Yakub Khan spoke readily and freely of all that had passed, and needed no question or suggestion from me to declare his conviction regarding the cause of his father's unfriendly attitude towards us during the past few years.
3.

The substance of the Amir's statement was as follows: 'In 1869 my father was fully prepared to throw in his lot with you.

He had suffered many reverses before making himself secure on the throne of Afghanistan; and he had come to the conclusion that his best chance of holding what he had won lay in an alliance with the British Government.

He did not receive from Lord Mayo as large a supply of arms and ammunition as he had hoped, but, nevertheless, he returned to Kabul fairly satisfied, and so he remained until the visit of Saiyad Nur Muhammud to India in 1873.
This visit brought matters to a head.

The diaries received from Saiyad Nur Mahomed during his stay in India, and the report which he brought back on his return, convinced my father that he could no longer hope to obtain from the British Government all the aid that he wanted; and from that time he began to turn his attention to the thoughts of a Russian alliance.