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 — BALUCHISTAN.

31

month of June 1795, was succeeded by his eldest During the son Mahmud Khan, then a boy of about fourteen years. reign of this prince, who has been described as a humane and indolent man, the country was distracted by sanguinary broils. The governors of several Provinces and Districts withdrew their allegiance and the dominions of the Khans of Khelat gradually diminished, until they prince at length died in extreme old age, in the leaving three sons and five daughters.

He

comprehended only a small portion of the Provinces formerly subject to Nasir Khdn. In 1839, when the British army advanced through the Bolan Pass towards Afghanistan, the conduct of Mehrab Khan, the ruler of Baluchistan, was considered so treacherous and dangerous as to require the exaction of retribution from that chieftain,’ and the execution of such arrangements as would establish future security in that quarter.’ General Willshire was accordingly detached from the army of the Indus with 1050 men, to attack Khelat. A gate was knocked in by the field-pieces, and the town and citadel were stormed in a few minutes. Above 400 Baluchis were slain, among them Mehrab Khdn himself; and 2000 prisoners were taken. Subsequent inquiries, however, proved that the treachery towards the British was not on the part of Mehrab Khan, but on that of his wazir, Muhammad Hussain, and certain chiefs with whom he was in league, at whose instigation the British convoys were plundered in their passage through Kachh-Ganddvd, and in the ‘

‘

Bolan Pass.

The

made our too credulous Mehrdb Khdn was to blame, his object

treacherous wazir., however,

political officers believe that

—

being to bring his master to ruin, and to obtain for himself the State, knowing that Mehrdb’s successor was a child.

all

power

How

in far

he succeeded in his object history has shown. In the following year Kheldt changed hands, the governor established by the British, together with a feeble garrison, being overpowered.

At the

close of the

same

was reoccupied by the British under General Nott. In 1841, Nasi'r Khan, the youthful son of the slain Mehrdb Khdn, was recognised by the British, who soon after evacuated the country. From the conquest of Sind by the British troops, under the command of Sir Charles Napier in 1843, up to the year 1854, no diplomatic intercourse occurred worthy of note between the British and the chief of In the latter year, however, under the Governor-GeneralBaluchistan. ship of the Marquis of Dalhousie, General John Jacob, at that time political superintendent and commandant on the Sind frontier, was deputed to arrange a treaty between the Kheldt State, then under the chieftainship of Mir Nasir Khdn, and the British Government. This treaty was executed on the rqth of May 1854, and was to the following

year

it

effect



‘That the former offensive and defensive

treaty,

concluded

in 1841