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KURUM, KABUL AND KANDAHAR 
 
Edinburgh : Printed by Thomas and A rchibald Constable, 
 FOR 
 
 DAVID DOUGLAS. 
 
 LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE. 
 
THE 
 
 AFGHAN FRONTIER. 
 
 Scale -6b ,n ^=l^ 
 
 IQC 7S so ZS so 
 
 H nif-inrrm m hi "-f- I ' 
 
 Routes of Invading Cobxnvw 
 
 GenP Browrv 
 
 Gmk Roberts _._ ._. 
 
 Genk Stewart .,-. 
 
 Routo of 
 
 GenJ^ Stewart, April 1880 \ p ### 
 
 Gen). Roberts August 1880] 
 
 W0: 
 
ifc/iffS 
 
Kurum, Kabul & Kandahar 
 
 BEING A BRIEF RECORD OF IMPRESSIONS IN 
 
 THREE CAMPAIGNS UNDER GENERAL ROBERTS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES GRAY ROBERTSON 
 ii 
 
 LIEUTENANT 8TH (THE KING's) REGIMENT. 
 
 Vouchsafe to such as have not read the story, 
 That I may prompt them ; and of such as have, 
 1 humbly pray them to admit the excuse 
 Of time, of numbers, and due course of things, 
 Which cannot in their huge and proper life 
 Be here presented. 
 
 King Henry V. 
 
 EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS 
 1 881. 
 
DS 34,4- 
 5 
 
 HEN 
 
 :jSE STEPHEH^ 
 
a-c 
 
 TO 
 
 MAJOR-GENERAL A. C. ROBERTSON, C.B., 
 
 Late Lieut. -Colonel %th {the King's) Regiment. 
 
 My dear Father, 
 
 A young author's last anxiety, 
 when his work lies finished before him, is for 
 the first word he shall say to the public. 
 Without embarking in a formal preface, let 
 me ask you to stand sponsor to this little 
 book, and lend your name to its dedicatory 
 page. None will be so ready to overlook 
 its many shortcomings as the most forgiving 
 of fathers ; and if it be found to contain any 
 merits, with whom can they be more fitly 
 
 13043 
 
vi Dedication. 
 
 associated than with the kindest of my 
 friends and the best of my advisers ? 
 
 I cannot let slip this opportunity of ex- 
 pressing my thanks to Sir Frederick Roberts 
 and Colonel Barry Drew for the plans which 
 they have been good enough to place at my 
 disposal ; and of acknowledging my debt to 
 Mr. James Dallas, R.E., for the pains he has 
 taken to reproduce them in their present shape. 
 
 I am, 
 
 Your affectionate Son, 
 
 C. G. ROBERTSON. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 dDampatgn & 
 chapter I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 We get our Orders, i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 A Bad Start, ..... 6 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Life on the March, .... 14 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Through the Darwaza Pass, ... 22 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Paiwar Kotal, .... 32 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The Fag-end of a Campaign, ... 43 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Treaty of Gandamak, . ..50 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 ampatjjtt It 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Returning to the Front, 59 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Bullock-driving, . . . . . 68 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Dawn at Ali Khel, .... 79 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Over the Shutargardan, ... 86 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 From Kushi to Charassia, ... 94 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Kabul, ...... ioi 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Bursting of the Storm, . . . 108 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 General Roberts at bay, . . .125 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 An Army on the watch, . . . 140 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The End of the Jehad, . . . .150 
 
Contents. ix 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Transport, . . . . .158 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 The Khyber Line, . . . .167 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The Second Fight at Charassia, . . 175 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Summering the Troops, , . . .183 
 
 Campaign Wk. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 The Lesson of Maiwand, . . . 191 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The March, r 198 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Victory, ..... 208 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Policy of Retreat, .... 224 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Through the Eolan The End, . . 228 
 
 Chronological Summary, . .237 
 
AFGHAN FRONTIER, .... Frontispiece. 
 
 PAIWAR KOTAL, Page 32 
 
 SKETCH OF KABUL AND ENVIRONS, . . 108 
 
 SKETCH OF KANDAHAR AND ENVIRONS, . 208 
 
Campaign I. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 WE GET OUR ORDERS. 
 
 The time is great. 
 What times are little f To the sentinel 
 That hour is regal when he mounts on guard. 
 George Eliot. 
 
 Tuesday the 8th of October 1878 began not 
 unlike other hot, hideous, Indian days. As 
 usual we were at early drill, we may even have 
 been engaged in the extraordinarily humiliat- 
 ing goose-step. The terrible sun-rays were 
 beginning to beat down over the tree-tops on 
 the Rawul Pindi parade-ground. They shone 
 on till the honest cheeks of the least irascible 
 of drill-serjeants looked done to a turn. They 
 shone on too till many of the half-grown lads 
 in the ranks grew white as the snowy tunics 
 
2 We get our Orders, 
 
 they wore ; for the sun is a chemist with many 
 secrets. We all had the weary, listless, air of 
 men who have tossed through a stifling night 
 to be remorselessly aroused just as sleep be- 
 comes a possibility. 
 
 But deliverance was at hand. A tall figure 
 on a tall horse galloped up. It was the 
 Colonel, holding in his hand an order to proceed 
 to the front at once. Never was reprieve more 
 welcome to a condemned criminal. In five 
 minutes the parade-ground was cleared. Each 
 recruit as he marched off looked as if he had 
 added an inch to his stature. At least he was 
 no longer to be taught to move like an ingenious 
 toy or a puppet in a procession, but to have 
 his share of the risks and prizes of war. 
 
 If soldiers in time of peace are apt to be taken 
 for as half-hearted a set of grumblers as are 
 to be found anywhere, the contrast is the more 
 striking when a regiment is ordered on service. 
 The news spreads like lightning; in a second 
 
We get our Orders. 3 
 
 every imagination is on fire. There is hope 
 in the air that acts like a magical tonic to the 
 system. The men lose their stolid machine- 
 like appearance, the officers their languid air of 
 indifference. Men who have the luck to be 
 mounted gallop their horses as if the fate of 
 India depended on their speed. 
 
 Go into the barrack-room or the mess-house : 
 everywhere the eye rests on men intent on their 
 outfits, and the ear is filled with an incessant 
 clamour of voices. The stir and sound of prac- 
 tical spirits have invaded even the favourite 
 retreats of red-tapeism and routine ; and the 
 pipe-clay, the varnish, and the glitter of showy 
 parade days have all vanished. Before the 
 start, each man must be provided with seventy 
 rounds of ball-cartridge, a couple of blankets 
 and flannel shirts, and two dull earth-coloured 
 suits to wear over his scarlet serge, and dark- 
 blue trousers. 
 
 And the officers have perplexities of their 
 
4 We get our Orders. 
 
 own. To provide a roof to cover you, bed and 
 bedding to lie on, and a kit fit for any ex- 
 tremity of winter bivouacs the whole to weigh 
 under 160 lbs., is a problem to exercise the 
 most ingenious. A third blanket must be 
 weighed against a waterproof sheet ; a couple 
 of extra flannel shirts against a spare pair of 
 boots. It must be discovered if a hammock or 
 a camp-bed be attainable ; and what pattern of 
 tent will give best protection from sun and 
 wind. I confess my own preparations were 
 hardly worthy of the name. Happily it matters 
 less than might be supposed how a man starts 
 on a campaign. The dog in the manger was 
 never bred among soldiers ; and there is no 
 article, from a button-hook up to a violin, that 
 cannot be borrowed in a regiment. The mode 
 of life too and the accidents of the march have 
 a decidedly communistic tendency. Still, there 
 are two rules 1 never transgressed without 
 regretting it. The first is to provide some 
 
We get our Orders. 5 , 
 
 kind of shelter, even the size of a dog-kennel, 
 which you can call your own. Then there is 
 some hope for you when your temper gets 
 ruffled. If you share a tent with the best fellow 
 in the world, there will be rough weather within 
 as well as without, unless you are both ripe for 
 a pilgrimage to heaven. The second, to carry a 
 camp-bed as long as the liberal Indian baggage- 
 scale permits. Mother Earth may find a perfect 
 resting-place for us all one day, but it is pure 
 knight-errantry to trust her before you are 
 obliged. At least so I determined, after three 
 months' trial of sleeping on her breast. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 A BAD START. 
 
 Has the night descended? Was the road of 
 late so toilsome f Did we stop discouraged 
 nodding on our way f 
 
 Walt Whitman. 
 
 The assembly sounded in the dead of the 
 night. But the stars and their queen will 
 do service to all wise travellers, and moonlit 
 hours in India are often to the full as lumi- 
 nous as broad day in foggy England. The 
 long motionless ranks of armed men ; the women 
 flitting to and fro beneath the trees, whimpering 
 ostentatiously ; the children, standing round- 
 eyed and silent with wonder, were dimly visible. 
 The word of command rang out sharply, the 
 companies moved off one by one, and presently 
 
A bad Start. 7 
 
 the column was well in motion, undulating along 
 the road like some dusky monster. 
 
 Thus we plodded on through the last hours 
 of darkness, and the brief grey dawn. 
 
 When we halted, the morning sun was pour- 
 ing on our heads a flood of most unwelcome 
 rays. Grateful seemed the shelter of the little 
 city of white tents that sprang up to receive us, 
 and well within reach the sweets of well-earned 
 repose. With it all, there were two unexpected 
 exceptions to the general satisfaction. Going 
 into partnership with a brother officer, I had 
 confidently freighted a camel with my whole 
 stock-in-trade. Our barque of the desert had 
 apparently suffered shipwreck on its trial trip. 
 In vain we strained our eyes till the last loiter- 
 ing straggler appeared, and the rear-guard itself 
 hove in sight. It was too true : we were reduced 
 at a stroke to what we carried on our backs. 
 This was a monstrous bad beginning to an 
 expedition as likely as not to land us in an 
 
8 A bad Start. 
 
 arctic climate. But want of faith in the miracles 
 of 'to-morrow' is not a failing of the British 
 subaltern. We fell back upon borrowed blankets 
 and a spare tent, quite unabashed by our bank- 
 ruptcy. 
 
 The day passed slowly and sleepily, but not 
 so the night. Camp was to be struck at 12.30. 
 Scarcely, it seemed, had we closed our eyes 
 before the drums began their tyrannical rata- 
 plan, and the bugles rang out their hateful 
 summons. At this signal our ears were assailed 
 by noisy knocking of soldiers loosening their 
 tent-pegs, shrill chattering of ape-like camp- 
 followers, hoarse roaring and gurgling of revolted 
 camels, clashing and clattering of loads from 
 the backs of specially ill-conditioned, or per- 
 chance overburdened, beasts a very chaos of 
 discordant sounds. When I was well awake, I 
 drew back the curtain of the tent and looked out 
 upon certain Rembrandt-like figures a bearded 
 Sikh leaning on his rifle, and the quaint old-world 
 
A dad Start. 9 
 
 profile of a camel, like a mediaeval goblin, 
 now lit up by the red glare of the camp-fires, 
 now mysteriously obscured by drifting smoke. 
 Above all was the moon, sailing along with her 
 silvery smile and soft unconcern. 
 
 So far I had contented myself by slavishly 
 copying my friend Frank's arrangements. It 
 was now clearly my turn to exert myself. So 
 I applied for leave to make a search after the 
 missing baggage, and began to retrace my steps 
 as the regiment moved off. My little Cachmere 
 pony, ' Tommy,' was the unwilling companion 
 of my retreat. His humour never improved 
 unless when I pulled up to rain furious and 
 futile interrogations on any half-dazed native 
 straying along the road. Day was breaking 
 as I rode into Rawul Pindi, and a native regi- 
 ment the 2 1st, I think slipped past me almost 
 before I was aware of it. 
 
 The hotel was full, but I chanced upon the 
 most hospitable entertainer in Asia let me 
 
io A bad Start, 
 
 call him Prince Goldenrule who provided me 
 with the three things needful a cold tub, a 
 clean shirt, and a good breakfast. 
 
 Before the morning was old I started on 
 my rounds, driving in a heavy, sad-discoloured, 
 coach through the swarming bazaars, and round 
 and round the wide-spaced bungalows of the 
 cantonment. There was plenty of sympathy 
 to be met with, and not a single ' not at home.' 
 It was promised me that the headmen of villages 
 should receive descriptions of the missing kits, 
 and be held responsible for any failure in giving 
 information. In short, the whole machinery by 
 which the country is governed in these parts 
 was to be set in motion for our benefit. Before 
 dusk I despatched a native cart with some of 
 the bare necessaries of existence in duplicate ; 
 and with the cart I sent forward two fresh 
 ponies to lay out along the road. 
 
 At the last Prince Goldenrule outdid himself, 
 for he insisted on camping out in the garden, 
 
A bad Start. 1 1 
 
 while I reposed in his comfortable bedroom. 
 I am ashamed to say I was too tired to resist. 
 
 Five o'clock next morning saw me on the 
 road again. 'Tommy' could make nothing of 
 it, ambling along with, a sort of lazy interro- 
 gative gait. I question which of us was the 
 better pleased when the stage was finished. 
 
 The ( Boy in Grey ' as I called the second 
 of my steeds put a different face to it. After 
 a steady gallop, I halted to break my fast at a 
 little oasis by the wayside. It was a charming 
 picnic ground. Hard by, a milk-white, dark- 
 eyed bullock circled round an irrigation-well 
 with slow and patient step. It was like music 
 to hear the creak of the rough wooden wheels 
 as they turned, and the splash-splash of the 
 cool water as each tiny pipkin sent its liquid 
 load lapping down the conducting trough. Of 
 their own motion, the peasants brought an 
 armful of some fragrant species of forage for 
 the Boy,' which he appeared to savour like an 
 
1 2 A dad Start. 
 
 amateur. But some small coins changed hands 
 before I was allowed to pollute a little earthen- 
 ware cup with my lips. This humble friend 
 served my turn as well as a goblet of gold. 
 But because its owners and I had been brought 
 up to call things by somewhat different names, 
 its destruction was certain from that moment. 
 I wonder, now, can we in England afford to cry 
 'Shame!' We have made ourselves safe for 
 the time from persecutions with violence. But 
 ' Do as others do ' is still the golden rule of 
 society, and woe to that man, be he saint or 
 sinner, who regardeth it not ! 
 
 At Futteh Jang, the second stage out, I 
 came unexpectedly upon the regiment. Colonel 
 Drew, taking advantage of the moon, had deter- 
 mined to make his third march at sundown, 
 instead of before daybreak. Wisely, for Good- 
 night,' after a long march, chimes in well enough 
 in the small hours or at midnight, when ' Good- 
 morning to you/ before starting, would set your 
 
A bad Start. 1 3 
 
 teeth on edge ; there is no destroyer like loss 
 of sleep. In camp a yet more welcome surprise 
 awaited me. Our kits had been recovered by 
 a commissariat agent ; after Corporal Dunce 
 had passed by on the other side, and left them 
 lying, because, forsooth, he thought ' as how 
 they belonged to one of the men, and not to 
 an officer !' 
 
 * Tommy' followed me into camp in time 
 to take part in the third march, while his stable 
 companions returned to Pindi. He picked his 
 way along the road under protest, as it were, 
 letting his ears flap backwards and forwards 
 as a final token of mulish disgust. When we 
 got in that night, he and I had, one way and 
 another, covered some forty miles since day- 
 break. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 LIFE ON THE MARCH. 
 
 The whirr of drums and the sound of soldiers 
 marching and the hot sun shining south. 
 Walt Whitman. 
 
 The remainder of the road was as barren of 
 incident as of natural beauty. I remember 
 nothing of it, unless it be the Bridge of Boats, 
 and a swim in the cold snow-water of the 
 Indus. 
 
 One fine morning we marched into Kohat 
 before most of the inhabitants were out of 
 bed. There followed a week of impatience 
 and anxiety, rather than of repose. Predic- 
 tions were not wanting from the cynical that 
 we should not ' see a shot fired,' as the phrase 
 
Life on the March. 15 
 
 runs ; and we did not breathe freely till we 
 were off again, marching, as before, at the most 
 unhallowed hours. 
 
 The life was vivid in a sense, for the heat 
 and strain of the day kept the blood in a 
 fever during the night. But fatigue is apt to 
 confuse the impressions, and the pictures seem 
 to shift in my mind like the patterns of a 
 kaleidoscope. After months of close imprison- 
 ment in an Indian bungalow, the nomadic habit 
 did not come easily. The ruthless midnight 
 awakenings had almost a flavour of the torture- 
 chamber. Later I got into the habit of half- 
 arousing myself with the first uneasy stirring 
 of the camp-followers. There was a certain 
 luxury in thus forestalling the vulgar summons 
 of the fifes and drums, and stealing ten minutes 
 of semi-conscious peace before the piping began, 
 and you must needs make shift to dance. A 
 regiment has something of the iron compulsion 
 of a machine ; and the laziest man I ever met 
 
1 6 Life on the March. 
 
 did not wait more than once for his tent to 
 come down about his ears. 
 
 After the ugly plunge into the bitter night 
 air, like the sea in December, came the hurried 
 forming up of the ranks, and then the column 
 was launched once more into the darkness. 
 The first cheery notes of the band never failed 
 to fill me with a sudden sense of exultation, 
 like one who had committed a virtuous action. 
 Your swaggering trooper will hardly believe 
 me, but it is possible to take a pride in using 
 your legs, instead of letting them dangle by 
 your horse's flanks. Certainly the foot-soldier, 
 confident and complete in himself, is master 
 of the battle-field. If the music and the 
 triumph only lasted ten minutes, with hours 
 of painful stumbling in the dark to follow, is 
 not that very near the usual proportion of pains 
 and pleasures through life ? The regulation 
 halts of five minutes aggravated the distress. 
 A subaltern had to choose between hunting 
 
Life on the March. 1 7 
 
 some unlucky wretch who had sat down on the 
 side of the road reserved by authority for his 
 superiors, or being hunted by mounted officers 
 for leaving him in peace. But there was a 
 real break at the ' Coffee Shop,' or half-way 
 refreshment place, where each man got his 
 biscuit and his tin of sticky brownish fluid. 
 The officers had a table, of course, with sand- 
 wiches and cold fowl for the active and 
 aggressive, and dry bread and bare bones for 
 the improvident and indolent. These early 
 passover breakfasts were generally more than 
 I could stomach, and I used to snatch ten 
 minutes' sleep, curled up in a ditch or hollow 
 by the way. Then on again, with the level 
 rays of the sun full on our necks. 
 
 All extra regimental duties are taken in turn, 
 so that if you are at the head of the column one 
 day, the next you are driving camels, or whip- 
 ping in stragglers in rear. On the march the 
 best berth is with the advanced guard. You 
 
1 8 Life on the March. 
 
 must keep awake to prevent your men from 
 closing in, or running away from the main 
 body, as some perverse instinct will lead them 
 to do on a dark night. Then you may change 
 your point of view, now passing from your 
 advanced scouts to your reserve parties, now 
 trying the finest link of your chain, now its 
 stoutest rivet. Out of the dust and trampling 
 of the ruck, the bugle notes have a clearer 
 ring, and the early dawn steals upon you more 
 stilly and freshly : in truth, you taste some 
 of the joys of a pioneer opening out an un- 
 trodden road. Contrast with this the worst 
 days on rear-guard. Men and animals slowly 
 stream off and leave you face to face with your 
 fate, the most sorry brutes and preposterous 
 loads in the line. With each break-down your 
 temper grows shorter and your task longer, 
 for, by fair means or foul, every load and every 
 living thing must be brought in : for the rear- 
 guard officer, like necessity, knows no law. But 
 
Life on the March. 19 
 
 there is no lot, however burdensome, without 
 its compensations : and when you come in, 
 many weary hours after your comrades, it is no 
 small boon to find your tent pitched and your 
 breakfast ready. Perhaps my first mishap had 
 made me suspicious, but on days when I came 
 in with the head of the column, any little 
 delay in the arrival of my baggage-animals 
 made me as miserable as if philosophy had 
 never been dreamed of. Once safe within the 
 grateful shelter of my tent, any summons to 
 quit it for outside duty, no matter how urgent, 
 seemed cause for open mutiny ; and, for the 
 first time in my life, I understood the meaning 
 of 'living in a free country' with a roof of 
 your own over your head. 
 
