AFGHANISTAN. 



tion of Balkh was mentioned by Lord Claren- 

 den as long ago as 1869, when in his corre- 

 spondence with Prince Gortchakoff he said that 

 Balkh could be of no use to Russia except for 



Purposes of aggression, and that " on the Hin- 

 oo Koosh the British possessions might be 

 viewed as a traveler on the summit of the 

 Simplon might survey the plains of Italy." A 

 Inter and more definite statement of the ob- 

 jects of the Russian expedition represented 

 that it aimed at the occupation of the six 

 minor khanates between the southern course 

 of the Amou Darya and the Hindoo Koosh, 

 one of which, Yakhan, was acknowledged to 

 be feudatory to Afghanistan. The occupation 



of this khanate would reduce the distance be- 

 tween the Russian and English frontiers to 

 about 325 miles, by roads easily passable in 

 summer, but not so in winter. No official 

 news was given respecting the progress of the 

 expedition ; but the Russian Agency published 

 an article denying the statements that were 

 current respecting its object, and professing 

 that they related to old occurrences belonging 

 to a time when England was making prepara- 

 tions for a war with Russia. The state of 

 things had ceased with the causes with which 

 it originated, and all the measures connected 

 therewith had since been countermanded. 

 A Russian mission, consisting of three Eu- 





ropean officers, of whom the chief was Gen- 

 eral StolietofF, accompanied by an escort of 

 Cossacks and Uzbecks, reached Cabool on the 

 22d of July, and was received by the Ameer in 

 durbar, when the chief of the mission deliv- 

 ered two letters to the Ameer one from the 

 Czar, and one from the Governor-General of 

 Turkistan. On the 2d of August a grand 

 review was held in honor of the mission, 

 to which troops and representatives had been 

 summoned from all parts of Afghanistan. 

 After the review, the Ameer gave the envoys 

 written replies to the Russian letter, which 

 were immediately sent off by a special mes- 



senger to Tashkend. This embassy was rep- 

 resented by a Russian diplomatist to have 

 been ordered a long time before the Con- 

 gress of Berlin, when the Russian relations 

 with England had assumed a threatening char- 

 acter. 



M. Arminius Yambery, in a letter written 

 to the " Allgemeine Zeitung," represented that 

 the chief object of this Russian mission was to 

 establish friendly relations between Tashkend 

 and Cabool. As a means of putting pressure 

 on Shere Ali with this view, Russia was hold- 

 ing in reserve the Afghan Prince Abdurrahman 

 Khan, a relative of the Ameer, and at the same 



