any longer than it suits him, and also that no allusion may be made to the above details, for if the King knew that we were able to send intelligence he might treat us worse, and perhaps kill everybody about us. The Russians propose to go about No-roz. We kept Colonel Boutenoff informed of our proceedings up to the date of our seizure, and if he should reach Europe ere our release, he may be able to enlarge this abstract, which is necessarily very imperfect. In the second week of March, Conolly’s sufferings broke out openly in the shape of cold and fever. Enfeebled and irritated by disease, he then began to despond. It seemed to him that he was in the toils of death; and in a high state of excitement, after many sleepless nights, he wrote to his brother, John Conolly, then also a prisoner in the hands of a Mussulman enemy, the following touching letter: From our Prison in the Bokhara Citadel, _11th March, 1842._ MY DEAR JOHN, This will probably be my last note hence, so I dedicate it to you, who now, alas! stand next to me. We both dedicate everything we feel warmest to William, whom may God bless in all belonging to him, for his long and untiring brotherly affection to us all! Send my best love to Henry and to all our dear sisters. This is the eighty-third day that we have been denied the means of getting a change of linen from the rags and vermin that cover us; and yesterday, when we begged for an amendment in this respect, the Topshee-Bashee, who had before come occasionally as our host to speak encouragingly, set his face like a flint to our request, showing that he was merely a vane to the withering wind of his heartless master, and could not help us thus, so that we need not ask him to do so. This, at first, astonished and defeated us; we had viewed the Ameer’s conduct as perhaps dictated by mad caprice; but now, looking back upon the whole, we saw instead that it had been just the deliberate malice of a demon, questioning and raising our hopes, and ascertaining our condition, only to see how our hearts were going on in the process of breaking. I did not think to shed one warm tear among such cold-blooded men; but yesterday evening, as I looked upon Stoddart’s half-naked and nail-lacerated body, conceiving that I was the special object of the king’s hatred because of my having come to him after visiting Khiva and Kokund, and told him that the British Government was too great to stir up secret enmity against any of its enemies, I wept on entreating one of our keepers, the gunner’s brother, to have conveyed to the chief my humble request that he would direct his anger upon me, and not further destroy by it my poor brother Stoddart, who had suffered so much and so meekly here for three years. My earnest words were answered by a “Don’t cry and distress yourself;” he also could do nothing. So we turned and kissed each other, and prayed together, and then said, in the words of the Kokunders,