 The scenery had nothing very notable about 
 it. We had now hills on both sides of us, always 
 a gain to the landscape. But they were too 
 low to be grand, and too bald to be beautiful. 
 In the full glare of noon they were positively 
 
20 Life on the March. 
 
 ugly. But with the fall of evening they bor- 
 rowed reflected beauty from the violet light 
 and the softening shadows. Certain aspects of 
 the country accidentally, as it were, engraved 
 themselves on my memory; a low hill, with 
 groups of trees and mud-houses clustering on 
 its brow, and a. steep descent on the far side 
 to a sparkling stream, where the men waded 
 barefoot across, or took perilous leaps from 
 stone to stone ; a weary stretch of road, leading 
 across a plain, shimmering with the heat-mists, 
 where the long strings of camels looked like 
 the hulls of ships on the distant horizon ; the 
 shadow of a noble group of trees, or of a steep 
 rock, green with a mass of prickly shrubs ; the 
 flash of the white tents seen from far off, a 
 veritable camp of refuge. 
 
 After breakfast indefatigable sportsmen would 
 put up their rods, or shoulder their guns in the 
 afternoon. But the bathing parties were my 
 particular delight. What luxury of marble bath- 
 rooms can compare with a green nook by the 
 
L ife on the March. 2 1 
 
 river-bank, where you hurry off your clothes 
 * without restraint, and a clear running stream, 
 where the cool rush of the water breaks over 
 you, or carries you down over its pebbly bed 
 fifty yards at a breath ! When dinner-time came 
 round, if the pleasures of a civilised table were 
 absent, at least the best of all sauces a healthy 
 appetite never failed us. The regimental mess 
 was broken up ; but we formed smaller circles, 
 throwing our rations, and any camp delicacies 
 that came our way, into the common stock. 
 Here is our bill of fare one night we were in 
 luck : 
 
 Chicken Broth. 
 Stewed Mutton. Chops. 
 
 Boiled Potatoes. 
 
 Boiled Fowls. 
 Curry and Rice. Poached Eggs. 
 
 After this my servant produced a tin of 
 cheese. But three votes out of four at the 
 table were Scotch. So we looked at each 
 other suspiciously, and put away the luxury 
 against a rainy day. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THROUGH THE DARWAZA PASS. 
 
 ' Tis the last hour of day. 
 Look on the West! How beautiful it is, 
 Vaulted with radiant vapours ! 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 We left^Thal on the 21st of November. Cross- 
 ing the frontier, in spite of the name of the 
 thing, was a very matter-of-fact affair, very 
 much like crossing the street. The road ran 
 at first along the river-bed. In places there 
 were dense patches of cane-brake, or great 
 grasses. The men struggled obstinately through, 
 and then on with a rush over the clearings, as 
 if determined to cut short their trial. As often 
 as not, there was a battery of artillery march- 
 ing in front of us ; and, in spite of the good- 
 
Through the Darwaza Pass. 23 
 
 will of officers and men pulling together in the 
 bonds of a discipline that was flexible, yet 
 perfectly well-knit, delays were endless. 
 
 Memory is a shifty and capricious guide 
 through the past, but to be trusted by us about 
 the march through the Darwaza Pass. The 
 road was of the roughest, intersected by water- 
 courses and ravines every hundred yards, so 
 that short halts and starts succeeded each 
 other the whole day through. We might as 
 well have been doing serious penance in the 
 palmy days of the Church. The ever-recur- 
 ring temptation to slake one's thirst was too 
 much for any principles. And if water-drink- 
 ing ranks among the highest of the virtues 
 in Exeter Hall, on the march it stands low 
 among the vices. After all, the reward that 
 was in store for us only seemed the more 
 splendid. So far, low hills had hidden the 
 best of the prospect : at last they fell back 
 on either side, and, suddenly, we emerged upon 
 
24 Through the Darwaza Pass. 
 
 an open place, and stood looking broadly 
 over the Kurum Valley, and across to where 
 the Safed Koh rises with its air of majesty, 
 calm and unapproachable from all eternity. 
 It was as if Nature herself had thrown her 
 inviolable shield over the land we invaded, 
 saying, Thus far shalt thou go, and no further. 
 Not a man but paused a second and held his 
 breath before that sublime defiance. As we 
 advanced, the sun dropped down in the west, 
 and on the mountain-side there hung a tricolor 
 of God's own weaving first a band of glowing 
 rose-light ; above, a dark belt of pines ; then 
 the bare crests of the hills, blanched by all 
 weathers till they shine like snow. 
 
 We had marched only thirteen miles, yet we 
 did not arrive till late in the afternoon, and 
 were glad enough to encamp without attempt- 
 ing the passage of the Kurum river. The 
 following day was employed fording its ice- 
 cold flood, sweeping up to our thighs. By 
 
Through the Darwaza Pass. 25 
 
 nightfall the 2d Brigade came in, after a hard 
 march ; and everything was ready for a spring. 
 
 On the 28th of November, at 3.30, the regi- 
 ment paraded, its tents being by this time 
 struck and loaded on mules. We had a hard 
 day's marching before us, so the men were 
 obliged to parade as lightly clothed as possible. 
 The morning was dark and bitterly cold ; for 
 the best part of three hours we shivered about, 
 greatcoatless, on our parade-ground or close 
 to it. 
 
 About six the different regiments of the 
 brigade and their reserve ammunition mules 
 had been got into order, and at last the march 
 began the 29th and 5th Punjab Infantry in 
 front, our regiment bringing up the rear. Day 
 broke, and we plodded on, with the usual halts 
 of five or ten minutes at intervals. Directly 
 in front of us were the reserve ammunition 
 mules of the 5th Punjab Infantry, at one 
 place there was a regular stampede among 
 
26 Through the Darwaza Pass. 
 
 them, and we passed more than half their loads 
 lying on the ground. After four or five hours' 
 marching, we reached the edge of the plain, 
 which was bounded by what appeared to be an 
 enormously broad torrent-bed. Here we passed 
 the General and his staff, who were all scanning, 
 with levelled telescopes, the famous Pass in 
 front of us. We moved on slowly, and there 
 was expectation in the very tread of the men 
 as their broken footsteps sounded on the loose 
 stones and gravel. 
 
 The brigade halted and piled arms by a 
 water-course that was straying through this 
 wilderness. But almost at once the order came 
 for the 29th to push on ; we watched them 
 disappear into the holly-scrub in front of us, 
 and then the provident ones fell-to on any 
 scraps they had in their haversacks. Conjecture 
 was busy as to the whereabouts of the enemy, 
 the general opinion being that he had bolted 
 over the Pass, where he was no longer visible, 
 
Through the Darwaza Pass. 2 7 
 
 leaving his guns behind him. None the less, 
 when again we were ordered to advance, a 
 feeling of excitement spread through the regi- 
 ment, as if at the prospect of coming unex- 
 pectedly into action. We struggled painfully 
 through the scrub, toiling up and down several 
 steep ravines, straining to catch the sound of 
 firing from the front. When the first faint 
 snapping of rifles reached our ears, a thrill ran 
 through our ranks. Then the Brigadier gave 
 the order to one of our companies and one of 
 the Sikhs to clear the range dividing the twin 
 valleys before us. The only person I could see 
 from the top of the first hill we climbed was a 
 little doctor, who shouted to us to ' Come on ! ' 
 and support the 29th, who were engaged some- 
 where on the left. We could not move fast 
 enough to please our excitable friend ; but as 
 we worked our way along from point to point, 
 we had the satisfaction of seeing the rest of the 
 brigade come swinging round the hill we had 
 
28 Through the Darwaza Pass. 
 
 just climbed, and pass up the valley on our 
 right. Our task was done, and we moved down 
 the slope in an oblique direction. 
 
 About three o'clock we came up with our 
 comrades halted under the slope of the hills on 
 the other side of the valley. The 2d Brigade, 
 which had advanced by another road, were also 
 halted about half a mile in front of us, and 
 beyond them again there was an action in pro- 
 gress. At first all our views were coloured by 
 the reports we had heard of the enemy's hasty 
 retreat. As we watched the tiny puffs from 
 the rifles creeping up the face of the steep hills 
 in front of us, and the larger white clouds from 
 the artillery fire breaking towards the peaks 
 and the summit of the Pass, we jumped to the 
 conclusion that our infantry were taking the 
 position, while the Royal Horse Artillery 
 and the mule battery were shelling the flying 
 Afghans. We got the length of bewailing our 
 hard fate in being left behind, and wondering 
 
Thi'ough the Darwaza Pass. 29 
 
 where the enemy's abandoned guns would be 
 found. 
 
 Soon, however, more accurate news began to 
 circulate. From a signalling party above us we 
 learned that the 72d Highlanders were being 
 shelled on their camping-ground. A still more 
 impressive message arrived in the shape of a 
 round-shot that fell close to our own position. 
 Later, a cavalry officer who had been watching 
 the fight rode in, looking rather anxious, and 
 informed us that the enemy were holding a very 
 strong position, against which we had made but 
 little way. Then the firing began to slacken, 
 and, as the light waned, the troops in front were 
 gradually withdrawn, the dashing little Ghoorkas 
 in their dark rifle-uniforms running out to 
 cover the movement : first the Royal Horse 
 Artillery, next the mule battery, and then the 
 line regiments passed through our camp. 
 
 Our brigade was now next the enemy, and 
 just as I was congratulating myself on the 
 
30 Through the Darwaza Pass. 
 
 arrival of my tent, I was ordered out on outpost 
 duty with my company. There was nothing 
 for it but to snatch up coat and waterproof 
 sheet, and trudge off dinnerless and supper- 
 less ; luckily I had some bread and cheese left 
 in my haversack. Taking fresh ground in the 
 dark, and stretching a chain of piquets and 
 sentries, with such an enemy before us, was 
 nervous work. We passed the night in shiver- 
 ing vigilance, with not even a lamp to throw 
 light on our watches, while the Afghans crowned 
 every height and pinnacle with their triumphant 
 bonfires. 
 
 On Friday morning, the 29th, our camp was 
 moved back out of sight of the enemy, and a 
 reconnaissance in force was made to our right. 
 From one of our piquets it was quite possible, 
 with a good glass, to make out guns in posi- 
 tion, and troops drawn up, at the top of the 
 Kotal. The Afghans were in high spirits, and 
 could be seen waving their swords, beating 
 
Through the Darwaza Pass. 3 1 
 
 drums, and advancing a little way down the 
 hill. They also kept pegging away at a work- 
 ing party of the 23d Pioneers, who were out 
 road-making. 
 
 On Saturday, the 30th, we still kept as quiet 
 as mice, but the General and his staff were 
 up on our right, peering about and sketching 
 the enemy's position. We heard that G III. 
 Battery, or rather the half of it which was at 
 Kurum, had been sent for. On Sunday G III. 
 arrived, and a conviction, which towards even- 
 ing became a certainty, spread abroad that we 
 should delay our attack no longer. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PAIWAR KOTAL. 
 
 An armed force is a means to an end the 
 end is victory over enemies ; and this is to 
 be achieved, partly indeed by a due use of 
 discipline and method, but partly also by 
 keeping alive, in those who may come to 
 have command, a knowledge and a love of 
 war ; and by cherishing that unlabelled, 
 undocketed, state of mind which shall 
 enable a man to encounter the unknown. 
 Kinglake. 
 
 On the 2d of December 1878 General Roberts 
 struck his great blow. It was my first battle, 
 and I suppose no other will ever seem like it to 
 me. Never will the thunder of English guns 
 sound so inspiriting, nor the shells seem to 
 burst so splendidly. 
 
 A small tower where the road crosses the 
 saddle of the Pass marked the enemy's main 
 position. 
 
-1 
 
 < . 
 
 -< 00 
 
 _. in 
 
 l. O 00 
 
 ^~ 
 z 
 
 j Pu O 
 
 - L- o 
 < 
 
The Paiwar Kotal. 33 
 
 To reach his guns directly, infantry must 
 have advanced nearly a mile under a heavy 
 flank fire, from both sides of the road, and then 
 scaled heights rising precipitously for about as 
 far again. 
 
 Guarding his right like a bastion was an 
 impregnable rock fortress, called The Crow's 
 Nest : on his left there rose a succession of 
 wooded heights, which commanded each other 
 in turn. But words fail to paint the dangers 
 that would have threatened a direct attack. 
 General Roberts's flank march was our salva- 
 tion. 
 
 At 4 A.M. two companies of ' The King's ' 
 were sent out as escort to the Artillery. Under 
 cover of the darkness we moved up the road 
 half a mile past our outposts, and half of G III. 
 and two guns of Royal Horse Artillery quietly 
 drew up in the open, and unlimbered. About 
 this time the enemy took alarm, and we could 
 hear their bugles all along the heights. Their 
 
34 The Paiwar Kotal. 
 
 calls are the same as ours, and we could make 
 out the ' double ' very clearly. As soon as it 
 was light G III. fired a trial shot to get the 
 range ; and a little later, say about 7 A.M., the 
 guns began pegging away in earnest. The 
 enemy replied vigorously from the Kotal and 
 the Crow's Nest straight in front of us ; but 
 in the Artillery duel that followed G III. had 
 it pretty much their own way. Their practice 
 was perfect, shell after shell carrying havoc 
 among the Afghan gun-teams, which were as 
 speedily renewed. The enemy's round-shot, 
 falling dead from a great height, were com- 
 paratively harmless, and their shells from a 
 rifled 7-pounder either fell short or did not 
 burst. Another thing was, that a good deal 
 of their fire was wasted by being poured into 
 a hollow just in rear of where my company was 
 posted, probably under the impression that it 
 was filled with troops intended to advance 
 under cover of our guns. The men of my 
 
The Paiwar Kotal. 35 
 
 company were in a very safe position under a 
 steep bank ; yet in spite of this we had some 
 narrow escapes the enemy's round-shot just 
 grazing the top of the protecting ridge and 
 curving in amongst us. 
 
 About eleven o'clock the enemy's attention, 
 as well as our own, was drawn to the wooded 
 hills on our right by the sharp rattle of the 
 Martini-Henry. The remainder of 'The King's,' 
 some five and a half companies, had come into 
 action, and were giving the defenders of the 
 Pass a lesson in the use of the new rifle at long 
 ranges. Instantly the Afghan artillerymen 
 slewed round their guns and began firing away 
 at their new assailants, who, with the $th Pun- 
 jab Infantry on their right, were creeping up 
 to within about 600 yards of the position. 
 
 There was no lack of cover, and casualties 
 were few, the drum-major being the only man 
 killed. Still, wherever a man showed, the fire 
 was pretty hot, and the Brigadier, who was 
 
36 The Paiwar Kotal. 
 
 wounded in the thigh, expressed himself well 
 pleased with the behaviour of the regiment. 
 When the fighting was at its height in this part 
 of the field, we were treated to the prettiest 
 part of the whole spectacle. Up from our 
 camp, past the artillery and its protecting in- 
 fantry, came the 12th Bengal Cavalry, winding 
 along the road. With the bright sunlight full 
 upon them, they looked like a wonderful dragon 
 with quivering scales of brown and glittering 
 gold. Right up to the foot of the Pass they 
 rode, till it seemed as if the battle were over, 
 and they were preparing for a rush after the 
 flying enemy. But to our surprise, after attract- 
 ing in their turn the fire of the enemy's guns (a 
 result which might easily have cost them some- 
 thing more than the loss of a charger), back 
 they came as unconcernedly as they had 
 advanced. 
 
 The firing on the right now slackened ; little 
 progress appeared to have been made towards 
 
The Paiwar Kotal. 3 7 
 
 ousting the enemy by a direct attack, and our 
 thoughts naturally reverted to the turning 
 movement. Had the 2d Brigade accomplished 
 its difficult task, or was it possible that a 
 link of our slender chain had given way ? If 
 the little army, which General Roberts was 
 using like a finely-tempered sword, were by 
 any accident shivered against this rock-bound 
 barrier of Afghanistan, there was no other 
 weapon of offence or defence lying ready to 
 his hand upon which he might count in case of 
 need. Visions of a retreat to Kurum, or even 
 to Thai, of harassing attacks from treacherous 
 hill tribes, and possible mutinies in our rear, 
 mixed up with recollections of the Spectator's 
 Cassandra-like warnings, presented themselves 
 unbidden to the mind. G III. were as much 
 puzzled as we were, and contented themselves 
 with silencing the gun in the Crow's Nest, 
 whenever its defenders ventured to relieve the 
 monotony of the proceedings by opening fire. 
 
38 The Paiwar Kotal. 
 
 But suddenly the battery received an order 
 which cleared everything up, and set us all 
 moving : the guns were to advance up the 
 Pass if practicable. Our two companies, con- 
 fident that the day was won, ran out in skir- 
 mishing order. Their fire, and a few rounds of 
 shrapnel that went crashing among the trees 
 on the hill-side, soon cleared the way ; and, 
 leaving the Crow's Nest on our left, we advanced 
 unmolested straight up towards the Kotal. The 
 battery had to be left at the foot of the Kotal, 
 which was almost precipitous, and scaled by a 
 mere track. As we struggled up, we could 
 not help wondering how the enemy had con- 
 trived to drag up his guns a few days before. 
 
 On reaching the coveted summit we found 
 ourselves mingling with our fortunate brethren, 
 who, to their surprise, had accomplished a 
 similarly bloodless advance, Colonel Barry 
 Drew, the acting Brigadier, leading the way, 
 and being the first to reach the crest of the 
 
The Paiwar Kotal. 39 
 
 hill. A strange scene met our eyes. There, 
 on the saddle of the hill, over which the road 
 leads, were the brass field-pieces, to which the 
 enemy. had clung so sturdily, all dulled with 
 smoke and dirt. A little further back stood 
 his tents, and piled around them were muni- 
 tions of war and every conceivable article of 
 camp equipage in the wildest confusion. There 
 had been some attempt at packing up and 
 loading at the last moment before the flight. 
 But the Turis, eager for plunder, had swarmed 
 round and dragged forth everything to view. 
 Amongst piles of sheepskin greatcoats, boxes 
 of ammunition, powder and shot loose in bags, 
 sacks of grain, rude blankets and rugs, and 
 the like, you might come across a bundle of 
 despatches, a copy of the Koran, or even an 
 embroidered scarf. Though the enemy, accord- 
 ing to his custom, had done his best to remove 
 his dead, there were still many bodies lying 
 about to testify the accuracy of our artillery 
 
40 The Paiwar Kotal. 
 
 and rifle practice. On the hill-side lay one 
 poor wretch who had been hit while baking his 
 daily meal. A little further on, in the Pass, 
 lay five camels in a group, slaughtered by the 
 same shell. The Afghan gunners, too, had 
 evidently suffered a good deal ; their black 
 forage-caps, with red tufts, lay strewed about 
 in all directions. 
 
 As night closed in, we lit large fires with the 
 pine-trees felled by our unwilling hosts, and 
 prepared to bivouac as best we might in the 
 biting cold. But we had reckoned without 
 our indefatigable Quartermaster, who presently 
 appeared at the head of our baggage-animals ; 
 we fared better that night than all our neigh- 
 bours. Next morning the details of the fighting 
 on the right became gradually known. We 
 heard of the sudden onslaught in the early 
 morning, when the uncertain light made it hard 
 to distinguish friends from foes. We heard 
 of the dash of the brave little Goorkhas and 
 
The Paiwar Kotal. 41 
 
 Highlanders at the stockade, and of the deter- 
 mined resistance of the Ameer's troops, who 
 attempted with three fresh regiments to retake 
 the position at the point of the bayonet. We 
 heard how General Roberts, despairing of fight- 
 ing his way to the Kotal from the flank, had 
 left part of his force in a strong position to 
 keep the enemy before him in check, while with 
 the remainder he pushed right to the rear of 
 the Pass, and so alarmed the defenders that 
 they determined on flight while their line of 
 retreat was still open. We heard how the 2d 
 Brigade had bivouacked each corps in the posi- 
 tion it occupied some in rear, some in flank, 
 of the Kotal, and how the completeness of the 
 victory and the total discomfiture and flight of 
 the Ameer's troops did not become generally 
 known until the morning after the battle. 
 
 General Roberts's operations were charac- 
 terised by a happy combination of prudence 
 and audacity. From the first he inspired all 
 
42 The Paiwar Kotal. 
 
 under his command with supreme confidence 
 in his judgment as a skilful general, as well as 
 in his boldness as an intrepid leader. The halt 
 from the 28th to the 2d was useful and judi- 
 cious. Repose was assured for the troops, and 
 time gained for complete and careful study of 
 the ground. The General was thus enabled 
 to arrange all the details of the attack with 
 sufficient certainty and precision. When the 
 moment for action arrived, he was able to lead 
 his troops during the dark midnight hours 
 through formidable mountain defiles to the 
 selected point of attack. Without serious pause 
 or check, he struck a succession of sudden 
 and effectual blows. When the difficulty of 
 the ground and the number of enemies arrested 
 his advance, without wasting life in needless 
 efforts, he suspended his attack, and, guided by 
 a sure coup cTceil t carried out the bold and skilful 
 dispositions for seizing the line of the enemy's 
 retreat, which decided the success of the day. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FAG-END OF A CAMPAIGN. 
 
