Note 98 — Chapter I

I must give Mohun Lal’s own words, in spite of their eccentric phraseology: “On the 1st of November,” he writes, “I saw Sir Alexander Burnes, and told him that the confederacy has been grown very high, and we should fear the consequence. He stood up from his chair, sighed, and said he knows nothing but the time has arrived that we should leave this country.”—[Letter of Mohun Lal to J. R. Colvin, Esq., January 9, 1842.—MS. Records.] In a letter to another correspondent, Mohun Lal makes a similar statement; and adds that, upon the same night, Taj Mahomed called upon Burnes, to no purpose, with a like warning: “On the 1st of November I saw him at evening, and informed him, according to the conversation of Mahomed Meerza Khan, our great enemy, that the chiefs are contriving plans to stand against us, and therefore it will not be safe to remain without a sufficient guard in the city. He replied, that if he were to ask the Envoy to send him a strong guard, it will show that he was fearing; and at the same [time] he made an astonishing speech, by saying that the time is not far when we must leave this country. Taj Mahomed, son of Gholam Mahomed Khan, the Douranee chief, came at night to him, and informed what the chiefs intended to do, but he turned him out under the pretended aspect that we do not care for such things. Our old friend, Naib Sheriff, came and asked him to allow his son, with 100 men, to remain day and night in his place till the Ghilzye affair is settled—but he did not agree.”—[Letter of Mohun Lal to Dr. James Burnes.—MS. Correspondence.]