Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/83

Rh contrived to soften the tenour of instructions which bade him warn the Amírs that 'neither the ready power to crush and annihilate them, nor the will to call it into action was wanting, if it appeared requisite, however remotely, for the safety of the Anglo-Indian Empire or frontier .'

Early in December the Bombay portion of the Army of the Indus was encamped at Vikkar, on the coast of Sind, unable to move forward for want of carriage and supplies. It seemed to Keane as if he had landed in an enemy's country. The little help he could obtain in the way of carriage came chiefly from Kachhí, for the boatmen and camel-owners of Sind would have no dealings with him, while the Amírs' Biluchi soldiery were gathering round their capital of Haidarábád. At last, on the 24th, he began his march up the right bank of the Indus to Tatta, once a great and populous city, noted for the produce of its silk and cotton looms. Some of his troops were quartered in a house which, eighty years earlier, had formed part of an English factory long since deserted. At Tatta Keane halted, waiting within easy reach of the capital for further guidance from Pottinger, and for the reinforcements already ordered from Bombay.

In the last days of December, while Cotton's troops were still beyond the Sind frontier. Sir Alexander Burnes — for he had just been knighted — alarmed Mír Rustam,the aged head of the Khairpur chiefs in Upper