(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, the Mahomedans of the Punjab, have dared to approach Your Excellency with this address with eyes tear-bedimmed, but a face smiling.  The departure of a noble and well-beloved General like yourself from our country is in itself a fact that naturally fills our eyes with tears.  What could be more sorrowful than this, our farewell to an old officer and patron of ours, who has passed the prominent portion of his life in our country, developed our young progeny to bravery and regular soldiery, decorated them with honours, and created them to high titles?  Your Excellency’s separation is the harder to bear for the men of the Punjab because it is our Punjab that is proud of the fact that about forty years ago the foundation stone of all your famous and noble achievements, which not only India, but England, rightly boasts of, was laid down in one of its frontier cities, and that the greater part of your indomitable energies was spent in the Punjab frontier defence.  If, therefore, we are sad at separating from Your Excellency, it will not in any way be looked upon as strange.  But these feelings of sorrow are mixed with joy when we see that the useful officer whom in 1852 we had welcomed at Peshawar, when the star of his merits was beginning to rise, departs from us in splendour and glory in the capacity of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of a vast Empire like India, and is an example of the highest type to all soldiers.  This address is too brief for a detail of all the meritorious services rendered by your Excellency in the Punjab, India and other foreign countries from that early epoch to this date.  Your zeal in the Mutiny of 1857, your heroic achievements in the Abyssinian and Afghan wars, your repeated victories of Kandahar, and your statesmanlike conduct of the Burma wars—­all these are facts which deserve to be written in golden characters in the annals of Indian history.  Your appointment as legislative and executive member of the Supreme Council of the Government of India for a considerable period has proved a source of blessings to the whole of India, and Your Excellency deserves an ample share of the credit due to the Council for all its useful regulations and reforms.  The great liking that men of noble birth in India have been showing for some time towards military service is a clear demonstration of the excellent treatment received at your hands by military officers, as in the reforms made by you in the military pay and pension and other regulations.  Another boon for which the Natives of India will always remember your name with gratitude, is that you have fully relied upon, and placed your confidence in, the Natives, thus uniting them the more firmly to the