e thrown over
the integrity of his state. However unjustified this supposition was by
the treaty with Sir Douglas Forsyth, the Ameer made as much use as
possible of his new-found ally; and the large section of Anglo-Indians,
and authorities in this country on the affairs of Central Asia, who,
either out of sympathy for the man, or from a belief in the identity of
British interests with his cause, proclaimed the advisability of
supporting him against Russian aggression, gave a colourable excuse to
his declaration that England had extended for the first time in her
Trans-Himalayan policy her protection to a native state lying north of
her natural frontier. The Russian governments in Siberia and Turkestan,
emphatically cautioned by their Foreign Office to give this country no
cause for umbrage, were at first inclined to make that assertion an
excuse for pushing their friendly relations with the Ameer; but their
advances were not reciprocated, and as it became more clear that the
importance of the Forsyth mission had been greatly exaggerated by the
representations of the Ameer, the language of the Russian authorities
became once more peremptory and menacing. In short, matters after more
than two years' discussion had retrogressed to the condition they were
in before the Kaulbars treaty. The Russians had not obtained their chief
desire, the establishment of consular agents in Kashgar, and Yakoob Beg,
as in the past, boldly met threat with threat. Relying on his increased
reputation as the most orthodox and the most puissant of Mahomedans in
Central Asia, and confident that England would intervene between the
Russians and the collapse of his state, he even went so far as to temper
his defiant, and almost bellicose, attitude with such irony as the
following incident is a characteristic specimen of. Early in the year
1874 the Duke of Edinburgh married Marie Alexandrovna, the only daughter
of the Czar; and Yakoob Beg seized the occasion to send a message of
congratulation to the Czar of All the Russias on the auspicious
event--saying, that he had heard that the son of his good ally, the
Queen of England and of India, was about to wed the daughter of his
friend the Czar, and that he hastened to send him his congratulations
upon the event. To this effusive epistle no reply was deigned, and it is
doubtful whether it ever got farther than Tashkent. There is no
difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that such exhibitions as this
is