to the pay of
all ranks in the Native Army, as well as a considerable increase in
numbers to the Order of British India; and the amnesty granted in 1859
was extended to all but murderers and leaders in the Mutiny.

When the Assemblage broke up, I started with Sir Frederick Haines
for a tour along the Derajat frontier. We visited Kohat, Bannu, Dera
Ismail Khan, and Multan; proceeded by steamer down the Indus to
Sukkur, and thence rode to Jacobabad. Then on to Kotri, from which
place we went to see the battle-field of Miani, where Sir Charles
Napier defeated the Amirs of Sind in 1843. From Kotri we travelled
to Simla _via_ Karachi and Bombay, where we were most hospitably
entertained by the Commander-in-Chief of Bombay (Sir Charles Stavely)
and his wife.

Afghan affairs were this year again giving the Viceroy a great deal
of anxiety. The Amir had eventually agreed to a discussion of Lord
Lytton's proposals being held, and for this purpose Saiyad Nur Mahomed
and Sir Lewis Pelly had met at Peshawar in January, 1877. The
meeting, unfortunately, ended in a rupture, owing to Sher Ali's
agent pronouncing the location of European officers in any part of
Afghanistan an impossibility; and what at this crisis complicated
matters to a most regrettable extent was the death of Saiyad Nur
Mahomed, who had been in failing health for some time.

On learning the death of his most trusted Minister, and the failure of
the negotiations, Sher Ali broke into a violent fit of passion, giving
vent to his fury in threatenings and invectives against the British
Government. He declared it was not possible to come to terms, and that
there was nothing left for him but to fight; that he had seven crores
of rupees, every one of which he would hurl at the heads of the
English, and he ended by giving orders for a _jahad_ (a religious war)
to be proclaimed.

For the time being nothing more could be done with Afghanistan, and
the Viceroy was able to turn his attention to the following important
questions: the transfer of Sind from Bombay to the Punjab, a measure
which had been unanimously agreed to by Lord Northbrook's Government;
the removal from the Punjab government of the trans-Indus tract of
country, and the formation of the latter into a separate district
under the control of a Chief Commissioner, who would be responsible
to the Government of India alone for frontier administration and
trans-frontier relations. This post Lord Lytton told me, as