 O weariness beyond what asses feel, 
 That tread the circuit of the cistern-wheel, 
 A dull rotation, never at a stay, 
 Yesterday 's face twin-image of to-day. 
 
 Cowper. 
 
 The position seemed mightily improved when 
 seen from the right side. If the Afghans 
 thought half as much of it as we, they must 
 have had a fine contempt for the infidel invaders 
 creeping about like an army of ants below. 
 For myself, I felt anything but puffed up on 
 the night of the victory. When our baggage 
 was brought in, to crawl under the first heap 
 of rugs and bedding, and get somehow buried 
 and out of the turmoil seemed to me the great 
 affair. At such times, for which the devil takes 
 
44 The fag-end of a Campaign. 
 
 care to provide a special litany, there is nothing 
 so revivifying as a cup of hot tea. Raw spirits 
 rouse you a little, but so would a hot iron. 
 
 There was no Capua to fall back upon, nor 
 any winter-quarters for us beyond what we 
 could contrive for ourselves. We fell at once 
 into the regular backwoodsman's life : marking 
 and felling and dragging timber on the hill-side 
 by day, and bivouacking round a great fire by 
 night. The scent of pine woods calls up before 
 me still, like a spell, the great crackling, hissing 
 logs, the clouds of bitter smoke, and the soft, 
 thick, charred dust that begrimed one past 
 recognition before morning, and strange asso- 
 ciations will arise with the vision. Where is 
 the republic that can match the ring round 
 the piquet fire for equality ? When men carry 
 their lives in their hands there are no titles to 
 consideration like a jolly face and a ready wit. 
 We had a wag in my company, a Londoner 
 of course, who kept the men in high good- 
 
The fag-end of a Campaign. 45 
 
 humour, and now and again a hint dropped by 
 accident reminded you that many of the life- 
 threads now woven into the same woof must 
 have been strangely tangled in bygone years. 
 But the savour of the wilderness loses its 
 piquancy all too quickly. As times grew 
 duller, he was a shallow hypocrite who did not 
 rejoice, as he descended to a more temperate 
 zone. Savage pine-woods and drifting snow 
 are well enough in the fourth act of a melo- 
 drama : but what a wretched background for 
 everyday life in a log-hut with the thermometer 
 anywhere. 
 
 My last quarter in Afghanistan that year was 
 at a little place called Ibrahimzai. Our camp 
 nestled down by the river-side, sheltered be- 
 tween the village and a grove of trees. Our 
 old friend the Quartermaster-General kept 
 threatening our two weak companies with 
 20,000 hill-men. But where he had said there 
 will be no grass, there was grass ; and where he 
 
46 The fag-end of a Campaign. 
 
 foretold drought, there we were nearly drowned. 
 So, taking the oracle at its usual value, we 
 felt confident we should not be disturbed, and 
 relapsed indeed into the dullest routine. 
 
 Our Christmas was sober to sinfulness. Not 
 a single orthodox dish would have graced our 
 table, but for the plum-pudding which the men 
 compounded, and generously shared with us. 
 With the best faith in the world a banquet of 
 commissariat rations and rum is apt to end to 
 the tune early to bed, and violent indigestion 
 next morning. 
 
 On the last strokes of the year, I had an 
 adventure that came very near marking finis 
 after my story. It was my duty to visit an 
 outlying piquet of Sepoys posted at night. 
 Your native sentry, with ears and mouth well 
 muffled in the folds of his turban, is more than 
 three parts deaf and dumb. To approach him 
 incautiously is nearly certain death; and it came 
 to pass quite naturally, with inexperience and 
 
The fag-end of a Campaign. 47 
 
 Corporal Boozer for my guide, that I discovered 
 my Sepoys watching for me, with rifles levelled 
 for a volley, just in the nick of time. What 
 angered me most was the absolute want of 
 sympathy which I had to encounter next 
 morning. Lucretius no doubt treated average 
 human nature fairly enough in his celebrated 
 lines. But your modern egotist does not rejoice 
 over the misfortunes of his neighbours : he 
 cannot be said to care enough about them for 
 that. 
 
 About this time rumour was very busy with 
 the march through the Mundior Pass and the 
 expedition into the Khost Valley, caricaturing 
 as usual every picture she drew. General 
 Roberts, being human, may have made a slip 
 here and there. But, happily for us, he saw 
 what his critics did not that in Asia, Provi- 
 dence still sides, not with the biggest battalions, 
 but with the bravest hearts. The truth is that 
 our victory over the Ameer's forces had carried 
 
48 The fag- end of a Campaign. 
 
 us off our feet a little. For the moment the 
 impolicy of bringing the tribes like hornets 
 about our ears was forgotten. 
 
 From a military point of view, the work in 
 Khost was done perfectly. More than once 
 the hill-men, who had collected in immense 
 numbers, were attacked and driven off with 
 great confidence and elan, the 10th Hussars 
 and the 5th Punjab Cavalry showing well to 
 the front. One night a batch of prisoners 
 attempted to break away at a signal from 
 their friends without. The guard, as in duty 
 bound, fired at them till they were quiet, or 
 till an officer gave the order to spare. About 
 a score were killed. The episode would pro- 
 bably never have been heard of, if an excited 
 journalist had not suggested a new cry to 
 persons who are fond of combining the parti- 
 san and the sentimental business. It is curious 
 that any one should have overlooked the general 
 truth, that the safety of his followers must be 
 
The fag-end of a Campaign. 49 
 
 the first thought and the last of a successful 
 General ; or the particular fact, that in this 
 instance General Roberts, with his tiny force 
 surrounded by thousands of the enemy, took 
 as usual the side of clemency. But in writing, 
 one side of a case is always almost as good 
 as the other ; and Englishmen, cold and un- 
 emotional in their speech, are among the 
 most hysterical of readers. 
 
 The new year found me over the border once 
 more. It is difficult to understand how such a 
 dull place as Thai continues to be a place at all. 
 Our life there for six weeks may be summed up 
 in few words : eating and drinking, with the 
 variation of eating and sleeping. But for the 
 mail-cart which dashed in every evening at five 
 o'clock, we must have shared the punishment 
 of Nebuchadnezzar, and turned as the beasts 
 of the field that perish. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE TREATY OF GANDAMAK. 
 
 . .< / cannot avoid beholding' the Russian Empire 
 as the natural enemy of the more Western 
 parts of Europe ; as an enemy already pos- 
 sessed of great strength, and, from the nature 
 'of the government, every day threatening to 
 become more powerful. 
 
 The Citizen of the World. 
 Thou set thy foot where England used to stand/ 
 Thou reach thy rod forth over Indian land! 
 Slave of the slaves that call thee lord, and weak 
 As their foul tongues who praise thee. 
 
 But thou take heed ere yet thy lips wax white, 
 Lest as it was with Philip so it be, 
 O white of name and red of hand, with thee. 
 1 The White Czar.' Swinburne. 
 
 At a certain stage of culture, the fancies of 
 philanthropists are apt to oppress the imagina- 
 tion more than the hard facts of existence, and 
 over every petty war that breaks out crafty 
 partisans are able to stir some section of the 
 
The Treaty of Gandamak. 5 1 
 
 people, as if murder were on their souls. To 
 fall into a mood in which a saner appreciation 
 of facts becomes possible, it is necessary to 
 remember that if fighting is the bane of civilised 
 societies, it is as the daily bread of barbarous 
 races. When a few thousands of the most 
 turbulent members of a tribe disappear in a 
 struggle with an irresistible power, the exter- 
 mination of the human wolves and the irrecon- 
 cilables of society is only accelerated a trifle. 
 Even in Afghanistan it must be assumed that 
 the mass of the population has no rooted aver- 
 sion to peace and prosperity. 
 
 The early phases of our quarrel with Shere 
 Ali can be of interest to few people, with the 
 exception of certain noble Lords. The atten- 
 tion of practical men was never aroused till 
 after the repulse of Sir Neville Chamberlain's 
 mission, and by that time there was no ques- 
 tion to discuss. The theory, however, that 
 the English Government was moved by some 
 
5 2 The Treaty of Gandamak. 
 
 feeling of hostility to Shere Ali is out of all 
 reason. It was determined, for State reasons, 
 to force the Ameer to show his hand. He 
 declared against us, and his blood is on his 
 own head. 
 
 Our destiny in India was at the bottom of 
 the matter. As Rome made Europe, so, if 
 there is to be any future for the dusky millions 
 of Hindustan, if the people are even to be 
 allowed to follow their own simple pleasant 
 lives unmolested, the English rule must be 
 upheld at any price. That rule, like all alien 
 supremacy, rests on the bayonet; and where 
 men go armed, for the State as for the indi- 
 vidual, there is but one way of wiping out 
 insults. As for the enormity of the offence, 
 ask any Asiatic what he thinks of the poten- 
 tate living almost in the shadow of our 
 gates who delivered a left-handed buffet to 
 our Ambassador, stretching out at the same 
 moment the right hand of friendship to our 
 
The Treaty of Gandamak. 53 
 
 declared rivals. Nor can the admission that a 
 more dangerous enemy lay behind the Afghans 
 affect the argument. As has been shown ad 
 nauseam we are under no obligation to attack 
 Russia before knocking the weapon pointed at 
 us out of her hand. After our armies were 
 set in motion, the Czar never moved openly 
 a step against us : if secret encouragements 
 were conveyed to the wretched Ameer, that is 
 no affair of our national conscience. 
 
 The treaty of Gandamak was framed to 
 guard against a recurrence of such evils, and 
 to secure a predominant influence for India 
 in Afghanistan. With the railway at Kurum 
 and the road up to Shutargardan, no ruler of 
 Kabul could stand without us. The right of 
 garrisoning Kandahar and Herat might no 
 doubt have been retained. But nothing was 
 to be gained by advancing without the railway. 
 General Phayre's break-down in the autumn of 
 1880 is a significant warning against crossing 
 
54 The Treaty of Gandamak. 
 
 deserts to occupy isolated ' strategical ' points. 
 As has been pointed out a hundred times, if 
 a flaw appeared in the treaty, it was in the 
 unskilful working of it. 
 
 A proud people and a savage soldiery were 
 smarting under recent chastisement, but they 
 were far from considering themselves as a 
 conquered race. Heaven knows how many 
 defeats would be necessary to extort any 
 admission of inferiority from such an incurable 
 braggart as the Afghan. There are times when 
 striking the iron when it is hot will produce 
 nothing but sparks ; if an Afghan monarchy 
 of the desired pattern was to be built up, it 
 required no hammering from us, but rather to 
 be handled most gingerly. But the Nemesis 
 of party government was upon the Ministry. 
 The appearance of complete success was not 
 less necessary to them than the substance. 
 
 Sir Louis Cavagnari started on his fatal 
 journey before the new Ameer was well seated 
 
The Treaty of Gandarnak. 5 5 
 
 on the throne, and, it is to be supposed, came 
 soon to be looked upon by all concerned as a 
 master in disguise. It was told me afterwards 
 in Kabul that a tour round the mutilated 
 Douranee Empire had been projected by the 
 Envoy ; but the Ameer, becoming suspicious, 
 afterwards signified to Sir Louis that he should 
 not accompany him. This was, perhaps, the 
 beginning of offence. 
 
Campaign IE 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 ' RETURNING TO THE FRONT. 
 
 Varus, Varus, what hast thou done with my 
 legions t Kenelm Chillingly. 
 
 When the strange electric whisper thrilled 
 round the world with the tidings of the Kabul 
 massacre, a wail of vain regret and a cry for 
 vengeance arose in the same hour from Calcutta 
 and Westminster, from Simla and Balmoral. 
 But there was that which intensified the emo- 
 tion in India. At home the ordinary newspaper 
 reader falls almost unconsciously into the atti- 
 tude of a spectator. He has hardly recovered 
 from the effects of one sensation before he 
 begins to speculate from what quarter the next 
 shock to his sensibilities will proceed. But a 
 
60 ' Returning to the Front! 
 
 disaster in India seems to touch every one ; 
 and the presence on all sides of possibly hostile 
 elements works upon the imagination, and 
 quickens the perceptions to every impression. 
 
 The second call to arms found me at Murree. 
 In most Indian stations, to withdraw the mili- 
 tary element is to disorganise society at a blow. 
 A regular carnival week to end the season had 
 been in prospect ; but in a single night the 
 whole train of preparations collapsed, and the 
 gossiping, lounging population, seeking amuse- 
 ment and finding none, seemed strangely 
 shrunken in all its proportions. The few men 
 left hovered furtively about the luncheon-table 
 at odd hours, or sat in different corners of the 
 reading-room at the club, as if ashamed to look 
 each other in the face. 
 
 It was a positive relief when a brief message 
 set me at liberty to catch up the invading force 
 if I could. The doubt did not trouble me at 
 the time, I confess, for those were hopeful days 
 
* Returning to the Front! 6 1 
 
 for men who were struggling in the rear. All 
 the wiseacres, who had spied out the nakedness 
 of the transport in the Kurum Valley, were 
 positive there could be no advance before the 
 middle of October. And no imagination was 
 likely to picture beforehand the obstructiveness 
 of acting officials, swaddled in red tape after 
 the fashion of infant administrators. 
 
 There were minor difficulties to be overcome 
 from the first. The Government mail service 
 from Murree was at once discontinued on the 
 outbreak. All the teams were hard at work 
 dragging people from Pindi to the front. If 
 you will pocket your pride, it is always possible 
 to get over forty miles of road : I began to 
 think I should travel on foot with no other 
 encumbrance. At last I hit upon a doolie for 
 myself, and a crazy native cart for my baggage 
 and servants. How they got in must ever 
 remain a mystery to me ; for horse and cart 
 looked as if a special interposition of Provi- 
 
62 ' Returning to the Front' 
 
 dence would be necessary to keep them together 
 for half a mile. 
 
 My own journey was prosperous up to the 
 last stage. I started about eight o'clock in 
 the evening, with six bearers, who were to be 
 relieved three times at least. Things must 
 have gone smoothly for about thirty miles, 
 when I was aroused by the keen morning air, 
 just in time to see the sun rise into a sky 
 clearly ominous of insufferable light and heat. 
 What interested me most, perhaps, was the 
 discovery that I was practically alone. Retreat- 
 ing along the road towards the dim blue hills, 
 I spied the figures of the gang, who had borne 
 me so far only to desert me with perfect indif- 
 ference. The fresh relay of bearers was repre- 
 sented by a frightful old man, who stood 
 opposite to me, muttering some unintelligible 
 sentences, and pointing with a skinny hand to 
 a collection of mud hovels that lay half hidden 
 in a patch of cultivated ground by the road. 
 
' Returning to the Front! 63 
 
 At first I affected not to take his meaning, and 
 refused to stir. Half an hour went by, and the 
 situation was unchanged. Women passed and 
 repassed from a well, with their earthen water- 
 jars picturesquely balanced on their heads. A 
 man persistently goaded a bullock, harnessed 
 to a primitive sort of harrow, up and down a 
 strip of ground at my side. It was clear I 
 must follow their example and -work, if there 
 was to be any breakfast for me, so, with that 
 old Judas for my guide, and the most imposing 
 air I could command, I set off to beat up the 
 village for recruits. After half an hour of this 
 business, I felt that the recruiting-serjeant, for 
 all the ribbons on his cap, is a man to be 
 pitied. But that the anxiety of the inhabitants 
 to betray each other exceeded their caution, I 
 could never have laid my hand on even four 
 able-bodied inhabitants. The last man pressed 
 into my service was my friend at the plough. 
 He could only be called a volunteer by courtesy; 
 
64 ' Returning to the Front' 
 
 as he unharnessed his beast and drew near at a 
 snail's pace, he might have been painted as an 
 ideal type of unwilling progress and rustic con- 
 servatism. With it all, this part of the journey- 
 lasted five hours, and the sun was high when 
 we reached Rawul Pindi. 
 
 Fresh delays of days that seemed weeks 
 were there in store for me. There never was a 
 place so hard to get out of, nor one so demoral- 
 ised by dustiness and dilatoriness, as Pindi. I 
 did not breathe freely again till I shouted good- 
 bye to my friends from my perch amongst the 
 post-bags and the luggage piled high in the 
 mail-cart. 
 
 The moon was in her most favourable mood, 
 rising as we started about seven, and guiding 
 us on our way almost till daybreak. Before us 
 the road unrolled like a broad greyish-coloured 
 ribbon, shining faintly in the pale moonlight. 
 But presently we turned off the grand trunk 
 road to follow the track which diverges to 
 
' Returning to the Front! 65 
 
 Kohat. The broad ribbon became a narrow 
 tape-line, which in its turn disappeared, lost in 
 an indistinct expanse of vastly uneven brown 
 surface. The two-wheeled, springless hill-cart 
 jolted along till our bones ached again, and 
 each bump and bruise added another indig- 
 nant interrogative point to the query, Why 
 are not the great strategical lines in India 
 completed by contract, as elsewhere? It is 
 not in human nature for a Government official, 
 with a handsome fixed salary, to make himself as 
 disagreeable to his superiors as he ought, merely 
 because they do not give him enough to do. 
 
 We had our ups and downs all along ; but 
 just beyond the Indus there were some regular 
 sloughs of despond, suggesting whole trains of 
 bullock-carts stuck fast, and numberless natives 
 sitting contentedly over their pipes for ten 
 hours at a stretch. 
 
 At Kohat I was in luck, and got a seat in 
 the cart for next morning. The place had a 
 
66 ' Returning to the Front.' 
 
 deserted air, like a small country town in de- 
 cadence. To escape from it was a relief, though 
 all men were agreed that the next stage of the 
 journey was an intolerable infliction. It rained 
 in torrents that night, and my experience of 
 the spring before taught me what to expect. 
 Of the many villainous works that have left 
 the hand of man, the Thai road is probably 
 the most vile. On the first stage out of Kohat 
 great efforts were directed towards keeping the 
 outside of the platter clean. When the road- 
 way seemed to require attention, a small army 
 of villagers, disguised in much dirt and a few 
 rags, would turn out, and a vast deal of shovel- 
 ling and patting and smoothing take place. A 
 level, fairly beaten track was the result ; but 
 after a few hours' heavy rain you might as well 
 have driven over an ill-drained stubble-field. 
 
 The mails were heavy the day I started, 
 and the wretched horses came to a standstill, 
 and panted for breath, every two hundred yards. 
 
'Returning to the Front.' 6 J 
 
 As the wheels heaved slowly round, I noticed 
 here and there some small stones imbedded in 
 the mud that clogged them. Some specially 
 industrious Royal Engineer had apparently 
 been amusing himself by scattering a few bags 
 of pebbles along his beat. 
 
 Presently matters mended a little. We had 
 apparently been travelling almost below the 
 general level of the country, when a sudden 
 rise in the ground set us rattling along to a 
 different tune. After a really fair breakfast at 
 Hango Dak bungalow, visions of a possible 
 reconciliation with one's temper presented them- 
 selves. But, alas ! for the last stage of that road ; 
 it was a stumbling-block to many. After stick- 
 ing in a dry torrent-bed, and being nearly 
 drowned in a full one, we arrived at Gandiar, 
 a police post six miles from Thai, unspeakably 
 mortified in mind and body, only to find we 
 could go no further that night. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 BULLOCK-DRIVING. 
 
 How can he get wisdom . . . that driveth oxen, 
 and is occupied in their labours, and whose 
 talk is of bullocks f Ecclesiasticus. 
 
 At Thai my troubles by mail-cart were over. 
 But worse befell me. Kinloch of the 13th 
 Bengal Lancers, travelling with a single Sowar, 
 had been murdered the day before I arrived. 
 Instantly the authorities closed the stable-door 
 with a bang ; and the decree went forth that all 
 officers should proceed with escorted convoys. 
 Therefore, after a day's delay, behold me in- 
 stalled as an amateur bullock-driver, with a 
 convoy of seven hundred of the worst pack- 
 animals in India. 
 
