No better proof of his earnest desire to cement an alliance with the British Government need be sought for than that involved in the fact of his extreme reluctance to abandon all hope of assistance from the British, and to turn his eyes in another direction. It was not until he was driven to despair by resolute refusals from the quarter whence he looked for aid, that he accepted the offers so freely made to him by other States, and set the seal upon his own destruction. “Our government,” said Burnes, “would do nothing; but the Secretary of the Russian Legation came with the most direct offers of assistance and money, and as I had no power to counteract him by a similar offer, and got wigged for talking of it at a time when it would have been merely a dead letter to say Afghanistan was under our protection, I was obliged of course to give in.”[213] What better result Lord Auckland could have anticipated, it is hard to say. If the failure of the Mission astonished him, he must have been the most sanguine of men. I am unable to perceive that there was anything unreasonable or unfriendly in the conduct of Dost Mahomed at this time. That, from the very first, he was disappointed, there is no doubt. He had formed exaggerated ideas of the generosity and munificence of the British Government in the East, and, doubtless, expected great things from the contemplated alliance. The Mission had scarcely been a day in Caubul, when the feelings of the Ameer were shocked, the exuberance of his hopes somewhat straitened, and his dignity greatly offended, by the paltry character of the presents of which Burnes was the bearer. No one ignorant of the childish eagerness with which Oriental Princes examine the ceremonial gifts presented to them by foreign potentates, and the importance which they attach to the value of these presents, as indications of a greater or less degree of friendship and respect on the part of the donor, can appreciate the mortification of Dost Mahomed on discovering that the British Government, of whose immense resources and boundless liberality he had so exalted a notion, had sent him nothing but a few trumpery toys. Burnes had been directed to “procure from Bombay such articles as would be required to be given in presents to the different chiefs.” And it had been characteristically added: “They ought not to be of a costly nature, but should be chosen particularly with a view to exhibit the superiority of British manufacturers.” Accordingly the envoy had provided himself with a pistol and a telescope for Dost Mahomed, and a few trifles for the inmates of the Zenana—such as pins, needles, and play-things.[214] The costliness of the presents lavished upon Shah Soojah, when the Mission under Mountstuart Elphinstone had entered Afghanistan, was still a tradition throughout the country. The Ameer was disappointed. He thought that the niggardliness of the British Government, in this instance portended no good. Nor was he mistaken.