen in the present generation. These 
 difficulties must be as patent to Russia as to ourselves. 
 Neither can she forget that, though by a concatenation 
 of favourable circumstances, she might succeed in landing 
 a well-ordered army at Kabul and Kandahar, nothing up 
 to that point would have been gained but the ill-will of
 
 68 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 England and the presence perhaps of English fleets in 
 the Baltic and Black Seas. Between Russia and those 
 rich plains, the hope of which could alone make it worth 
 her while to enter Afghdnistdn, there would still be a 
 chevatix dc /rise of bayonets, wielded by the same men 
 who gave her a taste of their quality not long ago at 
 Alma and at Inkermann, and who this time would be fight- 
 ing on their own ground and with the perfection of mili- 
 tary appliances at their command. Therefore we think 
 it unlikely that for many years to come so much as a 
 solitary Cossack will be seen across the Oxus. Should 
 Russia still be possessed with the earth-hunger of which 
 she has been accused, and seek to obtain an expansion of 
 territory for Siberia towards the genial south, we imagine 
 that she will prefer to advance on China from the sea- 
 board, and from the line of the Amur, rather than on 
 India. In the one case she will find an easy, in the other 
 a very tough morsel to digest. 
 
 We do not shrink from the conclusion to which these 
 arguments all point. We believe that with respect to 
 Central Asia the Indian Government can do no wiser 
 thing than fold its hands and sit still. By all means let 
 it obtain information, detailed and accurate, regarding the 
 course of events beyond the mountains ; but let no deci- 
 sive action of any kind be taken until England can see 
 more clearly what there is that she should do. The 
 materials are not wanting for the formation of an effec- 
 tive intelligent department. There is the news-writer at 
 Kabul, whose diaries, on the whole, give a faithful picture 
 of all that passes in Afghanistan ; and, as regards tidings 
 from the other States of Central Asia, there are Panjdbi 
 merchants and travellers, whose somewhat hyperbolical 
 accounts can from time to time be checked by the des-
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD LAWRENCE. 6c 
 
 patch of specially selected scouts. Presuming that Lord 
 Lawrence must have already pressed these sources ol 
 information into his service, we think there is nothing 
 more at present to be done. We would be quiet now, in 
 order that we may act with greater vigour when the time 
 for action comes. Every day of peace and economy thai 
 India enjoys strengthens our moral and material hold or 
 the country ; and England may be congratulated that Sir 
 John Lawrence has clung to this truth through good 
 report and evil report. His policy is of too sober and 
 practical a complexion to hit the taste of our impetuous 
 countrymen in the tropics, who freely charge him with 
 ignorant indifference to the perils gathering against the 
 State in Chinese Tartary, in Afghdnistan, and in Russia. 
 But inaction in this instance is not identical with un- 
 concern. 
 
 NOTE BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 Bhutan, the first of the States of which the foregoing Essay treats, soor 
 settled down into undisturbed relations with the British Government ; and 
 the territory whose annexation Mr. Wyllie describes, has remained a part ol 
 the British Empire. In the Persian Gulf, the second subject of the Essay 
 affairs are still liable to periodical complications. The Wahdbis continue tc 
 give trouble ; and for several years the fanatics of the same sect in India 
 proved a source of serious disquiet. The recent history of Afghdnistdn, the 
 third question dealt with, will be continued in the following Essay. The 
 relations of Russia with Khiva and Bokhara are now matters of European 
 rather than of Indian diplomacy, and the results of the late Russian Expedi- 
 tion, ending with the fall and temporary occupation of Khiva, are sufficiently 
 well known. In Kashgar, now generally spoken of as Eastern Turkistan, 
 the Muhammadan ruler has estabhshed himself on a strong de facto basis, 
 He has been recognised by the Government of India; and after sending a 
 mission to the Viceroy, a return Envoy, in the person of Mr Douglas 
 Forsyth, C.B., of the Civil Service, was despatched with a well-appointed 
 suite in 1873 to conclude a mercantile treaty. Mr. Forsyth was well received, 
 and has successfully accomplished his work. The text of the Treaty has 
 just been published, and the Envoy is now (April 1874) on his journey back 
 to India. VV. W. H.
 
 70 
 
 MASTERL Y JNA CTIVITY. > 
 1869. 
 
 Few regions in the world have claims on our interest 
 comparable in extent and variety to those which Central 
 Asia possesses. As the eye travels southward from 
 Orenburg to Peshawar, there is a fresh picture at 
 every stage of the country. First, steppe and desert, 
 scanty herbage or deep sand, vast expanses vexed by 
 mirage and simoom ; the home of marauding nomads, 
 in whose hordes survive unchanged the Mongols of 
 Chinghiz-Khan, the Turks of Atilla and Timur-Lung, 
 myriads of barbaric horsemen, ready as ever, if civili- 
 sation would but give them the chance, to again ob- 
 literate all the kingdoms of Asia in ruin, again surge 
 in resistless tumult to the shores of the Baltic and the 
 Danube. Then, rivers, the ancient rivers Oxus and 
 Jaxartes, rolling, turbid and yellow, through shifty 
 channels to their rest in the Aral Sea. And between 
 these fertilising floods, like * a jewel set in sand,' the 
 oasis-lands of the Mawar-u-Nahr, teeming with every 
 crop and fruit that a temperate climate, kindly soil, and 
 abundant irrigation can produce ; rich too in the re- 
 nown wherewith bygone dynasties and the fanaticism 
 of modern Islam have combined to clothe the names of 
 Bokhara and Samarcand, of Ferghana and Kharcsm. 
 Lastly, Afghanistdn, a mass of barren rocks for the 
 most part, and stupendous mountain-ranges crowned 
 with eternal snow, yet rejoicing here and there in grecn- 
 
 ' 'The Fortnightly Review,' December r, 1869.
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 71 
 
 wood valleys, lovely as a dream ; its people, the physi- 
 cal perfection of humanity, and bearing in their faces 
 strange confirmation of the tradition that refers a part 
 at least of their lineage to Jews of the Dispersion, tran- 
 sported hither from Babylon by successors of Nebu- 
 chadnezzar. In Central Asia philology has discovered 
 the cradle of that great Indo-Germanic race, from which 
 conquering Anglo-Saxons and conquered Hindus are 
 equally descended. In Central Asia, Alexander of 
 Macedon founded a sovereignty, the traces of which 
 are locally extant to this day, as well in the fresh- 
 ness of the great * Sikandar's ' fame, as in the Greek 
 characters inscribed on the old coins which a Turkish 
 beauty strings round her neck. Across Central Asia, 
 as neutral ground, the Romans of the Byzantine empire 
 stretched a hand to the Chinese monarchs of the Han 
 dynasty, and the recollection of that period serves 
 to explain the historic awe with which every Tartar 
 still turns to Constantinople 'Riim' or Rome still in 
 his phraseology as the seat of an omnipotence not to 
 be gainsaid. Central Asia, in the eighth century, became 
 the eastern terminus of Saracenic conquest ; here the 
 idolatry of China and the monotheism of Arabia met in 
 sanguinary collision ; and each prescribed bounds not to 
 be trangressed by the other. Central Asia, in the middle 
 ages, held so large a leaven of Christianity, according to 
 the Nestorian form, that Popes busied themselves in 
 quests of an imaginary priest-king, whose odd cogno- 
 men of Prester John sends a vague familiar echo even 
 to the ears of the present generation. Christianity now- 
 adays has wholly disappeared from the scene, but not 
 so the clash of rival empires contending for supremacy. 
 Two powers at this moment are again in motion,
 
 72 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 mightier than any that have preceded them in the same 
 field ; and on the issue of their meeting hang conse- 
 quences most momentous, not only to the continent of 
 Asia but to all mankind. One of these powers is Great 
 Britain ; her antagonist is Russia. 
 
 The approach of Russia's Siberian frontier towards 
 India, has for half a century filled English statesmen with 
 alarm. To fend it off by artificial barriers, innumerable 
 schemes of diplomacy have been woven, and repeated 
 wars with Afghdnistdn and with Persia have been un- 
 dertaken, costing thousands of valuable lives, and over 
 twenty millions of money. In this cause was encoun- 
 tered the greatest disaster which has ever befallen the 
 British arms. The shock which the Kabul massacre gave 
 to our prestige in India remained vivid enough sixteen 
 years afterwards to inspirit discontented Sepoys into 
 mutiny, and even now has not altogether been for- 
 gotten. Yet, despite of all our efforts, Russia's progress 
 has not been arrested by one inch of space, or for a 
 single hour of time. On the contrary, the strides of 
 her southward march, since the Crimean war, and es- 
 pecially during the last five years, have been enormous. 
 At present (1869) her troops are in occupation of 
 Samarcand, and dominate all the three Khanates of the 
 Mdwar-u-Nahr. Her influence extends to the Oxus, 
 and nothing now remains to separate the Cossack from 
 the Sepoy save only Afghdnistdn. Hence to us the 
 importance of that territory through it we feel the pal- 
 pable presence of Russia. Hence also our communica- 
 tions with Afghanistan are no longer matter of local 
 Indian politics, which the British public may incuriously 
 leave to fortune for settlement. They now touch the 
 relations subsisting between the imperial cabinets of
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY, 73 
 
 London and St. Petersburg, and may at any time pro- 
 duce some 'question' in which ParHament and the people 
 shall find themselves very deeply concerned. 
 
 On this ground I venture once more to invite 
 
 popular attention to recent events in Afghdnistan. 
 
 Hitherto, I am aware, the majority of my countrymen 
 
 has been much of a mind with Goldsmith's squire, 
 
 who 'no more troubled his head about Hyder Ally, or 
 
 Ally Cawn, than about Ally Croaker.' It is a natural 
 
 ] aversion, nor should I care to brave it but for a sus- 
 
 / taining sense that the uncouth names of men and places 
 
 / in which my chronicle deals represent forces charged 
 
 / with mischief to the national peace. Ordinarily, the 
 
 / intestine brawls of a nation of poverty-stricken and 
 
 / semi-savage mountaineers would be of little interest to 
 
 / anyone ; but when they come to affecting the course of 
 
 / English policy towards one of the greatest military 
 
 powers of Europe, the warning, ' tua res agiitir,' may 
 
 well be impressed on exery tax-payer. 
 
 The death, in 1863, of the famous Dost Muhammad 
 was followed, as every student of Afghan affairs had pre- 
 dicted it would be, by a fierce scramble among his sons 
 for the inheritance. The earlier incidents of this fratri- 
 cidal contest have been already described.^ I resume 
 the tangled thread of the story from the issue of 
 the battle on the loth May, 1866. In the pause that 
 then ensued, the position of the principal competitors was 
 as follows : Sher All, Amir of Afghanistan by the 
 double right of paternal selection and of the acknow- 
 ledgment which all men, including his rival brethren, had 
 in the first instance accorded to his accession, was at 
 
 * ' Edinburgh Review,' January 1867, which forms the preceding Essay in 
 this volume.
 
 74 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 Kandahar, still reeling under the disastrous recoil ot the 
 blow at Sayyiddbad, by which he had vainly hoped to re- 
 cover possession of his lost capital. Afzal Khdn, also 
 calling himself Amir of Afghdnistdn in virtue of primo- 
 geniture and of his occupation of the royal citadel, was 
 at Kabul, having by his side his son, Abdul Rahmdn, 
 and his full-brother, Azi'm Khdn, by whose allied arms 
 he had been recently rescued from Sher All's grasp. 
 Beyond Kabul, in the territory lying between the moun- 
 tains of the Hindu Khush and the river Oxus, which 
 may best be described by the name of Balkh, a new 
 potentate had unexpectedly sprung into existence in the 
 person of Faiz Muhammad, a younger prince of the 
 Barukzai house, who aspired to convert the lieutenant's 
 commission he held over that country into an autonomy, 
 independent of any control, whether from Kabul or from 
 Kandahar. The conclusion, therefore, to which matters 
 appeared for the time to have arrived was a dismember- 
 ment of Afghdnistdn between three separate powers ; the 
 north to Faiz Muhammad, centre to Afzal Khdn, and 
 south with west to Sher All. But this superficial view 
 needs certain corrections. We must note that Faiz Mu- 
 hammad had not in himself strength to maintain his bold 
 attitude of isolation for any considerable period ; and, in 
 the next place, that Afzal Khdn, in spite of the outward 
 observances of sovereignty which surrounded him, was in 
 truth a nonentity, set up by Azim Khdn as a convenient 
 and decorous screen to cover the motive power of his 
 own superior will. These deductions made, we find the 
 factions in the field reduced practically to two ; one 
 headed by Sher All at Kandahar, the other by Azi'm 
 Khdn at Kabul. In the rivalry between these two parties, 
 Sher All's right pitted against Azi'm Khdn's ambition,
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 75 
 
 the whole civil war of Afghdnistdn has almost from the 
 outset been comprised. 
 
 Absolute and complete as Sher All's late defeat had 
 been, he neither despaired, nor had any need to despair, 
 of his fortunes. The wholesome spur of adversity had 
 quickened his sullen nature, and he applied himself with 
 resolute activity to the task of organising a force for the 
 prompt renewal of hostilities. Besides Kandahar, he 
 still held the whole westward country up to the Persian 
 border ; and even towards Kabul, whence his danger lay, 
 the fortress of Khelat-i-Ghilzai was yet in his possession, 
 constituting for him an outpost of greater natural strength 
 than that of the enemy at Mukhar, which it faced. At 
 Herat he could depend upon his second son, Yakub 
 Khan, a youth of remarkable shrewdness and energy, to 
 send him every man that could be safely spared from the 
 garrison of that important city. Present with him in 
 Kandahar he had his full-brother Sharif Khan, fickle 
 and untrustworthy in temper, but not without value as a 
 source of pecuniary loans, and as an instrument of ex- 
 torting revenue from the people. From Balkh he justly 
 calculated on obtaining, sooner or later, Faiz Muhammad's 
 active co-operation ; and in Kabul itself there were not a 
 few persons of great influence corresponding with him 
 regularly, and only biding their opportunity to rejoin his 
 cause. Above all he held distinct assurance that the 
 Anglo-Indian Government, though on terms of civil 
 communication with his foes, had hitherto refused to 
 recognise any one but himself as Amir. On the other 
 hand, almost all his guns had been captured, and he was 
 in great straits for small-arms and for money. New 
 cannon he might certainly get cast, after tedious delay, 
 by the artificers at Kandahar; but for the other two
 
 76 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 essentials of a campaign, where was he to turn ? He 
 had already tried the English. One of the first acts of 
 his reign had been to send an envoy to Peshdwar, pray- 
 ing for a grant of muskets. And the prayer had been 
 rejected, notwithstanding that he had then been undis- 
 puted sovereign of all Afghanistan, and that Oriental 
 custom would have justified the British Government in 
 regarding his recent accession to the throne as a fit 
 occasion for the issue of exceptional presents. There 
 was little likelihood of his being more successful now 
 when half his kingdom was rent from him, and round 
 him bickered a flame of war, from which the English 
 Viceroy insisted on keeping aloof Remote, however, 
 as the chance appeared of obtaining help from India, in 
 no other direction was there any chance at all. This 
 forlorn hope, therefore, Sher Ah determined again to 
 essay. What his reasons may have been for taking a 
 circuitous path towards his object, instead of writing 
 directly to the British authorities at Peshdwar, it is un- 
 necessary to inquire ; suffice it, that he selected our news- 
 writer at Kabul as the depositary of his desires. 
 
 The position of the functionary thus brought upon the 
 stage was an anomalous one, hardly justifying Sher All's 
 choice. The right vested by treaty in the Governor- 
 General of deputing a native of India as envoy to the 
 court of the ruler of Afghdnistdn, had been in abeyance 
 since January 1864, when the last Vakil returned to 
 India, leaving a Munshi, or clerk, behind him to carry 
 on the minor duties of the office. Difficulties arising from 
 the civil war which immediately followed, and the fall of 
 the capital into the hands of the insurgent faction, had 
 prevented the despatch of a regular successor ; and, 
 meanwhile, the clerk-substitute continued sole represen-
 
 MA STEHL Y INA CTIVITY. 7 7 
 
 tative of our power at Kabul. For his own safety this 
 Munshi had regularly to make his obeisance at the 
 Darbdr, in which the usurping brothers, Afzal and Azi'm 
 Khdn, held on most afternoons a reception of chiefs, city 
 notables, and newly-arrived travellers ; but his place in 
 the assembly was merely that of a simple news-writer. By 
 such visits to the Bdld Hissar, by the exchange of private 
 civilities with the principal inhabitants, by rambles through 
 the public bazaars, and by resort generally to every avail- 
 able centre of information, he was expected to gather 
 materials for a diary in the Persian language, which, twice 
 a week, he transmitted by courier to our frontier officers 
 at Peshawar. Diplomatic powers he had none, though 
 the temptation to assume them must at times have been 
 irresistible. 
 
 In June and July, Sher All wrote three successive 
 letters to the Munshi, asking him to explain to the 
 British Government the extremity of his need, and the 
 gratitude with which he would receive a gift of 6,000 
 muskets and a proportionate supply of money. His first 
 letter was turned back by the enemy's line of sentries at 
 Mukhar ; the second, delayed for two months between 
 Kandahar and Kabul, did not reach India till after the 
 third ; and both the second and the third were viewed 
 and treated by the authorities in the Panjab as forgeries, 
 contrived by Azim Khan for the purpose of obtaining 
 an insight into the British Government's real sentiments 
 towards his rival. Consequently no reply was sent to 
 the application. This, we must allow, was an unsatisfac- 
 tory conclusion ; but the doubts which dictated it were 
 neither unnatural nor unreasonable. One letter was writ- 
 ten in a combination of Persian language with English 
 characters, and was without Sher All's seal of signature.
 
 78 MASTERLY JNAC21VJTY. 
 
 In both cases it was incomprehensible why Shcr Ah', if 
 he really were the author, instead of writing;-, as after- 
 wards he actually did write, directly to the Commissioner 
 by the short road which he commanded to our frontier, 
 should have preferred to betake himself to the unusual 
 intervention of a news-writer, and the long war-blocked 
 route through Kabul. The fact of our Munshi having 
 forwarded the letters as genuine proved nothing ; in the 
 perilous position he held at Kabul, bolder men than him- 
 self, and owning a higher stake in our interests, might 
 have seen through a ruse of Azi'm Khdn's without daring 
 to expose it. Several months elapsed before the authen- 
 ticity of the documents came to light. The regrettable 
 part of the incident is that Sher All, who had anticipated 
 nothing better than an explicit refusal, and who was igno- 
 rant of the suspicions attaching to his missives, seems to 
 have allowed himself to interpret the Viceroy's silence in 
 a sense too favourable to his own hopes. 
 
 Turning now to the head-quarters of the opposition 
 at Kabul, we light upon a scene of still greater perplexity 
 and trouble. Afzal Khdn, the titular Amir, was rapidly 
 drinking himself to death ; and between the two other 
 members of the triumvirate, quarrels were vehement and 
 interminable. Abdul Rahmdn, the Hotspur of the party, 
 conscious of military services at least equal to those of 
 his uncle, ill brooked the state of pupilage to which Azfm 
 Khan's assumption of superior wisdom would have con- 
 signed him. His father vainly tried to be peacemaker : 
 maudlin entreaties tliat State affairs miofht all be left 
 to Azfm were not calculated to allay the young man's 
 indignation. Nothing could have kept his reluctant 
 neck in the yoke but the inexorable necessity of the 
 times. For, notwithstanding their victory at Sayyiddbad,
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 79 
 
 the confederates were beset by dang-cr on every side. 
 Accounts of Sher All's preparations and capacity for a 
 new campaign came to them with all the exaggerations 
 of Eastern rumour. Faiz Muhammad they had hoped 
 to cajole or coerce by the hold they had on his full- 
 brother, Wali Muhammad, in Kabul ; but day by day 
 this hope diminished, and it soon became clear that they 
 would have to face a coalition between him and Sher 
 All, the one descending against them from the north, 
 the other simultaneously marching up from the south. 
 Between the two fires their case looked critical indeed. 
 Even the territory they called their own was held with 
 difficulty ; for the Ghilzai tribe about Jalalabad had 
 risen in insurrection, declaring for Sher All, and the 
 disturbances reached within five-and-twenty miles of the 
 city of Kabul. Worse still, they were short of money, 
 and the arbitrary measures they adopted to remedy the 
 deficiency, irritated every class of the community against 
 them. Nobles, whom Sher All's haughty demeanour 
 and ungovernable temper had stung into revolt, dis- 
 covered that Azim Khan could be not less overbearing in 
 manner, and that, if Sher All had been quick to resume, 
 and loth to make grants of the crown lands, these tempt- 
 ing objects, the promised rewards of treason, were now 
 retained by Azi'm Khan in a gripe quite as miserly, and 
 additionally odious by reason of its ingratitude and fraud. 
 Priests murmured against the diversion of their religious 
 endowments to purposes of State. Soldiers, to whom a 
 year's pay was due, were obliged to take half that amount 
 in quittance of the claim ; nor was the ^^^^ of their dis- 
 content the less keen for a belief, likely enough to be true, 
 that at their expense, and out of the public coffers, Azim 
 Khan was laying by a private provision for himself
 
 8o MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 against a rainy day. Agriculture fell under assessments, 
 heavy in amount, and collected before harvest. Traders, 
 already hard hit by Faiz Muhammad's detention in Balkh 
 of caravans which they expected from beyond the Oxus, 
 were subjected to double customs duties, an endless succes- 
 sion of forced loans never to be refunded either in interest 
 or in principal, and an indiscriminate impressment of the 
 camels on which they depended for the carriage of their 
 goods. The poorer people starved under a monopoly of 
 grain, which raised the necessaries of life to famine prices. 
 Robberies in the open street, and burglaries at night, 
 were frequent ; assassinations were not uncommon. No 
 one looked for justice ; might was the sole measure of each 
 man's right. A few ambitious spirits found their interest 
 in the continuance of such disorder; but generally the 
 inhabitants were weary of war and its accompaniments. 
 
 So matters stood when Sir John Lawrence's letter of 
 the nth July reached Kabul. ^ This, it will be remem- 
 bered, was in reply to a communication, nominally pro- 
 ceeding from Afzal Khdn, but inspired of course by Azi'm 
 Khdn, in which the British Government was invited to 
 extend its valuable friendship to the writer. The Go- 
 vernor-General's letter commenced with an expression 
 of profound regret for the dissensions by which the great 
 house of the Barukzais was torn, and professed strong 
 desire for the maintenance of good-will between the Af- 
 ghdn and English nations ; but in substance it was a 
 very clear and emphatic refusal to break off our alliance 
 with Amir Sher All. 
 
 The arrival of so important a despatch necessarily 
 caused deep sensation in Kabul. In the palace it pro- 
 duced consternation and bitter resentment; but in all 
 
 Sec ante, p. 48.
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 8i 
 
 other quarters there was universal glee over the cHscom- 
 fiture of the tyrannical rulers. Azi'm Khdn was at no 
 pains to conceal his anger. He sent for our news-writer, 
 and straightly cross-questioned him as to the Viceroy's 
 intention in addressing Afzal Khan as Sarddr only, or 
 Prince, instead of Amir, or King. Upon this text he 
 launched on to a furious tirade against English ingrati- 
 tude and selfishness. The Munshi bowed in silence 
 before the storm ; he had no authority to explain any 
 passage in the Viceroy's letter. 
 
 Azi'm Khan's wrath was not of the kind that eva- 
 porates in mere words. He looked round for a victim on 
 whom his fury might be more safely indulged than on a 
 British subject. Out of the Barukzai family the fore- 
 most man in Afghanistan was Muhammad Rafik. Gene- 
 rally it may be taken for granted that any prominent 
 leader in Afghan politics must of necessity be either a 
 son or grandson of Dost Muhammad so completely has 
 the strength of the country been absorbed into that house. 
 Muhammad Rafik's unique position, in exception to the 
 rule, came from his being the best soldier, the best states- 
 man, the best diplomatist of his time. It was his defec- 
 tion from Sher All's cause in the preceding autumn that 
 first and most powerfully turned the tide in favour of the 
 confederates. He had done nothing in the interval to 
 forfeit the confidence of Azim Khan. The blandishments 
 by which Sher All had striven hard to win back his 
 allegiance had been wasted on him. He told his friends 
 that the breach between the Amir and himself was irre- 
 parable. Unconsciously foreshadowing his doom, he said 
 that he would die sooner than return to his former lord. 
 But he was known to be a warm admirer of English 
 ways, and this, to the passion-blinded eyes of Azi'm 
 
 G
 
 82 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 Khdn, was in itself a crime. Some childish notion that 
 the laying low of so illustrious a head might awe the 
 English into a more deferential attitude towards himself, 
 seems also to have had a share in deciding the direction 
 of the despot's ferocity. The blow fell without a word 
 of warning. On the morning of the 27th of August, 
 Muhammad Rafik stood secure in his place, chief pillar 
 of the State ; at noon he was seized and hurried to 
 prison ; before one o'clock he was dead, strangled. His 
 body was thrown naked on a dunghill, and lay there for 
 four days, none daring to touch it. His wives and daugh- 
 ters, with unveiled faces and bare feet, were driven from 
 their home into the streets. All his property was confis- 
 cated, and one of his followers, supposed to have know- 
 ledge of a secret hoard, was tortured to death. 
 
 Muhammad Rafik and his household, though the first, 
 and probably the most innocent, were not the only suf- 
 ferers at this crisis. Azi'm Khan's hand, once raised, was 
 not to be lightly stayed. Soon he had as many as a 
 hundred and fifty persons in his prisons, suspected, more 
 or less justly, of intriguing with the enemy ; and the 
 penalty of death, which he freely administered, some- 
 times to batches of several at a time, had in his hands a 
 secrecy and an absence of preliminary trial which, among 
 civilised communities, would have earned for it a harsher 
 name than execution. He established a reign of terror 
 at Kabul. 
 
 Meanwhile the Amir at Kandahar was again specu- 
 lating on assistance from British India. On the loth of 
 September Sher All addressed direct to the Commis- 
 sioner of Peshawar a letj:er, which was at once recognised 
 as genuine, repeating his original prayer for six thousand 
 muskets, and cash in proportion. The Commissioner re-
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 83 
 
 plied, saying that he had forwarded the letter for the 
 Viceroy's orders, which, when received, would be duly 
 communicated to the Amir. But the Viceroy, in his 
 turn, postponed issuing orders of any kind on the sub- 
 ject, and hence Sher All's appeal remained practically un- 
 answered. It may well be asked why Sir John Lawrence 
 in this instance departed from the outspoken frankness 
 which had so markedly characterised all his previous 
 dealings with Afghanistan. The answer is easily given. 
 Sir John Lawrence abided as firmly as ever by his deter- 
 mination to abstain from aiding either Sher All against 
 Azi'm Khan or Azi'm Khan against Sher All, so long as 
 each of them respectively maintained a similar quiescence 
 towards British India. But Azim Khan had of late as- 
 sumed an air so offensive that it began to be doubtful 
 whether the principle of self-defence might not ere long 
 compel us, however reluctantly, to act against him by ex- 
 tending some help to his rival. It was not merely that 
 he made a habit in the Kabul Darbar of railing against 
 the British Government in a strain of unbridled insolence 
 and vindictiveness ; verbiage of that kind might be over- 
 looked with contempt; but he was doing his best by 
 actual deeds to stir up against us, in an organised league 
 of holy war, the numerous predatory and fanatical tribes 
 whose mountain-fastnesses overhang our north-west fron- 
 tier. Sir John Lawrence had little fear that this effort of 
 spite would be successful ; but there was none the less 
 need to be on the watch for its issue, and to reserve in 
 readiness the means of checking it, which Sher All's 
 application offered. Still no inkling of the new contin- 
 gency was, or could be, given to Sher All. His request 
 was not directly negatived ; but this was all : it received 
 not the faintest sign of encouragement. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 Both the contending factions in Afghdnistdn occupied 
 the autumn and early winter in equipping and despatch- 
 ing reinforcements for the positions from which their 
 respective armies confronted each other. The Kandahar 
 troops at Kheldt-i-Ghilzai grew steadily in numbers, 
 discipline, and confidence ; for Sher All was able to 
 concentrate all his energies on a single point. The pro- 
 gress of the enemy's camp at Mukhar was feebler and 
 more fitful ; a spirit of disaffection, desertion, and mutiny 
 kept thinning the ranks of Kabul, and the attention of the 
 confederate leaders was distracted by the revolt of the 
 Ghilzais in the east, and yet more by Faiz Muhammad's 
 threatened descent from the north. Between these later 
 sources of anxiety, Azi'm Khan's son, Surwar Khdn, was 
 left for months hoverinof with divided aim. Before he 
 could effect more than a skin-deep settlement of the 
 disturbances around Jaldldbdd and Kiinar, he was 
 hurriedly recalled to undertake the more arduous task 
 of defending the passes of the Hindu Khush against 
 Faiz Muhammad ; and his back was no sooner turned on 
 the Ghilzais than they again broke out in more serious 
 insurrection than ever. 
 
 By November all the elements of retributive violence, 
 which had been long gathering round Kabul, were simul- 
 taneously astir, but the supreme peril lay in the combined 
 action of Sher All and Faiz Muhammad. Impelled from 
 opposite bases to a common goal, the forces of Kandahar 
 and of Balkh, two moving masses of menace, seemed 
 closing in on the vessel of the confederates' fortunes with 
 fatal precision. To complete the horror of the situation, 
 rumours darkened the air that England's patience had 
 been at last exhausted, and that she was now permit- 
 ting Sher All to recruit his invading strength from the
 
 MASTERL Y INA CTl VITY. 85 
 
 arsenals and treasuries of India. Afzal Khan gave him- 
 self up to despair ; and even the stubborn spirit of Azi'm 
 Khdn was so far shaken as to consent to a parley. Mes- 
 sengers were sent to Sher All, proposing peace on terms 
 of a partition of the country Sher All to retain Kanda- 
 har and Herat, and the confederates to keep Kabul with 
 Balkh added. A marked improvement at the same time 
 came over Azim Khan's demeanour towards the British 
 Government. He soon ascertained by inquiry from our 
 news-writer that the report of British intervention in Sher 
 All's favour was baseless, and now, with the chance before 
 him of becoming once more a fugitive adventurer, he 
 could no longer afford the luxury of a one-sided enmity 
 with his powerful but placable neighbour. Moreover, if 
 it be true, as there is reason for supposing, that an emis- 
 sary, whom he had three months previously despatched 
 via Kunduz to ask assistance from the Russian general 
 at Tashkend, returned just at this period with an unsatis- 
 factory answer, such a rebuff from one of the two great 
 European Powers, between which his political loves and 
 hates were perpetually oscillating, would naturally set 
 him in motion with unabashed assurance towards the 
 other. Dangers and disappointments were bringing out 
 the prudent side of the Afghan character in Azi'm Khan. 
 He was by no means cowed, however. He still turned 
 upon his foes with a courage and vigour which it is im- 
 possible not to admire. Ignoring the lateral diversion 
 offered by the turbulence of the Ghilzais, and abandoning 
 Kabul to such protection as Afzal Khdn's presence might 
 afford, he absorbed every fighting man for field service at 
 one or other of the two points where a stand was essen- 
 tially necessary, viz., at Bamian against Faiz Muhammad 
 and at Miikhar against Sher All. By this means the
 
 86 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 strength of Surwar Khan's camp at the former place was 
 brought up to 7,000 men, while that of the southern force, 
 which was to be commanded jointly by Azi'm Khdn him- 
 self and by Abdul Rahmdn, rose to 9,000 numbers in 
 each case inferior to those of the invader, but eked out by 
 compensating circumstances. At Bamian the mountain 
 defiles afforded special facilities for defensive warfare, and 
 at Mukhar there was a better park of artillery than could 
 be opposed to it from Kandahar. If therefore Surwar 
 Khan could only keep the Balkh army in check for a 
 time, Azi'm Khan hoped that his own generalship and 
 Abdul Rahman's gallantry might suffice to give a good 
 account of Sher All in the interval. The game he saw, 
 though running against him, was not yet lost. He paci- 
 fied the discontent of the soldiery by a timely issue of 
 pay, and assumed the chief command at Mukhar about 
 the 20th December. 
 
 On the other side Sher AH did not personally take 
 the field so soon as had been expected. He was detained 
 in Kandahar till Christmas Day. The last weeks of the 
 Amir's stay in that city were clouded by the sudden 
 defection of his brother, Sharif Khan. One more 
 change of sides perpetrated by a chieftain whose in- 
 constancy, even among Afghdns, was already a by- word, 
 would not under ordinary circumstances be worth notic- 
 ing ; but in this instance the direction of Sharif Khdn's 
 flight gave an adventitious importance to his eccentrici- 
 ties. He came southward into Beluchistdn, and sought 
 asylum from the Khdn of Kheldt at Quettd, thereby dis- 
 quieting the British frontier in Upper Sind. 
 
 It was at this juncture that the Government of Bom- 
 bay submitted for the consideration of the Government of 
 India proposals of such magnitude as to demand record
 
 MASTERL Y JNA CTIVITY. 8 7 
 
 in their place of chronological order, let the inroad on 
 the continuity of Afghdn history be what it may. The 
 spectacle of Sher AH and Azim Khdn, each in full spring 
 at the other's throat among snows soon to be reddened 
 by decisive battle, must be set aside for a while that we 
 may pause in the serene atmosphere of British council- 
 chambers. The question of the occupation of Quetta 
 implies nothing less than a revolution in the system of 
 India's military defences. 
 
 The plan originated in 1856 with the late General 
 John Jacob, an officer whose assumption of infallibility 
 did prejudice to his unquestionable talents, his sleepless 
 devotion to the public service, and his real knowledge of 
 the Beliich border. At that time Persia, either with or 
 without instigation from Russia, had just seized the Af- 
 ghan fortress of Herat, and England was about to embark 
 on the campaign which ultimately extorted from the Shah 
 a restitution of the so-called ' Gate of India.' General 
 Jacob availed himself of the opportunity to offer sugges- 
 tions to the then Governor-General, Lord Canning, for 
 the better protection of the frontier. He declared that 
 if the red line of England's boundary was to retain its 
 position on the map, there was absolute necessity for 
 our occupying posts in advance of it. ' A war,' he 
 said, ' withm our own territory with a European army 
 might be ruinous to our reputation, and might entirely 
 undermine our strength, although that strength might 
 have sufficed successfully to meet a world in arms in 
 a field beyond our own boundary.' His argument pro- 
 ceeded, that there were but two great roads by which 
 a modern army could invade India from the north-west, 
 viz., the Khaibar Pass and the Bolan Pass ; that our 
 existing outposts were on the hither or Indian side of
 
 88 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 both these passes at Peshdwar as regards the Khaibar, 
 and at Jacobabad in respect of the Bolan ; that at Pesha- 
 war we might well remain as we were, watching the mouth 
 of the defile, but that from Jacobabdd we were in self- 
 preservation bound to advance. The first step would be 
 to take advantage of that article in our treaty with the 
 Khan of Khelat which permits the cantonment of British 
 troops in any part of his territory, and immediately to oc- 
 cupy Quetta; connected with which measure, as necessary 
 consequences, would come a continuation of the Sind 
 railway to the foot of the Boldn Pass, and the construc- 
 tion of a good road through the pass. Next, we should 
 take a body of Bek'ich irregulars into our pay, who, poli- 
 tically, would be useful as a link of connection with the 
 native inhabitants, and who, in a military capacity, might 
 be to us what the Cossacks are to a Russian army. Hav- 
 ing thus quietly established ourselves in Beluchistdn, we 
 should subsidise the Afghans, and pave the way for a 
 peaceable occupation of Herat. With a proper garrison 
 at Quetta, and a fortress held by 20,000 men at Herat, we 
 should not only block the Boldn route, but operate with 
 destructive effect on the flanks and rear of any invader 
 attempting to proceed by way of the Khaibar. And 
 then ' India would be as firmly locked in our grasp as 
 if surrounded by the ocean.' Such, briefly stated, was 
 the project, now, after ten years' suspension, revived in 
 official form by General Jacob's pupil and successor on 
 the Sind frontier, Sir Henry Green. Since its original 
 publication it had been the theme of endless controversy 
 in the pu' lie press, and its general principles had secured 
 the favourable; opinion of such weighty authorities as Sir 
 Henry Rawlinson and Sir Justin Sheil. Thus a special 
 responsibility, over and above that arising from the in-
 
 MASTERL Y IN A CTIVIT V. 89 
 
 trinsic importance of the subject, attached to the Go- 
 vernor of Bombay, when, by seriously recommending 
 that Sir Henry Green should be allowed to take pre- 
 liminary action, he identified the dignity of his govern- 
 ment with the furtherance of a scheme widely known, 
 generally popular, and strong in the sanction of great 
 names. Sir Bartle Frere's proposal on reaching Calcutta 
 was immediately laid by the Viceroy before his council. 
 Sir John Lawrence explained that he had for years been 
 familiar with General Jacob's arguments, that he had never 
 recognised their vaHdity hitherto, and that he saw nothing 
 in the present condition of Central Asia to lead him to a 
 different conclusion now. If the strategic advantages of 
 occupying Ouetta were doubtful, some of the political 
 disadvantages were obvious. The expense would be 
 enormous, and he should alarm the jealousy, not only 
 of the Afghans as a nation, but of the Persian Court 
 also. Besides, it would always be open to us to occupy 
 Ouetta and subsidise the Beluchis at any future period, 
 when the imminence of a real danger to our power might 
 render such a step expedient. ' In the meantime,' Sir 
 John concluded, ' I am absolutely opposed to this under- 
 taking.' The discussion was taken up by two councillors, 
 whose opinions on such a topic were entitled to the utmost 
 respect. Sir William Mansfield united to the mihtary 
 talents which had raised him to the chief command of 
 her Majesty's army in India, a statesmanlike comprehen- 
 sion of the internal condition and prospects of our Eastern 
 Empire, some knowledge of Russian policy derived from 
 diplomatic employment at Constantinople and at Warsaw, 
 and an intimate personal familiarity with the Afghan 
 frontier, acquired when he was winning his spurs as a 
 regimental officer at Peshawar. Similarly, the brilliant
 
 90 Af ASTER LY INACTIVITY. 
 
 reputation which Sir Henry Durand had won in many 
 an Indian Darbar and battle-field was enhanced by his 
 particular experience in the affairs of Afghanistan. Years 
 ago, as a young engineer of Lord Keane's force, he had 
 laid the powder-bags which blew open the gates of 
 Ghazni; and, more recently, as Lord Elgin's Secretary 
 for Foreign Affairs, he had taken a large share in the 
 direction of our later relations with the Barukzai dynasty. 
 Both these distinguished officers gave hearty support to the 
 view taken by the Viceroy. Sir William Mansfield calcu- 
 lated that the occupation of Quetta, necessitating as it 
 would the maintenance of communication with the Indus 
 by posts at Dadar and Jacobabad, and probably at some in- 
 termediate places, could not be safely carried out ' with 
 less than 3,000 British infantry and artillery, 4,000 native 
 infantry, and 2,000 cavalry, including a regiment of dra- 
 goons 9,000 in all, or 7,000 in excess of the force which 
 is now found to be more than ample for the defence of 
 the Sind frontier, the same being all native, and there- 
 fore comparatively of a cheap description.' 
 
 Moreover, a fort would be needed at Quetta to cover 
 the magazine and treasure, and to be a poirU dappjii in 
 case of accident, pending the arrival of reinforcements. 
 Taken altogether, these arrangements represented an 
 amount of expenditure so embarrassing to the finances of 
 India, that to incur it, even in counteracting^ a Russian 
 occupation of Kabul and Kandahar, would, in the Com- 
 mander-in-chief's opinion, be of doubtful propriety so 
 long as peace continued between England and Russia. 
 And if war should arrive, was it certain, as a matter of 
 pure strgitegy, that an advance to Quetta would be in- 
 cumbent on us in that extremity ? For his own part, Sir 
 William was inclined to say :
 
 MASTERL V IN A CTJVI2 Y. 91 
 
 ' The side whence to defend the Boldn Pass is not the western 
 extremity, where the British cantonment would be cut off by a 
 defile sixty-six miles long, through which its supports would 
 have to advance, after a painful and exhausting march from the 
 Indus and across a desert, but rather at the eastern extremity. 
 For there a hostile force could be struck on the head before it 
 could have time to deploy with the heavy materiel, without 
 which a modern army cannot move, or hope to move, against 
 such forces as we should array against it on any field we might 
 choose between Shikarpur and Dadar. The desert would be 
 in this manner turned into our most useful ally, instead of being 
 a formidable difficulty. The latter would be the case if General 
 Jacob's plan were adopted.' 
 
 Sir Henry Durand travelled to the same practical 
 result as his colleague by a different route. He could 
 easily * conceive circumstances which might combine to 
 render the partial or the entire occupation of Afghan- 
 istan necessary as a theatre for offensive operations on 
 our part, in aid of Afghan resistance to invasion from the 
 westward.' It was a region admirably adapted by nature 
 for giving the fullest effect to the destructive warfare 
 which Afghans thus supported could wage, with small 
 loss to themselves. 
 
 ' I know,' he continued, ' that we could again seize Afghanis- 
 tan, if it were advisable or necessary, and that, with our Indus 
 frontier complete in its communications, parallel and perpen- 
 dicular, no power on earth could shake us out of that country. 
 I know, too, that, with the Afghans friendly and cordial, we 
 could, without the actual seizure of the country for ourselves, 
 organise its defence in a most destructive manner against hostile 
 invasions. But neither alternative is at present imposed on us 
 as of the smallest necessity. . . . Any intervention now would 
 be ill-timed, and is wholly uncalled for. It will be all that 
 political and military considerations demand, if our lines of rail 
 and river communication on the Indus frontier are rendered as 
 perfect as it is easily in our power to make them ; so that, with-
 
 92 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 out our at present incurring the risk of complications with 
 Afghan and Beliich tribes and pohtics, it may yet be in our 
 power rapidly to mass, and securely to feed and support our 
 forces, whether intended for operations above or below the 
 passes. ... If our position on the Indus frontier be one of 
 unmistakable strength, it will long paralyse aggressive pre- 
 sumption.' 
 
 The remaining members of the Viceregal Council 
 tendered their adhesion with the good-will that flowed 
 from a similar conviction. And so the proposition from 
 Bombay was unanimously rejected. But let no one sup- 
 pose that this rejection gave a final quietus to the move- 
 ment for the occupation of Ouetta. Vigorous in the 
 vitality of popular error, it to this day remains at the root 
 of every discussion on Central Asia. 
 
 Another (episode of the Calcutta cold weather of 
 1866-7 may also be fitted into its place here, before 
 we return to the seat of war in Afghdnistan. The inter- 
 course of the British Government with that of Bokhara 
 has not been so frequent or so amicable that the appear- 
 ance of an ambassador from the Usbeg metropolis, the 
 head-quarters of Muslim bigotry, should be regarded as 
 an ordinary event. Indeed, the past relations between 
 the two powers might almost be summed up in the fact 
 that two British officers, Colonel Stoddart and Captain 
 Conolly, who had been sent to Bokhara during the Af- 
 ghan war of 1839-42, to bar Russian progress by the 
 organisation of a Tartar confederacy under the head- 
 ship of Amir Nasr-ullah of Bokhara, had been barbar- 
 ously seized by that Amir, and, after a long and cruel 
 imprisonment, brutally murdered. The whirligig of 
 time had now brought about its revenge ; behold 
 Nasr-ullah's successor, Muzaffar-ud-dm, spontaneously 
 seeking the English as his only means of rescue from
 
 MASTERL V INA CTI VITY. 93 
 
 Russian invasion! Utterly defeated at Idjar, on the 
 20th May, 1866, and expelled from Khojend on the 5th 
 June, the Amir Muzaffar-ud-din, in August, offered 
 submission to Generals Kryjanovski and Romanovski 
 with one hand, while with the other he sued to Sir John 
 Lawrence for an offensive and defensive alliance against 
 his conquerors. The person whom he selected as his 
 representative on the latter mission was named Khojd 
 Muhammad Parsa, and occupied at Bokhara the exalted 
 office of Chief Mufti, or expounder of the law. This 
 emissary, passing through Kabul, where he had a grand 
 comparison of political notes with Azim Khan, reached 
 Peshawar on the nth November, attended by twenty- 
 two followers, and bearing letters and presents not only 
 for the Lieutenant-Governor of the Panjab, and the 
 Governor-General of India, but also for their Majesties, 
 the Queen of England and the Sultan of Turkey. The 
 presents, though favourable specimens, probably, of the 
 staple products of Bokhara, were more curious than 
 valuable : They consisted of silk in pieces and in shawls, 
 skins of kid and ermine, woollen rugs, and a few horses. 
 The letter to the Lieutenant-Governor contained nothing 
 beyond the usual civilities of Oriental correspondence, 
 and a request that the bearer might be assisted on his 
 journey. Proceeding to Calcutta, the envoy was ad- 
 mitted to the Viceroy's presence on the 9th January. 
 Partly oppressed by the wonders of the civilisation which 
 had whirled him down by rail from Delhi, a thousand 
 miles in thirty-six hours, but still more haunted by 
 doubts whether the deaths of Stoddart and Conolly 
 might not be avenged on his own person, he had at 
 first some difficulty in preserving the air of impassive 
 tranquillity proper to his character. Quickly recovering
 
 94 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 himself, he delivered to Sir John Lawrence the letter 
 intended for the Queen, as well as that addressed to Her 
 Majesty's Vicegerent in India. In the one a hope was 
 expressed that the Governor-General would interfere ' to 
 relieve Muhanimadans from Russian oppression,' and a 
 pledge was added that the writer would follow any 
 advice which his Excellency might be pleased to give. 
 In the other, the Amir complained bitterly of Russian 
 aggression, treachery, and violation of international law, as 
 shown by the unprovoked seizure of Tashkend and other 
 territory, and by the detention at Orenburg of one of 
 his servants bearing the sacred character of an ambas- 
 sador : he was determined, he said, to resist the enemy, 
 by force of arms, to the utmost, but at the same time, in 
 compliance with the Kuran's injunction, ' to consult with 
 others and take advice,' he looked to her Majesty for 
 advice and aid towards the expulsion of the Russians. 
 Both these communications having been perused, it ap- 
 peared odd that the envoy, while making no attempt to 
 conceal the alarm with which his countrymen viewed the 
 Russian advance, nevertheless abstained from any allu- 
 sion to the request for British assistance which was so 
 specifically urged in his credentials. At last, when 
 pressed to name the precise object of his quest, he de- 
 clared that he wanted nothing. The explanation soon 
 followed. In journeying through Peshawar he had met 
 an agent of the Khan of Kokand, who had been de- 
 spatched three years previously on a mission identical 
 with his own, and who was then returning home. From 
 him he had learned that nothing but disappointment was 
 to be expected, whether at Calcutta or at Constantinople. 
 Acting, therefore, on the discretionary power with which 
 he believed himself to be vested, the envoy withdrew the
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 95 
 
 prayer for help contained in his master's letters, and pro- 
 fessed that he had no other object but to communicate 
 sentiments of general friendship from the Bokhara 
 Darbar to the British Government. Before the close 
 of the audience the Viceroy, touched on the murder of 
 Stoddart and Conolly, stigmatising it as a deed which 
 covered the Amir of Bokhara with infamy in the eyes 
 of all honest people. The envoy replied that the 
 murder, if indeed those officers were murdered, was a 
 very unworthy act, but that, for his own part, he at the 
 time must have been quite a young man, with no official 
 position, and that his master, the present Amir, must 
 also have been a youth, and had not then succeeded to 
 the sovereignty of the State. So terminated an Interview 
 possessing singular interest in the annals of 'Central 
 Asia. Some days afterwards Sir John Lawrence issued 
 to the envoy, for transmission to Bokhara, return presents 
 of the usual kind, and a letter, in which the communica- 
 tion he had himself received from the Amir was an- 
 swered as follows : 
 
 ' It is with much regret that I hear that your Majesty has 
 been at war with the Russians, and that you believe that you 
 have grounds for complaining of their oppression. But Bokhara 
 is so distant from the confines of India, and the difficulties of 
 communication which the intervening country presents are so 
 formidable, that hitherto they have proved a bar to any freedom 
 of intercourse, not only between our respective subjects, but also 
 between your Majesty and the Government of India. I am, 
 therefore, neither sufficiently well acquainted with the causes 
 which have unfortunately produced a state of hostilities between 
 Bokhara and Russia, nor with the present state of your Majesty's 
 affiiirs, to be in a position to give your Majesty useful advice. 
 And, therefore, though I am willing to be on friendly terms, and 
 am desirous of the peace of your dominions, and am anxious to 
 hear of the prosperity of your Majesty's rule, I am not able to
 
 96 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 render you effective aid, cither by advice or in any other form. 
 May God direct your Majesty in the proper course to pursue, 
 and keep you in safety ! Your Majesty's letter to the Queen of 
 England and India shall be sent on.' 
 
 The promise conveyed in these concluding words was 
 duly fulfilled. The appeal to Her Majesty reached its 
 destination, but, as hardly needs to be added, it elicited 
 no response of any kind. The British Government's 
 position in regard to the war between Russia and Bokhara 
 had already been sufiBciently defined in the Viceroy's 
 reply, and there was nothing in the past conduct of 
 Bokhara or in her rank among the kingdoms of the East 
 which at all entitled her ruler to the rare honour of an 
 English Queen's sign-manifal. No hopes of such con- 
 descension were held out to the envoy. He lingered in 
 Calcutta sight-seeing till the 1 9th of February, and then 
 proceeded to Bombay, whence he was to make his way 
 to Constantinople for the prosecution of that part of his 
 mission which was addressed to the Sublime Porte. 
 
 From these digressions regarding Quetta and Bok- 
 hara we must now revert to the scene of conflict in 
 Afghanistdn. 
 
 The new year opened brightly for Sher All's pros- 
 pects. On the 6th of January, 1867, his ally, Faiz Mu- 
 hammad, descending from Balkh, forced the defensive 
 position occupied by Azi'm Khdn's son, Surwar Khan, 
 and drove the Kabul army back in demoralised rout on 
 Bamian. There can be little doubt that if Faiz Mu- 
 hammad had followcdupthis success immediately, he might 
 without difficulty have swept through the passes, over- 
 whelmed all opposition, and captured Kabul. Instead, he 
 halted to check a disturbance in his rear, created by Azi'm 
 Khan's staunch partisan, the Usbeg chieftain of Badak-
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 97 
 
 shan. Surwar Khdn thus obtained breathing-time to re- 
 form his shattered forces and make a second stand for the 
 defence of the capital. Faiz Muhammad, when he again 
 advanced, had lost his opportunity without knowing it. 
 He anticipated an easy repetition of his victory over Sur- 
 war Khdn, and a triumphant meeting with Sher All 
 under the walls of Kabul ; but, in the midst of these 
 flattering fancies, his foot was stayed and his hand un- 
 nerved by intelligence from the south too disastrous to 
 be readily credible. 
 
 It was true, nevertheless. The stars in their courses 
 had once more fought against Sher All. That unlucky 
 prince had issued from Khelat-i-Ghilzai at the head of 
 his army on the 12th of January, and on the i6th he had 
 sustained a crushing defeat from Azi'm Khdn. 
 
 The details of the engagement are not worth our 
 attention. There seems to have been more treachery 
 than fighting, and the loss on either side was trivial ; 
 but the result, for all that, was quite as decisive as any 
 amount of heroism could have made it. Sher All aban- 
 doned Khelat-i-Ghilzai to its fate and fled to Kandahar. 
 He paused at Kandahar for one day only, and then 
 evacuated that city also, without a blow. Attended by a 
 mere handful of troopers, he continued his flight towards 
 Herat, now the only direction setting aside Faiz Muham- 
 mad's ambiguous allegiance in Balkh where the vestiges 
 of sovereign authority were yet preserved to him. Azim 
 Khan and Abdul Rahman entered Kandahar as con- 
 querors on the 26th of January, and were joined there 
 by the turn-coat Sharif Khan, whose departure for this 
 purpose from Quetta was a welcome relief to the Beliich 
 border. All central and southern Afgrhanistan was now 
 in the possession of the confederacy, and the north might 
 
 H
 
 98 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 be expected to follow, for, in Sher All's present dis- 
 ability to resume the offensive from Herat, Azim Khan's 
 whole strength was free to cope with Faiz Muhammad on 
 advantageous terms, and compel a surrender of Balkh. 
 
 The first use which the confederates made of the 
 new position they had attained was to send formal an- 
 nouncement of their successes to the British Government. 
 Their letter, running in the name of Afzal Khdn, as 
 Amir of Afghanistan, and dated February 3rd, was 
 substantially a challenge for the Viceroy's congratulations. 
 In forwarding it to Calcutta, the Lieutenant-Governor of 
 the Panjab added his opinion that ' the concession of 
 the title of Amir in our correspondence with Afzal 
 Khdn should no longer be withheld.' Sir Donald Mac- 
 leod was clearly right in this matter. The time had 
 come when, unless we recognised Afzal Khdn as Amir, 
 our news-writer would be turned out of Kabul, and we 
 should be at open rupture with the party then uppermost 
 in Afghdnistdn ; that is, we should be landed in the di- 
 lemma either of actively espousing Sher All's cause, and 
 forcing his supremacy on a people three-fourths of whom 
 disowned it ; or of tamely renouncing all hold on a country 
 in whose destinies much of our own future was involved. 
 But the Lieutenant-Governor's suggestion has its import- 
 ance as proving that Sir John Lawrence, so far from 
 being ahead of all the world in eagerness to recognise the 
 (ie facto rulers of Kabul an accusation which has been 
 often made actually on this point lagged behind his most 
 responsible adviser. In the Viceroy's reply to Afzal 
 Khdn, dated February 25th, that chief was styled Amir, 
 not of Afghdnistdn at large, but only of Kabul and Kan- 
 dahar, the territories actually in his grasp ; also the 
 congratulations addressed to the conqueror were tempered 
 with a regret and even a preference for his rival so
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 99 
 
 nakedly declared that the records of diplomacy might be 
 searched in vain for a parallel. The most important 
 clauses were as follows : 
 
 ' My friend ! The British Government has hitherto main- 
 tained a strict neutrality between the contending parties in 
 Afghanistan. Rumours, I am told, have reached the Kabul 
 Darbar of assistance having been granted by me to 
 Amir Sher Ali Khan. I take this opportunity to request 
 your Highness not to believe such idle tales. Neither 
 men, nor arms, nor money, nor assistance of any kind 
 have ever been supplied by my Government to Amir Sher 
 AH Khan. Your Highness and he, both equally unaided by 
 me, have fought out the battle, each upon your own resources, 
 I purpose to continue the same policy for the future. If, 
 unhappily, the struggle for supremacy in Afghanistan has not 
 yet been brought to a close, and hostilities are again renewed, I 
 shall still side with neither party. My friend ! as I told your 
 Highness in my former letter, the relations of the British 
 Government are with the actual rulers of Afghanistan. There- 
 fore, so long as Amir Sher All Khan holds Herat, and main- 
 tains friendship with the British Government, I shall recognise 
 him as ruler of Herat, and shall reciprocate his amity. But, 
 upon the same principle, I am prepared to recognise your 
 Highness as Amir of Kabul and Kandahar, and I frankly offer 
 your Highness in that capacity, the peace and the good-will of 
 the British Government.' 
 
 The letter concluded with a proposal that a Muham- 
 madan eentleman of rank and character should at once be 
 deputed to Kabul as British representative, in relief of the 
 news-writer whose temporary and imperfect occupation of 
 the post has already been explained. 
 
 Concurrently with this interchange of state papers 
 between the British Viceroy and the Kabul rulers, a 
 minor and indirect correspondence was also in progress 
 between the same potentates through the channel of our 
 news-writer. It has been already explained that Azi'm 
 
 H 2
 
 loo MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 Khan, at the time when he was preparini^ to march out 
 of Kabul, with small hopes of a successful issue to the 
 campaign, had hedged against the probability of defeat 
 by forswearing his former rancour against the British 
 Government and adopting instead an ostentatious desire 
 to conciliate. In this game he had played the old tradi- 
 tional opening of Afghan craft. He had written a note 
 to our Munshi on the 15th of November, dwelling on 
 the victorious advance of Russia, affecting alarm for the 
 independence of Afghanistan, and looking to England 
 for rescue. The reply which Sir John Lawrence in- 
 structed the Munshf to make reached Kabul on the 
 14th of February, when, in consequence of the absence 
 at Kandahar of both Azim Khan and Abdul Rahman, 
 the capital was in fact as well as in name under the ad- 
 ministration of Amir Afzal. The Munshi told Amir 
 Afzal 'that the most friendly relations existed between 
 the British and Russian Governments, and that there 
 was no reason to apprehend that Russia had any wish 
 to molest those who were in friendly relations with Great 
 Britain.' This message was immediately communicated 
 ]jy the Kabul Darbar to that of Bokhara. Afzal Khdn 
 was bound to the royal house of Bokhara by old political 
 intimacy and the domestic ties of intermarriage, and there- 
 fore it was not only natural that he should advise the 
 Usbeg court on such a subject, but also probable that 
 his advice would be inspired by perfect good faith. What 
 he is alleged, upon credible authority, to have written is 
 that, as far as he could make out, if the Russians took all 
 Bokhara to-morrow, the English would be rather pleased 
 than otherwise ; and that, therefore, the best thing for 
 Bokhara would be to make peace as soon as possible with 
 Russia, and desist from futile embassie.i to Calcutta and 
 Constantinople. Evidently Afzal Khdn's interest in the
 
 MASTERL Y INA CTI VITY. i o i 
 
 matter was strong ; for, after brooding over it for some 
 days, he asked our news-writer what the British Govern- 
 ment would have him do in case his old friend at Bokhara 
 asked him for assistance against Russia ? The question 
 almost carried its own solution. The Afghans had too 
 much on their hands to be able to spare one man or one 
 rupee for any external ally, however hard pressed. Never- 
 theless, it was no evasive answer which the Kabul ruler 
 received. He was informed, through the Munshi, that 
 the British Government, though always happy to receive 
 any information he might have to supply regarding current 
 events in Bokhara, recommended him to abstain from any 
 proceeding calculated to involve him in the disputes of that 
 State with Russia. 
 
 But the correspondence of our officers during the early 
 months of 1867 was not confined to the winning side in 
 Afghanistan. We were in communication with Sher 
 All as well. The fallen king, shortly after his defeat at 
 Khelat-i-Ghilzai, had sent a trusted kinsman and name- 
 sake of his own into Sind to lay a fresh entreaty at the 
 feet of the British Government. This he described as 
 his ultimatum. If England still withheld her helping 
 hand from his distress, he was bound to look for friends 
 elsewhere to Persia and to Russia. In one way or 
 another he was resolved to recover his lost kingfdom. 
 Our commissioner in Sind listened with commisera- 
 tion to the piteous tale, but he could do nothing to 
 relieve it. The policy of his Government, as proclaimed 
 in the Viceroy's recently-published letter to Amir Afzal 
 Khdn, was rigid neutrality between the belligerent parties. 
 The messenger received a copy of that letter, and then 
 retired in dejection to join his master at Herat. 
 
 Of affairs at Kandahar throughout the spring it is 
 enough to say that Azim Khan and Abdul Rahman
 
 I02 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 were there in conjunction. That implies a monopoly of 
 authority by the former, and ebullitions of jealous anger 
 from the latter, with the usual consequences to their sub- 
 j ects ; delirant regcs, plectuntur Achivi. U ncle and nephew 
 equally saw that one of them must remain in Kandahar 
 to keep a firm hold on the chief city of the Diirani race 
 and the surrounding country ; but each was resolved that 
 he would not be that one. Each strove to return with all 
 speed to Kabul, where Amir Afzal's failing health might 
 at any time leave the succession to the Afghdn capital a 
 prize for whichever of the two could contrive to be on the 
 spot. Both endeavoured to obtain letters of recall from 
 Amir Afzal, whose voice, under the pressure of these 
 rival bids for his good word, suddenly rose to an un- 
 wonted importance in the state. Driven to make choice 
 between his son and his brother, the bewildered referee 
 decided in favour of the former. Abdul Rahman was 
 to come back to Kabul, while Azi'm Khdn stood fast at 
 Kandahar. The competition, however, was still at see- 
 saw on the 30th of March, when Azi'm Khdn received 
 from Kabul a copy of Sir John Lawrence's letter of the 
 25th of February. Afzal Khdn, though delighted with 
 the Governor-General's recognition of his title, had not 
 felt competent by himself to compose a reply, and had 
 referred the duty to his cleverer brother at Kandahar. 
 Azi'm Khan drafted the necessary answer, and sent it 
 to Kabul to be signed and forwarded to India by the 
 nominal sovereign. It merely reciprocated in general 
 terms the friendly feelings of the Viceroy, and consented 
 to receive the Vakil, or native envoy, whom Sir John 
 Lawrence proposed sending to Kabul as representative 
 of the British Government. So far the action taken by 
 the confederate brothers on Sir John Lawrence's famous
 
 MASTERL Y IN A CTIVITY. 1 03 
 
 letter was all that could be desired ; but secretly they 
 had another use for it. With a duplicity amusingly 
 characteristic of the nation, they transmitted a copy of 
 it to the Russian governor at Tashkend.^ Amir Afzal, 
 in whose name of course the communication was made, 
 informed General Romanovski that he had no, confidence 
 in the * Lord Sdhib's ' fine professions of friendship, and 
 that he was disgusted with the British Government for 
 the ingratitude and ill-treatment shown towards his 
 brother Azim. He looked upon the Russians as his 
 real and only friends, hoped soon to be able to send 
 a regular ambassador to the Russian camp, and would 
 at all times do his utmost to protect and encourage Rus- 
 sian trade. 
 
 All this while Faiz Muhammad, with the Balkh army, 
 was hanging motionless about the high passes of the 
 Hindu Khiish, where his descent on Kabul had been 
 arrested by the news of Sher All's defeat and flight. It 
 was for some time doubtful whether, in the altered cir- 
 cumstances of his position, he might not draw in his 
 horns, and accept the liberal terms of accommodation 
 which the victorious party would have been glad to offer 
 him. But eventually he declared for the bolder alterna- 
 tive of going through with what he had begun. He sent 
 messengers to Herat assuring Sher All of his unchange- 
 able devotion to the royal cause, and begging the Amir 
 to come with all speed and join him in Balkh. Nor did 
 he wait for this invitation to take effect before adding 
 the proof of deeds to his protestations of fidelity. Surwar 
 Khan's was still the only force opposed to him, and that, 
 
 1 The name of the bearer was H^kim Kamrudin, and he reached 
 Tashkend on June 5, 1867. He was a merchant of Kokand, trading with 
 Kabul, and this was not the first occasion on which he acted as letter-carrier 
 between the Russian camp and Kabul.
 
 104 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 Strange to say, remained unaugmented by any of the re- 
 inforcements which the result of the battle of Khelat-i- 
 Ghilzai might have been expected to produce, and which, 
 even with allowance made for the necessity of keeping 
 an eye on Sher All's movements across the Helmand, 
 might certainly have been spared by Azi'm Khan from 
 the garrison of Kandahar. All that Faiz Muhammad had 
 before him was an ill-fed and half-hearted rabble. He 
 attacked and almost annihilated it on the 23rd of April 
 at a place called Bdjgah. The poor remnant, pursued as 
 far as Bamian, fled on without stopping till the neigh- 
 bourhood of Kabul was reached. At Charikar, Surwar 
 Khan made some attempt at a rally, but he had no heart 
 for the task, and soon committed it to other hands ; he 
 betook himself to Kabul, entering the gates in silence 
 and alone, sheltered from mocking eyes by darkness, on 
 the night of the 27th. Now for the second time Faiz 
 Muhammad had the capital of Afghdnistan at his mercy, 
 and for the second time he let the golden opportunity 
 slip. He advanced no further than Bamian. Leaving 
 a strong detachment at that important point, and drop- 
 ping by the way supports for it at Seghdn, Bajgah, and 
 Roce, among the mountains, he withdrew the main body 
 of his army back to Ibak, in Balkh. Nothing more 
 would he do until he had, face to face, effected a personal 
 league with Sher All. The desired meeting took place 
 at Takhtapul, where Sher All, preceded by his son, 
 Ibrahim Khdn, arrived from Herat on the 9th of May. 
 Faiz Muhammad welcomed the Amir with every demon- 
 stration of joy and reverence, and the Amir responded 
 by lavishing marks of honour on Faiz Muhammad. By- 
 gones were by-gones between them. It was understood 
 that in the civil administration of Balkh and in the con-
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 105 
 
 trol of the Balkh troops the king's presence was to 
 detract nothing from the king-maker's independence of 
 action ; and this understanding was not the less cordial 
 for being veiled under much outward deference to the 
 royal supremacy. The conjoined forces numbered 16,000 
 men with sixteen guns. They ought to have been led, 
 without a day's further delay, to the assault and recapture 
 of Kabul. That great prize was still within the grasp of 
 the northern invaders, for the panic caused by Surwar 
 Khan's defeat at Bdjgah had not yet subsided, and the 
 earliest instalment of the reinforcements sent for from 
 Kandahar did not reach Kabul, under command of Ab- 
 dul Rahman, till the 22nd of May. Sher All, however, 
 and his colleague, for some unexplained reason, would 
 not put out their hands to take what fortune so invitingly 
 offered. They wasted the whole summer in ruinous sloth 
 at Takhtapul, each day as it passed tending to introduce 
 some strain or rift in the artificial framework of their 
 compact. They were waiting, they averred, to be joined 
 by more soldiery from Herat ; but the pretext is inad- 
 missible. A more likely theory is that Sher All sacri- 
 ficed this precious interval to seeking from Russia and 
 Persia the help that British India had denied him. In 
 Balkh he possessed special facilities for communicating 
 with the Russian commanders across the Oxus, which he 
 is not likely to have neglected ; and his overtures to 
 Persia were made too openly to admit of any conceal- 
 ment. 
 
 The part played by the Shah of Persia in this matter 
 is most creditable to his Majesty. For purposes of reli- 
 gious pilgrimage, but also, probably, with some ulterior 
 idea of overawing the unquiet Turkomans, he happened 
 this summer to be at Meshhed, on the eastern frontiers
 
 1 06 M ASTER L Y INA CTIVITY. 
 
 of his kingdom. Thither came to wait upon him Sher 
 Ah"s son, Yakub Khan, Governor of Herat. The 
 Afghan prince, who was received by the Shdh with all 
 the honour due to his birth and office, proposed that in 
 return for a subsidy to be immediately granted to his 
 father, he should for the future hold Herat as a fief of 
 the Persian crown. In former times, and up to a recent 
 day, no surer bait could have been dangled before the 
 rulers of Persia, whoever they might have been. The 
 present monarch, however, alive to the danger lurking 
 within this gaudy fly, refused to bite. He replied simply 
 that he was bound by express treaty with the British 
 Government not to interfere in the affairs of Afghanistan, 
 and that he felt no inclination to break the engagement. 
 Yakub Khan obtained honourable dismissal back to 
 Herat ; his mission had been a total failure. 
 
 Sher All's mortification, when he found Persia thus 
 breaking under his hand like a bruised reed, was height- 
 ened by a misgiving lest shattered hopes might not 
 represent the full distress of his predicament ; how if his 
 attempt to seduce Persia into an infringement of treaty 
 should have given umbrage to England ? To get out of 
 this scrape he did not hesitate to volunteer an elaborate 
 fib. Recurring to his old method of circumlocution, he 
 wrote to our Munshf at Kabul ; but, being far too wily 
 a practitioner to commit dubious words to the enduring 
 test of paper, he put nothing in his note (dated Takhta- 
 pul, August nth) save an innocent request to be sup- 
 plied with the last news from India. The statement he 
 really wanted to make he entrusted to the bearer of the 
 note in the form of a verbal message for the Munshi's 
 private ear. It signified that in sending his son, Yakub 
 Khdn, to Meshhed, he had been actuated, not by any
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 107 
 
 political motive, but by a simple desire to show proper 
 respect to the Shah, when accident had brought his 
 Persian majesty so close to the Herat frontier; further, 
 that he had neither concluded nor desired any alliance 
 with Persia, his old alliance with England being the only 
 one on which he set the slightest store. Poor Sher All 
 might have saved himself the trouble of this ingenious 
 endeavour to mystify the British Government; all the 
 details of the Meshhed conference were already known 
 in India, having been duly reported to Sir John Lawrence 
 by our minister at Teheran. 
 
 Yet, to do Sher Ali justice, any liberty he may have 
 taken with the truth of Yakub Khan's abortive excur- 
 sion to Meshhed, was far surpassed by his rival's manipu- 
 lation of the same fact. As the former had striven to 
 explain away the circumstance into nothingness, so the 
 latter, writing on the very next day, strove to bring out 
 its purport and consequences in the blackest relief. Azim 
 Khan's version was that Yakub Khan had led back a 
 Persian army to Herat, which had occupied the place 
 and planted two standards on its walls, one Persian the 
 other Russian. This story he sent by express to Kabul, 
 desiring his brother to communicate it to the British 
 Munshi as news of the gravest urgency. Simultaneously 
 he wrote direct to Sir Henry Green on the Sind border, 
 urging that, as his enemies, by throwing themselves into 
 a Russo-Persian alliance, were now our enemies also, he 
 reckoned with confidence on our granting him support 
 against them. Of course neither of these overtures ob- 
 tained the slightest notice from the better informed Indian 
 Government. 
 
 The time which Amir Sher Ali and Faiz Muhammad 
 squandered, as we have seen, in fruitless applications to
 
 1 08 M ASTER L V INA CTIVITY. 
 