Bullock-driving. 69 
 
 Up to this time the Indian buliock had 
 always held a respectable, not to say revered 
 place in my imagination. Something in the 
 stillness of those large dark eyes, and the full 
 contours of that milk-white form, seems supe- 
 rior to the rush and fever of modern life, that 
 threaten to leave no corner of the earth at rest. 
 As he paces patiently round an irrigation- 
 well some hazy summer's evening, with the 
 droning of the wooden wheels, and the musical 
 tinkle of the water for sole accompaniment, 
 there is no quadruped less disappointing. The 
 English dream of a little home with a green 
 field or two about it comes to every one in 
 India at times ; and I used to fancy it would 
 be pleasant to see some of those placid strangers 
 domesticated with English farmyard friends, 
 unfamiliar visitors recalling memories of far-off 
 lands. 
 
 But my affections, like many warmer senti- 
 ments, were not destined to survive the strain 
 
jo Bullock-driving. 
 
 of a close relationship. After a day of my 
 new calling, I felt I would as soon welcome a 
 mediaeval fiend among my household gods as 
 one of those mild-eyed impostors. 
 
 First start your bullock may seem a simple 
 maxim, but it soon became to me as the advice 
 of the cookery-book to a hungry man in a 
 grass field. To get the herd loaded in the 
 morning was no mean problem in mechanics, 
 and the driving of it an art like navigation. 
 As a rule, your beast's first protest was to flop 
 down on the ground, lying hopelessly flattened 
 under his pack. Once on the road, before 
 going far in those parts you came to a pretty 
 steep descent. Here the late hopeless victim 
 of oppression would develop an amazing acti- 
 vity of spirit. Starting at a headlong trot, it 
 was ten to one he contrived to jerk his load 
 over his horns with a series of spasmodic kicks, 
 before he had gone fifty yards. After which 
 there was ten minutes' hard exercise up and 
 
Bullock- driving. 71 
 
 down hill before beast and burden could be 
 brought together again. I declare I would 
 as soon have herded the swine of Gadara after 
 the devils had entered into them. 
 
 Nothing could be more unfortunate for me. 
 The day we left Thai we were astir at day- 
 break, yet we were not fairly under way till 
 eleven o'clock ; after which we took six good 
 hours to cover as many miles! My chance 
 of witnessing perhaps the most extraordinary 
 and most daring of General Roberts's efforts 
 was really lost at Pindi. But I did not know 
 it, and I thought the world more odious with 
 each day of delay. 
 
 A pill is none the less bitter because it might 
 become tasteless with keeping ; and generally 
 every age must be allowed to know its own 
 worst failures. As a child you were quite 
 certain the delightfully wicked grown-up people 
 had the best of the cake when you were sent 
 to bed. At school you thought most of that 
 
72 Bullock-driving. 
 
 race you lost by a neck, or that bully you 
 never could thrash. At college you panted 
 hopelessly after your ideal, if not of woman, 
 then of learning or of fame. Even so, middle 
 age and decrepitude will not be denied their 
 share of disappointed desire and Dead Sea 
 apples. 
 
 We followed the new road. It has the 
 advantage of running the whole way on the 
 left bank of the river, which is swift and un- 
 manageable at times, like all Afghan streams. 
 Otherwise it might be fairly described as a 
 permanent provision for highway robbers and 
 murderers professions in which the neighbour- 
 ing tribes are held by good judges to excel. 
 
 Shinak was the only post in the line that 
 struck my fancy. It was built on the edge of 
 a steep place, and had a defensible, self-con- 
 tained air. From its walls you looked across 
 the broad grey shingle, with the river winding 
 through it like a thread of silver, to a span of 
 
Bu llock-driving. 7 3 
 
 populous, cultivated land. Where the opposite 
 bank rose abruptly like a small cliff, some 
 villages stood forward in a cluster ; and in 
 the background the hills were gloriously dyed 
 in saffron and purple. Budaskheyl I also re- 
 member chiefly for the ludicrous position of 
 the serai, or convoy enclosure, removed more 
 than a mile from the camp. The night we 
 arrived, things as usual sounded unpleasant to 
 ears unaccustomed to Afghan amenities. 
 
 A friendly Khan sent in to inform the com- 
 mandant that the enemy had sent away all 
 their women, and collected three thousand men 
 to overwhelm the post. Now a serai is simply 
 a large quadrangular enclosure, with sheds 
 constructed against the walls for the housing 
 of travellers. In the open space in the centre, 
 horses, camels, bullocks, and other beasts of 
 burden are picketed indiscriminately. It did 
 not inspire mirth to picture the scene of wild 
 confusion the trampling and blind terror of 
 
74 Bullock-driving. 
 
 animals, the shrieking and scuffling of natives 
 that would have arisen if the enemy had got 
 to work among us with their long knives. As 
 for defences, three sides of the place were well 
 guarded by a deep ditch and a good wall ; but 
 on the fourth, near which our tents were pitched, 
 there was only a low wall, without any ditch. 
 
 Our garrison consisted of a hundred men all 
 told, or about a sufficient number to man one 
 face of the serai. Before retiring for the night 
 our little party of five went the rounds of the 
 walls and settled on a rallying-place if the 
 worst came to the worst. We slept in our 
 clothes, but the night passed without any 
 alarm, and we awoke next morning feeling 
 decidedly uncomfortable and more than half 
 ridiculous. 
 
 The last stage was disastrous in the ex- 
 treme. Getting rid of our bullocks, when haste 
 was no longer of any avail, we suffered in the 
 loss of our kits the only ill we had not yet 
 
Bullock-driving. 75 
 
 experienced. For our camels broke down on 
 the steep zigzag, that now led up to the Paiwar 
 Kotal ; and darkness and a band of ' friendly 
 villagers' coming down together, our servants 
 allowed themselves to be intimidated and robbed 
 almost within hail of the guard. 
 
 Like travellers knowing the country, we had 
 started well equipped. To think of our nicely- 
 finished appliances scattered about the hovel 
 of some idle, dirty, bloodthirsty savage, was 
 enough to make us register a vow against 
 4 taking thought for the morrow ' for ever. The 
 loss of two or three pet books and of all my 
 writing things went near breaking my heart. 
 As I collected a few things the thieves had 
 dropped in their haste, I almost shared the 
 experience of Robinson Crusoe taking stock 
 of his first salvage from the wreck, while my 
 servant trembled like a second Friday. Com- 
 rades of all ranks, however, were generously 
 ready to help ; and with a pair of boots from 
 
J 6 Bullock-driving. 
 
 one, a shirt from another, and a warm waistcoat 
 from a third, I soon had a complete change of 
 clothes to boast of. 
 
 Next morning we were allowed to search 
 some of the neighbouring villages with an 
 armed party. Sentries were posted all round 
 the mud warrens with fixed bayonets, and 
 positive orders to let no one escape. The 
 curs, biped and canine, that inhabited the place 
 stood sulkily in corners ; but no one raised 
 positive objections, except a shrivelled-up old 
 beldam, who betrayed to me by her remon- 
 strances a curious underground hiding-place, in 
 which were buried some pounds of commissariat 
 tea and sugar and some soldiers' blankets. 
 
 It was an excellent opportunity for gain- 
 ing some insight into the interior economy of 
 villages in these parts. For myself, I infinitely 
 preferred the operations which were conducted 
 on the house-tops. All along the mud roofs 
 were great trusses of cut barley and other 
 
Bullock-d7'iving. 77 
 
 crops, which the soldiers prodded with their 
 bayonets most vigorously. The yellow and 
 white heads of Indian corn lying out in the 
 sun looked sweet and healthy ; but when you 
 came to the lower rooms, where smoke and a 
 smell of cooking prevailed, the business was 
 most unsavoury. In the basement rooms the 
 stalled ox, and even the despised ass, shared 
 the same roof with the human inhabitants. 
 Beyond a few wretched bedsteads and earthen 
 receptacles for grain, shaped like stoves, I could 
 not discover a single article of furniture : indeed 
 it puzzled me vastly to know what these primi- 
 tive beings would have made of my posses- 
 sions, if they had fallen into their hands. As 
 for the women, they were all dressed alike in 
 coarse blue smocks and trousers, without the 
 smallest seeking after personal adornment. 
 They may have possessed a certain comeli- 
 ness ; though, disguised as they were, I could 
 discover nothing of it, unless it were a pair of 
 
7 8 Bullock-driving. 
 
 bright dark eyes here and there. Certainly 
 they did not retire to a private chamber, as 
 had been politely requested, for the prevention 
 of ill-feeling. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 DAWN AT ALI KHEL. 
 
 The colour soothed me like a tune, 
 Green leaves all round the gold and red. 
 Swinburne. 
 
 Morn and eve 
 Were magnified before us in the pure 
 Illimitable space and pause of sky, 
 Intense as angels' garments blanched with God, 
 Less blue than radiant. 
 
 Mrs. Browning. 
 
 The Mangals (first discovered by Colonel 
 Thelwall in 1878) haunted the garrison of the 
 Paiwar Kotal with persistence. Every evening 
 after dinner the commandant received a tele- 
 gram from a person of political importance, 
 warning us that our enemy was on the war- 
 trail ; and every morning, before dawn, we 
 turned out silently, under arms, to receive him. 
 Like primitive man, we lived on the hill-tops, 
 
80 Dawn at AH Khel. 
 
 perpetually on the look-out. But the Mangals 
 were wiser than they pretended, and a day of 
 reckoning never came. There were, however, 
 two companies of ' The King's ' a few miles off 
 on detachment, under Captain Jervis. After 
 working hard for a month, they had a little 
 luck in the end. For the wolf came at last 
 to Ali Khel. 
 
 The camp was pitched on a stiff ridge, slop- 
 ing down in front to a dusty plateau. A grand 
 amphitheatre of pine-clad slopes, with lofty 
 summits and prominent spurs on the right and 
 left, looked down upon it. In the middle dis- 
 tance were lower ridges with rice and Indian 
 corn fields, villages, and many-coloured fruit- 
 trees, lying deeply embayed in the flank of the 
 hills. 
 
 Under cover of darkness, on the morning of 
 the 14th of October 1879, the enemy crept up 
 and lodged in masses close to the defences. 
 The first shot was fired as the bugles finished 
 
Dawn at Ali Khel. 8 1 
 
 sounding the reveille \ and, with this prelude, the 
 bullets came singing fast from all sides. With 
 the help of daylight our people easily repulsed 
 the attack all round. Some of the hill-men, 
 armed only with knives, were bayoneted by 
 the 29th outside of the stockade. Then General 
 Gordon took the offensive, handling his troops 
 boldly, so that every man had his chance. The 
 battery (C IV.), and our Lancashire lads with 
 their Martinis, made some very pretty practice. 
 Then the nth N.I. sallied out on the left to 
 the edge of the plateau, and peppered the fugi- 
 tives for a long way. Even a miscellaneous 
 troop of cavalry, boldly led by a stalwart pro- 
 fessor of the healing art, had a charge on the 
 plateau, and cut off some stragglers. 
 
 Two days after this affair I got leave to go 
 on to Ali Khel. What a ride it was! My 
 spirits rose with a leap, as I quaffed the keen 
 fresh-scented air, intoxicating as champagne. 
 For scenery there were the solemn pine-woods 
 
82 Dawn at AH Khel. 
 
 of the Paiwar, and, rising above them, the 
 mighty head of grey Sika Ram, with its crown 
 of awful solitudes. As I sped along, the valley 
 opened out before me, with its precious October 
 colouring one of the best of my memories. 
 In the wonderful southern sunlight even the 
 grey shingle of the river-bed, and the light 
 umber of the soil, seemed faintly luminous. 
 Against this background there stood out 
 orchard groves and bowers of trees, all aglow 
 like Aladdin's jewels, or clusters of magical 
 fruit, ruby, and topaz, and emerald, rose, and 
 crocus, and evergreen. High above, the dark 
 forest line, with its sharp points, like the setting 
 of a ring, showed against the flawless azure of 
 the sky. 
 
 After the 14th there was no more fighting at 
 Ali Khel. Instead we were treated to a real 
 Afghan burlesque ; and, to tell truth, pieces 
 with infinitely less humour have not seldom 
 appeared on more civilised stages : - 
 
Dawn at AH Khel. 83 
 
 Act I. 
 Scene. The Camp. 
 Patriot bands are discovered in the distance. 
 The garrison hurries to arms. 
 [Shots are heard alarm bugles molto agitato.] A 
 troop of sorrily-mounted horsemen arrives at a 
 gallop they are recognised to be hostages from 
 Kabul. [' Ceasefire'' sounds?^ Exeunt officers and 
 soldiers grumbling. 
 
 Act II. 
 
 Scene. The General's Tent. 
 
 [Politicals, staff-officers, interpreters, and Sepoy 
 guards.] The travel-stained hostages are introduced. 
 
 Recitative. They celebrate the mighty exploits of 
 the English army at Kabul particularly the blowing 
 up of the great magazine. 
 
 Jubilant exit of hostages, with light hearts and 
 heavy purses. 
 
 [Pas de deux the General and the Political^ 
 
 Act III. 
 
 Scene. The Patriots' Bivouac. 
 
 Hostages are discovered haranguing assembled 
 chiefs. 
 
 Irruption of patriots armed to the teeth. 
 
 [Grand sword-dance beneath the savage pine-trees '.] 
 
 Patriots bravely fire some deserted hovels and 
 proceed to disperse. 
 
 [Distant droning chorus of soldiers and Sepoys balked 
 of their prey '.] 
 
 Curtain. 
 
84 Dawn at Ali KheL 
 
 And this is how history is made in Af- 
 ghanistan. 
 
 By way of a parting compliment, the patriots 
 turned us out of bed about midnight. Nothing 
 was further from their thoughts than an attack. 
 Our watchfulness was a mere military formality ; 
 but the darkest and coldest vigil would have 
 been well rewarded by the vision of daybreak 
 which came at last. At such a time the mind 
 seems to take early impressions with a new 
 freshness, sensitised, as it were, in the dark- 
 ness and peace. Drawing the eyes of sun- 
 worshippers to the east, the morning star arose, 
 and hung gleaming in its setting of night's deep 
 enamel. Soon a pathway of faint light, gradu- 
 ally overflowing and increasing in brightness, 
 crossed the line of the hill-tops and the sky. 
 One by one the stars grew pale. As I dropped 
 my eyes, and raised them quickly, I seemed 
 almost to discern wave after wave of ethereal 
 radiance penetrating upwards. The profile of 
 the dark ridge, at the foot of which I stood, 
 
Dawn at Ali Khel. 85 
 
 grew sharper and sharper ; touches of saffron 
 and rose appeared on the right and the left ; 
 and above, the deep sapphire blue shaded off 
 into pale turquoise. Suddenly I became aware 
 that the objects in the foreground were plainly 
 visible. There were the deserted tents standing 
 in cold white groups, and the troops in their 
 grey greatcoats lining the stockades, and the 
 animals in the hollow looking round inquiringly 
 for their early dole of corn. Lastly, the hill-tops 
 leaning forward in the west, that had remained 
 in shadow, murky, almost smoky by contrast, 
 took fire at the sight of the rising luminary. 
 As the first rays of the sun fell on us, a com- 
 rade, a man of much practical common sense, 
 bade me laughingly 'Good-night.' And when 
 our half of the world was waking up to work, 
 I was mightily pleased to take the hint and 
 turn into bed. After all, sun-worship must be 
 terribly exhausting to its votaries, and start 
 heavily weighted in the race of the creeds. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OVER THE SHUTARGARDAN. 
 
 To struggle against great odds ! to meet 
 enemies undaunted / to be entirely alone 
 with them / to find how much one can 
 stand! 
 
 Walt Whitman. 
 
 The 26th of October saw a convoy fairly on 
 the road to Kabul. The march over the Shutar- 
 gardan is one of the most awkward and con- 
 vincing proofs of what impossible places it is 
 possible to lead an army across. The road 
 drops from the Ali Khel plateau into the 
 bed of a mountain-torrent, and very soon leads 
 into a long and terrible defile. I never felt 
 more like a mouse walking into a trap 
 without indeed the excuse of any savoury 
 morsel by way of temptation. The great 
 
Over the S hut ar gar dan. Sy 
 
 mountain-walls on either side were so smooth 
 and bare that it struck me if an enemy came 
 at you from above, you could lie down and 
 have half a dozen shots as comfortably as in 
 a shooting-gallery with your life instead of a 
 handful of nuts for the stakes. 
 
 Some five or six miles on, at Dracoula, three 
 roads, or, to be more accurate, three ravines, 
 meet in a sort of well, sunk among the hills. 
 We halted, facing a rock castle of Nature's own 
 building, with turrets and battlements regularly 
 cut and grooved out of the smooth fine-grained 
 stone. From this vantage-ground half a dozen 
 fanatics might have flaunted their flag in the 
 face of the whole British army with im- 
 punity. 
 
 A little further on, the hills make some pre- 
 tence of edging back, and allowing a lean valley 
 to squeeze in between them. 
 
 But the road, escaping from the stony river- 
 bed, gets entangled among the stunted firs 
 
88 Over the Shutargardan. 
 
 and bare stumps which represent but poorly the 
 famous Wood of a Thousand Trees. 
 
 We halted for this night at Karatega. It was 
 a dull, bitterly cold October evening, seeming 
 all the greyer for the mist and the smoke from 
 the camp-fires that trailed along the ground. 
 As we watched the tired followers and baggage- 
 animals come tailing into the serai, we con- 
 gratulated ourselves on finding shelter without 
 pitching our tents. 
 
 Indian servants are models of patience and 
 resource on the march. But that evening, when 
 the question of dinner was delicately raised, one 
 poor wretch whined outright, with the tears in 
 his eyes. As for his master, he grumbled as 
 only an Englishman can. Smoke, dirt, and evil 
 smells, the lack of forage for your horse, or a 
 decent dinner for yourself, are not heroic evils ; 
 but they are like chopping seas to the philo- 
 sopher's barque. Presently I caught myself 
 reckoning up the extravagant sums I would 
 
Over the Shutargardan. 89 
 
 have paid for a place at a bright English table, 
 and a pretty wench with trim ankles and a 
 ready smile to do the service. At least we 
 had four walls round us, so I deliberately 
 stripped myself of many garments before turning 
 in. Boots and breeches are among the most 
 demoralising of bedfellows good or bad fortune 
 can put in a man's way, while to earn a good 
 night's rest and to take it is to come very near 
 fulfilling the law of earthly happiness. 
 
 Next morning we were off in the teeth of a 
 nipping wind before the sun was on the valley. 
 About a couple of miles on, we came to the 
 steep zigzag ascent of the Surkai Kotal. Above, 
 there is a little upland plain to cross, and a long 
 pull up a dangerous defile, before you can set 
 foot on the crest of the famous Pass. There 
 was nothing but the biting air to remind us 
 that we were marching among mountain peaks 
 as high as the Alps. Here and there the face 
 of a hill had a harmoniously blended colouring 
 
90 Over the Shutargardan. 
 
 of rose and grey. But for grandeur there is 
 nothing to compare with the Paiwar Kotal. 
 
 A haze hung over the valley, so that the 
 prospect was disappointing ; but the descent 
 was enough to make your head turn. The 
 road goes down, and down, till you begin to 
 suspect you must be in a waking dream, bound 
 on one of those journeys that have no end. 
 On the left, some rugged hills lean back in a 
 group, the bright lines of the ridges, and the 
 shadows in the valleys converging towards 
 the traveller. Some way down we came upon 
 a clear stream journeying with us. There 
 was more than one narrow rock passage to 
 wade through, which a company of sappers, 
 with a single charge of dynamite, could have 
 made impassable for a month. After passing 
 through some villages and cultivated land, the 
 stream and the road part company again, the 
 stream disappearing into a deep gorge, the road 
 leading over the Shinkai Kotal. 
 
Over the Shutargardan. 9 1 
 
 Surmounting this, the last obstacle between 
 us and Kushi, we began to hope for better 
 things. But the prospect on the reverse side 
 was dismaying beyond belief. In place of 
 smiling valleys there met the eye cold wastes 
 of stone, and beyond these again the inevitable 
 hills. The dead levels in front and the low hills on 
 the left, rounded and hollowed by the ice-drifts 
 ages back, were barren even of the common 
 scrub and camel's thorn. After toiling long 
 through this doleful desert, we came suddenly 
 upon Kushi, lying hidden in a great cleft in the 
 plain. The green fields, the orchards with their 
 October wealth of fruit and colour, and the ham- 
 lets nestling low, looked like one great garden of 
 plenty ; and when the sun shone level with his 
 glory of golden light among the western hills, 
 we saw that Kushi is not called the Delectable 
 Land in vain, though its beauty is so hidden 
 that you might fancy the beggarly people 
 ashamed of it. 
 
