Of our position towards the Amir Yakub Khan I will speak presently; but the sullen submission of the people can more readily be disposed of. Whatever despot has governed Afghanistan his subjects have always preferred to suffer under his rule than to submit to outside interference; and this jealousy of foreign intruders has always been a stumbling-block in our dealings with Amirs in days gone by. We have had to calculate not only upon the sincerity of the ruler, but upon his capacity for controlling the fanaticism of his subjects. Up to the Treaty of Gundamak, we blindly believed that such capacity could exist. Now, after being roughly undeceived, we have taken for a time these subjects under our immediate control, and we find them submitting to superior force, but yielding in no way cordially to their fate. We can trust them while an army is among them, but our acts are only looked upon as temporary, and not the least active assistance can be counted upon in our search after those whom we have come to punish. The people will give supplies when each village is visited by a purchasing party, strongly escorted by our cavalry; but otherwise they would gladly let us starve sooner than open their grain-stores for our benefit. The few days on which we had to fight, every villager who thought he could do so with safety to his own skin pulled trigger upon detached parties of our men; and if the headmen are now coming in, seeing Cabul is at our mercy, it is because they dread a visitation from our troops. They are as insincere in all their protestations of friendship as forty years ago; but we put the proper value now upon their promises, and are strong enough to punish them if occasion arises. Such is the attitude relatively of our army and the people: the only sign we give of our supremacy being by keeping a tight hand upon Cabul itself, and by hanging such of our prisoners as participated in its crime. ----- Footnote 20: This expectation proved only too well-founded. -----