 Russia and Persia, was put to better purpose by their 
 opponents at Kabul. After the first reinforcement brought 
 up by Abdul Rahmdn from Kandahar, others followed. 
 Two camps were formed, at Gardandiwar and Charikar, 
 for the protection of the city on its northern face, and 
 every exertion was used to improve the discipline and 
 revive the confidence of the soldiery. A threatened out- 
 break of the Ghilzais was nipped in the bud. Chieftains 
 of the Kohistdn, suspected of a secret understanding with 
 Sher All, were soothed into neutrality. Even the harsh- 
 ness of the bit upon the urban population of Kabul was in 
 some degree relaxed, thanks to the more humane policy 
 which Abdul Rahmdn's presence inspired. In truth the 
 condition of the citizens was so forlorn that the sternest 
 heart might have been touched by some compunction. 
 War, famine, tyranny, and anarchy had already scourged 
 them to the limit of human endurance, and now they 
 were overshadowed by the wings of the pestilence. 
 Cholera broke out on the 23rd July, and in four days 
 took five hundred victims. Everybody that could, fled 
 into the country ; the rest cowered within closed doors. 
 The streets were deserted ; the daily Darbdr at the 
 palace was discontinued ; Kabul seemed a city of the 
 dead. A heavy fall of rain quenched for a time the 
 virulence of the plague, but soon it again burst forth, 
 and, in gusts that rose and fell with fitful vehemence, 
 clung scathingly about the doomed habitations through- 
 out the month of August. Barukzai princes, however, 
 reck little for a murrain among their subjects : at pre- 
 sent their whole thoughts were pre-occupied by the 
 impending vacancy on the cushion of the Bald-Hissdr, 
 and the fair vista for their ambitious fancies opening out 
 of that contingency. Ever since his return from Kanda-
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 109 
 
 har, Abdul Rahman had affected the state, and pressed 
 for the title, of heir-apparent to his father's dignity. Afzal 
 Khan could not be induced to confer the coveted distinc- 
 tion. As the disease under which the Amir was sinking 
 gradually gained ground, he began to repent him of the 
 absence at Kandahar of the keen brain and quick hand 
 on which he had been accustomed to depend ; and at last, 
 in spite of his son's passionate remonstrances, he recalled 
 his brother to his side. Azi'm Khan, on receiving the 
 summons, saw his advantage, and used it brutally. He 
 was not, he replied, the Messiah that by coming to Kabul 
 he could put fresh life into a dying man ; and, as for the 
 portentous invasion from Balkh, Abdul Rahman, he 
 imagined, was soldier enough to cope with that. He re- 
 fused to stir from Kandahar until he should have been 
 relieved in his duties there by his son, Surwar Khdn. 
 Amir Afzal eagerly complied with the condition. Sur- 
 war Khan was sent to Kandahar, and assumed the go- 
 vernment of that place and its dependencies. Then Azi'm 
 Khdn set out on a leisurely progress to Kabul, reviewing 
 and re-arranging, as he went, the civil administration of 
 Ghazni and the other interjacent districts. His new 
 plan was to leave to Abdul Rahman all the danger and 
 responsibility of a collision with the Balkh army, and not 
 himself to reach Kabul until the decisive overthrow of one 
 or other of the two combatants' hosts should leave his 
 own course clear. He had tried waiting tactics before 
 now, and found them profitable. 
 
 The event to which Azi'm Khan looked forward 
 seemed at last to be really imminent. On the 23rd 
 August the long- delayed advance on Kabul had actually 
 been begun by Sher All and Faiz Muhammad, and to 
 repel their progress Abdul Rahman was leading a
 
 no MASTERLY INACTIVJIY. 
 
 reori^anized army back to the old fighting ground, the 
 scene of Surwar Khan's defeats, in the passes of the 
 Hindu Khush. The invaders numbered nearly twenty 
 thousand men, but they marched in two columns, sepa- 
 rated by a considerable interval. Thus, on the 17th 
 September the leading column, under Faiz Muhammad, 
 had reached the boundaries of Ustur-Karram, in the 
 Kohistdn, while Sher All's battalions were away at Panj- 
 sher. With the quick eye of a good soldier, Abdul 
 Rahmdn pounced on the opportunity which this blunder 
 afforded. He charged Faiz Muhammad's corps, without 
 allowing it time to obtain support or co-operation from 
 Sher All's division. Fortune seconded his strategy. 
 A chance shot, early in the action, struck down Faiz 
 Muhammad, and at once all was over. The Balkh troops, 
 whose attachment was not to Sher Alf or the royal cause, 
 but to Faiz Muhammad and regular pay, immediately 
 ceased fighting, and surrendered. 
 
 Faiz Muhammad's body was brought into Kabul, in a 
 horse litter, on the 17th September. The Barukzais, 
 free as they are with the blood of all the world besides, 
 have traditional scruples, partly of religion, though 
 more, perhaps, of selfish policy, about taking the life 
 of a brother Barukzai ; and in the worst heat of their 
 interminable family quarrels, they seldom push revenge 
 to the point of outraging in the public eye the respect 
 they consider due to the meanest of their name. Full 
 funereal obsequies were therefore granted to the remains 
 of Faiz Muhammad ; and the illuminations which the first 
 news of so famous a victory had prompted the slavish 
 inhabitants of Kabul to prepare, were countermanded by 
 special instructions from the Bala-Hissar. ' Felix oppor- 
 tunitatc mortis', may be Faiz Muhammad's epitaph. Frank,
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. iii 
 
 gallant, and generous, he had lived long enough to win 
 the affection of his fellows and a commanding position 
 in the country, while the romantic circumstances of his 
 death induce a large indulgence for the versatility of 
 temper, which was rather the fault of his country and of 
 his time than of the individual. 
 
 When one, and that the better, half of the invading 
 army had ceased to exist, it was hardly to be expected 
 that the other would cohere. The news of the cata- 
 strophe at Kila Alladad smote the camp at Panjsher 
 with dissolution. Deserted by most of his troops, Sher 
 All was in a few days obliged to abandon his guns, and 
 make the best of his way, with the 3,000 men that alone 
 remained faithful to their colours, back through Inderab 
 to Takhtapiil. 
 
 Azim Khan, now that all difficulties had been re- 
 moved from his path without any exertion on his own 
 part, entered Kabul on the 21st September. He was 
 just in time. Amir Afzal Khan died on the 7th 
 October, and Abdul Rahman was ready in Kabul to 
 dispute the succession, having hurriedly returned for the 
 purpose from his encampment on the border of Balkh. 
 Three days were given up nominally to mourning for 
 the deceased Amir, who, unlike Faiz Muhammad, had 
 lived too long for his reputation. People forgot the 
 glories of Afzal Khan's military manhood in the fresh 
 recollection of his nonentity as a ruler, and no one really 
 regretted him. The practical use of the interval was to 
 test the relative strength of the two claimants to the 
 vacant title. On the fourth day Abdul Rahman suc- 
 cumbed. In a solemn Darbar he made over the sword 
 of the late Amir, his father, to Azi'm Khan, who there- 
 upon was saluted by all the assembled nobles and chiefs
 
 1 1 2 MASTERL V INA CTI VITY. ' 
 
 as lord paramount of their fortunes. It must have been 
 gall and wormwood to Abdul Rahmdn thus publicly to 
 make cession of his birth-right to the uncle whom he 
 abhorred ; but he went through the ceremony with a 
 good grace, laying it up in his heart as matter for which, 
 with the help of- time, he might yet exact satisfaction. 
 The mask of placid obsequiousness which he for the 
 present wore, he is said to have borrowed from the 
 advice of his step-mother, Afzal Khan's principal widow. 
 The tale is likely enough. In Afghanistan, as elsewhere, 
 the course of male politics largely takes its bent from the 
 invisible occupants of the Zandna, and the influence of 
 Bibi Marwarid, in particular, had long been a distinct 
 power in the land. 
 
 Quietly Azi'm Khan stepped into possession of the 
 prize to which, through much dirt and after many a 
 downfall, his indomitable perseverance had at last con- 
 ducted him. He was Amir, if not of Afghanistan, at 
 least of Kabul and Kandahar. Whatever validity there 
 had been in Afzal Khan's title was assuredly his now 
 by legitimate process of succession. The fact, he felt, 
 ought to be recognised by the British Government, and 
 the sooner the better. Accordingly, he took early occa- 
 sion to hint in roundabout fashion to our Munshi that 
 he expected from the Governor-General some expression 
 of condolence for the death of his brother, Amir Afzal. 
 The moment at which he gave this intimation was pro- 
 pitious to his wishes, in a way and to an extent of which 
 he could not be aware. For the last six months Sir John 
 Lawrence had been most anxious to accredit a regular 
 Vakil to the Court of Kabul. Important interests 
 demanded, and the express provision of a treaty sanc- 
 tioned, our having a representative resident among the
 
 - MASTERL V IN A CTI VI TV. 1 1 3 
 
 Afghdns. The experiment, which the distracted and 
 dangerous condition of the country had induced us to 
 try, of limiting our representation to the person of a 
 simple news-writer, was proved by three years' facts to 
 be impracticable. The Munshi was constantly found, 
 from no fault of his own, to be dabbling in business of 
 delicate diplomacy, quite foreign to the sphere of duty 
 for which he had been selected, and to which it was 
 desirable he should be confined. Manifestly the office 
 needed as capable and dignified an occupant as her 
 Majesty's native service of India could supply. Just 
 the man for the purpose was ready to our hand in Ata 
 Muhammad Khan, a Pathan of good birth, tried loyalty, 
 considerable military knowledge, and perfect familiarity 
 with all the various intricacies of the Afghan character. 
 As far back as in the month of May immediately, that 
 is, on receipt of Amir Afzal's assurance that our Vakil 
 would be welcome this gentleman had been warned to 
 hold himself ready for service at Kabul. His actual 
 despatch thither had remained in abeyance, pending the 
 issue of the Balkh campaign. The reason for awaiting 
 that event had been that the Governor General, foreseeing 
 how the gobe-mouches of every Asiatic bazaar would mis- 
 construe the revival of the Vakil's office into an evidence 
 of the British Government's preferential good-will towards 
 the party for the time being in possession of Kabul, had 
 desired, if possible, to reserve the imaginary compliment 
 for the benefit of the rightful sovereign. If, as had been 
 hoped, the Balkh campaign had ended in reseating Amir 
 Sher All at the Bala-Hissar, the credentials of the new 
 Vakil might have been addressed to the prince whose 
 prior claim on our favour every word and deed of the 
 British Government had consistently proclaimed. The 
 
 I
 
 1 14 MASTERL y INA CTIV/TY. 
 
 result, however, had disappointed our hopes. Sher Ah' 
 was further than ever from the recovery of his lost supre- 
 macy the opposition had obtained a new lease of power. 
 In justice to our own interests we could afford no further 
 waiting on the chances of a career that so repeatedly 
 belied the anticipations of its sincerest well-wishers. Sir 
 John Lawrence determined that our Vakil should at 
 once proceed to Kabul. A condition, however, obviously 
 precedent to the Vakil's despatch, was that the authority 
 to whom his credentials were addressed should have been 
 acknowledged by his employers. Hence a necessity for 
 recognising Azim Khan as Amir. In this field, etiquette 
 undoubtedly required that Azim Khan himself should have 
 made the first move ; he ought to have claimed British 
 recognition by a special letter to the Viceroy, formally 
 announcing his installation. On the other hand, Sir John 
 Lawrence knew for a fact that the submission to Azim 
 Khan had been universal ; he saw that the Vakil could 
 not start until the new Amir had been recognised ; he 
 had reason to hope that our policy of moral, though 
 inactive, preference for Sher All was too well proved to 
 be lightly called in question ; he felt the logical obliga- 
 tion which the previous recognition of Afzal Khan now 
 imposed on him to recognise Afzal Khdn's successor ; 
 and, finally, he held in the request for condolence, 
 expressed by Azim Khan to the Munshi, sufficient 
 groundwork for taking action, without derogating from 
 the viceregal dignity. These considerations decided 
 him. On the 13th November he issued two simulta- 
 neous letters to the address of Azim Khdn as Amir of 
 Kabul and Kandahar. The first bears on its face the 
 signs of a studied brevity; in it Azim Khdn was offered 
 due condolence for his brother's demise, and also con-
 
 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 115 
 
 gratulated, in a single frigid sentence, on his own accession 
 to power. The second comprised the credentials which 
 Ata Muhammad Khan was personally to deliver at Kabul. 
 Nothing now remained to prevent our Vakil's departure, 
 but the obtainmentof a proper Afghan escort for his pro- 
 tection on the road from the Peshawar frontier. This 
 was soon arranged. Ata Muhammad Khan hastened to 
 the scene of his duties, and from the date of his arrival 
 at Kabul the reproach and inconvenience of British India 
 being without a spokesman in Afghanistan ceased to be 
 felt. 
 
 So ended the year 1867. Its close left Sher All in 
 worse plight than he ever yet had been. All the brave 
 hopes that Balkh had held out to him in the spring were 
 buried in the grave of Faiz Muhammad. His own sway 
 over the Usbeg population of the province fell far short 
 of the standard requisite to unite their scattered clans in 
 any fresh effort against the victorious arms of Abdul 
 Rahman. Further stay in Balkh was useless, and might 
 be dangerous ; he had no choice but to retire from 
 Takhtapul. In all Afghanistan not a corner was left 
 to Dost Muhammad's heir but Herat. Worn in body and 
 broken in spirit, Amir Sher All prepared to fall back on 
 that asylum. 
 
 Here my tale of Afghan history must pause. The 
 epoch we have reached marks for Sir John Lawrence's 
 government the culminating point of the policy, which 
 popular criticism, creating a catch-word of definition out 
 of a chance phrase of mine -in the Edinburgh Review, has 
 quaintly agreed to laud or reprobate under the name of 
 ' Masterly Inactivity.' Half the censure which has been 
 showered on that policy springs from a misconception. 
 Our relations towards the states lying within the limits
 
 1 1 6 MASTERL Y IN A CTIVITY. 
 
 of the Indian peninsula have been confounded with the 
 fundamentally different relations we hold towards the 
 powers lying beyond those limits. Familiar w-ith the 
 right of intervention which we justly exercise in the 
 affairs of feudatory princes bound to us by ties of sub- 
 ordinate alliance, the Anglo-Indian mind forgets that we 
 are lords-paramount of India only, not of all Asia, and 
 expects us to throw down our truncheon between hostile 
 factions in regions which geography has made indepen- 
 dent of our control. Quite as justly might England 
 have been called on to thrust herself, some years ago, 
 between North and South in America, or, more recently, 
 between Monarchists and Republicans in Spain. In the 
 case of Afghanistdn the obligation to let foreigners 
 alone, that they might settle the form of their government 
 and the person of their governor as they please, was 
 enforced on the Indian Government, not only by the 
 general spirit of international law, but by the particular 
 provisions of a written treaty. The second article of 
 Lord Dalhousie's Treaty of 1855 with Dost Muhammad 
 bound us ' never to interfere in the territories of Afghan- 
 istan.' Dost Muhammad's sons were now fighting among 
 themselves for the sovereignty of Afghanistdn, and if to 
 have granted either of them arms or money against the 
 other would not have constituted a breach of treaty, it is 
 difficult to imagine what would. Yet, oddly enough, this 
 very treaty is reprinted at full length by more than one of 
 the many writers who condemn our long-continued refusal 
 of assistance to Sher All. What is stranger still, one 
 pamphleteer,^ by an ingenious perversion more credit- 
 able to his own daring than complimentary to the discri- 
 mination of his audience, has not shrunk from quoting 
 
 ' * The Oxus and the Indus.' liy Major Evans Bell.
 
 MASTERL Y INA CTIVITY. 1 1 7 
 
 the very clause which lays an embargo on our interference, 
 as a foundation from which to denounce the Indian Go- 
 vernment's postponement of a particular act. Surely the 
 force of casuistry can no further go than when inaction 
 and interference are found to be convertible terms. The 
 act referred to, is the original recognition of Sher Ah', as 
 Dost Muhammad's successor, which Lord Elgin's adminis- 
 tration delayed to issue till six months after the decease 
 of the old Amir. The delay has been imputed to the 
 Foreign Office of India as a sin, disgraceful in itself, and 
 lamentable in its consequences ; disgraceful, because it 
 amounted to a repudiation of the * perpetual peace and 
 friendship ' which Sher All, as his father's heir, had a 
 right to demand of us ; and lamentable, because it stimu- 
 lated the insurrectionary designs of his rivals. In point 
 of fact, the apparent dilatoriness of the Government was, 
 to a considerable extent, accidental, caused partly by the 
 length of time that necessarily elapsed before authentic 
 information of the death and dying wishes of Uost- 
 Muhammad could travel from the distant camp of Herat 
 to the viceregal lodge at Simla, and partly by the check 
 which Lord Elgin's mortal illness was then inflicting on 
 every wheel of the State machiner)'. But extenuation 
 need not be pleaded, w^hen the means of justification are 
 ample. Each of the two charges may be traversed by a 
 direct negatur. In the first place, the nomination of 
 Sher All by his father, though binding on the Barukzai 
 family, gave him not a tittle of claim to our recognition ; 
 no such being as Dost Muhammad's ' heir ' could have any 
 existence for the British Government, until the voice of 
 the chiefs and people should have ratified the deceased 
 Amir's choice ; we simply allowed time for that voice to 
 make itself heard, and, as soon as it had spoken, the
 
 ii8 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 recognition which then, and not till then, became Sher 
 Ah"s due, was granted with prompt cordiaHty. Secondly, 
 anything that the Indian Government, then or subse- 
 quently, did or refrained from doing, had no more effect 
 in rousing or quelling the force of Azi'm Khan's revolu- 
 tionary ambition, than it could have upon the motion of 
 the planets in heaven. Sher All, very likely makes a 
 secret grievance out of the guarded slowness of our pro- 
 cedure ; but if every word an Afghdn says in his own 
 cause is to be believed, the faith of some of us will be 
 sorely tried. Sticklers for Sher All's ' rights ' appear 
 to forget the origin of his title. In comparison with his 
 brothers he may be called the * rightful sovereign ; ' but 
 the father was nothing more or less than a usurper. Re- 
 presentatives of the family displaced by Dost Muhammad 
 are still forthcoming, and still cherish expectations of a 
 recall from exile in India to kingly power in Kabul. 
 Among them, if anywhere, is the 'rightful sovereign' to 
 be looked for. The truth, however, is, that the Afghan 
 policy contains no such institution. The only ' rightful 
 sovereign ' is he who can take the crown, and keep it. 
 Lord Dalhousie fully admitted the validity of the national 
 custom, when, by the treaty already cited, he recognised 
 Dost Muhammad as founder of a new dynasty in super- 
 cession of the house of the Sadyozais, whose more legiti- 
 mate title Lord Auckland's Government had formerly 
 advocated by force of arms. If Lord Dalhousie's act was 
 justifiable, so, too, must have been Sir John Lawrence's 
 conduct first, in taking time to recognise Sher All as 
 Amir of all Afghanistdn, and afterwards in not scrupling 
 to recognize successively Afzal Khan and Azi'm Khan as 
 Amfrs of that portion of Afghanistan which had fallen 
 under their de facto authority. The several operations
 
 MASTERL V INA CTIVITY. 1 1 9 
 
 are all parts of one consistent policy the policy of 
 assenting peaceably to the visible facts, resultant from a 
 neighbour's settlement of his own affairs after his own 
 fashion. 
 
 The more the historic facts of the case are sifted the 
 firmer will be the conclusion of every dispassionate 
 inquirer, that the course pursued by the Indian Govern- 
 ment up to the end of 1867 did no injustice to Sher All, 
 and that any other course would have been unjust to the 
 Afghdn nation. Further, it cannot be denied that a 
 system which, by the transparent simplicity of its quietism, 
 lulled the wakeful Anglophobia of Russian generals, and 
 disarmed their inconvenient propensity to meet supposed 
 plots of ours in Afghanistan by counter-plots of their 
 own in the same country was not without positive merit 
 of some kind. Whether, on the whole, it was the best 
 that could be devised for British interests, is a question 
 which the inordinate space already occupied by this paper 
 warns me to defer to another though, I hope, an early 
 opportunity. Towards the end of 1868 the Government 
 of India abandoned inactivity for action. Each, there- 
 fore, of the rival methods having now had a fair trial, the 
 English people has the means of judging which the more 
 rightly may be entitled the 'masterly' one. The new 
 scheme bore blossom at the Ambald Darbar in March 
 1869, but the soundness of its fruit remains to be tested. 
 
 NOTE BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 Mr. Wyllie has here stated with admirable force, the policy which the 
 Government of India pursued during the unsettled period of Afghan history, 
 while the sons of Dost Muhammad were struggling for the supremacy. On 
 some points he would probably have revised his opinion had he lived to see 
 the period of comparative rest which has supervened since Amir Sher Ali 
 finally obtained the ascendancy in 1868-69, '^^id was definitively recognised 
 by the British Government. Nor do I think he would have expressed
 
 120 MASTERLY INACTIVITY. 
 
 himself with so much certainty regarding the very complex question of the 
 military occupation of Qucttd. Such an occupation would doubtless have 
 been attended with very great expense and danger at the time when 
 Mr. Wyllie wrote. But with the extension and approaching completion of 
 the Panjdb and Sind Railway System, some of these difficulties disappear. 
 I have had the advantage of going over the proof sheet of the foregoing 
 Essay (pp. 87-92), referring to QuettA, with the General Officer who is now 
 the leading authority on affairs connected with the artillery defences of 
 India. He said ' I look on this subject purely from a military point of view. 
 I do not think General Jacob's plan was practicable 18 years ago ; but I 
 object to it being summarised as "a popular error." The truth is, that with 
 the railway system completed to Sakkar, and a short and inexpensive exten- 
 sion across the desert to the foot of the Boldn Pass, I look upon Quettd as 
 one of the great possibilities for the more complete defence of the Frontier, 
 and for the improved health of our English troops. But railway communi- 
 cation is a first necessity. Given a line of railway, and we might have the 
 English troops in perfect health in the English climate of Ouettd, instead of 
 dying like sheep in Sind. Moreover, concerning the strategic aspects of 
 Quettd as a great outlying defence, I think these pages do not fairly 
 state the case. If we have ever to fight for the Boldn Pass, we should 
 do it at the Ouettd end. We should there have our troops in perfect health, 
 and have the choice of our ground. I do not agree with the small print at 
 the top of page 91, about fighting on the western extremity. If we were to 
 defend the western extremity, our troops would have an open desert behind 
 them, and be encamped in the most deadly spot in India ; I know that 
 country well. It is all very well to speak on paper about arraying forces "on 
 any field we might choose between Shikdrpur and Dadur." The malaria 
 would render any such field a field of skulls for our army, while we were 
 waiting for the enemy. I look upon Ouettd as a question not yet settled. It 
 cannot possibly be settled until the completion of our railway system. Mean- 
 while, it is not according to knowledge to dismiss it as a " popular error." 
 The question must, some day or other, and probably before long, be con- 
 sidered in the light of the new capabilities of Frontier defence, which the rail- 
 way system will develop.' ( 1 874) This C2uettd question may serve as an example 
 of several other points, regarding which Mr. Wyllie would probably have 
 modified his views. With the rapid development, both moral and material, 
 at present going on in India, there is scarcely a question of Indian policy 
 which can be considered as definitively settled. W. W. H.
 
 121 
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 NOTE BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 In 1868 Amir Sher All finally established his autho- 
 rity in Afghdnistan. Lord Lawrence, the then Viceroy, 
 in pursuance of the policy of recognising and befriend- 
 ing the de facto ruler, deemed it wise that the British 
 Government should acknowledge, in a public manner, the 
 change which had thus taken place. He therefore inti- 
 mated that he would grant to the Ami'r a State interview 
 or Darbar, and that he would befriend him, in the con- 
 solidation of his power, with a present of money. Sir 
 John Lawrence quitted the Viceroyalty in January 1869, 
 and it fell to his successor, Lord Mayo, to carry out 
 these promises. This he did at the Ambala Darbar in 
 March 1869. The effect of that Darbar was to give to 
 our policy of de facto dealings with Afghanistan, its legi- 
 timate development. So long as the claimants to the 
 Afghan sovereignty were fighting among themselves, 
 that policy debarred us from interfering. But when one 
 of them had finally emerged triumphant, and concen- 
 trated the de facto authority in his hands, the same 
 policy led Lord Lawrence to strengthen him in that de 
 facto authority. The five years which have elapsed 
 since the Ambala Darbar prove that Lord Lawrence had 
 accurately gauged the situation. The successful claimant, 
 Sher All, whom the Ambala Darbar publicly recognised,
 
 122 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 has maintained his de facto authority ever since, and still 
 reigns as the rightful ruler of Afghdnistdn (1874). 
 
 When Mr. Wyllie wrote the following essay, it was 
 impossible to foresee this. The Darbar was held at the 
 end of March 1869 ; the latest information which Mr. 
 Wyllie had regarding its results was an Indian newspaper 
 of the 30th November 1869. During the next few 
 months Mr. Wyllie was in bad health ; and he died in 
 March 1870. In writing his former essays, he brought 
 to his work special knowledge acquired in the Indian 
 Foreign Office. To this essay he brought no special 
 knowledge of his own, and it was written before the 
 results of the Darbdr had had time to develop them- 
 selves. At first, indeed, it seemed doubtful to his brother 
 and myself whether this paper should be reprinted. It 
 was not written with Mr. Wyllie's usual knowledge of 
 the facts. Nor have its anticipations and forecasts been 
 realised by subsequent events. On the other hand, it 
 not unfairly represents a view which was at that time 
 shared by many careful thinkers, and which will always 
 have a body of supporters. That view is non-inter- 
 ference, pure and simple, in the countries lying between 
 the Indian frontier and the Asiatic possessions of Russia. 
 Hitherto it has not been found possible either in Persia 
 or in Afghdnistdn to give political effect to this view. In 
 Persia it has proved expedient to maintain an embassy at 
 the court of the legitimate sovereign. In Afghdnistdn 
 the policy has been to stand aloof during internal struggles 
 for the throne, and on their termination, to recognise and 
 befriend the de facto ruler. 
 
 It is right to add that although the calamities which 
 this essay foreboded from the Ambdld Darbdr have not 
 happened, yet the absolute tranquillity of Afghdnistdn
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 123 
 
 has not been secured. The anticipated complications 
 with Russia only required a little time and a little ex- 
 planation on both sides, to disappear. The Seistdn diffi- 
 culty between Persia and Afghanistan became a subject 
 of peaceful arbitration, instead of a chronic casus belli as 
 it had been for many years. And to this end the results 
 of the Ambala Darbar materially contributed. It would 
 be unwise, however, to assume that such an hereditary 
 source of irritation between two Asiatic powers has been 
 entirely laid at rest by the intervention of a third party. 
 The picture on page 160, of Ishakh Khan overthrowing 
 Afghanistan in 1870, was a purely imaginary one ; and had 
 Mr. Wyllie lived a few months longer, he would have 
 been the first to acknowledge its fanciful character. But 
 while the evils which he anticipated have not happened, 
 the Amir Sher All has not enjoyed unbroken rest. He 
 reigns de facto sovereign, so far as his brothers, the sons 
 of Dost Muhammad, are concerned. Time and death, 
 and Sher All's strong arm in the battle-field, have settled 
 their claims. But Sher Ali is himself a father, and the 
 struggle among the sons of his father now threatens to be 
 reproduced among his own sons. Of these sons, Yakub 
 Khan is a man of mature years, personal popularity, and 
 great military talent. Abdulla Jan is a mere boy, but he is 
 the favourite of his father. Sher All brought him to the 
 Ambala Darbdr, and has in many other ways put him 
 forward as his heir. This conduct Yakub Khan resents, 
 and he maintains a great party in Herat, of which he is 
 now governor (as lately in Kandahar), ready to assert his 
 claims on the death of his father, or if needful, by rebel- 
 lion during his father's lifetime. Amir Sher All's dearest 
 object was to obtain a recognition at the Ambala Darbar 
 of his youngest son, Abdulla Jan. In this, notwithstand-
 
 124 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 ing his astuteness, he was outwitted, and the subject was 
 not allowed to enter into the discussions. The father has 
 since recognised him, and Yakub is now in arms (Sept. 
 1874). 
 
 While, therefore, the Ambala Darbar has during the 
 past five years been productive of nothing but good, and 
 has contributed to the consolidation of the dc facto autho- 
 rity in Afghanistan, it has not removed all the sources 
 of present disquiet and future strife which lurk in that 
 unhappy country. The question of interference with the 
 internal affairs of Afghanistdn may arise again on the 
 death of Sher All, if not before that event. The follow- 
 ing essay will represent the views of an important class 
 of Indian politicians, whenever that question is resusci- 
 tated. I have therefore thought it best to include it in 
 this selection of Mr. Wyllie's writings, with omissions and 
 modifications of expression, such as, I believe, he would 
 have himself made had he lived to reprint it at this date 
 (1874). In every point dealt with, from the instability of 
 the Amir's rule and the danger of his administrative 
 reforms, to the Seistdn complication and the evil effects 
 of the Ambdla Darbdr in Russia and in Persia, the events 
 of the five years since the Essay was written have falsi- 
 fied its predictions. Nevertheless it represented the 
 views of a considerable class both in India and in 
 England at the date when it was written ; and it will ever 
 possess this basis of truth that, in its own words, the 
 ' true bulwarks of India are to be found within her own 
 limits.' 
 
 W. W. H.
 
 "5 
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY.^ 
 
 Who hath not seen Seville, according to the Spanish 
 proverb, hath not seen a marvel. The same may be 
 said of an Indian Viceroy's Darbar. The scenic splen- 
 dour of the pageant constitutes its humblest charm. 
 That might be rivalled or surpassed in other lands ; but, 
 except perhaps at an imperial coronation in Moscow, 
 nowhere else can be found so harmonious a combination 
 of the distinctive types of Europe and the East, so vivid 
 a revelation of all that can best symbolise the wonders 
 of comprehensive empire. On one side there is the 
 disciplined might of England, represented by a gathering 
 of picked troops infantry, cavalry, and artillery capable, 
 as they stand, of making a victorious promenade through- 
 out the length or breadth of India, though half the 
 country should be in arms against them ; on the other, 
 the fantastic pomp of Asia, impersonated in an array of 
 luxurious princes, who, by the lustre of their jewels, the 
 bellicose aspect of their motley followers, the bulk of 
 their elephants, and the costly caparisoning of their 
 horses, convert the act of homage to their common 
 master into an occasion of emulous display, each striving 
 to outshine his peer. In some sense, it is an Oriental 
 edition of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The vast 
 plain all round the city of rendezvous is white with 
 innumerable encampments. Every camp clusters round 
 
 1 'Fortnightly Review,' March i, 1870.
 
 126 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 the (lag-staff of a separate authority, and at every staff, 
 save one, the drooped flag denotes subordination to a 
 superior power in the vicinity. A long, broad street of 
 marquees, tenanted by the various members and attaches 
 of the supreme Government, leads up to the palatial 
 mass of canvas forming the vice-regal pavilion. The 
 feudatory chief whose turn may have come to approach 
 the ' Lord Sahib's ' presence, is greeted at the mouth of 
 the street by a salute of guns in number apportioned to 
 his rank. Up the street his ^^r/^^ slowly moves through 
 lines of British troopers, whose sabres flash welcome in 
 the sunshine. A fanfare of martial music announces 
 his arrival at the entrance of the pavilion ; secretaries 
 and aides-de-camp receive him as he alights, and see 
 him doff his shoes ; the infantry guard-of-honour pre- 
 sents arms, and so, between two rows of clashing wea- 
 pons his Highness is conducted to his allotted place in 
 the assembly. The throne under the central canopy is 
 vacant for the Viceroy. Right and left of it, in horse- 
 shoe fashion, chairs are arranged ; these for the native 
 potentates, and those for British officers. Behind the 
 latter, and drawn aside, as having no proper status in a 
 purely Eastern ceremony, gleams a small and select 
 parki'vc of English ladies. All present are seated, and 
 a growing stillness indicates the hour for the Viceroy's 
 advent. All rise as he appears, heralded by a royal 
 salute, and with a brilliant staff around him. Proceeding 
 to the canopy, he stands motionless below it the whole 
 conclave also standing in silence until the last of the 
 twenty-one guns, which recognise the majesty of India's 
 absent empress, has ceased. Then he mounts the throne, 
 and the business of the Darbdr begins. 
 
 Such was the scene at Ambdld, in Upper India,
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 127 
 
 under the sun's declining rays, on the 27th March 1869. 
 Yet in some respects the spectacle on that occasion pre- 
 sented a strikinof contrast to the usual routine. A truthful 
 sketch of it appeared shortly afterwards in the Illustrated 
 London News. The central personage is, of course, 
 Lord Mayo, and, not far from him, sits Lord Napier of 
 Magdala, both of them bareheaded ; below the dais the 
 slipperless figures of half-a-dozen Panjab chieftains, and 
 the bared heads of Sir Donald Macleod, Sir William 
 Mansfield, and Sir Henry Durand are equally familiar to 
 the eye. But who are these, a man and a boy, occupying 
 chairs of equality on the dais with Lord Mayo, their 
 heads covered with the tall black lamb's-wool hat of 
 Persia, and their lower limbs encased in trousers and 
 boots of European pattern ? They must be sovereign 
 lords of foreign territory, owning no allegiance to the 
 British Crown. The boy is Abdullah Jan, a younger 
 son of Sher All, of Afghanistan ; the man is Sher All 
 himself. Sher All's past history is legible in his exter- 
 nals. In his air there is all the dignity which Royal 
 birth, coupled with a long experience of misfortune, 
 seldom fails to confer ; and the habitual melancholy of 
 his passion-ravaged countenance is eloquent with the tale 
 of that domestic griefs which four years ago shook his 
 reason with an almost irreparable throe. But the domi- 
 nant feature is the eye, and its expression sternness the 
 practised sternness of one never known to spare any adver- 
 sary that might be wisely struck. But here, five hundred 
 miles within the British frontier, and parading a prece- 
 dence co-ordinate with the jealously guarded supremacy 
 of the British Viceroy, how comes Sher AH here ? 
 
 ^ His favourite son and his full-brother were both killed in hand-to-hand 
 combat with each other at the battle of Kujhbdz, on June 6, 1865.
 
 128 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 Fifteen short months ago he was a helpless fugitive, 
 beaten out of Kabul, beaten out of Kandahar, beaten out 
 of Balkh, and seeking a precarious shelter at Herat. 
 Russia and Persia had alike refused to help him, and the 
 determination of British India to leave him to his fate had 
 been brought home to him by a score of humiliating 
 rebuffs. He appeared sunk in complete and irretrievable 
 ruin. Now his lot is changed indeed. The sarne Eng- 
 lish who lately had not an obolus of alms for his destitu- 
 tion, are now receiving him with the honours of a royal 
 guest. From approaching in supplication at their feet 
 he has risen to appear among them as an equal who can 
 name his terms for mutual obligations given and conferred 
 as between friends. He has already accepted ten thousand 
 stand of muskets, and 120,000/. in cash. He is to take 
 back with him to Afghanistdnaperfectly equipped battery 
 of light guns ; and he has a prospect of more supplies 
 of money in the years to come. The gifts merely 
 personal to himself, which in the present Darbar strew 
 the carpet before him in one-and-fifty trays, are valued 
 at 5,000/. See, Lord Mayo takes a jewelled sword, and, 
 offering it to him with his own hand, says : ' May you 
 be victorious over your enemies, and with this defend 
 your just rights.' And listen to the AmiVs reply : 
 * I will also use it against the enemies of the Queen of 
 England.' Never was such a metamorphosis. It beats 
 the caprices of a Christmas pantomime in the ' transfor- 
 mation scene.' Spectators may rub their eyes and rack 
 their brains for an explanation. Has the new Governor- 
 General reversed the policy of his predecessor .-* Is the 
 civil war of Afghanistan at an end ? Or has Russian 
 aggression proceeded of late with such intolerable increase 
 of menace as to demand an imposing counter-demonstra- 
 tion in India .-*
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 129 
 
 Let US take up these hypotheses separately in their 
 order. 
 
 And, first, Lord Mayo's share in the business. As 
 might have been expected, the Russian press has attributed 
 to him alone the responsibility of initiating a new policy 
 towards Afghanistan. Yet, on the face of things, it was 
 unlikely that a steady official, within three months of his 
 assuming the government, should of his own judgment 
 have decided to undo all previous arrangements, and 
 strike out a fresh path for himself. All doubts on either 
 side of the question may be set at rest by reference to 
 the declaration contained in Lord Lawrence's maiden 
 utterance in the House of Peers on the 19th of April 
 last. The words of the late Viceroy are : * I believe that 
 Lord Mayo has done no more than act on the principles 
 I suggested.' Moreover, another passage in the same 
 speech shows that the subsidy of 1 20,000/., received by 
 Sher All for the maintenance of his army, was in part 
 granted and in part promised by Sir John Lawrence 
 before Lord Mayo's arrival. Clearly, therefore, Sir John 
 Lawrence, and not Lord Mayo, is answerable for our 
 embarkation on a voyage of active alliance with Sher 
 AH. 
 
 This being the case, let us investigate the second 
 theory. Over and over again Sir John Lawrence had 
 announced his solemn determination not to take sides 
 either with Sher AH or anyone else in the civil war of 
 Afghdnistan. When at last he came forward, consenting 
 to interfere in Afghan affairs, there would be a strong 
 presumption that the war must have already terminated. 
 Nevertheless, Lord Lawrence's own description of the 
 circumstances belies this presumption, and proves that 
 his action was taken irrespective of the condition which 
 
 *K
 
 130 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 had been the sine qtid non of all his previous declarations. 
 ' Each party,' he says, in the explanatory statement 
 addressed to the Lords, ' was sufficiently strong to 
 maintain itself against the other, but neither party was 
 strong enough to beat down the other and restore order.' 
 And, further on, he expressly affirms that the subsidy 
 was given to the Amir, * with a view of affording him a 
 chance of recovering his power.' To me it seems from 
 this, as if Sher All's rivals were still in the field, and 
 could not be suppressed without extraneous assistance. 
 
 Remains the third possibility. Undoubtedly the 
 recent capture and occupation of Samarkand by the 
 Russians, and their reduction of the Amfr of Bokhara 
 to a position in which the retention of nominal sove- 
 reignty only made him a more pliant vassal of the Czar, 
 were facts ^ of startling sound to many politicians. But 
 they were not so to the Government of India. Sir John 
 Lawrence's scheme of inactivity had been deliberately 
 framed in full view of these very contingencies. It is 
 incredible that their realisation, a few months perhaps 
 sooner than had been anticipated, could have deflected 
 his plans by a hair's breadth. 
 
 Thus, one after another, the several explanations, 
 which, from their simplicity, most readily occur to an 
 enquirer, have been weighed in the balance and found 
 wanting. Sher Alf's sudden exaltation to the pinnacle 
 of British favour continues as strange a stroke of fortune 
 as before. A more complex method is needed for the 
 
 ' Samarkand fell, May 2, 1868. General Kaufmann then advanced towards 
 Bokhara, with the intention of capturing that city also, the metropolis of the 
 Khanate ; but when he had accomplished half the distance, he was obliged 
 to hurry back to Samarkand, where a formidable insurrection had broken 
 out in his absence.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 131 
 
 right reading of the riddle. The best that I have been 
 able to devise is as follows. 
 
 I must begin by reverting to the course of events in 
 Afghanistan during the year 1868. At the commence- 
 ment of that period the government of Azim Khdn, the 
 usurping Amfr, was acknowledged throughout three- 
 fourths of the kingdom. One province, Balkh, was held 
 for him by his nephew, Abdul Rahmdn, with a con- 
 siderable army; and another, Kandahar, was adminis- 
 tered by his son, Surwar Khdn ; he himself held his court 
 at Kabul. Herat, the remaining territory, alone stood 
 faithful to Sher All. The ill fortune, however, of which 
 Sher AH had experienced so long and severe a run, was 
 now at its turning-point. In the spring his son, Yakub 
 Khdn, began the new deal by attacking and taking Kan- 
 dahar. Sher AH followed his lead from Herat, and, 
 after a short pause at Kandahar, saw his way to an ad- 
 vance on Kabul. Three previous attempts to recover 
 the capital had been scored against him as ruinous de- 
 feats within the last two years ; the fourth was launched 
 under better auspices. By this time, in fact, the Afghdn 
 people were ripe for a return to their former allegiance. 
 Not that they had forgotten aught of their old dislike to 
 Sher All, since he was last at Kabul, but that in the 
 interval they had learned to detest his rival far more ; 
 any prince of the Barukzai family, whose accession to 
 power would relieve them from the frightful tyranny of 
 Azfm Khdn, would be more or less of a godsend ; and 
 for this purpose Sher AH seemed as good as another. 
 So the rightful Amir had really no opposition to con- 
 tend with. Azim Khdn evaded a violent downfall by 
 spontaneously evacuating Kabul, and retiring to Balkh. 
 After an absence of forty months, Sher AH found him- 
 
 *K 2
 
 132 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 Self reseated in his royal citadel, the Bdld Hissir, and 
 repossessed of all his dominions Balkh only excepted, 
 where Azi'm Khdn and Abdul Rahmdn still flew the 
 flag of rebellious defiance. The Amir backed his luck 
 gallantly. Because the Indian Government had hitherto 
 turned a deaf ear to his innumerable entreaties for arms 
 and money, that was no reason why a fresh trial of the 
 Viceroy's temper might not have a happier result now ; 
 at any rate, he had naught to lose and much to win 
 by the venture. Accordingly. he again wrote to India, 
 urging the old, old request with unabated pertinacity. 
 
 This time the application caught the Governor-Gene- 
 ral in a mood of more than usual anxiety regarding our 
 future relations with Afghdnistdn. For his own part 
 Sir John Lawrence may have thought the right thing to 
 do was nothing, or next to nothing. Yet on all sides he 
 felt a pressure to do something. He had braved the 
 impatient taunts of the Anglo-Indian press for nearly 
 five years ; but now there* were signs of a restlessness 
 among his own official advisers. Voices began to be 
 heard in the council-chamber, arguing from the analogy 
 of international custom in Europe that British officers 
 should be deputed as diplomatic agents to the principal 
 cities of Central Asia ; a course to which Sir John Law- 
 rence entertained deep-seated objections.^ He looked 
 to England for guidance, and found cold comfort there. 
 
 These objections have been often stated. Firstly, whatever we want 
 in the way of political information from such places is already supplied in 
 sufficiency by natives. Secondly, Europeans, conscious of ability and yearn- 
 ing to prove it, have that dangerous tendency to ' zeal ' which Talleyrand 
 deprecated. Thirdly, white faces, the Christian faith, and her Majesty's 
 uniform, are to the unregulated patriotism and burning fanaticism of Central 
 Asiatics what a red rag is to a bull. And, lastly, the person of a British 
 officer embodies so large an emanation of the Government's prestige, that the 
 maintenance or vindication of his dignity and safety may, at any moment, 
 create necessity for war, costly as that of Abyssinia and far more perilous.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 133 
 
 He- saw that there existed among some portion of his 
 countrymen at home a craving for action and interven- 
 tion ; but from the standpoint of Simla he had no means 
 of gauging the extent or depth of the sentiment, and his 
 apprehensions magnified its proportions out of all sem- 
 blance to the reality. He was equally in the dark as to the 
 intentions of the India Office. The Secretary of State's 
 trumpet gave an uncertain sound. Perhaps the very pleni- 
 tude of Sir Stafford Northcote's trust in the Viceroy's 
 competency to deal with the Afghans as they deserved, 
 made him less communicative and explicit than he other- 
 wise would have been ; but, whatever may have been the 
 cause, the instructions sent to India on this topic were 
 unquestionably scanty and timid. And if to this the 
 further fact of significance be added that Sir Henry 
 Rawlinson, the brilliant and powerful champion of all 
 that Sir John Lawrence most disapproved, had recently 
 joined the Home Council, and was already giving un- 
 mistakable proof of his active interest in Central Asian 
 business, it will be apparent that there was cause enough 
 for doubt and perplexity. Nevertheless, all these things 
 combined might not have shaken Sir John from his reso- 
 lution, had he commanded a prospect of retaining in his 
 own hands the control of India's destinies for a further 
 period. But his tenure of office was close on expiration ; 
 and the new Governor-General would be a peer from 
 home, having no personal acquaintance with Asiatics of 
 any shade. There was no knowing to what lengths of 
 rapprochement with Afghanistan such a successor might 
 not be borne, especially in the earlier years of his ad- 
 ministration, by a natural surrender of his private judg- 
 ment to the confident clamour of local experience. It 
 was due to Lord Mayo that he should not be left without
 
 134 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 the stay of a political testament from the outgoing ruler ; 
 and the programme that seemed most likely to secure his 
 abstention from the extremity of evil would be one per- 
 mitting a certain dalliance with milder forms of the popu- 
 lar infatuation. In fine, Sir John Lawrence may have 
 possibly concluded that his policy of quiescence was 
 doomed to modification of some kind, but that he still 
 had it in his power, by a timely concession, to trace 
 beforehand what the modification should be, and so 
 to confine the impending mischief within bounds. 
 Hence, perhaps, it came to pass that he, who had, a 
 score of times, rejected Sher All's request for assist- 
 ance, now inclined to entertaining it. He proposed to 
 his council that the money should be granted. His 
 colleagues accepted the proposal with unanimity. Even 
 at this last moment the Viceroy perhaps saw reason 
 for shrinking from decisive action. What he proposed 
 to do touched English relations with Russia, and he 
 was ignorant in what light it might be viewed by the 
 European Governments. Therefore he telegraphed for 
 orders to the Secretary of State in England. The reply 
 he received from Sir Stafford Northcote, showed insufii- 
 cient appreciation of the interests at stake, and neatly 
 exemplified that laxity of control which most bewilders 
 conscientious subordinates. Mr. Disraeli's Government 
 told ^ Sir John Lawrence that he ' might pursue his 
 own policy, and that they trusted entirely to his know- 
 ledge and judgment.' The sequel may be told in Lord 
 Lawrence's own words: 
 
 Accordingly, I sent him (Amfr Sher AH) something like 
 60,000/., and I told him further that, if this money did not suffice, 
 
 See the Duke of Argyll's speech in the House of Lords, April 19, 1869.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 135 
 
 I would give him a further supply, and would also aid to a 
 certain extent in the maintenance of a standing army. He 
 replied most gratefully, and desired to come down and pay his 
 respects to the British Government, to enter into a treaty with 
 them as his father had done, and to maintain friendly relations 
 with them. It was considered by the Government of India that 
 overtures of this kind ought not to pass unnoticed, and I there- 
 fore wrote to the Amir, and told him what were my views 
 that I was willing to help him still further in a moderate way ; 
 that I could not bind myself by any treaty, which would involve 
 obligations on the part of her Majesty's Government to assist 
 him ; but that I was willing, from time to time, as circumstances 
 might suggest, and as his own conduct might show that he 
 deserved it, to give him some further assistance hereafter, as I 
 had already done. Things remained in that state until the 
 period of my service as Governor-General came to an end. I 
 then placed on record my reasons for having made this arrange- 
 ment. I suggested that my successor should act on the same 
 policy ; that he should make no treaty or engagement by which 
 we should be bound in any way, directly or indirectly, to inter- 
 fere in the affairs of Afghanistan ; but until the Amir should 
 recover his authority, and consolidate his authority, that we 
 might from time to time assist him.' 
 
 Two points in Sir John Lawrence's conduct remain 
 to be noticed, before we pass on to Lord Mayo's pro- 
 ceedings. The first is the question whether help to 
 Sher All, while his half-brother and great antagonist, 
 Azim Khdn, still survived in arms against him, was 
 compatible with the Indian Government's engagements 
 to abstain from intervention in Afghdn affairs. To me 
 it seems incompatible. The circumstances of the case 
 may be arrayed to explain the apparent divergence from 
 Article 2 of the Treaty of 1855, by which England is 
 bound never to interfere in the territories of Afghdnistdn ; 
 but no sophistry can deny or mitigate the outrage done 
 to the pledge, which in Sir John's letter of the 25th of
 
 136 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 February 1867, recognising Afzal Khdn as Amfr of 
 Kabul and Kandahar, had been voluntarily given to the 
 faction whose head was Azfm Khdn. The expressions 
 the Viceroy had then used were 
 
 * Neither men, nor arms, nor money, nor assistance of any 
 kind, have ever been supplied by my Government to Amfr 
 Sher AH Khdn. I propose to continue the same policy for the 
 future. If, unhappily, the struggle for supremacy in Afghdnistdn 
 has not yet been brought to a close, and hostilities arc again 
 renewed, 1 shall still side with neither party.' 
 
 Azfm Khdn and his friends had not forgotten this 
 assurance. Neither is it likely that the Afghdn people, 
 against whom collectively we are wont to level the 
 charge of Punic faith, should have omitted to note an 
 instance in which the plighted word of Great Britain 
 does not show to advantage. The second point wears an 
 equally unsatisfactory look. It is the language which, 
 after Sir John Lawrence had committed the Government 
 of India to a policy of activity, he employed to describe 
 what he had done. On two occasions once at a fare- 
 well banquet in the Town-hall of Calcutta, and again in 
 his statement to the House of Lords he spoke as if he 
 had never made the slightest deviation from his principles 
 of neutrality. In these statements he seems to me to 
 have been unconsciously deceiving himself far more than 
 he misled his audience. His wishes, hopes, and beliefs 
 all lying in one direction, he could not bring himself to 
 realise how fast and far he had gone in an exactly 
 opposite quarter. 
 
 But while the inception of the new policy must indis- 
 putably be laid to Lord Lawrence's charge, the fashion 
 in which it was carried out is a second question. Lord 
 Mayo seems to me to have en'ed on the side of com-
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 137 
 
 plalsance to his guest. The principles which, if our 
 national dignity had been considered, would have given 
 the key-note to the Darbdr were, firstly, that our 
 previous refusals to help Sher AH had been altogether 
 right and just ; and, secondly, that the interference 
 which we were at last reluctantly exercising in the 
 domestic dissensions of the Barukzai family, sprang 
 less from any regard for the Amir's individual interests 
 than for the general welfare of the Afghdn people. 
 These, in experienced hands, might have been impressed 
 on Sher Ali with a gentle firmness which would have 
 done little violence to his self-love. But, not satisfied with 
 the fortunate recovery of his hereditary possessions, he 
 requested and Lord Mayo agreed that we should call 
 Persia to account for alleged encroachments in the 
 debatable land of Seistdn. At the close of the con- 
 ference, when he was privately shown the draft of a 
 letter of good advice which, it was proposed, he should 
 take back with him to Kabul, he entreated that a clause 
 might be inserted, pledging the Indian Government to 
 view with displeasure any infraction of his legitimate 
 authority which his subjects might commit in Afghan- 
 istan. And this, too. Lord Mayo conceded. 
 
 If Sher All, on his return to Kabul, had suddenly 
 been dethroned, slain in battle, assassinated, or poisoned 
 any of which contingencies were clearly on the cards 
 Lord Mayo might possibly have been obliged either 
 to take another and a deeper plunge into the whirlpool 
 of Afghan politics, by extorting reparation for the cause 
 with which he had identified the British Government's 
 reputation, or else to endure the dangerous laughter of 
 all Asia, by shrinking from the vindication of an alliance 
 inaugurated at vast expense and with much flourish of
 
 138 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 trumpets. The predicament, however, did not arise. ^ 
 Sher Ah"s enemies were for the time smitten with de- 
 spondency. Azfm Khdn and Abdul Rahmdn retired 
 through Seistdn towards Meshhed, in Persia ; and 
 Azfm Khan's son, Ishakh Khdn, evacuated Balkh, 
 seeking shelter across the Oxus in Bokhara. The 
 Amir, therefore, before the end of last spring (1869), was 
 once more established as lord of all Afghdnistdn. The 
 task that lay before him was to consolidate his power 
 within the recovered limits. How he fared in the under- 
 taking we will enquire presently. 
 
 By many the Darbdr was interpreted as a counter 
 move against Russia. The ill-omened phrase of ' the 
 grand game,' which, thirty years before, had been in 
 vogue at Calcutta to describe Lord Auckland's unhappy 
 designs for repelling Russian approach by an English 
 occupation of Afghdnistdn, was now revived in the Anglo- 
 Indian newspapers. The leading journal of Bengal 
 fanned the professional enthusiasm of * the services ' by 
 assurances that ere long we should have Political Agents 
 in Afghdnistdn, military officers employed in drilling and 
 organising the Amfr's army, and a portion of that army 
 held completely at our disposal as a British contingent : 
 * the grand game,' it was said, promised well.^ 
 
 In Persia the result was, I think, mischievous. The 
 Shdh's Government, mindful that the Afghdns once over- 
 
 * The truth is, that the event proved that Lord Lawrence and Lord Mayo, 
 in finally recognising and helping Amfr Sher Alf, had rightly estimated his 
 position as the de facto ruler of Afghdnistdn. The five years which have 
 since elapsed confirm this view. W. VV. H. 
 
 ' This correctly states the case as regards the party in India who are 
 always crying out for ' the grand game.' But, if Mr. Wyllie had been in 
 India at the time, he would have known that this statement applied only to 
 that party, and was as usual discountenanced by the majority, both among 
 officials and the public. W. W. H.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 139 
 
 ran Persia and held it for seven years, has a traditional 
 jealousy of anything approaching to an aggrandisement 
 of the power of these intractable neighbours. Neither 
 can his Majesty forget that from British championing of 
 Afghan grievances he has twice reaped war, defeat, and 
 humiliation ; and that the same cause still operates to 
 keep him out of Herat, a city which he considers his own 
 by right, and which he desires for the protection of his 
 border subjects from the raids of the kidnapping Tur- 
 komans. Prepared, therefore, under any circumstances 
 to view with suspicion signs of a fresh alliance between 
 England and Afghanistdn, the Shdh might see in the 
 Ambala pageantry special reason far alarm on account 
 of Sher All's request that British assistance should procure 
 the expulsion of the Persians from Seistan. It is not 
 easy to understand how Lord Mayo can have been 
 induced to sympathise with thi^ demand ; unless, indeed, 
 he was moved by the consideration that British interests 
 would be better served by a transfer of the disputed ter- 
 ritory from Persian to Afghan possession. 
 
 The Blue Book published by the India Office shows 
 that the Afghan claim rests on little more than an 
 occupation of the province for forty-four years, which 
 terminated in 1793, and that at all other times, except for 
 a short interval of independence under local chiefs, Seistan 
 has formed an integral part of the Persian dominions. 
 Sher All's pretensions amount, in fact, to a reclamation 
 of the limits of the Afghdn kingdom, as they stood under 
 Ahmad Shah and Timor Shah. England cannot enforce 
 that principle against Persia without allowing that it must 
 also hold good against herself, in which case she will have 
 to renounce to Afghanistan all the broad lands of Pesha- 
 war, Multdn, Labor, and Kashmir. This argument,
 
 140 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 if it had ever been adopted by Lord Mayo, would be 
 thus reduced to an absurdity. No wonder that the 
 Persian Government called on the English Cabinet for 
 an explanation. Our diplomatists promptly furnished the 
 reply, that the arrangements effected with Sher AH in 
 no way militated against Persian interests, and that our 
 Afghdn policy generally was not conceived in a spirit 
 hostile to Persia. At the same time Lord Clarendon 
 satisfied himself of Persia's superior right to Seistan, and 
 refused to act on Lord Mayo's suggestion, that British 
 pressure should be brought to bear on the Shdh in 
 support of the Afghan claims. But both the positive 
 assurance of our friendly feelings and the negative 
 evidence supplied by our abstention from an unjust inter- 
 ference, were powerless to disarm Persian apprehensions. 
 The Shdh determined to send a special envoy to Kabul 
 who should probe this business.^ 
 
 Worse, however, than either the impetus communicated 
 to certain of our countrymen's ambitious longings in 
 India, or the alarm inspired in Persia, was the offence 
 which the Darbdr gave to our great rivals at St. Peters- 
 burg. The Russian press unanimously denounced the 
 event as * the first stone of the wall which the Anglo- 
 
 * The net result was that both Persia and Afghdnistdn agreed to be bound 
 by England's award regarding the disputed Seistdn territory. Such an act 
 of arbitration had been expressly provided for by the Treaty in 1857 ; since 
 1863 it had constantly been growing more necessary ; in 1870-72 both parties 
 agreed to abide by our decision ; in 1872-73 that decision was given and 
 confirmed ; and although from its impartiality it was at first pleasing to neither 
 Persia nor Afghdnistdn, it has been formally accepted by both. So far (1874), 
 a great and bloody conflict has been averted by the very policy which the 
 essayist in 1870 denounced. It would be unwise to vaticinate regarding the 
 future of this question. Seistdn forms a permanent and almost inevitable 
 source of complications between Persia and Afghdnistdn. All that can be 
 said at present is that the policy bequeathed by Lord Lawrence, and accepted 
 by Lord Mayo, has hitherto been productive of only peaceful results as 
 regards these two great states of Central Asia. W. W. H.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 141 
 
 Indian Government was hastening to build across the 
 road of the Russians in Central Asia.' ^ The Moscow 
 Gazette significantly observed that, since the English had 
 chosen to begin intrigue in Afghdnistdn, the same game 
 was open to Russia in Bokhara ; and that although Russia, 
 if let alone by the English, had no desire to menace their 
 possessions, yet, in the event of an Eastern war, Tur- 
 kistdn would afford her a formidable base of operations 
 against the Indian empire. The Golos ( Voice) breathed 
 open defiance of England. 
 
 * The commercial war,' it said, ' already being waged between 
 England and Russia, on the northern frontiers of Afghanistan, 
 is not at all unlikely to give way some day to a combat with 
 more sanguinary weapons than weights and measures. In this 
 case, the rifles presented to the Amir by the Earl of Mayo 
 would stand him in good stead, though, for the matter of that, 
 the Amfr, after taking pounds sterling, is quite as likely as not 
 to try roubles for a change.' 
 
 Nor was this indignation without some basis of 
 reason. The Darbdr, among its other effects, had 
 inflamed the malcontent population of Russia's new 
 conquests in Central Asia with an idea that England 
 might yet be induced to enter the lists and do 
 battle against the oppressor. A more unlucky time 
 for the spread of the belief could not have been chosen, 
 for it happened that the nomad hordes of the Kirghiz 
 steppe, about the northern shores of the Caspian and 
 Aral Seas, were in open rebellion, cutting off the 
 communication between Orenburg and Tashkend, and 
 blockading the numerous isolated forts among which 
 the Russian garrison of that enormous desert is dis- 
 persed in weak detachments, averaging not more than 
 fifty Cossacks to each post. The insurgents, and those 
 ^ 'Exchange Gazette' of St. Petersburg, April 16, 1869.
 
 142 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 who, like the Khdn of Khivd, were in secret league 
 with them, took heart from the retribution they beHeved 
 to be in store for their embarrassed enemy ; and hence, 
 though undesignedly, the demonstration at Ambald 
 may have inflicted a real injury on Russia. 
 
 In another respect, I think, the Darbdr occurred at 
 an awkward time. Negotiations had been begun, and 
 were still pending, in London, between the Russian 
 Ambassador and our Foreign Secretary, for the settle- 
 ment of the long-standing differences arising out of 
 Central Asia's geographical position, by a mutual agree- 
 ment to recognise the space then separating Russian 
 Turkistan from our Trans-Indus frontier as a zone of 
 neutral territory, beyond the influence of both Powers 
 alike. Considering the predatory and turbulent disposi- 
 tion of the tribes inhabiting the intermediate region, 
 there must, one would think, always be serious diffi- 
 culties in the way of either Russia or England binding 
 herself by specific treaty never to stretch a hand in 
 advance of a given line. Wherefore, even if no Darbdr 
 had turned up to mar the course of Baron de Bnmnow's 
 interviews with Lord Clarendon, little could have been 
 expected from their conferences beyond the exchange 
 of amicable generalities. Yet such generalities are not 
 without a certain value in the maintenance of inter- 
 national amities ; and the assurances conveyed to us on 
 this occasion by the Czar's representative would have 
 been all the more acceptable as having originated,^ not 
 
 * ' The ' Moscow Gazette * volunteers a disclosure, the accuracy of which 
 it says it can vouch for. ... * Not England, we are told, but Russia, proposed 
 the neutralisation of Afghdnistdn a short time ago not England asked 
 Russia for a pledge of pacific intentions, but Russia, seeing England uneasy 
 at the turn of affairs, offered of her own accord to vouchsafe such a guarantee.' 
 'The Times,' September 25, 1869. Berlin Correspondent's letter.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 143 
 
 in any nervous questionings on our part, but in a frank 
 move from the opposite side, intended to establish 
 between the two Courts a mutual understanding as to 
 their respective programmes for the disposal of Central 
 Asia. Russia laid her cards on the table, animated, no 
 doubt, to do so by her experience of the absolute and 
 continuous honesty with which the Anglo-Indian Govern- 
 ment's declarations of a laissez-faire policy had till then 
 been observed. The unexpected intelligence of the 
 meeting at Ambdld fell like a shock on her cordiality. 
 She shrank back into an attitude of reserve, and the 
 conferences ceased, barren of the useful result they might 
 possibly have borne. 
 
 There was trouble in Downing Street when the dis- 
 *advantageous aspects of the business became apparent. 
 Lord Clarendon, I suppose, gave the word that no hasty 
 language could be allowed in Parliament to aggravate the 
 situation, and under his inspiration the Prime Minister, 
 throughout last spring (1869), refused to admit Central 
 Asian affairs to discussion in the House of Commons.^ 
 On two separate occasions a private Member (Mr. East- 
 wick), who attempted to ventilate the question of our 
 relations with that part of the world, was forced to with- 
 draw his motion, in deference to a special appeal from Mr. 
 Gladstone, who, while denying that the Indian Govern- 
 ment had commenced an annual subsidy to the Amir of 
 Afghanistan, at the same time deprecated a premature 
 debate on the matter, lest it might interfere with the 
 satisfactory progress of the communications then passing 
 
 * As the AmMld DarMr did not take place till the close of March, all the 
 papers were not before the Home Government till quite the end of spring. 
 In the summer the question came before the House. 
 
 W. W. H.
 
 144 MTSCHTEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 between the English and Russian Cabinets. When, on 
 the 9th of July, Mr. Eastwick's motion eventually came 
 to a hearing, the tone of the House must have agreeably 
 disappointed Lord Clarendon's misgivings. Not a word 
 was said inimical to Russia, while much was urged for and 
 against our new alliance with the Afghan Amir. The 
 gist of the mover's long speech was, as might have been 
 expected from his previous connection with the British 
 Mission at Teheran, a plea for closer intimacy with 
 Persia, as a preferable investment for our money and 
 our hopes to any that could be found in Afghanistan. 
 The seconder was Sir Charles Wingfield, than whom 
 no more competent authority on Indian topics has ever 
 sat in Parliament. Sir Charles, with evident advertence 
 to Lord Lawrence's speech in the Upper House, which 
 has been above quoted, tore to pieces the flimsy fallacy 
 that asserted the Ambdla Darbdr to be no departure 
 from the Indian Government's previous policy : he laid 
 bare the irreconcileable antagonism between the principles 
 pursued up to the year 1 868, and those which the Darbdr 
 had just inaugurated ; and he dwelt with asperity on the 
 suicidal folly of our beginning in Central Asia a course of 
 intrigue against the Russians, which would infallibly elicit 
 from them ceaseless counter-intrigues against ourselves. 
 On behalf of the Ministry the Under-Secretary for India 
 made a strikingly able reply. The felicity of Mr. Grant 
 Duff's diction spirited, terse, and lucid ^gave interest 
 and charm to names which the British public generally 
 hears sounded with alien ears, while the copiousness of 
 his matter satisfied the most exacting critics of the 
 thorough mastery he possessed of his recondite subject. 
 The only blot in an otherwise admirable oration was that 
 the speaker over-stated the case committed to him to
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 145 
 
 defend. The paramount duty of soothing the irritation 
 of Russia fettered his thoughts in one direction, and he 
 was led astray in another as well by the glamour of Lord 
 Lawrence's reputation as by his own generous anxiety to 
 see good in measures for which other men than himself 
 were responsible. Only on this supposition can I under- 
 stand how a statesman of Mr. Grant Duff's calibre was 
 persuaded to accept, amplify, and reissue in bolder form 
 the fiction which Lord Lawrence's oracular dicta had 
 dimly started, as to the meaningless character of our 
 recent intervention in Afghdnistan : 
 
 ' The Government,' said the Under-Secretary, * did not dream 
 of erecting Sher Ali into a bulwark against Russia, or against 
 anybody else. If any bulwark was wanted in that part of the 
 world, nature had planted bulwarks enough in all conscience, as 
 we once found out to our cost, and as anybody else would soon 
 find out to theirs. What was wanted was a quiet Afghdnistan, 
 just as they wanted a quiet Burmah. The Government wanted 
 to be able to use every penny they could scrape together in 
 India for the moral and material development of the country. 
 They wished to stimulate commerce round the whole of the land 
 and sea fi-ontier, and it did not at all suit to have one of their 
 trade gates locked up by a burning house, the cellars of which 
 were known to be full of highly explosive compounds. They 
 wanted Sher AH to be strong for the suppression of lawlessness, 
 and rich, if possible, into the bargain. They wanted him to 
 understand that they did not covet a square inch of his territory, 
 or ask any kind of assistance from him, other than the sort of 
 indirect assistance which a civilised Government must always 
 derive from being known to exercise a pacifying and semi- 
 civilising influence around its own borders. . . . And the fact that 
 Russia had advanced to a point between Samarkand and 
 Bokhara had not induced them to do any one thing which they 
 would not have the strongest motives for doing if she had never 
 passed a verst beyond the Ural or Orenburg line.* 
 
 This seems to me a hazardous flight of rhetoric. To 
 test the soundness of its assertions let us glance at the
 
 146 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 parallel case so cited by Mr. Grant Duff himself of 
 our relations with Burmah. Burmah, both in itself and 
 as a stepping-stone to the markets of Western China, is 
 of far more value to our merchants than Afghdnistdn 
 has ever been, or will be. Insurrections and anarchy 
 may choke the course of trade in Afghdnistdn, but 
 their counterparts prevail in Burmah, and do much 
 more detriment to our interests. The King of Burmah 
 can point to a clearer title for his authority than Sher 
 AH possesses, and his past conduct towards his own 
 people and the British Government invests him with an 
 incomparably larger claim upon our regard. If, then, it 
 was for the relief of commerce that we lavished money 
 and arms on Sher All, how much greater should be 
 our obligation to supply the Lord of the Golden Foot 
 with the means of enforcing order in Burmah .-* Yet 
 we have never spared the latter a cowrie, and any pro- 
 posal to help him would move derision both in England 
 and In India. 'A quiet Burmah,' in fact, is not worth 
 the lifting of a finger ; while for ' a quiet Afghdnistdn ' 
 we move heaven and earth. Manifestly it cannot be 
 commerce that lends Afghdnistdn such signal prepon- 
 derance in our scales. Trade, no doubt, was spoken of 
 to Sher AH at Ambdld ; but had trade been all we 
 wanted, his cries for help would have gone unnoticed 
 by us to the end of the chapter.^ What we did for him 
 
 * Omitting no point of which anything could be made, Mr. Grant Duff 
 also referred to the advantage which a good understanding with the Am(r 
 would give us for checking the raids of the independent mountaineers who 
 separate India from Afghdnistdn. But this is rather an imaginary advan- 
 tage. The tribes would not like to be caught between two fires, and are on 
 their guard against such a combination ; otherwise they care not a straw for 
 the Kabul Government. Sher Alf himself, who, from a matrimonial connec- 
 tion with one tribe (the Momunds, if I remember rightly), exercises among 
 them some small influence of a personal, not a governmental character, paid 
 according to custom, on entering and on leaving India, to the clansmen of the 
 Khaibar Pass the usual black-mail for permission to traverse their defile.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 147 
 
 was dictated by a very different motive. That motive, 
 notwithstanding Mr. Grant Duff's inability to believe it, 
 seems to have been * the dream of erecting Sher AH 
 into a bulwark against Russia.* By blinking it, we may 
 deceive ourselves ; we shall impose on nobody else. The 
 Under-Secretary had been nearer the mark on the pre- 
 vious 9th of March, when he had defined our gifts as 'the 
 expression of a hope that a strong Government was about 
 to be established in a long-distracted country.' And the 
 less premeditated definition ought not to pass into ob- 
 livion : for there is a distinct note of warning in its sound ; 
 it reproduces the identical words commonly used to de- 
 scribe the intention, with which, to our shame and sorrow, 
 we once before undertook to interfere in the domestic 
 dissensions of the Afghdns. It was precisely this idea, 
 the idea of ^establishing a friendly Power and a strong 
 Government in Afghanistan,' ^ that inspired the expedi- 
 tion of 1838 ; and the phrase into which the member for 
 Elgin so naturally slipped is a distinct memento of that 
 evil time. True, there is a vast difference in the methods 
 by which Lord Auckland thirty years ago, and Lord Mayo 
 in these days, have respectively proceeded ; but the fact 
 of their both having sought the same object, throws a 
 startling light on the true bearings and ultimate tendency 
 of the present Viceroy's policy.^ 
 
 However, it must be admitted that the debate of the 
 9th of July had, on the whole, the effect primarily desired 
 by Mr. Grant Duff and the Ministry. One organ of 
 
 1 Kaye's * War in Afghdnistdn,' vol. i. p. 370. 
 
 2 The object of Lord Auckland's policy was to force back on the Afghdns, 
 by means of a British Army, a ruler whom they had ignominiously and finally 
 expelled ; the object of Lord Mayo's was to help the ruler whom the Afghdns 
 had themselves finally accepted, to consolidate his power without sending a 
 single English soldier into the country. W. W. H. 
 
 L2
 
 148 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 public opinion at Moscow (the Sovremetmilzvesti) warned 
 its readers not to be diverted from mistrust of our actual 
 deeds in India by our farcical assertions of innocence in 
 the House of Commons ; but Russia, at large, was for 
 the time mollified and appeased. 
 
