are highly gratified by the honour Your Excellency has lately given to the Khalsa Diwan by becoming its honorary patron.  In conclusion, we beg only to repeat that it is quite beyond our power to state how much we are indebted to Your Excellency, and how much we are affected by the news that Your Lordship will shortly leave this land.  The very idea of our separation from the direct contact of so strong and affectionate a leader, as Your Excellency undoubtedly is, makes us feel very sorrowful; but as our hearts and prayers will always be with you and Lady Roberts, we shall be consoled if Your Excellency would only keep us in your memory, and on arrival in England assure Her Most Gracious Majesty, the Mother-Empress, that all Sikhs, whether high or low, strong or weak, old or young, are heartily devoted to her Crown and her representatives in this country.  Before retiring, we thank Your Excellency for the very great honour that has been done to the people of Lahore by Your Lordship’s visit to this city.

* * * * *

APPENDIX XIII.

(Referred to in Chapter LXVIII, Note *.)

To HIS EXCELLENCY GENERAL THE RIGHT HONOURABLE FREDERICK BARON ROBERTS OF KANDAHAR AND WATERFORD, BART., V.C., G.C.B., G.C.I.E., R.A., Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty’s Forces in India.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY,

We are proud to stand in Your Lordship’s presence to-day on behalf of the Hindus of the Punjab, the loyal subjects of the Queen-Empress, who appreciate the countless blessings which British Rule has conferred upon this country, to give expression to the feelings of gratitude which are uppermost in their hearts.  We feel it really an honour that we are able to show our appreciation of British Rule in the presence of the eminent soldier and statesman who has taken an important part in making the India of to-day what it is—­contented within and strengthened against aggression from abroad.  The Punjab is the province where the military strength of the Empire is being concentrated, and the bravery of the warlike races inhabiting it, which furnish the flower of Her Gracious Majesty’s forces of the Army in India, has been conspicuously displayed on several occasions during the last thirty years.  We Hindus have availed ourselves the most of the facilities which British Rule has provided for the progress of the people in commercial enterprise, educational advance, and political progress.  We are, therefore, all the more proud that we have been allowed to-day to greet in person the mighty soldier, the sympathetic Commander, and the sagacious Statesman, the record of whose distinguished career in the East is virtually the history of nearly half a century of glorious victories—­victories both of peace and war—­achieved by the British Power in Asia, to show how intense is our gratitude towards the Queen-Empress and one of her eminent representatives