A Memoir of India and Avghanistaun: With Observations on the Present Exciting and Critical State and Future Prospects of Those Countries. Comprising Remarks on the Massacre of the British Army in Cabul ...

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J. Dobson, 1842 - 208 pages
Josiah Harlan (1799-1871) was an adventurer and soldier of fortune who possibly was the first American to travel to Afghanistan. Born in Pennsylvania into a large Quaker family, he went to Asia in 1823, where he found employment as a surgeon with the British East India Company. In 1827 he entered the service of Shah Shooja-ool-Moolk, the former leader of Afghanistan who had been deposed in 1810. Harlan remained in Afghanistan for 14 years, where he engaged in various intrigues with rival Afghan leaders, several times changing allegiances. During the First Afghan War (1839-42) his activities infuriated the British authorities, who expelled him from the country. A Memoir of India and Avghanistaun is Harlan's account of his adventures in South Asia, published in 1842, shortly after his return to the United States. The book and a series of interviews that Harlan gave to newspapers at the time stoked American interest in Afghanistan and the war then underway. The book begins with a discussion of the disastrous defeat of the Anglo-Indian force at the hands of Afghan tribesmen in January 1842. Six of the book's seven chapters deal with British India, its foreign policy, and its relationship to Afghanistan. The seventh, and by far the longest, chapter is a detailed description of Amir Dōst Moḥammad Khān (1793-1863), based in part on Harlan's service to and interactions with the amir. The book has three appendices. The first and third are concerned with the British defeat of 1842; the second is an 18-page essay that attempts to explain contemporary historical events with reference to a prophecy in the Bible (Daniel xi, 45). The book has several maps and a portrait, in profile, of Dōst Moḥammad.

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Page 180 - And I saw another angel ascending from the East, having the seal of the living God, and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
Page 184 - Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
Page 192 - But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him: therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many. And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain ; yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him.
Page 180 - And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, 3 Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
Page 185 - And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.
Page 193 - Look in (Dan. 12:1-3), it says, "and at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, everyone that shall be found written in the book.
Page 193 - And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates ; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the eaot might be prepared.
Page 195 - I beheld, and lo a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindred, and people and tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands...
Page 193 - I come as a thief; blessed is he that watcheth ; " and in a contemporaneous sense, it is added, " and he gathered them together in a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon." When Constantinople shall be without a Moslem master, or the integrity of the Ottoman empire can no longer be maintained, a new arrangement must be made, with the elements of the Mahomedan dominion. The existence of the British empire depends upon her paramount...
Page 180 - Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads." And I heard the number of those who were sealed. One hundred and forty-four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel...

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