ich the news of your approaching departure from India
has caused among the Hindus of the Punjab, who feel that they are
parting from a kind friend and a sympathetic Ruler. At the same time,
we feel that the country will not lose the benefit of your mature
experience and wise counsel for long; for we are hopeful that you may
some day be called upon to guide the helm of the State in India, a
work for which you are so specially fitted. In conclusion, we have
only to pray to the Father of All Good that He may shower His choicest
blessings upon you and your consort--that noble lady who has, in
addition to cheering you in your hard and onerous work in India,
herself done a great deal for the comfort of the soldier and the
sepoy, and that He may grant you many years of happy life--a life
which has done so much for the Queen-Empress's dominions, and which
may yet do much more.

* * * * *

APPENDIX XIV.

(Referred to in Chapter LXVIII, Note *.)

_To HIS EXCELLENCY GENERAL THE RIGHT HONOURABLE FREDERICK BARON
ROBERTS OF KANDAHAR AND WATERFORD, BART., V.C., G.C.B., G.C.I.E.,
R.A., Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty's Forces in India._

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY,

We, the Mahomedans of the Punjab, have dared to approach Your
Excellency with this address with eyes tear-bedimmed, but a face
smiling. The departure of a noble and well-beloved General like
yourself from our country is in itself a fact that naturally fills our
eyes with tears. What could be more sorrowful than this, our farewell
to an old officer and patron of ours, who has passed the prominent
portion of his life in our country, developed our young progeny to
bravery and regular soldiery, decorated them with honours, and created
them to high titles? Your Excellency's separation is the harder to
bear for the men of the Punjab because it is our Punjab that is proud
of the fact that about forty years ago the foundation stone of all
your famous and noble achievements, which not only India, but England,
rightly boasts of, was laid down in one of its frontier cities, and
that the greater part of your indomitable energies was spent in the
Punjab frontier defence. If, therefore, we are sad at separating from
Your Excellency, it will not in any way be looked upon as strange.
But these feelings of sorrow are mixed with joy when we see that the
useful officer whom in 1852 we had welcomed at Peshawar, when the star
of his merits was b