 Some approach to a better understanding with the 
 Muscovite Government was day by day growing into a 
 political necessity. For while our diplomatists had been 
 smiling, and our Ministers, like the lady in Ha^nlet, 
 protesting too much, the local politics of Central Asia had 
 kept the bias imparted to their course by British hands 
 in India, and were developing events calculated to re- 
 awaken and intensify any previous suspicion which Russia 
 might have conceived of our designs. The Amfr of 
 Bokhara, who in the summer of 1868 had been compelled 
 to accept terms ^ of peace from General Kaufmann, was 
 troubled with a rebellious son, known to the Russians as 
 Katti Tura and in India called Abdul Mallik. This 
 young prince, with the blessing of all the priesthood, had 
 taken the leadership of a quasi-national party in Bokhara, 
 comprising the numerous classes whose patriotism or 
 fanaticism spurned accommodation of any kind with the in- 
 vading infidel from Russia. The south-eastern provinces 
 adjoining Afghdnistdn had enthusiastically responded to 
 his war-cry ; and with the help of the well-known guerilla 
 chief, Sddik, operating in the north on the new Russian 
 frontier about Samarkand, this modern Absalom had so 
 nearly succeeded in deposing his father that, in November 
 1868, General Abramoff had felt constrained to rescue and 
 re-establish the Amir by force of arms. Then the prince 
 
 The terms were cession of the conquered territory ; payment of 80,000/. 
 indemnity ; protection and liberty of trade for all Russian subjects throughout 
 Bokhara ; and limitation of import duties on Russian goods to 2\ per cent. 
 ad valorem.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 149 
 
 had fled, first to Khivd and afterwards to Merv, labouring 
 hard, wherever he went, to organise a league of Islam 
 against the renegade Amfr and the accursed Russians. 
 His movements up to this point had mattered nothing to 
 British India. But from Merv he came into the Afghan 
 territory of Balkh, and there converted the asylum 
 afforded him by our friend, Sher All, into a lever for 
 raising rebellion across the Oxus am.ong his compatriots 
 and former associates in the Bokhariot territories of 
 Shahr-i-sabz, Sherabdd, and Hissar. Not this only, but, 
 for the furtherance of his designs, he falsely used the 
 names of Sher All and of the British Government as his 
 aiders and abettors. It would be superfluous to observe 
 that the British Government was totally free from any 
 complicity in these intrigues. Whether Sher Alf was 
 equally guiltless is open to doubt. The Amir of Bokhara 
 had done him injury in the late civil war by siding 
 with his rivals, and the present enterprise aflbrded him a 
 fair chance of repaying the Usbeg Darbar in its own coin. 
 Also, perhaps, he may have thought that, although no 
 hint regarding the conduct expected of him in this affair 
 had reached him from his patrons, the English, he could 
 not wrongly interpret their unspoken wishes if he fos- 
 tered a project avowedly intended to hamper the Russian 
 advance. Be this as it may, the refugee pretender to the 
 throne of Bokhara was allowed to have his own way 
 while he stayed in Balkh ; and when, towards the close 
 of the summer, he repaired to Kabul, he was received by 
 Sher Alf with every sign of the most distinguished con- 
 sideration. The menacing shadow thrown by the conjunc- 
 tion of these hostile forces across the southern border of 
 Bokhara filled Amfr Muzaffar-ud-din with disquietude. 
 Looking to his Russian allies again for salvation, the
 
 I50 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 Usbeg monarch determined to send an embassy all the 
 way to St. Petersburg. He placed his fourth and favourite 
 son, a boy of twelve years, at the head of the mission ; 
 and he officially avowed to the local Russian commandant 
 that his object was to inform the Ak Pddshdh, or White 
 Emperor, of the danger in which he stood from the 
 English and the Afghdns. The Invalide Russe, a 
 Government organ, made no secret of the Amfr's decla- 
 ration. Its semi-official voice proclaimed to all the 
 world that Bokhara had appeared before the Czar's 
 tribunal to accuse the English of kindling war against 
 herself and her Russian protectors. After such an an- 
 nouncement no one can be surprised to find an impartial 
 witness reporting presently from St. Petersburg^ that 
 ' the ill-will with which England is regarded in Russia is 
 slowly but steadily increasing,' and that an impression is 
 spreading in the Russian capital * that the complications 
 in Central Asia must lead to a violent collision with the 
 ruler of India.' ^ 
 
 To relieve the morbid state of our relations with the 
 Northern Power, the doctors of diplomacy a profession 
 as grudgingly honoured by the British public as that of 
 medicine is by healthy youth again came on the stage. 
 The London conferences between Lord Clarendon and 
 Baron de Brunnow had been adjourned without any definite 
 conclusion ; and so when the happy coincidence arose 
 last autumn that Prince Gortschakoff, the Russian Minister 
 for Foreign Affairs, and our own Foreign Secretary were 
 both spending their so-called holidays in Germany, the one 
 at Wiesbaden and the other at Baden-Baden, what more 
 
 * The St, Petersburg correspondent of the ' Cologne Gazette.' 
 ' It is fair to add that the same language had been used by the Con- 
 tinental Press a score of times before. VV. W. H.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY 151 
 
 natural than that the pair should arrange a meeting at an 
 equidistant third point, Heidelberg, and there take up the 
 thread of the unfinished negotiations ? In past years it 
 had been England's constant complaint, that while the 
 Czar's Government at St. Petersburg disowned all ideas 
 of further territorial aggrandisement in Central Asia, his 
 Majesty's generals on the spot nevertheless proceeded 
 unchecked to add conquest to conquest, thereby leaving 
 us in helpless perplexity between Russian professions and 
 Russian actions. Now the tables were turned, and the 
 charge of inconsistency pointed against ourselves. Prince 
 Gortschakoff could not get over the wide discrepancy 
 between our pacific sentiments in London and our inimical 
 doings, real or supposed, at Ambala and at Kabul. Lord 
 Clarendon, however, was ready with a remedy. There 
 happened at the time to be in Europe, on leave, a Bengal 
 civil servant, Mr. T. D. Forsyth, who was understood 
 to possess the confidence of the Indian Viceroy in 
 respect of Central Asian affairs. It was therefore pro- 
 posed and settled between the two high negotiators that 
 the discussions begun in London and renewed at Heidel- 
 berg should be concluded at St Petersburg, the English 
 side being represented at the Russian capital, not by our 
 ambassador alone, but by Sir Andrew Buchanan, aided 
 by Mr. Forsyth's Indian experience and knowledge of 
 the situation. In the meantime the path for our spokes- 
 men was cleared for them by the despatch of instructions 
 from the Duke of Argyll to Lord Mayo, desiring that 
 efforts should be made to induce Sher Ali to abstain from 
 any such exaggeration of the duties of hospitality as might 
 involve Afghdnistan in complicity with Abdul Mallik's 
 scheme against the Governments of Bokhara and Russia. 
 The St. Petersburg conference came off in October.
 
 152 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY, 
 
 Rightly to understand the circumstances which had to be 
 handled, we must remember that the preceding twenty 
 months had wrought a great change in the position not 
 only of Russia and of England towards Bokhara and 
 Afghdnistan, but of Bokhara and of Afghanistan towards 
 one another. Formerly Russia had been at war with 
 Bokhara, and Bokhara had been vainly seeking assist- 
 ance from England against Russia ; England had been 
 keeping aloof from any responsibility in Afghdnistdn ; 
 while between the Amir of Bokhara and the faction 
 headed by Azim Khdn, then dominant in Afghdnistdn, 
 a cordial understanding had prevailed. Everything was 
 now reversed. Russia was at peace with Bokhara, 
 and Bokhara was said to be claiming protection 
 from Russia against the supposed hostility of England. 
 England was deemed responsible for the conduct of 
 Afghdnistdn ; while between the Amfr of Bokhara and 
 Sher All, the restored ruler of Afghdnistdn, there was 
 hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Out of this new 
 combination flowed a clear necessity that Russia, on behalf 
 of her client, Amfr Muzafifar-ud-din, and England, on 
 behalf of her client, Amfr Sher Alf, should take steps 
 for ensuring a maintenance of the peace between the 
 neighbouring kingdoms of Bokhara and Afghdnistdn. 
 And the first step was to separate the antagonists by a 
 definite boundary. What quickened our interest in this 
 point to the highest degree was, that Russia had affirmed, 
 and we had accepted, the axiom, that in regard to all 
 territory within Bokhariot limits she must hold herself 
 unfettered to act as she in the future might think fit. 
 Hence the arguments at St. Petersburg revolved princi- 
 pally about the question whether Balkh, the province 
 intercepted between the river Oxus on the north, and the
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 153 
 
 mountains of Hindu Khiish on the south, should be 
 assigned to Afghanistdn or to Bokhara. Though held for 
 a score of years past by the Afghans, it has always been 
 a bone of contention between the two states. Russia ac- 
 cepted the principle we advocated of existing possession, 
 recognised the Afghdn tenure of Balkh, and contented 
 herself with securing the ferries of the Oxus for Bokhara. 
 With this result the negotiations were brought to a final 
 close ; and nothing, I believe, has since occurred to 
 modify the situation. The end obtained by our repre- 
 sentatives seems as much as, under the circumstances, 
 they could have hoped for ; and it may, therefore, be 
 considered creditable to them and satisfactory to England. 
 But obviously it falls far short, I will not say of a settle- 
 ment of the Central Asian question, which perhaps lies 
 in the limbo of impossibilities, but of the neutralisation of 
 Afghdnistdn ; which except for the intervention of the 
 Darbdr might have been accomplished for us at the 
 beginning of the year. Further, we must note that 
 Russia's concessions, if concessions they can be called, 
 are not guaranteed to us by a single stroke of her pen. 
 The agreement effected was purely conversational. Sir 
 Andrew Buchanan read aloud to Prince Gortschakoff, 
 General Miliutin (Minister for War), and M. Stremouk- 
 hoff (Chief of the Asiatic Department), the despatch re- 
 porting to his own Government the incidents and issue 
 of the conference, and his audience assented verbally to 
 its general correctness ; but this was all. The corre- 
 sponding despatch which Prince Gortschakoff addressed 
 to the Russian ambassador in London, and of which, it 
 was hoped, a copy would have been furnished to Lord 
 Clarendon, proved, on receipt by Baron de Brunnow, to 
 be of a confidential character, not intended for communi-
 
 154 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 cation to the English Government I do not presume 
 indeed, I have not even the wish to question the good 
 faith of Russia in this transaction. I merely regret the 
 omission of a formality, without which the pledges she 
 has given are, from a diplomatic point of view, 
 incomplete. 
 
 Another consideration not to be overlooked is that 
 Russia, while politely deferring to English views in re- 
 spect of the northern boundary of Afghdnistdn, has not 
 carried conciliation to the length of relaxing her aggres- 
 sive efforts in other parts of Central Asia nearer to her 
 present frontier. As for pausing in her southward march, 
 she is rather striding forward with redoubled speed and 
 energy. Quite recently she has sent an expedition across 
 from the Caucasian to the eastern shore of the Caspian 
 Sea to establish a fort in Krasnovodsk Bay, and from 
 thence to construct a caravan road along the ancient bed 
 of the Oxus to a convenient point on the modern river ; 
 and this is but the prelude to a campaign against Khivd 
 in the spring. The anexation of Khivd will lead im- 
 mediately to absorptions of Bokhariot territory higher up 
 the Oxus, so that really now we are in a fair way to see 
 verified an important event which hasty writers have often 
 already anticipated, namely, a Russian occupation of the 
 tete-de-pont at Chdrjui. Further eastward, other signs of 
 movement are not wanting. Against the Afghdn prin- 
 cipality of Badakshdn the Khdn of Kokand, Khudd Ydr 
 Khdn, who is a mere Russian cat's-paw, is said to have been 
 making hostile demonstrations at Koldb : and in Eastern 
 Turkistdn, unless the Atdlik Ghdzi speedily throws 
 open to Russian trade his own markets and the old com- 
 mercial communication with China, the independence of 
 his state is threatened with summary extinction. Gene-
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 155 
 
 rally, Russia's policy at the present time appears animated 
 by a resentful determination to meet our recent activity 
 by increased activity of her own. She has entered with 
 a will upon measures of aggression which, except for our 
 step forward, she might have indefinitely postponed. Far 
 from retarding, we have positively accelerated, the ap- 
 pearance of the Cossacks at Charjui. 
 
 Having now tried to show that in India, in Persia, 
 and above all in Europe, the consequences of the change 
 in our Central Asian plans from quiescence to action 
 are evil, my readers might expect to find some compen- 
 sation for these diplomatic difficulties in an ameliorated 
 condition of Afghanistan. Surely the year cannot have 
 terminated without * a strong Government,' or at least its 
 stable foundations, having been built among the Afghdns. 
 By this time surely Sher Ali must have done much to 
 consolidate his power; and so the success oi omx proUg^ 
 shall supply the amends owed us by fate. Yet, what 
 are the facts ? ^ All, I fear, in an opposite direction. The 
 official version of late events in Afghdnistdn is that Sher 
 All, penetrated with admiration for the British institutions 
 he saw at work in India, and impelled by a laudable 
 desire to communicate similar benefits to his own country- 
 men, has been occupied, since his return to Kabul, with 
 introducing reforms in the administration of the kingdom ; 
 but to me he seems to have prosecuted this task with 
 rather more vigour than caution. The Anglo-Indian 
 press, committed as it universally is to approval of Lord 
 
 ^ Mr. Wyllie unfortunately wrote this, and died, before the ' facts ' were 
 known to him. The reforms in the Afghdn administration which immediately 
 followed bur final^recognition of Sher Ali are mentioned on next page ; but 
 the five years of comparative rest in Afghdnistdn which resulted from the 
 Ambdld Darbdr could not have been anticipated in December 1869, when this 
 paper was written. W. W. H.
 
 iS6 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 Mayo's Central Asian policy, has gladly endorsed the 
 official story ; and through the veil of this consentient 
 approbation the real state of the case has been diffi- 
 cult to discern. To my view there is one point only 
 by which Slier All's prospects have been advanced 
 since last spring ; and that he has obtained more, as the 
 saying goes, by good luck than good management. Death 
 has done him the inestimable service of taking away the 
 ex-Amfr, Azi'm Khan. Sher All's history, whatever 
 may be its future course, will never contain a more con- 
 spicuous landmark than that which records the removal 
 from his path of his most formidable rival, Azfm Khdn. 
 In other respects the Amfr has, in my opinion, lost 
 ground His 'reforms' must be viewed in connection 
 neither with English models nor with any standard of 
 Utopian perfection, but with the customs of the country 
 he practically had in hand. The two branches of ad- 
 ministration on which he set to work were the revenue 
 and the army. Hitherto Afghdnistdn had been parcelled 
 out among governors, each of whom received and used 
 the taxes of his province after his own fashion, and re- 
 mitted to the central authority only so much balance as 
 he thought it unsafe to withhold. Similarly the army 
 had been nothing more than an assemblage of the contin- 
 gents which, on sound of war, the heads of the various 
 clans severally brought to the royal camp. These federal 
 and feudal arrangements Sher All endeavoured to re- 
 place by a system of monarchical centralisation. He 
 wanted a standing army of his own ; and, still more, he 
 wanted local treasuries of his own, so that the taxes 
 might reach him entire, and the emoluments of the pro- 
 vincial governors take the form of fixed salaries. In fact 
 he renewed, on a scale amplified in proportion to the
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 157 
 
 increase of strength accruing to him from English money 
 and English weapons, the self-same scheme for exalting 
 the kingly power at the expense of the nobility, his in- 
 dulgence in which, soon after the commencement of his 
 reign, had been a principal cause of his deposition. Of 
 all the unpopular measures among which his former go- 
 vernment had suffered shipwreck, not one had damaged 
 him so much as his attempt to commute the fiefs of the 
 aristocracy into cash allowances. He now recurred to it, 
 having, like the Bourbons of the Restoration, learned 
 nothing by adversity, and forgotten nothing. As a 
 natural result, conspiracies were secretly hatched, or his 
 authority openly defied, all over the kingdom. Two of 
 his nephews, who had been detected in a plot at Kabul, 
 he deported into India, where the British Government 
 obligingly undertook for him the gaoler-like duty of 
 detaining them under surveillance. But the Amfr's 
 greatest difficulty lay northwards, in Balkh. His re- 
 covery of that unruly province in the spring, when Azim 
 Khdn's son, Ishakh Khan, withdrew from it into Bokhara, 
 had never been confirmed by vigorous treatment. Day 
 after day he was said to intend sending troops to restore 
 order, but nothing came of all the talk. His procrastination 
 was intertwined with another folly equally dangerous, of 
 which mention has been already made. He was harbour- 
 ing and highly honouring a rebellious IJsbeg prince, 
 Abdul Mallik, who aspired to dethrone the Amir of 
 Bokhara, at the very time when a rebellious Barukzai 
 prince, Ishakh Khan, who aspired to do the same by him 
 in Afghanistan, was a refugee at Bokhara, ready and long- 
 ing to be used by the Bokhariot Darbdr as an instru- 
 ment of reprisal upon the Afghan Darbdr. The Amir 
 of Bokhara clutched the opportunity, and put at Ishakh
 
 158 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 Khdn's disposal every facility for organising a fresh ex- 
 pedition into Afghdnistdn. It is even alleged that the 
 undertaking was encouraged, if not actively assisted, by 
 the Russian general at Samarkand. This may or may 
 not be true : it is not unlikely ; and, if true, it is an im- 
 mediate realisation of Sir Charles Wingfield's prophecy 
 in the House of Commons that intervention in Afghdn 
 affairs would for England be equivalent to entering on 
 a game of intrigue and counter-intrigue with Russia. 
 Ishakh Khdn recrossed the Oxus in August last. Cor- 
 dially welcomed by the local chiefs, and without any 
 opposition from the royal troops, he repossessed himself 
 of Balkh. To this hour he remains in undisputed 
 occupation of the province. Indeed it appears an open 
 question whether, when the disappearance of the winter's 
 snows (1870) renders military operations again practicable, 
 the Amir Sher All will win back the lost jewel of Balkh 
 to his crown, or whether Ishakh Khdn will add the re- 
 mainder of Afghdnistdn to his present conquest. Sup- 
 posing the latter contingency came really to pass, and 
 that the avenging son of the man whom we helped to 
 destroy in 1868-9 should emerge as ruler of all the 
 Afghdns in 1870, where then would be the English 
 ascendancy in Kabul politics for which we have sacrificed 
 so much ? In suggesting this awkward question I may 
 be suspected of prejudice. I anticipate the charge by 
 soliciting reference to the facts confessed by the most able 
 organ of the policy I impugn. A correspondent of the 
 Friend 0/ India y vouched for by the editor as 'a careful 
 observer, who knows the country well, and had some con- 
 versation with the Amir on his late visit to India,* 
 employed the following language, on the 26th of October 
 last, to describe the condition of Afghdnistdn:
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 159 
 
 * So far as I can judge from the accounts brought me from 
 Kabul, there seems good reason for believing that the Amir is 
 ruining his own cause. He has money, but he does not pay his 
 troops. One of his regiments has been destroyed to a man, and 
 in Balkh, Ishakh Khdn, son of Azfm Khan, is gaining ground, 
 and is well supplied with money some say from Samarkand. 
 If so, it tells a tale. At Kandahar there is a rising, and a Sard^r' 
 (chief) 'has collected a lakh' (100,000) 'of well-armed ruffians, 
 who will probably give the Amir much trouble. Already they 
 have taken some guns from him, and disposed of the few troops 
 sent against them. There is a storm brewing, and many re- 
 spectable natives seem to think it not at all improbable that 
 Sher All, if he escapes with his life, will soon seek a refuge in 
 our territory. Uslum Khan is about the only faithful Sardar 
 left him, and he begs the Amir to pay the troops, and send 
 him to the seat of war. It is a pity he has not sense enough 
 to pay his soldiers. Even his friends think his reason is failing, 
 or he would not so foolishly persist in alienating his people. I 
 sincerely hope he will maintain his position, and govern the 
 country wisely ; but, if native information is worth anything, 
 misfortune is not far off, and that entirely through his own fault. 
 
 The same journal, in its issues of the 2nd and 23rd of 
 November, admits that Ishakh Khdn is complete master 
 of Balkh ; that the rebellion at Kandahar, mentioned in 
 the above extract, has spread to the neighbourhood of 
 Ghuznee, where it has been strengthened by defections 
 from the Amir's forces ; and that through all Afghanis- 
 tan a restless and insurrectionary spirit is abroad.^ 
 
 To look at the subject from another point of 
 view. Is the contact of Russia with the north-west 
 frontier of India a thing to be desired or deprecated .<* 
 If the welfare of Central Asia is to be considered, 
 we cannot deny that Russian order in place of Usbeg 
 or Afghdn anarchy, and that Christian tolerance in place 
 
 ^ These conjectures turned out to be without foundation. Sher Ah''s power 
 has grown more stable every year since the definitive recognition of him by 
 Lord Mayo in 1869. W. W. H.
 
 i6o MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 of Muslim bigotry, would be supreme benefits to that un- 
 happy region. But what is Central Asia to us, what are 
 we to Central Asia ? The general cause of humanity, 
 if I may hazard a guess at ' the painful riddle of this 
 world,* seems to be best served by each nation mind- 
 ing its own business. It is the business of England to 
 civilise India up to a point when the natives can be 
 left to govern themselves. Were we to be interrupted 
 in this mission, and forced to quit the country before 
 our time, the result in India to say nothing of the 
 shock to England, and, through England, to the in- 
 habited world would be, under any circumstances, long 
 years of war, confusion, and misery, such as befell the 
 denizens of our own island on the departure of the 
 Romans. We, in our turn, might become recipients 
 of the pathetic appeal, ' The barbarians drive us into 
 the sea, and the sea drives us back on the bar- 
 barians.' I believe that we shall be traitors both to 
 ourselves and to the peoples committed to our charge if 
 we regard the progress of Asiatic Russia from any other 
 point of view than the security and benefit of our own 
 empire. In this relation, and in this only, should the 
 * Central Asian Question,' as it is called, have any 
 meaning for England.^ So regarded, the advent of a 
 great European Power to our close neighbourhood, oc- 
 cupying the historic path by which all the various con- 
 querors of India, except ourselves, have advanced, and 
 summoning to her standard all the warlike clansmen of 
 
 ' Well said Sir Stafford Northcote, in the House of Commons on July 9 : 
 'When he heard that the House was asked to discuss the policy of England 
 in Central Asia, he was tempted to say that the only answer we could give 
 was, that England had no policy in Central Asia. In point of fact, we ought 
 not to have a Central Asian policy. It ought to be an Indian policy. Wc 
 had enough on our hands with the management of our own interests.'
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. i6i 
 
 the Afghdh hills, who look on Hindustdn as their natural 
 prey, must assuredly prove a grave inconvenience. I put 
 aside the contingency of a Russian invasion. The public 
 discussion (thanks to Sir Henry Rawlinson) of our dimly 
 apprehended perils has had the good effect of demonstra- 
 ting that Russia, neither at present nor for many years to 
 come, can command the means to attempt an open attack. 
 The practical danger consists in the encouragement to 
 insurrection which her proximity will supply to all our 
 discontented subjects in India. These in proportion to 
 the two hundred millions of population are marvellously 
 few, but in proportion to our garrison of sixty thousand 
 soldiers unpleasantly numerous ; even while our peace 
 with Russia continues unbroken, they may keep us in 
 perpetual fidget; and in case of war the necessity for 
 watching them may cripple our power for operations in 
 Europe. On the other hand, it is asserted that if we 
 have disaffection in India, Russia has the same in 
 Turkistan ; that the nearer she comes to us the greater 
 will be her embarrassments ; and that if she foments 
 troubles within our borders we can retaliate by doing the 
 like within hers. This no doubt is true ; but in such a 
 game we should be risking gold against her copper ; we 
 have infinitely more at stake in India than she has in 
 Turkistan, and by the loss of a single trick we should 
 be hit harder than she would be by the loss of a hundred. 
 As for commercial considerations, it is Russia's declared 
 object to secure a monopoly of the Central Asian trade 
 by rigidly excluding the superior and cheaper manufactures 
 of England ; markets, therefore, which at present under 
 the indigenous rulers are open to us, will be hopelessly 
 closed as soon as they pass within the Russian pale. 
 Only in one respect can I conceive any good accruing 
 
 M
 
 1 62 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY, 
 
 to us from further enlargements of the Russian boundary: 
 they operate as a heavy blow and great discouragement 
 to the cause of Islam, not only at the scene of their occur- 
 rence, but throughout Asia generally; and, as Muhamma- 
 dan fanaticism is the main source of our intestine dangers 
 in India, they, to some extent, serve to damp the designs 
 of our domestic enemies. But, on the whole, our interests 
 decidedly demand that India should be separated from 
 Russia for as long a time and by as wide a territorial gap 
 as possible. 
 
 Now, the question is. What can we do either to 
 prevent the meeting of the two empires, or, if that be 
 impossible, to render their collision innocuous ? 
 
 Several authorities have proposed that we should lay 
 a plain statement of our difficulties before Russia, and 
 obtain a written guarantee from her never to overstep a 
 certain line of limitation. The distinguished President 
 of the Geographical Society has on more than one occa- 
 sion announced his confidence in the Czar's intention to 
 leave Afghanistan untouched. But for myself I can 
 give only a qualified adhesion to this belief Bokhara 
 is intimately connected with Afghdnistdn ; and Russia, 
 who is now virtual mistress of Bokhara, hardly has 
 the power, though she may have the wish, to refrain 
 from contact with men and things south of the Oxus. 
 Omitting, as unproved, the support that Ishakh Khdn's 
 invasion of Balkh is said to have obtained from the 
 Russian authorities at Samarkand, we know that General 
 Kaufmann two years ago took into pay a large body of 
 Afghdn soldiers, and that their commandant, who is a 
 prince of the royal Barukzai house, now holds an official 
 position at St. Petersburg. These facts are incompatible
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 163 
 
 with utter isolation from Afghdn politics. Indeed, I cannot 
 suppress a doubt whether, when Russian troops hold the 
 ferry of the Oxus leading into Balkh, it will be possible 
 for them long to observe the limit which, under Sir A. 
 Buchanan's negotiations, has just been established for 
 parting Bokhara from Afghanistan. A river is noto- 
 riously a bad frontier; incursions from Balkh will pro- 
 voke the Russians to cross in pursuit of the offenders ; 
 and ultimately the Usbeg nationality of the inhabitants 
 will afford an argument for their incorporation into the 
 same empire with Bokhara. The imperial boundary 
 cannot, I believe, stop at the Oxus ; there is more like- 
 lihood of its pausing at the northern foot of the Hindu 
 Khiish mountains. Local complications of this kind are 
 almost beyond the Czar's control ; and, without a proper 
 allowance for the effect they are certain to exercise, his 
 Majesty's intentions are liable to be misread. Besides, 
 we must bear in mind that diplomacy between the Courts 
 of St. James's and St. Petersburg has been already tried, 
 and has not done much for us. To cap all, it seems 
 unworthy of our ancient nation that Englishmen should 
 cringingly approach any Power on earth with a confession 
 of fear and an entreaty for forbearance. Our dignity 
 demands, as our strength warrants, that we should look 
 to ourselves for our own protection. 
 
 The independent courses open to our option are of 
 two kinds, those which lie beyond, and those which are 
 contained within, the British frontier. Bright with the 
 attractive glitter of foreign enterprise, the former line has 
 always commanded the larger share of popular favour. 
 Its characteristic principle is the interposition between 
 India and Russia of Governments friendly to ourselves 
 
 *M 2
 
 1 64 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 and capable of withstanding our northern rivals. Thirty 
 years ago we pursued this idea so far as to enter on a 
 military occupation of Afghdnistin, and to assume a large 
 share in its civil administration. Some say that the experi- 
 ment, though it then ended in ruin, ought to be repeated 
 with the omission of old blunders and the addition of 
 new precautions. My own belief is that, even though the 
 strategic advantages of a renewed march to Kandahar 
 and Herat were clearer than they are, their cost of 
 three and a half millions sterling per annum is more 
 than India can furnish. The scheme, however, is too 
 large for discussion in this place. Moreover, its advo- 
 cates speak of it rather as a measure of future expediency 
 than of immediate necessity. We may pass on, therefore, 
 in a practical spirit to the notion now dominant in our 
 national policy, of giving Afghdnistan 'a strong Govern- 
 ment,' not in our own person, but in the person of a 
 native ruler subsidised by us. That this notion, as 
 set to work by Lords Lawrence and Mayo, has 
 hitherto produced nothing but disappointment, cannot be 
 doubted. 
 
 * But,' it may be objected, ' Sher All has only had a 
 ten months' trial ; he may yet become real master of the 
 country ; or, supposing even that he does break down 
 altogether, the failure in this case will be no argument 
 against better luck with the better men who will succeed 
 him on the Kabul throne ; one accident ought not to 
 damn a great policy.' 
 
 I reply, firstly, that the artificial erection of a 'strong 
 Government ' on foreign soil must, under the Most favour- 
 able circumstances, be about as arduous a task as it is pos- 
 sible to conceive any nation undertakinjj ; and, secondly,
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. i6S 
 
 that in the national character and customs of the Af- 
 ghans there are inherent defects which reduce our 
 attempt to a complete impossibility. The Afghan nation is 
 an aggregate of separate clans, republican in their internal 
 organisation. Their common saying is that"' all Afghdns 
 are equal.' The authority which the Amir, the head of 
 the principal clan, nominally exercises over them^^U com- 
 prises, at best, little more than a right to levy a fixed 
 proportion of troops and money from each for the'common 
 defence. Governments and sovereigns are changed with 
 inconceivable rapidity.^ 
 
 * He who possesses a little money, and can scatter it amongst 
 the crowd, will soon have a sufficient number of partisans to 
 assist in raising him to power ; and, though this power is here- 
 ditary in Afghanistan, the regular succession to the throne is by 
 no means liked, and is the most uncertain thing possible. The 
 legitimate heir is always obliged to submit the question of 
 sovereignty to an election and the chances of war. ... In 
 Afghanistan everything that succeeds is legitimate, and in this 
 way success favours the greatest rascal ; his crimes or his virtues 
 are of little importance to the people : if he pays well he is their 
 idol ; but let his purse get empty, let a reverse of fortune over- 
 take him, he at once becomes an object of contempt and 
 aversion, and is obliged either to expatriate himself, or retire 
 into a greater obscurity than that from which he sprung,' ^ 
 
 The Sardars, or chiefs of clans, are all sovereigns 
 within their respective domains. Jealous, turbulent, and 
 ambitious, they are always impatient to see their prince 
 
 ' The AmMM DarMr took place at the end of March 1869 ; Mr. Wyllie's 
 latest information when he wrote this was an Indian newspaper dated the 30th 
 of November 1869. Had he hved a few years, or even months, longer, he would 
 have seen his apprehensions for the stability of the Amir's power removed. 
 
 W. W. H. 
 
 - Ferrier's ' History of the Afghans,' p. 304. ,"
 
 1 66 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 replaced by another from whom they expect greater 
 advantages. * They will sell their services to the highest 
 bidder ; it is indifferent to them whether their friend of 
 to-day is their enemy to-morrow, or whether they have to 
 take arms against their relations or not' ' Anything for 
 money ' is their maxim. The common people follow the 
 example of their chiefs. 
 
 ' They will desert one party and attach themselves to another, 
 without feeling any compunction or incurring the least disgrace. 
 They always welcome, and with enthusiasm, the arrival of a new 
 sovereign ; but a reign too long, or a peace too prolonged with 
 their neighbours, is to them insupportable ; and when no oppor- 
 tunity presents itself of getting rid of their over-excitement on 
 their foes without, they make war upon one another.' 
 
 This description is mostly taken from Ferrier ; but 
 Mountstuart Elphinstone says much the same thing, and 
 supplies, in addition, the following anecdote : 
 
 * I once,' he states, ' strongly urged to a very intelligent old 
 man of the tribe of Miydnkhail, the superiority of a quiet and 
 secure life, under a powerful monarch, to the discord, the alarms, 
 and the bloodshed which they owed to their present system. 
 The old man replied with great warmth, and thus concluded an 
 indignant harangue against arbitrary power : ' We are content 
 with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with 
 bloodshed, but we never will be content with a master.' ' 
 
 What is to be done with a nation of this sort ? We 
 cannot make the Ethiopian change his skin, or the 
 leopard his spots. A war of succession, such as Sher 
 AH has just gone through, is not the exception, but the 
 rule, in Afghdnistdn. His four predecessors spent their 
 
 Elphinstonc's * Account of the Kingdom of Kabul,' p. 174.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 167 
 
 rlives in making or meeting insurrections. The normal 
 constitution of the country, since it ceased to be a foot- 
 ball between the Shdh of Persia and the Great Mughul of 
 Delhi, is not one strong monarchy, but several weak and 
 antagonistic principalities. Twice only in Afghdn history 
 have the discordant tribes been united under a native 
 king of substantial power. And the two soldiers of 
 fortune who achieved this feat were in their way Napo- 
 leons, born rulers of mankind, such as are not found in 
 every generation. If out of the present turmoil a second 
 Ahmad Shah or a new Dost Muhammad were to come 
 to the surface, and, by establishing his own supremacy, 
 restore comparative order to the land, such a Govern- 
 ment, born of indigenous materials and possessing a vital 
 principle of its own, might perhaps be susceptible of some 
 confirmation at our hands. But even then the hold which 
 an outlay of arms and money might procure for us on 
 Afghanistan, would only be co-extensive with the life of 
 the individual monarch ; when he died we should again 
 be adrift in the periodically recurring deluge. I will not 
 dwell on the moral aspect of the subsidy system, though 
 whether we are justified in giving any Government the 
 means to coerce its subjects without taking some security 
 that our gifts shall not be abused to purposes of oppres- 
 sion and cruelty, is a question well meriting attention. 
 On strictly political grounds it seems to me that we may, 
 , at any rate, wait for the avatdr in Afghdnistan of a hero 
 equal to the occasion. Until he appears, our most elabo- 
 rate efforts to keep any ruler going who has not strength 
 within himself to keep his legs, must be, to use Mr. 
 Bright's phrase, ' sheer tinkering.' 
 
 Afghanistan, however, is not the only kingdorn which
 
 1 68 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 has attracted attention as a fit locality beyond the British 
 frontier for our operations in search of a breakwater 
 against the tide of Russian progress. ' Russia,' says Sir 
 Henry Rawlinson, ' could never establish herself at 
 Herat, and keep up her communications with Asterdbad, 
 "without the co-operation of Persia ; and against that co- 
 operation our efforts should be accordingly directed.* I 
 have dared to differ from Sir Henry on many points of 
 our Central Asian policy, but, in regard to the value of 
 cordial relations with the Shdh's Government, I gladly 
 seize an opportunity for expressing humble concur- 
 rence with that great master. The administration of 
 Persia is not a model organism ; it is inferior to that 
 of Turkey. Still, Persia is a settled, and, so to speak, 
 civilised state, having representatives resident at the 
 Courts of Europe. She presents a tangible and reason- 
 able personality to our approaches ; and Mr. Eastwick is 
 amply justified in declaring that time and money spent at 
 Teheran would be much more to our purpose than if 
 sunk in the chaos of Afghdnistdn. We are too much 
 given, especially in India, to disparaging Persia as 'the 
 mere tool of an aggressive Russia.' The late Lord 
 Strangford oh that he were back to guide our counsels ! 
 protested against the ' brutal levity of thought ' in- 
 volved in this assumption.^ Persia deserves no such 
 reproach. She is keenly alive to the danger of being 
 caught within the snaky folds of her northern neighbour's 
 fascination. Moreover, as she is quite aware of the 
 sympathy with which England views her determination 
 to shun the fatal embrace, English influence might, and 
 ought to be, supreme at Teheran. If this is not the case 
 
 * ' Selected Writings of Viscount Strangford/ vol. ii. p. 274.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY, 169 
 
 at present, the fault is our own. There are many ways 
 in which we might show an increased regard for Persia. 
 Foremost stands the re-transfer to the India Office of 
 the control over our Mission which is at present exercised 
 by the Foreign Office. Hear the words of one who, being 
 more eminently fitted than any other man alive to repre- 
 sent British interests at Teheran, resigned the post of 
 Minister as soon as he found himself subordinated to the 
 Foreign Office : 
 
 ' Persian diplomacy is essentially an Eastern question, and 
 mainly dependent on considerations of Indian policy. . . . The 
 Indian revenues contribute a sum of 12,000/. per annum toward 
 the expenses of the Persian Mission. There is no single element, 
 indeed, of European diplomacy connected with Persia, except 
 the relations of that country with Turkey ; and even these rela- 
 tions, referring almost exclusively to frontier grievances, come 
 more naturally under the jurisdiction of Bagdad or of Erzeroum 
 than of Constantinople. It may further be questioned whether 
 the traditions and practice of the Foreign Office, admirably 
 adapted as they are to European diplomacy, are fitted to deal 
 with the peculiarities of Eastern character. ... It may be 
 doubtful if the duties of the Teheran Mission, reorganised as a 
 powerful machine of Indian defence, could be carried out by an 
 ordinary staff of Foreign Office attaches. At any rate, it would 
 be infinitely better to employ Indian officers, accustomed to the 
 native character, acquainted with the language, and who would 
 look to Persian and Afghan service as their career in life, instead 
 of pining for the luxuries and leisure of Paris and Vienna." ' 
 
 From my own experience I may add that the inform- 
 ation on Persian and Perso-Afghdn questions, which, 
 under present arrangements, the Viceroy of India derives 
 from our Minister at Teheran, is not what it ought to be. 
 
 1 ' Memorandum on the Central Asian Question,' by Major-General Sir H. 
 C. Rawlinson, K.C,B.j dated July 20, 1868.
 
 170 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 Imperfect information leads to rash and headstrong 
 measures ; and until Lord Mayo is put in communication 
 with an Indian officer at Teheran one of that military- 
 political school of which Sir Henry Durand and Colonel 
 Meade are shining examples his Excellency will be in a 
 false position. I believe that Mr. Gladstone's speech of 
 the 9th of July, ill reported in next morning's papers, 
 contained some assurance that the proposed retransfer of 
 the Mission was open to consideration. All who have at 
 heart our preservation from Central Asian difficulties 
 must hope that the ministerial capacity to be convinced 
 will, in the coming session, be developed into positive 
 acceptance of this urgently needed reform (1869-70). 
 
 Now, withdrawing our gaze from outside movements, 
 we have, in conclusion, to see what can be done in the way 
 of defence within our own border. All parties, including 
 the Government, are agreed that our system of railways 
 leading to, and skirting along, the north-west frontier of 
 India must be completed with all speed. Nor will any 
 one deny that, as the contentment of the people is the 
 cheap defence of nations, we should put forth all our 
 industry and ingenuity in order to reconcile the natives, 
 as far as possible, to our alien yoke by mild, firm, and 
 sympathetic administration. These should be the objects 
 with highest claim on our attention. Of subordinate, yet 
 very real, desirability is the proposal that when the 
 long-impending redistribution of Indian governments and 
 provinces takes place, Sind should be detached from 
 the Presidency of Bombay and fused into the Lieutenant- 
 Governorship of the Panjdb. As Sir Henry Durand has 
 pithily said : 
 
 ' It is anomalous that on so important a frontier wc should
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 171 
 
 be liable to have a different policy advocated in Sind from that 
 pursued at Peshdwar ; still more anomalous that the military- 
 force on the Lower Indus should be under the Commander-in- 
 Chief at Bombay, whilst the troops on the Upper Indus and its 
 affluents are under the Commander-in-Chief in Bengal. One 
 Government, one policy, and one command should watch over 
 the frontier, from the sea-board to Peshdwar.' ^ 
 
 I believe that the only true bulwarks for India are to 
 be found within her own limits. By reconstructing the 
 Teheran Mission we may create a useful outwork in 
 Persia; but the firmest of alliances with a foreign 
 ^Government can never be of equal value to us with the 
 triple line of internal ramparts which we may raise in 
 frontier railways, popular contentment, and uniformity of 
 border organisation. To take a stirring part in Central 
 Asian politics may tickle our national love of adventure, 
 but it fills Russia with increased jealousy of our trade, 
 and with a lively alarm for the political security of Tur- 
 kistan ; that is, it incites the Czar's generals to accelerated 
 aggression, and so precipitates the very collision we most 
 wish to postpone. If meddling could bring us any gain, 
 we might chance the inconvenience of irritating a great 
 military Power ; but when the only gain is a distinct loss, 
 why should busybodies in India be allowed to compromise 
 England's position in the great comity of European 
 nations ? Indian Interests themselves demand a system 
 of abstention. Russia in Turkistdn is still a weakly 
 exotic. She has entered on a task which Mons. Gri- 
 gorieff,^ one of her highest Asiatic authorities, rightly 
 
 ^ Minute in the Viceroy's Council, dated October 5, 1867. 
 
 "^ Letter to the Editor of the ' Moskva,' January 28 (February 9), 1867.
 
 172 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 
 
 describes as novel to her experience ; governing Usbeg 
 Muhammadans is decidedly ' a big job,' and what she will 
 make of it remains to be seen. Dangers anticipated do 
 not always come to pass ; and time, if we will but let it 
 work, may spontaneously relieve us of the Cossack cloud 
 that now overhangs the Indian horizon. Though the 
 worst should happen that can happen, our capacity for 
 meeting it is not bettered by close intimacy with Afghin- 
 istdn. The dreadful day may come for another European 
 war, in which England and Russia shall be ranged on 
 opposite sides, and then we may find the savage independ- 
 ence of the Afghans a weapon of deadly utility ready to 
 our hands. But meanwhile, 
 
 Non, tali auxilio nee defensoribus istis 
 Tempus eget. 
 
 We lose nothing by waiting. The Afghans, when 
 wanted, are much more likely to answer our call if,, as a 
 nile, we keep aloof from their internal dissensions, and at 
 the right moment appear to pay all parties handsomely, 
 than if we identify ourselves with a particular faction, 
 and in the end approach them with a largesse diminished 
 in proportion to our premature disbursements. I trust 
 that Sir Charles Wingfield and Mr. Eastwick will not 
 allow the next session of Parliament to pass without 
 obtaining from the Government a stoppage of Sher 
 AH's allowance. It is irritating to think that at a time 
 when the Indian exchequer seems to show a chronic 
 deficit^ of two millions, and when reduction of public ex- 
 
 ' Had Mr. Wyllie lived another month he would have substituted the 
 word surplus for deficit a surplus which till this Famine Year (1874) may be 
 rightly described as a chronic one. W. W. H.
 
 MISCHIEVOUS ACTIVITY. 173 
 
 pendlture, combined with the prospect of increased taxa- 
 tion, is spreading discontent throughout the empire, we 
 should be spending 1 20,000/. on what appears to many 
 a chimera. The capital of which this sum represents the 
 annual interest is three millions sterling ; it would defray 
 two-thirds of the entire amount required for the con- 
 struction of the Peshdwar railway ; and so appropriated it 
 might do real, instead of imaginary, service for our de- 
 fence. What I pray is that England may yet withdraw 
 her hand from Central Asia.
 
 174 
 
 WESTERN CHINA} 
 
 Our principal information regarding China is derived 
 from the commercial ports on the eastern sea-board, but 
 secondary approaches to the Flowery Kingdom also 
 exist through India and Siberia ; and the latter routes, 
 though little regarded in modern England, deserve some 
 attention, for they are the only channels of intelligence 
 with reference to the western boundaries of the empire. 
 These Indian lines of communication are to be looked 
 for not in the direction of Assam, where the advantages 
 of geographical propinquity to the Chinese frontier are 
 neutralised by the barbarism of interjacent tribes and the 
 barrier of impassable mountains, but towards Burmah in 
 the far south, where the absence of the Himdlayan range 
 reduces physical obstacles to a minimum, and towards 
 Kdshmir, in the extreme north, where the presence of a 
 Mahdrdjd, holding his principality in declared dependence 
 from the British Crown, affords facilities for political cor- 
 respondence. Hence the tidings that reach India over- 
 
 > 'Edinburgh Review,' April 1868. 
 
 I. ' Rising of the Dungens or Musalm5n Population in Western China.' 
 By O. K. Heins. Translated from the Russian Military Journal for August 
 1866. 
 
 II. 'Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.' Volume the Thirty- 
 second. Articles I. and II,, Notes on the Yang-tsze-Kiang, from Han-kow 
 to Ping-shan. I?y Lieutenant-Colonel Henrj^ Andrew Sarel, F.R.G.S., 17th 
 Lancers, and Dr. Alfred Barton, F.R.G.S. London : 1862. 
 
 III. 'Cathay and the Way Thither.' By Colonel Henry Yule, C.B. 
 London : Printed for the Hakluyt Society : 1866. 
 
 IV. 'The Middle Kingdom.' By S. Wells Williams. New York and 
 London : 1857.
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 175 
 
 land from China relate almost exclusively to the two 
 provinces of Yunnan and Eastern Turkistdn ; though 
 at rare intervals something is heard also of Thibet and 
 Szechuen via Nepdl. 
 
 Now the recent intelligence (1868) received through 
 Kdshmir from Eastern Turkistdn is but an echo of 
 the rumours which for some time have been current in 
 the bazaars of Burmah respecting the political condition 
 of Yunnan. Both in Eastern Turkistan and in Yunnan 
 the yoke of the Pekin Government has been thrown off 
 by the native population, and the insurgents in both cases 
 are Muhammadans. The first impulse on hearing of these 
 simultaneous outbreaks, the one apparently the counter- 
 part of the other, is to wonder whether, in spite of the 
 1,500 miles of Thibet, by which they are separated, they 
 may, by any posslbllit}^ be connected parts of a single 
 organised movement. Scarcely has the conjecture been 
 started before we receive accounts from St. Petersburg, 
 indicating that the Insurrection In Eastern Turkistdn is 
 not confined to that locality, but extends over the pro- 
 vinces of Kansu and ShensI and all the intermediate 
 country. And next we are told that, In the Szechuen 
 districts bordering on Thibet, midway between Kansu 
 and Yunnan, there has for some years been prevalent 
 just such a rebellion as might establish continuity of 
 action over the whole of the immense area stretching 
 from the Pamir Steppe to the Hoang Ho, from the 
 Great Wall to the borders of Annam. So, in the end, 
 we really have before us grounds to surmise that this 
 remote part of the world may at present be the scene of 
 a great Muslim revival, and that, under the proselytism 
 of scattered knots of enthusiastic Mullahs, millions of 
 Chinese and Tartars, recoiling from the cold nihilism of
 
 176 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 Buddha to the vivid faith that is in Muhammad, must have 
 flown to arms in a spirit of fiery fanaticism, directed 
 primarily against their own Government, but ready to 
 blaze out in any direction where infidels are to be exter- 
 minated. If facts could be found to verify such a theory, 
 It would be impossible to assign any limits to the grave 
 political consequences that might be apprehended for 
 Asia generally and China in particular. It therefore be- 
 comes a matter of some importance to ascertain what the 
 condition of Western China actually is ; and with this 
 view we now propose to lay before the public such inform- 
 ation on the subject as we have with difficulty succeeded 
 in collecting. 
 
 Of the eighteen provinces into which China Proper is 
 divided, Yunnan lies furthest to the south-west. It is a 
 mountainous country, rich in mineral products, and, up to 
 the date of the recent outbreak, it formed the channel for 
 an overland traffic with Burmah of considerable value. 
 From very early times there has been a large Muhamma- 
 dan element in the population, Marco Polo, whose book 
 was written in 1295, describes the inhabitants of the 
 principal city as a mixed assemblage of * idolaters, Nes- 
 torian Christians, and Saracens or Mahometans.' And 
 Rashid-ud-dfn, who was Vazi'r of the Persian Em- 
 pire at the beginning of the fourteenth century, says 
 roundly, in his Historical Encyclopedia, that 'all the 
 inhabitants are Muhammadans.' Now to what source can 
 this ancient leaven of Islam be traced ? Are we to look 
 eastwards to the sea, by which the Arabs first entered 
 China on mercantile ventures ? Or in a north-westerly 
 direction to the sandy Desert of Gobi, across which 
 numbers of roving Muhammadans, beginning from the 
 eighth century, have found their way into the upper
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 177 
 
 provinces of Shensi and Kansu from Khorasan, Tran- 
 soxianaC, and Eastern Turkistan ? 
 
 Questioned as to their own origin, the Musalmans 
 of Yunnan ^iv^ rather a fanciful account of themselves. 
 Once upon a time, they say, there came a plague of evil 
 spirits on China. The sun waxed dim, and the fruits of 
 the earth ceased. Then the Emperor dreamed a dream, 
 and, behold, there appeared unto him a man, clothed as 
 an Arab, but friendly withal and of a cheerful countenance. 
 And the Emperor told his dream to the magicians, and 
 they said : It is a sign unto thee to seek salvation from 
 Arabia, that our land may be quit of the evil spirits that 
 plague it. And the Emperor hearkened unto the word 
 of the magicians, and sent forth messengers to the Prophet 
 Muhammad, saying. Grant me, I pray thee, some of thy 
 follow^ers. And Muhammad granted unto him three hun- 
 dred and three score men. And it came to pass that 
 the evil spirits fled away before the face of the three 
 hundred and three score Arabs, and the land had rest. 
 Then the Emperor honoured these holy men, and gave 
 them ground close to his royal city, whereon to dwell ; 
 and they grew and multiplied exceedingly. But it came 
 to pass that the Emperor died, and another Emperor 
 arose, who knew them not. And he feared lest, when 
 war might fall out, they should join his enemies. Where- 
 fore, having taken counsel with himself, he broke up their 
 dwelling-places near his royal city, scattered their families, 
 and sent them, in separate bands, to dwell on the utmost 
 confines of his empire. 
 
 Divested of its mythical trappings, this story does not 
 essentially differ from the more sober narrative supplied 
 by the orthodox Chinese. According to the latter version, 
 a great rebellion broke out in China about a thousand 
 
 N
 
 178 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 years ago. The Emperor, being" reduced to great straits, 
 sought assistance from 'a^ certain king named Rdzi 
 or Khazi, who ruled over the countries to the west of 
 China.' He thus obtained the services of a Muhammadan 
 contingent, 10,000 strong ; and, with its aid, he succeeded 
 in quelHng the rebelHon. Then arose the difficulty how 
 to dispose of auxiliaries whose military prowess was no 
 longer necessary to the empire, and who, for their part, 
 had lost all desire to return to their own country, in con- 
 sequence of their reputation among the true believers at 
 home having become compromised by their long contact 
 with the swine's flesh and other abominations of remote 
 paganism. In the end, the Emperor despatched them to 
 colonise the frontier province of Yunnan, as permanent 
 subjects of China. 
 
 The general coincidence of these two accounts affords 
 a presumption that they rest on some basis of substantial 
 truth. Moreover, they harmonise with the Chinese cus- 
 tom of deporting a suspected tribe eii masse from one end 
 of the empire to another, and also with the historical fact 
 that applications for military assistance actually were 
 made to the Abbaside Khalifas by two successive Em- 
 perors of China, Sutsung in 757 and Tetsung in ']%']. 
 Indeed, it is worth while to compare the passage which, 
 in Colonel Yule's learned work on ' Cathay,' is devoted 
 to the incident of 757. Colonel Yule says (p. Ixxxi.) : 
 * When the Emperor Sutsung was hard pressed by a 
 powerful rebel, he received an embassy from the Khalifd 
 Abu Jafar ul Mansur accompanied by auxiliary troops. 
 . . . Ouigour and other western troops also joined the 
 
 ' This quotation, as indeed most of our information regarding the Yunnan 
 rebellion, is taken from a memorandum by the Chief Commissioner of 
 British Burmah, the materials for which were supplied by Captain Sladen, 
 the British agent accredited to the Court of the King of Ava at Mandalay.
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 179 
 
 Emperor's standard, and the rebel was completely de- 
 feated in the immediate neighbourhood of Singanfu. 
 These auxiliaries seem to have been found very un- 
 manageable : the eastern capital, Loyang, was pillaged 
 by them ; and, as we have seen,^ one account ascribes to 
 them, on their way to embark for the west, the sack of 
 Canton which occurred at this time.' 
 
 May it not then be possible that the modern Muham- 
 
 madans of Yunnan are in truth descendants of some 
 
 remnant of the contingent supplied to Sutsung by the 
 
 founder of Bagdad some band so warworn that they 
 
 had no heart to accompany the bulk of their comrades 
 
 through the perils of the return voyage from Canton to 
 
 the Persian Gulf, and preferred to remain in peace on 
 
 the alien shore ? However this may be, the general 
 
 drift of both the accounts above given indicates the 
 
 eastern sea instead of the northern desert as the door 
 
 by which the Muhammadans of Yunnan entered China. 
 
 Another circumstance testifying to the same effect is that 
 
 they pride themselves on their Arab origin, and that the 
 
 more learned among them cultivate Arabic not merely as 
 
 the language of their formal prayers, but as a medium 
 
 of polite communication. Now the most eastern point 
 
 which the tide of Saracen invasion ever reached was 
 
 Kashgar in Eastern Turkistan, and the Muhammadans 
 
 of Northern China are not of Arab, but of Turki 
 
 descent. Therefore, supposing the Yunnan Musalmans 
 
 to be justified in their boast, the hypothesis that they 
 
 reached their present seats by percolation from the north 
 
 ^ The previous passage to which Colonel Yule refers will be found at page 
 Ixxx. of his ' Cathay.' ' The Arabs at an early date of Islam, if not before, had 
 established a factory at Canton, and their numbers at that port were so great 
 by the middle of the eighth century that in 758 they were strong enough to 
 attack and pillage the city, to which they set fire and then fled to their ships.'
 
 I So WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 through the intermediate province of Szechuen, ceases to 
 be tenable/ and, as a further consequence, it must be 
 admitted that the tie, if there be any, connecting- the 
 insurgents in Yunnan with their co-reHgionists, who have 
 also taken up arms in Eastern Turkistan, cannot be one 
 of a common nationality. 
 
 The Musalmdns of Yunnan, though they speak of 
 themselves simply as Muslims, are known by a different 
 designation to both the Chinese and the Burmese. The 
 latter called them Paiithays ; the former are said to call 
 them Quayz. The word ' Panthay ' is merely a corruption 
 of ' Pathi,' by which name all followers of the Prophet 
 are distinguished in Burmah ; and ' Quays ' may possibly 
 be identical with ' Hoai-Hoai,' the generic title applied 
 to all Muhammadans in China ; for such a distortion is not 
 greater than might be expected from the phonetic spelling 
 by which an Anglo-Indian officer would endeavour to 
 reproduce on paper Chinese syllables reaching his ear 
 from Burman lips.''' 
 
 The Panthays belong to the Sunni sect of the Mu- 
 hammadans. In physical aspect they are fair, tall, and 
 strongly built. The fashion for their dress is, for the 
 most part, Chinese, ' though many of them cut their hair 
 to a certain length, and allow it to fall back on the nape 
 of the neck ; they also wear in many instances a distinctive 
 turban, of more ample form than in use among the 
 
 * Not less untenable appears to be the theory that they may have filtered 
 into China from Bengal through Burmah. The Muhammadan conquest of 
 Bengal took place in 1203, and the interval of seventy or eighty years from 
 that date up to the time when Yunnan fell under Marco Polo's observation 
 cannot, in the absence of any special explanation, be accepted as sufficient 
 to account for a large Muhammadan colony having taken firm root in lands 
 so far removed from the supposed mother-country. 
 
 ' There arc more Chinese Muhammadans than is commonly supposed. 
 Thus, the butchers in I'ekin arc said to be all Muslims, though their ortho- 
 doxy may have suffered by long residence amongst a pork-eating people.
 
 WESTERN CHINA. i8i 
 
 Chinese.' In character they are described as industrious 
 and enterprising. Their annals, during the thousand 
 years of their subjection to Chinese authority, seem a 
 perfect blank ; it may be inferred therefore that they 
 enjoyed a fair measure of tranquillity and material com- 
 fort. They certainly managed to preserve their own 
 social usages intact ; nor was any obstacle offered to 
 the erection of mosques and the public practice of their 
 religious observances ; even their political status appears 
 to have been little, if at all, inferior to that of the autoc- 
 thonous population. The cause of the disaffection which 
 latterly spread among them was, so far as can be ascer- 
 tained, nothing more complex than the extortion and 
 oppression of the individual officers entrusted by the 
 Pekin Government w^th the administration of the pro- 
 vince. It is possible that the foreign extraction and 
 peculiar religion of the Panthays may have attracted 
 towards them the jealousy and cruelty of the local 
 Government in an extraordinary degree ; or it may be 
 that men with Arab blood in their veins were not to be 
 trampled on with the same impunity as Chinese, to 
 the manner born. The paralysis of the central power 
 induced by the Taeping rebellion in Eastern China, 
 offered the Panthays just such an opportunity as is of 
 itself a motive to action; and in 1855 their pent up 
 indignation at last exploded, with a vehemence which 
 carried everything before it. Colonel Fytche describes 
 the occurrence as follows : 
 
 ' The Lusunphu silver mines of Yunnan were worked by 
 Panthays under the superintendence of Chinese officers. On a 
 certain day a dispute arose at the mines, and the miners, exas- 
 perated by unjust treatment, had recourse to force, and murdered 
 every Chinese officer they could find. The revolt of the miners
 
 i8a WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 was at once followed by a general armed rising of the Panthays 
 throughout Yunnan. Being inferior in number to the Chinese, 
 they at first took to the woods and mountain fastnesses, from 
 whence they carried on a fierce guerilla warfare. Meeting ever>''- 
 where with success, they were soon joined by large numbers of 
 the neighbouring semi-independent hill-tribes of Shans, Kakhyens, 
 and others, whereupon they extended their operations to the 
 plains, and laid siege to large towns. The local Government, 
 receiving no assistance from Pekin, finally succumbed ; the 
 insurgents became supreme, and a separate Panthay Government 
 was established with its head-quarters at Tali or Talifu, then 
 only a city of secondary importance, but where the Muhammadan 
 clement had always been very strong. Feeble attempts have 
 since been made, from time to time, to recover the lost province 
 by the despatch of imperial troops from the capital ; but the 
 Chinese Government has never been able to make head against 
 the Panthays ; and the troops sent have generally been repulsed, 
 before they could even penetrate within the Yunnan frontier.' 
 . . . . ' Panthay traders ' (residing at Mandalay) ' state that, 
 during the past year, an embassy was received from the Emperor 
 of China by which the Imperial Government sued for a cessation 
 of hostilities, and volunteered to cede Yunnan to the Panthays, 
 provided they would come to terms and commit no further acts 
 of aggression on neighbouring provinces. The offer, it is said, 
 was indignantly refused, and the embassy was obliged to return 
 to Pekin, without accomplishing its object.' 
 
 In fact Yunnan is now in the twelfth year of its 
 independence, and seems likely to maintain that position. 
 The head of the new Muhammadan Government is a 
 chief known to the Panthays as Sulaimdn, and to the 
 Chinese as Tuwintsen. He has had himself formally 
 installed on a divan, wears the imperial yellow,^ and in 
 
 * A proclamation from the new Sultdn of Yunnan (too long to be offered 
 to our readers in translation), has recently been circulated at Lhassa, with a 
 view of attracting to his camp Muhammadan recruits from Thibet. Prefaced 
 by a quotation from the Kurdn, it announces, in tones of Oriental hyperbole, 
 the overthrow of the polytheistic Chinese, and the triumphant erection of a 
 kingdom of true believers, under a Sultdn wise, just, and generous, whose 
 ministers and chiefs are ' as single-hearted as Abu Bakr,' and as * bold as 
 All.' It is pervaded throughout by a cant of religious motives and divine
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 183 
 
 all other respects displays the insignia of supreme power. 
 He is assisted by four military and four civil ministers, 
 of whom the one highest in rank is stationed at Momein, 
 a large town close to the Shan frontier, west of Yunnan. 
 The form of administration, except that it partakes of a 
 more military character, is the same as previously obtained 
 under the Chinese. Taxation is extremely light, being 
 restricted apparently to a moderate assessment on land. 
 
 Among the immediate results of this revolution the 
 one that chiefly concerns British interests is the ex- 
 tinction of the overland trade between Burmah and 
 China. The value of this traffic stood in 1854 at half a 
 million sterling ; and, as an indication of the distant 
 sources from Avhich the Chinese imports into Burmah 
 were gathered, it may be mentioned that Russian broad 
 cloth used to be procurable at Mandalay, which had 
 found its way through Siberia and Pekin. Caravans of 
 enterprising Chinese, among whom the Panthays were 
 always conspicuous, came, in those days, to Bhamo on the 
 Irrawaddy river, bringing silk and bullion to barter with 
 the Burmese for cotton, jade, and amber. But all this 
 abruptly ceased with the secession of Yunnan from the 
 Chinese Empire. The province that so long had vibrated 
 with the flow and reflux of a lively commerce at once 
 became a non-conductor ; the trader found his short-cut 
 closed. At present such small interchange of commo- 
 dities as still survives between Talifu and Bhamo merely 
 represents the produce and requirements of Yunnan 
 alone, isolated from the rest of China. This is a fact 
 
 favour, such as could not be surpassed even in a despatch from the Waha- 
 bi Court of Nejed. This very curious document is written in remarkably 
 good Arabic. For the copy in our possession we are indebted to Colonel G. 
 Ramsay, the British Resident in Nepal, who obtained it from the Nepdlese 
 Envoy, stationed at Lhassa.
 
 i84 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 which might be commended to the notice of the merchants 
 of Manchester and Rangoon, who clamour for a railway 
 from the latter place to the Yunnan frontier. Hitherto 
 they have made light of every obstacle to the project. 
 The sparseness of the population in British Burmah, 
 which would necessitate the importation of foreign labour, 
 and consequently cause not only enormous expense to 
 the State, but serious mortality amongst the labourers ; 
 the distracted condition of Ava, passing from one insur- 
 rection into another, and infested by gangs of organised 
 banditti ; the mountainous nature of the country between 
 Ava and Yunnan, and the lawless character of the Shan 
 tribes that inhabit it all these are regarded by the agi- 
 tators in question as matters of detail which Anglo-Saxon 
 perseverance would readily dispose of. But they seem 
 totally ignorant that even if the impossibility for which 
 they cry were granted them, and they were actually landed 
 on the platform of a terminus at Talifu, they would still 
 be as far removed as ever from the coveted prize of a 
 trade with China direct from the Bay of Bengal. Their 
 only customers would be our interesting, but impecunious 
 and hot-headed, friends, the Panthays.^ 
 
 ' Two separate projects have been started for establishing a mercantile 
 connexion with Yunnan : one, that referred to in the text, for a railway direct 
 from Rangoon eastwards to the nearest point in China ; the other, for water- 
 carriage up the Irrawaddy northwards to Bhamo, combined with a revival of 
 the old caravan traffic on by land from that point. Of these two schemes 
 they?rj/has now been definitely abandoned, though not before the Indian 
 Government was constrained to go through the farce of a * preliminary 
 survey ' of the route. The discontinuance of the survey has been regretted 
 by one officer of great local experience, on the ground that it might have 
 furnished a useful pretext for ascertaining what, if any, has been the poli- 
 tical action among the Shan tribes of the party of Krcnch explorers, who last 
 year (1867) made their way from Saigon up the Cambodia river as far as 21 N. 
 lat. ; but, with all deference to the eminent authority in question, we hesitate 
 to believe that English interests in that direction can have aught to appre- 
 hend from the excursions, however adventurous, which may be made in their
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 185 
 
 From Yunnan we now pass northwards to the large 
 and well-watered province of Szechuen, which has Thibet 
 for its western boundary. The inhabitants of Szechuen 
 are a mixed community ; the Chinese of the plains and 
 along the banks of that * silent highway,' the Yang-tsze- 
 Kiang, being peaceable, inoffensive, and loyal, while the 
 Maoutse towards the south are wild mountaineers, who 
 have never been under any effectual control from the 
 Government. Even at the best of times Szechuen used 
 to suffer from constant commotions and rebellions, which 
 the Chinese authorities, while their power lasted, were 
 wont to quell, in their own peculiar way, partly by force, 
 but chiefly by bribes and concessions. 
 
 The high road from Lhassa to Pekin traverses 
 Szechuen through Ta-tsin-deo, a frontier town, and 
 Ching-tu-fu, the capital. Messieurs Hue and Gabet, the 
 well-known missionaries, used this route in returning 
 from their adventurous sojourn among the Lamas of 
 Thibet ; and it is periodically followed by the embassy 
 which the Maharaja of Nepal ought every five years to 
 despatch to the Emperor of China. This also was the 
 way by which a party of English officers, under the 
 leadership of Colonel Sarel, endeavoured, in 1861, to 
 make an overland journey from Shanghai across the 
 Himalayas into India. From M. Hue's silence as to 
 any disturbances in Szechuen, it may be inferred that in 
 
 vicinity by the colony of Cochin China, which, notwithstanding the recent 
 extension of its territorial limits, still bears the reputation of an administra- 
 tive failure, unremunerative to the French empire, and unpopular with the 
 French nation. With regard to the second, and far more reasonable project, 
 we believe that the sanction of the King of Ava has been obtained for a 
 survey by British officers of the country beyond Bhamo towards Talifu. Pro- 
 bably the greatest difficulties we shall encounter in this work will arise from 
 the jealousy of the Chinese traders at Mandalay and Bhamo, who are strongly 
 opposed to the apparition of Europeans directly competing for a share in 
 their market.
 
 1 86 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 1846 the province was comparatively quiescent. But at 
 the time of Colonel Sarel 's expedition, affairs bore a very 
 different aspect. In fact, the cause which compelled that 
 officer to abandon his project, after he had penetrated 
 within 150 miles of Ching-tu-fu, was simply that he had 
 reached a country weltering in rebellion and anarchy, 
 through which no guides would venture to accompany 
 him. 
 
 The originators of the movement appear to have 
 been a set of hereditary and professional robbers called 
 Tufeh. Four different bands of these people, encouraged 
 by the success of the Taepings in Eastern China, and by 
 the helpless attitude of the central Government, united 
 their forces in 1859, and began to plunder on a grand 
 scale. Every day brought an addition to their strength ; 
 for wherever they turned, the Mandarins fled in terror, 
 the soldiery fraternised with them, and even of the 
 unhappy people, who had begun by resisting them 
 desperately, many afterwards joined them, not from any 
 natural proclivity towards a bandit's life, but simply 
 because homes gutted and burning left no other escape 
 from starvation. In two years' time the rebel force had 
 swollen to 300,000 men, who had carried fire and sword 
 through the greater part of Szechuen, and were then 
 besieging the capital. Numbers of headless bodies 
 floating past Colonel Sarel's boats on the Yang-tsze- 
 Kiang attested the proximity of the ruffians ; and at 
 last, on the night of the 29th May, the expedition came 
 into actual contact with them at a place called Pingshan. 
 The meeting and its consequences have been vividly 
 portrayed by a member of the party. Dr. Barton, as 
 follows : 
 
 'AH preparations having been made for leaving our boats the
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 187 
 
 following morning, we sat down to our dinner, when suddenly a 
 noise like the shouts of a legion of maniacs rent the air, and we 
 instantly armed ourselves, thinking the people were making a 
 rush at the boats ; but we found the rebels were pouring down 
 the hill at the back of the city and attacking it. The whole 
 hill-side was lighted up with hundreds of lanterns, and the city 
 walls also suddenly became illuminated with torches at each of 
 the embrasures. The yells and cries from the combatants and 
 the explosion of gingalls and cannon were so great that we could 
 scarcely hear each other speak. I had only just time to jump 
 into my boat when our crew cut us adrift : from the darkness of 
 the night and the din of the battle we could neither see nor hear 
 each other, and consequently our boats became separated, 
 myself and one Sikh only occupying the smaller. 
 
 It was an anxious night for all ; for wherever we attempted 
 to make fast to either bank, an explosion of gingalls drove us 
 away. During the night, however, we effected a mooring on the 
 Yunnan side, and I and my Sikh were standing on the house, 
 watching the battle, when several men rushed at our boat, and, 
 after firing three heavy gingalls within fifteen yards, obtained a 
 footing on our junk, but we soon cleared the deck and got away 
 with the loss of only one of our crew. The next morning we 
 picked him up on the opposite bank, he having taken to the 
 water for safety. At daybreak, seeing no trace of the other 
 boat, I slowly dropped down the stream to search for it, when 
 a few miles below the town, to my great joy, I discovered it 
 safely at anchor under a beetling cliff. 
 
 Thus, after ascending 1,800 miles of this river, exploring and 
 surveying 900 miles beyond any other European, save the Jesuits 
 in Chinese costume, and penetrating to the western borders of 
 the Empire for we were only a few miles from the country of 
 the independent tribes, the Maoutse we had now to abandon 
 all hope of carrying out our original plan of reaching India via 
 Thibet, and returned to Shanghai after an absence of five 
 months.' 
 
 The conclusion at which our travellers arrived was 
 that Western China had slipped altogether ' out of the 
 hands of the Government' Bands of robbers and rebels 
 were devastating the country in all directions.
 
 1 88 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 'In ihc eastern provinces were the Taeplngs ; in the south- 
 west the formidable band of Musalmans ; and in Szcchuen the 
 Tufeh : how many others we could not tell, but many no doubt; 
 and these have no connexion with each other. We also found 
 that the followers of the Prophet were very numerous, and 
 Roman Catholics were everywhere to be met, ready, at all times, 
 and at their own risk, to assist Europeans.' 
 
 This latter extract indicates that the rebels of Szechuen 
 have a character of their own, distinct equally from the 
 Taepings of Nankin and from the Muhammadans of 
 Yunnan. As observed by Dr. Barton, every province 
 of modern China contains a certain number of Muhamma- 
 dans ; indeed, there is one city in Szechuen which alone 
 contains i,ooo Musalmdn families ; and therefore it is 
 not improbable that several of this sect may be found in 
 the ranks of the Tufeh insurgents. But, if so, they must 
 be an inappreciable portion of the whole force ; and, even 
 in their case, the Kurdn is not the spring of action. In 
 the mass the rebels are Buddhists, and the motives by 
 which one and all of them are animated, are not religious, 
 but secular. They care little for Fo, and next to nothing 
 for Muhammad ; all they seek is plunder. 
 