92 Over the S hut ar gar dan. 
 
 To us the capital interest of the ground we 
 had crossed lay in the gallant struggle which 
 it had witnessed a fortnight back. Colonel 
 Money, with his own splendid regiment (the 3d 
 Sikhs), the 21st P. N. I. and Morgan's Mountain 
 Battery, had taught the wild hill clans they 
 were as powerless against a few ( Sikhs and 
 'apostate' Mussulmans, when led and disci- 
 plined by Englishmen, as against the white 
 soldiers themselves. The usual rough and ready 
 scale, for estimating the importance of an action 
 by the number of casualties fails here, as all 
 rule-of-thumb measurements fail at times. No 
 doubt the regiment that stands fast when half 
 its numbers have fallen, gives the highest 
 example of all valour. None the less the peril 
 at the Shutargardan was as real as it was ugly 
 to face. Match eight or ten long knives and 
 swords against one bayonet and it had almost 
 come to that more than once, and the result 
 will not be doubtful. If a handful of men will 
 
Over the Shutargardan. 93 
 
 not only stand confidently, but fight a gallant, 
 forward, and uphill fight in the face of great 
 odds, they have done as much as discipline and 
 courage, or anything short of despair or heroism 
 will teach soldiers to do. And that in a few 
 words is the story of the 14th of October, the 
 great day at the Shutargardan, when Major 
 Griffiths, with 200 men and a couple of guns, 
 sallied forth to the relief of the post on the 
 Surkai Kotal. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 FROM KUSHI TO CHARASSIA. 
 
 The leaves caught gold across the sun, 
 And where the bluest air begun, 
 
 Thirsted for song to help the heat : 
 As I to feel my lady s feet 
 Draw close before the day was done ; 
 Both lips grew dry with dreams of it. 
 
 Swinburne. 
 
 We halted two days at Kushi till the camp on 
 the Shutargardan was broken up. The 21st 
 unluckily were ordered back, but the remainder 
 of the brave little garrison joined General 
 Gough. Most of the troops were to march 
 round the valley collecting revenue, but a large 
 convoy started straight for Kabul. I never 
 matriculated in a better school of patience. 
 You might step out as bravely as you pleased 
 at the head of the march, but the end of it was 
 
From Kushi to Ckarassia. 95 
 
 that you had to pull up and wait for the weaker 
 brethren in rear a humble example which 
 some of us who are for pressing on in the van 
 of all reformers might lay to heart. Up among 
 the bleak mountain-paths these halts were of 
 doubtful advantage; but down in the valley, 
 after crossing great shelves of stony land, we 
 dropped now and again upon an oasis, and 
 rested royally, basking in the warm sunshine, 
 and feasting on the small sweet grapes of the 
 country. For threepence I carried away as 
 many cool clusters, fresh from a great deep 
 basket, as I could hold in my two hands to- 
 gether. 
 
 After crossing the Logar river the traces of 
 cultivation were decidedly encouraging. In 
 one field I positively saw a man digging alone. 
 In India the usual complement is three men to 
 a spade two to pull, and one to push. You 
 may wonder how it is done, but it is so. 
 Mechanically, I rode closer to examine this 
 
96 From Kttshi to C haras sia. 
 
 solitary cultivator. He was a sturdy little 
 fellow, with a nose of no shape in particular, 
 curious twinkling black eyes all breadth and 
 no length, and full podgy cheeks, with a dash of 
 colour glowing through his dusky skin. The 
 implement he was using had a sharp-pointed 
 triangular blade, and two wooden spokes on 
 the shaft. I thought I should never tire of 
 looking at his bare, healthy feet, cleanly shaped, 
 and pleasant to look upon, as a well-modelled 
 hand. As I thought of the unsightly deformity, 
 wont to emerge from the pointed case we call 
 a boot, it struck me our fancied superiority 
 over the Chinese in questions of fashion was 
 hardly of the superlative kind. When I sub- 
 mit to my shoemaker and who does not ? I 
 am after all only a little wiser than a Chinese 
 lady, and vastly more ridiculous than a Hazara 
 peasant ! 
 
 There were hills on either side of our line of 
 march, as usual ; but while the range on the 
 
From Kushi to Charassia. 97 
 
 right between us and India retained its rugged, 
 frowning aspect to the end, the slopes on the 
 left were smoother and more inviting. Our 
 second halt was close to Charassia, so that we 
 had an opportunity of studying the field of 
 the 6th of October. 
 
 Just beyond the camping-ground is a district 
 abounding in cultivated enclosures and walled 
 homesteads. An active enemy would have 
 lined the hedges with swarms of skirmishers, 
 and posted his squadrons behind the villages 
 to dash out and disconcert the advance of the 
 invaders. But the Afghans had no cavalry, 
 and their infantry had a w T holesome dread of 
 being caught in the open. As usual, they had 
 posted themselves along the crests of the hills, 
 and meant to stay there so long as they saw a 
 fair chance of being able to bolt down the re- 
 verse slopes in safety. Their position, roughly 
 speaking, resembled a horse-shoe. The left 
 segment was formed by a lofty range of hills, 
 
98 From Kushi to Charassia. 
 
 ending in a precipitous conical-shaped peak, 
 directly beneath which road and river run side 
 by side through a narrow gap. A lower range 
 with gradually falling, rounded slopes, com- 
 pleted the right segment. Beyond the right 
 flank there was another road, but no attempt 
 was made to advance by it. General Baker's 
 brigade (composed of the 72d, the 5th Ghoorkas, 
 and the 5th Punjab Infantry, and a mule 
 battery) had a stiff day of it rolling up the 
 enemy's right, and working steadily up and 
 down hill towards the pass. The ground was 
 bare and destitute of cover, and the enemy's 
 fire waxed hot : at one point our losses were 
 heavy, and a slight check occurred. It was two 
 o'clock before our people below saw the mules 
 of the mountain-battery against the sky-line, 
 threading their way well round the bend of the 
 hills. 
 
 Meantime G III., with a small escort of 
 cavalry and infantry, went straight up against 
 
From Kushi to C haras sia. 99 
 
 the pass, where the enemy's guns were planted. 
 Barring the passage were two steep isolated 
 hills, one behind the other, crowned with stone 
 breastworks, and strongly held. 
 
 Some time after G III. opened fire, Major 
 White, of the 92d, brought a company close 
 under the first hill, and then up they went, a 
 mere handful, against the enemy above. On 
 the hill-side the little band looked as if you 
 could have covered them with a blanket. It 
 was a fine sight, they say, to see the Highlanders 
 straining doggedly on, without wasting a single 
 shot. Now and then the Afghans swarmed 
 out in front of their defences, but a couple of 
 shells from G III. were always enough to turn 
 them flying under cover again. About half- 
 way up, the little storming party found shelter 
 behind some rocks, where they collected for 
 the last rush with the bayonet, that made the 
 hill their own. After this exploit Major White, 
 reinforced by some men of his own regiment, 
 
ioo From Kushi to Charassia. 
 
 and some of the 23d Pioneers, cleared the 
 second hill, and then made for the centre of 
 the enemy's position, where he took the guns. 
 As soon as it was seen that the enemy were in 
 retreat, the 5th Punjab Cavalry and a squadron 
 of the 9th Lancers rode into the pass ; but as a 
 marsh in front of the two hills had prevented 
 them from making a turning movement early 
 in the day, so now they were hampered by the 
 nature of the ground. The road and the river 
 have to find their way together through the 
 narrow pass ; moreover, the ground between 
 the two is very much enclosed, and intersected 
 by broad ditches. The troopers were obliged 
 to dismount ; but they made good use of their 
 carbines. Before evening the tribes who had 
 occupied the heights on the right of the camp 
 were driven off, and during the night both the 
 pass and the camp were held by our troops. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 KABUL. 
 
 The town, there, seems to seethe 
 In this Medcean boil-pot of the sun, 
 And all the patient hills are bubbling round 
 As if a prick would leave them flat. 
 
 Mrs. Browning. 
 
 I SHALL never stand beneath the Castle Rock 
 in Edinburgh without thinking of the Bala 
 Hissar, with Kabul stretching away behind it. 
 To make the resemblance complete, you must 
 fancy Arthur's Seat pushed close up, and a 
 wedge out of the Pentlands aligned beyond that. 
 But call the Castle the upper Bala Hissar; the 
 first house in the High Street the Residency ; 
 the Old Town the lower and inhabited part 
 of the Bala Hissar ; and the Princes Street 
 Gardens beneath the Ameer's palace; and 
 
102 Kabul. 
 
 you will represent very truly the scene where the 
 hero Cavagnari and his little band of followers 
 met their doom. 
 
 There are the inevitable differences between 
 North and South to be allowed for. Instead of 
 the grey, massive northern strength, you have 
 crumbling irregular outlines of turret and wall, 
 hot and dusty, like the sun-baked hills they 
 crown. The Afghan Sirdars, too, are better 
 lodged than the old Scotch nobles. Their 
 architects have to provide against heat as well 
 as cold : so there are spacious courtyards and 
 whitewashed galleries and corridors in place of 
 peaked gables and squalid attics. None the 
 less the main positions on that terrible day in 
 September may be filled in as I have indicated. 
 In the centre of all was the lion at bay, with the 
 toils closing round him. In the narrow lanes a 
 mob of scowling, dark-faced men, mad, and 
 baying for their prey like bloodhounds that 
 have tasted human flesh. These, now arming 
 
Kabul. 103 
 
 themselves with stones, now with rifles, now at 
 last with cannon, surged up to overwhelm the 
 noble little band from the citadel above. Far 
 below all, was the King or Cur, lolling in his 
 palace, unwilling, or at best unable, to strike 
 a blow for his guest, or his honour, or his 
 crown. 
 
 It was pleasant to pass from the Bala Hissar, 
 which must ever be haunted by such memories, 
 to the city itself. If it has no famous monu- 
 ments or architectural beauty to save it from 
 the destruction already twice merited, it has at 
 least a distinct Oriental character, and some 
 interesting particulars, peculiar to it. The two 
 main bazaars thoroughfares, we should call 
 them are simply two great diverging galleries, 
 roofed in with rough logs of wood and reed 
 matting. Thus protected from the sun in 
 summer and the snow in winter, the people eat 
 and work, buy and sell, and almost live, in 
 public. The rows of curious little booths, raised 
 
104 Kabul. 
 
 off the street about the height of your saddle, 
 reminded me of nothing better than stage 
 houses or workshops, the facing removed for 
 the uses of the audience. 
 
 Gaily-coloured wares from every accessible 
 land carpets of harmoniously blended hues 
 from Persia, red cotton handkerchiefs from 
 Manchester are pressed indiscriminately into 
 the service of the Oriental imagination. In 
 summer the pleasantest booths to linger in 
 front of were the fruit-merchants', piled up 
 with fresh fruit and every green stuff in season ; 
 or the confectioners', with their great blocks 
 of white ice, and their bowls of cunningly 
 compounded sherbets. But the cook-shops, 
 with the strongly-spiced kabobs, and high tid- 
 bits, hissing and reeking in great iron pans, 
 were an offence to any European nose. Through 
 whole quarters the monotonous tic-tac of the 
 tinsmiths resounds, or the sober guilds of the 
 tanners reign unchallenged. Afghan workmen 
 
Kabul. 105 
 
 are clever imitators in the rough, but lack finish 
 and refinement ; I never saw a bracelet or an 
 ornament in Kabul I had a fancy to buy. But 
 the curious in china and strange wares picked 
 up some treasures from Bokhara or Kokhand. 
 Perhaps the great square (with its fountains 
 and water-ducts choked up to this day, as 
 they were left by Pollock the Avenger) makes 
 the bravest show, hung round with furs, and 
 embroidered sheepskin mantles, and praying- 
 carpets. 
 
 On the right or left are many narrow lanes 
 and closes, clogged with dirt and all abomina- 
 tions. There is little temptation to stray down 
 them and pause before the stout doors studded 
 with broad iron bosses, to dream of the lovely 
 houris pining within. I had few opportunities, 
 and the nearest I got to acquaintance with a 
 city interior was one day in spring, when a con- 
 tractor with whom a friend of mine had large 
 dealings, asked us to visit him in his house in 
 
1 06 Kabul. 
 
 the Kuzilbash quarter. We had to leave our 
 horses in the street ; but after passing through 
 a low doorway and passage, we found ourselves 
 in a tiny court, overshadowed by a real green 
 tree. In one corner there were two or three 
 cows, placidly ruminating and mechanically 
 switching the flies from their flanks. Perhaps 
 the architect had hardly calculated for the 
 entertainment of live stock. But after the 
 garlic and offal and mixed high odours of the 
 city, the fresh smells of this court reminded 
 one of the country and farm-yards. 
 
 Our host ushered us into his drawing-room, 
 which he had at least begun to furnish on artistic 
 principles. Tables and chairs there were none, 
 but in the centre of the room shone a bright 
 patch of carpet, with a deep border of some 
 more sober-coloured material, as thick and soft 
 as felt, running all round the skirting. On the 
 walls in little niches and recesses were china 
 cups and gaily-coloured vases ; over the door- 
 
Kabul. 107 
 
 ways floated two Persian shawls, with rich fan- 
 tastic patterns. The whole effect gratified the 
 senses extremely ; so did the choice cup of tea 
 and the sweet biscuits that were offered to us. 
 
 We sat on the window-sill for half an hour 
 making friends with two or three dark-eyed 
 urchins and a young soldier of the Guides, 
 clinging with pride to his rifle. 
 
 The Kuzilbash quarter can be shut off from 
 the rest of the city when times are troubled ; 
 but neither the walls nor the gateways present 
 any remarkable features that I know of. On 
 the straight road to Sherpur the Kabul river is 
 crossed by a bridge, the favourite station of 
 the beggars. A more harsh-voiced, ill-favoured 
 mendicant race does not disfigure any city in 
 the world. The people, it should be observed, 
 even the shopkeepers, unlike other Orientals, 
 habitually receive you with an air of insolent 
 indifference. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE BURSTING OF THE STORM. 
 
 Over the hill-sides the wild knell is tolling, 
 From their far hamlets the yeomanry 
 come : 
 As through the storm-clouds the thunder- 
 burst rolling, 
 Circles the beat of the imistering drum. 
 Fast on the soldier's path 
 Darken the waves of wrath. 
 Long have they gathered, and loud shall 
 they fall ; 
 
 Red glares the musket 's fash, 
 Sharp rings the rifle's crash, 
 Blazing and clanging from thicket and 
 wall. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 Les temps ne semblent-ils pas venir on, dans 
 la plupart des rapports humains, les sages 
 diront de phis en plus : comprendre, et de 
 moins en moins : juger. 
 
 Revue des Deux Mondes. 
 
 ON Monday the 8th December 1879, General 
 Roberts ordered a great Divisional Parade. 
 That day all the force behind the English 
 
^ 
 
 c,.ETCjy 
 
 TO ILLUSTRATE THE OPERATIONS NEAR 
 
 KABUL 
 
 from the 9* to the 22^December 1879. 
 
 Scale igEoSo- or 3 mile to linch 
 
 :rccr^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 *P' 
 
 m^ 
 
 m^m 
 
 
 WBMi 
 
The Bursting of the Storm. 109 
 
 name in Kabul was arrayed in the plain be- 
 yond Behmaru Ridge. Those slender steel- 
 tipped lines may have seemed but a poor 
 display to a turbulent population, accustomed 
 to count its armed men by tens of thousands. 
 But there was not a soldier in camp, from 
 drummer-boy to staff-officer, who would not 
 have turned upon you with derision, if you 
 had hinted that within a week this proud army 
 would recoil, baffled and discouraged, behind 
 the cantonment walls. Yet so it befell ; and 
 the explanation is that we had reached one of 
 those points, where political, and even election- 
 eering, considerations in England, exercised 
 their baneful influence upon the conduct of the 
 war. We were floating, unconsciously perhaps, 
 on the all-glory-no-expense policy, and entering 
 upon a military occupation, or even a measure 
 of tentative annexation, with the resources pro- 
 vided for a punitive expedition. From a military 
 point of view General Roberts was strong enough 
 
1 10 The Bursting of the Storm. 
 
 to take and hold Kabul against all comers ; 
 but to hold it as the capital of Afghanistan, 
 he required at least five thousand more men. 
 
 Warnings had not been wanting. The de- 
 portation of Yakoob Khan, and the various 
 tentative measures for securing tranquillity, 
 excited nothing but enmity and distrust among 
 the tribes; and the whole country-side was astir 
 like a nest of angry wasps. A proclamation of 
 annexation would have been answered by a 
 less formidable burst of national rage. Yet with 
 it all, the old supremacy, resting with a bold 
 initiative, had very nearly reasserted itself. A 
 little luck, and General Roberts would have 
 carried matters with a high hand to the end. 
 
 The city of Kabul may, without extrava- 
 gance, be looked upon as the centre of a maze 
 of valleys. To catch the enemy, who kept 
 threatening us, in one of those mountain avenues, 
 or if possible to get him between two fires by 
 stopping up both openings of a valley, was a 
 
The Bursting of the Storm. 1 1 1 
 
 considerable military temptation. The diffi- 
 culty was, that while our columns could only 
 move by the valleys and regular passes, the 
 enemy knew every accessible point where their 
 native mountains might be scaled, or turned 
 into a natural fortress. 
 
 The village of Arghandi, a great centre of 
 discontent, on the direct road to Ghazni, was 
 selected for attack. On the afternoon of the 
 8th of December, after the review, Macpherson's 
 brigade, to which I was attached, moved into 
 the Chardeh Valley, and encamped at Killa 
 Aushar. On the 9th, although the enemy were 
 observed plainly enough streaming down from 
 Arghandi, we halted to allow General Baker to 
 develop his turning movement by the Logar 
 Valley and across the hills by Maidan, and on 
 the 10th there was a change of plans. 
 
 A large contingent from Kohistan was re- 
 ported to be creeping round from the north to 
 join the gathering at Arghandi. To defeat 
 
1 1 2 The Bursting of the Storm. 
 
 this new combination, Macpherson, leaving four 
 guns and a squadron of Lancers in camp, 
 slipped back into the Kabul basin, and thence 
 through a defile further west into Koh-Daman. 
 The manceuvre was so skilfully and secretly 
 carried out, that the brigade was actually nest- 
 ling in the hollow of a commanding ridge, 
 before either the Kohistanis or the Arghandi 
 column were well aware of its presence. Hope 
 ran high : at last we were to strike from 
 above, instead of toiling up to one summit 
 to find the enemy fled to the next. Un- 
 luckily, before the enemy's main body on 
 either side came within range, it became 
 necessary to drop a shell among some adven- 
 turous Kohistanis, who were pushing up the 
 slope towards us. And with the smoke of 
 our first gun there vanished all chance of a 
 surprise : in a second, the stream of men 
 on the left from Arghandi was dammed up, 
 and the Kohistani scouts scattered on the 
 
The Bursting of the Storm. 1 1 3 
 
 hill-side disappeared like rabbits. There was 
 nothing for it but to 
 
 1 Cry " Havock !" and let slip the dogs of war.' 
 The gun-mules scrambled round the crest and 
 half-way down a long spur of the hill just in 
 time for Major Morgan, who commanded the 
 mountain-battery, to place a few shells at 
 a long range with his usual precision. The 
 infantry, Sikhs on the right, English in the 
 centre, and Ghoorkas on the left, raced down 
 the slopes without a symptom of a check. 
 Meantime, the hostile masses below seemed to 
 disperse and reunite with as little intelligent 
 purpose, as swarms of flies in summer. On one 
 low brow, indeed, there was a fine show of form- 
 ing into line, with standards of white and red to 
 mark the companies ; but the whiff of a single 
 shell was enough to scatter all this array like so 
 much chaff. When the rabble streamed away 
 towards Kohistan, dotting all the fields and 
 
 darkening the slopes, a few resolute soldiers 
 H 
 
1 14 The Bursting of the Storm. 
 
 continued to hold a detached knoll, firing 
 volleys at our skirmishers. Before they were 
 silenced or driven off we had one officer and 
 seven men hit. Two fanatics remained crouch- 
 ing behind a rude breastwork to the last. Sud- 
 denly we saw their white-robed figures flash 
 out upon some Sepoys incautiously sauntering 
 towards them, dart zigzag down the hill in hot 
 pursuit, and so on to death among the serried 
 ranks below. 
 
 From start to finish the affair lasted little 
 more than an hour. The enemy's loss was 
 between fifty and a hundred ; and towards 
 dusk the fugitives were seen through telescopes 
 miles off and still running. 
 
