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Rh priety of prolonging his stay at Kábul, where, however, the information which he might be able to collect of the power, the means, and the state of parties in that country, could not but be useful.

On September 20, Captain Burnes entered Kábul, and the last link wanting in the chain to be stretched along the frontier would now, it was hoped, be forged. But the progress of events was not favourable to his success. On November 23, 1837, the day on which Lord Auckland and his camp left Benares, the Persian army commenced the siege of Herát. In December, Witkewitsch, a Russian emissary, appeared in Kábul, the bearer of a reply to Dost Muhammad's appeal of 1836 to St. Petersburg.