Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/106

100 certainly simpler, cheaper, and far more effective than any system of armed coercion applied to a race of hardy plunder-loving mountaineers, who owned no real allegiance to any neighbouring sovereign, and had always claimed the right to levy toll upon everything that passed through the Kháibar. And that right had been duly acknowledged by successive rulers of Afghánistán. Even the masterful Ahmad Sháh had to pay the customary blackmail for the safe passage of his troops and caravans.

Macnaghten's fussy ambition was not to be curbed either by Keane's scoffing or by a wise regard for practical likelihoods. With winter near at hand, and with no real knowledge of the country beyond Kábul, he ordered the Sháh's Gúrkha regiment and a native troop of horse-artillery to march across some of the loftiest passes of the Hindu Kush to Bámián, and there await the arrival of his agent. Dr. Lord. This strange move was intended as a kind of general menace to Russia, Dost Muhammad, and the Khán of Bokhára, who held an English envoy in close arrest. After a month of infinite labour the guns were dragged over the mountains; but Dr. Lord had not gone far from Kábul when his Afghán escort frightened him back again with groundless stories of a great Turkmán rising on behalf of the exiled Amír. As it happened, there was no armed rising anywhere between the Oxus and the Hindu Kush; while Dost Muhammad was to find at Bokhára an enemy rather than a friend. The detachment at Bámián could