eld it before and could hold it again, but I
have no further wish to rule such a people, and I beg of you to let me
go. If the British Government wish me to stay, I will stay, as their
servant or as the Amir, if you like to call me so, until my son is of
an age to succeed me, or even without that condition; but it will
be wholly against my own inclination, and I earnestly beg to be set
free.']

[Footnote 3: Dr. Bellew was with the brothers Lumsden at Kandahar in
1857.]

[Footnote 4: My action in endorsing the proceedings of this court,
and my treatment of Afghans generally, were so adversely and severely
criticized by party newspapers and periodicals, and by members of the
Opposition in the House of Commons, that I was called upon for an
explanation of my conduct, which was submitted and read in both Houses
of Parliament by the Secretary of State for India, Viscount Cranbrook,
and the Under-Secretary of State for India, the Hon. E. Stanhope. In
the Parliamentary records of February, 1880, can be seen my reply to
the accusations, as well as an abstract statement of the executions
carried out at Kabul in accordance with the findings of the military
Court.]

[Footnote 5: Afterwards General Sir Robert Bright, G.C.B.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER LIII.
1879

Afghans afraid to befriend us--Kabul Russianized
--Yakub Khan's abdication accepted--State treasury taken over

I had given much thought to the question of housing the troops during
the winter, which was now fast approaching. Some of the senior
officers were in favour of quartering them in the Bala Hissar, as
being the place with most prestige attached to it; but the fact that
there was not accommodation in it for the whole force, and that,
therefore, the troops would have to be separated, as well as the
dangerous proximity of the huge store of gunpowder, which could only
be got rid of by degrees, decided me to occupy in preference the
partly-fortified cantonment of Sherpur, about a mile north-east of the
city, and close to the ruins of the old British entrenchment. It was
enclosed on three sides by a high and massive loop-holed wall, and on
the fourth by the Bimaru heights, while it possessed the advantage of
having within its walls sufficient shelter in long ranges of brick
buildings for the British troops, and good hospital accommodation,
and there was ample space for the erection of huts for the Native
soldiers.

The dra