THE WAR IN AFFGHANISTAN.

"Heu! heu! cicatricum et sceleris pudet
Fratrumque."

For two centuries the history of the British possessions in India was the history of accumulated successes. Dangers there had been, and difficulties, but each onward movement, with here and there a fluctuation, ended in a triumph, which that fluctuation enhanced. There is no record of so many and such prosperous struggles leading to such a supremacy in the previous annals of any people, save of the Romans alone. Here, too, as there, the empire seemed to grow by the very necessity of the case. New contacts brought new collisions. The sagacity of the civilised race, the steadfastness of the disciplined host, here by negociation, there by the shock of armies, widened the circle of a conquest. There was nothing which could be called a reverse to shade the bright outline except that one instance which invested with horror the name of Sooraj-ud-Dowlah. The memory of disasters is lost in the keener recollection of disgrace. We boast no longer that the flag of Britain in India is free from the soil of dishonour. Rome had her Furce Caudinæ. On the page of the English historian will stand out for ever a blot unerased,-the tale of the Khyber Pass.

Where the peninsula of Hindostan bends south

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ward from the old Gedrosia, the embouchures of the Indus, struggling through the lowlands of Scinde, invite for a thousand miles the upland passage of the soldier or the merchant. For three-fourths of that distance it is navigable for vessels of two hundred tons. As a channel of trade it might have usurped the place of the Ganges, had not the cure of Shah Jehan's daughter by an English physician determined the point of the fulcrum to Calcutta. If not, like its sister flood, a sacred stream, the Indus was none the less characterised by some romantic attributes. Like the Nile, it had concealed its fountains from the hydrographer; to the archæologist its sources were classic soil, pressed by the footstep of the Macedonian. It had other attractions. The presages alike and the hopes of the Indo-Europeans regarded it as France, monarchy, republic, empire, regarded the Rhine,-a frontier at once glorious and secure. The sober and practical aspirations of commerce, "parum locuples continente ripa," coincided with the love of enterprise and the lust of rule. Till the year 1831 the course of the Indus was very partially known, its capacity as a highway undetermined.-Then William IV. would send horses to Runjeet Singh-the shortest and easiest route must be sought. It is an opportunity for surveying the commercial landscape. The charge of this expedition shall be given to Alexander Burnes.

The Indian service makes a man or mars him. If the oppressiveness of the climate and the habits of ostentatious luxury relax the energies of some men, the scope offered for talent to display itself and the keen relish of responsible action string the nerves of others. Nor is there any region on earth where the

civil and military instincts are found so readily in combination, nor where promptitude of action is so often united with variety of accomplishments and tastes. Of the Anglo-Indian type Burnes was no indifferent specimen. The physical obstacles to be encountered in the journey to Lahore were no light ones. Besides, the Ameers of Scinde were proverbially jealous; and the influence of England was a cloud that had not yet gathered shape. There was only a tradition, now of twenty years' standing, and dating from Elphinstone's mission, which attributed to the Feringhee inexhaustible wealth, and good faith as inexhaustible. The charge had been zealously undertaken; it was ably performed. Rendering account of his tour to Lord William Bentinck at Simlah, Burnes received authority to extend his travels north and west: nominally as a private gentleman, virtually as the pioneer of a trans-Indian policy some day to be developed, he started afresh. A long circuit from the Indus to the Oxus, from the firm ridges of the Koosh over Cabul to their outlying volcano over Teheran, the fabled throne of Zohak, brought him back to Bombay after an absence of two years. He came-he saw-he spoke no word of conquest. But we are told that a holy Syud, lifting up his hands and his voice, as Burnes first sailed up the Indus, proclaimed the downfal of Scinde as no doubtful or distant event, and, had the Ameer of Cabul possessed the gift of prescience, he would have divined in the aspect of his guest a future for his country such as that which lurked in the unconscious features of Hazael.

The travels were published and praised; the

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traveller petted and promoted; and in 1835 he was sent to negotiate with the Ameers of Scinde the opening of the Indus for traffic. His address prevailed; and a year later he was despatched northward to effect with the masters of the upper stream what he had effected with the chieftains below. In September, 1837, he arrived for the second time at Cabul.

Of the five streams which give its name to the Punjab, the westernmost retains its original title of Indus. In latitude thirty-four degrees runs into it from the west the Adozzye, or river of Cabul. Three towns, Peshawur, Jellalabad, and Cabul stand on the south side, upon or near this river, in a line from east to west, about a geographical degree each from the other. Between Peshawur and Jellalabad are the defiles of the Khyber; between Jellalabad and the capital are the passes of Khoord Cabul. Where the sources of the Adozzye lie south of Cabul is the fortress of Ghuznee. South-west, perhaps 200 miles by the crow, is Candahar. Draw a line south from Cabul five hundred miles, and it will cut the Indus near Shikarpoor. Between Candahar and Shikarpoor is the Bolan Pass. Dost Mahomed of the Barukzye clan holds the sceptre now in what was the capital of the Ouranee monarchy,-Cabul. His is not an unlimited monarchy. One of his brothers rules at Candahar by a feudal tenure, and with feudal inconstancy. Another brother, by favour of and in the interests of Runjeet Singh, maintains no brotherly attitude at Peshawur. It is the vantage ground of the Sikhs west of the Indus. Ten years have not sufficed to consolidate the power

of Dost Mahomed. The mountaineers of Kohistan are not docile. The Ghiljies remember that half a century ago they were the sovereign race. The Kuzzilbash, a Persian by sentiment as by descent, musters strong in Cabul. The Khans of Affghanistan generally append some condition to their obedience; like the Cyclopes in Homer, each is to some extent his own lawgiver. There is a flaw, too, as some count flaws, in the Ameer's title. Himself, a Barukzye, he holds a throne which the Suddozyes did not delegate, but lost. The first Suddozye ruled by conquest. The Barukzyes were a powerful and a rival family, and for two generations, as Viziers, they held the actual authority, though not the nominal. For ostracism, despots substitute the dagger. The King murdered the Vizier; the Vizier had brothers, who exacted blood for blood. Of these Dost Mahomed was one, and the ablest. By the right of revenge, a sacred right in the Affghan code, and by the right of force, he attained the "musnud." It is not too much to say, that he kept it by the right of a moral and intellectual supremacy. On the occasion of Burnes's first visit to Cabul, the Ameer received him with affability and kindness. He appeared to be just in intention and vigorous in execution, to hold enlightened views, and to be favourably disposed towards the British power. When, five years later, the traveller re-appeared as an envoy, he found again a ready welcome, and held to his first estimate of the man; saw that "his knowledge of character was great; that his patience and delays bespoke ambition; that his limited revenues alone stood in the way of his popularity."