Early next morning (the 14th) the Ameer marched out to the sound of his palace kettle-drums and trumpets, leaving us in the filthy clothes which we had worn for 115 days and nights. We said to the Gunner’s old brother, when he mentioned the Ameer’s having departed, “Then the Meshid caravan apparently stands fast.” “No,” was his reply; “please God it will go soon. I asked the Topshee-Bashee last night if nothing had been settled about you, and he replied, ‘When the Russians get out a march or so, the Dustan Kanchee will make a petition about them, and they will be dismissed.’” The old man also remarked, probably from what he had heard his brother say, that the Ameer had expressed himself to the effect that he knew the Russian Elchee was led to get us in order to make a boast of having procured our release, which made it seem as though Colonel Boutenoff had been endeavouring to obtain our dismissal. Our old keeper persisted for some days in assuring us of his belief that our immediate dismissal was designed, and on the 18th said that he was going down into the city to seek out my Dewan Beggee, Eusoff Khan (Augustin), to set his mind at ease about us; he returned, saying that he had been referred from place to place without finding Eusoff Khan, or any of our people; but that one Meer Hyder and another shopkeeper of his acquaintance had assured him that they were all in the town, and that four or five of them were in the habit of coming occasionally at night to a certain quarter, to hear books read. We had thought the gunners might have received orders to collect some of our people in order to our respectable dismissal; but knowing that all our men, except Ibraheem, had left Bokhara, we concluded that the Topshee-Bashee had made use of his old brother to deceive us, in order to keep us hopeful and quiet for another period, as he said nothing about changing our clothes, and kept himself quite aloof from us, which he would hardly have done had he believed what he reported in the Ameer’s name. Just before the Ameer’s departure, we heard that a British Elchee had arrived at Merve, on his way hither. We could get no further accounts of the said Elchee, but judged that it might be Shakespear on his way to Khiva.... [_MS._ defaced] ... From the 4th to the 7th of May the palace drums and trumpets were continually sounding for intelligence that Kokund had been taken after a faint endeavour at resistance under the famed Kokund general, Guda Bai; that the latter had been taken prisoner, and that the rebellious town had been given up to plunder, &c. Then follows much of Bokhara politics, the manuscript being greatly defaced—and after this, some passages of personal narrative, the chronicle of which extends up to the 24th of May—the latest date under which I have been able to discover anything in the hand-writing of Arthur Conolly: