Less heavily on Macnaghten’s mind sate the thought of this Russian invasion. Other and nearer sources of inquietude troubled him at this time. In whatsoever direction he turned his eyes, he was glared at by some great trouble. Everything was going wrong. At Herat, Yar Mahomed was playing a game of unexampled treachery. In the remote regions of Central Asia, a British envoy was groaning under the tyranny of the unscrupulous Ameer of Bokhara. Nearer home, the measures of the double government in Afghanistan were beginning to bear their own bitter fruits. At Candahar, the Douranees were chafing under the exactions of unpopular revenue-officers. In the Kohistan, already were those, who had revolted, in a critical hour, against Dost Mahomed, and contributed largely to his expulsion from Afghanistan, sighing for his return. And further down towards the South, the country which we had made the burial-place of Mehrab Khan, was breaking out into rebellion against the authority which we had attempted to establish; while the Sikhs, to whom we had conceded so much, our associates in the Tripartite Treaty, were unscrupulously intriguing against us. All these things were against him. It was plain that he was among a people of a very different stamp from those with whom he had been connected throughout the earlier years of his administrative career. There was much to disquiet his mind, to engage his thoughts, and to occupy his time. One after another he passed in review before him all the difficulties which beset his path; but there was nothing that pressed more heavily on his mind, or which seemed to arouse him into intenser action, than the outrages to which Colonel Stoddart had been subjected at Bokhara. Stoddart had been at Bokhara ever since the close of the year 1838. He had been despatched by Mr. M’Neill to that Court, with instructions to obtain the liberation of all the Russians pining there in captivity, and to conclude a friendly treaty with the Ameer. His reception, though marked by some caprice, was not altogether uncourteous. He was very ignorant of the customs of the country, and was inclined to resent as insults the exaction of formalities in accordance with the ordinary usages of Bokhara. He seems to have made no effort to win the favour of the barbarous monarch by the adoption of a conciliatory demeanour; but somehow or other he scrambled through the first ceremonials without giving the Commander of the Faithful any mortal offence.