part of Afghanistan, encouraging an attack by 30,000 Persians, led
by Russian officers, upon Herat. Instead of acceding to the request
of Dost Mohammed, the British Governor-General--Lord Auckland--
declared war against that potentate, alleging in a proclamation that
"the welfare of the English possessions in the East rendered it
necessary to have an ally on their western frontier who would be in
favor of peace, and opposed to all disorders and innovations."

This was the beginning of intrigues relating to Afghanistan on the
part, alternately, of England and Russia, in which John Bull has had
to pay, literally, "the lion's share" of the cost in blood and
treasure. In 1850, Sir John Cam Hobhouse, President of the Board of
Control in India confessed: "The Afghan war _was done by myself_;
the Court of Directors had nothing to do with it." The reason
already mentioned was alleged as an excuse for hostilities. They
were declared, notwithstanding that the British political agent at
the Court of Dost Mohammed reported that ruler as "entirely English"
in his sympathies. This report was suppressed. Twenty years later
the facts were given to Parliament, Russian letters were found
implicating the Czar's ministers, and the English agent, Burnes, was
vindicated.

The Anglo-Indian army--consisting of twenty thousand troops, fifty
thousand followers, and sixty thousand camels--advanced in two
columns, one from Bengal, and the other from Bombay by the Indus.
Scinde, which had hitherto been independent, like the Punjab and
Lahore, was subjugated _en route_, and nine thousand men were
left behind to occupy it. On the 23d of February, 1839, a
simultaneous advance from Shikarpur, on the Bolan Pass, commenced.
Kandahar was occupied April 25th, Ghazni July 23d, and Kabul August