Whilst Colonel Pottinger, not without some scruples, was enclosing the Ameers of Lower Sindh in the toils of his diplomacy, Captain Burnes, who by this time had reaped the reward of his services in knighthood and a lieutenant-colonelcy, was proceeding to operate upon the Princes of Beloochistan. Originally sent upon a mission to Mehrab Khan of Khelat, he had turned aside, however, to negotiate with the Ameers of Khyrpore, in Upper Sindh, and had found them more tractable than the Hyderabad Princes in Colonel Pottinger’s hands. It was deemed expedient that the British troops should cross the Indus at Bukkur, and Burnes was instructed to obtain the temporary cession of the island. The fortress stands on a rock, dividing the river into two channels. Apprehending that the incursion of British troops into their country would be followed by acts of territorial spoliation, the Ameers of Khyrpore, whilst expressing in general terms their willingness to co-operate with our government, expressly stipulated that the forts on either bank of the river were to be untouched. But as Bukkur stood on neither bank, but on an island, it appeared to the British diplomatist that the wording of the memorandum actually placed the fortress in his hands. Ashamed, however, of such an exhibition of legal acuteness, he declared that he had no intention to take advantage of such a reading of the document; he cited it merely as an instance of the manner in which very cunning people sometimes overreach themselves. There was no need, indeed, to look for flaws in a state paper, when the Army of the Indus was assembling to help itself to what it liked. The Ameers were told that, whatever might be their dislike to the march of our troops through Sindh, “the Sindhian who hoped to stop the approach of the British army might as well seek to dam up the Indus at Bukkur.” The fiat had gone forth, an army was to march, and it was now on the road.