was one long course of fruitless efforts to force the hand of the Athalik Ghazi on this point. Colonel Reinthal was sent in 1874, after the successful journey of Mr. Morozof, to see if any better arrangement could be attained, but, although the Ameer entertained him very hospitably, he fared no better than any of his predecessors. In that year, too, Yakoob Beg's position had become firmer in his own state. The Tungani had been driven back north of the Tian Shan beyond Turfan, and into the regions east of Lake Lob; the disaffection, too, in the cities of Kucha and Korla was also, to all appearance, dying out; but, above all, the vast ægis of English protection had appeared to be thrown over the integrity of his state. However unjustified this supposition was by the treaty with Sir Douglas Forsyth, the Ameer made as much use as possible of his new-found ally; and the large section of Anglo-Indians, and authorities in this country on the affairs of Central Asia, who, either out of sympathy for the man, or from a belief in the identity of British interests with his cause, proclaimed the advisability of supporting him against Russian aggression, gave a colourable excuse to his declaration that England had extended for the first time in her Trans-Himalayan policy her protection to a native state lying north of her natural frontier. The Russian governments in Siberia and Turkestan, emphatically cautioned by their Foreign Office to give this country no cause for umbrage, were at first inclined to make that assertion an excuse for pushing their friendly relations with the Ameer; but their advances were not reciprocated, and as it became more clear that the importance of the Forsyth mission had been greatly exaggerated by the representations of the Ameer, the language of the Russian authorities became once more peremptory and menacing. In short, matters after more than two years' discussion had retrogressed to the condition they were in before the Kaulbars treaty. The Russians had not obtained their chief desire, the establishment of consular agents in Kashgar, and Yakoob Beg, as in the past, boldly met threat with threat. Relying on his increased reputation as the most orthodox and the most puissant of Mahomedans in Central Asia, and confident that England would intervene between the Russians and the collapse of his state, he even went so far as to temper his defiant, and almost bellicose, attitude with such irony as the following incident is a characteristic specimen of. Early in the year 1874 the Duke of Edinburgh married Marie Alexandrovna, the only daughter of the Czar; and Yakoob Beg seized the occasion to send a message of congratulation to the Czar of All the Russias on the auspicious event--saying, that he had heard that the son of his good ally, the Queen of England and of India, was about to wed the daughter of his friend the Czar, and that he hastened to send him his congratulations upon the event.