ably lodged in the palace-fortress of the Bálá Hissár. The Amír himself received his old friend none the less graciously because Burnes, on his way to Kábul, had reproved him for his late attack on our Sikh ally at Jamrúd, near the mouth of the Kháibar. If the English would only help him to recover Pesháwar, Dost Muhammad would agree to almost any terms which Ranjít Singh might offer him. He would even submit to hold that province as a fief of the Punjab, paying the requisite tribute to his infidel overlord.
In the earliest interviews between the Envoy and the Amír, the commercial mission soon dropped out of sight. Talk about politics filled its place. As Burnes himself wrote to a private friend, he had come there not only to 'look after commerce,' but to survey the land, to 'see into affairs and judge of what was to be done hereafter:' and the hereafter, he found, had 'already arrived.' Dost Muhammad, who had early taken his friend's true measure, agreed to almost everything which Burnes recommended. He would do whatever the British Government desired, if the latter would but help him in the matter of Pesháwar. He would eschew all engagements with foreign powers, and would even compel his brothers at Kandahár to give up all connexion with Persia. Rather than see Pesháwar lost altogether to his country, he would consent to a scheme for placing it under the charge of his disloyal brother and bitter foe, Sultán Muhammad Khán.
Looking on the commercial mission as a convenient
