I visited all the camps, and conversed with every one of the Princes and Nobles, and each in turn expressed the same intense gratification at the Viceroy’s reception of him, the same fervent loyalty to the Empress, and the same satisfaction that the new title should have been announced with such appropriate splendour and publicity.

General rejoicings in honour of the occasion took place all over India, in Native States as well as British cantonments.  School-houses, town halls, hospitals, and dispensaries were founded, large numbers of prisoners were released, substantial additions were made to the pay of all ranks in the Native Army, as well as a considerable increase in numbers to the Order of British India; and the amnesty granted in 1859 was extended to all but murderers and leaders in the Mutiny.

When the Assemblage broke up, I started with Sir Frederick Haines for a tour along the Derajat frontier.  We visited Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, and Multan; proceeded by steamer down the Indus to Sukkur, and thence rode to Jacobabad.  Then on to Kotri, from which place we went to see the battle-field of Miani, where Sir Charles Napier defeated the Amirs of Sind in 1843.  From Kotri we travelled to Simla via Karachi and Bombay, where we were most hospitably entertained by the Commander-in-Chief of Bombay (Sir Charles Stavely) and his wife.

Afghan affairs were this year again giving the Viceroy a great deal of anxiety.  The Amir had eventually agreed to a discussion of Lord Lytton’s proposals being held, and for this purpose Saiyad Nur Mahomed and Sir Lewis Pelly had met at Peshawar in January, 1877.  The meeting, unfortunately, ended in a rupture, owing to Sher Ali’s agent pronouncing the location of European officers in any part of Afghanistan an impossibility; and what at this crisis complicated matters to a most regrettable extent was the death of Saiyad Nur Mahomed, who had been in failing health for some time.

On learning the death of his most trusted Minister, and the failure of the negotiations, Sher Ali broke into a violent fit of passion, giving vent to his fury in threatenings and invectives against the British Government.  He declared it was not possible to come to terms, and that there was nothing left for him but to fight; that he had seven crores of rupees, every one of which he would hurl at the heads of the English, and he ended by giving orders for a jahad (a religious war) to be proclaimed.

For the time being nothing more could be done with Afghanistan, and the Viceroy was able to turn his attention to the following important questions:  the transfer of Sind from Bombay to the Punjab, a measure which had been unanimously agreed to by Lord Northbrook’s Government; the removal from the Punjab government of the trans-Indus tract of country, and the formation of the latter into a separate district under the control of a Chief Commissioner, who would be responsible