Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/132

126 to the sword and knife of the revengeful Afghán and the bloody Biluch.' Unless several regiments were quickly sent from India, not a man, he declared, 'will be left to note the fate of his comrades. Nothing but force will ever make them submit to Sháh Shujá, who is most certainly as great a scoundrel as ever lived .' Nott's strictures on the 'politicals,' whose zeal was not always tempered by modesty, sound judgement, or special experience, contained a large amount of truth, spread perhaps over too wide a surface.

The old soldier'a opinion of the Sháh differed only in the strength of his language from the opinion held by Captain Henry Rawlinson, who had succeeded Leech in the middle of 1840 as Political Agent at Kandahár. A good officer and accomplished Eastern scholar, Rawlinson had begun his diplomatic career in Persia, whence he brought with him to his new post much serviceable knowledge of Central Asian affairs, an easy aptitude for official business, with a sharp eye for native cunning, and the tact which enabled him to work in harmony with his military colleague. Macnaghten called him an alarmist; but events were to justify the precautions taken by Nott and Rawlinson against dangers which the Envoy steadily ignored or underrated.

Eldred Pottinger, our political agent in the Kohistán, was another alarmist of the Rawlinson type. In the country lying a little to the north of Kábul he found disaffection, open or latent, as rife as ever among all