[Footnote 2:] [At] an interview which Major Hastings, the Political Officer, and Mr. Durand, my Political Secretary, had with His Highness at my request on the 23rd October, he said, referring to the subject of the Amirship: 'I call God and the Koran to witness, and everything a Mussulman holds sacred, that my only desire is to be set free, and end my days in liberty. I have conceived an utter aversion for these people. I always treated them well, and you see how they have rewarded me. So long as I was fighting in one place or another, they liked me well enough. Directly I became Amir, and consulted their own good by making peace with you, they turned on me. Now I detest them all, and long to be out of Afghanistan for ever. It is not that I am unable to hold the country; I have held it before and could hold it again, but I have no further wish to rule such a people, and I beg of you to let me go. If the British Government wish me to stay, I will stay, as their servant or as the Amir, if you like to call me so, until my son is of an age to succeed me, or even without that condition; but it will be wholly against my own inclination, and I earnestly beg to be set free.']
[Footnote 3:] [Dr]. Bellew was with the brothers Lumsden at Kandahar in 1857.]
[Footnote 4:] [My] action in endorsing the proceedings of this court, and my treatment of Afghans generally, were so adversely and severely criticized by party newspapers and periodicals, and by members of the Opposition in the House of Commons, that I was called upon for an explanation of my conduct, which was submitted and read in both Houses of Parliament by the Secretary of State for India, Viscount Cranbrook, and the Under-Secretary of State for India, the Hon. E. Stanhope. In the Parliamentary records of February, 1880, can be seen my reply to the accusations, as well as an abstract statement of the executions carried out at Kabul in accordance with the findings of the military Court.]
[Footnote 5:] [Afterwards] General Sir Robert Bright, G.C.B.]
FOOTNOTES, CHAPTER [LIII]
[Footnote 1:] In Pushtu the word tarbur signifies a cousin to any degree, and is not unfrequently used as 'enemy,' the inference being that in Afghanistan a cousin is necessarily an enemy.]
[Footnote 2:] [As] I reported at the time, the magnitude of Sher Ali's military preparations was, in my opinion, a fact of peculiar significance. He had raised and equipped with arms of precision sixteen regiments of Cavalry and sixty-eight of Infantry, while his Artillery amounted to nearly 300 guns. Numbers of skilled artisans were constantly employed in the manufacture of rifled cannon and breech-loading small arms. Swords, helmets, uniforms, and other articles of military equipment, were stored in proportionate quantities. Upon the construction of the Sherpur cantonment Sher Ali had expended an astonishing amount of labour and money. The size and cost of this work may be judged from the fact that the main line of rampart, with barrack accommodation, extended to a length of nearly two miles under the western and southern slopes of the Bimaru hills, while the original design was to carry the wall entirely round the hills, a distance of four and a half miles, and the foundations were laid for a considerable portion of this length. All these military preparations must have been going on for some years, and were quite unnecessary, except as a provision for contemplated hostilities with ourselves. Sher Ali had refused during this time to accept the subsidy we had agreed to pay him, and it is difficult to understand how their entire cost could have been met from the Afghan treasury, the annual gross revenue of the country at that time amounting only to about 80 lakhs of rupees.]
[Footnote 3:] [These] letters, as well as my report to the Secretary to the Government of India in the Foreign Department, with an account of my conversation with Yakub Khan, are given in the [Appendix].
[Footnote 4:] [Sirdar] Ayub Khan was Governor of Herat in 1879.]