 This success left General Roberts free to 
 follow out the original plan of surrounding 
 and crushing the enemy at Arghandi.' General 
 Macpherson was to push straight along by the 
 Pughman Hills ; his guns and cavalry (which 
 had remained at Killa Aushar), slightly rein- 
 forced, and placed under General Massy, were 
 
The Bursting of the Storm. 1 1 5 
 
 to advance by a converging line through the 
 Chardeh Valley, while General Baker was ex- 
 pected to take the enemy in rear from Maidan. 
 There was nothing foolhardy in this scheme, 
 particularly when the conduct of the enemy 
 the day before is taken into account. 
 
 We left Karez Mir about eight o'clock in the 
 morning, halting for half an hour on the Kotal 
 to allow the column to close up. Presently 
 the sound of a distant gun, and then another 
 and another, was borne across the hills. After 
 this there was no lagging behind. 
 
 About the same hour that we started from 
 Karez Mir, General Massy, with four Horse 
 Artillery guns and four squadrons of cavalry, 
 rode out from the camp at Killa Aushar. Up 
 to this nth of December 1879 the only diffi- 
 culty had been to get the enemy to stand at 
 all, and therefore it is assuming very little to 
 suppose that General Massy's main concern 
 that morning was to get a chance of dashing 
 at the enemy, and not to wait for Macpherson 
 
1 1 6 The Bursting of the Storm. 
 
 or any one else. In short, counsels of caution 
 were not so much as considered, and the 
 attack was made, as usual, with a light heart 
 wherever the enemy appeared. The Killa Kazi 
 Hill, two thousand yards off, made a good 
 target for the first shells ; but as village and 
 ditch and enclosure were rapidly left behind, 
 the battery became hotly engaged. Round 
 after round of deadly shrapnel was hurled for- 
 ward ; but the enemy had taken the measure 
 of the little force from the heights, and swept 
 down with terrible determination. Then it was 
 that the want of a few hundred good rifles was 
 sorely felt. After thirty dismounted horsemen 
 had in vain striven to make up for the de- 
 ficiency, it became evident that a desperate 
 effort must be made to save the honour of the 
 day. Side by side the British and Indian 
 Lancers dashed forward on their hopeless 
 errand. But you might as well have tried to 
 knock down a mile of wall with a single shell'. 
 The ground was unfitted for cavalry, and the 
 
The Bursting of the Storm. 1 1 7 
 
 enemy's loose formation offered no resistance 
 to the shock. After each trooper had maimed 
 or missed his man, there was nothing for it but 
 to turn and ride back, with many an empty 
 saddle. Of all the officers of the 9th who took 
 part in that charge, there were but three who 
 came out unscathed. Hearsey and Ricardo of 
 the 9th, and Forbes of the 14th, were hacked 
 to pieces in an instant, and the colonel of the 
 9th was terribly wounded. Retreat, however, 
 was still possible ; but before a practicable 
 roadway in the desired direction was hit upon, 
 the leading gun toppled over into a deep ditch, 
 hopelessly blocking the passage for those that 
 followed. Groups of troopers made charge after 
 charge without checking the enemy's masses. 
 At last, when the case was desperate, General 
 Roberts, who had come up, after General Massy 
 was committed to fight, is said himself to have 
 given the order to the gunners to cut the traces 
 and gallop off; thus avoiding the useless sacri- 
 fice of many valuable lives. 
 
1 1 8 The Bursting of the Storm, 
 
 All this time Macpherson's infantry was 
 pushing forward so rapidly that, with another 
 hour's grace, the guns would have been saved. 
 As it was, part of the brigade actually got within 
 distant view of the field before the fighting was 
 over. But the dead silence that followed the 
 sullen boom of the nine-pounders was taken to 
 mean that the enemy had got out of range in 
 that quarter; and General Macpherson con- 
 tented himself with chasing the enemy on his 
 right up to the hills for miles. Late in the 
 evening, after the pursuit was over, he received 
 the full tidings of the morning's fighting, and 
 the brigade groped its way back to a cheerless 
 bivouac at Dama Sang. 
 
 While General Macpherson was thus em- 
 ployed, General Massy's guns were recovered. 
 The carriages had been stripped and left lying 
 by the enemy in their haste, where captured ; 
 and Colonel Macgregor, with a handful of 
 officers and men collected as he went, was able 
 
The Bursting of the Storm. 119 
 
 to sally out and bring them back without firing 
 a shot. But the real mischief was not to be 
 thus lightly undone : for in the hour of that 
 unhappy reverse an impetus was given that 
 quickened a hesitating and half-hearted demon- 
 stration into a determined and most formidable 
 onset. 
 
 The actual danger to cantonments, and the 
 strength of the enemy, on the 1 ith of December, 
 have been exaggerated. The original plan of 
 the Afghan leaders was to occupy the line of 
 hills, to which they had been accustomed to 
 look for the command of their capital. As 
 fortune kept smiling on them, and swelling 
 their ranks, they may have learned to aim at 
 the destruction of the whole English army ; 
 but on the nth General Roberts's prompt mea- 
 sures of defence scared them from any active 
 attempt, even upon the city. It is incredible 
 that the capture of Sherpur should have entered 
 into their wildest dreams that afternoon. 
 
120 The Bursting of the Storm. 
 
 Throughout the day my fortune had been 
 cast in with General Macpherson's rear-guard. 
 The whole country-side was alive with men, 
 and we had some smart fighting to keep the 
 enemy off the baggage. But for half a battalion 
 of Sikhs which was sent back to the assistance 
 of the two companies of Ghoorkas with the 
 rear-guard, it would have gone hardly with 
 us. As it was, at one point where the road 
 was pushed back by the shoulder of a ridge, 
 and cramped by some vineyards and gardens, 
 we were hard pressed. The Hill-men dashed 
 along the slopes, springing like wild cats from 
 point to point, to threaten our flank. Major 
 John Cook and his brother went off to avert 
 this danger, and both met with hard knocks in 
 the hand-to-hand fight that followed. When 
 they disappeared, I was left holding the road 
 with a few Sikhs, in a pretty state of uncer- 
 tainty, fearing lest I should uncover the flank 
 of their party by retiring too soon, or be 
 surrounded myself by remaining too long. 
 
The Bursting of the Storm. 1 2 1 
 
 While engaged in a little exploring expedition, 
 suddenly I came upon a wild Afghan standing 
 above me on the hill. In my last moments, 
 whether they come early or late, I expect to 
 see this savage, with his pointed cap and his 
 villainous smock, like a petticoat huddled up in 
 front, and his rifle pointed at some one below. 
 A pistol is but an uncertain weapon except at 
 the closest quarters, and my first thought was 
 to get my little following away before we were 
 discovered and completely hemmed in ; so, 
 turning back, I hailed them, and we slipped 
 away through some gardens. But the worst 
 was to come. The last enclosure was bounded 
 by a five-foot wall, with, to my horror, no gate 
 on the far side ; my pony was being led beside 
 me ; there was no time to go back ; so, after 
 one distracted rush up and down to look for an 
 opening, I had to bid a sudden good-bye to the 
 prettiest and gamest tiny charger I ever rode. 
 Poor Minstrel ! how he stretched out his neck, 
 following me with a half-amazed, half-reproach- 
 
1 22 The Bursting of the Storm. 
 
 ml look, as I took off his saddle and bridle, and 
 scrambled over the wall. I am positive there 
 never was a more unwilling prisoner of war, 
 and regret for him haunted me long ; but even 
 an Afghan master could not find it in his heart 
 to use him ill. 
 
 Returning in the dusk of the evening to 
 Sherpur, with one of the recaptured guns all 
 sullied with dust and smoke, was an adventure 
 in itself. Passing under the Asmai Hill, and 
 through some of the narrow lanes of the city, 
 an unusual interest in the demeanour of the 
 townspeople forced itself upon us. But the 
 shops were not closed ; and all the muddy 
 streams of Kabul life seemed to be flowing in 
 their accustomed well-worn channels. 
 
 In cantonments there was every sign of an 
 unwonted excitement. You rode up to a gate- 
 way and found it barricaded, passed round the 
 walls and were stopped every hundred yards 
 by a sentry's challenge ; were admitted at last, 
 only to be assailed by volleys of questions from 
 
The Bursting of the Storm. 1 23 
 
 groups of men and officers, some cheery, chaffing, 
 and confident, others veritably despondent and 
 anxious. 
 
 During the day the excitement in the little 
 garrison, which did not include one complete 
 regiment, had been intense, and late at night 
 the strain on the attention was still kept up. 
 Again and again the piquet of the J2& on the 
 Sher Darwaza was furiously attacked. The 
 Hill-men crept close up to the wall, and taunted 
 the Highlanders, crying, ' We killed Cavagnari, 
 sahib ; come and kill us.' For sole answer the 
 flame of the Martini would leap like lightning 
 round the crown of the hill. When day dawned 
 it was seen that the enemy had left behind 
 many of their bravest lying dead on the 
 ground. 
 
 At midnight the Guides, cavalry, and in- 
 fantry, marched in from Seh-Baba, having 
 covered that day over thirty miles, or three 
 marches, the first of which, over the Lataband 
 Pass, was by far the worst on the line. The 
 
1 24 The Bursting of the Storm. 
 
 arrival of this celebrated Corps was a matter of 
 congratulation to themselves, and to all of us ; 
 for they had a heavy score of retribution to 
 wipe out, and their opportunity was at hand. 
 None understood better than our gallant chief 
 the arduous task that lay before him. He knew 
 that to re-establish our shaken prestige many 
 desperate deeds must be attempted, and many 
 brave lives sacrificed ; for north and south, and 
 east and west, messengers were riding furiously, 
 with tidings that set the blood of the wild 
 Afghans coursing like fire, and maddened them 
 with memories of '42. Even now the priests 
 were at work, calling on the clansmen to arise 
 and snatch from their hiding-places sword, and 
 knife, and jezail ; and bidding them swear the 
 same oath that their fathers before them had 
 sworn in the name of Allah and the Faith to 
 exterminate the Infidels, and cast to the dogs 
 and the vultures the carcases of the pale-faced 
 invaders. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 GENERAL ROBERTS AT BAY. 
 
 Well, then, to work; our cannon shall be 
 
 bent 
 Against the brows of this resisting town. 
 King John. 
 
 General Roberts was now fighting against 
 time. The all-powerful Eastern creed of fatal- 
 ism, his safest ally during a victorious advance, 
 was now arming a whole people against him. 
 If he could not beat the enemy off the hills 
 overlooking the city in three days, there was 
 no telling where the conflagration would stop. 
 Many a bloody quarrel and national brawl 
 had been fought out beneath those frowning 
 peaks. Once they had even looked down 
 upon an English army in its death-agony ; 
 
126 General Roberts at bay. 
 
 they were now to shelter in vain the greatest 
 host raised in Afghanistan since the days of 
 Akbar and Mahmoud. 
 
 On the morning of the 12th of December 
 the enemy's flag waved from the lofty Takht-i- 
 Shah, and from a lower and more advanced 
 peak ; but the Sher Darwaza and the com- 
 mand of the city were in the hands of the 
 72d. Part of Macpherson's brigade moving 
 up early from Dama Sang, the attack began 
 along the ridge. The base of the Takht-i- 
 Shah was reached by the afternoon, but the 
 murderous fire which swept its naked sides 
 checked all further advance, and the attempt 
 had to be given up. On this afternoon Major 
 John Cook's tall figure towered for the last 
 time above the little people he had so often 
 led to victory. 
 
 In the evening the 2d Brigade marched in 
 from Arghandi, the enemy having dogged 
 their steps all through the Logar, and back 
 
General Roberts at bay. 1 2 7 
 
 from Maidan. On the nth of December the 
 rear-guard had been hunted from one camp to 
 the other, in spite of Captain Wynter's able 
 and stubborn resistance. On the last march 
 such was the exhaustion of the transport 
 animals it was actually proposed at one time 
 to park the baggage in Gholam Hyder's Fort, 
 at the far end of the Chardeh Valley, from 
 which not a man would ever have escaped 
 alive : altogether, the expedition had been 
 productive of much danger, and little or no 
 profit None the less, General Baker now 
 became the hero of the hour. A direct assault 
 on the Takht-i-Shah had been found imprac- 
 ticable ; but a flank attack by way of Beni 
 Hissar proved a glorious success. 
 
 About eight on the morning of the 13th 
 General Baker marched out past the city with 
 a strong brigade. His guns spoke early from 
 beyond Sia Sang, and soon he sent the 92d 
 Highlanders straight at the heights above Beni 
 
1 28 General Roberts at bay. 
 
 Hissar, telling them that this was the post of 
 honour. The gallant regiment, that has never 
 disappointed friend nor foe, sprang forward at 
 the challenge, and carried crest after crest at the 
 point of the bayonet. Every incident of the 
 struggle could be clearly seen from below ; and 
 there were many spectators of Forbes's heroic 
 death. Outstripping his men, he reached the 
 brow of the hill alone. At once the Afghans 
 rushed upon him : he cut clean through the 
 knife of his first assailant ; but another, coming 
 up behind, stabbed him in the back. His 
 colour-serjeant, who came next, was killed in 
 the same way. But when his men came upon 
 the scene, the enemy broke and fled ; and 
 soon the little Ghoorkas were seen scaling the 
 Takht-i-Shah itself, and avenging their losses 
 of the day before. 
 
 But the fight still raged round General Baker. 
 During the morning streams of men had been 
 observed pouring over the Pai Manar Kotal ; 
 
General Roberts at bay. 129 
 
 a few shells had warned them off the Behmaru 
 side of cantonments, and they presently made 
 off for Sia Sang, with the effect of taking 
 General Baker in flank and rear. The rabble, 
 too, from the city were sharpshooting from the 
 lower Bala Hissar, and, to complete the circle, 
 from walled villages in the plain. But the fire 
 from all these quarters was steadily quelled. 
 A couple of shells well directed cleared the city 
 wall ; a company of the 3d Sikhs faced about, 
 and silenced the enemy behind them ; and the 
 5th Punjab Infantry surrounded one village and 
 blew or burned down the gate, so that not a 
 man escaped from it alive. Finally the cavalry 
 settled accounts with the bands on Sia Sang. 
 The Guides swept grandly round across the 
 valley, while the 9th Lancers and the 5th Pun- 
 jab Cavalry rode along the ridge itself. The 
 enemy stood up boldly to meet them with their 
 rifles, but the Guides, charging to the cry of 
 'Bala Hissar! Bala Hissar!' had not forgotten 
 
1 30 General Roberts at bay. 
 
 the massacre of September. They say that in 
 the melee the sabre of the irregular horseman 
 proved more deadly than the lance of the 
 trained trooper. But in a rapid pursuit, or in 
 the charge of squadron against squadron, the 
 verdict might be reversed. 
 
 The 9th Lancers were again unlucky in their 
 losses. Captain Butson was shot through the 
 heart, and Trower and Chisholme were wounded, 
 so that young Gough, a captain of only nine 
 years' service, was left in command of the regi- 
 ment. None the less the pipes came back 
 playing merrily, and cheer after cheer rose from 
 the gateway by the o,2d lines. For we were in 
 high feather that night, and the final defeat and 
 dispersion of the enemy on the morrow were 
 looked forward to with all certainty. 
 
 When day broke on the 14th the Asmai Hill 
 was occupied by masses of the enemy with flags 
 flying from every spur and pinnacle. The 
 position was an ugly one to look at, but skilful 
 
General Roberts at bay. 1 3 [ 
 
 dispositions were made for the attack, and the 
 result seemed as certain as any in that great 
 game where the hazards are infinite and the 
 combinations defy calculation. 
 
 General Baker was to have the honour of 
 finishing the work. Putting the trews of the 
 72d for the kilts of the 92d, he had with him 
 much the same force as the day before. The 
 action began with a brisk cannonade. Four 
 field-guns, posted on a low eminence, crowned 
 with the ruins of a mud fort, pounded the 
 Asmai Hill on the front and right. Two 
 Horse Artillery guns, posted by the General's 
 Gateway, swept it on the left, where a pathway 
 led down to the city ; while the fire of Major 
 Morgan's mountain-battery, on the Sher Dar- 
 waza, took it in rear. For every Afghan who 
 comes out to fight there are a hundred strutting 
 about on the hill-tops, and watching for their 
 share of any plunder which Allah wills shall 
 fall into the hands of the Faithful ; but that 
 
132 General Roberts at bay. 
 
 morning the upper air on the Asmai Heights 
 was a trifle too disturbed for spectators. Sway- 
 ing first to one side, then to another, the motley 
 masses finally settled down upon the city, and 
 streamed away towards Sia Sang. Then the 
 scaling parties of Guides and Highlanders swept 
 off the fanatics who remained in fine style 
 Corporal Sellars, V.C., leading the way, and 
 there established themselves under Colonel 
 Jenkyns. During this time the cavalry were 
 playing a grim game of hide-and-seek with the 
 fugitives among the enclosures and villages 
 outside of the city. Then it was that Vowsden 
 of the 5th Punjab Cavalry, the second V.C. of 
 the day, was seen to dash round the corner of 
 a village, followed by half-a-dozen sabres, and 
 slash his way through some hundreds of the 
 enemy. 
 
 The day being apparently won, General 
 Hugh Gough, with the cavalry, two guns 
 Royal Horse Artillery, and two companies of 
 
Genei'al Roberts at bay. 133 
 
 infantry, set off in pursuit towards Sia Sang. 
 Judging after the event, it is evident that every 
 man that could be spared should have been 
 sent instead to reinforce General Baker. That 
 commander's position was outflanked and over- 
 looked by the enemy from a high hill on his 
 right : with the help of a wing of the 3d Sikhs 
 and the 92d Highlanders, he might have gained 
 this point, without which his position was tac- 
 tically incomplete. It is certain, however, that 
 under no circumstances could we have continued 
 to hold the whole long line of heights against 
 the terrible odds the enemy brought into the 
 field before nightfall. The thing actually turned 
 in this way ; General Baker, deserted by the 
 full tide of victory, fell into the slack water 
 before the ebb ; then, on the arrival of fresh 
 levies, a burst of impetuous valour, the like of 
 which we had never seen before, carried the 
 enemy irresistibly forward, and swept him back 
 defeated. The Conical Hill a stepping- 
 
134 General Roberts at bay. 
 
 stone, so to speak, to the Asmai Heights 
 had been intrusted to Colonel Clarke, with 
 four guns and about a couple of hundred men 
 of the 72d and 5th Punjab Infantry. Soon 
 after midday, the plain beyond towards Indiki 
 became black with skirmishers, coming within 
 range of shrapnel, they seemed to open out 
 and sweep round to the right, under cover of 
 the hill already referred to. Signals for help 
 were repeated by the defenders again and 
 again. In answer, Colonel Jenkyns sent a 
 party of men half-way down from his newly- 
 won position on the Asmai Heights, but 
 naturally, with his weak numbers, hesitated to 
 do more. No other succour arrived, and the 
 enemy, coming down from his high vantage- 
 ground, collected in dangerous numbers in a 
 fold of the ground close to our men. In a 
 vain attempt to dislodge them, Spens of the 
 72d threw his life away, as a man might a 
 weapon in despair. The danger to the guns 
 
General Roberts at bay. 135 
 
 was evident to all. But Colonel Clarke set 
 his teeth grimly, and refused to stir a foot. 
 None the less, when their cartridges were all 
 gone, his own men gave way. The 5th Pun- 
 jab Infantry were not slow to follow, and the 
 supports who were coming up would not look 
 at the hill, when they saw their English com- 
 rades driven back. Some of the gun-mules 
 were shot ; and then the enemy, in hot pursuit, 
 had again the triumph of capturing two pieces 
 of our dreaded ordnance. The honour of check- 
 ing and driving them back up the hill lies with 
 the 3d Sikhs, who had been ordered out from 
 Sherpur in hot haste. 
 
 After this there was some more firing at 
 long ranges to very little purpose. The battle 
 was lost ; and General Baker sullenly with- 
 drew. 
 
 During the afternoon, news was received that 
 another dense column of the enemy was advanc- 
 ing by the road from the Logar Valley. When 
 
[36 General Roberts at bay. 
 
 a weaker man might have ruined us with half 
 measures, General Roberts decided on instant 
 concentration. Orders were flashed by helio- 
 graph across to the troops on the hills to return 
 at once. 
 
