Lord John Russell to Queen Victoria.
Pembroke Lodge, 28th April 1850.
... Lord John Russell cannot but assent to your Majesty's right to claim every consideration on the part of your Majesty's Ministers. He will take care to attend to this subject, and is much concerned to find that your Majesty has so frequently occasion to complain of Lord Palmerston's want of attention.
The Marquis of Dalhousie to Queen Victoria.
THE KOH-I-NOOR
Simla, 15th May 1850.
... When the Governor-General had the honour of addressing your Majesty from Bombay, the arrangements for the transmission of the Koh-i-noor were incomplete. He therefore did not then report to your Majesty, as he now humbly begs leave to do, that he conveyed the jewel himself from Lahore in his own charge, and deposited it in the Treasury at Bombay. One of your Majesty's ships had been ordered to Bombay to receive it, but had not then arrived, and did not arrive till two months afterwards, thus causing delay. The Medea, however, sailed on 6th April, and will, it is hoped, have a safe and speedy passage to England.
By this mail the Governor-General transmits officially a record of all that he has been able to trace of the vicissitudes through which the Koh-i-noor has passed. The papers are accurate and curious.
In one of them it is narrated, on the authority of Fugueer-ood-deen, who is now at Lahore, and who was himself the messenger, that Runjeet Singh sent a message to Wufa Begum, the wife of Shah Sooja, from whom he had taken the gem, to ask her its value. She replied, "If a strong man were to throw four stones, one north, one south, one east, one west, and a fifth stone up into the air, and if the space between them were to be filled with gold, all would not equal the value of the Koh-i-noor." The Fugueer, thinking probably that this appraisement was somewhat imaginative, subsequently asked Shah Sooja the same question. The Shah replied that its value was "good fortune; for whoever possessed it had conquered their enemies."
The Governor-General very respectfully and earnestly trusts that your Majesty, in your possession of the Koh-i-noor, may ever continue to realise its value as estimated by Shah Sooja.