 Not much has been heard of Szechuen since Colonel 
 Sarel visited it. The latest information that has reached 
 India is connected with the quinquennial embassy from 
 the Nepdlese Darbdr to the Emperor of China, which 
 started from Katmandu in August 1866, and ought to 
 have reached Pekin in the followincf March. Quite 
 recently Jang Bahddur (the ' Mayor of the Palace' who 
 rules Nepal) received through Lhassa despatches from 
 his envoy, dated from Ta-tsin-deo, the first town within 
 the limits of Szechuen, reporting that the party, after 
 suffering considerable hardship in the snowy passes
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 189 
 
 through which their route had lain, had succeeded in 
 passing the Chinese frontier, but could get no farther in 
 consequence of the country being overrun with rebels ; 
 orders, it was added, had been received from the Em- 
 peror that the letter and tribute destined for himself 
 should be delivered up to his representatives at Ta-tsin- 
 deo, and that the usual return-presents should be issued 
 to the Nepalese at the same place, for any advance 
 towards Pekin was out of the question ; accordingly 
 the envoy contemplated an immediate return from Ta- 
 tsin-deo to Katmandu. The following is a translated 
 extract from the despatch : 
 
 ' In our journey onwards from the city of Batang, every city 
 we passed through had been destroyed by fire, and deserted by 
 the inhabitants ; habitations were rarely met with. As far as 
 Lithang the country is in the same bad state, and everything is 
 dear. . Lithang is inhabited, but the governor's palace there has 
 been pulled down by the enemy, and the governor is living in a 
 thatched tenement. The war has now lasted nine years, and the 
 country is in a miserable condition. Some wounded men and 
 deserters have come here (Ta-tsin-deo) from the seat of war, 
 which is only four or five days' journey distant.' 
 
 Thus it is clear that the Szechuen insurrection has 
 not in the least degree been suppressed, but that the 
 Emperor's authority nevertheless survives at some 
 points, and that communication with Pekin, though dif- 
 ficult and hazardous, is still kept up by some circuitous 
 route (1868). 
 
 In speculating on the present condition of Szechuen, 
 special interest attaches to the fate which may have be- 
 fallen the city of Chung-king-fu, an important trading port 
 at the junction of the river Hotow with the Yang-tsze- 
 Kiang. Chung-king, whatever may be its present
 
 iQo WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 aspect, not only used to be the largest and most flourish- 
 ing city in the west of China, being of greater extent and 
 population than the provincial capital, Chingtu, but it 
 also formed the head-quarters of a small band of those 
 heroic men whose toils and sufferings have for centuries 
 illumined the dull obscurity of Chinese annals we allude, 
 as hardly needs to be explained, to the Catholic mission- 
 aries. The head of the mission establishment at Chunof- 
 king in 1861 was Monsignor Desfleches, bearing the 
 title of Vicar Apostolic of Eastern Szechuen, and his flock 
 numbered over 2,ocx) souls. It is devoutly to be hoped 
 that this notable outpost of Christianity has escaped 
 falling into the hands of the rebels. And there is reason, 
 we rejoice to observe, for believing this to be the case. 
 For, among the despatches received from Ta-tsin-dco by 
 Jang Bahadur, was a very interesting communication to 
 the address of the British Resident in Nepdl from cer- 
 tain French missionaries, who, being stationed at a town 
 near Ta-tsin-deo through which the Nepdlese envoy 
 had passed, had taken this opportunity to inform the 
 Indian Government of their position and prospects.^ 
 
 ' There is a pathetic simplicity in the narrative. The original seat of the 
 Mission was a valley called Bonga on the Lon-tsa-Kiang river in the south- 
 east corner of Thibet, close to the western frontier of Szechuen, and the 
 northern border of Yunnan. Here in 1854, MM, Renon and Fage took 
 some land on lease, and soon afterwards converted to Christianity the inhabi- 
 tants of a neighbouring village, within the limits of Yunnan, called Kion-na- 
 tong. In 1858, the landlord forcibly ousted them from Bonga and destroyed 
 the house they had built. In 1861, upon the strength of the new treaty 
 between France and China, several recruits from Europe joined the Thibetan 
 Mission, and, in the beginning of the following year, the intercession of the 
 French envoy at Pckin procured the restoration of the Bonga valley to its 
 rightful tenants. In May 1863, M. Renon left Bonga for Kiangka, the chief 
 town of the district, and established there a new centre of missionar)' labour. 
 He died at Kiangka about September of the same year, * some days after a 
 nightly attack of paid rascals;' his place being taken by MM. Fage and 
 Goutelle. Meanwhile five Thibetan villages in the neighbourhood of Bonga 
 had embraced Christianity. Fnragcd at this encroachment on their influence,
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 191 
 
 This letter contained no mention of Chung-King, and 
 though the writers appear to have no closer connexion 
 with the establishment at that place than as pioneers 
 thrown out in advance, yet, if aught untoward had be- 
 fallen their base of operations, it is not likely they would 
 have omitted to notice so important an occurrence. 
 
 The political relations of Thibet with China, and of 
 Nepal with both those countries, are curious. There is 
 a native government in Thibet, as we all know, of a 
 sacerdotal character; or it might even be called theocratic, 
 for the Grand Lama at the head of the administration is 
 
 the Lama priests caused three out of the five villages to be simultaneously- 
 attacked in June 1864 ; the inhabitants were beaten and carried away cap- 
 tive, and the resident pastors were obliged to retreat to Bonga. The station 
 at Kiangka came in for similar treatment on June 7, 1865, and MM. Fage 
 and Dubernard fled for their lives out of Thibet into Szechuen. The next 
 that suffered was the village of Kion-na-tong ; M. Durand was murdered 
 there on September 28 ; but his colleague, M. A. Biet, and the bulk of the 
 native converts, made good their escape to found a Christian colony at the 
 town of Tsekou on the Kincha-Kiang river in Yunnan. Bonga was the last 
 to fall : towards the close of the year MM. Desgodins and F. Biet were 
 deported with their flock, after much ill-treatment and some murder, out of 
 Thibet to Tsaka in Szechuen. Thus the missionaries lost at last all foot- 
 hold in Thibet ; and at present the only stations left to them are Tsaka near 
 Ta-tsin-deo in the Batang district of Szechuen and Tsekou in the extreme 
 north of Yunnan ; at the former are MM. Desgodins, Goutelle, and Fage, the 
 writers of the letter to Colonel Ramsay ; at the latter is M. A. Biet. They 
 ascribe their persecutions entirely to the religious jealousy of the Lama 
 priesthood as a body, and the political ill-will of one or two individuals 
 among the Chinese bureaucracy at Lhassa. Their words are : ' Though 
 people helped in expelling us, it was certainly against his own will. People 
 of Thibet is so slave of powerful men that his deeds are to be counted for 
 nothing ; but we know his good feeling for religion as well as for Europeans. 
 We know very well that he would feel very glad if he become freed from the 
 heavy yoke of the Lamas.' The Indian newspapers, from which the above 
 account is taken, seem to have been unaware that this is not the first occa- 
 sion on which the Catholic missionaries in Thibet have succeeded in sending 
 a letter overland into British limits. On August 9, 1859, they despatched a 
 geographical description of the country about Bonga to Bishop Bigandet, the 
 Vicar Apostolic at Rangoon, which travelling via Yunnan and Bhamo, reached 
 its destination in about ten months' time. The letter was communicated by 
 the Bishop to Sir Arthur Phayre, and was subsequently published in the 
 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta.
 
 192 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 venerated throughout the Buddhist world as an incarna- 
 tion of the Deity. But side by side with the native 
 government stands the Chinese power, in the person of 
 a diplomatic agent, bearing the title of Amban, who 
 occupies at Lhassa towards the Grand Lama a position 
 analogous to that which, before the Italian war of 1859, 
 the Austrian Ambassador used to hold at Rome towards 
 the Pope. How completely the Amban was master of 
 the situation at the time of M. Hue's visit to Lhassa, may 
 be inferred from the circumstance that, when it became 
 a trial of strength between the Amban and the native 
 government whether the French missionaries should be 
 allowed to remain at Lhassa, the Amban carried his 
 point and caused them to be deported back to China. 
 The Chinese military force at that time quartered in 
 Thibet, appears to have been inconsiderable, comprising, 
 besides a guard of honour for the Amban at the capital, 
 only a few scattered garrisons, employed in guarding the 
 frontier towards Nepdl, and keeping open communica- 
 tions with Szechuen. But in truth the Amban's influence 
 has always rested less upon the strength visibly at his 
 command, than upon his supposed power of summoning 
 at any time unlimited reinforcements from the province 
 of Szechuen. With the people of Lhassa, the Chinese 
 element in their government is by no means popular : on 
 this point M. Hue has testified that * the Thibetans fear 
 the Chinese, the Katchi ^ despise them, and the Pcbouns 
 laugh at them.' Similar evidence occurs in a despatch 
 dated July 1854, from Sir John Bowring, to Lord 
 
 ' The Katchi and the Pcbouns are the principal foreign settlers at 
 Lhassa, the latter being emigrants from Bhutdn, chiefly of the artisan 
 class, and the former a colony of wealthy Muhammadan merchants from 
 K.ishmfr, who have a monopoly of the trade through Ncpdl with British 
 India,
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 193 
 
 Dalhousie, In which a g-ood authority (M. Gabet ap- 
 parently) is represented to have said * that the Chinese 
 yoke was oppressive to the Thibetans, and that they 
 would avail themselves of any favourable occasion to 
 revolt against their masters.' Therefore it certainly 
 might have been expected that now, when the Chinese 
 Government is threatened with total collapse at home, 
 and the Amban has been cut off from his communica- 
 tions with Szechuen, the Thibetans would at once have 
 recognised their opportunity, expelled the Chinese, and 
 established their own independence. Facts, however, in 
 the field of Asiatic politics, invariably belie the best- 
 grounded anticipations. Thibet at the present time is 
 perfectly tranquil, and the Amban, though backed by 
 only 500 Chinese soldiers at Lhassa and not more, say, 
 than 1,500 in the provinces, still continues the virtual 
 master of the kingdom. It remains to be seen how 
 long, by dint of incredible brag, he may succeed in 
 retaining this position. 
 
 As regards Nepal, the quinquennial embassy above 
 mentioned, which the Maharaja is bound to despatch to 
 Pekin, had its origin in events which occurred at the 
 close of the last century. The Gorkhas, a Hinduised 
 race, had barely completed the conquest of Nepal from 
 an aboriginal tribe of Mongols called Niwars before they 
 turned their arms in the direction of Thibet ; and, in 
 1790, they penetrated as far as DIgurche, ravaging- the 
 country and pillaging the sacred temples. The Lamas 
 had recourse for aid to the Emperor of China, who 
 despatched an army of 70,000 men to avenge the out- 
 rage. The Chinese drove the Gorkhas back Into 
 Nepal, and compelled them, within a few miles of 
 their capital, to accept an ignominious peace. The 
 
 o
 
 194 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 precise terms of the treaty have never come to h'ght ; 
 but it is certain that the Gorkhds had not only to ac- 
 knowledge the supremacy of China, but also to under- 
 take the despatch of tribute every five years to Pekin. 
 Matters continued on this footing until the year 1854, 
 when the Crimean war in one direction, and the Taeping 
 insurrection in another, presented to the scheming brain 
 of Jang Bahddur (not then a Knight Grand Cross of 
 the Bath) simultaneous and irresistible temptations to 
 military action. He collected a considerably army, and 
 then deliberated on what errand it should be launched. 
 Should he march into China and aid his feudal sovereign 
 against the rebels ? Or could he make a better bargain 
 by helping the Lamas to extrude the Chinese from 
 Thibet ? Or and here he wondered whether the pro- 
 digious tales of Russian victories and English defeats 
 in Europe were altogether to be trusted might he 
 venture to make a sudden pounce on those rich plains 
 in Bengal and in Behar north of the Ganges, the finan- 
 cial heart of the Anglo-Indian Empire, which, save at 
 the one point of Calcutta, he saw ungarrisoned by a 
 single sepoy ? He concluded to take none of these 
 courses, but to pick a quarrel with Thibet on the 
 ground that insults and ill-usage had been inflicted in 
 that country on the members of the Nepdlese em- 
 bassy, just then returned from Pekin. In December 
 1854 a formal declaration of war was despatched to 
 the native rulers and to the Chinese Amban at Lhassa ; 
 and at the same time the Emperor of China was in- 
 formed, in very humble terms, of the injuries which had 
 constrained Nepdl to take up arms against a fellow- 
 tributary of the empire. In the following spring the 
 expeditionary force started in three columns, intended
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 195 
 
 to operate by separate routes ; altogether, it included 
 30,000 regular fighting men, an equal number of armed 
 followers, 36 guns and 8 mortars. But Jang Bahadur 
 soon found that he had under-rated the difficulties of 
 providing food for so large a body of men, and of 
 forcing snowy passes, defended by hardy mountaineers ; 
 so, after one or two positions in Thibet had been occu- 
 pied by his troops, he was not sorry to receive overtures 
 of peace. In the course of the negotiations that ensued, 
 the Chinese Amban wrote to the Maharaja of Nepal 
 in the following arrogant strain : 
 
 * If you choose to consent to these proposals, do so. If you 
 will not consent to them, we shall address a petition to the 
 Emperor of China, and call from the city of Sutyang an army 
 of Chinese soldiers, and of Gyamis,' besides some Kumba'^ 
 soldiers, and some Thibetans, and some Khambaliks,' we will 
 assemble them all, and take them with us in person. We have 
 taken an oath seven times repeated to this effect ! We will do 
 this, and will entirely destroy your capital, and seize the ruler, 
 and will deliver him to the Emperor at a time when his 
 Majesty is possessed with extreme anger.' 
 
 This intemperate effusion did not tend to smooth the 
 course of the negotiations, and during the last weeks of 
 1855 some severe fighting ensued. At length, in March 
 1856, a treaty was concluded between Nepal and Thibet, 
 to which the Amban condescended to give a haughty 
 assent. It was agreed that the Gorkhas should evacuate 
 the positions occupied within the Thibetan border, and 
 that the Thibetans should pay Nepal an annual tribute 
 of the value of 1,000/. But the most remarkable part 
 
 ^ Said to be a Chinese military tribe. 
 ^ Tartar cavalry from the Kokonor country, probably. 
 ^ Can this word have any connexion with the name Cambalu or Khanbalic, 
 by which Pekin was known to European travellers of the middle ages 1 
 
 02
 
 196 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 of the en^^agement was the insertion in two places of an 
 acknowledgment that the Emperor of China was the 
 common lord and master of both the contracting parties. 
 It speaks well for the diplomatic audacity of the Amban 
 that he should have successfully insisted on this recog- 
 nition of his master's supreme authority, at a time when 
 either state might have laughed his pretentions to scorn 
 with impunity. The Nepalese Darbar, however, was 
 only complaisant, not imposed upon. Jang Bahadur 
 accepted the two clauses as being, in respect of his own 
 country at least, a meaningless formality ; and, as soon 
 as peace had been fully re-established, he declared a 
 determination to make open disavowal of Nepdl's 
 nominal allegiance to the Emperor by discontinuing the 
 despatch of the quinquennial tribute. He adhered to 
 this resolution in the year 1857, when the next embassy 
 should have started, and again in 1862. However, in 
 1866, cupidity induced a change of purpose. The 
 Chinese Government, at all times in its history, has 
 loved to make a parade before the citizens at Pekin of 
 ambassadors humbly bringing tribute from the most 
 distant potentates to the Emperor's feet ; and, as the 
 power of the empire has gradually waned, the only 
 means of persuading states that have acquired a practical 
 independence to keep up a custom no longer extorted 
 from their fears, has lain in so augmenting the value of 
 the presents issued by the Emperor, in return for the 
 so-called tribute, as to make the embassy positively a 
 profitable speculation to the prince from whom it ema- 
 nates. This was the bait which tempted Jang liahddur. 
 He had but to get together a pedlar's pack of tnmipery 
 and send it off to Pekin with a deferential address to the 
 Emperor, and in return he would secure a reappearance
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 197 
 
 of those costly gifts, which had not been seen at Kat- 
 mandu since 1854 bales of silk and satin, embroidered 
 cloaks, ornaments of porcelain, ivory, jade, and tortoise- 
 shell, pictures, and all sorts of artificial curiosities. Enor- 
 mous profit was also to be reaped by making the embassy 
 an instrument for smuggling opium and other merchan- 
 dise into China. With a cynical appreciation of such 
 solid advantages, Jang Bahddur put the national pride 
 in his pocket, and decided to do homage anew to the 
 Emperor. Accordingly a Nepalese embassy was de- 
 spatched from Katmandu in August 1866. What its 
 fate has been we have already stated, namely, that it 
 advanced as far as the border of Szechuen, and has been 
 obliged to retrace its steps from that point back towards 
 Nepal, in consequence of the road to Pekin being 
 blocked up by rebels. Jang Bahadur is naturally much 
 disappointed at this result, and the native qiiidimncs of 
 Katmandu discuss the probability of a fresh war with 
 Thibet, in case the returning party should meet with any 
 ill-treatment in that territory. There is no real ground, 
 however, for anticipating such a result. All that is at 
 present clear is, that the last links are broken between 
 Nepal and China, and that the former power is there- 
 fore drawn into somewhat closer union with the British 
 Empire of India. This, from a national point of view, 
 matters little to England ; for, except as regards the 
 mutual extradition of fugitive criminals from either juris- 
 diction, and the superb field which Nepal opens for 
 recruiting the Bengal regiments of Native Infantry, the 
 Gorkhas are of little interest in British eyes, and our 
 relations with their Darbar have, for several years past, 
 been so frank and cordial, that no better understanding 
 is left to be wished for. But to China it is different.
 
 198 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 The final loss of all connexion with Nepdl distinctly 
 marks a further stage in the decadence of the Empire ; 
 and this specially is the point to which, on the present 
 occasion, we desire to draw attention. It is one more 
 instance of that general mortification in the extremities of 
 the body politic, which forms the subject of our review. 
 
 North of Nepal and Thibet lies a vast expanse of 
 territory, throughout which the present insurrections 
 against the Chinese power offer some appearance of con- 
 tinuous and systematic action. Speaking roughly, we 
 may take for the boundaries of this area the parallels 
 of 35 and 45 north latitude, and of 72 and 110 east 
 longitude ; and we may divide it from west to east into 
 three zones, of which the first shall include Eastern 
 Turkistan and Dzungaria, the second the Desert of 
 Gobi, and the third the Chinese provinces of Kansu and 
 Shensi. The events that have recently occurred within 
 these limits were carefully investigated in 1865 by a 
 Russian officer. Monsieur Heins who, in the following 
 April, communicated to the Imperial Geographical Society 
 of St. Petersburg the paper mentioned at the beginning 
 of this article. Monsieur Heins, entitles his contribution 
 ' The Rising of the Dungens ;' and, considering that little 
 has hitherto been heard in Europe of any such people, 
 it appears advisable that we should begin by explaining 
 who the Dungens are. 
 
 At the beginning of the Christian era, the inhabit- 
 ants of Eastern Turkistdn were a branch of the great 
 Ouigour horde of Tiirks,^ who, from their geographical 
 
 ' Turks, Mughuls, and Manchus arc the three great species into which 
 that most indefinite entity, the genus T?rtar, may be divided. Mountstuart 
 Elphinstonc gives their geographical distribution as follows : ' The Usbegs 
 who now possess Transoxiana, the Turkmans both on the Oxus and in 
 Asia Minor, the wandering tribes of the north of Persia, and the Ottomans
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 199 
 
 proximity to China, and the fact of their having, for long 
 intervals, been subject to Chinese dominion, had acquired 
 both in physical characteristics and in language, a closer 
 resemblance to the Chinese than was to be found in any 
 other Turkish tribe. In China their name assumed the 
 forms of Hoeike, Oihor, and Hoai-Hoai. Towards the 
 close of the eighth century the Emperors of the Tang 
 dynasty took strong measures for their coercion by de- 
 porting, it is said, as many as a million families from the 
 neighbourhood of Kashgar, and settling them in Kansu 
 and Shensi. Buddhists by original profession, the Kash- 
 gari-Ouigours, about the year 966, followed the example 
 of their famous Prince, Satuk Bukra Khan, and em- 
 braced the Muhammadan religion. Led by the same 
 chief, they conquered Transoxiana, and carried away 
 captive an immense number of the inhabitants, who were 
 Turks of the Targhi tribe. In 972 the majority of 
 these prisoners were allowed to return to their homes 
 about Samarkand, but many stayed where they were, 
 and the latter came consequently to be known by their 
 own countrymen as Turghanis, or Tunganis, a name 
 signifying remnant. The conquests of Chinghiz Khan 
 and of his successor, Okkodai Khan, in the first 
 half of the thirteenth century, brought a fresh influx 
 of population from Eastern Turkistan into China, the 
 immigrants this time being mingled Ouigours and Tun- 
 ganis. These new comers were Muhammadans ; their 
 religion spread, and by the end of the fourteenth century 
 it had been universally adopted throughout the Tur- 
 
 or Turks of Constantinople are all Turks, as was the greater part of the 
 army of Tamerlane. The ruling tribe and the greater part of the army of 
 Chinghiz Khdn was Mughul. The Tartar dynasty that now reigns in China 
 and the adjoining part of Tartary is Manclm.'
 
 200 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 kish colonies in Kansu and Shcnsi. And so it came 
 to pass that the bond of a common faidi was added 
 as a new hnk between the exiles in China and their 
 western mother-country. Another circumstance which 
 must have had considerable influence in preserving them 
 isolated from the Chinese, and united in sympathy 
 with their own race, was the facility of communication 
 they had with the latter from their geographical posi- 
 tion in the track of the great commercial highway 
 between Europe and Pekin ; for the caravans across 
 the Desert of Gobi kept a perennial stream of Tur- 
 kish Muhammadans passing to and fro between Kash- 
 gar and the western termination of the Great Wall. 
 Meanwhile in Eastern Turkistdn the fusion of the 
 Tungdnis with the native Ouigours became so com- 
 plete that the distinction between the two nationalities 
 ceased to exist, and a single designation sufficed to cover 
 both. The name, however, which was taken up in 
 Transoxiana differed from that current in China. In 
 the former the Tungdnis were regarded as having 
 absorbed the Kashgari-Ouigours, in the latter the 
 Ouigours were remembered to the exclusion of the 
 Tungdnis ; and hence the same people came to be 
 spoken of in one direction as Tungdnis or Dungens, 
 and in another as Ouigours or Hoai-Hoai. The idea 
 equally comprehended in either title was that of a com- 
 munity, Chinese in type of features, fashion of dress and 
 language, but of Turkish lineage, and by religion Muham- 
 madan. The early habitat of the people so defined was, 
 as we have seen, the belt of country between the Tliian- 
 Shan and Kuen-Liin Mountains, extending eastward 
 as far as the Yellow River ; but in modern times they 
 are also found to muster strongly in Dzungaria, as far
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 201 
 
 north as the Tarbagatai range, where their presence may- 
 be accounted for partly by the spread of Muhammadan 
 doctrine among the aboriginal Ouigours of the north, 
 and partly by the fact that, when the Chinese, in 1 75 7, 
 conquered Dzungaria and exterminated the resident 
 Kdlmaks, they re-peopled the province by drafts from 
 Kansu and from Eastern Turkistdn, having a large 
 Musalman element in their constitution. The result 
 is that the whole north-western border of the Chinese 
 Empire is thickly sown with Musalmans who, in spite 
 of some local distinctions among themselves, have enough 
 of a common history to be regarded for political pur- 
 poses as a tolerably homogeneous body. The generic 
 appellation which we shall prefer applying to this com- 
 munity is Ttingdni a word differing in form only from 
 M. Heins's Dungen. As for Hoai-Hoai, the name in 
 China has quite lost its proper signification ; for, from 
 the Musalman Ouigours, to whom alone it originally 
 applied, it has been transferred by the Chinese to all 
 Muhammadans of every description resident in any part 
 of the empire, and even to Jews as well.^ 
 
 Like the Panthays, the Tunganis belong to the 
 Sunni sect of Islam, and, like all followers of the 
 Prophet in every part of the world, they are capable of 
 outbursts of splendid fanaticism. In so godless a country 
 as China, a character for devoutness is perhaps more 
 easily obtainable than elsewhere ; and we must also re- 
 member that in the mere principle of dissent from the 
 religion of the masses, there is an inherent vitality which 
 tends to band the non-conforming minority in closer 
 
 ^ ' Les Chinois appellent les Juifs qui demeurent parmi eux Hoai-Hoai. 
 Ce nom leur est ccmmun avec les Mahometans.' (' Lettres Edifiantes et 
 Curieuses,' tome xxiv. p. 50.)
 
 202 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 adhesion to their peculiar tenets. But, however it is to be 
 explained, the Tungdnis certainly have the reputation 
 of exceptionally rigid compliance with the requirements 
 of their faith, and of extraordinary subservience, even in 
 secular affairs, to the summons of their spiritual leaders, 
 the Imdms and Akhiinds. They abstain from wine 
 and spirits, and smoke neither opium nor tobacco, so 
 that in outward appearance they are easily distinguish- 
 able from the drug-stupified Manchus and Chinese, by a 
 more robust physique and a more intelligent expression 
 of countenance. Their temper, according to M. Heins, 
 is passionate and overbearing ; and they are too apt to 
 settle quarrels by the knife, which they invariably wear 
 about their persons. Less questionable characteristics 
 are their love of trade, and the honesty which pervades 
 all their dealings, especially those of a commercial charac- 
 ter. The latter quality recommended individual mem- 
 bers of their body for employment in the Imperial service, 
 and numbers of them held office in the department of 
 police. But, as a whole, the Tungdnis were viewed 
 by the Manchu Government with marked jealousy and 
 disfavour. Not only were they made to pay for the 
 luxury of retaining a separate nationality by being sub- 
 jected to exceptionally severe taxation, but, from time to 
 time, they fell under the weight of special ordinances 
 designed to obliterate their guild and fuse them into the 
 mass of the population. Thus, about the beginning of 
 the present century, an Imperial decree was issued re- 
 quiring the men to wear pigtails, and the women to 
 compress their feet to the standard of Chinese defor- 
 mity ; attempts were also made to prevent the marriage 
 of their daughters to any Muhammadans but those of 
 purely Chinese blood. These measures, however, so far
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 203 
 
 from producing the desired effect, served only to weld 
 the Tungdnis into a political unit, animated throughout 
 with strong antagonism to the ruling power. 
 
 In China Proper the Tungdni community was no- 
 where stronger than at a certain city in Kansu, on one of 
 the right affluents of the Yellow River, which M. Heins 
 denominates Salar, but of which the Chinese name is 
 apparently Hochow. This place has been the scene of 
 frequent insurrections against the present dynasty, and 
 M. Heins regards it as the centre from which a politico- 
 religious propaganda for the subversion of the govern- 
 ment has for a long time been carried on. A native of 
 Salar, named Sawun, is said to have been the head of the 
 movement ; he died several years ago, and his memory is 
 still cherished by the Tungdnis. 
 
 It was at Singan-fu, however, the large and well- 
 known capital of the neighbouring province, Shensi, that 
 the present rebellion first broke out. The spark that 
 kindled the flame there in 1862, appears to have been 
 a squabble between two merchants, a Tungdni and a 
 Manchu, in which the latter was stabbed ; hence arose 
 a municipal tumult which speedily assumed the propor- 
 tions of a political revolution : the Manchus were cut to 
 pieces, and the Tungdnis remained masters of the city. 
 When the news of this success reached Salar, Sawun's 
 youthful son, Sukhan Jdn, set out for Singan-fu and 
 assumed command of the insurgents. The first force 
 despatched from Pekin for the restitution of order num- 
 bered only 1,000 soldiery, and, of course, could effect 
 nothing ; a second corps, 10,000 strong, was utterly de- 
 feated ; and a like fate befell the army of 40,000 men, 
 which represented the third effort put forth by the Go- 
 vernment.
 
 304 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 From Singan-fu the insurrection spread in a north- 
 westerly direction. Sometimes after a struggle with the 
 local garrison, and sometimes without any opposition, the 
 Tunganis soon obtained possession of several towns : 
 at places where they were numerically inferior to the 
 Manchus, they slew their own wives and children and 
 fled unencumbered to join the cause in a more favour- 
 able quarter. At Salar a Holy War was proclaimed ; 
 and preachers were sent forth in every direction to rouse 
 all true believers against the infidel. These emissaries 
 went to work with a will, and ere long, there was not a 
 town in the two provinces, containing any considerable 
 number of Tunganis, where the mosques had not rung 
 with their passionate exhortations. They announced the 
 arrival of the long-looked-for hour when the Manchus 
 must be either converted or exterminated, and they sum- 
 moned every male Muslim to join in the good work. 
 Their audience responded enthusiastically to the call, 
 and the crowds that then flocked to Sukhan Jan's ban- 
 ner enabled him, in a very short time, to take the field 
 with vigour, and maintain himself against the enemy 
 with persistent success. 
 
 For the internal government of his people, Sukhan 
 Jdn took the most experienced and influential of the 
 priests into his counsels, and the institutions he esta- 
 blished owe their peculiar form largely to the influence 
 of that hierarchy. The right of private property was 
 abolished until the termination of the war, and, as in 
 the early Christian Church, a community of goods was 
 ordained. Every person, however wealthy, brought the 
 whole of his worldly possessions to the local mosque, and 
 delivered them to the Imam ; thenceforward he became, 
 equally with the meanest of his fellow-citizens, dependent
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 205 
 
 for clotlies, weapons, food, and the subsistence of his 
 family on such supplies as might be Issued to him from 
 the mosque. That establishment was made the pivot 
 on which social life revolved : from the cobbling of a 
 shoe to medical aid for the wounded, whatever any one 
 wanted could only be obtained from the mosque. Dis- 
 obedience to the Elders was punishable by death. 
 Severe penalties also were prescribed for robbery ; and, 
 as all spoil taken in war had to be transferred entire to 
 the common stock, any Imitator of the sin of Achan was 
 liable to Instant execution. Buddhist temples, wherever 
 found, were plundered and destroyed. Adult Chinese ^ 
 were compelled to adopt Islam, or become hewers of 
 wood and drawers of water ; and their children were all 
 placed in mosques to be nurtured and educated as Mus- 
 almans. Lastly, that no outward sign, however trivial, 
 might be wanting to mark the dawn of a new era, the 
 Tunganis discarded the Chinese garb, and assumed one 
 of the fashion prevalent in Turkistan. 
 
 The most striking feature in such an organisation as 
 that we have just described is undoubtedly its religious 
 tincture. M. Heins, who is our authority on the point, 
 has been charged by persons well versed in Chinese 
 affairs with giving an undue prominence to the antagonism 
 of Islam against Buddhism ; but we are not sure that the 
 charge is just. The principles of the Kuran generally, 
 
 ^ The relations of the Tunganis towards the Manchu Tartars, and 
 towards the native Chinese, appear to have been very dilTerent. With the 
 former war to the knife was their watchword ; but with the latter they had 
 no particular quarrel ; on the contrary, they had intermarried with them for 
 centuries, and, but for the stumbling-block of a different religion, they were 
 even inclined to sympatliise with them as fellow-sufferers under a dynasty 
 equally alien and inimical to both. M. Heins cites this feeling in explana- 
 tion of what otherwise would be inexplicable, the ' certain degree of intimacy' 
 which arose between the fanatical Tungdnis and the heterodox Taepings.
 
 2o6 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 and above all the text which declares death in battle 
 against the infidel to be the surest passport to the arms 
 of the expectant Houris in Paradise, have established 
 in every iMusalman's breast so intimate a connexion 
 between his spiritual aspirations and his political con- 
 victions, that it is only consonant with experience to 
 believe that the Tunganis, in entering on their desperate 
 struggle for civil liberty, should have vociferously ap- 
 pealed to Allah to aid the cause of his chosen people. 
 The war-cry that rang through Musalman India in 
 1857 was, 'Din! Din!' (for the faith! for the faith!); 
 and it is the same spirit that for the last two years 
 has kept the heterogeneous rabble of Bokhara in arms 
 against the disciplined might of the Russian Empire. 
 Or a yet nearer example is to be found in the tone of the 
 manifesto issued by the Yunnan Muhammadans, which 
 we have above noted. 
 
 Respecting recent events in Kansu and Shensi, our 
 information is singularly defective. M. Heins says 
 briefly that * the Musalman insurgents in that quarter 
 appear to have sustained a check.' How and when this 
 check was brought about, we have failed to discover ; 
 but there is reason for believing it to be a fact ; and 
 therefore, although the success of the Imperialist troops 
 is perhaps temporary only, and their snake scotched 
 rather than killed, we may for the present withdraw our 
 attention from China Proper, and concentrate it on the 
 territory west of the Desert of Gobi. 
 
 A traveller, taking the great caravan route, which for 
 ages has maintained commercial communication between 
 China and the regions around the basin of the Caspian Sea, 
 would start from the western extremity of the Great 
 Wall, with his face set to the north-west, and, after
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 207 
 
 traversing the Kiayu Pass, would find before him five 
 hundred miles of desolate sand to be traversed ere he 
 could reach the city of Khamil. At Khamil the road 
 strikes the eastern spurs of the Tian-Shan Mountains, and 
 bifurcates along the northern and southern slopes of that 
 range the upper branch leading through Barkul, Ur- 
 amchi, and Kurkara-usu into Dzungaria, and the lower 
 through Pijan, Turfan, Karashar, and Kucha, to Aksu in 
 Eastern Turkistan. While the Chinese rule continued, 
 Dzungaria and Eastern Turkistan formed respectively 
 the northern and southern circuits of a single province, 
 which, under the designation of Hi, was administered by 
 a governor-general having his head-quarters at Kulja, in 
 the northern circuit. This administration differed con- 
 siderably in form and principles from the organisation of 
 the home provinces of China ; it was necessarily of a 
 more military character, as having to deal with subjugated 
 foreigners ; and at Pekin, it ranged departmentally under 
 the control of the Colonial Office. In short, it was of the 
 type which, if we may be permitted to borrow a compa- 
 rison from Anglo-Indian institutions, we should denomi- 
 nate * non-regulation.' 
 
 Into this territory of Hi, in the summer of 1864, came 
 fanatical emissaries from Salar, and fugitives from those 
 parts of Kansu where the Tungani cause had failed. 
 Their path was traceable by the furious insurrections 
 which broke out in city after city as they spread west- 
 wards. The Tunganis of Khamil and Uramchi were 
 among the earliest to rise. The latter city is large and 
 densely populated, and from a distant date it had been the 
 emporium on which the whole of Central Asia depended 
 for its supply of tea. Here, as indeed throughout Hi gene- 
 rally, the revolt assumed the form of a military mutiny.
 
 ao8 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 For the soldierly qualities of the Tungdiiis had blinded 
 the authorities to the danger of employing aliens in the 
 ranks of the Imperial army, and, at the time we speak of, 
 the Tunganis formed the very llower of the 60,000 
 troops distributed under the command of the Manchu 
 governor-general. The Tungani soldiery at Uramchi, 
 led by their own officers, seized the city, compelled their 
 co-religionists, the native Sarts,^ to join their enterprise, 
 and put all the Manchus to the sword. In the course of 
 the struggle a fire broke out, and the flames were not ex- 
 tinguished before many streets of houses ar.d vast stores 
 of tea had been destroyed. 
 
 From Uramchi the insurgents advanced westwards in 
 two bands, one making for the northern, and the other for 
 the southern circuit of Hi. 
 
 Those composing the force destined for Dzungaria 
 effected an important capture of artiller}^ at Manasy, and, 
 after occupying that town, proceeded to Kur-kara-usu. On 
 the way they met and routed an army sent out to oppose 
 them from Kulja, and their victory was the signal for 
 a general rising of all the Muhammadans in Dzungaria 
 against the Chinese rule. The insurrection at Kulja was 
 at first a failure ; the Tunganis were badly armed, 
 and, after a bloody struggle of twelve days' duration, 
 they had to fly for refuge to Old Kulja. '** Encouraged 
 
 * Dr. Vambdry identifies the Sarts with the people who, in Bokh.ira and 
 Kokand, go by the name of Tajiks. According to the same authority they 
 are of Persian blood, and have for ages been settled throughout the tract 
 which has Siberia and India, Persia and China, for its several borders. In 
 the present narr.itivc all that need be noted about them is, that they repre- 
 sent an urban and quasi-aboriginal population ; owning no connexion with 
 the 'PungAnis, except that of a common religion. 
 
 * Colonel Yule believes th.at Old Kulja may mark the site of Alm.ilig, a 
 city which was renowned in the middle ages as the capital of the Chagatai 
 Kh.inate. In 1339 there was a Catholic bishop of Almalig, who, v.ith six 
 other minor friars, suffered martyrdom there. John dc Marignolli, however.
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 209 
 
 by this result, the Manchu governor-general again gave 
 them battle ; but fortune no longer favoured him he 
 was utterly defeated, and all his artillery captured. He 
 then evacuated the city of Kulja, and fled into the fort, 
 where the victors immediately subjected him to a strict 
 blockade. Elsewhere in Dzungaria the Tunganis and 
 Manchus were in constant collision throughout the year 
 1865, but step by step the former steadily prevailed. 
 The whole country was full of exiles, who hailed the 
 Tunganis as their deliverers ; for Dzungaria, during 
 the century since its acquisition by the Imperial Govern- 
 ment, had been the general place of transportation, not 
 only for individual convicts from interior China, but for 
 entire families suspected of political disaffection from 
 Eastern Turkistan. Even the Manchu tribes of Sibo 
 and Solon, who had been brought from the banks of 
 the Amur, on the footing of military colonists, to act 
 as a check on the exiles, proved faithless to their trust, 
 and compounded for peace with the Tunganis by en- 
 gaging to adopt the Musalman religion. One after 
 another, the minor forts and towns of Dzungaria fell 
 into the hands of the revolutionary party; and, when 
 autumn came, four points alone remained with the Im- 
 perialists, two of which were the citadels of Kulja and 
 Chuguchak. The struggle which occurred at the last- 
 named place is noteworthy as having caught up in its 
 eddy the nomad Kirghizes and Kalmaks, who pasture 
 
 who visited Almalig, the following year, on his way to the Court of the Great 
 Khdn of Cathay, testifies to the prevalence of a very tolerant spirit in the 
 city. * There,' he says, ' we built a church, bought a piece of ground, sang 
 masses and baptized several ; preaching freely and openly.' It is curious to 
 note these old-world glimpses of a country which, having since been buried 
 for centuries in the thickest darkness, is now inevitably marked out for 
 speedy restoration to the gaze of Europe by absorption within the light of 
 the Russian Empire. 
 
 P
 
 2IO IVESTERM CHINA. 
 
 their flocks in the vicinity. No sooner had the Kir- 
 ghizes shown signs of siding with their co-reHgionists, 
 the Tunganis, than their ancient foes, the Kalmaks, de- 
 clared for the Chinese. Nor was the declaration an idle 
 one. On the night of the 4th November, a large body 
 of Kalmaks, joined by a sallying party of Chinese from 
 the beleaguered citadel of Chuguchak, crossed the Rus- 
 sian border, and, within Russian limits, fell suddenly 
 with fire and sword on an encampment of the Kirghizes. 
 The work of massacre and plunder continued for two 
 days. The Kdlmaks then withdrew to Chuguchak, 
 taking with them ioo,cxx) sheep, 6,000 horned cattle, 
 1,300 horses, and 600 camels; they left on the field 300 
 human corpses, 200 sheep killed out of mere wanton- 
 ness, and 1,500 masterless dogs.^ This, for the time at 
 any rate, was a crushing blow to the Muhammadan cause 
 in the north of Dzungaria. The Kirghizes no longer 
 dared to lift their heads, and the Tunganis were 
 obliged to raise the siege of Chuguchak. But the single 
 check in this direction was more than compensated to the 
 Tunganis in other quarters. Early in 1866 they carried 
 the citadel of Kulja by storm, and butchered the gallant 
 garrison to a man. And though no detailed accounts of 
 subsequent events have yet reached us, the general tenor 
 of our information inclines us to believe that, at the present 
 time, the Tungdnis are masters of all Dzungaria south of 
 the Tarbogatai mountains. 
 
 Whether their power promises to be permanent is 
 another thing. From China probably they have litdc to 
 
 ' These dogs, after devouring the flesh, and gnawing the bones of their 
 slain masters, soon became ravenous and desperate. Scouring the country 
 in packs between Urdjar and Chuguchak, they were so numerous and auda- 
 cious that the pass of Khatyn-Su was officially reported by the Russian 
 superintendent of the district to be dangerous for a single horseman.
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 211 
 
 fear. An army of retribution has, it is true, recently 
 recaptured Khamil, thereby cutting off the Tunganis 
 in both circuits of Hi from those provinces of interior 
 China where the rebelHon was hatched ; but we doubt 
 the competency^ of the Pekin Government to follow up 
 its first success ; and to the Tunganis the loss of 
 Khamil is merely one city the less in their possession ; 
 it is not as though they had any base of operations in 
 Kansu. The chief danger to the victorious insurgents 
 in Dzungaria comes from their own disunion and bar- 
 barism. Under all circumstances, it is much easier to 
 upset a government, especially an alien one, than to 
 organise a fresh government in its stead. And in Dzun- 
 garia we doubt whether the Tungani, or any other 
 section of the heterogeneous population is capable of 
 producing a dynasty which shall reunite the several 
 townships and encampments under a single sceptre, or 
 even consolidate a strong administration in any one dis- 
 trict. Each township aspires to a separate autonomy, 
 and every camp has its own chief : all these endeavour 
 to work out their own ideas of right and order, and as 
 aggressive war upon their next neighbour usually stands 
 high in the programme, the general result is not far 
 off utter anarchy. Now anarchy just beyond a border 
 implies raids within that border. We have already had 
 
 1 Recent accounts from China report the occupation of the eastern districts 
 of Shantung by a body of rebels, called Nien-fei, who are carrying rapine and 
 murder up to the walls of Pekin, ' The elite of the Tartar army' (we quote 
 from the ' North China Herald') 'is gathered around the capital, and it is 
 only the terror of this arm of the service which keeps the rebel hordes from 
 the City of Nine Gates.' This is probably an exaggerated estimate of the 
 importance attaching to the Nien-fei movement. And it must also be con- 
 ceded that the Taepings have disappeared from the scene. But still the 
 Government, which can permit the former to go unchecked, and all but suc- 
 cumbed to the latter, cannot be expected to show more vigour against rebels 
 in a remote and impracticable country like Hi. 
 
 P 2
 
 212 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 an example of this truth in the incursion of the KiUmaks 
 from Chuguchak into the Russian province of Semi- 
 polatinsk. And it is eis impossible for Russia to let such 
 injuries pass unnoticed as it would be for the Anglo- 
 Indian Government to submit to corresponding insults 
 from the Wazi'ri or Marri tribes on the Peshawar or Shik- 
 arpur frontier. The press of St. Petersburg already speaks 
 of the Tungani insurrection in Dzungaria as ' the Dungen 
 question (1868) ;' and the recent measure of adminis- 
 trative reconstruction, by which the southern portion of 
 Semipolatinsk has been severed from the Government of 
 Western Siberia, and constituted, together with Russia's 
 recent conquests on the Sir-Daria river, into a new ' Go- 
 vernment of Turkistan,' is avowedly adopted with a 
 view to watching, and, if necessary, controlling the affairs 
 of Dzungaria. Had China retained her grasp on the 
 two circuits of Hi, the Czar would have had no reason, 
 and possibly little inclination, to transgress the bounds of 
 empire laid down by recent treaties with the Court of 
 Pekin ; but, now that the power- to which he was pledged 
 has finally disappeared from the scene, and that its 
 successor is found to be a disorderly neighbour, objec- 
 tionable in many ways, and specially so for interrupting 
 the course of Russian trade towards the east, we imagine 
 that it cannot be long before the troops at present* con- 
 centrated about Fort Vernoe have their headquarters 
 transferred across the frontier to Kulja. In short, we 
 look forward to an early extinction of the Tungdni 
 revolution, with all its attendant troubles in Dzungaria, 
 by means of a Russian occupation of the country (1868). 
 
 ' East of Lake Issyk-Ki'il, the Russians have five battahons of infantry, 
 ten 'sotnias' (each one hundred strong) of Cossacks, and sixteen guns ; and, 
 west of the s.ime point, tlicre arc eleven battahons, twenty sotnias, and forty 
 guns ; the whole under the command of General Kaufmann, the new Govcrnor- 
 (ieneral of Turkis'.;in,
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 213 
 
 But it is time that we should turn to a field of greater 
 attraction for British interests. We have already inti- 
 mated that, while one band of Tunganis issued from 
 Uramchi, in June 1864, for operations in Dzungaria, 
 another band, by a more southerly route, advanced into 
 Eastern Turkistan. Before proceeding, however, to 
 follow the fortunes of the latter force, it appears desirable 
 to say a few words as to the physical appearance and past 
 history of the territory forming the new scene of action. 
 
 Other names for this territory are Little Bokhara, 
 which is simply unmeaning, and Chinese Tartary, which 
 conveys an incorrect impression ; Eastern Turkistan, on 
 the contrary, as the correlative of that Western Tur- 
 kistan which is to be looked for on the other side of the 
 Bolor mountains, rightly indicates a geographical division 
 of the region which has Turks for the bulk of its popu- 
 lation. Eastern Turkistan then forms a great depressed 
 valley, shut in on three sides by mountains of great 
 height ; on the north it is separated from Dzungaria 
 by the Tian-Shan range ; on the west from Transoxiana 
 by the Bolor ; and on the south by the Kardkoram 
 and Kuen Liin from India and Thibet. Hence its 
 configuration somewhat resembles a blunt-headed cone, 
 except that, towards the east, where the base-line ought 
 to be, there are only barren sands, which merge imper- 
 ceptibly into the great Desert of Gobi. Sand throughout 
 the interior of the cone, and a clayey soil and stony sur- 
 face along the edge of the mountain lines, are too largely 
 the characteristics of the country. Morever, the air is of 
 exceeding dryness, and rain is rare. But, on the other 
 hand, the volume of water which flows down from the 
 snowy mountains on three sides of the valley, is con- 
 siderable, and the rivers which carry this, all of them
 
 214 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 converging into the central channel of the Ergol or 
 Tarym, afford ample means of irrigation : while the 
 tracts under the shadow of the three ranges, arid as they 
 generally are, nevertheless contain patches of more or less 
 fertile land. The climate is temperate and eminently 
 salubrious. The mineral resources have been very im- 
 perfectly explored by the ignorant natives ; but there can 
 be no doubt of their abundance. They include gold, 
 copper, sulphur, salt, and especially the jade-stone, on 
 which the Chinese place so high a value. The real im- 
 portance, however, of Eastern Turkistdn lies not in its 
 indigenous productions, but in its geographical advan- 
 tages as a commercial thoroughfare. It forms an im- 
 portant stage in the ancient line of communication by 
 land between Europe and Asia. This famous route, 
 which we have above traced from the Great Wall as far 
 as Khamil, passes on, along the southern slope of the 
 Tian Shan, through Karashar, Kucha, and Aksu to 
 Kashgar ; from thence over the commodious Terektin 
 Pass to Andijan and Kokand ; and finally it crosses the 
 Russian border to Orenburg. The distance from Pekin 
 to Aksu is said to be 2,550 miles, and caravans take 
 nearly five months to traverse it, though special couriers 
 accomplish the journey in one month. From Aksu on 
 to Kokand may be reckoned other 800 miles. 
 
 As for the history of Eastern Turkistdn, the Chinese 
 appear to have been masters of the country from the 
 beginning of the Christian era up to the days of Chinghiz 
 Khdn, though their rule during that interval was subject 
 to considerable fluctuations, at one time extending be- 
 yond the Bolor mountains as far as the shores of the 
 Caspian Sea, at another receding within the territory of 
 Khamil. On the partition of Chinghiz Khdn's mighty
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 215 
 
 empire, Eastern Turkistdn became a part of the Chag- 
 atai Khanate, and even after the bulk of that Khanate 
 had been overrun by the Kdlmaks, a descendant of 
 Chagatai continued in power at Yarkand up to the 
 middle of the seventeenth century. Some insight into 
 the mediaeval condition of Yarkand, Kashgar, and 
 Khoten is obtainable from the travels of Marco Polo, 
 and of the pious Jesuit, Benedict Goes. In both narra- 
 tives the point which most strikingly contrasts with the 
 circumstances of our own day is the religious toleration 
 displayed by the native authorities. Marco Polo testifies 
 to the existence of a large number of Nestorian Chris- 
 tians among the inhabitants ; indeed, in his time, Kash- 
 gar was the seat of a Nestorian archbishopric ; and Goes, 
 whose journey dates 1664, or three centuries after the 
 Venetian, was admitted, in the presence of the Prince of 
 Yarkand, to a religious discussion with the principal 
 Mullahs of the country, who actually came to the con- 
 clusion that ' our law also might have some good in it' 
 Yet Eastern Turkistdn, since its first conversion from 
 Buddhism, has always been intensely Muhammadan ; and 
 its political fortunes, particularly in the western portion of 
 the province, have received a very strong bias from the 
 national creed. This western portion is known as Alti- 
 shahr, or the Six Cities, and comprises Yarkand, Kash- 
 gar, Koten, Aksu, Yanghisar, and Ush-turfan, with 
 the territories subordinate to each. Altishahr, perhaps 
 from its proximity to those centres of Muhammadan 
 theology, Bokhara and Samarkand, has never had any 
 lack of holy men to guide its concerns ; and, as the 
 Chagatai dynasty neared its close, the priestly element 
 began to play an important part in public affairs. No 
 better summary of the events of this period can be given 
 than the one supplied by Colonel Yule :
 
 2i6 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 ' Saintly teachers and workers of miracles, claiming descent 
 from V Muhammad, and known as Klnvdjas or Hojds, acquired 
 great influence, and the sectaries attached to the chief of these 
 divided the people into rival factions, whose mutual hostility 
 eventually led to the subjugation of the whole country. For, 
 late in the seventeenth century, Hoja Appak, the leader of one 
 of those parties called the White Mountain, having been expelled 
 from Kashgar by Ismail Khdn, the chief of that state, who was 
 a zealous supporter of the opposite party, or Black Mountain, 
 sought the aid of Galdan Khan, sovereign of the Eleuths or 
 Kalmaks of Dzungaria. Taking the occasion offered, that chief 
 in 1678 invaded the states south of the Thian Shan, carried off 
 the Khan of Kashgar and his family, and established the Hojas 
 of the White Mountain over the country in authority subordinate 
 to his own. Great discords for many years succeeded, sometimes 
 one faction and sometimes another being uppermost, but some 
 supremacy always continuing to be exercised by the Khdns of 
 Dzungaria. In 1757, the latter country was conquered by the 
 Chinese, who, in the following year, making a tool of the White 
 party, which was then in opposition, succeeded in bringing the 
 states of Turkistan also under their rule.' 
 
 Such were the successive steps by which the Chinese 
 power was at length re-established in Eastern Turkistdn. 
 The Khwdjas of the White Mountain, however, who, 
 after their expulsion by the Chinese, had found refuge in 
 Kokand, made more than one bold endeavour to recover 
 what they regarded as their patrimony. In 1827, Ja- 
 hangi'r Khdn Khwdjd invaded Altishahr with a large 
 rabble of armed fanatics, and captured Ydrkand and 
 Kashgar ; but after an eight months' occupation of those 
 cities, he was defeated by the Chinese, and obliged again 
 to fly across the Bolor. The Khdn of Kokand sur- 
 rendered him to the Chinese ; he was conveyed to Pekin 
 and executed there in 1828, his fate making a profound 
 sensation throughout Central Asia and even in China 
 also : to this day there is no more popular ballad among
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 217 
 
 the Kirghizes and Usbegs than that which tells the tale 
 of Jahclngi'r Khan's betrayal. In 1852 the Kokand 
 Darbar connived at a fresh expedition against Altishahr, 
 headed by seven Khwdjds of the same family, who, after 
 a transient success, were similarly repulsed by the Chi- 
 nese. One of the seven, Wali Khdn Tarrd, renewed the 
 attempt in 1857, and, though he too, in the end, had to 
 retire, his temporary occupation of Kashgar is memorable 
 for a display of cruelty, such as staggered even the un- 
 susceptible Turks. * His mania was a thirst for blood, 
 and not a day passed without several men being slaught- 
 ered in cold blood, either by himself or in his presence. 
 On the banks of the Kizil he erected a pyramid of 
 human skulls, and anxiously watched the gradual rise of 
 a monument so worthy of him. The heads of fallen 
 Chinese and Musalmans were collected from all parts 
 and added to the pyramid.' Some of the bravest and 
 best of his own adherents were made to contribute their 
 skulls to this ghastly trophy ; and it was crowned by the 
 head of a European traveller, the lamented Adolphe 
 Schlagentweit. He struck a paralysis of terror into the 
 people, and, to be rid of him, even the return of the 
 Chinese was for a time welcomed by all classes. The 
 Chinese, however, were not conciliatory masters, and a 
 national party soon rose into sturdy life again. Still 
 fondly looking in the direction of the saintly family from 
 which they had suffered so much, the Turks fastened 
 on Buzurg Khan, son of the martyr Jahangir, as their 
 destined deliverer. Their watchword was, 'When Bu- 
 zurg Khan mounts his steed, Altishahr shall be free.' 
 All that remains to be noted is that, while contact with 
 the fanaticism of Transoxiana had thus kept Altishahr 
 seething in perpetual war and anarchy, proximity to
 
 2i8 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 the civilisation of China had saved the eastern towns 
 from participation in the same miseries. East of Aksu 
 the influence of the Khwajds diminished, and east of 
 Kucha it ceased entirely, so that not the Tunganis 
 only but the Muhammadans generally of Karashar, 
 Turfan, and Khamil served actively with the Im- 
 perial troops engaged in the pacification of the Six 
 Cities. 
 
 This imperfect sketch of previous events in Eastern 
 Turkistdn will perhaps suffice to give the reader some 
 idea of the relative position of parties in the province, 
 about the middle of 1864, when the wave of Tungani 
 insurrection swept in from the Desert of Gobi. There 
 were the Chinese in military possession, with a force of 
 about 14,000 men ; there were the Tungdnis, forming 
 a large and hitherto staunch portion of the Chinese 
 garrison ; and there were the native non-Tungdni 
 Muhammadans (Usbegs, Sarts, Kirghizes, and others), 
 who in the eastern districts identified their interests with 
 the Tungdnis, but who in Altishahr held Chinese and 
 Tungdnis in equal abomination, and sighed for a return 
 of the Khwdjds from their exile in Kokand. 
 
 On the arrival at Kucha of the Tungdnis, who 
 had been despatched from Uramchi to raise Eastern 
 Turkistdn, their clansmen of the Chinese garrison at 
 once fraternised with them and mutinied. The other 
 Muhammadan residents joined the Tungdnis ; and the 
 Chinese, powerless to resist the combination, all had their 
 throats cut. The triumphant Muslims then elected a 
 Khwdjd, named Rashud-ud-dfn, of great local sanctity, 
 to be their ruler ; and under his direction they rapidly 
 obtained possession of Aksu, Ush-turfan, and Lai 
 Masjid. Rashud-ud-dfn s next blow was to have fallen
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 219 
 
 on Yarkand, the seat of the local government of the 
 southern circuit of Hi. The Manchu governor, how- 
 ever, precipitated events at that place by the very 
 measures he took to counteract the move. By largesses 
 and yet more liberal promises he induced his Tungani 
 soldiers, through their priests the Imdms, to swear 
 solemnly on the Kuran that they would stand by their 
 colours to the death. They observed the oath for three 
 whole days; but, on the 24th July, 1864, they mutinied, 
 broke open the jail, released the prisoners, and plundered 
 all the dwellings of the Chinese civil population. Next 
 day they proclaimed a Holy War against the infidel ; a 
 device which secured them the co-operation of every 
 Muslim in Yarkand. The Chinese troops had now to 
 retire within their fortifications and submit to a siege. 
 Scarcely had this result been attained at Yarkand, before 
 the same antagonistic elements came into collision at 
 Kashgar. Here too the Chinese took the initiative, 
 though by a sterner process than that which had failed 
 so signally at the capital. The Manchu commandant of 
 Kashgar invited the Tunganis to a feast in his fort ; 
 they came, and as they unsuspectingly sat at meat, a 
 volley of musketry was poured into them from all sides ; 
 of the seven hundred men who were in this doomed 
 assembly, fifty only are said to have made good their 
 escape. Instantly the Musalmans of the city flew to 
 arms, with a cry for vengeance ; and the Chinese, like 
 their compatriots at Yarkand, found themselves belea- 
 guered within their own citadel. Almost at the same 
 time a similar tragedy was enacted at Khoten ; the 
 Chinese began by massacring a number of Tunganis, 
 and the Muhammadan citizens retaliated with vigour ; but 
 in this instance no fortifications availed to save the
 
 220 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 Chinese from immediate ruin ; they were blotted out of 
 Khoten, and a native priest, named Haji Habi'bulla, 
 was elected to rule in their stead. Soon afterwards 
 Rashud-ud-di'n's preparations at Kucha for an advance 
 on Yarkand were complete ; and on the 30th September 
 he despatched a force of 7,000 horse and foot and 250 
 camel-guns to aid the revolted Yarkandis in pressing 
 the siege of the fort. The Chinese defended themselves 
 with the courage of despair ; but famine and undermined 
 ramparts soon rendered further resistance hopeless ; then 
 they fired their magazine, and anticipated in flames of 
 their own creation the certain death which awaited them 
 from the foe. 
 
 The fort of Kashgar was now the last place in which 
 a vestige of the Chinese power remained. While its 
 fate still hung in the balance, Buzurg Khdn Khwdjd from 
 Kokand rode into the streets of the city with a following 
 of 500 men, chiefly Kirghizes and Kipchaks. At last 
 the Turks had got their long-looked-for deliverer among 
 them, and they hailed him as their rightful prince with 
 acclamations. But, alas for the misdirection of popular 
 regard, not Charles Stuart nor Louis Ic Dcsird ever so 
 disappointed the hopes of their enthusiastic partisans ! 
 Buzurg Khan proved a worthless debauchee, who, be- 
 fore many weeks were over, was content that the burden 
 of princely duties should be transferred to an officer of 
 his own staff, Yakub Beg. Of a very different stamp 
 was this new ruler of Kashgar. By birth a Tajik, and 
 a subject of Kokand, he had for many years played 
 a conspicuous part in the stormy politics of his native 
 Khanate. The deed for which he hitherto had been 
 best known, would in Europe have covered his name 
 with hopeless dishonour, but the moral sense of Central
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 221 
 
 Asia is less nice, and he, who in 1847, as commandant 
 of Ak Masjid, had accepted Russian gold in exchange 
 for a portion of the territory committed to his charge, 
 still retained among his countrymen a reputation for 
 exceptionally fair dealing. Brave, energetic, and open- 
 handed, he was popular with his brother-chieftains, and 
 beloved by his own retainers. At the time to which our 
 story relates he held the rank of Kiishbegi, or com- 
 mander-in-chief of the Kokand forces ; but, as Kokand 
 existed only on the sufferance of Russian generals, his 
 instincts had rightly taught him that even a subordinate 
 share in Buzurg Khan's venture across the Bolor offered 
 a finer field for his ability and ambition than any that was 
 open to him at home. 
 
 Meanwhile famine was effectually doing its work 
 within the fort of Kashgar. By March 1865 two thou- 
 sand Chinese had died of starvation. The remainder 
 of the garrison then for the most part committed sui- 
 cide, and Yakub Kiishbegi became master of the fort 
 with little difficulty. So fell, after a century of con- 
 tinuous dominion, the Chinese power in Eastern Tur- 
 kistan. 
 
 But the Musalmans who, in one form or another, 
 had now succeeded to the supremacy, were far from 
 being a united or harmonious body. Rashud-ud-din 
 in the east, Habibulla in the south, and Yakub 
 Kiishbegi in the west, each represented a separate 
 faction. At Kucha, Aksu, and Yarkand the prevailing 
 influence was Tungani. At Khoten, Habibulla, as the 
 weakest of the parties, sincerely desired, but was not 
 likely to enjoy, a life of quiet isolation ; already he had 
 been obliged to fight a pitched battle in defence of his 
 territory against a wanton invasion of Tunganis from
 
 222 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 Ydrkand. And lastly, Yakub Kiishbegi at Kashgar, 
 though constantly threatened with destruction from the 
 local intrigues of rival competitors for power, was not the 
 man to be content with the possession of a single town- 
 ship. Thus the conclusion to which events manifestly 
 tended was a struggle for mastery between the Tun- 
 ganis of Rashud-ud-din and the Kokandi adventurers 
 under Yakub Kiishbegi ; Khoten meanwhile endeavour- 
 ing to keep aloof from either side, but destined to be ab- 
 sorbed by whichever should prove the winner. 
 
 The contest that ensued was sharply fought out, but 
 we spare our readers a recital of the varying fortunes 
 of the combatants. The issue was still doubtful, and 
 Habibulla was consequently still unmolested, when, in 
 1865, Khoten was visited by a European traveller, the 
 first (excepting Adolphe Schlagentweit, who never lived 
 to tell the tale) that had been seen there for centuries. 
 We allude, of course, to Mr. Johnson, of the Indian 
 Trigonometrical Survey. An account of Mr. Johnson's 
 journey, and of the incidents that followed it, has been 
 already given in a previous page of this volume (51); how, 
 while in the execution of his professional duties on the 
 Kashmir border, he received, and upon his own respon- 
 sibility accepted, an invitation from Khan Habibulla of 
 Khoten ; how the Khan entertained him with sufficient 
 hospitality, but was strongly inclined to keep him as a 
 hostage for the extraction of money and munitions of war 
 from the Indian Government ; how, in the end, he let 
 him go, and endeavoured to obtain what he wanted 
 by the more civilised method of a formal embassy to the 
 English Viceroy at Calcutta ; and how his hopes were 
 blasted by Sir John Lawrence civilly refusing to have 
 anything to do with him.
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 223 
 
 At length victory inclined decidedly to Yakub Kiish- 
 begi ; for in April 1866 he captured Yarkand from the 
 Tungdnis. He followed up his advantage with ardour, 
 and his career eastward was an unbroken success, so 
 that by autumn of the following year Khoten, Ushturfan, 
 Aksu, and Kucha had surrendered to his arms. In fact 
 Yakub Kiishbegi is at the present time (1868) undisputed 
 master of the whole of Altishahr. [He has since then 
 consolidated his power as Ruler of Eastern Turkistan.] 
 
 What bearing this result may have on British interests 
 in India, we shall presently inquire ; but, in the mean- 
 time, we may with advantage cast a glance at the cir- 
 cumstances connected with the Kushbegi's capture of 
 Khoten. For there have not been wanting writers in the 
 public journals to sneer at Sir John Lawrence's pusillani- 
 mity in declining to enter into close relations with this 
 particular chiefship ; and even a responsible and un- 
 doubtedly most able Minister like Lord Cranborne was at 
 one time disposed to look with favour on the proposal of a 
 Panjab official, who volunteered to visit Khoten in search 
 of that brilliant Will-o'-the-wisp, the trade of Central 
 Asia. Statesmen can seldom hope to obtain so imme- 
 diate and signal a justification of their prudence, as Sir 
 John Lawrence has found in the narrative of Habi- 
 buUa's fall, as given by the British Agent at Leh, in a 
 despatch dated September 3, 1867, which has been pub- 
 lished in the Indian newspapers. We prefer therefore 
 to give the actual text of the despatch without attempting 
 an abridgment. 
 
 'At the end of last year Yakub Kushbegi of Yarkand, 
 having first imprisoned the Agent from Khoten, to prevent his 
 sending any intelligence, commenced preparations for an advance 
 on Khoten. The Agent, however, managed to send off a letter
 
 224 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 by two of his servants to give warning to the Khdn, but the 
 messengers were stopped, and the letter found sewn up in a 
 shoe. The men were brought back and shot by the Kiishbe- 
 gi's orders. The Agent was then very closely confined and 
 guarded ; and threatened with a like fate, if he did not give full 
 information regarding the strength of Khoten, the number of 
 troops, &c. ; and, to save his life, he disclosed everything. The 
 Kushbegi then, at the beginning of this year, sent a strong 
 force against Khoten, and himself joined it within a march or 
 two of the town. From this point he sent off a letter to the 
 ruler, Habi'bulla Khan, expressive of his friendly feelings, and 
 his desire to establish amicable relations between the two 
 countries, as they were neighbours and of the same faith, and 
 begging the Khan to come out and meet him that he might 
 enter into an alliance. Habi'bulla at first refused, but, after 
 much pressing, and receiving many assurances of friendship and 
 esteem, he assented and went out to the Yarkand camp with 
 one of his sons and a few followers. He was received with every 
 mark of friendship and honour, and well feasted and entertained, 
 but in the night he and all his followers were made prisoners, 
 and his signet-ring removed ; and the next day a letter was sent 
 to Khoten, signed with the Khan's seal, directing all the chief 
 officers and other men of influence to come out and pay their 
 respects to the Yarkand ruler, with whom a friendly alliance 
 had just been formed. Many of the officers and others obeyed 
 the summons, and, as they left Khoten by one road, a large 
 force was sent against it by another. And, there being no one 
 to take the command and give orders, the place was quickly 
 taken and a large number of the garrison slain. The Kush- 
 begi then entered, and secured a very large treasure in gold 
 and silver ; and, after appointing one of his own officers governor, 
 he returned to Ydrkand. When leaving, he gave all the women 
 of the Khan's harem to his chief officers and followers : but these 
 women, having formed a plot among themselves, and seizing the 
 opportunity when their new husbands were unarmed and unpre- 
 pared, attacked and killed many of them. When the Kushbegi 
 heard "of this, he at once ordered Habibulhi Khan, an old man 
 of more than eighty years, and his son to be shot.' 
 
 Now, supposing that Sir John Lawrence, in deference 
 to the popular cry for the extension of Indian trade in
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 225 
 
 Central Asia, should have allowed the English officer 
 above mentioned to proceed on his volunteer journey to 
 Khoten, what, it may be asked, would have been that 
 officer's fate ? We think we may reply that, even if he 
 had not been cut off before reaching Khoten at all, he 
 must, upon arriving there, either have perished in that 
 city amid the tumult of Habibullas downfall, or have 
 been carried off captive to Yarkand, where England, for 
 all her length of arm, would have then been powerless 
 either to rescue or to avenge him. With this difference, 
 and it is one that would have been most damaging to the 
 national prestige, we should have had a second Abyssinia 
 in Eastern Turkistan, another Theodore in Yakub 
 Kushbegi. Taught this by lesson, we trust that for 
 some time to come the British public may hear no more 
 of that premature agitation, which, in pursuit of doubt- 
 ful advantages, clamours for the despatch of English 
 officers among the untried and ill-consolidated states 
 of Central Asia. Were England at war with Russia, 
 and were it necessary for the prosecution of the war 
 that English gold and English lives should be staked 
 in organising hordes of Usbegs and Tunganis for 
 guerilla warfare against the enemy, our money and our 
 lives might doubtless be lavished in the country ; but he 
 who, as matters now stand (1867), talks of English em- 
 bassies to Yarkand or to Khoten, is an enemy to his 
 country.^ This is strong language, we admit, but it 
 cannot be wholly uncalled for, when a recent wTiter in 
 a well-informed English journal charges the Indian 
 Government with ' inexcusable apathy' in neglecting to 
 
 ^ This was written in 1867, and was at that time true. Since then the 
 Kushbegi has firmly consolidated his power. The expediency of holding 
 diplomatic intercourse with him has been reconsidered, and has been decided 
 in the affirmative. W. W. H.
 
 2 26 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 establish consuls in the cities of Eastern Turkistdn.' 
 Apathy there certainly is not, either for commercial and 
 political purposes, or towards purely scientific ends. 
 Sir John Lawrence refuses to send English officers 
 where their mere appearance might be a signal for 
 their detention (1867) ; but he obtains all the intel- 
 ligence he requires by the systematic despatch into the 
 same countries of natives of India, specially trained for 
 inquiry, and handsomely remunerated for their pains. 
 And, if proof were wanted of the efficiency of this 
 agency, we might point to the valuable geographical 
 information acquired by a Pandit who, under Captain 
 Montgomerie's instructions, recently journeyed from India 
 via the Mdnsarowar Lake to Lhassa. 
 
 Reverting now to the actual position of affairs in 
 Altishahr, and the extent to which British interests may 
 be affected by the succession of a wild captain of free- 
 lances to the dominion of the Chinese, we can only say 
 that the Kushbegi's rule is of altogether too recent a 
 growth to admit of any opinion being formed as to the 
 qualities it will display (1867). Hitherto he has had work 
 enough to win his kingdom at the point of the sword ; 
 and now that it is fully won, whether he will succeed in 
 keeping it, and, if so, how he will govern it, remain to be 
 seen. Upon these doubts hangs the future as well of 
 Russian policy as of British trade. 
 
 ' This writer in the same sentence denounces the Indian Government for 
 similar neglect at Leh, and also for permitting the R.-ij.-i of Kdshmfr to block 
 the course of trade by monstrous exactions at the frontier ; whereas the fact 
 is that so far back as in 1864 the MahArdjA was constrained to make large 
 reductions in his customs duties, and that there already is a consul at Lch, 
 sent there for the special purpose of seeing that the terms of the reduced 
 tariff of 1864 are strictly adhered to by the Mah;ir;ij;t's officials. The true 
 cause of the depressed state of trade at Leh is the disturbed condition of the 
 country on the other side of the Kdrdkoram range ( 1 867) .
 
 WESTER JSi CHINA. 227 
 
 If the Kiishbegi be, as we are disposed to believe, 
 not a mere soldier of fortune, but something of a states- 
 man also, the first use he will make of the consolidation 
 of his conquests will be to resuscitate the trade which 
 recent wars and tumults have all but extinguished in 
 Eastern Turkistan. Most probably it will be beyond 
 his power to reopen commerce with China through 
 the country occupied by the revolted Tunganis ; but 
 China's difficulty ought, in this instance, to be India's 
 opportunity. With the Kushbegi's leave, India should 
 be able to supply most of the articles for which Tartary 
 has hitherto depended on the Chinese, and other goods 
 besides. Already there is one Indian staple which is in 
 urgent demand throughout all the Turkistans, Eastern, 
 Western, and Russian ; and that is tea. The Turks 
 cannot live without tea ; not only do they use it as a 
 beverage at meals, but one person may not receive a 
 private visit from another, nor a chief give audience to 
 his retainers In public darbar, without tea being offered 
 to the guests and freely consumed by all present. Thus 
 if our planters of the Himalayas would only take the 
 trouble to ascertain and imitate the particular appearance, 
 whether brick-shaped or blue-glazed, which Chinese tea 
 has hitherto borne in the Turkish bazaars, they ought to 
 find at Leh a splendid market for the commodity which 
 has caused so much disappointment to Indian speculators 
 (1867). Recently we heard of a single tea-district in the 
 North-west Provinces exporting tea into Central Asia to 
 the value of 15,000/. It will easily therefore be under- 
 stood that the Indian Government scans the prospects of 
 a revival of the caravan trade across the Karakoram Pass 
 with considerable solicitude. 
 
