permitted to accompany our party as a guide and interpreter. "If you
will take my advice," said he, "you will have nothing to say to the
scoundrel, who will come to a bad end: he has been deceiving you; but
if, after my warning, you still wish to have him as a guide, take him
by all means."

Accordingly I took him, but in justice to the Meer's discrimination of
character it must be owned that my protegé, as soon as he considered
himself safe from the Meer's indignation, proved himself to the
full as great a scoundrel as he had been represented. The following
morning, before taking our departure, Sturt presented to the Meer's
youngest son a handsome pair of percussion pistols, for which the
father seemed so very grateful that I could not help suspecting he
intended to appropriate them to his own use as soon as we were well
away.

On leaving the fortress of Heibuk we passed through a very extensive
cultivated district, the principal produce being the grain which in
Hindoostan is called jow[=a]r. The remaining portion of our journey to
Hazree Soolt[=a]n, which was a distance of eighteen miles, was nothing
but a barren waste with occasional patches of low jungle. We were now
evidently on the farthest spur of the Hindoo Khoosh; the hills were
low and detached, gradually uniting into the endless plain which
bounded the horizon to the north and west. On the road we met a
messenger who was on his way to Sir Alexander Burnes at K[=a]bul,
having come from Bokhara, bearing a letter from the _Vakeel_, or
native ambassador, whom Sir Alexander had sent some time back to
endeavour, by persuasion or stratagem, to effect the release of our
unfortunate countryman, Col. Stoddart. The courier, who had received
the account from the Vakeel, whether true or false he could not