 Colonel Jenkyns's withdrawal from the Asmai 
 Hill, tardy though it was, came first. The 
 blood-stained, mysteriously-curtained doolies 
 had been plying their dismal office all after- 
 noon ; and every minute the strain on the 
 minds of spectators within the walls grew more 
 intense. The enemies' execrated figures and 
 banners stood out against the sky-line in the 
 west like sharply-cut silhouettes ; and now we 
 could see them dashing in thousands over the 
 Conical Hill, and reaching the brow of the 
 Asmai seemingly as our men left it. Then 
 
 1 There was silence deep as death ; 
 And the boldest held his breath 
 For a time.' 
 
 Could it be that those ghastly knives 
 
General Roberts at bay. 1 3 7 
 
 were sheathed in the breasts of our best and 
 bravest comrades ? But no ! A fresh burst of 
 firing announced that Colonel Jenkyns was 
 descending by one of the central spurs of the 
 Asmai. The Guides and Highlanders supported 
 each other nobly ; and at the foot of the hill 
 they faced about together and fired volleys, the 
 deadly roll of the Martini lasting without a 
 break for a quarter of an hour. It was the 
 hottest fire I ever heard. 
 
 Meanwhile General Macpherson was hasten- 
 ing down from the Sher Darwaza. His move- 
 ments were not easy to trace from Sherpur, 
 but his anxieties must have been frightful. 
 The narrow lanes of the city through which 
 he had to struggle happily belonged to the 
 Kuzilbash quarters. But the Logar column 
 of the enemy had already taken the Takht-i- 
 Shah and threatened his rear, and might at 
 any moment appear on his right flank. On his 
 left, skirmishers were already swarming up the 
 
138 General Roberts at bay. 
 
 Dama Sang gorge. Worst of all, there was 
 now menacing him the host from the Asmai 
 Hill. A rapid retreat might have become at 
 any moment a headlong rout ; and his men, 
 worn out with exposure and hunger, have been 
 struck by panic as by the plague. Happily 
 the 67th had a company above Deh Afghan, 
 and the rear-guard stood like men : the enemy 
 failing to press their advantage, the brigade 
 reached Sherpur without serious mishap. 
 
 There were many losses to be mourned in 
 Sherpur that night, and many anxieties to 
 weigh heavy. Thousands of rounds of price- 
 less ammunition, and many other stores, had 
 fallen into the enemy's hands. But perhaps 
 the most bitter regret must have been General 
 Macpherson's refusal to drop a shell into the 
 great magazine in the Bala Hissar, with its 
 hundreds of thousands of tons of powder. It 
 was all-important to prevent such a treasure 
 from falling into the hands of the enemy. If 
 
General Roberts at bay. 139 
 
 the Bala Hissar had been left a shapeless mass 
 by the shock, and half the city of Kabul had 
 been laid in ruins, that would have been but a 
 just, though a tardy, retribution for the many 
 outrages of its rulers and people upon the 
 English flag. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AN ARMY ON THE WATCH. 
 
 Fighting for dear life, men choose their 
 
 swords 
 For cutting only, not for ornament. 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 General Roberts now took up a defensive 
 position, and he chose Sherpur rather than 
 Sia Sang, or the Bala Hissar, in virtue of a 
 decision of his own arrived at two months 
 previously, and not under pressure of any im- 
 mediate necessity. He had soon to submit, 
 under penalty of heavy loss, to all the appear- 
 ance and some of the reality of an investment ; 
 but this misfortune he owed mainly to the 
 nature of the ground : at the worst, on the 
 bare fields to the west and north of Sherpur 
 
An Army on the watch. 141 
 
 not a single Afghan ever dared to show him- 
 self ; and there was no day when the cavalry 
 could not, and did not, sweep the country-side. 
 
 The conversion of Shere Ali's big barrack 
 into a magazine for reserve ammunition and 
 commissariat stores has itself been blamed, and 
 even compared to the blunders of 1842. But 
 what more convincing proof could critics give 
 of their unreasonableness ? The first blunder 
 in '42 was the choice of an indefensible site 
 for the cantonment; and the second greater 
 than the first the suicidal neglect to bring 
 the commissariat stores within the walls. In 
 1879 tne English army occupied a position 
 upon which no enemy unprovided with artillery 
 could hope to make an impression, and had food 
 enough to last for from three to five months. 
 
 The wisdom of a change of tactics after the 
 events of the 14th was apparent to all. Re- 
 inforcements might be reasonably expected 
 to arrive in a week. In the interval, if there 
 
142 An Army on the watch, 
 
 could be little bodily repose in the vast incom- 
 plete lines of Sherpur, there would be at least 
 a breathing-space for men to recover their 
 moral elasticity. There had been no direct 
 defeat ; but five days' marching, and climbing, 
 and fighting, fasting and watching, is a severe 
 ordeal for any troops ; and all our regiments, 
 excepting perhaps two, had felt the weight of 
 the enemy's arm. Moreover, every hour that 
 passed took as much out of the enemy's scale 
 as it added to ours. The capture of the city 
 permitted the Hill-men to hold together beyond 
 the period of their ordinary raids; but even 
 this source of supplies was not inexhaustible. 
 There were, besides, the festering rivalries of 
 the chiefs at work, and the undisciplined habits 
 of the clansmen, hesitating between hatred of 
 the infidel and greed for plunder. If the great 
 agglomeration of Afghan tribes I had almost 
 compared it to some huge drift of icebergs 
 did not break itself to pieces against the rock 
 
An Army on the watch. 143 
 
 of our resistance, it must gradually melt away 
 through the action of natural causes. 
 
 There was thus nothing to be down-hearted 
 about. Yet it was a strange experience to look 
 out over the fields, with their robe of innocent 
 snow-white, and remember that the land we 
 had been lording it over had brought forth, as 
 by a miracle, from its barrenness, sons enough 
 to rend us in pieces. Men catered for the 
 smallest scrap of news of the enemy's numbers, 
 or the approach of our reinforcements, with an 
 undisguised appetite. It gave one an inkling 
 of the state of mind when omens, on the right 
 or left, seem of portentous significance, and of 
 the reason why commanders of beleaguered 
 garrisons are apt to die under the burden of 
 responsibility. I will not even undertake to 
 say that visions of defeat and disaster never 
 presented themselves uninvited to the imagina- 
 tion. On one miserable night of snow my own 
 musings were persistently gloomy; and perhaps 
 
144 An Army on the watch. 
 
 others, lying awake through the biting hours of 
 darkness, may have been oppressed by the same 
 nightmare a wan procession of soldiers and 
 camp-followers, fagged, famished, and half- 
 frozen, struggling desperately on, with the 
 horrible shadow of Death falling athwart their 
 path at every turning. 
 
 I suppose there never was a defensible place 
 that did not seem incomplete to its garrison, 
 when the wolf appeared at its gates. Sherpur, 
 with its two open sides, was no exception to 
 the rule. A well-managed night attack (if 
 such a thing be conceivable), by way of Beh- 
 maru, on the night of the 14th December, 
 might have had awkward results. But the 
 truth that fortified lines are no stronger than 
 their weakest point seems less self-evident from 
 without than from within : from the first the 
 enemy were ready enough to show fight if 
 General Roberts had attacked them, but it 
 took them three days to discover he was 
 
An Army on the watch. 145 
 
 willing to change roles with them, and six more 
 to learn their new part of assailants comfort- 
 ably. Meantime they were not idle. Toiling 
 and moiling, sapping and mining, would have 
 been little to their taste ; but from Deh Afghan 
 right round to Behmaru, villages and walled 
 gardens had been left standing at a convenient 
 distance from Sherpur. From these positions the 
 Afghan gentlemen could enjoy a day's infidel- 
 shooting with a minimum of risk and expense. 
 It must be admitted that they entered into 
 the pastime with infinite zest ; but the amount 
 of damage that was or could have been done 
 to us in this way by an enemy unprovided with 
 artillery was small. It was no part of the 
 original scheme to turn Kabul and its environs 
 into a vast fortified camp. Moreover, labour 
 was scarce; and since the occupation all hands 
 had been employed in preparing to meet 
 1 General Winter's ' inevitable assaults. 
 
 The position of Sherpur was .naturally so 
 
146 An Army on the watch. 
 
 formidable that a few days' digging made us 
 safe against an enemy with no guns. One 
 disadvantage only could not be overcome, 
 the unwieldy size of the place, which held the 
 whole force on guard day and night for its 
 protection. In a day, however, the telegraph- 
 wires were carried all round the defences, so that 
 the General was able to control every movement 
 sitting in his cabinet in the West Gateway. 
 
 English armies, in nine cases out of ten, are 
 numerically too weak for the work they have 
 to perform ; but there is no reason why they 
 should not be perfectly equipped. Encounters 
 with equal weapons may have a high-sounding 
 chivalrous ring; none the less, if you find 
 yourself in a field with fifty half-naked savages, 
 armed with the bloodiest of intentions, and the 
 sharpest of knives, it is singularly inspiriting 
 to know science has done her best for you. In 
 Afghanistan we had no rockets, and no Gatlings 
 worthy of the name ; those at Kabul were 
 
An Army on the watch. 147 
 
 never known to fire a complete round ; 
 perhaps the Royal Regiment of Artillery is 
 not entirely blameless in this matter. 
 
 The heliograph, however, was well worked all 
 through the war. The strength and the weakness 
 of the instrument came out together in this hour 
 of trial. The gravest anxiety, I suppose, that 
 weighed upon the General, was for the safety of 
 the little garrison that held the Lataband Pass. 
 Communication could be held only by means 
 of the heliograph; and there was something 
 curious about the persistency with which the 
 sun, so true to his votaries in these parts, 
 refused, day after day, to smile on the exercises 
 of the signallers. At last the tiny intermittent 
 flash from Lataband reached us, like the light- 
 house ray travelling over, stormy waters. Wel- 
 come was its message, for the post was safe, 
 and the advancing brigade was expected on 
 the 22d. 
 
 The news was the signal for an exploit that 
 
148 An Army on the watch. 
 
 deserves to be better known. The advancing 
 brigade had no cavalry : to supply this defi- 
 ciency, and also to secure, if possible, the bridge 
 over the Logar, the 12th Bengal Cavalry were 
 ordered to make their way through the enemy's 
 position, and join hands with General Charles 
 Gough. 
 
 As soon as the moon was down, before the 
 faintest streak of dawn appeared, the Sowars 
 rode forth on their perilous errand. The gates 
 of Sherpur had hardly closed behind them 
 when the enemy took alarm and opened fire. 
 Pressing on, they came to a deep water-cut ; 
 the banks were slippery, and the horses plunged 
 and floundered about in a pitiful fashion. For 
 half an hour the splashing and trampling 
 attracted the enemy's fire. Some half-a-dozen 
 men who were dismounted had to be left to 
 find their way back through the sentries to 
 Sherpur; but the squadrons were unbroken, 
 and kept steadily on their way. 
 
An Army on the watch. 149 
 
 Happily the bridge over the Logar was 
 found intact and unoccupied ; but at Butkak, 
 which was reached at daybreak, a regiment 
 of Afghan regulars turned out and received the 
 brave Sowars with volleys of musketry ; so 
 they rode on ten miles further, to Lataband, 
 without drawing rein. This triumph of disci- 
 pline and skill, in the face of the darkness and 
 uncertainty, the perils and exposure of that 
 night, was as a sign to mark the time when 
 our troubles were at an end. The hours of 
 Mahomed Jan's greatness were numbered. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE END OF THE JEHAD. 
 
 Some naked and savage, some like httge collec- 
 tions of insects, 
 
 Some in tents herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, 
 horsemen. 
 
 Walt Whitman. 
 
 On the 23d of December, an hour before day- 
 break, a clear beacon-fire shone out from the 
 Asmai Hill. Before you could count twenty, 
 every man in Sherpur was at his post ; for this 
 was the signal, as well known within as without, 
 for the long-threatened assault. The sound of 
 firing came first from the English Hospital, 
 and then ran all down the long southern face 
 of cantonments, to break out with tenfold 
 
The end of the Jehad. 151 
 
 violence on the east. Every man strained his 
 eyes in the darkness, and asked himself what 
 this furious fusillade might portend. 
 
 When day broke, the state of affairs was 
 made plain at a glance. There were no dead 
 bodies piled up before the abattis, nor any 
 evidences of an attack driven well home. But 
 the enemy had collected in thousands close 
 under Behmaru, and were increasing in num- 
 bers every minute, running in groups of ten or 
 twelve from one village to another. The fire 
 waxed hotter and hotter for a time, and the 
 shelter-trenches stood our men in good stead. 
 General Hugh Gough, who was commanding 
 at this point, refused to take cover till a spent 
 bullet knocked him over, and then even he 
 condescended to place an earthen parapet 
 between him and the enemy. The Afghans, 
 with the true tactical instinct they invariably 
 displayed, had discovered the most vulnerable 
 point in the defences. But when the direction 
 
152 The end of the Jehad. 
 
 of the main attack became thus evident, General 
 Roberts was at liberty to concentrate reserves 
 in sufficient force to roll back the most deter- 
 mined assault. 
 
 On the other sides the attack hung fire all 
 day, never getting past the stage of a demon- 
 stration. Sharpshooters secreted themselves 
 behind every available wall in larger numbers, 
 and wasted ten times more cartridges than 
 usual. Now and again a madman, drunk with 
 opium, and frenzied with religious hate, rushed 
 headlong forward, till a death-bearing messenger 
 stilled the furious beat of his pulses for ever. 
 
 To strike a blow at a hated enemy, men have 
 often made their lives cheap ; but even a wild 
 beast will pause before a twenty-foot wall with 
 death staring over it. A more melancholy 
 spectacle than those quasi-suicides I never 
 looked upon. 
 
 When the first wave of the attack on Beh- 
 mafu seemed spent, and before a second could 
 gather force, General Roberts sent four guns 
 
The end of the Jehad. 1 5 3 
 
 well escorted through the gorge in the centre 
 of the ridge, with orders to wheel to the right, 
 and take the enemy in flank. The moment 
 was perfectly judged. No sooner did the 
 Afghans perceive the cavalry and guns on 
 their flank, than they began to retire from the 
 nearest villages ; their retreat gradually be- 
 came more rapid, and soon could not be distin- 
 guished from a rout. The main body made 
 for the Pai Manar Kotal in a broad black stream, 
 while on either side a multitude of stragglers 
 dotted the snow-covered fields. One breathed 
 more freely when that mighty tide of men had 
 rolled back across the plain. 
 
 The mass of the fugitives, as usual, escaped 
 unscathed. Infantry pursuit was impossible ; 
 but if the cavalry brigade had been together, 
 and well led, there would have been terrible 
 slaughter. As it was, Major Williams, with 
 two squadrons of the 5th Punjab Cavalry, made 
 short work of a good many of the stragglers ; 
 and others streaming back towards the city 
 
154 The end of the Jehad. 
 
 were raked with a searching fire by the 67th 
 from the cantonment walls. In the afternoon 
 the two infantry Brigadiers, moving out to the 
 east of Sherpur, blew up the towers of some of 
 the villages that lay in the path of General 
 Charles Gough's probable advance. In per- 
 forming this service, the lives of Captain 
 Dundas, V.C., and Lieutenant Nugent, two 
 most distinguished officers of the Royal Engi- 
 neers, were sacrificed to a defective fuse a 
 mine which they had prepared exploding before 
 they could get clear. 
 
 The enemy, though they made a last demon- 
 stration on Sia Sang, fell back that night upon 
 the city, disheartened and ripe for flight. Next 
 morning there was not an armed man to be 
 seen ; and the cavalry had a twenty-mile ride 
 in vain pursuit, without firing a shot. 
 
 Thus ended the great Jehad of Mahomed 
 Jan and the Moolah Musk-i-Alam. The curious 
 in such matters might find an interesting 
 experience in applying a sort of moral thermo- 
 
The end of the Jehad. 155 
 
 meter to determine the degree of fervour and 
 religious zeal which animated the humbler ranks. 
 I fear they would seek in vain for the noble 
 dignity of purpose and the pathetic single- 
 mindedness of Peter the Hermit's Crusaders. 
 
 Two circumstances proving the ignorance 
 and credulity of the tribesmen seem worth 
 recording. Judging from the habits of their 
 own leaders, they found it easy to believe 
 that the body of cavalry which broke through 
 their lines under cover of darkness, the night 
 before the attack, consisted of the principal 
 persons in the English army ; and they actually 
 advanced to the attack shouting to our Sepoys 
 'Your generals and colonels have gone out 
 of your lines !' The other is still more gro- 
 tesque, but I had it from an Afghan of rank. 
 It was rumoured the English losses were so 
 heavy, that the defenders on the walls of Sher- 
 pur were represented mainly by goats, with 
 turbans artfully arranged on their heads, figur- 
 ing for soldiers ! It had also been given out 
 
1 5 6 The end of the Jehad. 
 
 which clan would give its attention to the 
 Europeans when the slaughter began, which to 
 the Sikhs, and which to the Ghoorkas. I was 
 somewhat struck by this last piece of fore- 
 thought, for, if things had gone as they hoped 
 it may be noted parenthetically that Mahomed 
 Jan had constructed enough scaling-ladders to 
 carry a first-class fortress some time and 
 arrangement would certainly have been re- 
 quired to cut 1 2,000 throats. 
 
 On the 24th, General Charles Gough's brigade 
 marched into Sherpur in time for more than 
 its share of mud and misery, but too late for 
 anything else. There was here the fuel for a 
 burning controversy. 
 
 It is obviously a matter in which a man 
 should be careful how he throws the first stone. 
 The accusations which were bandied about by 
 partisan members of the Kabul and Khyber 
 Forces, would certainly have been disavowed 
 by their respective Commanders. Difficulties 
 swarmed round General Charles Gough at 
 
The end of the Jehad. 157 
 
 starting. In these days there were no move- 
 able columns at Jellalabad and Gandamak, 
 and, during the hasty move forward, some of 
 General Bright' s posts were more than once 
 completely denuded of their garrisons. More- 
 over, the weak relieving brigade, when concen- 
 trated at Jagdalak, had before it the worst of 
 the road, where enemies were numerous and 
 supplies nil. 
 
 Coming to the day of the 23d, the case is 
 different. All the data are known, and they 
 seem to point to the conclusion that General 
 Charles Gough missed a chance of adding a 
 chaplet to his laurels. If he had pushed for- 
 ward two regiments and a couple of guns to 
 seize the Logar Bridge ; collected his baggage 
 and his transport in Butkak Fort ; and then 
 dashed at Sia Sang; he would have done no 
 more than was justified by the situation. After 
 all, the ' sound of the cannon ' is the surest 
 guide on the battle-field. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE TRANSPORT. 
 
 Trpb 5' &pa ovpyjes kLov clvtuiv' 
 ttoXXcl S'&vavra Kdravra Tr&paura re 56xA" 
 
 r ffkdov. Iliad xxiii. 
 
 He is diligent to give the kine fodder. 
 
 Ecclesiasticus. 
 
 WHEREVER English armies take the field, the 
 old Transport trouble is not slow to raise its 
 unsightly head. After each discreditable break- 
 down the critics rush in, laying about them 
 wildly ; and then things go on, or rather stand 
 still, much as before. 
 
 To treat the question, as raised in Afghan- 
 istan, at all fairly, it is necessary to bear in 
 mind the exceptional difficulties of the under- 
 taking. 
 
The Transport. 159 
 
 The work was carried on in a country where 
 rugged hill-sides and torrent-beds are the chief 
 roads ; where opposite extremes of climate 
 must be endured within the twenty-four hours ; 
 where stones represent the chief produce of the 
 fields ; where munitions of war and the com- 
 missariat stores for 50,000 men were carried 
 almost exclusively on animals' backs ; lastly, 
 where the attendants enlisted to care for the 
 animals were so ignorant, so indifferent, and 
 so brutish, that these attendants were, in fact, 
 the worst enemies of the animals. What is the 
 good of a new pattern saddle if the driver will 
 let his animal march a whole day in torture, 
 rather than trouble himself to shift a strap or 
 a buckle ? 
 
 There was but one remedy which could be 
 applied on the spot an extended scheme of 
 supervision of the Transport animals and drivers 
 by soldiers who had learnt the habits of discipline 
 at least in the ranks. This system was most per- 
 
160 The Transport. 
 
 fectly worked by Colonel Low, who was to the 
 Transport much what General Roberts was to 
 the Army. After the animals had been handed 
 over to the different corps, he contrived to 
 insure that the best care should be taken of 
 them. The result, as every one knows, was that 
 during the summer of 1880 the Kabul Field 
 Force was ready to go anywhere on a moment's 
 notice, and in the autumn actually did accom- 
 plish one of the most arduous marches on record, 
 without a single serious break-down in the 
 Transport arrangements. The strain, it is true, 
 tried the new organisation severely. Cases of 
 carelessness began to crop up. The men 
 small blame to them were inclined to think if 
 they could but get to Kandahar, other things 
 were of small account. But even here there 
 was an example to prove what could be done 
 with extreme 'care and resolute management. 
 One Commanding Officer (Colonel Boswell 
 of the 2d Sikhs) was determined that, come 
 
The Transport. 161 
 
 what might, his men should neither overload 
 nor neglect their mules. The consequence 
 was, that Lieutenant Dunlop, a most conscien- 
 tious and vigorous worker, who was directly in 
 charge, marched into Khelat-I-Ghilzai without 
 one sick beast ; and at Kandahar returned only- 
 three animals out of nearly three hundred to 
 hospital ! The fact that the animals originally 
 issued to this regiment were unusually good 
 detracts very little from such a brilliant feat. 
 
