tone from that of Dr. Buist, writes of Mr. Masson's 'truthful simplicity,' falls, possibly on Mr. Masson's authority, into the error that 'Mr. Macnaghten's proposal of himself as envoy met with the acceptance of the Governor-General.'
With the arrival of the cold weather of 1838 Mr. Colvin accompanied Lord Auckland to a great ceremonial gathering at Lahore, leaving Simla on November 7. On December 12 the party are at Amritsar. On December 18 he writes wearily in his Diary, 'a man of business tries in vain to be a student in tents.' On December 21 Lahore is reached; and among endless salutes, processions, festivities, and formal exchange of visits, his books are for weeks laid aside to make room for questions of precedence, Commissariat calculations, questions of tenure in the North-West Provinces, estimates of the cost of the late North-West famine, (which is put at 13½ lakhs, with 29½ lakhs of land revenue suspended, 'for eventual remission, no doubt'), Sátára claims, Nepálese and Burmese ambitions, and a hundred questions of the moment. On December 24 Sir Willoughby Cotton sends up the deposition of one Kásim Khán, a Kábul fruit dealer, who represents Dost Muhammad Khán as highly popular, and the restoration of Sháh Shujá as not at all desired. Mr. McNeill writes from Teherán in great delight at the October Proclamation. The army, meanwhile, is struggling on towards Kandahár and Kábul. On March 15 Mr. Colvin is again at Simla for the summer of 1839, and on April 5, Friday, he sees
