1 168 APPENDIX.
2 Colonel Ochterlony crossed the Jumna at Booreea on
3 the 16th January, 1809, and as he approached Umbala,
4 Runjeet Singh’s detachment left there retired to the Sut-
5 lege. Taking en route the several places visited by the
6 Sikh army, the British commander reached Loodianah on
7 the Sutlege, and took up a position there on the 18th
8 February following. His march was hailed by the people
9 and chiefs, as affording the promise of future protection and
10 tranquillity, and they vied with one another in the display
11 of their gratitude and satisfaction.
12 Up to this period Runjeet Singh had maintained in
13 the conferences to which the envoy was admitted, that the
14 Jumna, and not the Sutlege, was the proper boundary of
15 the British possessions, and that in right of his supremacy
16 over the Sikh nation, no less than as Governor of Lahore, he
17 was warranted in asserting feudal superiority over all the
18 chiefs of that nation between those two rivers. The existing
19 independence of Puteeala and the other principalities, had
20 no weight in argument with a chief, whose domination was
21 the right to plunder and usurp, according to the condition
22 of his army, and who aimed only to secure himself this.
23 The arrival of Colonel Ochterlony on the Sutlege, however,
24 opened his cyes to a new fear, which was that, if he longer
25 resisted, offers of protection that might be made to chiefs in
26 the Punjaub, which would effectually curb his ambitious
27 views, and must involve him in collision and, perhaps, hos-
28 tility, with a power he never thought himself capable of
29 seriously opposing in the field. His resolutions were has-
30 tened by an event that occurred in his camp. The Mo-
31 hurrum, the first and sacred month of the Mahomedans,
32 commenced in 1809, towards the end of February, and the
33 followers of this faith, in the suite of the envoy, prepared to
34 celebrate the deaths of Husun and Hoosein, the two sons of
35 Ulee, with the usual ceremonies. The Akalees, or fanatic
36 priests of the Sikhs, took umbrage at this performance of
37 Moslem rites in the Sikh camp, and at Umritzur; and col-
38 lecting in a body, beaded by Phoola Singh, a bigot of