India and the army in Afghanistan--a source of danger which from the
first had disquieted cautious soldiers--was making itself seriously felt,
and constituted for Macnaghten another cause of solicitude. Old Runjeet
Singh, a faithful if not disinterested ally, had died on June 27th, 1839,
the day on which Keane marched out from Candahar. The breath was scarcely
out of the old reprobate when the Punjaub began to drift into anarchy. So
far as the Sikh share in it was concerned, the tripartite treaty
threatened to become a dead letter. The Lahore Durbar had not adequately
fulfilled the undertaking to support Prince Timour's advance by the
Khyber, nor was it duly regarding the obligation to maintain a force on
the Peshawur frontier of the Punjaub. But those things were trivial in
comparison with the growing reluctance manifested freely, to accord to
our troops and convoys permission to traverse the Punjaub on the march to
and from Cabul. The Anglo-Indian Government sent Mr Clerk to Lahore to
settle the question as to the thoroughfare. He had instructions to be
firm, and the Sikhs did not challenge Mr Clerk's stipulation that the
Anglo-Indian Government must have unmolested right of way through the
Punjaub, while he undertook to restrict the use of it as much as
possible. This arrangement by no means satisfied the exacting Macnaghten,
and he continued to worry himself by foreseeing all sorts of troublous
contingencies unless measures were adopted for 'macadamising' the road
through the Punjaub.

The summer of 1840 did not pass without serious interruptions to the
British communications between Candahar and the Indus; nor without
unexpected and ominous disasters before they were restored. General
Willshire, with the returning Bombay column, had in the previous November
stormed Mehrab Khan's ill-manned and worse armed fort of Khelat, and the
Khan, disdaining to yield, had fallen in the hopeless struggle. His son
Nusseer Khan had been put aside in favour of a collateral pretender, and