On his arrival at Lahore, Burnes received an effusive welcome from the one-eyed Sikh monarch, who loved horses and was careful to cultivate the goodwill of a neighbour whose military prowess he had learned to respect. Ranjít's reception of Lord W. Bentinck at Rúpar, on the upper Sutlej, in October 1831, was a splendid Oriental pageant, which lasted for several days. Before the great camp was broken up, Bentinck had signed a treaty of perpetual friendship with the great Sikh ruler, who agreed in his turn to encourage trade along the Sutlej and upper Indus, and to respect the territories of the Sind Amírs[1].
From Lahore Burnes went on to Simla, where Bentinck gave a ready countenance to his schemes of further exploration. With Bentinck's sanction he started early in 1832 on a difficult and hazardous journey through Pesháwar to Kábul, and over the Hindu Kush to Bokhára, returning by way of the Persian Gulf to Bombay. At Calcutta, in 1833, the Governor-General gave him a warm greeting, and sent him to England to lay the results of his travels before the home Government. When his book was published, 'Bokhára Burnes' became the 'lion' of the season in London drawing-rooms, and the star of learned societies, before he was thirty years old. Returning to Lidia in 1 835, ho was soon employed on a special mission to Haidarábád, the capital of Lower Sind. He had just persuaded the Amírs to sanction a scheme for surveying the Indus, when the new
- ↑ Cunningham's History of the Sikhs; Afghan Papers.