 Still more narrowly are the Russians on the Sir-
 
 2 28 IVESTERN CHINA. 
 
 Daria watchinij the movements of the Kushbc^^i in 
 respect to the rc-opening of traffic over the Terektin 
 Pass. Their frontier at Namangam is only about i6o 
 miles from the foot of the pass ; they are indignant at the 
 loss of their ancient commerce with China by this route ; 
 and, though they cannot but admit that the more distant 
 Tunganis on the borders of Kansu, or within that pro- 
 vince, are the principal cause of the misfortune, they 
 are not likely to overlook any obstructions to their 
 mercantile enterprise which Yakub Kushbegi may offer 
 in Altishahr, close to their own outposts. If the Kush- 
 begi is a wise man, he will do his utmost to conciliate 
 Russian sentiments on this score. But there are rumours 
 afloat that he is differently inclined (1867). It is said that 
 he has sent emissaries to the courts of Kokand and 
 Bokhara and to the Tungdni's at Kulja, in view to the 
 formation of a league hostile to Russia. This is very likely 
 false. The substratum of truth, however, appears to 
 be that in Altishahr, as in every other part of Central 
 Asia, including Afghanistan, a general feeling has arisen, 
 and day by day gains ground, of antagonism to Russia, 
 as an aggressor from whom much is to be feared, and of 
 inclination towards England, as a power content to remain 
 within her own limits. The time may come when this 
 feeling will be of incalculable value to us ; and we owe 
 its existence to that determined policy of non-intervention 
 which among certain critics of Sir John Lawrence's policy 
 is his capital offence. Meantime, if Yakub Kushbegi 
 should be imprudent enough to give umbrage to General 
 Kaufmann, the newly-appointed Governor-General of Rus- 
 sian Turkistan (1867), events may be precipitated which, 
 upon present chances, are not immediately to be expected. 
 In the end no doubt Altishahr will be absorbed into the
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 229 
 
 Northern Empire, and it probably will be the fortune of the 
 Kdrakoram mountains to form the first common boundary 
 the world may ever see between the dominions of Old 
 England and Holy Russia. But on the whole, we doubt 
 whether the next move of the Russian forces in this 
 quarter will be across the Terektin Pass. An advance 
 from Fort Vernoe for the suppression of the Tun- 
 gam's about Kulja appears a much nearer contingency ; 
 and, since the command of Dzungaria would enable the 
 Russians to reach Khamil and the trade beyond, almost 
 as effectually as they could from Eastern Turkistdn, it is 
 possible that, with the accomplishment of that object, 
 they might cease to take all the interest they at present 
 certainly do in the affairs of the Six Cities. But, what- 
 ever may be the course of events, whether to accelerate 
 or to retard the southward progress of the Russians, we 
 look forward to their ultimate occupation of Eastern 
 Turkistan without any apprehension. Our trade can- 
 not suffer, for it is imipossible that the system of protec- 
 tive duties should be much longer maintained at St, 
 Petersburg, and as for the security of the Indian Empire, 
 even the wildest of Russophobists has not yet conceived 
 the possibility of an invasion by way of the Kdrakoram. 
 
 Our task is done. We have endeavoured, so far as 
 our fragmentary materials permit, to throw light upon a 
 part of the world regarding which Europe possesses very 
 scanty information, and to trace over an enormous extent 
 of frontier the progress of a famous empire's decline. 
 What effect the events we have reviewed may produce 
 on the central fabric of Manchu power we leave to others 
 to delineate. The result perhaps will be small, for the 
 morbid condition of the extremities is, in this case, less a 
 potential cause of future disaster than a mere symptom of
 
 230 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 deep-seated evils that have their origin elsewhere. It 
 betokens an organisation sapped at its vital sources by 
 an atrophy, which, sooner or later, must terminate in 
 utter collapse and dissolution. 
 
 NOTE BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 An able article in the last Edinburgh Review (April, 
 1874), brings down the history of Eastern Turkistdn from 
 the point at which Mr. Wyllie's article in the same journal 
 left it in April, 1868. It is, therefore, needful here to say 
 only a very few words regarding this interval. Partly by 
 dissimulation and treachery, partly by a skilful use of the 
 fanatical aspects of Isldm, but chiefly by valour and 
 policy, Yakub Kushbegi has established himself as the 
 de facto ruler of Eastern Turkistdn, and now firmly 
 governs it. As he strengthened himself in this position, 
 he extended his relations alike towards Russia and India. 
 At first the Russian Government held, that though ' he 
 might have established a Government de facto y Russia 
 had treaties with China, and could not enter into diplo- 
 matic relations with a successful insurgent against the 
 Chinese Emperor.' The Chinese Government, however, 
 took no steps to recover the revolted province. Various 
 high officers enjoy titles connected with its civil and 
 military administration ; but (with the exception of an 
 occasional agitation such as is said to have taken place 
 this spring, 1874) they live calmly at the courts of Pekin 
 or Sze Chucn, and continue to hold their nominal 
 offices as if Eastern Turkistdn still formed an integral 
 part of the Chinese Iimpire. As the ruler of Eastern 
 Turkistdn consolidated his power, Russia recognised him.
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 231 
 
 A Russian envoy was sent to Eastern Turkistan in the 
 spring of 1872 to complete a commercial treaty, and since 
 then an embassy under Baron Kaulbars to the Amir has 
 removed former causes of suspicion, and established 
 friendly relations. In the same year, the Atalik Ghazi, 
 or ruler of Eastern Turkistdn, despatched an envoy to 
 India. He reached there in 1873. His first object was to 
 obtain the Viceroy's consent to a British envoy returning 
 with him to Turkistdn, with a view to forming a com- 
 mercial treaty. His second object was to visit Constan- 
 tinople and to obtain from the Sultdn a recognition of his 
 master as Defender of the Faith. He succeeded in both 
 his objects. It is now understood that the Atalik Ghdzi 
 is de J2tre as well as de facto the great Muhummadan 
 Chief of Central Asia. In the summer of 1873 the Atalik 
 Ghdzi's envoy returned to India from Constantinople, 
 and was accompanied to Eastern Turkistdn by a British 
 envoy, Mr. Douglas Forsyth, C.B., of the India Civil 
 Service. Mr. Forsyth, now Sir Douglas Forsyth, was 
 peculiarly welcome to the Atalik Ghdzi, as he had already 
 visited Turkistan in 1870. He has been received with the 
 utmost cordiality, and has now brought his mission to a 
 successful close. 
 
 While these sheets were passing through the press 
 (March, 1874) the treaty framed by Mr. Forsyth and the 
 Atdlik Ghdzi arrived in India. As it forms the final 
 result of the series of events described in the above essay, 
 I reproduce it in full at the end of this Note. But, before 
 doing so, it may be well to explain the actual position of 
 the Atdlik Ghdzi in his own dominions, and to state the 
 evidence showing that he is, in reality, the de facto ruler. 
 I shall quote first a short passage which the Edinburgh 
 Reviewer cites from the Russian envoy. Captain Reinthal.
 
 232 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 To this will be added the description of the present state 
 of affairs in Tiirkistan, which the writer in the April 
 number (1874) of the Edinburgh Rcvieiu gives. Ex- 
 tracts from a recent letter of Mr. Forsyth, the British 
 envoy, now 'on his way back from Turkistan, will con- 
 clude the series of quotations. 
 
 Captain Reinthal, the Russian envoy, writes thus : 
 
 ' To all appearance, Ydkub Beg wields an unlimited power 
 in his dominions. He enters into every detail of administration 
 and sits all day receiving reports, issuing orders, and confirming 
 sentences of death. There is not the least form of trial. Theft 
 is punishable by hanging ; even a simple accusation securing 
 the sentence of death. The nooses never swing idly on the 
 gallows. Information against individuals is the great feature in 
 the administration of Kashgaria. All creatures living in Jetis- 
 hahr, as well as all private property, are the belongings of Yakub 
 Beg, who disposes of them as he pleases for his own personal 
 benefit or for the good of the state.' 
 
 The Edinburgh Reviewer, in April, 1874, thus sum- 
 marises the evidence which he has collected from English 
 and Russian sources : 
 
 ' Eastern Turkistan is now ruled by the Atalik Ghazf in an 
 austere manner, which befits his title as Protector and Champion 
 of the Faith. Isldm is enforced with a strict adherence to ortho- 
 dox Sunni observances, contrasting forcibly with the laxness 
 that prevailed during the tolerant rule of the Chinese. At the 
 hours of morning and evening prayer, functionaries duly armed 
 with sticks, as in Bokhard, now sweep the laggards into the 
 mosques. Idolaters are not allowed to ride or to wear turbans, 
 those privileges being reserved for the faithful ; and the Atdlik 
 Ghdzi has prohibited, as contrary to Sunni law, a practice pre- 
 valent in and before the days of Marco Polo that of temporary 
 marriages between visitors and the women of the country, lasting 
 only so long as the visit lasts. He is, himself, completely un- 
 educated a mere trooper, as he often styles himself, but knows 
 the spell which religious teachers can exercise, and assigns a 
 great part of the revenue of the country for their maintenance.
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 233 
 
 He keeps them, however, in their place, no less than his other 
 subjects, and permits on their part no interference with his 
 worldly policy. Indeed, he seldom resorts to anyone for counsel, 
 with the exception and that only an occasional exception of 
 old Kokandi friends Muhammad Sunnus, the Governor of 
 Yarkand, and Sayyid Yakub, the late Envoy to India and 
 Constantinople. Almost every offence of any gravity and 
 even a light offence, if repeated is punished by death, and, 
 during the early days of his rule, the gallows were rarely empty. 
 It is needless to add that the anarchy which preceded his rise to 
 power has entirely disappeared ; and Mr. Shaw has told us that 
 a man who saw a bag of silver ingots lying on the roadside 
 would immediately run over to the other side, for fear of being 
 supposed to have designs upon it. The administration appears 
 to be as impartially just as it is Draconic, and the people do not 
 suffer from what they would regard as oppression. The taxes 
 do not differ materially from what they were in Chinese times ; 
 a tenth of the produce of the land being taken partly in kind, 
 partly in cash, while herdsmen contribute each year a fortieth of 
 their stock, and merchants a fortieth on their sales. The officials 
 are not paid in cash, but by the assignment of the revenue from 
 a village, a group of villages, or even a fractional share in a 
 village ; and from this they support both themselves and their 
 following. Thus, a tenth share of the produce from the district 
 of Kargalik (on the way to Yarkand from the south) is devoted 
 to the support of the Governor of Yarkand, who, with it, main- 
 tains a mighty table, whereat each day, in true Spartan fashion, 
 he sits down to meat with all but the menial employes of the 
 administration. It is true that, besides these regular taxes, the 
 people have to make presents of horses and various articles that 
 are needed by the officials ; that the bales of merchants are 
 examined, and any article which pleases the Atalik Ghazi or the 
 officials is taken from them at a price which, though not unfair, 
 is fixed arbitrarily ; and that no man physically capable is held 
 exempt from service in the field. But none of these demands 
 are repugnant to the notions of a primitive Asiatic people ; and 
 as the eye of the master is everywhere, and extortion on the 
 part of an official is mercilessly punished, that class is not able 
 to abuse its powers. There is, again, little freedom of action ; 
 and the people are all kept in a state of profound awe, no man 
 venturing to discuss any matter in the most distant way con-
 
 234 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 nectcd with the Government, for fear of his words being reported 
 to the official spies, and his life being taken in consequence ; 
 but that, again, is quite in accordance with the Asiatic idea of a 
 strict and even of a just administration. Such administrations 
 have, in fact, not been unfrequent in Oriental history, and have, 
 while they lasted, formed bright exceptions to the monotonous 
 story of misrule ; but, as was to be expected, no sooner was the 
 master, whose vigilance had kept the whole artificial structure in 
 proper order, succeeded by another, who preferred ease to toil, 
 than the instruments of order became only engines of organised 
 oppression. As yet, however, the only part of the Atalik Ghdzf's 
 policy which stirs up actual complaint is the extent to which all 
 offices of trust are given to Kokandi's, and that must be viewed 
 as a natural precaution. Kokandfs, too, form the most valued 
 constituent of his army, the total strength of which was, four 
 years ago, estimated at 20,000 men, with 70 pieces of ordnance, 
 cast, some by immigrants from the Muhammadan portions of 
 Asiatic Russia, some by Hindustanis. Since then, the neces- 
 sities of his war with the Tunganis of the north-east have 
 doubtless caused a considerable increase in his force. A large 
 portion of it, even now, consists of Tunganis, whom he has lately 
 begun to pay in money, as they were paid in Chinese times, 
 while the others are paid in kind, as in Kokand. Their drill is 
 still very rude ; and, as is usual in Asiatic armies, the object 
 mainly held in view is to produce as noisy a fire as possible, 
 without much regard to aim.' 
 
 Mr. Forsyth, the British envoy to Eastern Turkistan, 
 writes on the 2nd February, 1874, from Kashgar : 
 
 ' In for\varding the Treaty of Commerce just concluded with 
 His Highness the Amir of Kashgar and Yarkand, I wish to 
 offer some remarks on the prospects of trade between India 
 and Eastern Turkistan, regarding which very widely divergent 
 opinions are held ; one class holding the belief that the people 
 of this country are much below the ordinary Hindu in the scale 
 of civilisation, and that the difficulties of the Himalayan route 
 must ever prove a barrier to extensive trade ; the other class 
 going to the opposite extreme, and encouraging the liritish 
 manufacturers to believe that the conclusion of a treaty is only
 
 WESTERN CHINA, . 235 
 
 necessary to enable them to ship loads of bales consigned to 
 the Yarkand and Kashgar markets, 
 
 ' The truth lies in the mean between these two extremes ; 
 and whilst those who depreciate the importance of the trade arc 
 probably not thoroughly acquainted with the subject ; on the 
 other hand, it would certainly save the more sanguine class from 
 disappointment if, before despatching their goods, they weighed 
 well the following facts : 
 
 'What strikes every Englishman who has visited the Amir's 
 dominions is the very comfortable condition of the people, and 
 the degree of civilisation they have attained, considering their 
 entire want of contact hitherto with European nations. They 
 are industrious, peaceful, and, as a rule, remarkably intelligent 
 and very energetic, and would be quick to appreciate and adopt 
 all the advantages offered by European science, 
 
 ' Russian and English goods are eagerly sought, and though 
 there are certain prejudices of religion against clothes figured 
 with the resemblances of animal life, there are no such caste 
 difficulties to be overcome as are to this day to be met with in 
 India. 
 
 ' The population is much scantier than we had been led to 
 expect, and there is much more land available for cultivation 
 and capable of irrigation by the numerous canals and streams 
 than there are hands for : in fact, the prolific crops now raised 
 would feed many more mouths than there are at present. 
 Sheep and fowls are abundant, cows are not quite so plentiful. 
 The disturbances of late years have, of course, much to do with 
 the scantiness of the population, as may be seen in the undue 
 proportion of females to males. This would prove an obstacle 
 to a speedy development of trade on a large scale ; but it is an 
 evil which a few years of peace and good-will will soon remedy. 
 Already the population in the cities of Yarkand and Kashgar is 
 on the increase, and everywhere that we have travelled there 
 is the appearance of a thriving people. The bazaars are well 
 filled, trade is brisk, houses are springing up on all sides, and 
 poverty is said to be on the decrease, so that on this head I can 
 speak confidently. Time and peace only are necessary for the 
 production of a large demand for necessaries and luxuries. 
 
 ' The next great drawback is the want of proper currency, in 
 consequence of which all commercial transactions have to be 
 carried on more or less by barter. It is the intention of the
 
 236 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 Amfr to introduce a silver coinage, until which has been fully 
 established, merchants must content themselves with taking 
 gold-dust, felts, shawls, wool, charas, carpets, &c., in exchange 
 for their luiropean goods. If very large consignments of British 
 manufactures came over, the importer would perhaps find the 
 market swamped by consignments from the Russian side, and 
 they might have difficulty in getting loads in exchange which 
 would fetch any fair price in the Indian markets. 
 
 * The next obstacle is the road over the Himalayas. At 
 present mules and ponies are the only beasts of burden em- 
 ployed ; and though the road by Kulu and the Bara Lacha 
 has been rendered practicable for camels, it is exceedingly doubt- 
 ful if Indian camels could stand the great cold of the higher 
 Himalayas north of Laddkh. For mules and ponies, the road 
 between Lch and Ydrkand passes for days over an inhospitable 
 tract, where grass and grain are not to be found, and it would 
 be necessary for traders to carry supplies with them, or to lay 
 them out at convenient distances. From the Yarkand side the 
 difficulty of carriage can be met with more successfully, the 
 double-humped Bactrian camel is to be had in any numbers, 
 and is bred in the Kogyar district. These animals are well 
 adapted for crossing the high desert plains of the Karakoram, 
 and if Mr. Johnson has been successful in finding a road down 
 the Shyok practicable all the year round, there is no reason why 
 camels should not go with their loads to Leh. They have already 
 gone there with ease by the more circuitous Changchenmu route. 
 
 'The Yarkandi ponies far surpass all other animals of their 
 kind as bea.sts of burden, and, for all animals, the difficulties of 
 the mountain route will be immediately reduced by the opening 
 out of the Kogyar line, by which one lowca.sy pass is substituted 
 for the high and troublesome Suget and Sanju passes, and the 
 journey will be .shortened by three day.s. The question of the 
 best line throughout to be adopted must be reserved for dis- 
 cussion when all the information requisite for forming an opinion 
 has been collected. But it may be assumed at once that the 
 Kogyar route between Aktagh and Yarkand will certainly be 
 adopted, and if so, then mules from the plains of the Panjab can, 
 without any great risk, make the journey to Ydrkand, Last 
 year they came across the Suget pass as far as ShahidulUi, or 
 close to that place, so that they could certainly have crossed the 
 easier pa.ss to Kogyar, and then would have reached the plains
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 237 
 
 of Ydrkand. As regards the Laddkh and Kashmir ponies as a 
 means of carriage, the stock is not nearly sufficient for the re- 
 quirements of the trade as it is at present ; and it is not likely 
 that they will increase to any extent, and I look to Yarkand for 
 the supply of carriage. 
 
 ' Another supposed obstacle to our trade is the competition 
 of Russia. Undoubtedly Russian goods have obtained the chief 
 place in the bazaars of Eastern Turkistan, and the road between 
 Kashgar and Russian territories offers none of the great diffi- 
 culties to be met with on the Ladakh route. But it is, I believe, 
 a fact that English goods can be conveyed at a cheaper rate 
 through India and over the Karakoram than through Russia to 
 Kashgar. English goods under Russian covers are sold here, 
 which shows that our manufactures do somehow or other find 
 their way into this country. Russian chintzes have a large sale 
 here ; but comparing prices, I find that superior English chintzes 
 could be sold at a much lower figure, and still leave the im- 
 porter a handsome margin of profit. At present, the few Indian 
 traders \tho come over with ventures consider they have not 
 done well if they do not clear 75 or 80 per cent, profit. Unless, 
 then, the Russian merchants make the same rate of profit, it is 
 clear that English goods ought to hold their own, to say the 
 least, against all others. 
 
 ' It may perhaps appear at first sight that I have little faith 
 in the elasticity of the trade which I am specially empowered 
 to foster by treaties and other facilities. But this is very far 
 from the fact, though I believe I am consulting the real interests 
 of our British merchants and of Eastern Turkistan in putting all 
 the circumstances of the case in a clear light. 
 
 * That the trade is capable of expansion experience has 
 proved. When the subject was first brought to Lord Lawrence's 
 notice in 1866, the total amount of annual exports and imports 
 at Lch did not exceed one lakh (10,000/.), and Wazi'r Goshaon, 
 whose opinion was sought by the then Viceroy, was considered 
 to have overshot the mark when he suggested a possible increase 
 to ten lakhs (100,000/.) per annum. From the returns published 
 by the Supreme Government, we find that within five years 
 fifteen lakhs (150,000/.) have been passed; and as the obstacles 
 to which I have alluded to are gradually removed, the expansion 
 of commerce in this direction may spread to a very large extent. 
 But if British merchants try to act in defiance of all prudence,
 
 238 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 and without proper arrangements, they are sure to meet with 
 disappointment, and will cause discouragement to others. 
 
 ' I am led to offer these remarks by the receipt of a letter 
 from a gentleman who signs himself ' Director of a Company for 
 Trading with Eastern Turkistan,' in which he informs me that he 
 purposes leaving the Panjab on the 20th of May next with 600 
 loads of merchandise, valued at three lakhs of rupees, and he 
 requests me to order supplies for his animals to be laid out on 
 the road between Leh and Yarkand. 
 
 ' It is not for me to offer him advice, and the idea of laying 
 out supplies for him alone is of course not to be entertained ; 
 but as other merchants may be disposed to follow his example, 
 I think they would do well to ponder over the facts I have put 
 forth in this letter. There is wisdom in proceeding by degrees, 
 and not putting too great a strain on a growing structure, 
 
 ' Experience tells me that to convey 300 loads from the 
 Panjab to Yarkand requires an immense amount of forethought 
 and arrangement, as well as a considerable expenditure, without 
 which disaster would have been inevitable in crossing from Leh 
 to Ydrkand. 
 
 ' Up to Leh the difficulties of supplies arc far less, and each 
 year will decrease. In course of time I hope the Mahdrajd on 
 his side, and the Amir on the other, may be induced to arrange 
 for supply houses at convenient distances ; and, possibly, by 
 judicious planting, grass and wood may be reared on some parts 
 of the road ; but till some such facilities are afforded, I should 
 think small consignments would be more likely to be successful, 
 and the establishment of a market at Leh will give probably a 
 good impetus to the completion of the desired arrangements. 
 
 ' A mule or pony ought not to be compelled to carry more 
 than 225 lbs., or 2 cwt., and spare animals in the proportion of 
 5 per cent, .should be taken. The hire of a pony or mule from 
 the Panjab to Yarkand is Rs. 70, or 7/, The number of stages 
 is 75. 
 
 ' Goods consigned from England for the Yarkand market 
 should be packed in bales of i cwt. each, wrapped in skins or 
 other stout material to resist damp, as well as the thorny 
 bushes in the valleys, which are very destructive. Spare pony 
 or mule .shoes at the rate of three .sets per animal .should be 
 taken, and it is advisable to have amongst one's followers one 
 or more men who can do farrier's work.
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 239 
 
 ' In selecting goods for the Yarkand market, patterns with 
 figures of birds or animals should be eschewed ; stripes find 
 more favour than checks ; high colours are much preferred by 
 the people here ; black is not at all approved ; tweeds are not 
 appreciated. Bright chintzes, and all kinds of cotton goods 
 are in great demand, though a common kind of cotton cloth 
 is largely manufactured at Khoten, and is even exported to 
 Kokand. All goods should be of the best quality, good prices 
 being readily paid for fine cloth, whereas inferior cloths and sized 
 piece goods, though even low priced, are not in favour, 
 
 ' Having alluded to the fairs in Asia, I may give facts as the 
 result of my observation which appear to account for their 
 extensive use, and afford at the same time an insight into the 
 character of the people. There are not many large towns in 
 Eastern Turkistan, or villages of any size, such as are to be 
 found in India ; but the cultivated portion of the country is 
 studded with separate farms and homesteads, many hundreds 
 forming a kind of circle, or what in India would be called 
 pargana. 
 
 * As there is no village bazaar, such as we understand in 
 India, in order to supply their wants, a custom has grown up of 
 holding weekly markets at different spots in the pargana. Thus, 
 as we passed along from Sanju to Kashgar, we came across 
 many places called Ekshumba, or Doshumba Bazaar, i.e., held 
 on Sunday or Monday, and so on. Here, for instance, within a 
 radius of twenty-five miles, there is a bazaar held at one place 
 or another every day in the week except Friday, to which the 
 peasantry flock with their sheep, fowls, cotton clothes, boots, 
 and other articles of daily consumption or requirement. Even 
 in the large cities one day in the week is devoted to the bazaar, 
 when the chief business seems to be transacted. Frequently, 
 when I have had occasion to send to the city of Kashgar for 
 an article, I have been told that it will not be procurable till 
 Thursday, the market day. 
 
 * It is hardly necessary for me to do more than point to the 
 peace and security to property which all this betokens ; when a 
 peasantry can live thus unprotected in solitary farms or in small 
 hamlets, there must be little fear of robbers or of violent crime. 
 No need here evidently for enclosing themselves within walled 
 towns, or for the erection of forts, for protection from internal 
 commotions. Though there is no Arms' Act in the country,
 
 240 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 weapons are never carried by the people, and the appearance 
 of arms is a sign that the wearer is employed on duty for the 
 Government. 
 
 'Violent crime is almost unknown, and thefts are rare. The 
 Amir has acquired a character for excessive severity because he 
 punished theft with death. He is undoubtedly a terror to evil- 
 doers, but is acknowledged to be just in his punishments, and 
 the result is a complete stoppage of crime. The peasantry are 
 unmolested, and when peaceful industry is thus allowed to thrive, 
 we may with justice form high expectations of the advancement 
 of the people, and be encouraged to aid in the work of im- 
 provements. 
 
 ' The country is said to be rich in mines of copper, iron, lead, 
 and coal, so that by the aid of European science and skill, 
 machinery of all kinds maybe introduced, and would be quickly 
 appreciated where the hands are so scarce. The habits of the 
 people, too, are all favourable to industry. Instead of each man 
 cooking his own food, and thus spending a valuable part of the 
 day in culinary occupation, as is the case in India, there are 
 innumerable restaurants and bakeries, and bread and meat pics 
 are hawked about the streets, and a very cheap dinner is thus 
 provided for the masses. 
 
 ' In conclusion, there is one point on which any British trader 
 or traveller purposing to visit this country ought to be informed, 
 and which he would do well to bear in mind. The people of 
 Eastern Turkistan, though good-natured, friendly, and hospitable 
 to Europeans, own to no inferiority of race, and will not submit 
 to be roughly treated. They meet Europeans with perfect 
 politeness, but on terms of equality, and any attempt at hauteur 
 or domineering will be quickly and fiercely resented.' 
 
 Treaty between the British Government and His 
 Highne.ss the Amir Muhammad Ydkub Khdn, Ruler of 
 Kashgar and Yarkand ; signed at Kashgar on the 2nd 
 February, 1874, by Mr. T. Douglas Forsyth, C.H., on 
 behalf of the Viceroy, and by Sayyid Muhammad Khan 
 Tura on behalf of the Amir. 
 
 Art. I. 'The high contracting parties engage that the sub- 
 jects of each shall be at liberty to enter, reside in, trade with.
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 241 
 
 and pass with their merchandize and property into and throuj^h 
 all parts of the dominions of the other, and shall enjoy in such 
 dominions all the privileges and advantages with respect to com- 
 merce, protection, or otherwise, which are or may be accorded 
 to the subjects of such dominions, or to the subjects or citizens 
 of the most favoured nation. 
 
 Art. II. * Merchants of whatever nationality shall be at 
 liberty to pass from the territories of the one contracting party 
 to the territories of the other with their merchandize and pro- 
 perty at all times and by any route they please ; no restriction 
 shall be placed by either contracting party upon such freedom 
 of transit, unless for urgent political reasons to be previously 
 communicated to the other ; and such restriction shall be with- 
 drawn as soon as the necessity for it is over. 
 
 Art. III. ' European British subjects entering the dominions 
 of His Highness the Amir, for purposes of trade or otherwise, 
 must be provided with passports certifying to their nationality. 
 Unless provided with such passports, they shall not be deemed 
 entitled to the benefit of this Treaty. 
 
 Art. IV. ' On goods imported into British India from 
 territories of His Highness the Amir, by any route over the 
 Himalayan passes which lie to the south of His Highness' 
 dominions, the British Government engages to levy no import 
 duties. On goods imported from India into the territories of 
 His Highness the Amir, no import duty exceeding 2\ per cent. 
 ad valorem, shall be levied. Goods imported as above into the 
 dominions of the contracting parties may, subject only to such 
 excise regulations and duties, and to such municipal or town 
 regulations and duties as may be applicable to such classes of 
 goods generally, be freely sold by wholesale or retail, and trans- 
 ported from one place to another within British India and within 
 the dominions of His Highness the Amir respectively. 
 
 Art. V. ' Merchandize imported from India into the terri- 
 tories of His Highness the Amir will not be opened for exa- 
 mination till arrival at the place of consignment. If any disputes 
 should arise as to the value of such goods, the Customs officer, 
 or other officer acting on the part of His Highness the Amir, 
 shall be entitled to demand part of the goods at the rate of one 
 in forty in lieu of the payment of duty. If the aforesaid officer 
 should object to levy the duty by taking a portion of the goods, 
 or if the goods should not admit of being so divided, then the 
 
 R
 
 242 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 point in dispute shall be referred to two competent persons, one 
 chosen by the aforesaid officer and the other by the importer, 
 and a valuation of the goods shall be made ; and if the referees 
 shall differ in opinion, they shall appoint an arbitrator whose 
 decision shall be final, and the duty shall be levied according to 
 the value thus established. 
 
 Art. VI. * The British Government shall be at liberty to 
 appoint a representative at the court of His Highness the Amir, 
 and to appoint commercial agents subordinate to him in any 
 towns or places considered suitable within His Highness' terri- 
 tories. His Highness the Amir shall be at liberty to appoint 
 a representative with the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, 
 and to station commercial agents at any places in British India 
 considered suitable. Such representatives shall be entitled to 
 the rank and privileges accorded to ambassadors by the law 
 of nations, and the agents shall be entitled to the privileges of 
 consuls of the most favoured nation. 
 
 Art. VII. * British subjects shall be at liberty to purchase, 
 sell, or hire land, or houses, or depots for merchandize in the 
 dominions of His Highness the Amir, and the houses, depots, 
 or other premises of British subjects shall not be forcibly entered 
 or searched without the consent of the occupier, unless with the 
 cognizance of the British representative or agent, and in presence 
 of a person deputed by him. 
 
 Art. VIII. ' The following arrangements are agreed to for 
 the decision of civil suits and criminal cases within the territories 
 of His Highness the Amir in which British subjects are con- 
 cerned : 
 
 (rt.) ' Civil suits in which both plaintiff and defendant are 
 British subjects, and criminal cases in which both prosecutor 
 and accused are British subjects, or in which the accused is a 
 European British subject mentioned in the 3rd Article of this 
 Treaty, shall be tried by the British representative or one of his 
 agents, in the presence of an agent appointed by His Highness 
 the Amfr. 
 
 {b) ' Civil suits in which one party is a subject of His High- 
 ness the Amfr, and the other party a British subject, shall be 
 tried by the Courts of His Highness in the presence of the 
 British representative or one of his agents, or of a person ap- 
 pointed in that behalf by such representative or agent. 
 
 (c.) 'Criminal cases, in which either prosecutor or accused is a
 
 WESTERN CHINA. 243 
 
 subject of His Highness the Amir, shall, except as above other- 
 wise provided, be tried by the courts of His Highness in presence 
 of the British representative or of one of his agents, or of a 
 person deputed by the British representative, or by one of his 
 agents, 
 
 (^.) ' Except as above otherwise provided, civil and criminal 
 cases, in which one party is a British subject and the other the 
 subject of a foreign power, shall, if either of the parties is a 
 Muhammadan, be tried in the courts of His Highness ; if neither 
 party is a Muhammadan, the case may, with consent of the 
 parties, be tried by the British representative or one of his 
 agents ; in the absence of such consent, by the courts of His 
 Highness. 
 
 ((?.) ' In any case disposed of by the courts of His Highness 
 the Amir, to which a British subject is party, it shall be com- 
 petent to the British representative, if he considers that justice 
 has not been done, to represent the matter to His Highness the 
 Amir, who may cause the case to be retried in some other court 
 in the presence of the British representative or of one of his 
 agents, or of a person appointed in that behalf by such repre- 
 sentative or agent 
 
 Art. IX, * The rights and privileges enjoyed within the 
 dominions of His Highness the Amir, by British subjects under 
 this Treaty, shall extend to the subjects of all Princes and 
 States in India in alliance with Her Majesty the Queen ; and if, 
 with respect to any such Prince or State, any other provisions 
 relating to this Treaty or to other matters should be considered 
 desirable, they shall be negotiated through the British Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Art. X. ' Every affidavit and other legal document filed or 
 deposited in any court established in the respective dominions 
 of the high contracting parties, or in the Court of the Joint 
 Commissioners in Ladakh, may be proved by an authenticated 
 copy, purporting either to be sealed with the seal of the Court 
 to v/hich the original document belongs, or in the event of such 
 court having no seal, to be signed by the judge, or by one of the 
 judges of the said court. 
 
 Art. XI. ' When a British subject dies in the territory of 
 His Highness the Amir, his movable and immovable property 
 situate therein shall be vested in his heir, executor, administra- 
 tor, or other representative in interest, or (in the absence of such 
 
 R 2
 
 244 WESTERN CHINA. 
 
 representative) in the representative of the ]3ritish Government 
 in the aforesaid territory. The person in whom such charge 
 shall be so vested shall satisfy the claims outstanding against 
 the deceased, and shall hold the surplus (if any) for distribution 
 among those interested. The above provisions, mutatis mutandis, 
 shall apply to the subjects of His Highness the Ami'r who may 
 die in British India. 
 
 Art. XH. ' If a British subject residing in the territories of 
 His Highness the Amir becomes unable to pay his debts, or 
 fails to pay any debt within a reasonable time after being ordered 
 to do so by any Court of Justice, the creditors of such insolvent 
 shall be paid out of his goods and effects ; but the British repre- 
 sentative shall not refuse his good offices, if needs be, to ascertain 
 if the insolvent has not left in India disposable property which 
 might serve to satisfy the said creditors. The friendly stipula- 
 tions in the present Article shall be reciprocally observed with 
 regard to His Highness' subjects who trade in India under the 
 protection of the laws.' 
 
 It will be observed that the above Treaty not only 
 provides for the opening up of commercial relations 
 between India and Yarkand, but also for the maintenance 
 of ambassadors on the part of the two Governments. 
 This is, perhaps, the most important clause (No. VI) in 
 the whole Treaty. The status assigned is exceptionally 
 high, being * the rank and privileges accorded to ambas- 
 sadors by the law of nations.' Hitherto the traditions of 
 the India Foreign Office have been averse to any title 
 higher than that of Envoy, Political Agent, or Resident. 
 
 W. W. H.
 
 245 
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS BHAYAD {KINDRED)} 
 
 Properly to appreciate the peculiar character of our 
 treaty-relations with Kutch (Kachh), a glance at the 
 condition of the country, as it stood before we came in 
 contact with it, appears necessary. 
 
 The Jareja Rajputs immigrated into Kutch from Sind 
 about the beginning of the fifteenth century a.d. Over 
 the Chaura Rajputs, who up to that time had been domin- 
 ant in the West, they established a speedy mastery ; and 
 their sway soon afterwards included the Kathis in the cen- 
 tral Districts, and (though with a slighter hold) the Wag- 
 held Rajputs in the eastern portion called Waghar. The 
 title borne by the Chief of the Jarejas was originally 
 Jdm, but since the time of Khengar, who reigned in 
 1580 A.D., it has been Rdo. 
 
 Before proceeding further, it appears desirable to de- 
 fine the word Bhdydd. Etymologically it means Brother- 
 hood. The institution which it indicates obtains, more or 
 less, among all Rajput States, and may best be described 
 by the following extracts from Tod's * Rajasthdn,' vol. i., 
 pp. 173-4: 
 
 ' In all the large estates the Chief must provide for his sons 
 
 ^ The following is a Foreign Office note written by Mr. Wyllie when 
 Under-Secretary in 1867. It forms one of several papers which Mr. 
 Aitchison, C.S.I., the Foreign Secretary, has kindly rendered available to 
 me. I select it for publication, as the subject with which it deals has an 
 interest to those who wish to really understand the policy of the Indian Govern- 
 ment towards an important class of its feudatories a class, moreover, with 
 regard to whose ancient system oi frerage little has hitherto been placed 
 before the English reader. W. W. H.
 
 246 THE RAO OF KUTCIT AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 or brothers, according to his means, and the number of imme- 
 diate descendants. In an estate of sixty to eighty thousand 
 rupees of annual rent, the second brother might have a village 
 of three to five thousand of rent. This is his patrimony (bdpotd)'. 
 he besides pushes his fortune at the Court of his Sovereign or 
 abroad. Juniors share in proportion. These again subdivide 
 and have their little circle of dependants. . . The extent to 
 which the sub-division before mentioned is carried in some of the 
 Rajput States is ruinous to the protection and general welfare 
 of the country. It is pursued in some parts until there is 
 actually nothing left sufficiently large to share, or to furnish 
 subsistence for one individual ; consequently a great deprivation 
 of services to the State ensues. But this does not prevail so 
 much in the larger principalities as in the isolated tributary 
 thdkiirdts or lordships scattered over the country ; as amongst 
 the Jarejds of Kutch, the tribes in Kathiawar, and the small 
 independencies of Gujarat bordering on the great Western 
 Rajput States. . . The system in these countries of minute 
 sub-division of fiefs is termed BJidydd, or brotherhood, synony- 
 mous to the tenure by fra-age of France. ..." Give me 
 my bat (share)," says the Rajput, when he attains to man's 
 estate, " the bat of the bhayad," the portion of the frcrage ; and 
 thus they go on clipping and paring till all are impoverished, 
 . . The divisability of the Kutch and Kathiawar frcrage, carried 
 to the most destructive extent, is productive of litigation, crime, 
 and misery. . In this custom and the difficulty of finding 
 daijds, or dowers, for their daughters, we have the two chief 
 causes of infanticide amongst the Rajputs, which horrible practice 
 was not always confined to the female.' 
 
 One point among others which this quotation makes 
 clear is, that all the members of the Bha)-ad are necessar- 
 ily of the same stock as the Chief himself. The Rao of 
 Kutch being a Jdrejd, his Bhaydd must also be all 
 Jarejds. And it is of some importance to bear in mind 
 that, although the Jdrejd Bhdydd constitutes the great 
 majority of the Rdo's feudatories, he has other vas.sals 
 besides, such as Wagheld Rdjputs, t\:c., representing
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 247 
 
 families settled in Kutch from a date anterior to the im- 
 migration of the Jarejds. 
 
 The reign of Rao Desal, who was eighth in succes- 
 sion after Rdo Khengar above-mentioned, is described in 
 Captain Walters sketch of the History of Kutch as com- 
 prising the palmy days of the Province, when ' the scenes 
 of cruelty and oppression which accompanied the intro- 
 duction of the state and pomp of a Darbdr ' were yet un- 
 known. The sketch, therefore, which this writer gives 
 of Rao Desal's relations with his Bhayad is of some in- 
 terest, although allowance, apparently, must be made for 
 its tendency towards rose-colour. ' The Rao himself/ 
 says Captain Walter,^ 
 
 ' does not appear to have claimed among his brotherhood any 
 greater supremacy than what he derived from his title and his 
 superior resources. Ingress and egress were freely admitted 
 to his presence without the intervention of attendants, and his 
 habits were as frugal and free from ostentation as his private 
 Hfe was simple. Confiding in the fidelity and attachment of 
 his Bhayad and hereditary servants, all of whom were of the 
 military tribe, no regular force or foreign Sibandi had as yet 
 been introduced into Kutch. The principal Jarejas had all 
 recently received their possessions, and as up to this period 
 (a. d. 1 7 16) the ties of relationship had scarcely been severed, 
 they were inclined both by habit and duty to obey their com- 
 mon Chief A custom of friendly intercourse and mutual 
 support existed between the Rao and his nominal feudatories, 
 forming an union of interests among them, and presenting a 
 striking contrast to more modern times (A.D. 1827), when each 
 considers his neighbour as an enemy.' 
 
 Of the general administration of Kutch from the first 
 Rao to the tenth, who died in 1778, it may be said that 
 ' the different reigning princes appear to have retained 
 their supremacy over the whole Province, some laxly, 
 
 * Page 103 of the Selections Volume on Kutch.
 
 248 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 Others with a vigorous hand,'^ according to the bent of 
 their several dispositions towards sensual pleasure or 
 public power. 
 
 Rao Raidhan ascended the throne of Kutch in T778. 
 The country had been much weakened in the preceding 
 reign by a war with Sind, and the new ruler was foolish 
 and vicious beyond the worst of his predecessors. 'With 
 so much laxity was the administration conducted that 
 some of the Chiefs, and others holding estates, were only 
 nominally subject to the Darbdr authority, while security 
 of person and property was at an end.'^ 
 
 Insanity developed itself in Rdo Raidhan, and in 1786 
 he was placed under confinement. Two usurpers then 
 divided the power in the country between them ; the 
 one, a Musalmdn soldier of fortune, Jamdddr Fathi Mu- 
 hammad, and the other a Hindu politician, named Hans- 
 raj. The head-quarters of the former were at the capital, 
 Bhiij, and of the latter at the sea-port, Mdndavi. Stand- 
 ing aloof from the struggles**^ of this pair, and watching 
 their opportunity, the feudal -nobles of Kutch, each on his 
 own estate, consolidated an independent authority, which 
 they exercised in any lawless fashion that for the time 
 pleased them. Thus in 1809, when our political relations 
 with Kutch commenced, there was utter chaos throughout 
 the Province. 
 
 ' Memoir on Kutch by Lieutenant S. N. Raikes, page 13 of the Selections 
 Volume. 
 
 ^ Raikes' Memoir, page 14 of the Selections Volume. 
 
 ' Fathi Muhammad and Hansrdj were supported by 'mercenary troops, 
 Arabs, Sindis, and Musalm:ins of Kutch. The Jdrcj;is appear to have 
 possessed but little weight, and to have taken little interest in the struggle. 
 Some remained at their forts entirely neutral, others served the contending 
 parties for pay ; and although the Rdo's person was in the hands of Fathi 
 Muhammad, and Hansr.-ij had not even the shadow of legitimate authority, 
 the greater part of the BhAydd were entertained in his ' (Mansrdj's) ' service, 
 or attached to his party.' F. (). HIuc Hook, page 81.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 249 
 
 Several applications for our assistance from the con- 
 tending factions had been already received, and refused ; 
 but about this time the piracies organised from Mdndavi, 
 and the raids of freebooters from Wdghar into the north- 
 western districts of newly-settled Kdthidwar, had become 
 so intolerable that intervention of some kind could be no 
 longer postponed. Accordingly, in October 1809, separate 
 engagements were obtained from Jamdddr Fathi Muham- 
 mad and from Diwdn Hansrdj, by which either leader, on 
 behalf of his puppet master, engaged to eradicate piracy 
 and to stop incursions across the Ran into Kdthidwdr. 
 
 These engagements failed altogether of their object. 
 Piracy by sea and depredations from Wdghar went on 
 as before. The British Government remonstrated again 
 and again, but its representations fell unheeded equally at 
 Mdndavi and at Bhiij. 
 
 In October 18 13 Jamdddr Fathi Muhammad died, 
 leaving two sons, Husain Miydn and Ibrahim Miydn. 
 The following month, the mad Rdo Rdidhan died also. 
 The succession to the principality then lay between two 
 children, one the illegitimate son, and the other the legiti- 
 mate nephew of the late Rdo. By the influence of the 
 Muhammadan party the former obtained the preference, 
 and In January 18 14 he was Installed upon the ^^rtf/ under 
 the title of Rdo Bharmalji. Still, the actual administration 
 of affairs lay with the brethren Husain Miydn and Ibrahim 
 Miydn, and In their hands the young Rdo and his cousin, 
 Ladobd, were prisoners of State and nothing more. 
 
 In April 1 8 14 Captain McMurdo was deputed from 
 Kdthidwdr to visit Jamdddr Husain Miydn for the purpose 
 of inducing him to coerce the marauders in Wdghar. 
 Captain McMurdo reported, as the result of this visit, 
 his conviction that the control of Wdghar was beyond the
 
 250 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 power of the Kutch Government. His notice of the 
 Jarejd vassals on this occasion is significant. ' The 
 feudatories,'^ he wrote, ' which compose the general force 
 of the State, cannot be induced to act for a length of 
 time sufficient to reduce the petty Chieftains ; and it is 
 averse to the principle, as also to the supposed interest of 
 these feudatories, to aid the Government in subverting or 
 limiting the power of Girdsids similarly situated to them- 
 selves.' 
 
 In September 1814 Ibrahim Miydn was murdered, 
 and in the following January his brother, Husain Miydn, 
 fell from power. The men who succeeded to the chief 
 place in the young Rdo's councils were inimical to British 
 interests. One of their first acts was unceremoniously to 
 dismiss from the capital the native representative of the 
 British Government. Shortly afterwards the Wdghar- 
 banditti, becoming more insolent than ever, attacked 
 and plundered Captain McMurdo's camp in Kdthid- 
 wdr. The British Government, provoked at last beyond 
 endurance, addressed an ultimatum to Rdo Bharmalji in 
 November 18 15, giving him 24 hours to comply with 
 its demands for satisfaction. At the same time, in order 
 to conciliate the Jdrejd feudatories of the Province, a 
 proclamation was circulated, assuring them that, so long 
 as they refrained from interference with the operations 
 about to be undertaken against the Rdo, their rights and 
 privileges would be respected by the British Government. 
 It is worthy of remark that the letter, by which the Resi- 
 
 * Page 8 of Major Shortt's Blue Book. Para. lo of the letter to Resident 
 at Barodil. 
 
 '^ These are not to be confounded with the outlaws, of whom so much 
 has been lately heard in K;ithi<iwdr. The latter are W.-ighars by tribal desig- 
 nation, are subjects of the Gdikwdr, and reside in the Kdthidw.ir District of 
 Okhdmandal ; whereas the people mentioned in the text (being chiefly 
 WaghclA Rdjputs) arc from the locality Wdghar, and subjects of Kutch.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 251 
 
 dent at Baroda forwarded this proclamation for the 
 approval of the Bombay Government, appears to be the 
 origin of the phrase 'constitutional,' as applied to the 
 position of the Jdreja feudatories in the Government 
 of Kutch ; the Resident described them as ' respectable 
 Chieftains who form a constitutional branch of the 
 State.' 1 
 
 The British force entered Kutch on the 14th De- 
 cember and soon captured Anjar. It then moved on 
 towards the capital Bhuj, where no resistance was offered. 
 Captain McMurdo, the Political Officer accompanying 
 the troops, was at first in some doubts whether to treat 
 with Bharmalji, or with hii cousin Ladoba, as legitimate 
 Rdo of Kutch. He therefore assembled fifteen of the 
 principal Jdreja Chieftains in his tent, and explained to 
 them that the British Government ' wished to understand 
 whether the accession of Bharmalji to the gadi was accep- 
 table to their body, or whether, with the aid of our 
 Government to effect it, they would prefer the establish- 
 ment of Ladoba.' They unanimously gave their voice in 
 favour of Bharmalji ; and thereupon Captain McMurdo 
 proceeded to execute a treaty with Rdo Bharmalji. By 
 this instrument, dated J4th January 1816 His Highness 
 made full reparation for the depredations of his subjects 
 in Kdthidwdr, pledged himself to put a stop to such raids 
 and also to piracy for the future, and ceded to the British 
 Government the town of Anjdr with its dependent 
 lands. But for the purposes of the present note, the 
 most remarkable features in the arrangement are those 
 contained in Articles VOL and XHI. By Article VHI. 
 'the British Government, in consideration of the distracted 
 
 1 Page 12 of Major Shortt's Blue Book, Letter from Resident to 
 Bombay Govermnent, dated 7th August, 1815.
 
 252 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 state of the Government of Rao Bharmalji, and its ina- 
 bility to fulfil the above obligations without aid,' engaged 
 ' to cause such possessions as ' had * been alienated by the 
 treachery of his servants to be restored to His Highness' 
 authority.' Article XHI., which is of still greater im- 
 portance, runs as follows : 
 
 'A representative of the Honourable Company's Government 
 shall reside with the Rdo in the capital, in order that all questions 
 which may arise between the contracting^ Governments be dis- 
 cussed in a friendly manner, and the engagement of both parties 
 be watched over and preserved inviolate. This Vakil shall not 
 listen to any complaints, either from the Rdds Bhdydd or his 
 Minister; at the Rao's request, however, the Sarkar will afford 
 him its best advice.' 
 
 Immediately after the conclusion of the Treaty, the 
 British force was marched into Wdghar, in fulfilment of 
 the pledge given in Article VHL; and by the end of 
 February this turbulent District was completely subju- 
 gated for the Rdo.^ 
 
 * His Highness, Rao Bharmalji, was now for the first time in 
 undisputed possession of the Sovereignty of Kutch (with the 
 exception of the Anjdr Pargand ;'' and thus, after nearly twenty 
 years of turmoil, a descendant of the former Raos again ruled 
 the destinies of the Province.' 
 
 Captain McMurdo now became the first British Resi- 
 dent in Kutch. 
 
 Rdo Bharmalji's reign was short and bad. He chose 
 his public ministers and private associates from men of 
 low rank and bad character : gave himself up to drunk- 
 enness and every kind of debauchery ; murdered his 
 cousin Ladobd ; insulted the British Government ; and 
 finally evinced unmistakable signs of the insanity which 
 
 ' Raikcs' Memo., page 30 of the Selections Volume. 
 ' Ceded to the I^ritish Government under the Treatv.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 253 
 
 he had inherited from his father. As for the feudatory- 
 Chiefs of the Province, he made it his settled object to 
 sap their power in all ways, and especially ' by kindling 
 disputes in families, and espousing the cause of that branch 
 which was willing to lose its independence by applying 
 for his aid.' ^ He was much strengthened in this under- 
 taking by the prestige derived from his alliance with the 
 British Government. On the other hand, there is good 
 authority for believing that the Bhayad were bent on in- 
 subordination. Writing to the Bombay Government on 
 the state of the Waghar District in June 1816, Captain 
 McMurdo saicP: 
 
 ' The Girasias have a dire aversion to acknowledge the 
 supremacy of the Chief of their Bhayad,^ although they would 
 not hesitate to accept a foreign yoke. In this state of mind, 
 the smallest relaxation on the part of the Kutch Government 
 would instantly be followed by the overthrow of the Rao's 
 power in the District.' 
 
 Nevertheless Captain McMurdo's sympathies were 
 all on the side of these stiff-necked vassals. He was 
 of opinion that * on the strict preservation of the feudal 
 system of government, and the privileges of the Jarejas, 
 depended everything that could render Kutch at all 
 serviceable to our Government ; ' ^ and it is probable that 
 he acted on this principle quite as far as, with reference 
 to our treaty-pledge not to interfere between the Rao 
 and his Bhayad, could be considered justifiable. 
 
 With the increase of the Rao's misconduct, it began 
 
 ' Page 14 of Major Shortt's Blue Book. Captain McMurdo's letter of 
 30th January 181 8. 
 
 - Page 13 of Major Shortt's Blue Book. 
 
 ^ Greater condemnation than this it seems difficult to conceive, consider- 
 ing that the condition of this tenure was military service against all invaders. 
 
 * Page 15 of Major Shortt's Blue Book. Captain McMurdo's letter of 
 iith September 1818, para. 3.
 
 254 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 to be perceived by the Bhayad that their Chiefs alli- 
 ance with the British Government was sensibly cooling. 
 They, therefore, took heart of grace, and in September 
 1818 presented to Captain McMurdo a memorial, pro- 
 testing against the pressure put on them by the Rdo, and 
 befrorino;- that the British Government would intervene for 
 the reformation of the affairs of the Province.^ 
 
 ' This application, however, was negatived, and it is impos- 
 sible to surmise what might have been the result had not the 
 Rao placed himself in the light of an enemy by directly molest- 
 ing our villages in the Anjar Pargana, and by attacking the 
 town of Arisir in Waghar, at a time when its Chief was, in con- 
 formity with the first Treaty, in attendance on Captain McMurdo 
 for the settlement of his differences with the Darbar.' 
 
 In November 18 18 Captain McMurdo was authorised 
 to ' open a communication with the principal Chiefs, and 
 to declare the readiness of the British Government to co- 
 operate with them in deposing Rao Bharmalji, and con- 
 ferring the Government of Kutch on whomever they 
 might consider to be the legitimate successor.' ^ Early in 
 the following year a British force entered Kutch ; and 
 the camp was soon joined by the principal Jareja feuda- 
 tories. Bhiij was stormed, and the Rdo captured on the 
 25th March ; Captain McMurdo then consulted the 
 Jarejas regarding a successor to the gadi, and their 
 choice fell on Bharmalji's infiint son, who accordingly was 
 installed in the sovereignty of Kutch, under the title of 
 Rc-io Desalji, April 9th 1819. 
 
 To provide for the interval of the new Rdo's minority 
 a Regency had to be appointed ; and, although the 
 
 ' Page 95 of Major Shortt's Blue Book. Sir John Malcolm's Minute, 
 para. 21. 
 
 '^ From Government of India, to Government of Bombay, 28th Novem 
 ber 1818. Page 16 of Major Shortt's Blue Book.
 
 THE KAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 255 
 
 British Government would have preferred to abstain 
 from any direct share in the administration, it so far 
 yielded to the earnest desire of the Bhdydd as to consent 
 that the British Resident, Captain McMiirdo, should also 
 be the head of the Regency. 
 
 One of the first acts of the Regency was to pacify 
 Waghar. Many of the landholders in this tract had fled 
 from their estates on the approach of the British force 
 in 1 8 16, and had ever since been in a state of outlawry, 
 living by plunder. These now signed an engagement, of 
 which the preamble may be reproduced here : 
 
 ' The Darbar, as a punishment for our bad conduct, had 
 deprived us of our villages and Giras ; at present, however, the 
 Honourable Company's army having accomplished a reform in 
 the affairs of the Darbdr, the English Government has graciously 
 interfered and restored to us our Giras, &c. We do, therefore, 
 engage that henceforth none of us shall be guilty of improper 
 or troublesome conduct, and we engage to abide by the follow- 
 ing Articles.' 
 
 Of these ' following Articles ' some are worth notice. 
 For instance. Article VII. : 'We will perform the Rao's 
 service with fidelity. We will accompany the Darbar 
 troops when they are acting, and act in concert.' And 
 Article IX.: 'We have given a distinct deed to the 
 Darbar, under the guarantee of the Sarkar, for the pay- 
 ment for ever of an annual jamabandi (rental). The 
 specific jamabandi mentioned in it we shall yearly pay.' 
 Article X. : ' Should we have a necessity for money, 
 and wish to sell our villages, we engage to acquaint the 
 Sarkar beforehand.' And the document winds up : 
 ' In the above manner we engage to behave justly, 
 peaceably, and honestly, and not to act improperly or 
 infringe on our engagements.' 
 
 The next matter for which Captain McMurdo had to
 
 256 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 provide was the settlement of the future relations of the 
 British and Kutch Governments. The instrument by 
 which this was effected is known as the Treaty of 181 9, 
 and continues up to the present time the most important 
 of all our engagements with Kutch. That the IVeaty 
 should be characterised by a special regard for the interests 
 of the Bhaydd is only what might have been expected, 
 as well from the general policy of the time, which, under 
 Captain McMurdo's direction, swayed strongly in their 
 favour, as from the particular circumstance that their open 
 co-operation in our recent proceedings deserved some kind 
 of recognition at our hands. But even with allowance 
 fully made on this account, the position secured to the 
 territorial vassals under the new constitution of Kutch 
 can hardly be regarded otherwise than as a singular 
 divergence from the ordinary feudal system of Rdjwdrd. 
 
 Thus the deposition of Bharmaljf, ordered in Article 
 II., is made to rest, not upon his proved incapacity to 
 govern, but upon ' the desire of the Jareja Bhdydd,' which 
 the Honourable Company accepts. In the next Article the 
 Company acknowledges Desalji as Rdo of Kutch, not by 
 right of birth, but by unanimous election of the Jdrejd 
 Chiefs. In Article IV., it is the Jdrejd Bhdydd which, 
 as being at the time the sole depositary of power, 
 'determines, with the Honourable Company's advice, that a 
 Regency shall be formed.' When, under the Vlth Article, 
 the Company agrees to leave a British force in Kutch, this 
 concession is made ' at the desire of Rdo Srf Desaljf and 
 the Jdrejd Bhdydd;' and for the payment of the force, 
 funds are guaranteed by the same ' Rdo Sri Desalji and 
 the Jdrejd Bhdydd,' as though the normal Government 
 of Kutch were not a despotism, but a limited monarchy 
 with the Bhdydd as a second estate. Again, in Article
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 257 
 
 XIV., which provides for the British Government obtaining 
 military aid from the Kutch Darbar upon requisition, a 
 special clause is added to the effect that this arrangement 
 * is not to be understood as imposing any duties on the 
 Jdrejd Bhdydd contrary to their established customs.' 
 
 But the most important Articles of the Treaty are the 
 Xth, XVIth, and XVIIIth, which I proceed to give at 
 length 
 
 'Article X. 
 
 ' The Hon'ble Company engages to exercise no authority 
 over the domestic concerns of the Rao, or those of any of the 
 Jareja Chieftains of the country ; that the Rao, his heirs and 
 successors, shall be absolute masters of their territory, and that 
 the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the British Government shall 
 not be introduced therein.' 
 
 'Article XVI. 
 
 ' The British Government, with the approbation of that of 
 Kutch, engages to guarantee by separate deeds the Jareja 
 Chiefs of the Bhayad, and generally all Rajput Chiefs in Kutch 
 and Waghar, in full enjoyment of their possessions ; and further 
 to extend the same protection to Mehta Lakshmi Das Wal- 
 labhji who, for the welfare of the Kutch Darbar, has acted in 
 concert with the Jarejas, and with great zeal and sincerity.' 
 
 'Article XVIII. 
 
 ' Previously to the execution of the deed of guarantee in 
 favour of the Jareja Bhayad, according to the tenor of the 
 XVIth Article, a written engagement shall be entered into by 
 them to abstain from the practice of infanticide ; and specifying 
 that, in case any of them do practise it, the guilty person shall 
 submit to a punishment of any kind that may be determined by 
 the Hon'ble Company's Government and the Kutch Darbar.' 
 
 With regard to Article X., above quoted, I may here 
 mention that I do not agree with Major Shortt in his in- 
 terpretation of the clause ' The Rao and his heirs shall 
 
 s
 
 258 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 be absolute masters of their territory.' In para. 43 of 
 that Officer's Report No. 22, dated 27th February 1867, 
 he cites the Gujarati version of the Treaty, to show that 
 the word 'their' should be 'their own,' i.e., the Rdo's 
 Khalsa domain as opposed to the feudal estates of the 
 vassals, and hence he derives an argument for the latter 
 being exempt from the authority of the Darbar. Having 
 read the Gujarati, I quite agree that the word 'their' 
 should be ' their own,' but the whole tenor of the Article 
 convinces me that the distinction intended by the framers 
 of the Treaty was not that of the Khalsa domain as 
 opposed to the estates of the Bhayad, but that of the 
 Kutch country as opposed to the British Empire. No 
 argument for or against the independence of the Bhaydd 
 can be drawn from a clause which clearly has no reference 
 to the internal distribution of power, and merely guaran- 
 tees the Province at large from subjection to external 
 domination. 
 
 Captain McMurdo's own view of the XVIth Article 
 may be gathered from his letters quoted at pages i 7 and 
 18 of Major Shortt's Blue Book.^ 
 
 * In guaranteeing,' he says, ' the privileges and possessions of 
 the Girasids, we take most effectual means to secure the peace 
 of the Province, to acquire the confidence and respect of all 
 classes, and to introduce that degree of influence and control 
 without which the State must again fall into anarchy and disorder.' 
 
 And again : 
 
 'We^ must continue to support our guarantee to them (the 
 l^hdydd) of their privileges. It was to secure this guarantee that 
 the Jarejas have come forward with so much, and such un- 
 expected, and such unusual candour and sincerity. It was for 
 this great benefit that they made conmion cause with us, and now 
 
 ' Letter to Bombay Government, dated 20th May 1819, para. 27. 
 ' Letter to Bombay Clovernment, dated loth July 18 19, para. 5.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 259 
 
 join without reserve in every public measure which we consider 
 requisite for the strict preservation of terms of alliance and 
 friendship.' 
 
 Captain McMurdo, it will be observed, speaks of the 
 guarantee of ' privileges ' as well as * possessions ;' and of 
 course there can be no higher authority as to the intcn- 
 tio7is with which he framed the Treaty than his own lan- 
 guage. But it is not the less worthy of note that the actual 
 wording of the XVIth Article of the Treaty in its English 
 version contemplates a guarantee for ' possessions ' only 
 and is silent as to * privileges.' Also it may be mentioned 
 that the general rule, which makes the English version of 
 Indian Treaties the only authoritative one, has been spe- 
 cially declared applicable^ to this particular engagement. 
 
 Another point which may be noticed in illustration of 
 Captain McMurdo's policy on this occasion is, his reply 
 to the Bombay Government's very reasonable enquiry 
 whether some stipulation could not be introduced into the 
 Treaty for commuting the feudal service due from the 
 Jareja Chiefs towards the Rao's Darbar into a pecuni- 
 ary contribution. On his mentioning the project to the 
 Chiefs^ : 
 
 * The utmost jealousy (he says), was evinced ; as it struck at 
 once at the roots of the independence of the Bhayad, which we 
 were actually at the same moment guaranteeing, the proposal 
 gave general alarm. I did not persist when I found the impres- 
 sion to be so serious, as I feel assured that, from the moment 
 our interference in Kutch becomes obnoxious to this body of 
 men, from that moment may be dated the ruin of the Province, 
 and of a system of society and manners which alone can render 
 Kutch useful to us in any point of view.' 
 
 ^ In 1843. See Major Shortt's Report No. 492, dated 9th November 
 1864, para. 22. Page 3 of his Blue Book. 
 
 * Page 17 of Major Shortt's Blue Book. Letter from Captain McMurdo 
 to the Bombay Government, dated 20th May 18 19, para. 24. 
 
 S 2
 
 26o THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 Evidently Captain McMurdo was possessed with a 
 strong partiality towards the Bhayad, and the result of 
 these feelings as brought to bear on the composition of 
 the Treaty was, as has been well said by Captain Raikes/ 
 that the utmost advantages of British interference were 
 secured to the Jarejd Chiefs, while * the burthens in- 
 separable therefrom were heaped on His Highness the 
 Rao, then a minor of two or three years of age.' 
 
 It has been already explained that the English is the 
 authoritative version of the Treaty of i8 19. The Treaty, 
 however, does not itself contain the guarantee given to 
 the feudatory Chiefs ; it merely stipulates that guarantees 
 in the form of ' separate deeds,' shall at some subsequent 
 time be issued to those concerned. For the specific terms, 
 therefore, of the guarantee, reference must be made to the 
 * separate deeds.' These documents are in Gujardti. 
 They are all in the same form, and, as a specimen, one 
 issued to the Chief of Balachor is exhibited as the last 
 entry in the last page of Major Shortt's Blue Book. The 
 following is as literal a translation of that paper as the 
 crude structure of the Gujardti dialect allows me to 
 make : 
 
 'Jarejd Arjunji', of Balachor, to wit: Whereas, in the 
 XVIIIth Article of the Treaty between the Company's Govern- 
 ment and the Rao's Darbar, it has been agreed that female 
 children arc not to be killed, and whereas you have accordingly 
 executed a writing, pledging yourself to abstain from this prac- 
 tice : you are hereby granted the guarantee of the Government 
 that your landed possessions, as tliey now are, shall so be con- 
 tinued to you from generation to generation, in perpetuity, 
 according to established custom. Wherefore continue to fulfil 
 your service to the Rao's Darbar.' 
 
 ' r.iij'c 51 of Blue Dojk. ra;:i. 12 of Captain Raikcs' I'cprjrt.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 261 
 
 How many such deeds were issued, it is impossible 
 now to ascertain. Major Shortt^ imagines that as many 
 as 215 must have been prepared for issue, but that the 
 number actually issued was comparatively insignificant. 
 He explains this discrepancy by the statement that the 
 feudatories all relied upon the ' generally accepted inter- 
 pretation of the sixteenth Article of the Treaty,' and 
 therefore regarded the actual possession of their specific 
 guarantee as a matter of indifference. It appears that the 
 Gujarati version of the Article referred to differs from the 
 English version in the following particular; the latter 
 engages to guarantee ' the Jareja Chiefs of the Bhayad, 
 and generally all Rajput CJdefs in Kutch and Wdghar, 
 in full enjoyment of their possessions,' whereas the former 
 engages to guarantee ' the Jareja Chiefs of the Bhayad 
 and generally all Gtrdsids, &c., in full enjoyment of their 
 possessions ' according to the ancient cnstom! Out of the 
 Gujarati reading of the Article, the belief became preva- 
 lent that our guarantee would cover the possessions and 
 privileges not merely of all Rajput Chiefs, but of all Gir- 
 asias at large, including even some Miil-Girdsias.^ This 
 belief, inasmuch as the Gujarati version of the Treaty is 
 not the authoritative one, had of course an erroneous 
 foundation; but under its influence there were very few 
 Chiefs who applied to the Resident for their guarantee. 
 
 It is stated in paragraph 6 of the Bombay^ Govern- 
 
 ^ Page 3 of the Blue Book. Memorandum No. 492, dated 9th Novem- 
 ber 1S64, para. 25. 
 
 "^ In the wilder times before British intervention, it was not uncommon 
 for the weaker landowners to write over their girds to whomsoever they 
 thought best able to protect them, reserving a fixed portion for themselves : 
 these, where they have retained only a minor share of the village lands and 
 taxes, without one in its government, arc termed Mul Girdsids. ' Mill ' 
 means 'original.' [See/fj/, 277 and 336.] 
 
 * Page 42 of the Blue Book.
 
 262 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 merit's letter No. 3,242A, dated 14th August 1857, that 
 'during Captain McMurdo's administration from 1819 
 until his death, the rights of the Jarejds and Chiefs in 
 general were strictly respected.' This statement, as in- 
 deed the bulk of the letter, is taken from a Minute^ 
 by the Hon'ble Mr. Lumsden, who, having at one time 
 been Resident in Kutch, was an authority on all matters 
 connected with the Province. But as far as I can make 
 out, the interval between the execution of the Treaty of 
 1 8 19, and the close of Captain McMurdo's administration 
 must have been very short. For, on the ist October 
 1820 there was another Resident in Captain McMurdo's 
 place, Mr. James Williams ; and the letter,^ bearing that 
 date, which Mr. Williams addressed to the Bombay 
 Government, is worth reading. Speaking of the Jdreja 
 Chieftains, he says : 
 
 * Their towns arc poor and villages thinly scattered, and I 
 cannot conceive that such a race of men could ever have been 
 formidable, or that it was at all necessary to consult their inte- 
 rests, so much as appears to have been done in the late Treaty. 
 If we review the events in Kutch of late years, we do not find 
 any remarkable instances of the devotion of the Jarejas to the 
 interests of their sovereign, the Rao. We, on the contrary, find 
 that they either assisted or tamely permitted Fathi Muhammad 
 to possess himself of Bhiij and the person of their prince, and 
 other usurpers of Alandavi, Miindrd, Lakpat, and other places.' 
 
 And, with reference to the deeds of guarantee, he 
 remarks 
 
 ' I regret the multiplicity of guarantees which our Government 
 are bound by Treaty to grant, as, even when the Rao attains 
 his majority, he cannot in any sense of the word be said to be 
 independent. We shall constantly be obliged to interfere, either 
 by his oppressing the Chiefs, whom we have guaranteed, or they 
 taking advantage of that circumstance and opposing his just 
 
 ' Pages 1 21-125 of the Blue Book. ' Pages 77-79 of the Blue Book.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 263 
 
 demands. I conceive that the Rao hardly possesses one-third of 
 the land in Kutch, the remaining two-thirds being divided 
 among the Jarejd Chieftains, the Wagheld and other Rajputs, 
 and the rehgious estabhshments.' 
 
 Mr. Williams then sketches the characters of the 
 principal Chiefs, and proceeds 
 
 ' Besides these chiefs, there are about 1 50 others, whom it would 
 be tedious to enumerate. Nearly all have hereditary enmities 
 against each other, and the intercourse is very little. They are 
 very seldom acquainted with anything which passes beyond 
 their own Districts, and of the country they are in general igno- 
 rant. It is only since the introduction of our influence in the 
 Councils of Government, and the presence of our troops, they 
 have discontinued plundering each other. However, outlaws 
 and thieves abound in Kutch, chiefly Mi'anas ; they are very 
 daring and pay little respect to the Rao's troops, and from the 
 Chiefs no assistance is to be expected.' 
 
 In another letter,^ dated April 14th 182 1, the same 
 officer pithily describes the standing" difficulty between 
 the Darbar and the Bhdyad, as follows : 
 
 * The Rao will always be desirous of taking something from 
 the Jarejas, and they of withholding due obedience from him.' 
 
 In January 1821 the Hon'ble Mountstuart Elphin- 
 stone. Governor of Bombay, visited Kutch, and embodied 
 the results of his personal inspection in a Minute'^ of con- 
 siderable length. The following extract gives Mr. El- 
 phinstone's view of our alliance with Kutch : 
 
 ' The use of a connection with Kutch to us is to curb the 
 plunderers of Waghar, to check the Khosas ' (robber tribes from 
 the desert of Thar and Parkur), ' to keep Sind at a distance, and 
 to afford an opening into that country in the event of our being 
 engaged in a war with the Amirs. The most desirable situation 
 of Kutch for us, is that it should be under a strong and indepen- 
 dent Government. The first of these conditions was found to be 
 unattainable, and the want of strength has led to the loss of 
 independence. We are now too deeply engaged in the affairs of 
 
 ' Page 19 of the Blue Book. ^ Pages 79-89 of the Blue Book.
 
 264 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 Kutch ever to retreat, and the option reserved to us of withdraw- 
 ing from the subsidiary alHance is rendered nugatory by our 
 guarantee of the rights of the Rao and of the Jarejas, Of all 
 our alliances, this is probably the most intimate and the most 
 difficult to dissolve, since to free us from its obligations requires 
 the consent not of one Prince, but of 200 nobks.' 
 
