The Governor-General reached Ferozepore on the 27th of November. The Commander-in-Chief and the infantry of the Army of the Indus had arrived a day or two before; and on the following day the main body of the cavalry and artillery took up their ground on the plain.[271] On the 29th,[272] the first meeting between Lord Auckland and Runjeet Singh took place amidst a scene of indescribable uproar and confusion. The camp of the Governor-General was pitched at the distance of some four miles from the river Gharra. In the centre of a wide street of tents were those set apart for the purposes of the Durbar. A noble guard of honour lined the way, as amidst the roar of artillery and the clang of military music, Runjeet Singh, escorted by the English secretaries and some of the principal political and military officers in camp, rode up, in the centre of a line of elephants to the Durbar tent. The Governor-General and the Commander-in-Chief came forth to meet them. Then came the crush of the two lines of elephants, urged forward by the goads of their drivers, and meeting with a terrific shock—the clangour of a tumultuous crowd of Sikh horsemen and foot-men—a rush of English officers eager to see the show; and presently, amidst such tumult and such noise as had seldom before been seen or heard, the elephants of the Governor-General and the Maharajah were brought side by side, and Lord Auckland, in his uniform of diplomatic blue, was seen to take a bundle of crimson cloth out of the Sikh howdah, and it was known that the lion of the Punjab was then seated on the elephant of the English ruler. In a minute the little, tottering, one-eyed man, who had founded a vast empire on the banks of the fabulous rivers of the Macedonian conquests, was leaning over the side of the howdah, shaking hands with the principal officers of the British camp, as their elephants were wheeled up beside him. Then the huge phalanx of elephants was set in motion again. There was a rush towards the Durbar tent; the English and the Sikh _cortège_ were mixed up together in one great mass of animal life. Such was the crush—such was the struggle—that many of the attendant Sikhs believed that there was a design to destroy their old decrepit chief, and “began to blow their matches and grasp their weapons with an air of mingled distrust and ferocity.”[273] But in time a passage was made, and the imbecile little old man was to be seen tottering into the Durbar tent, supported on one side by the Governor-General, and on the other by Sir Henry Fane, whose fine manly proportions and length of limb, as he forced his way through the crowd, presented a strange contrast to the puny dimensions of the Sikh chieftain who leant upon his arm.