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Rh bring no possible help to Colonel Stoddart, and the Russian advance on Khíva was planned for the rescue of many hundred Russian captives from lifelong slavery in Turkistán.

When Lord afterwards joined the detachment at Bámián he was not long in proving his absurd unfitness for the work entrusted to him. It was needful, perhaps, in view of the impending winter, to turn out the occupants of three small forts in order that his own troops might be comfortably lodged, and even to ensure them a due supply of food by putting pressure upon reluctant villagers whose stocks were none too large for themselves. But Lord proceeded to act as if the neighbouring country were under his sole command. In the Saighán valley, which lay between him and the Uzbek chiefship of Kúlum, where the Amír's family still found shelter, he took an active part in a quarrel between two rival chiefs, a quarrel in which we had not the least concern. Every rumour, however wild, stirred him into fresh activity. In December he heard that Dost Muhammad and the ruler of Bokhára were leagued together against the garrison of Bámián. Writing off to Burnes for more troops from Kábul in the depth of an Afghán winter, he set a portion of his force to work on intrenchments, while the remainder were marched forward into the Saighán valley, to aid in holding an untenable fort. These and similar displays of strenuous folly provoked the ill-will of neighbouring Uzbek chiefs; and served to convert the Khán of Bokhára from Dost