of Afghanistan.

Under the Viceroyalty of Lord Lytton's successor, the Marquess of
Ripon, and after anxious negotiations, Abdur Rahman was proclaimed
Amir of Afghanistan, July 22, 1880. In a spirit of thoroughly
good-natured banter the Gryphon's veritable "Expedition" from Lahore
to the seat of Government to receive the Viceroy's instructions, and
thereafter Afghanistan-ward to carry them out--made under very
different conditions from that one by Cyrus the younger--is amusingly
pourtrayed.

Travelling through the provinces then ruled over by the late Sir
George Couper and Sir Robert Egerton respectively, until finally Kabul
is reached, where Sir Frederick Roberts handed over his powers to the
Civil authority, as embodied in the Gryphon. A progress which, as
profusely chronicled by the correspondents of the innumerable
newspapers, British, Indian, and Foreign, attracted to India by the
second Afghan War, is lightly, yet not unkindly, satirized by
Aberigh-Mackay under the _nom de plums_ of "Your Political Orphan."
Who also in this article gave expression to the general impression of
the day, that by entrusting Mr. Lepel Griffin with the direct
negotiations, the position of the then Foreign Secretary to the
Government of India, Mr. (now Sir) Alfred Lyall had been somewhat
ignored.

Be this as it may, for his undoubtedly great services, in which he was
very greatly aided by his intimate acquaintance with the Persian
language, still the French of Afghanistan and other Central Asian
lands in diplomacy and etiquette, Mr. Griffin was created a K.C.S.I.,
and shortly afterwards appointed Governor-General's Agent in Central
India and Resident in Indore--where Aberigh-Mackay was Principal of
the Rajkumar College--the College for the "Sons of Nobles"--the first
"Eton" established under British rule in India. These appointments Sir
Lepel held from 1881 until 1888, when he was appointed Resident at
Hyderabad, the last official position he held in India.

The article now under elucidation appeared on March 29 1880, in _The
Bombay Gazette_, then edited by the late Mr. Grattan Geary, whose
narrative of a journey from Bombay to the Bosphorus through Asiatic
Turkey, published in 1878, did much to revive and stimulate interest
in those important countries, where happily British trade and other
influences are now being actively commented upon by the press of
Western India, and developed by the merchants of Bombay, Karachi, and
Western