the Persians, strengthened and officered by the Russians, might roll
on towards Cabool, and there prepare for a descent upon India. This
magnificent but terrible idea was not examined in its details--it was
taken for granted as a thing not only possible but probable; and the
far-distant region of Hindostan, separated as it was by deserts,
mountains, and rivers from the tumult that agitated Central Asia, was
stirred by conflicting feelings of terror and exultation. British
India, from the Himalaya to the sea, is dotted here and there with
native states, which the inconsistent policy of the Company in
Leadenhall Street has preserved in a kind of liberty, as relics and
remembrancers of a past _régime_. But besides these uncertain
protégés, we had to look to the natives in our own provinces, who
seemed to _expect_ that something would happen--they knew not what,
any more than their rulers. 'Among our Mussulman subjects,' says Mr
Kaye, 'the feeling was somewhat akin to that which had unsettled their
minds at the time when the rumoured advent of Zemaun Shah made them
look for the speedy restoration of Mohammedan supremacy in Hindostan.
In their eyes, indeed, the movement beyond the Afghan frontier took
the shape of a Mohammedan invasion; and it was believed that countless
thousands of true believers were about to pour themselves over the
plains of the Punjab and Hindostan, and to wrest all the country
between the Indus and the sea from the hands of the infidel usurpers.
The Mohammedan journals, at this time, teemed with the utterances of
undisguised sedition. There was a decline in the value of public
securities; and it went openly from mouth to mouth, in the streets and
the bazaars, that the Company's Raj was nearly at an end.'

Under these circumstances, it seemed necessary to look to the
intervening country, Afghanistan, which in this summary manner was to
be made a 'platform of observation' for the Perso-Russian army to