errible trial to us
both, and, what with the effects of the voyage and the anxiety and
sorrow she had gone through, my wife was thoroughly ill when we
arrived at Simla towards the end of February.

[Footnote 1: The numbers actually despatched from India were 13,548,
of whom 3,786 were Europeans. In addition, a company of Royal
Engineers was sent from England.]

[Footnote 2: At first it was thought that 10,000 mules, with a coolie
corps 3,000 strong, would suffice, but before the expedition was over,
it was found necessary to purchase 18,000 mules, 1,500 ponies, 1,800
donkeys, 12,000 camels, and 8,400 bullocks.]

[Footnote 3: Fresh water was obtained by condensing the sea-water;
there were few condensors, and no means of aerating the water.]

[Footnote 4: The late Admiral Sir George Tryon, K.C.B.]

[Footnote 5: Now Admiral Sir Leonid Heath, K.C.B.]

[Footnote 6: He is said to have killed in one month, or burnt alive,
more than 3,000 people. He pillaged and burnt the churches at Gondur,
and had many priests and young girls cast alive into the flames.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
1869

Afzal Khan ousts Sher Ali--Sher Ali regains the Amirship
--Foresight of Sir Henry Rawlinson--The Umballa Durbar

In January, 1869, Sir John Lawrence, after a career which was
altogether unique, he having risen from the junior grades of
the Bengal Civil Service to the almost regal position of
Governor-General,[1] left India for good. He was succeeded as Viceroy
by Lord Mayo, one of whose first official acts was to hold a durbar at
Umballa for the reception of the Amir Sher Ali, who, after five years
of civil war, had succeeded in establishing himself on the throne
of Afghanistan, to which he had been nominated by his father, Dost
Mahomed Khan.[2]

Sher Ali had passed through a stormy time between the death of the
Dost, in June, 1863, and September, 1868. He had been acknowledged as
the rightful heir by the Government of India, and for the first three
years he held the Amirship in a precarious sort of way. His two elder
brothers, Afzal and Azim, and his nephew, Abdur Rahman (the present
Ruler of Afghanistan), were in rebellion against him. The death of
his favourite son and heir-apparent, Ali Khan, in action near
Khelat-i-Ghilzai, in 1865, grieved him so sorely that for a time his
reason was affected. In May, 1866, he was defeated near Ghazni (mainly
owing to the treachery of his own