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Rh been followed, and had Lord Auckland rejoined his Council, there might have been no Afghan War.

Lord Auckland's letter disappointed and vexed the Afghan Amír, who knew what sort of a barrier stood between him and Ranjít Singh, and who justly resented a threat which implied the right of a distant neighbour to control his foreign policy. The Sikhs might rob him of Pesháwar, but nothing, he knew, would tempt them to face the terrors, real or fabulous, of the Kháibar Pass. And why should a Government which sought his friendship claim the right to curtail his independence? In the last days of 1837, a Russian emissary from Orenburg had arrived at Kábul, bearing letters of compliment from the Tzar and his minister at Teherán. Instead of receiving Captain Viktevitch with open arms, Dost Muhammad treated him from the first with the coldest courtesy, in strict accordance with a promise privately volunteered to the British Agent. The Amír's proposal to ignore Viktevitch altogether was probably sincere; and even after the receipt of the rebuff from Lord Auckland, Dost Muhammad held aloof from his Cossack visitor in the hope of softening the Governor-General's heart. 'He still clung,' says Kaye, 'to the belief that the British Government would look favourably upon his case, and was willing to receive a little from England rather than much from any other State.' Hoping against hope, he caught with readiness at the compromise which Wade himself proposed to urge upon