But the expedition of Russia into Central Asia excited the alarm of our statesmen in Afghanistan, though it did not rouse their indignation. There was, at all events, in it much food for anxious consideration. It was the one great subject of thought and topic of discussion in the winter of 1839-1840. Burnes, who was left in control at Caubul, whilst Macnaghten was with the Shah at Jellalabad, now, with the snow around him, found himself in the enjoyment of a season of comparative leisure, able both to think and to write. “What a year has been the past,” he wrote to a friend at Bombay, on the 19th of November—“not to me, I mean, but to our affairs in the East. Further submission to what was going on, and our days of supremacy in the East, were numbered. As it is, we have brought upon ourselves some additional half-million of annual expenditure, and, ere 1840 ends, I predict that our frontiers and those of Russia will touch—that is, the states dependent upon either of us will—and that is the same thing.... Every week brings fresh business; and all the world will now have it that Russia has advanced on Khiva. What of that? She has the right to relieve her enslaved countrymen; and if she have the power, why should she have so long hesitated? But the time she has chosen for this blow is an awkward one. I hold, however, that the man who recommends the cantonment of a British or an Indian soldier west of the Indus is an enemy to his country.”[25] After the lapse of a month, Burnes wrote again to another correspondent, more emphatically, on the same subject: But everything past and present has been cast into the shade by the expedition which the Russians have now pushed into Central Asia. I have known of it for eight weeks past, and had numerous and authentic reports concerning their waggons, their _matériel_, &c., &c., all of which are on a grand scale, giving rise to serious apprehensions that their plans are not confined to the chastisement of the petty Khan of Khiva; indeed, our policy at Herat is already out of joint, and we have reason to know that Russia from Khiva looks to that city. Her attack on Khiva is justified by all the laws of nations; and in a country like England, where slave-dealing is so odiously detested, ought to find favour in men’s eyes rather than blame. Yet the time chosen wears a bad appearance, if it at once does not lead to the inference that Russia has put forth her forces merely to counteract our policy. This latter is my opinion; and by our advance on Caubul we have thus hastened the great crisis. England and Russia will divide Asia between them, and the two empires will enlarge like the circles in the water till they are lost in nothing; and future generations will search for both of us in these regions, as we now seek for the remains of Alexander and his Greeks.