eting at St. Petersburg, that is to say, a
Congress, which means an assemblage of Powers. We will then
open an official discussion with the English Government, and
either by force of words and diplomatic action we will
entirely cut off all English communications and interference
with Afghanistan, or else events will end in a mighty and
important war. By the help of God, by spring not a symptom or
a vestige of trouble and dissatisfaction will remain in
Afghanistan.

[Footnote 314: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 7, (1879), p. 9. He also
states on p. 172 that the advice of the Afghan officials who accompanied
Shere Ali in his flight was (even in April-May 1879) favourable to a
Russian alliance, and that they advised Yakub in this sense. See
Kaufmann's letters to Yakub, in Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No.
9 (1879).]

It is impossible to think that the Czar had any knowledge of this
treacherous epistle, which, it is to be hoped, originated with the
lowest of Russian agents, or emanated from some Afghan chief in their
pay. Nevertheless the fact that Shere Ali published it shows that he
hoped for Russian help, even when the British held the keys of his
country in their hands. But one hope after another faded away, and in
his last days he must have come to see that he had been merely the
catspaw of the Russian bear. He died on February 21, 1879, hard by the
city of Bactra, the modern Balkh.

That "mother of cities" has seen strange vicissitudes. It nourished the
Zoroastrian and Buddhist creeds in their youth; from its crowded
monasteries there shone forth light to the teeming millions of Asia,
until culture was stamped out under the heel of Genghis Khan, and later,
of Timur. In a still later day it saw the dawning greatness of that most
brilliant but ill-starred of the Mogul Emperors, Aurungzebe. Its fallen
temples and convents, stretching over many a mile, proclaim it to be
the city of buried hopes. There was, then, something fitting in the
place of Shere Ali's death. He might so readily have built up a powerful
Afghan State in friendly union with the British Raj; he chose otherwise,
and ended his life amidst the wreckage of his plans and the ruin of his
kingdom. This result of the trust which he had reposed in Muscovite
promises was not lost on the Afghan people and their rulers.

There is no need to detail the events of the first half of the year 1879
in Afghanistan. On the assembly