The end of the present struggle in Afghanistan appears to
be approaching. The Ameer, with his army, has reached Khelat-i-Ghilzai, and Ayoub Khan is encamped about seventy miles off. He is evidently reluctant to make the decisive attack, and so is the Ameer ; and it is not impossible that a compromise may be made and the latter recog- nised as Sovereign, while Ayoub retains Herat, with a semi-independent authority quite understood in that region. He is, after all, a cadet of the house of which Abdur- rahman is the legitimate and Yakoob Khan the legal head, and the chiefs of clans who respect the blood of Dost Mahommed may impose terms. We suspect Ayoub, a greedy voluptuary with flashes of energy, is asking too much, and it may come to a great battle, which Ayoub's skill or that of his captain- general of artillery—once rumoured to be an Armenian—may make uncertain ; but the probable chance is an arrangement, to last till the Ameer can destroy his rival, either by a coup de main. on Herat or a palace intrigue. We are well out of all that mud, slippery as it is with blood and broken promises.
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