From Lawrencepur I went with the Commander-in-Chief to Calcutta.  Soon after we arrived there I was asked by Sir Douglas Forsyth to accompany him on his Mission to Yarkand and Kashgar.  I should have much liked to have done so, for the idea of a trip to these, at that time unknown, regions possessed great fascinations for me.  I was therefore well pleased when Lord Napier told me he would not stand in the way of my going, and proportionately disappointed when, the next day, His Excellency said that on consideration he did not think I could be spared just then, for the Quartermaster-General would be new to the work at first, and he thought he would need my assistance.

The end of April saw us back in Simla, and in July Edwin Johnson arrived.

During the summer of 1873 important events occurred which had much to do with our subsequent relations with Afghanistan.  The inquiries which Sher Ali had begged Lord Mayo to make about Persian encroachments in Sistan, had resulted in General Goldsmid[2] and Colonel Pollock[3] being deputed in 1871 to proceed to Sistan to decide the question.  The settlement arrived at by these officers, which assigned to Afghanistan the country up to the right bank of the Helmand, but nothing beyond, satisfied neither the Shah nor the Amir, and the latter sent his confidential Minister, Saiyad Nur Mahomed, the Afghan Commissioner in the Sistan arbitration, to meet Lord Northbrook on his arrival in Bombay for the purpose of appealing to him against the decision.  It could not, however, be reversed; but in a subsequent interview which the new Viceroy accorded the Envoy, the latter was told that as soon as Persia and Afghanistan had signified their acceptance of the settlement, the Government of India would present the Amir with five lakhs of rupees as compensation for the ceded territory which had for a time belonged to Afghanistan.

The action of Her Majesty’s Ministers in communication with Russia regarding the northern boundary of Afghanistan was another matter about which the Amir was greatly exercised; and Lord Northbrook, thinking that all such vexed questions could be more satisfactorily explained by personal communication than by letter, proposed to the Amir that His Highness should consent to receive at Kabul a British officer ‘of high rank and dignity, in whom I have full confidence’ (Mr. Macnabb),[4] ‘who will also explain to Your Highness,’ wrote the Viceroy, ’the negotiations which have now been satisfactorily concluded with the Government of His Majesty the Emperor of Russia, whereby the Russian Government have agreed to recognize and respect the integrity and independence of the territories now in Your Highness’s possession.’