 Of the Rao's position toward the Jarejas, Mr. 
 Elphinstone said 
 
 'The Rao's ordinary jurisdiction is confined to his own demesne, 
 each Jarcjd Chief exercising unlimited authority within his own 
 lands. The Rao can call on the Jarejas to serve him in war, but 
 must furnish them with pay at a fixed rate, while they arc with 
 his army. He is the guardian of the public peace, and, as such, 
 chastises all robbers and other general enemies. It would seem 
 that he ought likewise to repress private war, and to decide all 
 disputes between Chiefs ; but this prerogative, though constantly 
 exerted, is not admitted without disputes. Each Chief has a 
 similar body of kinsmen, who possess shares of the original 
 appanage of the family, and stand in the same relation of 
 nominal dependence to him that he bears to the Rao. These 
 kinsmen form what is called the Bhdyad, or brotherhood of the 
 Chiefs, and the Chiefs themselves compose the Bhayad of the Rao.* 
 
 Proceeding to further details of the condition of the 
 Chiefs, Mr. Elphinstone observed 
 
 * The last revolution was effected at the request of the Jarejas, 
 and the last Treaty affords them a guarantee of their possessions. 
 It might therefore be expected that they would be content, and 
 accordingly I have not been able to learn that any dissatisfaction 
 exists among them.' . . . ' Some of them are reduced to poverty 
 by the numerous sub-divisions of their estates, every younger 
 brother being entitled to a share equal to one-third, and often to 
 one-half of that of the elder, but on the whole, the number of 
 estates that have descended to single heirs induces a suspicion 
 that in Kutch infanticide is not confined to females.' 
 
 And in req-ard to the policy to be pursued by the 
 Regency towards the Jdrcjas, he laid down the follow- 
 ing directions : 
 
 'It is necessary that they ' (the Jareja.s) 'should be treated
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 265 
 
 with attention and civility, and that care should be taken not to 
 encroach on their privileges. The vigilance of the Resident should 
 guard against the negligence, partiality, or corruption which may 
 be evinced by the Regency in deciding on the quarrels of the Chiefs. 
 His authority should repress all attempts on their part to renew 
 the practice of plunder or of private war, and his moderation 
 should guard against the temptation of adding to the Rao's posses- 
 sions by forfeitures even in cases where the resistance of a Chief 
 should have required the employment of military force.' ' Great 
 care should be taken to avoid any appearance of arrogance in our 
 treatment of the Jareja Chiefs ; but I do not think there is any 
 necessity for referring political questions to the decision of their 
 body, to the extent which a superficial view of the correspond- 
 ence of the Residency would lead us to think usual. It is 
 natural to suppose that the former Raos would consult the prin- 
 cipal Jarejas before they entered on any measure that required 
 the cordial co-operation of the Bhayad, and, in the absence of 
 an efficient sovereign, it is still more necessary that the Regency 
 should learn the sentiments of that body, but it does not appear 
 to be usual, or to be expected, or to be practicable, that all 
 should be assembled to give their votes even on the most im- 
 portant questions. The Resident should continue to consult the 
 greatest Chiefs, separately or together, as he thinks best suited 
 to the occasion, and may extend or confine the number, accord- 
 ing to the importance of the question ; but I should think fifty 
 or sixty the greatest number that need ever be consulted.' 
 
 Mr. Williams was succeeded in the Office of Resident by 
 Mr. Norris, in whose time (May 1822) a fresh Treaty Avas 
 concluded with Kutch. This engagement, however, has 
 no bearing on the matters now at issue : it merely pro- 
 vides that the Pargana of Anjar, ceded to the British 
 Government by Article X. of the Treaty of 1816, should 
 be restored to the Kutch Darbar on payment of an annual 
 compensation. In this way the British Government ceased 
 to hold any portion of Kutch in direct sovereignty. 
 
 After Mr. Norris came Mr. Gardiner,^ who made it 
 
 ^ Page 90 of Blue Book. Para. 54 of ]\Ir. Gardiner's letter to Bombay 
 Government, No. 11, dated 23rd March 1823.
 
 266 THE FAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 his aim to protect ' zealously and rigidly' the rights and 
 privileges of the Jarejds. In his turn Mr. Gardiner 
 was succeeded, about the year 1827, by Major (after- 
 wards Sir Henry) Pottinger, who appears to have retained 
 the position through the fifteen following years. 
 
 Major Pottinger's incumbency forms an important 
 portion of the present enquiry. The Regency continued 
 until 1834, and during this interval Major Pottinger com- 
 bined in his own person the two Offices of British 
 Resident and President of the Regency. No doubt the 
 people of Kutch were slow to distinguish the point at 
 which his functions ceased in the one capacity and 
 commenced in the other. It can easily therefore be 
 understood that in his hands the Regency acquired a 
 sway over the Chiefs, such as they would not have been 
 equally ready to acknowledge, had it emanated merely from 
 the Rdo's Darbar unsupported by any connection with 
 British Authority. In the Minute by Mr. Lumsden, from 
 which one quotation has been already given, it is said ^: 
 
 * With Sir Henry Pottinger and his able coadjutor, the Mehta 
 Lakshmi Das, a ccntraHsing policy was steadily pursued ; and 
 while in the main the independence of the Jarejds was respected, 
 such rights as interfered with the prospect of preserving public 
 order, or with the policy of a good and a strong Government, 
 were firmly but quietly taken out of their hands. They could 
 no longer put their rayats to death, nor could they venture 
 openly to disobey the direct orders of the Regency acting for 
 the Darbar.' 
 
 The tone in which Mr. Lumsden makes this statement 
 appears to imj:>ly an opinion that Major Pottinger's 
 policy, though springing from laudable motives, was not 
 altogether constitutional ; but it ai)pcars to me that, 
 considering the extraordinary constitution which Captain 
 
 ' Page 122 of Blue Book.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 267 
 
 McMurdo's Treaty had erected, the course pursued by 
 Major Pottinger is open to unquaHfied praise. 
 
 The Mehtd Lakshmi Dds, characterised by Mr. 
 Lumsden as 'able,' was probably a Brdhman. What 
 sort of coadjutors Major Pottinger had in the Jareja 
 Members of the Regency may be seen from the following 
 extract from a report^ written in February 1828, by 
 Captain Walter, Assistant Resident : 
 
 * From the Jareja Chiefs who are members of the Regency 
 no assistance has ever been derived. Considering the attainment 
 of the commonest quaHfications as beneath their dignity as 
 Rajputs, they are as Httle adapted from their ignorance, as it is 
 foreign to their habits, to interfere or advise in the affairs of the 
 Rao. On their own estates they evince the greatest ignorance 
 of their own affairs ; but during their customary residence at 
 Bhiij, they appear to be solicitous of nothing else ; and, without 
 their own individual interests are concerned, neither an opinion 
 nor judgment is ever expressed by them, excepting in cases 
 where the ministers, wishing to give weight to their own pro- 
 posals, bring the Jarejas to assert their concurrence. The 
 whole management and routine of the government will now 
 devolve upon the Minister and the Resident. . . This is not, 
 I am aware, the independent footing which was in the first 
 instance designed for the Government of this country ; but it 
 has become, by the course of events, the only method by which 
 it (the country) can become either a useful or respectable ally.' 
 
 In 1830 Sir John Malcolm, Governor of Bombay, 
 proceeded in person to Kutch and held a conference with 
 the Jarejas assembled at Bhuj to the number of nearly 
 one hundred. He told them plainly of the unexampled 
 consideration with which they had been treated, and the 
 bad return they had as yet made for such liberal usage. 
 
 ' Your lands,' he said,^ ' have been guaranteed to you and 
 your descendants by the British Government without the stipu- 
 lation of one kauri of pecuniary payment to it or to your prince, 
 
 ^ Page 20 of Blue Book. ^ Page 98 of Blue Book.
 
 268 THE RAO OF KUTCII AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 and without fixing any specific aid of troops in the event of 
 invasion or of the pubh'c peace being disturbed. You have sub- 
 sequently permitted small and despicable bands of plunderers to 
 traverse the country and carry off booty from the principal towns 
 of your prince. I have desired the Resident and the Minister 
 to inform me of the name of any person that distinguished him- 
 self on the late incursion of the Mi'anas, but not a name has been 
 brought to my notice ; and I find that a large body of Rdjput 
 Chiefs, boasting the name of Jdrejas and of devoted allegiance 
 to their ruler, considering themselves sheltered by our too 
 generous guarantee from the just resentment of their prince, 
 made not one effort to protect his towns from plunder, or his 
 fields from devastation, apparently satisfied if they saved their 
 own estates from similar evils ; and, in some instances, it is 
 strongly suspected that the exemption of these from attack was 
 the price of a base, if not of a traitorous inactivity. This,' said 
 Sir John, ' has passed, but let it be known in future that there 
 is nothing in the Bhandari, or guarantee obligation, which the 
 British Government has given to the chiefs of Kutch, that 
 exempts them from their allegiance, and the aid which, in virtue 
 of that, they are bound to give to their prince on every occasion 
 where his person or his property is at hazard. And any chief, 
 who is hereafter supine, and who does not exert himself to the 
 utmost to oppose and destroy his (the Rao's) enemies or plun- 
 derers, will be dealt with as one who aids them, and shall, as the 
 slightest punishment, be proclaimed to have forfeited all rights 
 to British protection. 
 
 ' The Resident,' Sir John added, ' has been instructed by me 
 to communicate with all of you individually upon this subject, 
 which is one of much importance for you fully to understand. 
 He will explain to you the mode in which you can best fulfil 
 obligations that belong to your condition, and which are not 
 specified in any engagement or Treaty, because they are 
 implied as duties that can neither be evaded nor neglected 
 without the total dissolution of those ties by which a Govern- 
 ment, like that of Kutch, can alone be maintained under its 
 present form and administration.' 
 
 The text of this .speech is taken from the very 
 valuable Minute,^ which Sir John Malcolm placed on 
 lilue IJook, pages 91 to 105.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCII AND HIS KINDRED. 269 
 
 record on his return from Kutch. The following extracts 
 from the same paper are of even greater importance. 
 
 * My communications with the Jarejas, and the line of 
 conduct I prescribed to the Resident, were grounded upon the 
 conviction that no motives but dread of the superior power of 
 the British Government, and reliance upon its faith, could 
 restrain them for a moment from those outrages which for 
 generations have been habitual to this class of chiefs. These 
 yield a respect bordering upon veneration, as far as outward 
 show, to the family of their ruler, considering him the head of 
 that aristocracy among whom Kutch has been long divided ; 
 but, with all their professions of allegiance, they have never 
 hesitated, when it suited their personal interests or gratified 
 their passions of revenge or ambition, to rebel against his 
 authority, to plunder his lands, and at times to dethrone or 
 murder the occupant of the masnad, placing, however, one of his 
 family in his place. This conduct on their part has led their 
 princes to similar acts of violence, when they have had absolute 
 power, either through the aid of some of their dependent chiefs 
 or foreign mercenaries. . . In dictating that Treaty with the 
 Jarejas, on which the present connection is founded, it is much 
 to be regretted that we guaranteed their estates, and freed them 
 from all specific duty or payment to their Prince, without impos- 
 ing one obligation upon them in return, except that they should 
 abandon the horrid practice of infanticide. Tliis humane 
 Article of the Treaty has, I fear, been much disregarded, and 
 we possess no means of enforcing its strict fulfilment. Secure 
 in our protection, and freed by it from all supervision or respon- 
 sibility in the management of their estates, the Jarcja Chiefs 
 have become indolent and indifferent to all matters that do not 
 immediately affect their personal interest. Lost in the enjoyment 
 of sensual pleasures, they neglect all improvement and endea- 
 vour to supply funds for such a course of life by every means of 
 oppression and outrage they can venture upon without the 
 hazard of their property. Not above one has exposed his estate 
 to forfeiture, but that should be rigidly enforced whenever they 
 join in rebellion or fail in their efforts to guard the country from 
 foreign plunderers. They should, in such case, either be de- 
 prived of their estates or be subjected to heavy fines. Nazrana 
 to their Prince, on succession or adoption, which they fully
 
 2 70 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 recognise, should be strictly enforced and fixed upon as high a 
 scale as usage warranted. The Chiefs of Kutch have encroached 
 upon their Ruler, till his revenue bears no just proportion to his 
 condition as their head, and it should be a principle of our 
 policy to take every fair advantage of events to increase his 
 power to the diminution of that depraved, disobedient, and 
 unmanageable class of petty Chiefs, whose existence in their 
 actual state is at variance with all plans of improvement, and 
 calculated to render unprofitable, if not to destroy, the alliance 
 we have formed with this Principality.' 
 
 Sir John JNIalcolm's views, it will be observed, vary 
 materially from those expressed by his predecessor, Mr. 
 Elphinstone. When such high authorities differ it may 
 appear presumptuous in me to offer an opinion either 
 way ; but my excuse must be that in Kathiawar I have 
 seen something, though not much, of the Jarejas per- 
 sonally. Of the two. Sir John Malcolm, in my humble 
 opinion, is far the better guide in this particular question. 
 Mr. Elphinstone wrote at a time when the Treaty of 
 1 8 19 had just been concluded, and wdien, besides the 
 Officers whose political sentiments had inspired that 
 Treaty, there were few, if any, wdio pretended to know 
 anything about Kutch ; naturally, therefore, he accepted 
 the Treaty as it stood, and confined his attention to devis- 
 inor arranifcments for the maintenance of the oblisji-atlons 
 expressed or implied within the four corners of that 
 document. Sir John Malcolm, on the other hand, had 
 the advantacje of visitinij Kutch after there had been a 
 ten years' trial of the Treaty, and after a protracted 
 Regency had given our Officers a closer insight into the 
 working of Jareja institutions ; further he had a personal 
 familiarity, acquired in Central India, with Rajput Govern- 
 ments in what, as compared with Kutch, might be called 
 their archetypal form. Hence, it is easy to understand
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 271 
 
 why he should have taken a broader view of the consti- 
 tution erected by us in Kutch than Mr. Elphinstone 
 considered necessary. He looked beyond the text of 
 the Treaty to the principles at its root, and finding those 
 principles to be inconformable to a feudal organisation, he 
 at once challenged them as unsound. I believe that the 
 standard used by Sir John Malcolm in arriving at this 
 judgment was the proper one. Except in the exaggera- 
 tion with which inheritances are divided and sub-divided, 
 and in the consequent aggravation of infanticide, Jareja 
 institutions do not seem originally to have differed in any 
 material respect from the ordinary Rajput type. The 
 divergencies from that type which Kutch now has to 
 show appear almost entirely traceable to British interven- 
 tion as their cause. Land for service, and service for 
 land comprised on either side the normal obligation of 
 the Prince and of his Chiefs, as well in Kutch as in Rajas- 
 than Proper; but by the Treaty of 18 19 we guaranteed 
 the Kutch Chiefs their lands without taking from them 
 any compensatory security that the service due to the 
 Rao, or rather the pecuniary equivalent rendered neces- 
 sary by our intervention, should be properly paid. 
 
 A new Treaty was executed with Kutch in 1832, but 
 it is quite irrelevant to the present discussion. The dis- 
 covery had been made that our pecuniary demands on 
 Kutch were heavier than could be satisfied from the 
 resources of so poor a State ; so by the modification of 
 former engagements on this head, a large remission was 
 conceded. 
 
 The next Treaty, dated 5th July, 1834, is more to the 
 purpose. By this time Rao Desalji had become old 
 enough to assume the management of his country. Ac- 
 cordingly the first Article provided that the functions of
 
 272 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 the Regency should terminate, and that His Highness 
 should * be placed in charge of the Government of his 
 country, under tJie constitutional and established advice 
 of his ministers and the members of the ydrcjd 
 Bhdydd: 
 
 The clause just quoted is a remarkable one, and I 
 doubt if a parallel is to be found for it in any other 
 Indian Treaty. It may be explained by reference to the 
 peculiar circumstances of the time and the locality. The 
 Rdo of Kutch was an inexperienced boy, powerless to 
 demand respect for his prerogative, and without any 
 choice but to accept whatever status the British Govern- 
 ment might assign him. The British Government, for 
 its part, desired to do only what was right ; but Sir John 
 Malcolm no longer guided its policy at Bombay, and his 
 successor, the Earl of Clare, had fallen back on the old 
 theory that Kutch was altogether an exceptional country, 
 that it contained the germ of a limited monarchy, and 
 that our obligations and our interests alike lay in the 
 development of the limiting power. 
 
 As regards the ministers, the obligation placed on the 
 Rdo to abide by their advice appears to me simply un- 
 meaning. In countries where ministers hold their place 
 by tenure other than that of the Prince's pleasure 
 such as the suffrages of Parliament or people, it would 
 have a very intelligible force ; but in Kutch, where the 
 Rdo has a right,^ not to be gainsaid, of consulting his 
 own fancy in the choice of ministers and changing them 
 as often as he pleases, any attempt on the part of a 
 minister, in virtue of the clause under notice, to force his 
 
 ' As a matter of fact, there has, for many years, ' been no responsible 
 Minister in Kutch.' See para. 45 of Major Shortt's Memo, dated 9th 
 November, 1864, page 6 of liluc Book.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 273 
 
 own political opinions on his master's acceptance would 
 be futile ; if persisted in, it could end only in his removal 
 from office by the Rdo. 
 
 And, as regards the Bhaydd, 'established and con- 
 stitutional' seem, according to my judgment, the last 
 words that should have been used to describe the 
 position arbitrarily assigned to this class among the 
 councillors of the Rao. Such adjectives cannot be 
 justified by reference to either our past experience in 
 Kutch or the general custom of Rajputana (a standard 
 which the Rajputs of Gujarat decidedly affect), or to any 
 special practice of the Jareja tribe. How unfitted even 
 the best of the Kutch feudatories were for the duties of 
 councillors, their conduct as members of the Regency 
 had already proved ; now and again, when their personal 
 interests had been touched, they had waked up to undue 
 activity, but otherwise they had taken no interest what- 
 ever in public affairs, and left everything to the disposal 
 of the British Resident and the Brahman Minister. 
 Again, in Rajputana it is true that, in the fighting days 
 of old, when the Prince had no other stay but the feudal 
 contingents of his brotherhood, these martial vassals held 
 and exercised the right of advising him In assembled 
 Darbar on all questions involving Issues of peace and 
 war, questions of foreign policy especially ; also that his 
 Minister for War, charged with the political supervision 
 of the fiefs (the Pardkdn), has always been selected from 
 this body ; but still In the civil administration of the 
 country none of the feudatory Chiefs have ever been 
 admitted to a share. For this business there have always 
 been one or more separate Ministers of a different 
 caste, usually Brahmans, and It Is In consultation with 
 them alone, irrespective of any aid from his Chiefs, that 
 
 T
 
 2 74 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 the Prince promulgates legislative enactments affecting 
 the general rights and wants of the community. The 
 Chiefs cling with pride to their right of a seat in the 
 Darbar, and thus assembled, they still form nominally the 
 Prince's Council of State ; but their attendance, whatever 
 it may once have been, is now little more than a matter 
 of pomp and ceremony. So it is too with the Jarejds 
 themselves everywhere out of Kutch. The foremost 
 Jareja Princes after the Rao of Kutch are the Jam of 
 Nawanagarand the Thakur of Murvi in Kathiawdr ; both 
 spring from the same stock as the Rdo, the Thakur 
 representing an elder branch of the family, and the J dm 
 being the descendant of a Prince who usurped the throne 
 of Kutch, but was afterwards expelled from the Province 
 by the legitimate Ruler in the sixteenth century. Both 
 the Jam and the Thakur are, if my recollection serves 
 me right, perfect autocrats within their respective States, 
 at any rate so far as their Bhayad is concerned. On all 
 these grounds I believe that the British Government's 
 specific recognition by Treaty of the Kutch Bhdydd's 
 right to a voice in their Prince's Councils was an unneces- 
 sary innovation. 
 
 The clause, however, let its merits be as they may, at 
 any rate affords some argument against those authorities 
 who contend that the normal position of the feudatory 
 Chiefs was one of complete independence of the Rdo's 
 authority. If the Rdo was to exercise his power subject 
 to check from the Bhdydd, then that power must have 
 extended beyond the limits of' his own Khdlsd domain. 
 Otherwise he would have been worse off than his sub- 
 jects ; for they would have had a right to interfere in the 
 management of his private estate, while they on their 
 estates would have been independent of any person's
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 275 
 
 control, and specially of his. Thus the interposition of 
 the Bhdyad's advice must imply the possession by the 
 Rao of a general power to supervise the affairs of all 
 Kutch, such as would naturally be attributed to a Prince 
 deriving his title not from any city or District but from 
 the Province at large. 
 
 From the date of Rao Desalji's accession to power, 
 under the terms of this Treaty, up to the year 1842, an 
 interval of eight years, the records contain little that is of 
 interest. About the close of this period Major Pottinger 
 was succeeded by Mr. Malet. On the ist June 1842, 
 Mr. Lumsden, as President of a Commission appointed 
 to enquire into the relations of the Thakur of Murvi 
 towards the Rao of Kutch in respect of the Pargand of 
 Adui, submitted his report^ on the subject, proving that 
 Adui, though within the geographical limits of Kutch, 
 was held by the Thakur, not as an estate derived by 
 * Bhayad' grant from the Rao, but as an original and 
 integral portion of an independent sovereignty, the bulk 
 of which lay round Murvi in Kathiawdr on the other side 
 of the Gulf of Kutch. In this report Mr. Lumsden took 
 up and discussed the several items comprising the Rdo's 
 prerogative over his Bhdydd, with a view to ascertain 
 whether any such rights had ever been exercised by the 
 Rdo in Adui. Mr. Lumsden's statements on this head 
 are intended to be of general application, but, as might 
 be expected, they are not altogether free from interfusion 
 with the particular case of Adui. On the whole it may 
 be deduced that he recognised the possession by the 
 Rdo of the following rights over the Bhdydd : 
 
 I. The right to summon the Bhdydd for the perform- 
 
 * Pages 105 to 113 of the Blue Book. 
 T 2
 
 2 76 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 ance of military service, subject to the condition of sub- 
 sisting them and their troops. 
 
 II. The right to settle appeals from the Bhdydd in 
 their disputes with each other. 
 
 III. The right to recover stolen property, or its 
 value, from those members of the Bhdydd into whose 
 towns it had been traced. 
 
 IV. The sovereignty of the Kutch waters (a term 
 which includes the enjoyment of the customs and other 
 duties at all ports). 
 
 V. The right to collect certain trifling dues from 
 particular villages belonging to Jdrejd Chiefs. 
 
 VI. The right, in cases of disobedience, to enforce 
 the Darbdr's legitimate orders by the imposition of 
 Mohsuls,^ or by the coercion of a military force. 
 
 Other points which Mr. Lumsden represented as being 
 claimed by the Rdo were (VII.) the right to levy a sub- 
 scription from the Bhdydd for public works; (VIII.) the 
 right to place police posts on all necessary occasions in 
 Jdrejd towns, and (IX.) the power of saddling the estates 
 of Jdrejd Chiefs with the perpetual payment of certain 
 religious grants. Of these Mr. Lumsden disallowed the 
 first, and considered the second doubtful ; with regard to 
 
 ' The word * Mohsul' (meaning, I believe, 'sent) is peculiar to Gujardt, 
 but the practice it represents is a common one in RAjputdn.i under the name 
 ' Rozfnd.' The following passage is extracted from Tod's ' Riijasthdn,' 
 vol. i., p. 146 'It often becomes necessary to see justice enforced on a 
 Chief or his dependant, but it begets eternal disputes and disobedience. 
 \Vhcn delay in these matters, or to the general commands of the Prince, is 
 evinced, an officer, or herald, is deputed with a party of four, ten, or twenty 
 horse or foot, to the fief of the Chief at whose residence they arc to take up 
 their abode ; and carrying, under the seal, a warrant to furnish them with 
 specified daily {rozimi) rations, they live at free quarters till he is quickened 
 into compliance with the commands of the Prince. This is the only accele- 
 rator of the slow movements of a R.ljput Chieftain in these days, whether for 
 his appearance at Court or for the performance of an act of justice. It is 
 often carried to a harassing excess and causes much complaint.'
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 277 
 
 the third, he admitted that some rare instances of reh'gious 
 grants having been imposed on the Bhdydd were dis- 
 coverable in the early history of the Province. Beyond 
 the nine items above enumerated, * no other authority,' he 
 wrote, ' was formerly exercised or is now claimed as an 
 heir-loom by the Darbar.' Finally he considered that the 
 right of the Bhayad to ' exclusive civil and criminal juris- 
 diction within their own towns and territories ' was in- 
 contestable. 
 
 Mr. Lumsden's views, as summarised in the preceding 
 paragraph, are of some importance, for he shortly after- 
 wards succeeded Mr. Malet as Political Agent in Kutch, 
 and thus obtained an opportunity for practically enforcing 
 them. Writing from Bhiij in June 1843, he remarked on 
 ' the social system of the Kutch Girdsids ' as follows : 
 
 ' It recognises a partition of jurisdiction as well as of land ; 
 but as this is incompatible with an efficient government, and, 
 indeed, would speedily lead to anarchy, we find it modified by 
 circumstances, and an uncertain scale of independence accom- 
 panying the possession of landed property. The representa- 
 tives of all the great families throughout Kutch are called the 
 Tilats. These, in their turn, have shared giras with their 
 younger brethren, and the latter again among their heirs. This 
 minute sub-division of property and rights has led to the follow- 
 ing results : we find everywhere numerous petty proprietors who 
 live in perfect independence, exercising in their own persons the 
 civil and political authority which is elsewhere vested in the 
 Chief. In many cases younger branches, who have either 
 equalled or surpassed the elder in wealth and influence, have 
 come to be regarded, by prescription, as the representatives of 
 distinct houses ; while in others, by a sort of family compact, 
 they acknowledge and support their tilats! [See/(?j/, 336.] 
 
 Above, I have submitted an opinion that Article I. of 
 the Treaty of 1834, in so far as it subjected the Rao to 
 the advice of his Bhayad, was inequitably prejudicial to
 
 2 78 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 the Rcio's prerogative. I now have to show that in the 
 year 1849 Rao Desalji, after fifteen years' experience of 
 power, sent in to the Political Agent (at this time Colonel 
 Roberts) a formal protest against the clause in question, 
 and demanded that the Treaty containing it should be 
 authoritatively modified. The Rao based his argument 
 upon general principles, and expressly declared that, as 
 he was on good terms with his Bhayad, his motion was 
 not caused by the pressure of any special circumstances. 
 The general government of the Province 'has always,'^ 
 he said, * been carried on by the Rao's own authority : so 
 in this Article it should be plainly written that, wherever 
 the Government guarantee exists, there the Rdo Sahib, 
 or his descendants, should act with the advice of his 
 brethren ; and, for the remainder, that it be in accordance 
 with the ancient usages of the Province.' This requisi- 
 tion appears to me to have been a reasonable one. The 
 Bombay Government, however, under the signature of 
 Mr. Malet, now become Chief Secretary,''^ refused to alter 
 the Article, on the ground that it concerned the interests 
 of others besides the Rdo and the British Government. 
 
 After Colonel Roberts, the next Political Agent in 
 Kutch was Mr. Ogilvie, whose views, so far as they can 
 be gathered from the following^ extract, appear to have 
 been sound : 
 
 ' His Highness the Rdo finds it so difficult to satisfy the 
 Chiefs of Wdghar that he prefers that disputes among them 
 should be investigated by the Political Agent. As the object of 
 the guarantees to the Chiefs is, I apprehend, limited to protec- 
 tion from oppression, I have discountenanced the interpretation 
 they wish to give them, of independence of their Sovereign, and 
 have endeavoured to strengthen his Highness's authority by 
 
 ' Page 23 of Blue Book. ' Page 23 of Blue Book. 
 
 ' Report dated 5th January 1850 page 35 of Blue Book.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 279 
 
 encouraging references to him and by conducting all enquiries 
 in concert with him.' 
 
 Mr. Ogilvie was succeeded about 1852, by Colonel Le 
 Grand Jacob, an officer of considerable ability, whose pre- 
 vious training had been in Kathiawar. At that time and 
 up to the arrival of Major Keatinge, the present Agent, 
 there was a school of Political Officers in Kathiawar, whose 
 distinctive feature was the extravagant length to which 
 they carried the principle of protecting the subject from 
 his Sovereign. Colonel Jacob cannot, I believe, have 
 served so long as he did in Kathiawar, without imbibing 
 some at least of the prejudices of this school. 
 
 It was during Colonel Jacob's tenure of office that his 
 Assistant, Captain Raikes, compiled the Memoir on the 
 Kutch vState contained in the printed volume of Selections 
 from the Bombay Government's Records. The date of 
 the Memoir is November 1854. Captain Raikes' de- 
 scription of the judicial system observed in Kutch will be 
 found at pages 74-75 of the volume, and may here be 
 quoted : 
 
 * A considerable portion of the western part of Kutch apper- 
 tains to the chief members of his Highness's Bhayad, whose 
 possessions in that District far exceed the khalsa possessions. 
 These Chiefs are virtually independent of the Darbar ; they pay 
 nothing to their Sovereign, exctpt some customary presents on 
 the marriage of the heir apparent, or on some such occasion. 
 Within their own estate they take cognisance of disputes, thefts, 
 &c., and except in serious cases, such as murder, and the like, 
 which come before the Darbar, no interference is exercised in 
 their jurisdiction. The peculiar circumstances under which the 
 Treaty of 18 19 was entered into, will account for the easy terms 
 on which the Chiefs of Kutch were allowed to benefit by our 
 interference, while the Darbar had, and has still, to bear all the 
 expenses resulting from the arrangements then and subsequently 
 made. The Chiefs of the Arbrasar' (the Western Districts)
 
 28o THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 ' then declared that the only claim the reigning Prince had on 
 them was for service with their respective quotas of troops on 
 any great emergency. This principle appears to have been 
 admitted at the time, and thenceforward to have formed the 
 basis of our relations with them, in addition to which they enjoy 
 our guarantee for the security of their possessions, which has a 
 tendency to make them feel more independent of the Darbar 
 than previously. The Chiefs of Wdghar or the eastern portion 
 of Kutch (the greater part of the centre being khdlsd) are difife- 
 rently situated. It was for their punishment that we first 
 entered Kutch ; after which, for a considerable period, they were 
 treated as public enemies, and subsequently, on their estates 
 being restored to them under certain restrictions, they bound 
 themselves, amongst other things, to pay a certain sum per 
 plough annually to the Darbar ; in addition to which, the neces- 
 sity of exercising a more direct control over Wdghar, and the 
 arrangements consequent thereon for the cognisance of all crimi- 
 nal cases, naturally led to more direct interference in the afifairs 
 of the different Chiefs than was requisite in the Arbrasar. The 
 affairs of Waghar, however, have been more under the Agency 
 than is the case with other parts of the Principality, the duties 
 thereof devolving chiefly on the Assistant, under whom also is 
 the police of the District. The above remarks were requisite to 
 show the various degrees of subordination to the head of the 
 State in which the different Chiefs are situated. All murders 
 and serious criminal offences are supposed to be reported to the 
 Darbdr. In Wdghar they would primarily be taken notice of by 
 the police, and then handed over to the Darbdr authorities ; in 
 the Arbrasar, by the Chief on whose state they occur ; or by 
 the Darbar officers, if in the khdlsd possessions, other than those 
 situated in Waghar, which are subject to the regular police 
 system. Civil disputes in the Arbrasar are generally disposed of 
 by arbitration, or by the Chief; and only in the event of some 
 great outrage being committed and an appeal being made, would 
 the Darbdr interfere. In the khdlsd possessions, such cases are 
 generally disposed of by arbitration, and in Wdghar also, though 
 often in the latter District, the assistance of Government and the 
 Darbdr is called into requisition before an adjustment can be 
 effected. It will thus be seen that comparatively few cases, 
 cither civil or criminal, come before the Darbdr authorities in 
 Bhuj, except such as arise at the capital, or one of the neigh- 
 bouring large towns of Mdndavi, Mundrd, &c.'
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 281 
 
 Colonel Jacob, during the last six months of 1856, 
 which were also the last of his service in Kutch, sent in 
 a series of reports ^ to the Bombay Government upon 
 various disputes that had arisen between the Rdo and 
 certain members of the Bhdydd. Four general prin- 
 ciples were at stake in the decision of these particular 
 cases, viz., (i) whether or not the British Government, in 
 vindication of the guarantee granted to the feudatories, 
 was under any obligation to check the Rdo's syste- 
 matic acquisition of claims, by purchase and mortgage, 
 upon their lands ; (2) whether the Rao had the right of 
 promulgating laws applicable to the Province at large 
 without the consent of his Bhayad ; (3) whether the Rao 
 was entitled to issue Mohsuls on the vassals of his 
 Bhayad ; and (4) what was the extent to which the 
 Bhaydd could enforce the power of advice reserved to 
 them by the first Article of the Treaty of 1834. On all 
 these points Colonel Jacob entertained opinions strongly 
 adverse to the pretensions of the Rao. In one letter^ he 
 even spoke of the Rao as occupying towards the Jareja 
 Chiefs the position ' in many respects ' of a * rival 
 Zami'ndar.' 
 
 Lord Elphinstone was at this period Governor of 
 Bombay, and his Councillors were the same Messrs. 
 Lumsden and Malet who, as successive Political Agents 
 in Kutch, have already been mentioned in this Note. 
 Even, therefore, if there were no certain information 
 forthcoming on the point, it might reasonably be pre- 
 sumed that Lord Elphinstone, in disposing of the difficult 
 questions submitted by Colonel Jacob, should have 
 
 ^ Two of these Reports are given in the Blue Book, viz. : No. 113, 
 dated 26th July 1856, at pages 39 to 41, and No. 188, dated isth December 
 1856 (with enclosures), at pages 1 14 to 118. 
 
 2 Para. 27 of No, 113, dated 26th July 1856, page 41 of Blue Book.
 
 282 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 availed himself largely of the special local knowledge 
 possessed by his colleagues. But in the Blue Book 
 which the Bombay Government has now sent up to the 
 Government of India, the arcana of the Bombay Secre- 
 tariat in regard to this correspondence are laid bare ; the 
 whole Office-file of Draft Resolutions by the Secretary 
 and Minutes by the several Members of Government is 
 given at length, so that the share which each writer had 
 in the orders finally issued by the Bombay Government, 
 can be distinctly traced. In this way it is clear that the 
 final orders, as contained in Mr. Secretary Anderson's 
 letter^ No. 3, 242 A, dated 14th August 1857, owe their 
 inspiration to Mr. Lumsden. 
 
 The letter opens with a sketch of the relations 
 between the Rdo of Kutch and his feudatories at the 
 time when the Treaty of 18 19 was executed: but, as 
 this sketch is merely a summary of the conclusions at 
 which Mr. Lumsden had arrived, sixteen years pre- 
 viously, in the course of his enquiry into the Adui 
 dispute, and as those conclusions have been already 
 given above, there appears to be no necessity for their 
 further quotation. Perhaps, however, I may be permitted 
 to remark that throughout Mr. Lumsden's views there 
 appears to be insufficient allowance made for the circum- 
 stances of the times anterior to British connection with 
 Kutch. First, in Kutch, as in Rajputdna and in every 
 other country during the feudal ages, when might both 
 at home and abroad was equivalent with right, the 
 Prince's main desideratum was the military service of his 
 vassals ; this secured, he willingly conceded to them such 
 
 ' This letter will be found at pages 41 to 45 of the Blue Book. By a 
 method of arrangement calculated to confuse, the Minutes, &c., out of which 
 it was evolved are separated from it by much other matter ; they occupy 
 pages 121 to 132.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 283 
 
 a trifle as independence of action on their own estates ; 
 but, could he have foreseen that the days would come 
 when, under the shadow of the British peace, military 
 service should wane into an unmeaning formula, and his 
 relations with the permanent power raise the consolida- 
 tion of his jurisdiction into a great necessity, the arrange- 
 ments he would have desired to make for the future 
 would hardly have been the same as those that had 
 sufficed for the past. In the second place there never 
 was a State in which the power of the Sovereign had 
 fallen to so low an ebb as Kutch just before our ap- 
 pearance ; but for British intervention the dynasty 
 would probably have altogether disappeared, and its place 
 have been taken by some usurper of a calibre calculated 
 to restore the central authority to its normal supremacy. 
 
 The letter proceeded to charge the Rao with pur- 
 suing, cautiously but incessantly, a still more centralising 
 policy than had been initiated by the Regency under 
 Colonel Pottinger. He ' has lost no opportunity,' it is 
 said, ' of aggrandising himself, and of increasing his own 
 powers, while he lowered the powers of the Jarejas.' 
 
 The specific issues raised by Colonel Jacob were decided 
 in the following manner. Firstly, with regard to the Rao's 
 acquisition of claims on the estates of the guaranteed Chiefs, 
 it was ruled that such claims could give him no right to 
 encroach on the 'prerogative' of the Jareja Bhayad, nor 
 to appropriate their lands without their express consent ; 
 further, that if he endeavoured to enforce any such pre- 
 tension, the British Government would interfere and vin- 
 dicate its guarantee. Secondly, with respect to legisla- 
 tion, it was decided that, as the Rao, before the Treaties 
 of 1816 and 1819, had not had power to legislate for any 
 except his own subjects, he was not entitled now to trans-
 
 284 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 gress that bound and to legislate for the * subjects ' of the 
 Bhaydd, except with the consent of the Bhdyad ; it was 
 necessary that he should be reminded that ' Section i6 of 
 the Treaty of 1819 secures to the Chiefs, by the term 
 *' full enjoyment of their possessions," the enjoyment also 
 of those privileges which such possessions conferred.* 
 Thirdly, as to issuing Mohsuls on the rayats of the 
 Chiefs, the practice was declared contrary to the ancient 
 constitution and customs of Kutch, and could not be per^ 
 mitted by the British Government in case of an appeal 
 being received from any Chief. Lastly, the right of 
 advice secured to the Darbar by the Treaty of 1834, was 
 defined as rendering their consent necessary to any law 
 intended to have force throughout the whole of Kutch, 
 but as not binding the Rao to their views in matters 
 which concerned his own prerogative. 
 
 The first of these decisions, placing restrictions on the 
 Rdo's power of acquiring land from the guaranteed 
 Girasids, approximates to a reversal of orders issued by 
 the Court of Directors. So far back as in 1843 Mr. 
 Lumsden, while Political Agent in Kutch, had ^ invited 
 the interference of the Bombay Government to prevent 
 ^ the Rdo obtaining lands by purchase and mortgage ; and 
 in May 1848 the Bombay Government had issued an ab- 
 solute interdict on the practice. In 1849, however, the 
 Court of Directors had - caused the interdict to be with- 
 drawn by instructions to the following effect : 
 
 ' We do not, as at present informed, agree in your opinion 
 that it is desirable to discourage the sale by Jdrejds of their 
 
 * Page 31 of Blue Book. Letter from Mr. Lumsden to Bombay Govern- 
 ment, No. 363, dated 14th July 1843. 
 
 ' Page 114 of Blue Book. Extract para. 34 from Court's Despatch, No. 
 17, dated 1 8th July 1849. ^ce also, on same page, letter from Bombay Govern- 
 ment to the Political Agent, No. 4021, dated 25th September 1849.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 285 
 
 possessions to the Rao. Lieutenant-Colonel Roberts states that 
 there is nothing contrary to custom in the sale of such estates ; 
 and, as the Jdrejds are almost all greatly in debt, there seems 
 no reason against their liberating themselves from it by restoring 
 the lands to the authority from which they are held.' 
 
 It is open, therefore, to doubt whether the renewal of the 
 interdict (for the decision virtually amounts to that) was 
 within the competence of the Bombay Government to 
 order. 
 
 Another of these decisions, that relating to the impo- 
 sition of Mohsuls on sub-vassals, the Bombay Govern- 
 ment was compelled to modify a few months after its 
 issue, in deference to the strong representations of Colonel 
 Jacob's successor, Colonel Trevelyan. The new Political 
 Agent had, I believe, previously seen political service 
 under the Central India Agency; and this circumstance 
 would account for his taking a broader view of the Rdo's 
 relations towards the British Government and the Bhayad 
 than he might have favoured if his experience, like that 
 of some of his predecessors, had been confined to Kutch 
 and the neighbouring territory of Kathiawar. On the 
 27th June 1858 Colonel Trevelyan^ forwarded to the 
 Bombay Government a Memorandum prepared by his . 
 Assistant, Captain Raikes, in which it was satisfactorily 
 proved that the right of the Rao to impose Mohsuls on 
 his feudatory chiefs and their vassals was one which had 
 long been exercised and but recently called in question. 
 Colonel Trevelyan gave his opinion that the exercise of 
 this right in no way infringed the British Government's 
 guarantee to the feudatories, but on the contrary was 
 essential to the maintenance of the Rao's supremacy. 
 
 1 Blue Book, pages 46 to 52. Letter from Political Agent, No. 58.
 
 286 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND IILS KINDRED. 
 
 *Althoug-h,'^ he added, ' the possession of their estates, 
 security from oppression, and peaceable enjoyment of 
 their rights were (guaranteed to the Chiefs, it could never 
 have been intended (in my humble opinion) that they 
 should be exempted from the le^i^itimate authority of their 
 Sovereign.' With this vindication, however, of the Rdo's 
 general title to impose a Mohsul on any person in all 
 Kutch, Colonel Trevelyan coupled a suggestion that 
 Mohsuls on vassals of guaranteed Chiefs should be im- 
 posed through the Chief, and that, in cases to which the 
 Rao might himself be a party, reference should in the 
 first instance be made to the Agency. The compromise 
 thus proposed was'"^ accepted by the Government of Bom- 
 bay and approved^ by the Secretary of State. But when 
 in May 1859 it was communicated to the Rao, His 
 Highness stood on his right as recognised by the Bombay 
 Government, and refused to have that right circumscribed 
 by any conditions. What Colonel Trevelyan may have 
 thought of the Rdo's rejection of the arrangement, the 
 papers received from Bombay do not show. He appears 
 to have left Kutch without taking any further action in 
 the matter. He even omitted to inform the Bombay 
 Government of the objections entertained by the Rdo, 
 notwithstanding that the Rdo had sent him a formal note* 
 on the subject, specially requesting that it might be trans- 
 mitted to the Government. The question, therefore, has 
 remained open up to the present time. 
 
 Colonel Trevelyan's inaction, which at first sight ap 
 
 * Para. 5. 
 
 * Pa^'c 52 of Blue IJook. Bombay Government to Political Agent, No. 
 157, dated 15th January 1859. 
 
 ^ Page 53 of Blue Book. Despatch from Secretary of State to Bombay 
 Government, No. 29, dated 14th October 1859. 
 
 * This note, dated 27th May 1859, will be found translated at page 62 of 
 the Blue Book.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 287 
 
 pears so strange, is probably attributable to the circum- 
 stance that Rdo Desalji, shortly after the presentation of 
 his note of remonstrance, fell ill, and so, for the second 
 time during his reign, the Government was undertaken 
 by a Regency. 
 
 The following year (i860) Rao Desalji died ; the 
 Regency ceased, and Desalji's son, Prdgmalji, the present 
 Rdo of Kutch, assumed the management of the country. 
 Rdo Prdgmalji ' is young and not easy of access to those 
 outside his palace walls, as his father was, and he is, though 
 exceedingly well disposed, of an indolent turn of mind, 
 and has an antipathy to business. He is much guided in 
 his opinions of matters connected with the government of 
 the country by a few of his Karbharis ' (ministers), * by 
 whom everything is done.' ^ 
 
 It is at this point in the narrative of the Rao's rela- 
 tions with his Bhayad that the present Political Agent, 
 Major Shortt, comes upon the scene. Major Shortt, like 
 Captain McMurdo and Colonel Jacob, had received his 
 political training in Kathiawar, and he brought with him 
 from that Province a lively sympathy for Girasias ap- 
 pearing in any way oppressed by their Darbar. 
 
 Almost simultaneously with Major Shortt's arrival at 
 Bhiij whether before or after is not clear a change 
 took place in the administration of Waghar, which Major 
 Shortt apparently views with some regret. This District 
 at the time of our first connection with Kutch had been 
 found in so disordered a state that the British Agent had 
 been obliged to assume a direct share in its government. 
 Thus, the police of Waghar, as stated above, had fallen 
 under the sole control of the Agency ; and further a 
 
 ^ Page 55 of Blue Book.
 
 288 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 native representative of the British Government had 
 been stationed in Waghar, through whom the poorer and 
 more distant Girdsias had been wont to forward their 
 complaints to the Agent. These arrangements continued 
 until some date between i860 and 1863, when the control 
 of the Police was transferred to the Darbdr, and the office 
 of Native Agent was abolished. The change, of course, 
 threw into the hands of the Rdo a greater power over the 
 feudatories in that part of Kutch than he had before 
 possessed, and made him, according to Major Shortt, 
 covetous of yet more. 
 
 The first representation which Major Shortt addressed 
 to the Bombay Government on the subject of the Rdo's 
 attitude towards the guaranteed landholders of Kutch' is 
 dated 24th February, 1863. In it he reported that the 
 policy, which the late Ruler had started, of supplanting 
 the Bhdydd's jurisdiction over their own vassals, and of 
 ousting Girdsids out of their estates by pecuniary accom- 
 modation, was still more conspicuous in the young Rdo, 
 and that the Darbdr had been much encouraged in this 
 course by the spectacle of the great change which had 
 recently come over the spirit of our administration in 
 Kdthidwdr. In that kindred country the Chiefs and Gird- 
 sids held a guarantee very similar to the one enjoyed by 
 the same classes in Kutch ; and up to the time of Major 
 Keatinge's appointment to the Kdthidwdr Agency, there 
 had been no limit to the interference we had exercised in 
 their behalf; but one of the first of Major Keatinge's 
 reforms had been to reduce our interference to a minimum 
 and to restore the Native Sovereign to the exercise of his 
 legitimate authority over his own subjects. The course 
 
 ' Page 54 of Blue Book, letter No. 21.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 289 
 
 of events in Kdthidwar was eagerly watched by the Kutch 
 Darbar ; and the Rdo was sanguine that what had at last 
 been conceded to the Native Rulers of Kathiawar could no 
 longer be withheld from himself. 
 
 Major Shortt submitted a more detailed report^ on the 
 same subject on the 26th of the following month. He 
 quoted Mr. Lumsden's views as to the original indepen- 
 dence of the feudatories, and the encroachments upon this 
 status which commenced under Colonel Pottinger's Re- 
 gency and were afterwards followed up by Rao Desalji. 
 He explained how the questions regarding the Darbdr's 
 right to mohsul guaranteed Chiefs in cases in which it 
 was itself interested, and to mohsul direct the vassals of 
 such Chiefs, remained unsettled, as they had been left by 
 Colonel Trevelyan. He exhibited his doubts as to the 
 extent of the interference which the Darbar could legiti- 
 mately exercise between the Zamindars and their ^ vassals; 
 and he cited three instances in which the interference ap 
 peared to him pernicious. Then, to illustrate the indig- 
 nation excited among the feudatory Chiefs by the Darbar's 
 proceedings, he forwarded translations of two petitions of 
 complaint which he had recently received from members 
 of that body. Finally he stated that he had 'endeavoured, 
 quietly, but firmly, to oppose these encroachments ;' that 
 his efforts had not been successful, and that, therefore, he 
 desired to have a definite expression of the views of the 
 Government upon the crisis. 
 
 ' Should it,' he said, ' appear advisable to his Excellency the 
 Governor in Council still further to withdraw interference, and 
 
 ^ Pages 56 to 66 of Blue Book, letter to Government, No. 30, dated 26th 
 March, 1863, with enclosure. 
 
 "^ Major Shortt, following the custom of his predecessors, invariably 
 speaks of the sub-vassals as 'subjects' of their respective Chiefs. This 
 appellation seems to me a begging of the question at issue. 
 
 U
 
 290 THE l^AO OF KUTCIl AND JUS KINDRED. 
 
 to concede to the Darbdr the extent of its claim in regard to 
 mohsuUing the Chiefs and their subjects, some more defined 
 rule as to the extent to which Darbar interference is justifiable 
 in the internal management of their estates, might, I think, with 
 advantage be laid down. But if his Excellency does not con- 
 sider that, consistently with our engagements to the Zami'ndars, 
 the power claimed in his Highness's ' Ydd can be conceded, I 
 venture, with much deference, to suggest, as the only other 
 course open, that his Highness the Rao be invited to show some 
 more detailed proof of what he claims as his hereditary exercise 
 of this right than what is contained in Captain Raikes' ^ report 
 on the subject' 
 
 After a delay of nearly eight months, the Bombay 
 Government disposed of Major Shortt's letter by the fol- 
 lowing Resolution,^ dated 5th November, 1863 : 
 
 * The Political Agent's report shows very clearly how unsatisfac- 
 tory is the present relation of His Highness the Rao and the Chiefs 
 ofKutch. The action of the Darbar in imposing Mohsuls on all 
 sorts of pretences on the Chiefs and on the subjects of Chiefs 
 must, at no distant period, drive the Chiefs into rebellion, and 
 that result is probably only postponed because of disputes and 
 divisions among the Chiefs themselves. The Hon'ble the Go- 
 vernor in Council altogether doubts the propriety of permitting 
 the Darbar to mohsul the Chiefs except on some very emergent 
 occasions, and then, in his opinion, the Mohsul should be 
 imposed through the Political Agent. The Hon'ble the Go- 
 vernor in Council then thinks that His Highness the Rdo, as 
 suggested by the Political Agent, should be called on to adduce 
 further proof of his right to impose such Mohsuls. And if he 
 succeeds in showing that he really does possess the right, the 
 Political Agent should then submit his opinion as to the restric- 
 tions under which this right should be exercised.' 
 
 * This YiUi'xs the note mentioned on p. 286 as having been presented by 
 Rdo Desaljf to Colonel Trevelyan in May 1859. There is a translation of 
 it at page 62 of the Blue 15ook. 
 
 " This report is the memorandum mentioned on p. 285 as having been 
 forwarded by Colonel Trevelyan to the Government, as an enclosure of 
 his letter, No. 58, dated 27th June 1858. The memorandum will be found 
 at pages 47 to 51 of the Blue Book. 
 
 ' rage 66 Blue Book.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 291 
 
 I would venture here respectfully to submit that the 
 opinion recorded in the above Resolution was incorrect, 
 and the issue raised informal. In the first place to assert 
 that the Rdo could not mohsul his vassals except on 
 emergent occasions, and then only through the Political 
 Agent, was tantamount to a denial of his supremacy and 
 a recognition of separate sovereignty in them ; whereas 
 Major Shortt never questioned the possession by the 
 Rao of a certain authority over his vassals, and only 
 entertained doubts as to the limits within which that 
 authority legitimately lay. It was the latter point, 
 and that alone, which constituted the real difficulty. As 
 for the Rao's right to enforce by Mohsuls such authority 
 as he legitimately exercised over his vassals, that has 
 never been questioned ; for, under all circumstances, the 
 right of visiting disobedience by penalties must be con- 
 ceded co-extensively with the recognition of authority, 
 and, in the particular case of Gujarat, there is no getting 
 a Rdjput to do anything without a Mohsul.^ Secondly, 
 Captain Raikes' Memorandum had been accepted in 1859 
 both by Lord Elphinstone's Government and by the 
 Secretary of State as full and complete proof of the Rao's 
 right to mohsul both his vassals and his sub-vassals. In the 
 absence, therefore, of any evidence to throw doubt on 
 the accuracy of Captain Raikes' statements. Sir B. Frere's 
 Government was hardly competent to re-open a point 
 
 ^ When I first went to KAthidwdr a fellow assistant told me that the system 
 of administration was very simple, all comprised in the following formula : 
 * One Hukm, two Tdkids, three Miiddats, then a Mclisul.' This I found in 
 fact to be the case. I issued an order, and no notice being taken of it, I 
 issued first one and then another reminder ; next I had to give a period of 
 grace within which compliance must be made, and this period, on various 
 pretexts, was extended to a longer, and again a yet longer date. At last a 
 Mohsul issued, and then for the first time the man bestirred himself to obey. 
 Altogether it took about a year, and sometimes twice that time, to get a 
 decision enforced. 
 
 U 2
 
 292 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 already settled. In a formal aspect, the only point re- 
 mainintj unsettled was whether, in vindication of our 
 guarantee, any limitations should be imposed on the 
 Rao's general right, and, if so, what the limitations 
 should be. 
 
 On the^ loth January 1865, Major Shortt, with reference 
 to his former reports and to the Resolution of the Bombay 
 Government, forwarded a Memorandum" No. 492, dated 
 9th November 1864, intended to place clearly before the 
 Government the whole subject of the Rao's relations towards 
 his feudatories, as touching on the British guarantee. The 
 first 31 paragraphs of this Memorandum contain a sketch 
 of the past history of Kutch ; paragraphs 32 to the end 
 are more important and deserve careful perusal. Major 
 Shortt represented (paragraph 32) that the result of the 
 British connection with Kutch had been to increase im- 
 mensely the power of the Darbar over the Bhayad and 
 the country generally. 
 
 ' The very fact,' he wrote, ' of the compact to abstain from 
 female infanticide necessarily carried with it the power of punish- 
 ing infractions, and this has been invariably delegated to the 
 Darbar. This naturally led to the Darbar's taking cognisance of 
 criminal cases involving the power of life and death. Subsequently 
 cases of suicide were investigated by the Darbar Officers, and 
 accidental death reported to it.' 
 
 Within the limits thus indicated, the consolidation of 
 the Darbar's jurisdiction appeared to Major Short an 
 unmixed benefit ; for the matters arising for cognizance 
 seldom affected the interests of the Darbar, and therefore 
 offered no temptation to a warped judgment, But the 
 Darbar had not paused within these limits ; it had |)ro- 
 
 ' Letter to Bombay Government, No. i, printed on the prclimin.nry and 
 unnumbered page of the Hlue Hook. 
 * Pages I to 7 of lUue IJook.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 293 
 
 ceeded to exercise and to allow its ignorant and corrupt 
 farmers of the revenue to exercise a 'daily increasing 
 and desultor)- kind of interference ' in * the internal affairs 
 of the Bhaydd and the Zamindars,' such as had caused 
 discontent and alarm among that body. Major Shortt, 
 therefore, specifically put before the Government the ques- 
 tion how far the independent jurisdiction of the Chiefs 
 on their own estates was guaranteed by our engagements, 
 and what support the Chiefs ought to receive towards its 
 maintenance. He stated the complaints of the Chiefs to 
 be as follows : 
 
 ' A. That Mohsuls are sent on them not only by the Dar- 
 bar, but by its subordinate officers. 
 
 ' B. That Mohsuls are sent on their subjects without pre- 
 vious reference to them, not only by the Darbar, but by its 
 subordinate officers. 
 
 ' C. That fines are imposed on them. 
 
 ' D. That fines are imposed on their subjects by the Darbar 
 and its officers, and the fines appropriated by the Darbar. 
 
 ' E. That a new tax, called Taklifan is levied by the Dar- 
 bar on cases to which they are parties, the tax having been for- 
 merly only levied from the Darbar's own subjects. 
 
 ' F. That since the Police in Waghar has been put under 
 the sole superintendence of the Darbar, now nearly five years, 
 they have interfered in petty cases in which both plaintiff and 
 defendant have been subjects of the same Zamindar. 
 
 ' G. That the Darbar buys girds (landed property), or its 
 reversion on mortgage deeds, in their villages, from parties who 
 are not, by the custom of the country, competent to alienate it 
 permanently.' 
 
 All these questions. Major Shortt pointed out, had 
 more or less occupied the attention of previous Political 
 Agents, but they had been met by successive authorities 
 in a spirit so vacillating and inconsistent that the Darbar, 
 in the long run, had been able to work its will, without
 
 294 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 any effectual check from the British Government. Major 
 Shortt prayed that our policy might now be revised in 
 accordance with a definite design. He suggested the 
 necessity for ' a more exact and limited definition of the 
 particular Chiefs or Estates to which the sixteenth 
 Article of the Treaty of 1 8 19 is to be applied ; ' and he 
 ask(xl for instructions ' in reg"ard to estates tjuaranteed at 
 the date of the Treaty, but which have since broken up, 
 or in which the Darbar may have since acquired a direct 
 interest.' Lastly, with reference to the ' constitutional ' 
 advisers assigned to the Rao by the Treaty of 1834, 
 Major Shortt entered on the present aspect of the 
 Bhayad in that capacity. The Council of the Bhdyad, 
 though still preserved in name, had sunk into a nonentity ; 
 but, as containing the germ of a valuable political institu- 
 tion, it ought, in Major Shortt's opinion, to be revised and 
 strengthened. Properly organised, it might, he believed, 
 be constituted a Court ' to take cognizance of all matters 
 connected with its own order, in other words, of all cases 
 involving the interests of the Chiefs or their subjects.' 
 
 On receipt of this Memorandum the Bombay Govern- 
 ment appears to have returned it to Major Shortt, re- 
 questing him to add to it a statement of the specific 
 measures he would recommend in order to remove the 
 evils he had brought to notice. Accordingly, on the ist 
 March 1865, by a Memorandum No. 15, Major Shortt 
 wrote thirty-one paras., ^ numbered 53 to 83, in continua- 
 tion of his former Memorandum. In this new Memo- 
 
 ' Tlic original form of these additional parngraphs will be found at page 
 69 of the Blue Book, but the original form is not the one to be consulted. 
 Major .Shortt cancelled it. and submitted a revised form by letter to the 
 Bombay (Government No. 9 dated 31st January 1867. The revised form, 
 which alone should be consulted, is not in the Blue Book, but printed 
 separately, with the letter just mentioned.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 295 
 
 randum Major Shortt laid down as premises that the 
 normal position of the feudatories within the limits of 
 their own estates was one of complete independence ; 
 that by the deeds of guarantee issued to them in 1 8 1 9 we 
 were bound to preserve that independence ; and that up 
 to the present time we had failed in our obligation, and 
 rather from the absence of any policy than the pursuit of 
 a contrary policy, had allowed their independence to be 
 in many ways infringed by the Darbdr. He further ex- 
 plained that, under the operation of ' the custom, all but 
 universal in Kutch, of the sub-division of inheritance 
 entailing sub-division of authority,' the majority of the 
 guaranteed landholders had undergone since 18 19 such a 
 disintegration of financial means and administrative power 
 as to be no longer fitted for the exercise of a completely 
 independent jurisdiction, and that, in all these cases, there- 
 fore, a modified form of independence was the utmost we 
 could now hope to secure for the holder of our guarantee. 
 Major Shortt then specified his practical recommenda- 
 tions. These are not so lucidly stated as they might 
 be ; but I gather that his initial step would be to define 
 the limits of the Rao's legitimate jurisdiction over the 
 guaranteed Zamindars generally. As to the nature of 
 these limits Major Shortt held that every feudatory had 
 a right to exercise internal civil jurisdiction on his own 
 estate, except in cases wherein the shareholders might 
 themselves be the disputants, and the custom of the 
 country, passing over the Tilat, or head of the family, 
 might point to the Rao as the referee ; but that the criminal 
 jurisdiction, which the Rao had acquired in matters of 
 life and death over the vassals of his Chiefs, should con- 
 tinue in the Rao's hands, although eventually even this 
 might be transferred to the Council of the Bhayad, if that
 
 296 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 body could be erected into a judicial tribunal fit to dis- 
 charge such functions. Next Major Shortt would make 
 out an authoritative list of the Zamindars meriting to be 
 recognised as holders of our guarantee. This list he 
 would divide into two classes, viz., Zaminddrs competent 
 to exercise independent powers on their own estates, and 
 those, who, from sub-division of the fief or other causes, 
 could not be considered competent. The first and 
 smaller class would be admitted to the full enjoyment of 
 the comparative autonomy recognised by Major Shortt 
 as the general right of the feudatories ; but for the second 
 and far larger class, special arrangements Avould have to 
 be devised. To meet the case of the latter, Major Shortt 
 proposed that twelve men should be selected from the 
 Bhayad (apparently by the Political Agent) on account of 
 their being known to possess the confidence of their 
 order, and constituted a Court sitting permanently at 
 Bhuj for the adjudication of all those matters which, as 
 occurring on the estate of one of the weaker landholders, 
 might be beyond the Rdo's right, and beyond his vassals 
 power, to dispose of The Court would be under the 
 presidency of the Rdo or any Chief named by him, and 
 five members would constitute a quorum. Having thus 
 stated his views. Major Shortt solicited a renewal of at- 
 tention to the questions, on which he had dwelt in former 
 reports, as to the Rdo being permitted to purchase land 
 in the estates of guaranteed Chiefs from one or more of 
 the shareholders, without the consent of the whole, and 
 as to the right of the Darbdr to mohsul such Chiefs. 
 Finally, his Report wound up with a brief notice,* ex- 
 planatory of the Rdo's new tax called Taklifan, to which 
 the Bhdydd objected. 
 
 ' This notice will be found at page 133 of the Blue Book. The tax 
 appears equivalent to the costs payable to the Court in Civil suits.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 297 
 
 The Bombay Government was now In full possession 
 of Major Shortt's views. His Reports were still- under 
 consideration, when, on the 25th August, 1866, the Rao 
 addressed to Sir B. Frere a protest ^ against Major 
 Shortt's proceedings, describing them as subversive of 
 the prerogative which by hereditary right and by the 
 British Government's recognition was properly vested in 
 the sovereigns of Kutch. The Rdo's communication, 
 being a translation, apparently, from Gujr.rati, is a prolix 
 affair, straggling through five separate Sections, and with 
 twenty-seven exhibits attached. Sections I. and II. 
 refer to the question of the Rdo's right to mohsul guaran- 
 teed Zamindars and their vassals. The Rao asserted 
 that this question had been unnecessarily originated by 
 Colonel Jacob, and after lying in abeyance for several 
 years, was now as unnecessarily revived by Major Shortt, 
 ' There are not,' he said, ' separate Talukas in Kutch, 
 but the whole is one, and that under our control. Con- 
 sequently the civil and criminal jurisdiction, and the 
 sovereign power in the country, belong to us alone. If 
 then to serve Mohsuls be not in our power, how could 
 we carry on the administration?' He maintained that 
 the Darbar reserved to itself the criminal jurisdiction 
 throughout Kutch, at any rate in all serious matters ; 
 and he specified the crimes of murder, suicide, abortion, 
 affray with lethal weapons, infanticide, sati, 'samadh,' 
 gambling, torture, slavery, and the violation of any 
 general law already enacted, or to be hereafter enacted 
 by his authority. Besides these, theft and robbery in 
 the particular District of Waghar were cognisable by the 
 Darbar. Civil suits, on the contrary, when occurring on 
 the estates of the Bhayad, were, he admitted, generally 
 
 ' Separately printed, not in the Blue Rook.
 
 29S THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 settled by local panchayats ; but even in these cases an 
 appeal lay to the Darbar. On the whole, the Rao could 
 not admit any limitation upon his power of mohsulling 
 either vassal or sub-vassal ; but he was nevertheless 
 willing that in important suits decided by the Darbar 
 there should be a right of appeal to the Political Agent. 
 Section III. is devoted principally to an exhibition of 
 the practical difficulties besetting any such limitation 
 of the Darbar's interference in the Bhayad's domestic 
 concerns as the injunctions from time to time issued by 
 Major Shortt had endeavoured to establish. Section IV. 
 is intended to refute Mr. Lumsden's opinions regarding 
 the relations of the Darbar and the Bhayad ; it also 
 recapitulates the Rao's old claim (long since negatived) 
 to jurisdiction over the Thakur of Murvi's Pargand 
 of Adui in Wdghar. And Section V. dwells on the 
 British Treaties with Kutch, and British guarantee to 
 the feudatories. With regard to the guarantee, the Rao 
 quoted the text of the guarantee-deeds to show that the 
 sole thing specifically guaranteed to the feudatories was 
 ' girds-wdsl that is, landed possessions, and that, conse- 
 quently, the intention of the arrangement was simply to 
 secure to these persons the quiet enjoyment of the produce 
 of their lands, and not by any means to assure to them the 
 exercise of a civil and criminal jurisdiction incompatible 
 with their sovereign's supremacy. Further, the Rao com- 
 mented on the circumstances of the time when the Treaty 
 of 18 19 was framed. ' My grandfather,' he said, ' was a 
 jDrisoner; my father a minor, only two-and-a-half years 
 old ; and the Zami'nddrs took advantage of these cir- 
 cumstances, benefited themselves, and put the State to 
 loss.' He then proceeded to point out that whereas the 
 entire tribute payable to the British Government had to
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 299 
 
 be provided from the Crown revenues, and the whole 
 cost of the country's civil and military administration had 
 also to be defrayed from the same source, the pecuniary 
 contribution leviable by the Darbar from the feudatories 
 was in Wa^har insignificant, and in the rest of Kutch 
 7iil. As for the military service, which nominally was 
 still claimable from the feudatories, it had become a 
 fiction of the past, productive of no benefit to the Darbar, 
 and entailing no cost or trouble of any kind on the 
 Chiefs. The Rao concluded with a prayer that the 
 Government, if indisposed to grant him that increase of 
 authority over his Bhayad which the neighbouring 
 Princes in Kathiawdr had recently obtained, would at 
 any rate be pleased not to reduce his powers below the 
 standard at which they actually stood. 
 
 The Rao's memorial was added by the Bombay 
 Government to the file of Major Shortt's Reports ; and, 
 on the loth October last, the Political Secretary, Mr. 
 Gonne, drew up a Note on the whole. The Note has 
 been sent up by the Bombay Government, and is worth 
 the perusal of the Governor-General in Council. Mr. 
 Gonne gave it as his opinion 'that Major Shortt had 
 over-rated the extent of the guarantee granted to the 
 Chiefs by the Treaty of 1 8 1 9 ; and that it was not at all 
 clear that Government had guaranteed to them their in- 
 dependence, in such a sense that it might not be inter- 
 fered with in the cause of good government.' Prac- 
 tically Mr. Gonne suggested that the Chiefs should be 
 classified according to their ability to govern, as had 
 already been done in Kathiawar ; and that after each Chief 
 had been assigned his proper jurisdiction, all remaining 
 power should centre in the Rao. 
 
 At length, on the loth of December, 1866, the
 
 300 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 Bombay Government took definite action on the papers, 
 by sending the Rdo's Memorial and Mr. Gonne's Note to 
 Major Shortt for consideration and report, and by sub- 
 mitting the case generally for the orders of the Govern- 
 ment of India and the Secretary of State. 
 
 Very shortly afterwards the Government of India 
 received a telegram from Bombay, requesting that the 
 disposal of the case might be postponed, pending the sub- 
 mission of a further Report from the Political Agent in 
 Kutch. The further papers thus promised were received 
 at the Foreign Office on the 3rd April, as enclosures of 
 the Bombay Government's letter No. 83, dated 28th 
 March. They included a communication from Major 
 Shortt No, 22, dated 27th February last, offering obser- 
 vations on the Rdo's Memorial and Mr. Gonne's Note. 
 With regard to the Memorial, Major Shortt remarked 
 that the Rao's possession of a certain criminal jurisdiction 
 over the estates of the feudatories had its origin, not in 
 the original organisation of the State, but in comparatively 
 recent arrangements arising out of the Darbar's connec- 
 tion with the British Government ; also that the Rrio, 
 though pretending to have the right to legislate by his 
 own individual authority for the Province at large, held 
 really no such right, and could not issue any general 
 enactment except in consultation with the Bhaydd. In 
 respect to Mr. Gonne's Note, Major Shortt contended 
 that the correct interpretation of the guarantee was the 
 one given by Mr. Lumsden, assuring the landholders a 
 continuance not merely of possession of their lands, but 
 of possession in accordance with the acknowledged 
 custom of the country. Moreover, Major Shortt rejected 
 Mr. Gonne's suggestion for a classification of the Chiefs 
 as a measure beyond the scope of our authority, and ad-
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 301 
 
 hered In preference to his own plan for the organisation 
 of a judicial tribunal from among the members of the 
 Bhaydd. 
 
 It will thus be seen that there are two letters from 
 Bombay which the Government of India now has to 
 acknowledge and answer, viz., No. 283, dated loth Decem- 
 ber i866, and No. 83, dated 28th March. Besides these, 
 however, there are two others, which may here be 
 noticed, viz.. No. 30, dated 26th January, proposing that 
 the Political Agent in Kutch may be granted a European 
 Assistant, and No. 164, dated 12th June, intimating that 
 the sooner the relations of the Rao and his Bhayad can 
 be settled, the better it will be for the Province. 
 
 But of all the four letters awaiting the orders of the 
 Government of India, the one of earliest date, No. 283 
 of the 10th December, is the most important, inasmuch 
 as it states the couise which the Bombay Government 
 desires to take for the disposal of the main question. 
 The proposal is, that 'a special Officer of weight and 
 standing' should be deputed to Kutch 'for the purpose 
 of drawing up and submitting to ' (the Bombay) ' Govern- 
 ment the draft of an adjudication on all disputed points 
 connected with existing treaties and engagements. This 
 draft would not, of course, be acted upon until It had been 
 submitted to the Government of India.' The points, 
 therefore, which the Governor-General in Council is 
 invited to consider are, whether such a Special Commis- 
 sioner shall be appointed, and if so, what general instruc- 
 tions shall be issued to guide him In the general treat- 
 ment of the pending questions. 
 
