On the following day, “with many expressions of his high sense of the great honour conferred upon him,” Dost Mahomed formally received the representatives of the British Government. Burnes submitted his credentials. The letters were opened by the Ameer himself, and read by his minister, Meerza Samee Khan. They introduced Burnes to his Highness solely as a commercial agent. The flimsy veil was soon dropped. It was evident from the first that whatever might have been his instructions—whatever might have been the proximate, or rather the ostensible object of the mission, Burnes had ulterior designs, and that he, in reality, went to Caubul either as a spy or a political diplomatist. He had not been three days at the Afghan capital, before he wrote to Mr. Macnaghten, that he should take an early opportunity of reporting what transpired at the Ameer’s Court; and ten days afterwards we find him announcing “the result of his inquiries on the subject of Persian influence in Caubul, and the exact power which the Kuzzilbash, or Persian party resident in this city, have over the politics of Afghanistan.” To a private friend he wrote more distinctly: “I came to look after commerce, to superintend surveys and examine passes of mountains, and likewise certainly _to see into affairs and judge of what was to be done hereafter_; but the hereafter has already arrived.”[117] It is hard to say what our Oriental diplomatists would do if they were forbidden the use of the word “commerce.” It launched Burnes fairly into the sea of Afghan politics; and then he cut it adrift.