purpose of discussing terms upon which he might be recognized as Amir, and the rulership of the country might be made over to him. In June, 1880, Lord Lytton resigned his Governor-Generalship of India to Lord Ripon, by whom this arrangement was, not without difficulty, concluded. Abd-ar-Rahman's accession was proclaimed in the British camp at Kabul; he was strengthened by grants of arms and money, and by a formal promise of support against foreign aggression; and the British troops were just starting on their return to India, when news came that Ayub Khan, Sher Ali's younger son, had marched with an army from Herat upon Kandahar. In July he routed a British force at Maiwand, not far from Kandahar, and was beleaguering the garrison within the walls of that city. A strong expedition was immediately dispatched from Kabul, under the command of Sir Frederick Roberts, who reached Kandahar by forced marches at the end of August, attacked and completely defeated Ayub Khan, relieved the garrison, and drew off his troops into India by the Bolan Pass. Simultaneously the British army at Kabul had withdrawn from Afghanistan by the direct northern route; and in 1881 the evacuation of Kandahar left the Amir free to enforce his authority over the southern province. Abd-ar-Rahman, thus left to his own resources, drove Ayub Khan (who had returned) out of the country, and rapidly extended his power everywhere, until in a few years all Afghanistan was, for the first time in its history, amalgamated into a strong independent kingdom under a
