Dear John, I'm full of a great serendipitous joy as I write this, because I think I've quite unexpectedly reached the end of a long journey in search of the origins of the legendary ''Peccavi'' quote, attributed to the hero of the Scinde conquest - Napier. Do you remember we had discussed this quite at length many moons ago and wondered about the 'truth' of this 'apocryphal' story? I'm glad to report that I have now found out the source, and present it to you as my Christmas gift. The only thing that remains now is to find out the actual (or digitised) copy of the relevant issue of the Punch. No point in telling you how I accidently stumbled upon this last night, while reading a book I'd recently purchased at a used-books sale. I almost felt like shouting Eureka - although I was not in the tub, but on my bed and fully dressed in my pyjama-suit. :) OK, so here is the low-down, according to the book I was reading: *** Sind, the territory lying between the Punjab and the sea, was annexed in 1843 by Lord Ellenborough, Sir Henry Hardinge's predecessor as Governor-General; this gave Britain control of the Indus, and an important buffer against possible Moslem invasion from the North-West. It was a cynical piece of work, in which Ellenborough goaded the Sind Amirs by forcing an unacceptable treaty on them; when this provoked an attack by the Baluchi warriers, Sir Charles Napier promptly conquered the country, winning the battles of Miani and Hyderabad. Public reaction to the annexation was reflected by the House of Commons, which postponed for a year the normal vote of thanks to the successful general and by Punch, which gleefully accepted a contribution from a Miss Catherine Winkworth, aged 17, suggesting that Napier's despatch to Ellenborough must have read : ''Peccavi, I have Scinde'' (sinned). [See under Foreign Affairs, Punch, May 18, 1844.] *** Now, I wonder who among us can find out this issue of Punch. It must be online somewhere. I searched but could not find it immediately. May need a deeper look. --- Harshawardhan, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India