News from me you will not expect, nor have I the least word of interest to offer you, except that I am waiting the replies of government, before I am finally released and take my departure. Nothing can be more slack than the time and means taken to provide me with those replies, and my disgust perfectly negatives any attempt to write a commonly agreeable note. My last news from Caubul, dated June 6, says that poor Todd is there awaiting, if possible, a mitigation of his sentence. Conolly is not yet here from Kokan, nor have my messengers to him yet returned. They conveyed the orders from Caubul, and an invitation to the Ameer, to return by this route.[215] On the 28th of February, 1842, he wrote again, as a kind of endorsement to one of Conolly’s letters: TO THE SECRETARY OF GOVERNMENT IN INDIA. SIR, The Governor-General in Council will be informed by the accompanying abstract how far my position here [_and that of Captain Conolly_] has been sacrificed. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient, humble servant, CHARLES STODDART. The words within brackets were erased—most probably by Conolly.[216] But Stoddart, though he may have resented the injustice of sacrificing him to no purpose, was ready to become a sacrifice if, by so doing, he could promote the interests of his country. “I beg sincerely,” he wrote on the 5th of April, “that no one will regret any sacrifice of me, for it is nothing at all. It may yet not be requisite—but if it be, I regard the probable result, from the action of government in doing justice to others, and bringing all these countries to reasonable conduct, as fully compensating a much greater sacrifice than that of so humble an individual as I am.”[217] If anything could increase the sorrow with which we contemplate the fate of this brave man, it would be a perusal of such noble sentences as these. It was under a high and chivalrous sense of duty to his government that Colonel Stoddart continued to face the dangers of his position at Bokhara, after he might have escaped from them; and it was under an equally strong sense of duty that Captain Conolly made his way to the inhospitable city. To describe them officially as “innocent travellers,” was clearly a misapplication of language; and yet, when on the famous 1st of October, 1842, Lord Ellenborough addressed the following letter to the Ameer of Bokhara, he so described them both: Simlah, _October 1st, 1842._ A. C. The Queen of England, my royal mistress, has sanctioned my coming to India, to conduct its government, and direct its armies. On my arrival, I found that great disasters had befallen those armies, and much injury had been inflicted on my countrymen and the people of India by the treacherous Afghans, under Mahomed Akbar Khan.