BURNES, Sir Alexander.

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Cabool: Being a Personal Narrative of a Journey to, and Residence in that City in the years 1836, 7, and 8 First edition of this posthumously published account of the author's remarkable experiences serving as an intelligence officer in India and Afghanistan during the early days of the "great game." Burnes excelled at political work, his linguistic ability, adventurousness, boundless self-confidence, and diplomatic guile lending themselves to delicate duties. Throughout the 1830s, political opinion in London and Calcutta worried increasingly about Russian expansion in central Asia, and Burnes seemed the ideal man to gather information. At the end of 1836, Lord Auckland dispatched him on a commercial mission to Kabul. Auckland mistrusted the amir Dost Muhammad's independence and proposed to restore a former amir, Shah Shuja, to the Afghanistan throne. In August 1839, Burnes was one of the three British officers who escorted Shah Shuja into the Afghan capital. By 1841, the government was deeply unpopular and the local populace wanted revenge. On 2 November, Burnes's house was surrounded and besieged, and he and his younger brother were murdered.Burnes's travel descriptions "exceed usual interest for their concentration on what is seen rather than the process of the journey itself. He displayed a lively interest in culture, religion, inscriptions, etc." (Riddick).

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