 I think the Bombay Government's proposal not 
 merely judicious, but the only one that offers any pros- 
 pect of this important business obtaining a satisfactory
 
 302 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 settlement. Affairs in Kutch have fallen so altogether 
 out of gear that something more is needed than a bare 
 decision on the several issues raised by the Political 
 Agent. A new constitution has to be created for Kutch, 
 and this cannot be done except by some person on the 
 spot, prepared to meet promptly every detail of the many 
 difficulties which must attend measures of innovation and 
 of compromise. There is the Political Agent, it is true, 
 already on the spot ; but, even if Major Shortt were less 
 evidently biassed in favour of the feudatory Chiefs, an 
 experienced Officer, having no previous connection with 
 Kutch, would probably take a more comprehensive view 
 of the position, and also carry more weight with both 
 parties in the dispute than the local functionary, whoever 
 he might be, could command. Any constitution which 
 the Governor-General in Council may impose on Kutch 
 will certainly be administered by Major Shortt with all 
 the zealous loyalty towards Government and all the sym- 
 pathetic patience and gentleness towards the natives for 
 which he is conspicuous ; but the framing of the consti- 
 tution should, I submit, be left to other hands. As to the 
 pay of the Commissioner, he might receive, if already in 
 office elsewhere, Rs. 500 deputation in addition to the 
 salary of his substantive appointment ; or, if unemployed, 
 a consolidated salary of Rs. 2,000. It may be presumed 
 that the appointment would not last more than two or 
 three months. To this Commissioner might also be left 
 the duty of reporting on the question, whether it is neces- 
 sary for the Political Agent to have an European Assist- 
 ant ; for the amount of work falling on the Agency will 
 for the future largely depend on the extent of the inter- 
 ference which, under the new constitution, the Political 
 Agent will be authorised to exercise in the internal affairs 
 of the Kutch State.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 303 
 
 A wide discretion may safely be left to the Commis- 
 sioner in choosing the particular form of practical arrange- 
 ments best calculated to please the parties concerned, and 
 to work well in the long run. But it will be necessary, 
 and the Bombay Government expects, that the Commis- 
 sioner before entering on his labours, should hold from 
 the Government of India an outline of the general prin- 
 ciples by which he is to be guided. For this purpose it 
 now becomes my duty to recapitulate the several points 
 which appear to require special notice from the Governor- 
 General in Council. 
 
 In the first place, I do not think the Commissioner 
 need at all be hampered in his designs by the considera- 
 tion to which Major Shortt more than once refers, that 
 *we' cannot now assume administrative and executive 
 powers to introduce what may appear to us to be benefi- 
 cial to ' the Rao or the Bhayad. Major Shortt probably 
 bases this statement on Article X. of the Treaty of 1819, 
 in which ' the Hon'ble Company engages to exercise no 
 authority over the domestic concerns of the Rao, or of 
 those of any of the Jareja Chieftains of the country.' 
 But what is to be done when both the Rao and the Bha- 
 yad entreat the British Government to arbitrate between 
 them ? Clearly the restriction on British interference at 
 once falls into abeyance, and the paramount power pro- 
 ceeds legitimately to deliver whatever kind of arbitrament 
 it may consider just and expedient. Indeed, even though 
 no appeal for aid had been received from either party, it 
 would still have been our duty to interfere ; for the ma- 
 chinery of the Kutch Government, which has now come 
 to a dead-lock, is entirely the work of our own hands, 
 
 1 Paragraphs 48 to 50 of Major Shortt's Report, No. 22, dated 27th 
 February 1867.
 
 304 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 and we are bound to cobble up our failure in the best way 
 we can. 
 
 Secondly, there is much truth in the Rdo's complaint, 
 that our existing treaties with Kutch, owing to the pecu- 
 liar circumstances under which they were framed, are 
 conceived in a spirit unduly favourable to the Vassal 
 Chiefs. It is an anomaly that, in engagements profes- 
 sedly executed between two sovereign powers, any men- 
 tion whatever should be found of the domestic status 
 proper to the subjects of one of the high contracting 
 parties; but the advantages secured to the Kutch Bhdydd 
 by the Treaty of 1819 were absolutely unjust The 
 British Government undertook the protection of all Kutch 
 from foreign foes, thereby benefiting none more than the 
 feudatory Chiefs, for not only are half the revenues of the 
 country in their possession, but, further, the arrangement 
 operated in practice as a remission of their military service, 
 yet the entire cost of our intervention was saddled on the 
 infant Rdo, and not a kauri of contribution, except the 
 triflinor amercement inflicted on the turbulent District of 
 Wdghar, was secured to him from his Chiefs. Similarly 
 we guaranteed the Chiefs immunity from that aggression 
 on their landed possessions, by which, in the lawless times 
 of a real feudal system, the Darbdr had from time to time 
 been wont to recoup the losses consequent on the custom 
 of providing a separate appanage for every cadet of the 
 royal house ; yet, in doing so, we took no thought of get- 
 ting for the Darbdr any compensatory concession from the 
 Chiefs ; we merely required the Chiefs to abstain from the 
 practice of one very horrible crime. With regard to the 
 Treaty of 1834, I have above endeavoured to show that 
 the exaltation of the Bhdydd to a place in the legislative 
 councils of their Prince, however desirable in itself, or
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 305 
 
 however * constitutional ' it may now have come to be re- 
 garded, was at the time a Hmitation of the Rdo's prero- 
 gative for which it is difficult to find a precedent in the 
 annals of Rdjasthdn. These are matters which the Com- 
 missioner would do well, perhaps, to bear in mind. 
 
 Thirdly, it is a general rule which has been declared 
 specially applicable to Kutch that our treaties should be 
 interpreted by the English version, reference to the native 
 version only being permissible to elucidate the meaning 
 of terms left doubtful in the English text. Therefore , 
 although It is permissible to discuss the scope of the 
 guarantee given to the feudatory Chiefs on the text of 
 the Gujarati deed in which It Is embodied, the Treaty of 
 1819, engaging that the guarantee shall be given, can- 
 not be so handled ; and the reference which, in dealing 
 with the tenth Article of that Treaty, Major Shortt de- 
 sires to have made to the Gujarati version can only be 
 admitted under protest. Major Shortt has shown that in 
 the clause securing to the Rao and his heirs absolute 
 mastery over their territory, the word ' their ' Is by the 
 Gujardtl version rendered ' their own.' But the Inference 
 which the Bhayad draw from this circumstance, that the 
 mastery of the Rao was to be confined to the Royal 
 demesne, and not to Include the estates of the Vassal 
 Chiefs, cannot for a moment be sustained. Whether the 
 word ' their ' be retained or ' their own ' substituted for it, 
 the clear- meaning of the clause remains precisely the 
 same, viz., that the successive Raos of Kutch are to con- 
 tinue ' absolute masters of their ' (or their own) * territory ' 
 of Kutch, ' and that the civil and criminal jurisdiction of 
 the British Government shall not be Introduced therein.' 
 The object In view was to exclude the British Govern- 
 ment's jurisdiction from the whole principality ; certainly 
 
 X
 
 3o6 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 not to define by implication the extent of the Rdo's 
 domestic authority. With reference to the latter subject, 
 the clause had best be left unquoted, but if it is to be 
 quoted at all, the only force it can have is wholly adverse 
 to the pretensions of the Rao ; for, as Mr. Gonne remarks, 
 it ' seems expressly to ignore the jurisdictions exercised 
 by the Bhdydd, and to imply their subordination in that 
 respect to the Rao.' 
 
 FourtJily^ with regard to the number and description of 
 persons to whom the guarantee was intended to be appli- 
 cable, Major Shortt is, for the reason given in the pre- 
 ceding paragraph, debarred from quoting the Gujardti 
 version of the sixteenth Article, in order to extend the 
 application of the guarantee to 'all Girasias generally.' 
 If, on this point, any reference to the sixteenth Article 
 appears desirable, the reference must be made to the 
 English version, which confines the arrangement to * the 
 Jdrejd Chiefs of the Bhaydd and generally all Rajput 
 Chiefs in Kutch and Waghar.' But after all, the sixteenth 
 Article is less to the point than the eighteenth, which 
 makes the grant of the guarantee contingent on the 
 execution of a written engagement for the renunciation of 
 infanticide. So far, therefore, as the question can be 
 decided by arguments taken from within the four corners 
 of the Treaty, the guarantee can have applied only to 
 those Rdjput Chiefs who actually executed the conditional 
 engagement and to none others. I think, myself, how- 
 ever, that under the peculiar circumstances stated by 
 Major Shortt (p. 261), the equitable course would be to turn 
 aside from the text of the Treaty, and to look solely to the 
 interpretation which public opinion in Kutch and the 
 practical action of the Political Agent has hitherto placed 
 on the scope of the guarantee. This principle would ob-
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 307 
 
 vioLisly be very favourable to the feudatory landholders, 
 but it seems to me the fairest that can be adopted. 
 
 Fifthly, the same must be said in respect to the object 
 that was guaranteed. Judged by the text of the guaran- 
 tee deed, this was simply the continuance to the Chiefs of 
 their ' landed possessions from generation to generation in 
 perpetuity, according to established custom.' There is 
 little in such a phrase to imply that with the landed 
 possessions went privileges also, including the enormous 
 privilege of independent jurisdiction. Yet from the date 
 of the issue of the guarantee down to the present time, 
 the practical rendering of the words ' according to 
 established custom ' has always been that the supposed 
 holders of the guarantee were entitled to be supported by 
 us in the maintenance of a certain form of independence 
 on their own estates ; and it is too late now to enquire 
 whether this was the interpretation that ought to have been 
 adopted. We must take it, and make the best we can of it. 
 
 Sixthly., as regards the extent of the modified inde- 
 pendence properly allowable to the Chiefs, I think the 
 Commissioner might reasonably be warned that, as the 
 remarks made by Mr. Lumsden in 1841 on the status 
 of the Kutch feudatories as a body occur in a report, 
 the final object of which was the settlement of the 
 very exceptional relations subsisting between the Rdo 
 of Kutch and the Thakur of Murvi, and are much mixed 
 up with the main topic, there possibly may be some 
 foundation for the Rao's complaint, * that the conclusions 
 arrived at by Mr. Lumsden's Commission with regard to 
 the position of the Thakur of Murvi in Adui have been 
 wrongly applied to the position of all the other Chiefs in 
 Kutch.' Perhaps, also, the Governor-General in Council 
 might not object to the communication to the Commis- 
 
 X 2
 
 3o8 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 sioner of the remarks which I have ventured to make on 
 previous pages, on the bent of Mr. Lumsden's general 
 views as embodied in the orders of the Bombay Govern- 
 ment, No. 3,242 A., dated 14th August, 1857. 
 
 Seventhly, I would expressly guard the Commissioner 
 from giving the Rdo the slightest pretext for re-opening 
 the old quarrel with Murvi about Adui. It has been 
 finally settled long ago, and has no bearing whatever on 
 the present dispute. 
 
 EightJily, the attention of the Bombay Government 
 might well be invited to the following remarks by the 
 Court of Directors quoted in Sir John Malcolm's Minute^ 
 on Kutch : 
 
 * It is always an advantage to know what we want, and to 
 have a distinct object in view. If the object of a Government be 
 always the same, the changes produced by time will ultimately 
 afford the means of obtaining it ; but neither success nor credit 
 is to be found in the following languidly, or without plan, deci- 
 sion, or pertinacity, any object, however desirable may be its 
 possession.' 
 
 What then is it that the Government of India wants ? 
 The answer, I would submit, is to be found in para. 39 
 of the same Minute, where Sir John says : 
 
 ' It should be a principle of our policy to take every fair 
 advantage of events to increase the Rao's power to the diminu- 
 tion of that depraved, disobedient, and unmanageable class of 
 Chiefs whose existence in their actual state is at variance with 
 all plans of improvement, and calculated to render unprofitable, 
 if not to destroy, the alliance we have formed with this Princi- 
 pality.' 
 
 If these views were sound in 1830, how much greater is 
 the necessity for their being borne in mind at the present 
 time, when the Chicfships, which thirty-seven years ago 
 
 * Page 92 of Blue Book.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 309 
 
 may have been compact and strong, are broken up among 
 a dozen different proprietors, none of them sufficiently 
 powerful to maintain order on their estates, and all deter- 
 mined that the responsibility shall not be undertaken 
 by anyone else. Of course a strong Government is not 
 necessarily a good one, but, on the other hand, a weak 
 Government is invariably a bad one, and in India a very 
 bad one. Our only hope of introducing any moral and ma- 
 terial improvements into a Native State is by the exercise 
 of influence on the central authority ; and we ought not to 
 hand over half the Province of Kutch to a daily increasing 
 anarchy under petty and still pettier Zaminddrs, if any- 
 thing can be done to prevent it. Our clear object, there- 
 fore, is to strengthen the hands of the Rao over all Kutch 
 as much as we in any way can, consistently with the 
 redemption of our pledge to the Zaminddrs. 
 
 Ninthly, it might tend towards an avoidance of mis- 
 conception, and consequently of erroneous action, if the 
 designation of ' subjects,' which Major Shortt and several 
 of his predecessors have used to denote the relation of the 
 rayats on guaranteed estates towards their immediate 
 masters, were discontinued. As imputing rights of 
 sovereignty to a body of men, who never have had, and 
 never even have claimed such rights, it is clearly a mis- 
 nomer. The lords of the guaranteed estates are the 
 vassals of the Rdo, and they in their turn have vassals, 
 not ' subjects,' who stand in the position of stib-vassals to 
 the Rdo. The adoption of the correct appellation would 
 in no degree weaken the dependence of the sub-vassal on 
 his immediate superior : for it is an axiom of the feudal 
 system that the sub-vassal's first duty is to his Chief, and 
 that, except as an appellant from his Chief's injustice, 
 he can enter into no direct communication with his 
 Sovereign.
 
 3IO THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 Tcnihly, I come to the several points specified (p. 293) 
 as needing, in Major Shortt's opinion, an immediate 
 settlement. 
 
 A. I think it would be as well, provided no serious 
 hindrance to business were the result, if the Darbdr kept 
 in its own hands, and never confided to any of its District 
 Officers,^ the right of issuing Mohsuls on guaranteed es- 
 tates. The practical working of such a rule might be 
 considered by the Commissioner. 
 
 B. I think that the Rdo, so long as his Mohsuls are 
 issued merely for the enforcement of an order which it was 
 within his competency to make, has an indisputable right 
 to mohsul both his vassals and (even directly) his sub- 
 vassals ; and that it would be equally unjust and inexpe- 
 dient in us to impose any modifications on that right. It 
 might, perhaps, appear more in conformity with the spirit 
 of feudal institutions, if Mohsuls on the sub-vassals were 
 only issued through the intermediate lords ; but where the 
 original form of the constitution has already been so far 
 broken through that the serving, under some circumstances, 
 of direct orders on sub-vassals has acquired a recog- 
 nised legality, I do not see how the process, by which 
 alone an enforcement of such orders is to be obtained, can 
 any longer be regarded as illegitimate. 
 
 C. and D. As with Mohsuls, so with fines. I do 
 not think that the local Thdnddars or Farmers of the 
 revenue should be allowed to fine any j^erson off the 
 Khdlsa domain. But any vassal or sub-vassal disobeying 
 an order which the Darbar was entitled to issue, would 
 
 ' At pages 21 and 22 of tlic 15iiic Hook will l)c found several orders from 
 Colonel I'ollin^^cr, a:i head of llic Regency, interdicting the issue of Mohsuls 
 by District Officers of the Darb;ir on villages of guaranteed Zamfnddrs, 
 These orders, however, do not touch on the right of the Darbar itself to do 
 what its Officers were forbidden to attempt.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 311 
 
 properly be liable to be fined by the Darbdr, and all such 
 fines would fairly be appropriated by the Darbdr as an 
 ordinary item of State revenue. 
 
 E. ' Taklifan ' is described by Major Shortt as the 
 fees payable by parties in civil suits towards the mainten- 
 ance of the Rao's Courts of Justice. I think the Rdo is 
 fully entitled to exact such fees from all persons taking 
 advantage of his tribunals, and that it can make no differ- 
 ence whether the litigants belong to his Khdlsd domain or 
 to the guaranteed estates. In saying this, I of course 
 presume that the Rao's judges only take up cases which 
 lie within their cognisance ; if they act otherwise, they act 
 wrongly, but their misconduct cannot affect the general 
 principle that people who go to law are bound to pay for 
 the luxury. 
 
 F. The Commissioner will have to investigate the 
 complaint of the Bhdydd that in Wdghar the Rdo has 
 taken advantage of his recent assumption of the Police 
 administration of this tract to interfere in petty cases, in 
 which both plaintiff and defendant have been vassals of 
 the same Zaminddr. It is obviously desirable that trivial 
 civil suits of this description should be settled locally by 
 the common lord of both parties, without any interference 
 from either the Rdo or his officers. At the same time 
 the Commissioner may perhaps find on inquiry that there 
 exists among the Zaminddrs of Wdghar an inclination to 
 dispute the exercise by the Darbdr of functions which are 
 but the continuance of a system instituted by ourselves, 
 and to which no one thought of taking exception, so long 
 as the Police remained in our hands. In evidence of this 
 feeling may be cited the complaint against the standing 
 arrangements for the suppression of cattle-stealing, de-
 
 312 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 tailed in paragraphs^ 25 to 29 of Major Shortt's Report, 
 No. 30, dated 26th March 1863. And, while on the 
 subject of Wdghar, I may observe that, however culpable 
 may have been the conduct of the Darbdr in keeping 
 alive the dissensions between the Wdgheld Chiefs of Pul- 
 answd and his vassals, I do not understand how it can 
 have become necessary for the Political Agent year by 
 year himself to collect the jamabandi payable by this 
 Chief to the Darbdr under Article 9 of the Engagement 
 dated 15th April, 18 19 ; unless, indeed, the authority of 
 the Chief may have been so much impaired by Darbdr 
 intrigues that he became unable to realise from his rayats 
 the rent enjoyable by himself a circumstance which the 
 Political Agent has omitted to mention. 
 
 G. I think the Darbdr should certainly not be allowed 
 to buy landed property, or its reversion on mortgage 
 deeds, in guaranteed villages, from persons who, by the 
 custom of the country, are not competent to alienate it 
 personally. The primary object of our guarantee is to 
 secure to the Chiefs, as against the Darbdr, the continued 
 possession of their landed revenues ; and whatever 
 changes may have been brought about, or may be im- 
 pending in respect to their territorial jurisdiction, no 
 such alteration has occurred, or may be expected to occur, 
 in the political requirements of Kutch as would justify us 
 in departing from our obligation to prevent the aggran- 
 disement of the Khdlsd domain by pickings from the 
 estates of the feudatories. The nature of the Darbdr's 
 proceedings in this respect is well illustrated in the fol- 
 lowing extract from paragraph 16^ of Colonel Jacob's 
 Annual Report for 1865 : 
 
 ' I'.-igcs 58-59 of the 131uc Hook, 
 
 ' Page 59 of Blue Book. Paragraph 23 of Major Shortt's letter, No. 30, 
 d.-ited 26th March 1863. ' Page 35 of Blue Book.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 313 
 
 * A Chief will not scruple to pledge his land to a Banid of his 
 village or District on favourable terms to the lender, because he 
 fears nothing from him, and has the power of again freeing him- 
 self on easy terms, the land being in his possession or under his 
 influence: it is not the interest of the other to drive a hard 
 bargain with him, or even to demand all he may have stipulated 
 for. But the transaction becomes totally changed when the 
 ruler of the country steps into the money-lender's shoes ; for he 
 has the power of exacting the " pound of flesh " or whatever 
 may be in the bond, by Mohsuls and confiscations, and does so 
 accordingly.' 
 
 Moreover, Mr. Lumsden asserts, and my recollections 
 of the Kdthiawar Jdrejas confirm his statement, that the 
 practice is especially forbidden by the Mulk-i-Sarishta, or 
 custom of the country.^ 
 
 * Immemorial usage,' says Mr. Lumsden, ' permits the Bhayad 
 to sell or to mortgage their property, without restriction, except 
 to the Darbdr. This exception originated in a jealous sense of 
 independence. The seignorial rights which were alienated to 
 inferiors or to equals might be recovered and the jurisdiction of 
 the tilat might be maintained ; but where the Darbdr became 
 the proprietor, the Chiefs could neither expect to preserve their 
 authority or to resume suspended rights.' 
 
 And Major Shortt has shown^ that the transaction is 
 in itself unjust, as superseding the claims to inheritance 
 vested in third parties ; for although the Rao, as theo- 
 retically the original fountain of every landed estate, has 
 the ultimate reversion of all, yet the several other share- 
 holders have an intermediate and prior claim which he is 
 not justified in ignoring. For these reasons then, not- 
 withstanding that the orders of the Court of Directors in 
 
 1 Page 31 of Blue Book. Para. 15 of letter to Bombay Government, No. 
 363, dated 14th July 1843. 
 
 ^ Para. 79 of his Memo, (printed separately, not in the Blue Book), No. 
 15, dated ist March 1865.
 
 314 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 1849 are of a contrary purport, I think that the Rdo 
 ought not to be allowed to acquire lands by sale or mort- 
 gage from any guaranteed Zamfnddr, except with the 
 clear and willinqf consent of all the other members of the 
 proprietary body, and of all persons generally, who stand 
 between him and the reversion of the property. 
 
 Lastly, I reach the sketch which Major Shortt has 
 submitted of a new constitution for the Kutch State {ante, 
 
 295-6). 
 
 In defining the several rights which collectively con- 
 stitute the Rao's prerogative, the Khalsd domain may, I 
 think, be at once eliminated from discussion. In his own 
 villages the Rao is absolute, and the Council of the 
 Bhdydd can have no voice in their administration. It is 
 the extent of the sovereign's authority over the guaran- 
 teed estates which is the only difficulty. On this point I 
 suggest that whatever power, executive or judicial, the 
 Rdo may at the present time exercise should be confirmed 
 to him, without reference to the circumstances under 
 which it was acquired. Such a course would, after all, 
 be merely conceding to the Rdo what, as regards the 
 meaning and the application of the guarantee, has already 
 been proposed for concession to his Chiefs, viz., a recog- 
 nition of the form into which vague and floating elements 
 have been crystallised by time. In judicial business of a 
 civil character it might be necessary for the Commissioner 
 to introduce some safeguards against a miscarriage of 
 justice in cases wherein the Rdo's personal interests should 
 be concerned ; but, subject to a drawback on this account, 
 the Rdo's authority, as it now stands, might be made the 
 basis on which to fit whatever superstructure a regard for 
 the guaranteed privileges of the Bhdydd should lead the 
 Commissioner to conceive.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 315 
 
 The Commissioner's next step would be, as Major 
 Shortt suggests, to make out an authoritative list of all 
 the Zaminddrs, who for the future shall be recognised as 
 holders of the British guarantee. The Commissioner 
 might be guided in this task by the liberal principle 
 indicated at p. 306, i.e. he might admit to the guarantee 
 all persons whom the general estimationof the country has 
 hitherto regarded as entitled to its benefit. Every estate 
 not included in the Commissioner's list would, for pur- 
 poses of jurisdiction, fall into the same category with the 
 Khalsa domain. The Chiefs entered in the list would 
 need, as Major Shortt points out, to be divided into two 
 classes, according to their ascertained competency, or 
 incompetency, to discharge judicial functions on their 
 own estates. 
 
 As regards the first-class, the course to be adopted 
 seems clear. Each Chief might be invested by Sanad 
 from the Rao, with certain definite powers for the dis- 
 posal of civil and criminal cases. In the latter class of 
 business, the Rao's present right to take cognisance of 
 serious crimes w^ould have to be preserved ; and, in the 
 former, appeal should lie to the Rao, either in his indi- 
 vidual capacity or sitting in judicial conclave with select 
 members of the Bhayad, as the Commissioner might think 
 preferable. The powers of a Sanad-holding Chief would 
 be for his life only, and subject to resumption even within 
 that interval, at any time when the Political Agent and 
 the Darbar in concert might have proof of misconduct 
 deserving such a penalty. On the death of a Sanad- 
 holder it would be for the Political Agent, in communica- 
 tion with the Darbar, to determine whether powers should 
 be continued by fresh Sanad to the successors, and, if so, 
 what kind of powers.
 
 3i6 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 There remains for consideration what should be done 
 with the numerous class of Chiefs to whom no powers can 
 be given. Major Shortt's plan to evolve out of the pre- 
 sent effete Council of the Bhayad, a new body of men in- 
 vested with judicial functions, and sitting under the pre- 
 sidency of the Rao, for the disposal of all business arising 
 on the estates of such Chiefs, will deserve very attentive 
 consideration from the Commissioner. Any measure 
 which Major Shortt's experience and moderation might 
 recommend, would probably have the merit of being, on 
 the whole, not distasteful to the parties concerned ; and 
 the present scheme as contemplating the utilisation of 
 materials already to our hand, has an air of special facility 
 about it. Moreover, the principle of the thing seems in 
 itself good, for, as Major Shortt^ j'^istly observes, although 
 the despotic form of government has hitherto sufficed for 
 the wants of Native States, a day may be coming when 
 the spread of intelligence and education among the masses 
 shall necessitate the grant of a more liberal constitution ; 
 and we ought, therefore, not to lose the special opportu- 
 nity now offered us in Kutch of forecasting the organisa- 
 tion of that State in conformity to the possible require- 
 ments of the future. Major Shortt does not specify the 
 authority with whom the selection of the twelve Chiefs to 
 constitute the new Court should rest ; but I do not myself 
 see any objection to the Political Agent's assuming this 
 responsibility, and being guided in his choice by reference 
 to the amount of confidence which the Bhdydd at large 
 may repose in the independence and sagacity of the re- 
 spective candidates for office. Some such precaution is 
 essential, for otherwise the Darbdr would continue to 
 
 * Page 6 of liluc Book, paragraph 44 of Memorandum, No. 492, dated 
 9th November 1864.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 317 
 
 nominate, as at present, creatures of its own, powerless to 
 counteract the Rdo's schemings for despotic power ; and in 
 their hands the proposed arrangement would infallibly 
 break down. Again, Major Shortt's plan for a re- organi- 
 sation of the Council of the Bhdydd looks solely to the 
 provision of a judicial tribunal, whereas it appears to me 
 that a legislative body, with clearly defined powers, re- 
 quires also to be constructed from the same source. 
 Major Shortt's theory is, that no legislative enactment, 
 applicable to the whole Province, can be promulgated by 
 the Rao without the consent of the existing Council of the 
 Bhdydd, holding office under Article I. of the Treaty of 
 1834. But the powers of the existing Council have never 
 been defined,^ the Rdo, as a matter of fact, has legislated^ 
 without any reference to its wishes ; and, for practical 
 purposes, it is ^ but the shadow of a name. I would abolish 
 the existing Council altogether, and form a new Legisla- 
 tive Council out of the same men who may have been 
 already selected for the Judicial Court of the Bhayad. I 
 have submitted (p. 273) a doubt whether the limitation ot 
 the Rao's legislative authority, created by the Treaty of 
 1834, was, at the time of the execution of that engage- 
 ment, in consonance with the traditions of Rajput go- 
 vernment ; but, considering the long interval since that 
 date during which the semblance of a House of Lords has 
 been maintained in Kutch, I believe that the institution 
 may rightly be utilised as a basis from which to form the 
 legislative complement of the new constitution. As to 
 
 * Page 45 of Blue Book. Para. 21 of Bombay Government's orders, No. 
 3,242A, dated 14th August 1B57. 
 
 * Paras. 20-23 of Major Shortt's letter, No. 22, dated 27th February 
 1867 (not in Blue Book). 
 
 3 Page 6 of Blue Book. Paras. 46-47 of Major Shortt's Memo., No. 
 492, dated 9th November 1864.
 
 31 8 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 
 
 the powers of the future Legislative Council, its consent 
 should, in accordance with the present theory, be neces- 
 sary to all enactments affecting the guaranteed estates ; 
 but measures applying only to the Khalsd domain should 
 be expressly declared beyond its cognisance. 
 
 So far as the Commissioner is concerned, the para- 
 graphs from p. 303 perhaps embrace all the heads on which 
 he requires instructions from the Government of India. 
 But there are three other matters, which, after his labours 
 shall have concluded, the Bombay Government, acting 
 through the Political Agent, might see to with advantage. 
 
 Firstly. Infanticide : there is no doubt that the 
 practice has received a severe check from our exertions, 
 but it as certainly still exists. I think that, considering 
 our guarantee rests upon the condition of an abandon- 
 ment of infanticide, it will be equally just and politic if 
 every case in which an infraction of the condition may 
 be proved, should be visited by an immediate and formal 
 withdrawal of our guarantee from the guilty Zamfnddr, 
 who would thenceforward be left to fight his own battles 
 with the Darbdr, as he best might. 
 
 Secondly. Major Shortt complains^ that there is no 
 written Code of the common law of the country. I 
 would suggest that, as soon as the termination of the 
 Commission allows him leisure, he should endeavour to 
 summon a meeting of the best jurists of Kutch, including, 
 of course, spokesmen from the Darbdr and from the 
 Bhdydd, and get them to agree to a set of Rules, em- 
 bodying the main principles of the Miilk-i-Sarishtd ; 
 such Rules at first would necessarily be crude and 
 imperfect, but by periodical repetitions of the assembly, 
 
 ' Page 5 of Blue Book Paragraphs 39 and 40 of Memorandum, No. 
 49?, dated 9ih November 1864.
 
 THE RAO OF KUTCH AND HIS KINDRED. 319 
 
 something like a generally acknowledged Code would, in 
 the end, be obtained, and would assuredly be most useful. 
 
 Thirdly. Major Shortt reports the native officials of 
 Kutch as universally corrupt. They must be very bad 
 indeed if Major Shortt, with his Kathiawdr experience, 
 singles them out for special reprobation ; and advantage, 
 might, therefore, be taken of any concessions which the 
 new arrangements should secure for the Rdo to call His 
 Highness's serious attention to the necessity wdiich exists 
 for a reform in the matdriel of his administration. 
 
 It has been stated (p. 300) that the Government of 
 Bombay, at the same time that it referred this weighty 
 case for the orders of the Government of India, trans- 
 mitted the papers to England for the information of the 
 Secretary of State. I imagine that, under the urgent 
 necessity which exists for a settlement of the case, the 
 Government of India is at liberty, even though the crea- 
 tion of a new temporary appointment is involved, to 
 sanction the deputation of a Commissioner and to instruct 
 him regarding the general policy to be followed without 
 any previous reference to Sir Stafford Northcote. The 
 orders of the Governor-General In Council, however, 
 after issue to the local Government, should be reported 
 without delay to the India Office.
 
 320 
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS} 
 
 Katiiiawar (Kattiwar) is the peninsula of Gujardt ; 
 bounded on the South by the Indian Ocean, on the East 
 by the Gulf of Cambay, and on the West by the Gulf of 
 Kutch. Northwards towards the military station of Disd, 
 and the large territory known as Rdjputdnd, it is in great 
 measure cut off from the mainland by a couple of those 
 peculiar compounds of salt marsh and desert locally 
 known as Rdiis) these stretch in on either hand from 
 the apex of each of the gulfs, leaving a space of barely 
 seventy miles open to invasion. And isolated as is even 
 its present position, Kdthiawdr in the olden time was, no 
 doubt, wholly an island. It is about 150 miles long by 
 about the same distance broad, and contains an area of 
 22,000 square miles. The chief physical features of the 
 Province are the Bardd Hills in the west, with their 
 southern continuations, the Alich range and the Osham ; 
 the lofty and holy mount of Girndr overshadowing the 
 ancient fortress of Jundgarh ; and lastly a remarkable 
 
 ' From the Calcutta Review, December, i860. This was one of Mr, 
 WylUe's earliest essays ; but I insert it as Mr. VVyllie served in KAthidwdr, 
 and contributed some new knowledge on that Province. w. w. H. 
 
 Art. \'I 1 1. I. Rtis Mdld, or Hindu Annals of the Province o/Gujardt, 
 in Western India. By ALEXANDER KiNLOCH FoRHKS, of the Honourable 
 East India Company's Civil Service. 1856. 
 
 2. Travels in Western India, embracini^ a Visit to the sacred Mounts of the 
 yains, and the most celebrated Shrines of Hindu faith between Rdjputdnd and 
 the Indus, with an account of the ancient city of Ai^arwdld, by the late 
 Lieutenant Colonel James Tod, Author of "Annals of Rdjasthdn." 
 1839. 
 
 3. Selections from Bombay Government Records, No. 37. 1856.
 
 KA mi A WAR AND THE WAGHARS. 321 
 
 tract in the South, stretching 50 miles East and West by 
 30 North and South, known as the Gir, and consisting of a 
 succession of ridges and hills which towards the South 
 reach to a considerable elevation, covered with the densest 
 forest trees and jungle, full of almost inaccessible fast- 
 nesses which for ages have afforded shelter to robbers, 
 outlaws, and a sect of wild fanatics (Aghoris) long re- 
 puted to be cannibals. 
 
 We waive those legehdary times when the Black Race 
 whose supposed descendants are to be found in the still 
 half-savage Bhils and Kols, roamed their forest without 
 one prophetic fear of the coming foe from Arya. Nor shall 
 there be any pause over the pastoral myth of Krishna, 
 either as he Apollo-like tends his sheep and romps with 
 rustic Daphnes, or as he subsequently emerges into the 
 Hero- King and God of Gujarat, longer than may suffice 
 to mark the confirmation hence accruing to the natural 
 supposition that the Brdhmanic races should have found a 
 home and settled in Gujarat, many a long year before any 
 outer ripple of their wave of emigration had spread on- 
 wards into the valley of the Ganges. Similarly the 
 wonders of the Girnar inscriptions must be noticed only 
 for the proof they give that in the third century before 
 our era Gujardt was portion of an empire seated in Central 
 India and stretching as far East as Cattack. 
 
 It is fortunate that almost the whole authentic history 
 of Kathiawar is bound up with two or three sites, which to 
 this day have a name wherein the past still echoes, and 
 which exhibit distinct remains for the pilgrim who 
 gazes on them to re-people with the shades of those men 
 of yore who there fought, loved, sorrowed, and rejoiced 
 even as men do now. 
 
 Of such sites the most memorable is a spot just out- 
 
 Y
 
 322 KATJIIAWAR AND THE IVAGHAJiS. 
 
 side the walls of the Gohel Thdkur's town of Waleh, 
 some twenty miles North-Westwards of the flourishing 
 port of Gogo. Before the traveller lies a thicket of 
 ancient Pilu trees, round which eddies a stream known 
 to our guide as the Child, or Mad River, and at our feet 
 long tufted grass, only half concealing masses of old brick 
 work or occasional fragments of granite over which it is not 
 easy to avoid stumbling. Yet this is all that now remains 
 of Wallabhipur, a capital which during the seventh century 
 of our era boasted the most brilliant Court in India. To 
 see and admire it came from China the Buddhist priest, 
 Hiouen Thsang, and from Arabia the no less famous geo- 
 grapher El Edrisi. Cyclopean walls and a deep moat em- 
 braced within their circuit of thirty miles, a city wherein 
 rose the fair proportions of a hundred ornate palaces, with 
 cool depths of waters in many a spacious reservoir. The 
 call to prayer issued from the spires of 360 temples. 
 This splendid seat of empire whether its subversion be 
 due to Scythians, as Colonel Tod would have it. to Indo- 
 Bactrians according to another authority, or to Persians 
 under Nashirwan the Great, as Mountstuart Elphinstone 
 believes fell before an irruption of barbarians from the 
 North at a date which conjecturally may be given as a.d. 
 770. How sudden and complete was the overthrow may 
 be judged from the fact that the remnant of inhabitants 
 which escaped death or captivity fled away to found new 
 cities in Mdlwa without making an effort to rebuild their 
 ancient homes ; and that a still current legend ascribes 
 the event to the operation of a miracle resembling that 
 which overwhelmed Sodom and the cities of the Plain. 
 Vroxw Wallabhi the sceptre of Gujardt departed to Anhil- 
 wdrd Pattan, a city near the modern cantonments of Disd, 
 which, founded by Wan Rdj the Poorest King in 746,
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 323 
 
 passed from the Chaura dynasty to the Solankhis in 925, 
 and from the Solankhis to the Waghelds in 11 72; the 
 Waghelds in their turn being crushed and Anhilwdra as a 
 seat of Hindu power destroyed by Alah-ud-din, the 
 Emperor of Dehli, in 1294. 
 
 Another historical site is the city of Dev Pattan. At 
 our entrance we are met by a grave handsome Arab, who 
 holds the surrounding District in hereditary lieutenancy 
 from the Nawdb of jundgarh : he wheels his horse by our 
 side, and courteously points out each object of interest on 
 either side of the narrow streets. The whole plan of the 
 city is of the early Hindu period; so are the mutilated 
 images and architectural ornaments which ever and anon 
 protrude from the masonry of mosque or private house 
 into which they have been wrought in most cases inappro- 
 priately enough. Outside the Western walls of the city, 
 and as yet invisible, we know that there is the river Haran 
 which, winding down from the wild Gir, is broadened 
 near its mouth by the confluence of two smaller streams, 
 and thus affords to the Hindu pilgrim a Triveni, or holy 
 meeting of three waters, where foliage-shadowed steps 
 lead down from Krishna's shrines to a bathing-place of 
 peculiar efficacy. Still pressing onwards through the cool 
 shadow of the streets we emerge at length on a com- 
 paratively open space towards the sea, littered with rub- 
 bish and dustheaps. Huge blocks of stone lie around, 
 and fragments of once polished slabs mingle with the 
 flowered capitals of fallen pillars, the maimed trunks 
 of what have of old been carven Caryatides, or the 
 shattered half of the well-known emblem of Siva, the 
 mysterious Linga. In the midst, black with the age of 
 centuries, rises a structure of great solidity though (as 
 compared with other celebrated shrines of religion) of in- 
 
 Y 2
 
 32 4 K A Tin A WAR AND THE IVA GUARS. 
 
 considerable dimensions. The bell-shaped spire is wanting, 
 and the central dome, massive as it appears, is obviously 
 the work of more recent and less careful architecture than 
 that which fashioned the jasper lintel of the entrance door, 
 encrusted the outer walls with innumerable niched figures 
 of shapely design, and made the coarse sandstone droop 
 in fringes delicate as lace work. There is a cow calving 
 in the holiest penetralia, and on the inmost wall, the ex- 
 terior base of which is within a few feet of the sea, a 
 solitary splash of red paint attests at once the cow-herd's 
 rude piety, and the completeness of the degradation to 
 which Mahd Kdl's great oracle has fallen. For this i 
 before us is the far-famed Temple of Somndth. ^ 
 
 ' It was about the time when Canute the Great was employ- 
 ing himself in decorating the old minster at Winchester with 
 such magnificence as confounded the minds of strangers at the 
 sight of the gold and silver and the splendour of the jewels, that j 
 another sovereign, as successful a soldier and as enthusiastic a ' 
 lover of architectural display, undertook in the far East an enter- 
 prise in which he sought to perpetuate his name by the destruc- 
 tion of an idolatrous shrine, perhaps more splendid than that 
 Christian temple which the politic Western Sovereign was en- 
 gaged in founding Mahmiid left Ghazni on his 
 
 expedition aginst Somndth in September A.D. 1024 : his numer- 
 ous army was accompanied by crowds of volunteers the flower of 
 the youth of Turkistan.' 
 
 Ajmi'r and Anhilwdrd fell before him ; but * it was 
 * against the Gods, and not the Kings of the Hindus, that 
 Mahmiid made war ;' and he hastened on without a pause 
 to Somndth. And, whatever may be the present state of 
 the Temple, ' to behold it as it met the eye of the army of 
 Isldm, we must recall its lofty spire rising far above the 
 blue horizon of its ocean back-ground, the tawny banner 
 of Siva fluttering from its summit, the porticoes and
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 325 
 
 pyramid-like dome, the courts and columned aisles that 
 surrounded them, and the numerous subordinate shrines 
 which, as satellites, heightened the splendour of this chosen 
 dwelling- of the Lord of the Moon.' Rapid as had been 
 Mahmud's approach, he found an army ready to oppose 
 him. His herald proclaimed defiance, the green ensign of 
 the Prophet was unfurled, and the assault delivered. For 
 two days his best efforts were vain, and the most devoted 
 of the stormers, as fast as they scaled the walls, were 
 beaten back by the valour of the Rajputs. On the third 
 day, when victory seemed still more decidedly turning 
 in favour of the besieged and their relieving army, 
 Mahmud himself led a furious charge that saved the day. 
 Five thousand Hindus lay dead at his feet and the city of 
 Dev Pattan was his own. When the victorious Sultdn 
 
 * entered the shrine of Someswar, he beheld a superb edifice of 
 hewn stone, its lofty roof supported by pillars curiously carved 
 and set with precious stones. In the adytum, to which no ex- 
 ternal light penetrated, and which was illuminated only by a lamp 
 suspended from the centre by a golden chain, appeared the 
 symbol of Someswar a stone cylinder which rose nine feet 
 in height above the floor of the temple and penetrated six feet in 
 depth below it. Two fragments of this object of idolatrous wor- 
 ship were at the King's order broken off, that one might be 
 thrown at the threshold of the public Mosque, and the other at 
 the Court-gate of his own palace at Ghazni. Other fragments 
 were reserved to grace the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. 
 While Mahmud was thus employed, a crowd of Brahmans, 
 petitioning his attendants, offered an enormous ransom if the 
 King would desist from further mutilation. Mahmud hesitated, 
 and his courtiers hastened to offer the advice which they knew 
 would be acceptable ; but after a moment's pause the Sultan ex- 
 claimed that he would be known by posterity not as the ' idol- 
 seller,' but as the destroyer. The work of spoliation then con- 
 tinued, and was rewarded by the discovery, in the vaults below 
 the adytum, of untold treasures.'
 
 326 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 From the fall of Somndth to the destruction of Anhil- 
 wdrd by a still fiercer storm of Islamism nearly three 
 centuries afterwards, the story of Gujardt presents nothing 
 but a melancholy sameness of intestine strife ; Rdjput 
 contending fratricidally with Rdjput, and nowhere any- 
 thing like union against the common foe. The Muham- 
 madans had consequently little difficulty in conquering the 
 country after a fashion. Conquer it thoroughly they never 
 did; and Kdthidwdr which, according to their own authors, 
 fermented with a chronic insurrection, at no time became 
 to the Sultdns of Ahmaddbdd that compact portion of a 
 subject empire, which it had been to the dynasties of 
 VVallabhi and Anhilwdrd. It profits little to look into 
 the successive struggles made now by the paramount 
 power to confirm its ascendency, now by turbulent tribu- 
 taries to re-assert their independence ; efforts in which 
 neither side gained any material advantage, and which 
 leave the general plot of the drama advanced scarcely a 
 step towards final development. The Musalman in his 
 turn bowed and fell before the Marhattd ; but before the 
 appearance of the latter comes an episode which no less 
 for the interest attaching to the first exhibition of the 
 Christian cross in Kdthidwdr than for the heroism of a 
 people to whom, perhaps because of old they pressed us 
 closely as rivals, and now seem to have fallen almost 
 beneath our notice, we, the present lords of India 
 seem inclined to mete scant justice deserves equally 
 prominent mention with the stories of Wallabhi and Som- 
 ndth. 
 
 Two marches South-eastward from the last-named 
 place, we come to our camping ground on a narrow neck of 
 land, across which, from the sea on one hand to the mud 
 of a salt creek on the other, stretches a row of iron cannon
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 327 
 
 evidently marking a once disputed boundary. This line 
 as it passes over a sandy attempt at a road in the middle 
 of its course is additionally marked by two glaring white 
 pillars, bearing inscriptions, which, as far as we can gather 
 from their Latin-like Portuguese, inform us that we are 
 passing from the limits of the Junagarh territory to those, 
 as defined by an Anglo- Portuguese Commission in 1859, of 
 the Colony of Diu. Presently a small stone erection on 
 the beach to our left attracts notice, and it is with that 
 strange thrill of alien pity and unreasonable interest v/hich 
 it is impossible to suppress at the sight of a fellow-coun- 
 tryman's solitary grave in a far foreign land, that we 
 decipher the quaint old Hicjacet of an English sea-captain 
 who died and was buried here just one century ago. As 
 we approach the town of Gogla, we are challenged by 
 the cry of a sentry on guard at the gate, and out tumble 
 his comrades, a batch of neatly dressed little fellows in 
 dark greenish blue, who carry arms to our English excel - 
 lencies, in mute surprise at the unaccustomed advent of a 
 white face. The Havildar sends off a message in haste 
 to warn the Governor of coming visitors, and himself 
 escorts us through the streets of the village till we come 
 out upon the brink of the little creek, on the opposite 
 shore of which we hail the yellow houses and dark rock- 
 built fort of Diu. The latter juts out into the sea from 
 the eastern extremity of the island, and from its topmost 
 citadel floats the tower-charged blue-and-white of Portugal. 
 Five minutes suffice to transport us past the little Pani 
 Kotha, or Water Fort, rising from a rock in mid-channel 
 to command the entrance of the port ; and as our boat 
 touches the shore, again comes the shriek of a sentry, and 
 we pass under the gates of Diu with the same military 
 honours which we had hoped to have endured once for
 
 328 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 all at Gogld. Here the Town Major joins us and carries 
 us off to pay our respects to the Governor. The latter is 
 a dark, stout little man of polite manners and energetic 
 character, whose medals show that, as a Major of Dra- 
 goons, he has seen active service in Europe ; he receives 
 us at the top of his outer stairs, and leads us to a long 
 apartment rather bare of furniture with a dais and guber- 
 natorial chair at one end over which hangs a coloured 
 print of the young King of Portugal. His excellency 
 seats us beside him on a red sofa of Spartan hardness, and 
 unless we have taken the precaution to bring an interpre- 
 ter with us, jerky civilities are exchanged through the 
 medium of a not slipperless Banid equally versed in our 
 own Gujardti and our host's Portuguese. The view facing 
 us through the open windows is charming ; it looks north- 
 ward across the sail-specked harbour to our tents on the 
 white sand-hills opposite ; near them at intervals may be 
 marked those curious double-headed palm trees peculiar 
 to the Southern coast of Kathidwar, and, further beyond, 
 the swelling outlines of the Nandevilf and other hills of 
 the Gir hanging like a cloud in the horizon. We sip the 
 Governor's ' tinto,' and take our leave with a view to 
 visiting the sights of the place. Pigs, churches, stone- 
 (juarries, Negroes, Sombrero straw hats, and brilliant- 
 patterned pantaloons figure largely among first impressions 
 of Diu. The pigs run untended about the streets, and, as 
 we know by our previous experience at Damaun, share 
 with the omnipresent pariah the duties and privileges of 
 the public scavenger. Churches, churches everywhere 
 the majority in various stages of dilapidation, one turned 
 into an hospital, and two or three still occupied for 
 devotional purposes : of these last the largest is dedicated 
 to St. Paul, a name which the natives of the island, many
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 329 
 
 of them professing a convenient polytheistic form" of 
 Christianity, have converted into Shri Pdl. It is a large 
 stone building with a fa9ade, which, but for its coat of 
 yellow wash, would have been handsome, and an interior 
 where the majestic effect of vaulted height is marred by 
 most tawdry ornamentation. 
 
 Attached, and in fact forming part of the same pile, is 
 a convent, where welcome relief from the outer glare and 
 heat may be found in the shadow of arched cloisters, 
 pierced by windows, whose semi-transparent shells, sup- 
 plying the place of glass, shed a religious light which 
 harmonises delightfully with the murmur of a fountain 
 among the cool dark foliage of the little arboretum in 
 the centre. Here paces a spare elderly man in slippers 
 and a gaudy cotton dressing-gown, to whom we are intro- 
 duced as the Bara Padre of the place, and he offers us a 
 cigarito with a bonhonimie quite captivating. On again 
 venturing outside we are more than ever struck with the 
 appearance of the stone quarries : all Diu is honeycombed 
 with them, and by the side of every edifice of any size one 
 sees the hole in the rock out of which its materials have 
 been hewn. Some of these quarries are of considerable 
 depth and extent, families have settled at the bottom, and 
 thus little settlements of Troglodytes have been created, 
 iiestling under tall old trees, the tops of which scarcely soar 
 to the mouth of the pit. The frequent occurrence of 
 African faces suggests the enquiry where they come from, 
 and the response teaches us that what little commerce the 
 decaying colony can still boast is chiefly with the Portu- 
 guese possessions in the Mozambique. Until the present 
 system of passes for Malwa opium was introduced, a 
 smuggling traffic in the precious drug diverted a good 
 deal of money to Diu : but that source dried up, the place
 
 330 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 no longer paid its expenses, and although the present 
 Governor has struck out a new channel for receipts by the 
 establishment of a regular fishery, it is doubtful if even 
 this ingenious device can avail in a financial point of 
 view to justify the retention by the Portuguese of this their 
 ancient footing in the country. The fort is at present 
 garrisoned by about 200 men and the guns it mounts are 
 very old pieces of ordinance ; but the position has certainly 
 strong natural advantages for fortification. Near the 
 harbour wall, and between the fort and the town, stands a 
 tall pillar commemorative of a Sultan slain in battle. And 
 it is for the sake of the old days when this event occurred 
 that we have given to Diu so prominent a place in our 
 sketch of Kathiawdr. 
 
 It was in 1537 that Nunho-da Cunha, who had five 
 years previously made an unsuccessful attempt on Diu, 
 gained his object by the promise of aid to Sultin Bahd- 
 dur of Gujarat, then engaged in war with the Dehli 
 Emperor, Humdyun. Bahddur, when the war ended, 
 wished to retract his gift, and became involved in desul- 
 tory hostilities with his former allies. It was then agreed 
 that these differences should be settled by a personal 
 interview with the Captain of the Feringhis. The parties 
 had scarcely met each other on Diu beach, before mutual 
 suspicions of treachery led to a scuffle at the boats, in 
 which the Indian Monarch and the European Commander 
 were both slain. When we hear that in this encounter, 
 the Portuguese bullets having run short,^ one soldier tore 
 a tooth out of his mouth and fired that instead, and that 
 another ran with a barrel of powder and a lighted torch 
 into the midst of the Muslim bands, and then blew him- 
 
 ' Taylor and Mackcnna's Ancient and Mo(Lrn India.
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 331 
 
 self and forty of the foe to pieces, we feel that the pillar 
 before which we stand is scarcely needed to give assur- 
 ance that victory remained with the handful of adventurers 
 from the West. Subsequently the Grand Seigneur, as 
 Defender of the Faith of Islam, despatched from Suez 70 
 galleys, carrying 7,000 Turkish soldiers, and a perfectly 
 equipped train of artillery, under the command of the 
 Governor of Cairo, to co-operate with 20,000 troops of 
 Gujarat in exterminating the 600 Kafirs who held Diu for 
 the house of Avis. 
 
 The first siege is memorable for the bravery of the 
 defendants. Donna Isabella de Vega assembled the women, 
 told them that their husbands and brothers were all wanted 
 for active operations against the enemy, and then herself 
 led them out to work with mattock and spade at the ever- 
 crumbling parapets. Ann Fernandez passed from post to 
 post even while the assault ran hottest, cheering and encou- 
 raging the soldiers, and, when her son was slain, carried his 
 body out of the press of battle, and then returned to the 
 melde^ where she remained till the repulse of the stormers 
 allowed her to depart and weep over his burial. The last 
 grand effort of the besiegers failed. On the 5th Novem- 
 ber 1538 the garrison, or rather forty men, the sole rem- 
 nant of 600, haggard and war-worn, but still unconquered, 
 stood on the seaward ramparts of their battered fort, and 
 watched the white sails that bore away from them for 
 ever Sulaiman the Cairene, baffled and discomfited. 
 
 Seven years slipped away and then Diu, this time de- 
 fended only by 210 men, sustained a second siege in the 
 course of which to the usual horrors of war were added 
 the miseries of famine. 
 
 But at last there came rescue from Goa with Juan de 
 Castro ; and he not only relieved Diu, but attacked the
 
 332 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAG BARS. 
 
 enemy In their fortified trenches and routed them. He 
 then carried the war inland, and so humbled the Kings of 
 Gujarat and the Dakhi'n that they were fain to accept 
 peace on any terms. De Castro's fame has been im- 
 mortalised in the verse of Camoens. He too it was, who 
 when in want of a loan to complete the fortifications of 
 Diu, cut off his beard and enclosed it in a letter to Goa ; 
 the only security which his knightly patriotism had to 
 offer, and one accepted by his countrymen with enthu- 
 siasm. 
 
 But we must hasten away from the brave little island 
 of Diu, which from that time to this has remained the 
 unmolested property of the Portuguese. The Muhamma- 
 dans, whose yoke, as we have already noticed, had ever 
 sat lightly on the half-conquered Rdjputs of Kdthidwdr 
 were compelled in their turn to submit to the Marhattds, 
 and in the wake of the Marhattas came the mightier 
 Sovereignty of England. In April 1755 the Peshwd and 
 Gaikwar took possession of Ahmaddbad, and proceeded 
 to divide the revenues of Gujardt between them. Forty- 
 five years afterwards the Peshwd granted his share in 
 farm to the Baroda Government, and in this way the col- 
 lective claim for tribute of both the Marhattd Princes 
 against Kdthidwdr fell to the Gaikwdr to collect. The 
 business was performed in a mode eminently characteris- 
 tic of the people, with whom, according to Grant Duff, 
 ' to collect revenue and to make war were synonymous.* 
 Bodies of three or four thousand predatory horse, un- 
 encumbered with camp equipage or artillery, would be 
 let loose upon the country, usually about harvest time, 
 and as they * approached the territory of the Chief from 
 whom the tribute was demanded, it was his duty if he 
 meditated no opposition to despatch an accredited agent
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 333 
 
 to the boundary line, furnished with the means of afford- 
 ing security for his compHance with all reasonable de- 
 mands.' But it was a point of honour with the Rdjputs to 
 resist as long as possible the levy of any tribute whatever ; 
 and the Marhattas, for their part, ill-brooked any delay in 
 yielding to their requisitions. What usually ensued there- 
 fore was that 
 
 ' the Pindarfs were thrown out on all sides and the march of 
 the army was thenceforth marked by every species of plunder 
 and desolation ; the ripe crops were swept from the fields, the 
 villages were wantonly fired and destroyed, nothing was allowed 
 to remain but the bare walls of the houses, and it frequently 
 happened that every acre of his lands was left bare, and every 
 hamlet in his territory reduced to a heap of smouldering ruins 
 before the Rajput Chieftain condescended to the payment of the 
 tribute demanded.' 
 
 Such was what the Marhattas called their Mulkgiri, 
 or circuit of the country. Apparently not quite aware of 
 what it was to which we were pledging ourselves, we had 
 become bound by treaty to give military assistance to our 
 Baroda ally in these expeditions. But in Colonel Alexan- 
 der Walker the British Government of the day had a 
 representative at the Gaikwar's Court, on whose tact and 
 judgment they could thoroughly rely. By his intervention 
 an arrangement was concluded which, while it not only 
 more than redeemed our promises, at the same time satis- 
 fied the scruples of Christian conscience and European 
 civilisation, and legitimately expanded the sphere of our 
 growing influence. The Gaikwar welcomed the idea of 
 realising his dues without the trouble, uncertainty, and ex- 
 pense of an armament specially despatched year after 
 year ; and the various States of Kdthiawar, as soon as they 
 had got rid of the notion that we intended a Mulkgiri
 
 334 KATHIAWAR AND TJIE WAGHARS. 
 
 expedition on our own account, were not behindhand in 
 expressing their satisfaction with any system that would 
 rid them of the recurring Marhatta scourge. Given these 
 feelings on either side, the problem was soon solved. The 
 Gaikwdr consented to forego his Mulkgiri, and the 
 Peninsular Chiefs, in lieu of all demands whatever that the 
 Marhatta Suzerain might have against them, were sever- 
 ally rated at a certain fixed sum to be paid annually, not 
 to the Gaikwar, but to a British Agent, who in his turn 
 was to account for the sums so received to the Gaikwdr. 1 
 This triple bargain was ratified in the year Samvat 1864 
 (a.d. 1808), and to this day, under the familiar title of the 
 settlement of sixty-four, remains the most important land- 
 mark in the modern history of the Province. It is the 
 foundation-stone on which the structure of British ad- 
 ministration has since been raised. 
 
 Our first appearance then in Kathidwar was in the 
 character of arbitrators between a native ally and his un- 
 ruly tributaries. But when we vanquished and deposed 
 the Peshwa of Pund in 181 7, we suceeded to his share in 
 the tribute, and thus became entitled to assume on our 
 own account a commanding position towards the swarm 
 of vassals, whom both Mughul and Marhattd had found it 
 impossible to keep in permanent subjection. And now, .; 
 practically, Her Majesty is sole Suzerain of Kdthidwdr. At 
 present (i860) the gross revenues of the country may be 
 estimated at rather less than half a million sterling : out 
 of which about 100,000/. are paid as annual tribute to the | 
 British Government and the Gaikwdr, in the proportion 
 say of two-thirds to the former and one-third to the latter. 
 The population is about i^ million (1860).^ 
 
 ' Population is now (1874) over 2\ millions. For a brief account of the 
 present condition of KdthiAwiir, see my note at end of this essay. W. W. H.
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 335 
 
 Put simply, the duty of a Political Agent in Kathiawdr 
 is twofold, to collect the tribute and to keep the peace. 
 For insuring the first of these objects he is entitled so far 
 to interfere in the internal management of every Talukd 
 as to see that its owner does not endanger the realisation 
 of the Government demand against him. To secure the 
 second he, under certain limitations, administers Civil and 
 Criminal Justice. A position, it will be seen, not ade- 
 quately expressed by the title, Political Agent ; for the 
 word Political has in India come to signify Diplomatic; 
 and tributaries neither are nor have the right to be 
 treated with that formal delicacy of suggestion character- 
 istic of an embassy accredited from one august ally to 
 another. The name Kathidwar too is a perpetual stum- 
 bling-block, inasmuch as Kdthiawdr is not only not the 
 proper name of the Peninsula, but it is the name of some- 
 thing else, namely, of one of the ten divisions into which 
 the Peninsula is divided. The word Soreth is open to a 
 similar objection. Some such designation, therefore, as 
 Warden of Southern Rajasthan would better denote both 
 the country and the nature of the duties carried on by the 
 British officer posted there. 
 
 Nevertheless payment of a tribute does not deprive 
 the tributary of his independence. Even under our sway 
 each Talukdar is supposed to possess exclusive jurisdic- 
 tion within his own Taluka. Several of the smaller fry 
 have little practical ability to enforce the execution of 
 justice, and under these circumstances the right of taking 
 cognisance of injuries lapses naturally to the paramount 
 Power. But the majority are quite capable of dealing 
 with most of the contingencies calling for interposition ; 
 and three or four of the more important actually retain 
 the power of life and death within their own hands. As
 
 336 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 a general rule a subject can look for justice only to his 
 own Tdlukddr ; his grievance, if lying against a fellow- 
 subject, must be redressed by the common lord of both ; 
 if against the subject of another jurisdiction, it must be 
 first taken up by his own Chief, and only through him can 
 it be prosecuted, the plaint in that case holding good not 
 as against the particular defendant, but against the state 
 to which such defendant may belong. Downright oppres- 
 sion or denial of justice by a Tdlukddr is prevented by 
 the operation of the old rule of Rdjput hospitality, which 
 the Agency never allows to fall into abeyance ; the rayat 
 can migrate into the lands of another Tdlukddr, who is 
 then bound not only to give him shelter, but to espouse 
 his quarrel against the oppressor and to see it fought out 
 in the British Courts. This provision, seconding the 
 natural worldly wisdom of a landlord, who knows that his 
 rent roll varies in proportion to the number of his culti- 
 vators, brings it about that the Talukddrs do not generally 
 indulge in those practices of tyranny and extortion to- 
 wards their tenantry which, we are too much given to 
 believe, so markedly distinguish the Native Revenue 
 system from our own. There is but one class of men in 
 the Province admitted to the right of direct litigation with 
 their own Chiefs. These are the Girasid and Mul- 
 Girasias, as they are called, who being either originally 
 portioned cadets of the ruling tribe, or the less respectable 
 descendants of some cateran who in the old time estab- 
 lished his black-mail upon a village or District, have 
 become possessed of certain proprietary rights in the land, 
 which they defend with all the proverbial tenacity of the 
 Rdjput. 
 
 In i860 there were 224 Tdlukddrs of sizes; each 
 basing his right to the title upon the fact of the estate
 
 KATHJAWAR AND THE WAG HA US. 337 
 
 which he represents having been entered in the Domes- 
 day Book of Colonel Walker's settlement as paying its 
 quota of tribute by a separate and direct transaction with 
 the British Agent. The following are the principal 
 men : 
 
 1 
 
 : El 
 
 H.H. the Nawab of Junagarh... 
 
 the Jam of Nawanagar ... \ Chiefs of the first rank. 
 
 the Rawal of Bhawnagar 
 The Rana of Purbandar 
 
 The Raj of Drangdra J. Of the second grade. 
 
 The Thakur of Murvi 
 
 Junagarh is the premier state of the Province. The 
 city lies at the entrance of a valley, and at its north- 
 eastern angle the dark bastions of the old Rdjput Acro- 
 polis, the Uparkot of Rd Khengar, still frown over 'the 
 streak of gold,' the river Sona Rekhd ; whilst high above 
 city and citadel towers the temple-crowned mount of Ni- 
 minath, the royal Girndr. Many a time did the old 
 Churasamd princes, who held their Court here as Rdos of 
 Soreth, and whose memory is still cherished in the coun- 
 try, do battle with the Muhammadan invader. After a 
 gallant resistance the last of the Rdos was starved into 
 submission and forcibly converted to the faith of the 
 Prophet by Mahmud Begard in 1468. A century after- 
 wards when Akbar overran Gujarat, the place was still 
 further Islamised, and became occupied by a garrison 
 subordinate to the Subah of Ahmaddbdd. Finally amid 
 the general anarchy which proceeded the subversion of the 
 Mughuls, Sher Khdn Bdbi, a soldier of fortune, usurped 
 the royalties of Jundgarh : and it is his descendant who 
 still is seated on the gadf. The present Nawdb, after a 
 good deal of hard usage in his earlier years, was still in 
 his nonage when his brother, Hdmid Khdn, died, a youth 
 
 z
 
 338 KA Tin A WAR AND THE IVAGI/ARS. 
 
 of great promise. A Panchdyat of administration was ap- 
 pointed, with special injunctions from the Court of Direc- 
 tors that not less attention should be paid towards the pre- 
 paration of the young Chieftain for the position he was 
 destined to fill in after life, than to the nursing of the 
 Talukd's revenues in the interval. The result, however, 
 has been chiefly no doubt attributable to the crass 
 nature on which the Regency were expected to work, 
 but also in some measure, we suspect, owing to crafty 
 views of future ascendency over an incompetent master 
 that while great general prosperity was attained for the 
 estate, its owner grew up in the Zandna ignorant, 
 enervated, and almost fatuous. The intrigues of a dis- 
 reputable old slave-woman, who had been the indulgent 
 nurse of his boyhood, led to the unj.ustifiable repudiation 
 of his consort, a Princess of the house of Rhddanpur, and 
 to a degrading alliance with the slave-woman's niece. 
 Soon the Darbdr became rent by two factions ; one behind 
 the Pardd aiming at an acknowledgment from the Bom- 
 bay Government of the legitimacy of a son by the last- 
 mentioned connection ; which, once obtained, would be 
 the sure forerunner of the Nawdb's sudden demise ; and 
 another supporting the Di'wdn, or chief minister, who 
 strong in the Agency's approval of his general adminis- 
 tration, attempted to seat himself permanently as Mayor 
 of the Palace over this Roi Famdant. About two years 
 before this article was written, the Chief Minister was 
 dismissed from his office. But he still intrigued for the 
 recovery of power, and thus with a weak ministry de 
 facto struggling against a powerful opposition, a fresh 
 element of confusion is added (i860). 
 
 It is a relief to turn from Jundgarh to Nawdnagdr. 
 The Jdm is the head of the Kdthidwdr branch of the great
 
 KATHTAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 339 
 
 clan of Jdrejd Rdjputs, which surged into the country 
 from Sind about the middle of the fifteenth century ; 
 and another stem of which is represented by the Rao of 
 Kutch. 
 
 Personally, though ignorant of the English language, 
 and possessed of a high spirit of independence that chafes 
 under a yoke stricter than his fathers ever knew, the Jam 
 has more of the essentials of an English gentleman about 
 him than any Hindu it has yet been our lot to meet. 
 European society is not particularly courted at Nawana- 
 gar, but no sahib, great or small, official or independent, 
 has ever visited its well-ordered Darbar without carrying 
 away a real feeling of hearty regard for the active little 
 Prince, whose punctilious courtesy, frank and easy as- 
 sumption of perfect equality, readiness to join in the chase, 
 and liberal hospitality render social intercourse with him 
 an unaffected pleasure. The Tdlukd is well managed and 
 its large compactness is the chief reason why the Halldr 
 District gives but little trouble to the officer in charge. 
 
 But the best administered Tdlukd and possibly the 
 wealthiest belongs to the Rdwal of Bhdwnagar. De- 
 scended from a dashing sea-rover, Mokherdji, who in the 
 fourteenth century had his eyrie in the isle of Pirim at the 
 mouth of the Gulf of Cambay, and whose shade is to this 
 day propitiated by the passing mariner, the Rdwal is the 
 head of the Gohel Rajputs, a race driven in from Mdrwdr 
 by the Rdthors a.d. i 200. 
 
 Himself boasting neither abilities nor attainments, he 
 has the fortune to command the services of the most en- 
 lightened and upright Chief Minister in the Province, and 
 the good sense not to quarrel with him (i860). Commerce 
 has been the traditional policy of the State for a consider- 
 able period, and on this common field of enterprise 
 
 z 2
 
 340 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 Bhavvnagar has been brought into close and frequent con- 
 tact with our own traders of Bombay and Surat ; the 
 natural consequence being that Bhdwnagar has become 
 honourably identified among Kdthiawdr feudatories with 
 the cause of progress and civilisation. Part of the Rawal's 
 territories, ever since one of his ancestors put to death 
 some unhappy wretch who, in a season of famine, had 
 ventured on the sacrilege of killing a cow for its beef, has 
 been placed by Government under the sway of English 
 laws. And for purposes of jurisdiction it was originally 
 incorporated into the Zild of Ahmaddbdd.^ 
 
 We now come to Chiefs of the second class. Fore- 
 most is the Rdnd of Purbandar, representing the Jetwds, 
 one of the four ancient races still extant in the Peninsula. 
 The Rdnd professes to trace his origin back to a patriarch 
 got by Hanumdn, the Monkey-God, out of a female 
 alligator. His genealogy is asserted in the family title 
 of Puncherid, or long tailed, and the household bard in 
 Colonel Tod's time ' stoutly contended for a superfluity of 
 down in Prince Sontdn, only four generations ago.' In 
 the days of Ghazni'vide invasion all the West and part of 
 the North of Kdthidwdr belonged to the Jetwd Rdjputs, 
 but the forays of Jhdld and Jdrejd have now narrowed 
 their possessions to a small tract called Bardd, south of 
 the shaggy range of hills of the same name. The Rdnd of 
 to-day is a man of plain business habits, whose Brdhmanic 
 simplicity of attire strikes an eye accustomed to the blaze 
 of jewels usually presented by his fellow chiefs. Formerly 
 there was a British detachment stationed at Purbandar, 
 
 ' This was written in i860. On the death of the Bhdwnagar Chief, his 
 successor being a minor, the territory passed under a regency, with a Bombay 
 civilian and the old native councillor as joint Ministers. Under their rule it 
 continues the most prosperous and best governed State in Kdthidwdr. W.W. H.
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 341 
 
 its expenses being defrayed by a cess on the Rdna's port 
 dues ; but the troops have now been withdrawn, and 
 nothing but the Christian cemetery raising its crosses by 
 the blue waters of the bay, is left to tell of what has been. 
 
 The Jhdlas, sprung probably from an offshoot of An- 
 hilwara, on the extinction of which dynasty they obtained 
 large territorial aggrandisement, own the Raj of Halwad- 
 Drdngdrd as their Chief. 
 
 The Thakur of Murvf is a Jarejd, and deserves 
 notice from the fact of his ancestor in Colonel Walker's 
 time having been the first of the tribe who consented to 
 abandon the fell custom of infanticide. The present in- 
 cumbent of the gadi possesses better abilities than has 
 fallen to the lot of most of his peers, and retains the 
 management of his Taluka considerably in his own hands. 
 He keeps in tight check the landed proprietors under 
 him, and from this circumstance has incurred the not 
 wholly deserved odium of a grasping and oppressive 
 policy. Having possessions in Kutch, he has been for 
 long involved in various disputes with the Rao of that 
 State, and some recent decisions of the Bombay Govern- 
 ment in these cases have given him much dissatisfaction. 
 
 It now remains to notice generally the ten divisions of 
 the Peninsula. These are : 
 
 Five Southern. Soreth, Babriawdr, Und-Surweya, 
 Gohelwar, and Kathiawar Proper. 
 
 Five Northern. Jhalawar, Machu-Kanta, Hallar, 
 Barda, and Okhamandal. 
 
 Soreth contains the Girnar Hill and Junagarh city, 
 the port of Virawal-Pattan and Somnath Temple all 
 discussed above. If we except the Shaikh of Mangrol on 
 the coast as too insignificant to glance at, the only other 
 Taluka is Bantwa, a Musalman township held by a
 
 342 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS, 
 
 junior branch of the Babi's of Jundgarh. The two prin- 
 cipal shareholders, Sir Baland Khdn and Kamal-ud-din 
 Khdn carry on a chronic feud, which in March 1859 was 
 further embittered by a fight between their retainers of 
 unusual ferocity ; fifteen men killed and fifty wounded. 
 A sham reconciliation was then got up with the object of 
 tricking Government into a commutation of the penalties 
 to which they had become liable ; and finally they put the 
 crown to their misdeeds by treasonably harbouring the 
 rebel Waghars. 
 
 In Babridiudr, a small and poor District lying 
 between the Gir forests and the sea, and held by Babrids 
 and Ahirs with land-tenures of singular complication, the 
 only town of note is Jafarabdd, or more correctly Muzaffa- 
 rabad, a fortified port said to have been colonised by the 
 Turks, and now belonging to the Habshi Chief of Zan- 
 jira near Bombay, who deputes the management of his 
 distant estate to a violet-bearded Faujddr of indubitably 
 African physiognomy In connection with this District 
 may be mentioned the sulphureted hot springs of Tul-si- 
 sdm in the heart of the pestilent Gir. Superstition has 
 ascribed the phenomenon to Divine agency, so by the 
 side of it is reared a diamond-eyed image of Krishna, 
 tended by a small colony of monks. 
 
 Und Siirweyd is no bigger than Babridwdr, and even 
 more insignificant. 
 
