Note 122 — Chapter I

“The chiefs of Candahar,” he wrote a few days afterwards, to a private friend, “had gone over to Persia. I have detached them and offered them British protection and cash if they would recede, and if Persia attacked them. I have no authority to do so; but am I to stand by and see us ruined at Candahar, when the Government tell me an attack on Herat would be most unpalatable. Herat has been besieged fifty days, and if the Persians move on Candahar, I am off there with the Ameer and his forces, and mean to pay the piper myself. We have good stuff—forty-six guns and stout Afghans, as brave as regular troops need be. I am on stirring ground, and I am glad to say I am up to it in health and all that, and was never more braced in my life.”—[Correspondence of Sir A. Burnes—privately printed.]