horsemen; and, having easily overcome Syed
Mahomed, who is represented to be an
imbecile and incapable person, they applied to
the Shah of Persia for help to enable them to
keep their conquest. The Shah at once
responded to the request, by sending an army
of twelve thousand men avowedly to their
assistance, but really in the hope of recovering
the authority formerly held by Persia over
that province. In the meanwhile, the
imbroglio was thickening in other directions.
Dost Mahomed, Khan of Cabul, indignant
at the boldness of the Candahar chiefs, who
are tributary to his power, marched upon
their capital, of which he will doubtless finally
dispossess them, and placing one of his sons
at the head of a large force, sent him forward
to Herat to dispute the vacated sovereignty,
to which the ambitious youth has a sort of
left-handed claim, by virtue of his marriage
with one of the thousand-and-one daughters
of the late Yar Mahomed. Of the other
claimants who have started up, including the
surviving sons of the Prince who had been
deposed by the late ruler, we need not speak,
as their chances of success are utterly
obliterated by the superior strength and influence
of their opponents.

Such are the royal and revolutionary broils
in course of development, round the
beleaguered walls of Herat. The mere English
reader (a personage who is supposed to know
nothing of the doings of foreign races, or, as
the Chinese more descriptively call them,
"outside barbarians,") will naturally ask,
"What have we to do with the feuds of
these people? " It was to elicit and answer
that very question that we have invoked
attention to the warning voice of the Overland
Mail.

Upon the scene of conflict and confusion
which we have indicated, rather than depicted,
there falls a strong light from a great distance,
which, growing broader and broader, and
approaching nearer and nearer every moment,
will soon shed such an illumination over the
battle-field, as to leave us no longer in doubt
as to what interest we have in the complicated
struggle now going forward. Watching with
avidity every vicissitude of fortune that
promises to produce a convulsion in those regions,
Russia has not been an unobservant spectator
of the death of the Khan of Herat, and the
contentions that have grown out of it; and,
seizing upon the opportunity it seemed to
throw open for carrying into execution one of
the old Muscovite schemes of aggrandisement,
rapidly transported to the northern coast
cf the Caspian Sea a body of troops, that
had no sooner effected their landing there,
under the pretext of proceeding against the
Turkomans, than, casting off all disguise
as to their real motive, they commenced
their onward march in the direction of
Herat. What have the Russians to do with
the affairs of Herat, which lies on the
frontier of Persia, divided from them by the
whole of that kingdom? This is the point
for consideration.

The invasion of India has long been one of
the grand projects of the Czars. They have
endeavoured to initiate this design in a
variety of ways, and under a hundred different
excuses; sometimes by arms, sometimes by
subtle diplomacies, undermining other powers
at the Court of Teheran, and endeavouring
to sap the influence of the English in their
relation with the border tribes. The notion
of a Russian invasion of India used to be
regarded by us at one time as a pure chimera;
while, at other periods, it has produced all
over British India a feeling of alarm little
short of a panic. We appear never to have
been able exactly to make up our minds as to
the practicability of so gigantic an enterprise.
But we have grown wiser by experience, and
can no longer affect indifference to the agitation
of a scheme which, whether its ultimate
achievement be likely or not, is calculated,
even in the attempt, to involve us in the most
serious difficulties.

Russia is the only European power whose
geographical position would enable her to
embark in such an undertaking with the
slightest prospect of success. She alone
possesses a frontier in Asia, which brings her
into immediate intercourse with the Asiatic
nations; and she has the largest interest of
all the European powers in seeking to divert
the commerce of the East from its present
channels. The highway from Russia to India
lies through Persia. Nature has set up an
almost impassable barrier between them, in
the stupendous chain of the Caucasus; yet, in
spite of that obstacle, the Czars have steadily
persevered for a hundred years, at an enormous
expenditure, in their efforts to establish
themselves beyond the Caucasus, for the
furtherance of ulterior views, which clearly
pointed to the rich shores of the Indus. Hence
the expedition of Peter the Great from
Astracan, the prodigious outlay at which
Catherine tried to maintain herself in Georgia,
the subsequent absorption of that kingdom
into the Russian empire, and the constant
intrigues of the Russians to detach Persia
from the English alliance. The present
movement upon Herat is part and parcel of the
same policy; and we are justified by the
history of the past, in believing that Persia is
merely the dupe and instrument of the
Autocrat. But it is necessary to explain why
the clustering of foreign levies round the
ramparts of a small fortified town on the
remote confines of Afghanistan, acquires an
air of suspicion which, under ordinary
circumstances, would not necessarily attach to
such an event.

Herat is called, after the imagerial way of
the Easterns, the key of India, or, sometimes,
the gate of India. It derives this title from its
position, which presents the most available
basis for a plan of operations against India,
being within an easy distance of our frontier,