 Gohclwdr, at the mouth of the Cambay Gulf, is occu- 
 pied by the Rdwal of Bhdwnagar, and his Bhdydd or 
 brother-kindred. Noticeable Thdkurs are those of Walleh, 
 Ldthi, and Palitdnd. The town of Walleh has been 
 already remarked as standing near the ruins of the once 
 splendid Wallabhi'pur. Ldthf gave a daughter in mar- 
 riage to one of the low-born Gaikwdrs, a condescen-
 
 KA Till A WAR AND THE WA GUARS. 343 
 
 sion repaid by that monarch agreeing to accept the yearly 
 Nazardnd of a horse in lieu of his former demands for 
 tribute. But emphatically the glory of Gohelwdr is the 
 hill of Satrunjai {Satrunjayd) at Palitdnd, dedicated to 
 Adindth, the first of the twenty-four hierophants of the 
 Jains. The beauties of this ancient haunt of Indian 
 Buddhism are described by Mr. Forbes as follows : 
 
 * There is hardly a city in India, through its length and 
 breadth, from the river of Sind to the sacred Ganges, from 
 Himalaya's diadem of ice-peaks, to the throne of his Virgin 
 daughter, Rudra's destined bride, that has not supplied at one 
 time or other contributions of wealth to the edifices which crown 
 the hill of Palitana ; street after street, and square after square, 
 extend these shrines of the Jain faith, with their stately en- 
 closures, half-palace, half fortress, raised in marble magnifi- 
 cence upon the lonely and majestic mountain, and like the man- 
 sions of another world, far removed in upper air from the ordinary 
 tread of mortals. In the dark recesses of each temple one image 
 or more of Adinath or Ajit, or of some other of the Tirthankars, 
 is seated, whose alabaster features, wearing an expression of list- 
 less repose, are rendered dimly visible by the faint light shed 
 from silver lamps ; incense perfumes the air, and barefooted, with 
 noiseless tread upon the polished floor, the female votaries, 
 glittering in scarlet and gold, move round and round in circles, 
 chanting forth their monotonous, but not unmelodious hymns. 
 Satrunjai indeed might fitly represent one of the hills of Eastern 
 romance, the inhabitants of which have been instantaneously 
 changed into marble, but which fairy hands are ever employed 
 upon, burning perfumes, and keeping all clean and brilliant, 
 while fairy voices haunt the air with voluptuous praises of the 
 Devas.' 
 
 And in plain truth we believe that no fabric of man's 
 workmanship in India, not excepting even the Taj, is 
 more calculated to arouse wonder, admiration, and lasting 
 remembrance than the temple-city of Palitana in its unique 
 and mysterious perfection.
 
 344 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 Kdthidwdr Proper is a large inland District, and, as its 
 name denotes, the country of those redoubted freebooters 
 who, by the awe they inspired into the Marhattds, have un- 
 wittingly given their name to the whole Peninsula. They 
 immigrated into the country in the eighth century, a.d., 
 and from their stature, facial linaments, and blue eyes 
 have been by some authorities supposed to be of Scythian 
 origin. Their religion is a loose form of Hinduism grafted 
 upon an ancient veneration for the Sun ; the list of 
 witnesses appended to any of their documents still leads 
 off with ' Sri Siirjyani Shdkh,' the testimony of the holy 
 Sun. Unlike the Rajputs who enjoy a modified form of 
 primogeniture, the sons of a Kathf inherit by equal parti- 
 tion ; and the minute subdivision of estates with no recog- 
 nised heads of houses effected by the operation of this 
 custom, added to an innate turbulence in their blood, 
 renders the Kathi's the most troublesome tribe of all that 
 the agency has to deal with. What they were in former 
 times when they could act up to the good old maxim 
 * Thou shalt want ere I want,' may be gathered from the 
 following specimen embalmed for us by Colonel Tod : 
 
 ' Jessa, or, with the more respectful postfix, Jessaji, was a fair 
 specimen of his race. After sitting at his ease, for some time, 
 indulging, like a true Kdthf, in the most unrestrained freedom of 
 speech, I turned the conversation to his past life, by asking 
 whether he had not earned the honourable profession of arms to 
 some distance beyond his own sequestered abode. A mere ' trifle ' 
 replied the moss-trooper with the greatest nonchalance^ ' never 
 further than Bhawnagar, Pattan, and Jhalawdr.' If the reader 
 will consult the map he will find that Jessdji's three points form 
 a triangle, embracing the most remote quarters of the Peninsula, 
 East, South, and West ; and that a trifle beyond in either direc- 
 tion, both the horse and his rider must have gone into the sea. 
 On [Djjshing him a little further, by observing that these were 
 very confined limits, and enquiring if he had never tried the
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 345 
 
 Northern or continental portion, with the same simplicity of 
 manner and tone, he replied in his melaphorical diction, ' Why 
 I have driven my lance into the gate of Ahmadabad.' I wanted 
 no more ; Jessdji, the Suzerain of Deola, and of one dozen sub- 
 jects, his township covering about as much soil as a good-sized 
 mansion, had, single-handed, insulted the capital of Gujarat.' 
 
 Of the Northern Districts, Jhdldwdr is a large and 
 fertile tract, rich in wheat and cotton, lying towards Cam- 
 bay and Ahmadabad. The Jhdld Chiefs ranking next 
 after the Rdj of Drangdrd are the Raj of Wdnkdnir and 
 the Thakur of Wad wan. In these parts there is a 
 capital device for providing in every robbery either for the 
 detection of the robber or compensation to the party 
 robbed. The village within the limits of which any such 
 occurrence may have happened ho-covwes ipso facto bound 
 either to produce the thief, make good the value of the 
 property, or point out some other village whereto their 
 own primary liability may be justly transferred. The last 
 alternative is effected by tracking the footsteps of the 
 robbers from the scene of their depredation into the limits 
 of a neighbouring community, who again in their turn are 
 at liberty, if they can, similarly to pass the responsibility 
 on to a third village, the third to a fourth, and so on, until 
 either the fugitive offenders are run down or their steps 
 are no longer traceable. And where the track ceases 
 there the final liability rests. Large sums are not unfre- 
 quently at stake on questions arising out of this system, 
 and, although the dexterity of the Jhalawar Pagis is such 
 that, we suspect, even one of Cooper's impossible Red 
 Indians might learn a hint or two from them, the 
 doubtful proofs upon which an estate is muclted some- 
 times in penalties out of proportion to its means, makes 
 these ' Waltar ' (compensation) cases among the most un-
 
 346 KATHIAIVAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 satisfactory which the officer in charge of the Northern 
 Districts has to adjudicate. Still, in an unsettled country, 
 the system is too valuable to allow of its being weakened 
 by the admission of exceptional cases of impunity. And 
 certainly great precautions ai*e taken to exclude some ob- 
 vious abuses to which its provisions are liable, by requir- 
 ing every Pagi to pass a practical examination in his pro- 
 fession before being admitted to practice, and by largely 
 cutting down or occasionally altogether disallowing the 
 claim for compensation in cases where there may appear 
 to have been want of proper precaution against loss. 
 
 Machu Kdnta, or the banks of the River Machu, 
 constitute a wedge-shaped District on the Ran of Kutch, 
 the greater part of which is ruled by the Thdkur of 
 Miirvf. The other Talukddr is the Thdkur of Malid, a 
 Chief of singularly limited authority. For the real masters 
 of Malid are the Miands, who may be characterised as 
 the most lawless race on the face of the earth. To the 
 local Rajd they own no kind of allegiance, but under their 
 own Chauattids, or Heads of tribes, form a special 'im- 
 perium in imperio ' of their own. The basis on which we 
 deal with them is a formal agreement between the Agent 
 on the one side and the Chauattids on the other, by which 
 in consideration of certain annual stipends the Chauattids 
 have agreed to consider every outrage committed within 
 a certain circle round Mdlid as necessarily the work of 
 some Mfdnd or other, and at once without more ado to 
 produce the culprit or make fit reparation for the offence. 
 The Mi'dnds do not confine their doings, however, to 
 Mdlid and its neighbourhood : numbers of them take ser- 
 vice as Sepoys, and every boundary fight shows a Mfdnd 
 or two among the killed and wounded. Mr. Forbes hits 
 their character exactly in the following anecdote :
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 347 
 
 * One day while an Arab soldier of the Gaikwdr's was at his 
 prayers, a Mfand passed by and asked him whom he was afraid 
 of that he bent his head that way. The Arab replied with some 
 indignation that he feared no one but Allah. " Oh, then," said the 
 Mfdna, "come along with me to Malia ; we don't fear even Allah 
 there.'" 
 
 Hdlldr on the gulf of Kutch belongs to the Jam of 
 Nawanagar, and to the Cadets of his house seated at Gun- 
 dal, Rajkot, and other places. The Gundal Darbar is in a 
 most disreputable state just at present (i860). Rdjkot 
 derives its only importance from its central position having 
 recommended it as the site for our own Civil and Military 
 Head Quarters.^ The usual strength of the force cantoned 
 there is one regiment of N. I., one of regular cavalry, 
 and a post of guns. It may be doubted whether abetter 
 base for military operations might not have been found 
 somewhere on the cool south coast : a complete arma- 
 ment could then have been poured into the country at a 
 moment's notice from Karachi or Bombay. 
 
 Bardd belongs entirely to the Rdnd of Purbandar. 
 
 Okhdmandal is the last, and in point of value and ex- 
 tent, the least of all the Divisions. It is the extreme 
 Western claw of the Peninsula, and as it has the sea on 
 three sides of it and on the fourth a Ran about 1 7 miles 
 long, stretching from the Gulf of Kutch southward to 
 within a few hundred yards of the Indian Ocean, it is in 
 fact a little Peninsula on its own account, isolated from 
 the rest of the Province by the same physical features 
 which serve to cut off Kathiawar itself from the Continent 
 
 ^ Rdjkot is now the seat of a public school for the young chieftains of the 
 Province. It is admirably conducted under an English principal with 
 assistant masters. The lads have taken kindly to athletic sports, and show 
 much of the public school spirit and manliness which the institution was 
 intended to develop. W. W. H.
 
 348 K ATI! I A WAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 of India. The inhabitants of this sterile and jungly 
 District, which does not contain altogether 50 villages or 
 13,000 inhabitants, are the notorious Waghars. Their 
 only important places are Dwdrkd and Bait, the former on 
 the West coast, occupying the site of one of the most 
 ancient cities of the Aryan race, and possessing all that 
 sanctity in the eyes of the Hindu which its mythic origin 
 at the hands of Krishna should confer ; the latter on a 
 small island of the same name a few miles to the North, 
 boasting shrines of scarcely inferior holiness ; and both, 
 until recent events, strongly fortified. The history of the 
 Wdghai's is briefly this. Their- buccaneering practices 
 brought down on them a British invasion : we conquered 
 the country in 18 16, and finding it not worth retention 
 made a merit of handing it over for a handsome considera- 
 tion to the Gaikwdr, who desired to clothe his humble 
 origin in the prestige which lordship of their Holy Places 
 would confer upon him in the estimation of the Hindus. 
 He was inducted into his new possession in 18 17, and 
 thenceforward managed it through his deputies with a 
 happy mixture of weakness and bad faith of which his 
 turbulent subjects were not slow to take advantage. 
 In 1820 it required a brilliant little campaign under 
 Colonel Stanhope to put them down ; and still their insur- 
 rection went smouldering on until in March [858 it again 
 broke into a flame. By the end of that year they seemed 
 to have been once more effectually coerced, but the follow- 
 ing J une brought a fresh outbreak more serious than the 
 last. The British Government had now lost all patience 
 with a Prince on whom incessant exhortations to better 
 his administration had so long idly fallen, and insisted on 
 the Gaikwar's handing over Okhd to our own direct 
 management. The rebels received timely notice of this
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 349 
 
 change of masters, and had certain distinct terms of sur- 
 render offered them. These terms were dictated by the 
 Resident of Baroda, and were perhaps needlessly severe ; 
 such as they were, however, the Waghars were allowed 
 ample grace within which to consider them, and as they 
 refused to accept them, were from that time to the ter- 
 mination of hostilities, rebels in arms no longer against 
 the Gaikwar but against the Supreme Power of India. 
 Troops by land and sea were thrown into Okhamandal 
 early in October. We attacked Bait and were for the 
 third time within little more than half-a-century (1803 ^'^'^ 
 1858 being the dates of the two preceding disasters) de- 
 feated from its walls with severe loss. The Waghars 
 evacuated the place during the night : our forces entered 
 next morning, and proceeded to loot (as they were en- 
 titled) and to blow up (as they were in prudence bound 
 to do) the rich buildings, which, notwithstanding their 
 sanctity as temples, had but the day before been fortifica- 
 tions manned by triumphant marksmen. The Wdghars 
 fled to Dwarka : we followed and besieged them there. 
 One dark November night they made a sally, cut their 
 way through the pickets of H.M.'s 28th foot, and escaped 
 across the Ran into Kathiawar with all their families 
 and baggage. They took refuge in the Barda Hills, 
 and in a fort well supplied with water on the top of 
 a precipitous and jungle-covered hill seemed at last to 
 have reached a shelter from whence they might long defy 
 our best efforts to dislodge them. However, their good 
 fortune had now culminated. A fresh force from Kara- 
 chi was disembarked at Purbandar, and a week afterwards 
 the dashing dlan of Colonel Honner had stormed this in- 
 expugnable position, taken 300 prisoners and broken the 
 neck of the rebellion. The Wdghars everywhere sur-
 
 350 KATIIIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 rendered or were hunted down, and before the close of 
 the hot weather of i860 there remained not a dozen men 
 still at large and unaccounted for. Civil authority per- 
 sonified in an Assistant to the Baroda Resident had been 
 established in Okhd almost immediately after our capture 
 of Dwdrkd in 1859, and the whole rainy season of the 
 following year was a period of repose, during which it was 
 hoped that the Waghars would settle down in their homes 
 and learn to reconcile themselves to their English governor. 
 But October last brought tidings of their again havingrisen, 
 again having crossed the Ran, and committed greater 
 mischief in Kdthidwar than they had ever dared to attempt 
 during their previous incursion, by penetrating as far 
 South as Korindr, and pillaging that city, belonging to 
 their old enemy the Gaikwdr with great ease and 
 success. All that can be said about this last outbreak 
 is that the Assistant Resident had an extremely diffi- 
 cult task before him when he undertook the pacifica- 
 tion of Okhd, and that fortune has not smiled upon his 
 efforts (i860). 
 
 From first to last it will be observed the Kdthidwdr 
 Agency have had nothing whatever to do with the 
 Wdghars. 
 
 And in making this statement we touch upon a sore 
 in our administration of the country, which urgently calls 
 for cautery. Besides Okhdmandal there are two other 
 estates, Amreli in Kdthidwdr Proper and Korindr in South, 
 over which the Gaikwdr has by force or fraud, or both, 
 managed to acquire the directly dominant rights of a 
 Tdlukddr. Both have been subjected to the same misrule 
 as Okhd, and though a less headstrong population, unaided 
 by the advantages of isolated locality, have had neither 
 the daring nor the ability to rise in organised rebellion
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS, 351 
 
 like the Wdghars, yet both Amreh' and Korindr simmer 
 with an unceasing anarchy, fed not only by broils of an 
 indigenous growth but by numbers of others imported into 
 its congenial atmosphere from neighbouring Talukds. 
 The Gaikwar's Khas Mahals are the Alsatia of Kathia- 
 war. The Political Agent is powerless to meddle with 
 them ; only the Resident of Baroda, who never visits 
 Kathiawdr and has necessarily but an imperfect knowledge 
 of its condition, has any voice in their Government. It 
 requires no conjuror to guess that they are fruitful sources 
 of misunderstanding between the two offices ; Rdjkot for 
 ever feeling peremptorily called on to interfere, and 
 Baroda with equal justice resenting the intrusion. We 
 have no hesitation in asserting that had Okhdmandal been 
 under the supervision of the local Agency these Wdghar 
 campaigns of the last three years, so damaging to our 
 prestige, would never have occurred. When they did 
 occur, the vehement protest of the military authorities 
 against the anomaly of two political powers in the same 
 country compelled Government to concentrate their repre- 
 sentation in the single person of the Political Agent ; and 
 now again, when a cry is raised that the Nawab, the Jdm, 
 and the Rdnd give lukewarm or no aid in discovering the 
 whereabouts of the fugitive rebels, does it not occur to 
 those who have the ordering of these matters, that if the 
 pacification of the Wdghars and the control of those who 
 decline the trouble of catching them were both equal 
 objects of consideration to one and the same officer. 
 Englishmen might be spared the shame and expense of a 
 wild-goose chase after a handful of miserable barbarians ? 
 There can be no shadow of a doubt but that the officer, be 
 he personally who he may, who is put in charge at Okhd, 
 should bear the title and office of an Assistant not to the
 
 352 KA Till A WAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 Resident of Baroda but to the Political Agent at Kdthid- 
 wdr. Amreli and Korinar are as yet differently situated ; 
 their case stands in this wise. The Gaikwdr, as an ally, 
 has a right to demand that our representations on the sub- 
 ject of his estates and their management should be ad- 
 dressed to him through the sole channel of the Resident 
 at his own Court ; but this form of procedure has been 
 found in its working to entail much bloodshed and un- 
 happiness upon neighbouring states paying us tribute 
 upon the condition of our protection. Is this, or is this 
 not sufficient reason for our saying to the Gaikwar, 
 ' Henceforward your deputies in Kdthiawar shall stand 
 on the same footing and be amenable to the same control 
 with all other Talukdars of the Peninsula' ? (i860). 
 
 Yet another cause of quarrel with His Highness of 
 Baroda. By treaty he is bound to keep up an efficient 
 Contingent of Irregular Cavalry for service in Kathidwdr. 
 And, as the founders of our rule foresaw, it is absolutely 
 necessary for the peace of the country that there should be 
 a body of light troops at the disposal of the Agency. To 
 do the Gaikwdr justice, he spends an enormous sum an- 
 nually on the corps, but his disbursements are fruitlessly 
 appropriated by courtiers in nominal command of squad- 
 rons, to whom it would be absurd to entrust any duty 
 more important than that of carrying the letter-bag from 
 camp to camp. All that we require is the fulfilment of a 
 very plain engagement. If the Gaikwdr cannot himself 
 raise and maintain an efficient Contingent of Cavalry, let 
 him hand us over the funds required for the proper re- 
 demption of his pledge and we will do it for him. There 
 is already a body of Irregular Arab Infantry, attached to 
 the Agency, which, though now fallen into decrepitude, 
 was originally raised for exactly that kind of flying service
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 353 
 
 ag-alnst small bodies of outlaws, wherein regulars suffer 
 much and effect little. These footmen, together with a 
 troop of mounted police, called 'Mohasali Sawdrs, require 
 thorough reorganisation : they might then be combined 
 with an improved Gaikwar Contingent into a really useful 
 force of Irregulars ; and so without the cost of a rupee 
 to the State, the Political Agent might be invested 
 with a strength and prestige which he very materially 
 needs, and which would be the surest safeguard against 
 the occurrence of another ' little war ' such as that of 
 the Waghars. Disturbances in a country which, like 
 the Oudh of a few years ago, bristles with forts and is rich 
 in jungle fastnesses, while her population is habitually 
 armed to the teeth and largely interspersed with merce- 
 nary desperadoes from Mekran, Arabia, Sind, and Belu- 
 chistan, are no trivial matters. Our Model Corps would 
 be raised on somewhat the same principles as the Panjab 
 Guides ; but the Commandant would be strictly confined 
 to executive functions, never moving out his men without 
 express order from the chief Political Authority, so 
 firmly would we guard from all chance of infraction the 
 salutary rule of holding each Talukdar responsible for 
 the peace of his own dominions. 
 
 Another reform that we would advocate is connected 
 with an abuse for which the local officers of the day are 
 in no degree responsible. It is a traditional part of our 
 policy in the country, having its probable origin, we are 
 inclined to think, in the fact of an inefficient Contingent 
 having left the Political Agent powerless to maintain the 
 peace. We refer to a feeble method of dealing with dis- 
 putes about land. In a Rajkot court the maxim seems 
 to be that a land case can never be finally settled, and 
 that the most unreasonably litigious Girasia, whose 
 
 A A
 
 354 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. \ 
 
 shadowy claims may have been heard twenty times over, 
 must still be received with some temporising expedient | 
 that may turn away his wrath. This system not only 
 serves to retard the administration of justice in cases of 
 genuine urgency, but, as giving scope for the admission 
 and retention on the file of cases that never can come to 
 any definite issue, leads to the Agent's camp being followed 
 about, month after month, and year after year, by a posse 
 of people for whom nothing ever can or ought to be done, 
 but who still live on in hopes of interference some lucky 
 day in their behalf. All this has its secret spring, we 
 believe, in a dread of Bahirwatia. ' This term,' writes 
 Colonel Walker, ' is derived from Bdhir outside, and ludt 
 a road. The offence consists in the Rajputs, or Girasias, 
 making their Rayats and dependents quit their native 
 village, which is suffered to remain waste, and the Girasid 
 with his brethren then retires to some asylum, whence he 
 may carry on his depredations with impunity. Being 
 well acquainted with the country, and the redress of in- 
 juries being common cause with the members of every 
 family, the Bdhirwatid has little to fear from those who 
 are not in the immediate interest of his enemy, and he is 
 in consequence enabled to commit very extensive mis- 
 chief until he may be extirpated, or his principal forced 
 to compromise the dispute.' In fact a Kdthidwar Bdhir- 
 watid is just what an Oudh Ddkdit was in the late king's 
 time. Hitherto it has been usual to coax and wheedle 
 the outlaw into surrender ; and his crimes have been 
 visited with slender punishment. Let us cite the first case 
 that occurs to our memory. The date, we think, was in 
 1844, the Girasid's name Visdji Unarjf ; at any rate he was 
 ' out ' against the Thdkur of Palitdnd, and the Political 
 Secretary for the time was Mr. J. P. Willoughby, now of
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 355 
 
 the Home Council. Visajf was tried on several counts 
 by a Criminal Court presided over by the Political Agent 
 with three or four natives of rank as Assessors. For 
 want of judicial proof he escaped a general conviction, but 
 on the first count, embracing the three crimes of murder, 
 arson, and robbery, he was unanimously found guilty. The 
 Court sentenced him to a pecuniary fine, and detention 
 until he furnished proper security. The Government of 
 Bombay, in reviewing this decision, upheld the conviction 
 but mitigated the fine, and directed that the prisoner 
 should be at once released, adding that his conduct in the 
 existing state of Kdthidwdr society called for a merely 
 nominal punishment I 
 
 Generally, indeed, we are disposed to think there has 
 been too much leniency in Kdthiawar. Colonel Lang, the 
 late admirable Warden of the Chiefs, on this head merely 
 kept going a policy originated before his time. Moreover, 
 in Colonel Lang's case, a clear intellect and warm sym- 
 pathies devoted unreservedly for thirty years to the single 
 study of furthering the happiness of his beloved Kathiawdr 
 had justly invested him with an extraordinary personal 
 influence which would have enabled him to work single- 
 handed and successfully the craziest machine of state that 
 ever was started. Yet the work must be done ; and much 
 of It, we fear, calls for the unpopular duties of a reformer, 
 who shall abolish what has become effete, put new life 
 into more useful principles that have been allowed to 
 slumber, and at all points patiently, gradually, and surely 
 brace up our rule to a state of stricter discipline. Espe- 
 cially do we deprecate the false benevolence of Interfering 
 with the domestic affairs of a Taluka to save it from 
 pecuniary embarrassment. Spoiled children have rickety 
 health ; and a Chief, who after having imbibed the best 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 education which we have been able to throw in his way, 
 may once have discovered by experience that his prodig- 
 ahty will hurt no one but himself, and that if he takes to 
 boundary-fights we shall infallibly make him smart for 
 them, will be a far more valuable member of society than 
 one whom we have for ever been trying to keep out of 
 harm's way. At present Kdthidwdr is a barbarism pure 
 and simple, her people having just two virtues, patri- 
 archal hospitality and comparative truthfulness. And the 
 first lesson to be instilled into all ranks is the same which 
 Lord Canning taught the Khans of Peshdwar : ' You shall 
 have justice, but your Suzerain will have peace.' 
 
 A word or two in conclusion may be acceptable re- 
 garding the two species of Kdthidwdr denizens that have 
 made the name of the country familiar to most people, 
 vi;i;., the lions and horses. 
 
 The famous old breed of horses that bore the 
 Kdthi's on their forays they, by the way, always affected 
 mares for their singularly unfeminine quality of superior 
 silence and that mounted H.M.'s 17th Dragoons in such 
 a style that two successive Colonels (one of them being 
 the same Honourable Lincoln Stanhope who suppressed 
 the Wdghar revolt of 1820) testified to the Regiment 
 being better mounted than any other cavalry corps in the 
 service, is either extinct, we regret to say, or fast dying 
 out Now-a-days there is nothing to be found in the 
 country with legs even decently strong-boned. The half- 
 dozen Arab stations of the Government Remount Agency 
 scattered through the country are too few to leaven the 
 mass. A regular Stud Farm and a Race Meeting at 
 Rdjkot in which the Chiefs of the Province might be in- 
 duced to take an interest would effect real good. 
 
 From accounts still to be read in back numbers of the
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 357 
 
 Indian Sporting Review it is clear that formerly lions were 
 to be met with in many parts of Kdthidwar. Now, how- 
 ever, these animals are only to be found in the Gir jungles ; 
 and consequently the sport they afford, like tiger-shoot- 
 ing in the Oudh Tarai, offers itself at the risk of fever 
 from malaria and unwholesome water. Colonel Le Grand 
 Jacob, who shot numbers, maintains that it is a mistake 
 to suppose the Gujardt lion has no mane, and imagines 
 that the hair is thinned by perpetual entanglement with 
 the thorns and underwood of the forest ; but, on the other 
 hand, a writer in the Quarterly Review, describing a 
 specimen presented to the Zoological Gardens of London 
 by the late Nawab of Jundgarh, compares it with a young 
 African lion that boasted a fine mane, and says : 
 
 * The full-grown animal from Gujarat is, on the contrary, com- 
 paratively maneless, and his tail takes a short curl upwards at 
 the end. The caudal extremity of both is furnished with a rudi- 
 mentary claw. This little appendage was supposed by the 
 ancients to be instrumental in lashing the lion into fury, and Mr. 
 Gordon Gumming informs us that the natives of South Africa 
 believe it to be the residence of an evil spirit which never evacu- 
 ates its post until death overtakes the beast and gives it notice to 
 quit. The Gujarat or maneless lion is supposed to be the origi- 
 nal of the heraldic beast we regard with such respect as a 
 national emblem, but which foreigners maintain is nothing better 
 than a leopard.' 
 
 There are no tigers in Kdthidwdr : indeed they are 
 seldom found anywhere, we believe, in the neighbourhood 
 of lions. With this exception the sport all over Kdthidwdr 
 is first-rate. The fanatical Hindu and Jain inhabitants 
 who consider virtue and religion to consist in the preser- 
 vation of animal life, indeed who never stick at robbery to 
 prevent the butchering of a sheep, and even some times not 
 at murder to revenge the death of a cow, are the finest
 
 358 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 game preservers in the world. In many parts you may 
 shoot black-buck from your tent-door, or pick ofidi c/tmkara 
 with your revolver while driving on the public road. Nor 
 is there any lack of hog to be hunted, or of hares and 
 foxes to be coursed. In the cold weather Kulatn, bustard, 
 and wild-duck are capital eating ; and in the rains it is 
 always matter of emulation at Rdjkot who shall shoot the 
 first purple-crested florican. Quail and partridges abound 
 all over the Province. 
 
 One last word as to the climate. The whole year round 
 it is equable and temperate, and in the hot weather when 
 everywhere else in India doors and windows are barred 
 to exclude the furnace puffs of outer air, the coast of 
 Kdthiawdr is balmy with the wet breath of Ocean breezes. 
 The whole Agency lives under canvas, and the tent of 
 each Political Officer becomes a nucleus, round which in 
 pic-nic fashion gather the tents of everybody who can 
 manage to slip away from dust and duty at Rdjkot, with 
 sometimes a stray sportsman from even the more distant 
 stations of Surat and Ahmaddbdd, to bathe, shoot, hunt, 
 eat pomfret and oysters, and enjoy that perfection of dolce 
 far nunte which can be found only in the soft languid 
 atmosphere of a summer sea. 
 
 NOTE BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 Since Mr. Wyllie wrote this essay, in i860, much has 
 been done to improve the administration of Kdthidwdr. 
 The difficulties proceeding from the mismanagement of 
 the Gaikwdr, and the inefficient state of his contingent, 
 remain. But a British Commission appointed in 1873 to
 
 KATHIAVVAR AND THE WAGHARS. 359 
 
 deal with the charges against him laid the foundation of 
 a thorough reform (1874). In 1875 the Gaikwdr was 
 publicly tried and dethroned by the British authority, and 
 a fitter man raised to the sovereignty of Baroda. The 
 lions of Kdthidwdr continue to decrease in number, and 
 retreat deeper into the jungle fastnesses of the south- 
 west. A marked improvement has taken 'place in the 
 Kdthiawdr horses. The Chiefs vie with each other in 
 their studs ; importing costly stallions and keeping up large 
 establishments of selected brood mares. Mr. Wyllie's sug- 
 gestion about race meetings at Rajkot is now an accom- 
 plished fact, and these gatherings, with the horse shows 
 which the Government so liberally fosters in the Bombay 
 Presidency, are doing much to again give bone and muscle 
 to the once famous Kdthiawar breed. As regards the 
 civil and criminal administration, regular tribunals have 
 been gradually substituted for the agrestis justitia which 
 Mr. Wyllie describes. I derive the following account of 
 the present system from the Political Agent's Report for 
 1872-73. As at the time when Mr. Wyllie wrote, the 
 Political Agent at Rajkot directs the whole administration 
 of Kathiawar, and represents the chief British authority 
 in the Province, alike to the native Chiefs and to his own 
 assistants. 
 
 The province of Kathiawdr has an area of more than 
 20,000 square miles and a population in 1874 of upwards 
 of two and a third millions of souls. The ancient name 
 of the whole peninsula was Saurashthra. The British 
 Government has perpetuated from the Marhattas the 
 name of * Kathiawar,' a term applied by them to all Sau- 
 rashthra, from the Kathi race or tribe which gave most 
 trouble to the invading forces. The Province is divided 
 into four divisions called Prdntis, viz., Jhalawar, Hallar,
 
 36o KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 Soreth, and Gohelwdr. Each of these divisions contains 
 one first-class State. That in JhalXwXr is Drdngdrd, the 
 chief state of the Jhdlas, with the kindred Jhdld States of 
 Wankdnir, Wadvvdn, Limn, Sdeld, and others. The first 
 power in HXixXRis His Highness the Jdmof Nawdnagar, 
 the head of the Jdrejds in Kdthidwdr ; along with the off- 
 shoots from Nawdnagar, the J drejd principalities of Muroi 
 Dhrol, Rdjkot, and Gondul. The principal State in 
 Soreth is Jundgarh, a Muhammadan power, fully de- 
 scribed by Mr. Wyllie at page 337. It is the Premier 
 State of the whole Province. Within the south division, 
 also, are the small principalities of Bdntwd, held by the 
 Jundgarh family, and of Jafardbdd, held by the descend- 
 ants of the Mughul Admirals, the Sidis of Jinjird. The 
 Jetwa State of Purbandar has also, for convenience, been 
 placed in the Soreth Prdnt. In GoiielwXr, the State of 
 Bhdwnagar has risen within the last century to be the 
 leading power, and now ranks above the Gohel houses of 
 Palitdnd, Ldthf, and Walleh. 
 
 Down the centre of the Province, from the heart of 
 Jhdldwar to some distance south of Jundgarh, extend the 
 estates of the Kdthi's, who appear to the present Political 
 Agent to have come into Saurdshthra after the Jhald, 
 J drejd, Gohel, and Fetwd Rdjputs, and to have obtained 
 from them and the Nawdb of Jundgarh, by the sword or 
 diplomacy, the Tdlukds they now hold. Further south 
 the Gaikwdr's territories march with the Kdthi estates, 
 and partly overlie them. 
 
 Below the ruling houses there are many petty Rdjputs, 
 landlords, and yeomen, representatives of old families now 
 ruined or supplanted, or of the younger brothers of chiefs 
 who have received their girds or portion from the State. 
 The discontent of this class caused by the insufficiency
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WA GUARS. 361 
 
 of their land to feed their increasing numbers, by the 
 chronic agitation of old unsettled claims, and by new 
 oppressions on the part of the superior Darbdrs, still 
 disturbs the Province. There are also several dis- 
 tinct sets of dangerous communities, the descendants of 
 the mercenaries formerly kept up by ambitious chiefs, 
 such as the Mi'inds under Mdlid, and the Miydns under 
 Jundgarh. The Koli's, Ahirs, and other aboriginal people 
 who form the lowest grade of society, have an inborn 
 taste for plunder, and require an efficient and a watchful 
 police. The Mekrdnis are always ready to join a leading 
 freebooter. The wild tribe of Waghars in the Gaikwar's 
 old district of Okha on the west coast, described by Mr. 
 Wyllie at pages 348-50, and the marauders who descend 
 on Jhalawar from the Ran (Runn) of Kutch and Jatwdr, 
 complete the list of predatory races in Kdthiawir. 
 
 The peace of the Province has become, however, merely 
 a question of Police. Internal warfare and resistance to 
 the supreme power have been put down under the British 
 rule. Since 1807-8, the Chiefs have been bound to pay 
 their tribute regularly, to respect each other's possessions, 
 and to keep the highways safe within their own limits. 
 But no definite measures were pressed on them for the 
 due performance of the latter duty. And as with the 
 repression of crime^ so with the remedy of those civil 
 wrongs which drive men to outlawry and murder. There 
 Vvas an infinite number of unsettled proprietary rights, 
 and claims to jurisdiction, rank, and independence as 
 between those who actually possessed and those who had 
 formerly possessed political power. These conflicting titles, 
 the British Agency when first established did not attempt 
 to treat in such a way as to ensure finality. The Agent 
 generally confined himself to mediation, and irreversible
 
 36a KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 
 
 decrees were seldom issued. Mr. Kinloch Forbes, the 
 Political Agent, found in i860 that the country had pretty 
 nearly stood still since 1808, and that nothing conclusive 
 had been done with a mass of civil business of which a 
 part ought to have been settled by diplomatic means, 
 while the rest could have been dealt with under ordinary 
 civil procedure. 
 
 With the exception of the Criminal Court of the 
 Political Agent established in 1831 to aid the Darbdrs in 
 the trial of great crimes, the whole interference of the 
 Political Agent with the internal justice of the State had, 
 up to 1863, been exercised diplomatically. He never 
 took action magisterially. The criminal jurisdiction of 
 only the first and second class chiefs was defined. Since 
 1863, the country has undergone a great change. The 
 jurisdiction of all the Chiefs was in that year classified 
 and defined. The Chiefs of the first and second class 
 have full judicial powers in both criminal and civil suits. 
 The lesser Chiefs are arranged in grades, on a diminishing 
 scale of jurisdiction. As a rule no appeal lies from the 
 Chiefs. But on presumption of mal-administration, their 
 proceedings may be called for and reviewed. The resi- 
 duary jurisdiction is exercised by four Political Assistants, 
 each resident in his own Prdnt (or one of the four great 
 divisions), who have the civil powers of Judges of British 
 Districts, and the criminal powers of District Magistrates. 
 They commit to the Sessions of the Political Agent's 
 Court of Criminal Justice. Civil and criminal appeals 
 lie from the Political Assistants to the Political Agent. 
 Each Political Assistant in charge of a Print has a 
 subordinate Assistant, who resides at the head-quarters 
 of the Prant and has civil and criminal powers up to a 
 fixed limit. In each Prant, moreover, subordinate native
 
 KATHIAWAR AND THE WAGHARS. 363 
 
 judges named Thdndddrs exercise a lower grade of civil 
 and criminal jurisdiction over the group of villages con- 
 tiguous to their respective Thdnds. These Thdndddrs 
 are under the Assistant Political Agents, and form the 
 point of contact between the British Administration and 
 the people. They also take charge of the management 
 of small or disintegrated estates. And as a matter of fact, 
 out of the 187 States into which Kdthiawaris now (1873) 
 divided, 1 34 are administered under the Thdnddars. For, 
 interspersed among the large States, are clusters of small 
 properties so sub-divided that the owners no longer hold 
 the place of chiefs with right of jurisdiction, and, indeed, 
 are often glad to surrender it. The Thandddr conducts 
 the civil and criminal business up to the limit of his 
 powers, along with the general administration ; but has 
 not any responsibility for the police. It is clear that the 
 area thus administered is destined to increase ; for wher- 
 ever a Gadi (State-Cushion) and the strict right of primo- 
 geniture are not maintained, and wherever the State is 
 sub-divided anew among each successive generation, the 
 chiefs must in time subside to the level of petty landlords. 
 On the other hand, as the States that maintain a Gadf 
 comprise 15,000 square miles out of the 20,000 forming 
 the Province, the area which the Agency may be called 
 on, from this reason, to administer, will not at any time 
 exceed 5,000 square miles. 
 
 W. W. H.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abbaside Khalifas, 178 
 
 Abdul Aziz, capture of Sur by, 18 
 
 Abdullah, Amir of the Arabian Wa- 
 habis, 18, 23 
 
 Abdullah Jan, 123, 127 
 
 Abdul Mallik, of Bokhara, stirs up an 
 insurrection against the Russians, 
 ISO 
 
 Abdul Rahman, flies from Sher AH 
 into Bokhara, 30; becomes master 
 of Balkh, 36 ; defeats Sher AH at 
 Shaikhabad, 42 ; instals his father as 
 Amir, 43 ; in conjunction with Azim 
 Khan, becomes master of Kanda- 
 har, 97 ; defeats Faiz Muhammad, 
 1 10 ; swears fealty to Azim Khan 
 on death of Afzal Khan, 1 1 1 
 
 Adui, the Pargana of, 275 
 
 Afghajiisian, position of affairs in, on 
 death of Dost Muhammad, 24 ; 
 Sher AH acknowledged Amir of, by 
 British Government, 28 ; Afzal Khan 
 installed Amir of, on defeat of Sher 
 AH at Shaikhabad, 43 ; position of 
 competitors to the throne of, after 
 battle of Shaikhabad, 74 ; installa- 
 tion of Azim Khan as Amir of, on 
 the death of Afzal Khan, 1 1 1 ; Sher 
 AH reinstalled in possession of 
 throne of, 131 ; re-appointment of 
 an English Vakil in, 115; the diffi- 
 culty of establishing any strong go- 
 vernment in, 165 ; English inter- 
 ference m the territories of, forbidden 
 by Lord Dalhousie's treaty, 116; 
 
 difficulty of determining a * rightful 
 sovereign' of, 118; conference at 
 St. Petersburg for demarcation of a 
 boundary line between Bokhara and, 
 154; Sher Ali's reforms in the ad- 
 ministration of, 158 ; the position of 
 Russia towards, 163 ; argument 
 against an English occupation of, 
 64, 165 
 
 Afghans, their character, 166 
 
 Afzal Khan rebels against Sher Ali, 
 28 ; is imprisoned, 30 ; released and 
 installed as titular Amir, 43 ; letter 
 to, from Sir John Lawrence, 48 ; ac- 
 knowledged by the Indian Govern- 
 ment as Amir of Kabul and Kan- 
 dahar, 98 ; death of, in 
 
 Akhund of Swat, 47. 
 
 Altishahr, the territory comprising, 2 1 5 
 
 Ambdld, the durbar at, 126 ; its results 
 in Persia, 140; Russian views of, 
 142 
 
 Amban, the, Chinese diplomatic agent 
 in Thibet, 192 
 
 Ambeyla, campaign of, 11 
 
 Ainin Khan, rebels against Sher Ali, 
 32 ; death of, 33 
 
 Ainreli, Mahal of, in Kathiawar, 350 
 
 Anhilward Pattan, the city of, 322, 
 
 324 
 
 Anjar, territory of, ceded to the Eng- 
 lish, 251 ; restored to Kutch Durbar, 
 265 
 
 Atd Muhammad Khan, accredited as 
 English Vakil to Kabul, 113
 
 366 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Atalik Ghasl, the, 231 
 
 Auckland, Lord, the Afghan policy of, 
 
 149 
 Azim Khdn, swears fealty to Sher Ali, 
 27 ; flies to British territory, 28 ; 
 returns to Afghanistan, 32 ; joins 
 Abdul Rahman, 37 ; captures Kabul, 
 39 ; yields his claims to Amirship 
 in favour of Afzal Khan, 43 ; mur- 
 ders Muhammad Kafik, 82 ; defeats 
 Sher Ali at Khelat-i-Ghilzai, 97; 
 succeeds Afzal Khan as Amir, 1 1 1 ; 
 acknowledged Amir of Kabul and 
 Kandahar by the Indian Govern- 
 ment, 114; evacuates Kabul, 131; 
 death of, 158 
 
 Babriawar, district of, 342 
 
 Bagdad, Turkish Governor-General of, 
 
 Bahadur^ Sultan of Guzarat, 330 
 Bahirwatia, in Kathiawar, 354 
 Bait, the town and fort of, 348-9 
 Bajgah, action at, 29 
 Balkh, the province of, 25 
 Bam-i-duniya, 49 
 Bantwa, the Taluka of, 341 
 Baroda, tribute paid to the State of, 
 
 by the Kathiawar chiefs, 332 
 Barton, Dr., attempted journey of, 
 
 with Colonel Sarel to India, vid 
 
 Thibet, 187 
 Bell, Major Evans, 116 
 Bellew, Dr., 25 
 
 Bereymah, the Wahabi town of, 18 
 Beluchist&n, proposals of General John 
 
 Jacob for occupation of, 88 
 Bhdydd, explanation of the system of, 
 
 in Rajput States, 245 
 Bhdwnagar, The Rawal of, 339 
 Bhdmo, trade between China and, 
 
 183-4 
 Bokhara, the king of, shelters Abdul 
 Rahman, 31 ; disputes the occupa- 
 tion of Kokand by the Russians, 
 53 ; detains M. Struve, the Russian 
 envoy, as prisoner, 56 ; sends an 
 envoy to Calcutta, 92 ; terms of 
 peace obtained by, from Russia, 150 
 
 Bolan Pass, The, 88, 91 
 Botiga, seat of Roman Catholic mis- 
 sion, 190 
 Brunnow, Baron de, 144, 152 
 Buchanan, Sir Andrew, 153, 155 
 Burmah, our relations towards, as 
 compared with Afghanistan, 14S 
 
 Caravan Route between Europe and 
 China, 206, 214 
 
 Castro, Juan de, 331 
 
 Cazala, Fort, detention of Bokhara 
 envoy at, 54 
 
 Central Asia, general features of the 
 country known as, 70; map of, 
 issued by Colonel Walker, 51 
 
 China, overland lines of communica- 
 tion between India and, 174. 
 
 Chinas, Fort, 54 
 
 Chinese Tartary, provinces of, and 
 races inhabiting, 49 
 
 Ching-tu-fu, capital of Chinese pro- 
 vince of Szechuen, 185 
 
 Chirchik, river, 54 
 
 Cholera, outbreak of, at Kabul, 108 
 
 Chutig-king-fu, port of, 189 
 
 Cochin China, French colony of, 185 
 
 Colvill, Dr., \^ 
 
 Dadar, 90 
 
 Dalhousie, Lord, Treaty of, with Dost 
 Muhammad, 116 
 
 Daman, Fort of, 15; unsuccessful 
 assault upon, 20 
 
 Dawes, Lieutenant, 17 
 
 Deb and Dharm, Rajas, terms of our 
 treaty with, 7 
 
 Dereyiyah, 12 
 
 Desfliches, Monsignor, 190 
 
 Dev Pattan, Ruins of, 323 
 
 Diplomatic Agents, danger of deput- 
 ing to cities in Central Asia, 132, 
 225 
 
 Diu, Portuguese Colony of, 323 
 
 Diwdngiri, the Disaster at, 6 
 
 Dost Muhammad, death of, 24 ; prin- 
 cipal sons of, 25 ; Lord Dalhousie's 
 treaty with, 116
 
 INDEX. 
 
 367 
 
 Diij^, Mr. Grant, Speech of, on Afghan 
 affairs, 147 
 
 Durand, Sir Henry, arguments of, 
 against the British occupation of 
 Quetta and Herat, 90 ; incorpora- 
 tion of Sind with the Panjab recom- 
 mended by, 171 
 
 Drangdra, the Raj of, 341 
 
 Dwarka, 348 
 
 Dwdrs, cession of, from Bhutan, 7 
 
 Dzungaria, Muhammadan population 
 in, 200 ; insurrection in, 208 
 
 Eastwick, Mr., motion of, in the 
 House of Commons, in regard to 
 Afghan affairs, 145 
 
 Ellenborough, Lord, 14 
 
 Elphinstone, the Honourable Mount- 
 stuart, Minute by, on the affairs in 
 Kutch, 263 ; description of the 
 Afghan character by, 167 
 
 Faiz Muhammad, sides with Abdul 
 Rahman against Sher Ali, 35 ; be- 
 comes master of Balkh, 45 ; joins 
 Sher Ali, 79 ; defeats Surwar Khan, 
 96, 104; is killed in battle, no. 
 
 Faizul, Amir of the Arabian Wahabis, 
 
 H 
 
 Fathi Muhammad, nephew of Sher Ali, 
 appointed Governor of Balkh, 31 ; 
 flies to Kabul, 36 ; appointed Gover- 
 nor of Jalalabad, 40 
 
 Ferrier's History of the Afghans, 166, 
 167 
 
 Forbes, Alexander Kinloch, 320 ; de- 
 scription of the Palitana Temples, 
 
 by, 343 
 Foreign Office, Indian, functions of, 2 
 Forsyth, Sir Douglas, account of 
 Eastern Turkistan by, 234 ; Treaty 
 with the Ruler of Kashgar signed 
 by, 240 ; takes part in a conference 
 at St. Petersburg on Central Asian 
 affairs, 153 
 Frcre, Sir Bar tie, 89, 291, 297 
 
 Fytche, Colonel, account of the 
 Muhammadan insurrection in Yun- 
 nan by, i8i 
 
 Gabet, Monsieur, 185, 193 
 
 Gaikwar, the, Contingent maintained 
 in Kathiawar by, 352 
 
 Gardiner, Mr., Resident in Kutch, 265 
 
 Ghilzai, Tribe of, 79, 84, 108 
 
 Gir, the, country so called in Kathia- 
 war, 321 
 
 Girasias, system of, in Kutch, 261, 
 277 ; in Kathiawar, 336 
 
 Girnar, the inscriptions at, 321 
 
 Gobi, desert of, 176, 198, 200 
 
 Gohel Rajputs, 339 
 
 Gohelwar, 342, 360 
 
 Gonne, Mr., Note on Kutch affairs by, 
 299, 306 
 
 Green, Sir Henry, 88, 107 
 
 Gundal, State of, 347 
 
 Gurkhas, the, 193, 197 
 
 Halldr, district of, 341, 347 
 
 Heins, Monsieur, 174, 198, 201 
 
 Herat, capture of, by Dost Muham- 
 mad, 24; proposed occupation of 
 by British troops, 63, 88 
 
 Hoai Hoai, generic title of Muham- 
 madans and Jews in China, 180, 201 
 
 Hojas, 216 
 
 Honner, Colonel, 349 
 
 Hue, Monsieur, 185, 192 
 
 Ibrahim Pasha, invasion of Nejed by, 
 12 
 
 Ibrahim Khan, son of Sher Ali, ap- 
 pointed Governor of Kabul, 36 ; 
 capitulates the city to Azim Khan, 
 39 
 
 Idjar, defeat of the Bokhariots at, by 
 Russian troops, 59 
 
 Ilchi, capital of Khoten, 5 1 
 
 Ishakh Khan, son of Abdul Rahman, 
 evacuates Balkh, 139; repossesses 
 himself of that province, 160
 
 368 
 
 INJDEX. 
 
 yacoby General John, proposals of, to 
 occupy Quetta and Herat, 63, 87, 
 120 
 Jacob, Colonel Le Grand, 279, 281, 
 
 283, 312 
 Jafarabad, 342 
 
 yaldl-ud-din, 32, 33 
 
 Jareja Rajputs, immigration of into 
 Kutch, 245 ; into Kathiawar, 338 ; 
 position secured to, as feudatories in 
 Kutch, by Colonel MacMurdo's 
 treaty, 256 ; status of, as described 
 by Mr. Williams, 26 ; policy to- 
 wards, advocated by Mountstuart 
 Elphinstone, 264 ; rights of the Rao 
 of Kutch over, as recognised by Mr. 
 Lumsden, 275 
 
 Jahangir Khan Khwaja, 216 
 
 yemibah, tribe of, 18, 20 
 
 yetwa Fajputs, 340 
 
 yhdldwar, district of, 345, 360 
 
 yoasmes, tribe of, 1 1 
 
 yohnson, Mr. W. H., visit of, to the 
 Khan of Khoten, 51, 222 
 
 yournal de St. Petersbourg, 57 
 
 yundgarh, the State of, 337 
 
 yung Bahadur, Sir, war declared by, 
 against Thibet, 194; embassy de- 
 spatched by, to Emperor of China, 
 188, 197 
 
 yuzaky disaster of Russians at, 56 
 
 Kalmaks, incursion of, into Russian 
 
 territory, 210 
 Kandahar, proposed occupation of, 
 
 by British troops, 63 
 Kansu and Shensi, insurrection in, 203 
 Karshi, 60 
 Kashgar, 50, 215, capture of, by 
 
 Yakub Khan, 221 ; prospects of 
 
 trade between India and, 235 
 Kashgari-Onigours, 199 
 Kdthiawdr Proper, district of, 344 
 Kau/mann, General, 130, 150, 163 
 Keatinge, Major, 288 
 Khan Bddshah, of Khoten, 50 
 Khaibar Pass, 88 
 Khddt, English treaty with Khan 
 
 of, 88 
 
 Khiva and Kokand, their independence 
 subject to the will of Russia, 53 
 
 Khoja Muhammad Parsa, envoy frotn 
 Bokhara to Calcutta, 93 
 
 Khojend, capture by Russians of, 59 
 
 Khoten, the insurrection in, 50 ; visit 
 of Mr. Johnson to Khan of, 51, 222 ; 
 capture of, by Tunganis, 219 ; cap- 
 ture of, by Yakub Kushbegi, 223 
 
 Khurshid Pasha, 13 
 
 Khwdjds oi \}cvt White Mountain, 216 
 
 Kokand, geographical position of, 52 ; 
 Russian occupation of, 59 
 
 Korinar, 350 
 
 Kryjanovsky, General, Governor-Gen- 
 eral of Orenburg, recall of, 58 
 
 Kuen Lun Mountains, 49 
 
 Kujhbaz, battle of, 33 
 
 Kulja, town of, 208, 210 
 
 Kutch, commencement of our political 
 relations with, 249 ; guarantee given 
 to feudatory chiefs of, 260. 
 
 Lama, the Grand, 191 
 
 Lang, Colonel, 355 
 
 Ldthi, the Thakur of, 242 
 
 Lawrence, Sir John, attitude of, in 
 regard to the Bhutan war, 5 ; care 
 of, to discountenance the claims of 
 Sher All's rivals while the latter re- 
 tained any hold on Afghanistan, 44 ; 
 informs Afzal Khan that the rela- 
 tions of the British Government 
 must be with the actual rulers of 
 Afghanistan, 48 ; declines an appli- 
 cation from the Chief of Khoten for 
 arms and assistance against Russia, 
 52 ; policy of, in respect to Russian 
 conquests in Central Asia, 64, 69 ; 
 objections of, to a present occupa- 
 tion of Quetta by British troops, 89 ; 
 declines an application of the AmTr 
 of Bokhara for assistance against 
 Russia, 95; acknowledges Afzal 
 Khan as Amir of Kabul and Kan- 
 dahar, but reiterates policy of neu- 
 trality as regards contending parties 
 in Afghanistan, 99 ; explanation of, 
 in House of Lords, for rendering 
 assistance to Sher Ali, 130, 135.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 369 
 
 Lhassa, road from, to Pekin, 185 ; 
 
 Chinese agent at, 192 
 Lions in Kathiawar, 357 
 Long, Lieutenant, 19 
 Lumsden, The Hon. Mr., views of, 
 
 in regard to Kutch affairs, 262, 275, 
 
 282, 284, 313 
 
 Machu Kanta, 346 
 
 Macleod, Sir Donald, 98, 127 
 
 MacMtirdo, Captain, first British Resi- 
 dent in Kutch, 252 ; treaty effected 
 by, with Kutch Durbar, 256; par- 
 tiahty of, towards Bhayad, 260 
 
 Mahmjid, Sultan, of Ghazni, 324 
 
 Malcolm, Sir John, Minute of, on 
 Kutch affairs, 269, 308 
 
 Malet, Mr., 277, 278 
 
 Malta, Thakur of, 346 
 
 Mangrol, the Shaikh of, 341 
 
 Mansfield, Sir William, vindication 
 by, of the peace made with Bhutan, 
 9; arguments of, against a British 
 occupation of Quetta and Herat, 
 90,91 
 
 Marco Polo, 176, 180, 215 
 
 Maoutse, the, 185, 187 
 
 Mdwar-u-Nahr, 52, 70 
 
 Merv, 61 
 
 Meshed, visit of Yakilb Khan to Shah 
 of Persia at, 105 
 
 Missionaries, French, in Thibet and 
 China, 190, 192 
 
 Muhafnmad Rafik, suppresses disturb- 
 ances in Khurm, 28 ; takes part in 
 the battle of Kujhbaz, 33 ; deputed 
 by Sher Ali to defend Kabul, 36 ; 
 deserts to the forces under Abdul 
 Rahman, 27 j assists in defeat of 
 Sher Ali at Shaikhabad, 41 ; mur- 
 dered by Azim Khan, 82 
 
 Muhammad P^\, Pasha of Egypt, 14 
 
 Mulkgiri, The Mahratta system of, 
 
 333 
 Munshi, our, at Kabul, 45, H2, 113, 
 
 114 
 Muscat, proceedings of Colonel Pelly 
 
 at, 22 
 
 Najum-ud-din, envoy from Bokhara 
 to St. Petersburg, 53 
 
 Nawanagar, the State of, 274, 339 
 
 Nejed, invasion of, by the Pasha of 
 Egypt, 12, 13 
 
 Nepal, communication from French 
 missionaries in Western China to 
 the British Resident at, 190 ; Politi- 
 cal relations of, with China, 193 ; 
 Quinquennial embassy from, to 
 China, 188, 194, 197 
 
 Newswriter at Kabul, 45, 68, 76, 100 
 
 Non-intervention, the policy of, gene- 
 rally maintained by Sir John Law- 
 rence in his dealings with the States 
 of Central Asia, 44, 52, 64, 76, 95, 
 99, 1 01, 136 ; arguments in favour 
 of present non-intervention of Eng- 
 land in Afghanistan or Beluchistan, 
 64, 89, 116, 165 
 
 Norris, Mr., Resident in Kutch, 265 
 
 Ntmho-da-Ctmha, 330 
 
 Ogilvie, Mr., Political Agent in Kutch, 
 278 
 
 Orenburg, detention of Bokhara cara- 
 van at, 53 
 
 Okhamundel, 347 
 
 Onigottr Turks, 1 98 
 
 Palgrave, Mr., 10 
 
 Palitdna, the temples at, 343 
 
 Pamir, steppe, 49 
 
 Panthays, origin of the name of, 180 ; 
 insurrection of, in Yunnan, i8r 
 
 Pasley, Captain, 19 
 
 Pelly, Colonel Lewis, Resident at 
 Bushire, 16 
 
 Persia, position of, in respect to Rus- 
 sian conquests in Central Asia, 168 ; 
 credulity of, as regards Russian in- 
 fluence at Kabul, 46 
 
 Phayre, Sir Arthur, 191 
 
 Political Agent, duties of, in the pro- 
 vince of Kathiawar, 335 
 
 Pottinger, Sir Henry, Resident in 
 Kutch, 266 
 
 Pilrbanda, the Rana of, 340 
 
 B B
 
 37 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Qiiayz, Chinese designation of Mu- 
 hammadans in Yunnan, i8o 
 
 Quetta, flight of Sharif Khan to, 86 ; 
 General Jacob's scheme for the 
 occupation of, 87, 120 
 
 Raikes, Captain, Assistant Political 
 Agent in Kutch, 279, 285 
 
 Rajkot, 347 
 
 Ramsay, Colonel G., 183, 191 
 
 Rangoon, proposed railway from to 
 Yunnan frontier, 184 
 
 Rann of Kutch, 320 
 
 Rao Bharmalji, Captain MacMurdo's 
 treaty with, 251 ; deposition of, by 
 British Government, 254 
 
 Rao Desal, 247 
 
 Rao Desal ji, 254; treaty made with 
 on his assumption of the govern- 
 ment of Kutch, 272 ; death of, 287 
 
 Rao Prdgmalgi, 287 ; protest of 
 against Major Shortt's proceedings, 
 297 
 
 Rao Raidhan, 248 
 
 Riad, visit of Colonel Pelly to, 17 
 
 Roberts, Colonel, 278, 285 
 
 Roman Catholic Missionaries in Thibet 
 and China, 190 
 
 Russia, views taken by, of the Ambala 
 Durbar, 142 ; negotiations between 
 England and, for the neutralisation 
 of the territories separating Russian 
 Turkistan from India, 144 ; the dan- 
 ger to our Indian Empire from, con- 
 sidered, 61, 160 
 
 Sadleir, Captain, 12 
 Sadyozais, family of, 118 
 Samarkand, Russian capture of, 130 
 Saracen invasion, eastern limits of, 179 
 Sarel, Colonel, 174, 185, 188 
 Sorts, The, 208 
 Satrunjai, hill of, 343 
 Sayyidabdd, battle of, 74 
 Sayyid Ghes, 1 6 
 
 Sayyid Salim, murder of Sultan 
 Thoweyni by, 21 
 
 Sayyid Turki, 21 
 
 Schlagentweit, Monsieur de, 51, 217 
 
 Seistan, disputed territory of, 123, 139, 
 142 
 
 Shaikhdbad, battle of, 41 
 
 Shahr-i-Sabz, 60 
 
 Sharif Khan, 26 ; joins Amin Khan 
 in rebellion against Sher Ali, 32 ; 
 defeated and tenders submission to 
 Sher Ali, 33 ; deserts to the enemy, 
 37; rejoins Sher Ali, 41 ; again de- 
 serts to the rebels, 86 
 
 Sheill, Sir Justin, 63, 88 
 
 Sher Ali, selected by Dost Muham- 
 mad as his successor, 27 ; recognised 
 by British Government as Amir, 28; 
 imprisons Afzal Khan, 30 ; gains 
 battle of Kujhbaz and captures 
 Kandahar, 34 ; is defeated by Abdul 
 Rahman at Shaikhabad, 43 ; applies 
 to Indian Government for assistance, 
 'jy, 82 ; defeated by Azim Khan at 
 Khelat-i-Ghilzai and flies to Herat, 
 97 ; joins army of Faiz Muhammad 
 in Balkh, 104; obliged to retreat to 
 Takhtapul, 1 1 1 ; returns to Herat, 
 115; recovers possession of Kabul, 
 132 ; sole master of Afghanistan, 139 
 
 Shortt, Major, Political Agent in 
 Kutch, 287 
 
 Sohar, 2 1 
 
 Somnath, temple of, 324 
 
 Soreth, 341, 360 
 
 Sind, fusion of its administration with 
 that of the Panjab recommended, 
 171 
 
 S laden. Captain, 178 
 
 Stanhope, Colonel the Hon. L,, 348, 
 356 
 
 Stoddart and Conolly, murder of, 92, 
 
 95 
 
 Stir, destruction of forts at, by Colonel 
 Pelly, 20 
 
 Surwar Khan, made prisoner by Sher 
 Ali at battle of Kujhbaz, 34 ; libe- 
 rated by Abdul Rahman, 43 ; de- 
 feated by Faiz Muhammad, 96, 104; 
 appointed Governor of Kandahar, 
 109 
 
 Sutsung, Emperor of China, 178
 
 INDEX. 
 
 371 
 
 Si. Petersburg, conference at for settle- 
 ment of boundary between Bokhara 
 and Afghanistan, 154 
 
 Struve, Monsieur, sent as Russian 
 envoy to Bokhara, 55 ; imprisoned 
 at Samarkand, 58 
 
 Szechuen, province of, 185 
 
 Tajiks, same people as the Sarts, 208 
 
 Takhtapul, 104, 105, iii 
 
 Taklifan, tax so called in Kutch, 3 1 1 
 
 Talilkdars in Kathiawar, 336 
 
 Tali ox Talifu, 182, 183 
 
 Tashkend, capture of, by Russians, 53 
 
 Tashkurgan, imprisonment of Afzal 
 Khan at, 30 
 
 Ta-tsin-deo, town of, 188 
 
 Tchcrniayeff, General, 55, 56, 58 
 
 Tea, the demand for, throughout 
 Turkistan, 227 
 
 Teheran, our Mission at, 169 
 
 Terektin Pass, traffic over, 228 
 
 Thibet, political relations between 
 China and, 191 
 
 Thian Shan Mountains, 60 
 
 Thoweyni, Sultan of Oman, murder 
 of, 21 
 
 Tod, Colonel, Description of the 
 Kathls by, 344 
 
 Tongso Penlo, 7 
 
 Trevelyan, Colonel, Political Agent in 
 Kutch, 285 
 
 Tufeh insurgents in Szechuen, 186 
 
 Tungdnis or Dungens, origin of the 
 people so called, 199 ; character of, 
 202 ; insurrection of, in Kansu and 
 Shensi, 203 
 
 Turki Saidari, 16 
 
 Turkistan, Eastern, situation of, 213 ; 
 early history of, 214; position of 
 parties in, prior to Tungani insurrec- 
 tion, 218 ; present state of afifairs in, 
 232 
 
 Tiirkistdn, Russian, 25, 212 
 
 Tzirks, geographical distribution of, 
 198 
 
 Und Sunveya, district of, 342 
 Urainchi, town of, 207 
 
 Usbeg, the States so called, 52 
 
 Vakil, re-appointment at Kabul of an 
 
 English Vakil, 113 
 Vambdry, Dr., 63, 208 
 
 Wadwan, Thakur of, 345 
 
 Wdghars, of Kathiawar, 348; the 
 Chiefs so called in Kutch, 250, 255, 
 280, 287 
 
 Wahdbls, The Arabian, our policy in 
 past dealings with, 12 ; nominal de- 
 pendence on Constantinople of, 16 
 
 Walt, Muhammad, Governor of Kabul, 
 
 36 
 Walker, Colonel Alexander, 333 
 Walker, Colonel, R.E., 51 
 Wallabhipar, city of, 322 
 Walleh, town of, 322, 342 
 Walter, Captain, 267 
 Wdnkdnir, Raj of, 345 
 Waziri tribe, 32 
 Williams, Mr. James, Resident in 
 
 Kutch, 262 
 Willoughby, Mr. J. P., 354 
 Wingjield, Sir Charles, 146 
 
 Ydkub Khan, third son of Sher Ali, 
 appointed Governor of Herat, 27 ; 
 able service rendered by, to his 
 father, 44 ; visits Shah of Persia at 
 Meshed, 106; captures Kandahar, 131 
 
 Yakub Kushbegi, Amir of Eastern 
 Turkistan, origin of, 220; present 
 position of, 232 
 
 Yarkand, the insurrection in, 50, 220 ; 
 captured by Yakiib Kushbegi, 223 ; 
 prospects of Indian trade with, 235 
 
 Yule, Colonel Henry, 174, 178, i79, 
 208, 216 
 
 Yunnan, origin of Muhammadan 
 population of, 176; results of Pan- 
 thay revolution in, 183; projects for 
 opening mercantile connection with, 
 184
 
 LONDON : PRINTBD BV 
 
 SPOTTISWOODK AND CO., NKW-STRKKT SQUARE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STRKKT 
 
 / I 
 
 I
 
 WORKS BY W. W. HUNTER, B.A., LL.D., 
 
 OF HER majesty's BENGAL CIVIL SERVICE; DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF STATISTICS TO THE 
 GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ; ONE OF THE COUNCIL OF THE ROVAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 
 
 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 THE ETHNICAL FRONTIER. 
 
 FIFTH EDITION, ids. 
 
 ' One of the most important as well as most interesting works which the records of Indian literature 
 
 can show Yellow stained volumes from each District Treasury in Bengal, family archives from 
 
 the stores of Rajas, local information collected by Pandits specially employed for the purpose, folk- 
 lore supplied by the laborious inquisition of native gentlemen, manuscripts in London, Calcutta, and 
 Bengal, have all been laid under contribution ; and, as the initial result, we have the first volume of 
 what promises to be a delightful and valuable history.' li^estminster Review. 
 
 ' If Mr. Hunter does not ultimately compel recognition from the world as a historian of the very 
 first class of the class to which not a score of Englishmen have ever belonged we entirely mistake 
 
 our trade He has executed, with admirable industry and rare power of expression, a task which, 
 
 so far as we know, has never yet been attempted : he has given life and reality and interest to the 
 internal history of an Indian Province under British rule to a history that is without battles or 
 sieges, or martial deeds of any sort.' S/>eciator. 
 
 ' It is hard to over-estimate the importance of a work whose author succeeds in fascinating us 
 with a subject so generally regarded as unattractive, and who, on questions of grave importance to 
 the future destiny of India, gives the results of wide research and exceptional opportunities of personal 
 study, in a bright, lucid, forcible narrative, rising on occasion to eloquence.' Times. 
 
 Mr. Hunter, in a word, has applied the philosophic method of writing history to a new field 
 
 The grace, and ease, and steady flow of the writing almost make us forget, when reading, the surpass- 
 ing severity and value of the author's labours.' Fortnightly Review. 
 
 ' Mr. Hunter has written a book which gives promise of a historian scarcely inferior in scholarship, 
 intellectual power, and literary skill to Mr. Froude or Mr. Freeman.' British Quarterly Review. 
 
 'A work of the greatest talent, and one which will make an epoch in Indian literature. The facts 
 are set forth with the scrupulous exactness of an honest and im^partial judge, the scientific details are 
 clothed in a dress at once clear and picturesque.' Revue Bibliosraphique Universelle. 
 
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 NATIVE AND BRITISH RULE. 
 
 TWO VOLS. T,2s. 
 
 'A model of what official research and scholarly zeal ought to do A book of striking grasp, 
 
 interest, and completeness.' Fortnightly Review, 
 
 'The mature and laborious work of a man who has devoted the whole power of his mind, first to 
 the practical duties of his profession as an Indian civilian, and next to the study of all that relates 
 to or can illustrate it. As long as Indian civilians write books like this, as long as they interest them- 
 selves so passionately in their work, and feel so keenly its connection with nearly every subject which 
 can occupy serious thought, the English Rule will not only last, but will prosper, and make its 
 subjects prosper too.' Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 'A great subject worthily handled He writes with great knowledge, great sympathy with 
 
 the Indian people, a keen and quick appreciation of all that is striking in their history and character, 
 and with a flowing and picturesque style which carries the reader lightly over ground which, in less 
 skilful hands, might seem tedious beyond GXiAwczxice..' Saturday Review. 
 
 'It is difficult to know whether the book is most praiseworthy for its literary style, its wide grasp 
 of facts, or its humane ie.dX.'\VcstiuiHStcr Review.
 
 By tht same Author. 
 
 A VOCABULARY OF THE NON-ARYAN 
 LANGUAGES OF INDIA AND HIGH ASIA: 
 
 BEING A GLOSSARY OF 139 LANGUAGES BASED UPON THE 
 HODGSON PAPERS, OFFICIAL RECORDS AND MSS. 
 
 WITH A DISSERTATION. 
 
 QUARTO. TWO GUINEAS. 
 
 ( The Author withdraws some of the Linguistic Inductions.) 
 
 ' We trust that this book will be the starting-point in a new era for our Indian empire, and that 
 the course recommended in it will immediately engage the attention of our Indian statesmen.' 
 
 Ai/iefia-um. 
 
 'The primitive Non-Aryan population of India has seldom been the subject of European research. 
 The ignorance of their habits and views inevitably brings forth mistakes in dealing with them, and the 
 editor traces their chronic hostility to the British power in a large measure to this source. He discloses 
 the means for putting an end to this unhappy state of things, and for utilizing the tribes as soldiers 
 
 and reclaimers of the soil Besides this very practical aim, Mr. Hunter's Dictionary will bring 
 
 the important ethnological questions, which he has propounded in his Dis.sertation, nearer to a definite 
 solution.' Literarisches Centralbtatt. 
 
 ' Mr. Hunter has prefixed to the body of his work a Dissertation which it is within our competence 
 to appreciate, and which we unhesitatingly pronounce to contain one of the most imiwrlant generalisa- 
 tions from a series of apparently i-solated tacts ever contributed to Indian History It is between 
 
 these [Non-Arj'an] masses and the British Government that Mr. Hunter hopes by his book to establish 
 a lasting link ; and whatever the result of his linguistic labours, in this one labour of mercy he has, we 
 believe, succeeded. Non-Aryans will not again be shot down on the faith of statements from Hindu 
 settlers, who first seize their lands, and then bind them down under the Indian law of debt into a 
 serfdom little, removed from slavery.' Spectator. 
 
 'The political value of Mr. Hunter's new book is this, that he has put before the public, official 
 and non-official, surh a view of the character and capacities of the Non-Aryan trilxs, and of our 
 gross niLsmanagemcnt of them in the past, that no one, whether the Government or the Christian 
 Church, will dare to withhold from them the civilisation which will convert at least twelve millions of 
 frank, truthful, induslbious races into the most loyal of our subjects, aggressive for good, and checking 
 such evil as Hinduism and Muhammadauism so plentifully bring forth.' Friend ^ India. 
 
 'It is a singular good fortune f<#the aboriginal tribes of India to have drifted into the favour of 
 so brilliant a writer and so accomplished a scholar. Their connection with Mr. Hunter was one cf those 
 accidents in history which arc the mother of great events.' ///'</ Patriot. 
 
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 understand the policy of the Government of India in relation to the famine.' -Pall Mull Gazette. 
 
 Just published, 2 7'oh. 24J. 
 
 A LIFE OF THE EARL OF MAYO, 
 
 FOUKiH VICKROY OK I.\D1.\ ; 
 
 WITH A NARRATIVE OF HIS INDIAN ADMINISTRATION.
 
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