 Coming to the question of administration, 
 men are at all times of more importance than 
 measures in war. Yet the absence of that 
 irreducible minimum of organisation and fore- 
 thought which Englishmen steadily refuse 
 themselves in all departments of public life, 
 will always lead to serious inconvenience. A 
 small nucleus of trained departmental officials, 
 men who have renounced the gold lace and 
 tinsel of the service, and who will not grumble 
 if they are left in charge of important posts on 
 
1 62 The Transport. 
 
 the line of communications, might surely be 
 formed without difficulty in time of peace. For 
 the forward work (where there is generally no 
 lack of adventure), either in the Transport, or, 
 as far as I have been able to observe, in the 
 sister department, the Commissariat, young 
 hands are positively to be preferred to veterans 
 grown grey in the peace routine. All that is 
 required for purposes of expansion is, that the 
 authorities should take the trouble to keep lists 
 of qualified volunteers, both in the commissioned 
 and non-commissioned ranks. A pass exami- 
 nation, to test practical knowledge of farriery 
 and saddlery, would hardly alarm the least 
 sanguine of competitive candidates. If the 
 shuffling of the cards is left to chance, curious 
 results will crop up at times. When Jellalabad 
 was the most advanced post on the Khyber 
 side, the whole work of the Transport depart- 
 ment fell for a time on the shoulders of a 
 youngster with two years' service and no special 
 
The Transport, 163 
 
 experience at all. He was a clever fellow ; but 
 the incessant rain of correspondence, requisi- 
 tions, forage contracts, demands for money, 
 memos, from every officer in the station, from 
 the General downwards, nearly beat him to the 
 earth. He used to sit at times, he afterwards 
 told me, with his head in his hands, wondering 
 how soon he would go mad. 
 
 The work was never showy, even when it was 
 best done ; but it had its own compensations. 
 The pleasantest part of it was that it brought 
 you amongst the animals. No doubt, unhappy 
 beasts of burden, with spirit and character 
 crushed out of them in the ceaseless round of 
 daily toil, are but sorry specimens of their race. 
 But there are glimpses of Nature to be caught 
 even in the dullest prison-house. 
 
 Feeding-hour is the time to visit your lines. 
 There is something refreshing in the undisguised 
 delight of animals in eating : they are not 
 ashamed, as Walt Whitman says. To see a 
 
164 The Transport. 
 
 line of ponies when the feed-trumpet sounds is 
 like watching the wind stirring in a grove of 
 trees. Ten minutes later, the long row of 
 sloping contented quarters, with perhaps one 
 indignant head raised in the air, tells its own 
 tale with dumb eloquence. 
 
 Camels are perhaps the most irritating, as 
 they are the most imperturbable, of brutes. On 
 the march it is impossible to disturb their grave, 
 deliberate gait ; and they will wear an air of 
 imbecile and abstracted self-satisfaction under 
 the most wretched circumstances. In the depth 
 of winter I once timed a camel standing up to 
 the knees in ice-cold water, with one great 
 absurd padded foot in the air, quite undecided, 
 and apparently indifferent as to what he should 
 do next. Three minutes elapsed before he 
 settled to take a step forward. 
 
 In camp, camels are usually assembled kneel- 
 ing in circles with their heads inwards. At 
 feeding-time they are all anxiety, stretching out 
 
The Transport. 165 
 
 their long necks restlessly, and giving vent to a 
 deep, uneasy growling. Every now and then 
 a gaunt figure rises excitedly, and looms apart, 
 till it is driven with blows into the ring again. 
 When their dole of grain has actually been 
 placed before them, it is pitiful to see the poor 
 famished brutes sweep up their whole meal with 
 their great loose lips in a few gulps. 
 
 Mules are easier to get on with, and less 
 eccentric in their habits. We had some sleek- 
 coated, really beautiful animals, that would 
 trip along under any fair load, as daintily as 
 a fine lady. A mule's ears, flapping absurdly 
 backwards and forwards, or pointing fixedly 
 towards you, with portentous gravity, seem 
 made to turn the laugh against the creature. 
 But observing my favourites closely, I fancied 
 I discovered a reflective look in their eyes, 
 redeeming their character for shrewdness. As 
 justly suspicious of two-legged strangers as 
 cats, if they found you meant them well, they 
 
1 66 The Transport. 
 
 would recognise you with pleasure, and receive 
 your advances graciously. 
 
 Later on we had troops of little grey donkeys. 
 Such workers were never seen : I defy you to 
 treat them with disrespect. It was not good on 
 that last terrible march to see the poor, tiny, 
 patient neddies come staggering in, their deli- 
 cate little shanks hardly able to support two 
 great eighty-pound bags of flour. But alas I 
 it was part of the horror of war in a semi- 
 barbarous country like Afghanistan, that the 
 living flesh and blood of animals had often to 
 be used up as remorselessly as so much shoe- 
 leather. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE KHYBER LINE. 
 
 Far out, kindled by each other, 
 Shining hills on hills arise. 
 
 Mrs. Browning. 
 
 Afghanistan is not the country for a nervous 
 traveller. The grass did not grow under the 
 feet of an officer in the Kabul Transport. 
 Indeed, I question . if at any time I pitched 
 my tent or tethered my horses for ten days 
 together in the same place : yet I cannot 
 remember ever sleeping in a post where an 
 overwhelming attack was not supposed to be 
 impending. The truth is, that our presence in 
 their borders kept every tribe we came near 
 
1 68 The Khyber Line. 
 
 in a state of smouldering excitement, and fuel 
 was never wanting to keep the fires of their 
 resentment alive. The 'friendly' country-folk 
 you met walking about might have hesitated 
 whether to cut your throat first or your purse- 
 strings. That they would have preferred to 
 do both, if the opportunity offered, was certain. 
 One ended by getting used to it ; but it was 
 not a reassuring state of affairs. 
 
 Critics who perceived one-half of the truth 
 only were not slow to suggest that the invading 
 army should have been doubled. Irrefutable 
 proof, however, of the sufficiency of the force 
 employed is to be found by turning to the 
 record of facts. For two years we held three 
 long lines of communication, with military 
 posts every ten miles. Yet the mountaineers 
 were not equal to organising a single successful 
 attack of any importance upon one English 
 garrison or escort. Ninety-nine times out of 
 a hundred, the threatening thousands, after 
 
The Khyber Line. 169 
 
 playing the game of brag with an incalculable 
 amount of assurance, quietly dispersed to their 
 homes, perhaps murdering a few miserable am- 
 bulance-bearers on the road. The hundredth, 
 and last time, when the blow really fell, the 
 moment was probably selected in obedience 
 to some contemptible omen of superstition, 
 or some unaccountable spasm of rage, demon- 
 strably never in accordance with any rational 
 plan of hostilities. 
 
 The case of Fort Batteye, in the spring of 
 1880, is a perfect instance of this incapacity. 
 The attack was timed to fall, not when one of 
 the large convoys of transport animals (the loss 
 of which would have crippled a brigade) was 
 passing up to the front, but one night when the 
 garrison chanced to have been almost doubled. 
 The only other attempt upon a post that occurs 
 to me was the attack upon Chapri, in the 
 Kurum Valley, which resulted in the death 
 of Lieutenant Wood of the Transport; and 
 
1 70 The Khyber Line. 
 
 beyond this, in no other gain, small or great, 
 to the assailants. 
 
 Fully to account for the impotence of such a 
 large hostile population, it must be remembered 
 that if there are plenty of the best rifles in 
 Afghanistan, as our losses in all the regular 
 engagements prove, any one tribe can muster 
 but few soldiers well armed according to 
 modern standards. The tables have been 
 turned since the days when the deadly jezails 
 used to harass our men, who were powerless to 
 reply. The change is dead against all accepted 
 rules of tactics in Afghanistan. If a Pathan 
 can crouch behind a rock and shoot you safely, 
 he enjoys himself amazingly ; but he hates risk, 
 and if there is any chance of your shooting him 
 instead, the sport is entirely spoiled in his eyes. 
 I have heard men of much frontier experience 
 declare it is almost enough to build a wall 
 round a post without putting a man behind it ! 
 
 There are tracts of grand scenery between 
 
The Khyber Line. 1 7 1 
 
 Peshawur and Kabul, and some landmarks to 
 be remembered for a lifetime. About eighteen 
 miles from Peshawur is Ali Musjid, a wild eyrie, 
 perched on an insulated inaccessible mass of 
 rock, with a stream of clear water washing its 
 base. From this point the Khyber, monarch of 
 passes, winds its way royally through a majestic 
 avenue of mountains 
 
 ' Mountains that like giants stand 
 To sentinel enchanted land.' 
 
 Lundi Kotal, an unapproachable little outpost 
 surrounded by precipices, marks the highest 
 point about half-way through the Pass. Then 
 the road is cut out of the face of the hill for a 
 couple of miles, after which it descends gradu- 
 ally to the level of the Kabul river at Dakka. 
 Once in the Jellalabad valley it is all plain 
 sailing till you reach Jagdalak, where convoys 
 are again apt to be in difficulties. 
 
 A little off the beaten track is the Purra- 
 durrah, a rift in the mountain flank, where 
 
172 The Khyber Line. 
 
 stupendous cliffs on either side rise sheer, a 
 few feet apart, to an unknown height. If the 
 hapless fugitives of the 1 842 had really struggled 
 through this terrific passage, they might well 
 have fancied, and almost prayed, that the hills 
 would fall upon them, and make them a tomb 
 for ever. 
 
 Last of all there is the Lataband Pass, with 
 a memorable prospect from its crest. South, 
 barren plateaus and peaks seem to stretch 
 away above the clouds to the Shutargardan, 
 one summit in the middle distance giving a 
 conception of loftiness and remoteness com- 
 bined, that would make the despair of an 
 artist ; West, you get your first glimpse of the 
 famous Bala Hissar ; North, there is an abrupt 
 mountain wall and a deep, unexplored gorge 
 where the Kabul river has forced its gloomy 
 passage ; East, low ridges, regularly smoothed 
 and rounded, roll away for miles like the 
 billows of a petrified sea, and beyond there . is 
 
The Khyber Line. 173 
 
 a distant vista of the passes leading to India, 
 valley opening into valley in interminable suc- 
 cession. 
 
 It is written that military roads shall not lie 
 in pleasant places. To tell truth, a camp, with 
 its trampling and countermarching, would make 
 a desert of Eden in a week. Though I travelled 
 along the whole line, from Jumrood to Lata- 
 band, twice, I have pleasant recollections of 
 only two halting-places Jellalabad, for its fine 
 trees and well-shaded gardens ; and Fort Roza- 
 bad, which did not altogether disgrace its soft- 
 sounding name. Politicals, and other men more 
 fortunate than their neighbours, tell you there 
 are beautiful valleys hidden away in the flanks 
 of the Saved Koh and elsewhere. But most of 
 the posts were low, mean-looking, dusty enclo- 
 sures mere magnified commissariat flour-bags, 
 dropped by the way for the use of all travellers ; 
 and the surrounding country was rich in sand 
 and stones, as Siberia or the Great Desert. 
 
1 74 The Khyber Line. 
 
 The life was sober, almost sombre, of hue ; 
 even the military record did not escape the 
 general dulness note, by way of exception, 
 General Charles Gough's brilliant action at 
 Futteahbad, which closed the first campaign. 
 
 What memories there were to bear away 
 were heavy with melancholy. Pharaoh and his 
 Egyptians were not worse tormented than the 
 Khyber army. Every evil pursued it, from the 
 plague of the flies to the horrors of that terrible 
 death-march in 1879, when men lay sweltering 
 in their tents with the thermometer at 120 , 
 and cholera wasted whole regiments to mere 
 skeletons. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE SECOND FIGHT AT CHARASSIA. 
 
 Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill. 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 The olive-branch of peace, despite the care of 
 the Politicals, sunning it with their smiles and 
 watering it with their tears, was slow to put 
 forth shoots in Afghanistan. Even the news of 
 General Stewart's crushing victory at Ahmed 
 Kheyl did little towards keeping things quiet 
 at Kabul. 
 
 In the latter half of April a thousand men 
 and a couple of guns were sent out to the Logar 
 Valley, to keep the road open for supplies, and 
 draw off some of the tribes who were threaten- 
 
i j6 The second fight at Charassia. 
 
 ing General Ross's column of observation at 
 Zaidabad. 
 
 This second object was so effectually attained 
 that on the 25th we awoke to find ourselves 
 nearly surrounded by the enemy, at a distance 
 of only eight miles from Kabul. The action 
 that followed is worth recounting. Colonel 
 Jenkyns's dispositions, full of caution no less 
 than of determination, might serve as a model 
 of frontier tactics. There could be no better 
 example of how to handle a small force in the 
 face of heavy odds. 
 
 We were encamped on very nearly the same 
 ground as General Roberts had occupied on the 
 5 th of October, only we stood with our backs 
 instead of our faces to the city. Stretching 
 along our right and right rear were the village 
 and vineyards of Charassia, and beyond these the 
 interminable hills ; straight to our front lay the 
 road through the valley, and on our left again 
 ranges of hills. There had been rumours afloat 
 
The second fight at Charassta. 177 
 
 of gatherings of tribesmen, so Colonel Jenkyns 
 was early astir. About daybreak the Guides 
 fell in quietly by companies, and a piquet with 
 a strong support moved out, as if to occupy a 
 peak about a mile above our camp, which we 
 had always held by day as a signalling station. 
 Presently the heavy report of the native jezail 
 broke upon the still morning air, and the dawn- 
 ing light revealed the figures of the Hill-men, 
 with their accustomed banners sharply picked 
 out against the sky-line. Colonel Jenkyns had 
 forced the enemy's hand, and deprived them of 
 all hope of surprising the camp. The advantage 
 thus gained was turned to account swiftly and 
 noiselessly. Not a single bugle was allowed to 
 bray forth its alarms, but the tents were struck 
 and the baggage-animals loaded up in a trice. 
 The decks, so to speak, were now cleared for 
 action ; and our little force of a thousand men 
 was ready for attack or for defence. We were 
 
 not long left in suspense as to which attitude to 
 M 
 
1 78 The second fight at C haras sia. 
 
 assume. The Hill-men, first observed on the 
 peak in front, spread along the ridges and 
 down the slopes, keeping up a brisk fire, while 
 fresh bands, probably summoned from a dis- 
 tance, were seen moving down the valley and 
 threatening our right flank. Colonel Jenkyns 
 took in the situation at a glance. In rear of our 
 camp, at a distance of some 600 yards, lay a low 
 rounded mount, well detached from the main 
 range. This mount naturally suggested itself 
 as a rallying-point in case of extremity, and 
 a company of Highlanders, under Captain 
 Napier, was at once sent off to crown it. 
 Parties of the Guides were also despatched to 
 hold three walled enclosures, one lying under 
 the hill and two covering our right flank. The 
 remaining companies of infantry doubled for- 
 ward and found cover among the irrigation 
 banks and ditches. The thin extended fighting 
 line had the shape of a great fan, two com- 
 panies held in reserve representing the handle. 
 
The second fight at Charassia. 179 
 
 Meantime, without any appearance of haste, the 
 baggage-animals had been moved off under 
 the lee of the mount. Out of some 700 animals, 
 there were only three or four trifling casualties 
 to prove that the movement had been decided 
 upon wisely and in time. On our late camp- 
 ing-ground were the two Horse Artillery guns, 
 and behind them the Guides Cavalry, pacing 
 patiently backwards and forwards, on the watch 
 for a chance to charge. 
 
 Such was the position of affairs when the 
 enemy's attack developed, and the bullets 
 began to fly about, the sharp spit of the 
 Sniders and the wheezy moan of the Enfields 
 betraying the presence, in his ranks, of soldiers 
 well trained and armed. On our side, during 
 the six hours of resistance that followed before 
 help arrived from Kabul, there was little shift- 
 ing, and no giving up of ground. Woodhouse, 
 however, had to move his guns back two 
 hundred yards after losing a couple of his 
 
1 80 The second fight at C haras sia. 
 
 horses. Similarly the Guides Cavalry were 
 ordered to retire from their unpleasantly ex- 
 posed position, when it became clear that our 
 infantry were holding their own in front. The 
 Afghan attack presented all the peculiar merits, 
 with the accompanying defects, of an irregular 
 style of fighting. As if by magic, a crop of 
 flags, red and white, sprang up to right and 
 to left of us. Some of the brave standard- 
 bearers crept up to within two hundred yards 
 of our men ; and the rank and file skirmished 
 round us in their usual admirable fashion, 
 offering no mark for artillery, and very little 
 for riflemen. But the absence of discipline 
 and of any settled plan of action was as 
 conspicuous as ever. Bands of men were 
 seen hurrying to and fro, uncertain which way 
 to turn. Hundreds more never left the hills, 
 employing all their energies in the beating 
 of drums and cheering on of their comrades 
 down below. At one moment they rose up all 
 
The second fight at Charassia. 1 8 1 
 
 round with a shout, and threatened to break 
 over us like a great wave. Men felt for their 
 pistols, and instinctively tightened their grip on 
 their swords ; but it turned out that even the 
 Ghazis down below were in no hurry to face 
 the bayonets of our slender fighting line ; and 
 the human froth above subsided as quickly as 
 it had risen. 
 
 About noon the promised help from Kabul 
 arrived, and after much watching we caught 
 sight of the head of Macpherson's column 
 debouching from the Sang-i-Newashta Pass. 
 The first troops to come up the 2d Ghoorkas 
 were ordered to clear the enemy from our 
 right. To see them settle to their work was 
 a sight for a king's birthday. The elan of 
 these minikin soldiers, as they dashed at the 
 enemy, was not more notable than the steadi- 
 ness with which they kept together and poured 
 in their death-dealing volleys. Then the Guides 
 on the left, backed up by the 45th Sikhs, drove 
 
1 82 The second fight at Charassza. 
 
 the enemy off the peak they had held, so that 
 with one rush we had won all his positions. 
 Finally, when the cavalry rode out in pursuit, 
 Woodhouse was not a whit behind. Galloping 
 forward about a mile with his two guns, he 
 completed the rout of the enemy with four 
 parting shells dropt clean in their midst, as 
 they were tailing over a distant range of hills. 
 The contrast between this disciplined onslaught 
 and the desultory fighting that had been going 
 on was a trifle startling. I like to imagine 
 the disgust of the Afghan leaders, who had 
 confidently expected to swallow us up when 
 darkness came on. 
 
 The cavalry cut down a score or more of 
 fugitives in the plain. We counted our losses 
 in this brilliant little affair by tens the enemy, 
 as we afterwards learned, by hundreds. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SUMMERING THE TROOPS. 
 
 / went down into the garden of nuts to see 
 the fruits of the valley, and to see whether 
 the vine flourished, and the pomegranates 
 budded. 
 
 Song of Solomon. 
 
 From huge rectangular Sherpur, half-barrack, 
 half-warehouse, we looked out many a time with 
 longing on the lofty Pughman range. Around 
 its cool peaks the grey mists gather, and the 
 snow glistens in the hollows, and the light 
 and shade shift from the rosy morning to the 
 violet-tinted evening all through the seasons, 
 and verdant valleys, that penetrate its base 
 like narrow creeks, lure explorers with tempting 
 invitations. 
 
 I had like enough missed visiting our Hes- 
 
1 84 Summering the Troops. 
 
 peria altogether ; but I chanced to be attached 
 to a brigade that was ordered out from Kabul 
 in June, in quest of nothing more poetical than 
 food for men and forage for animals. When 
 we took our way past the cool white slabs of 
 Baber's tomb, green luxuriant growths seemed 
 to spread over the Chardeh Valley like a magical 
 carpet ; and in the Koh-Daman country beyond 
 the year was at its best. 
 
 In that delectable land there is a summer of 
 bright holidays to be spent in the saddle or 
 on foot. In the morning the fields lie open 
 before you ; the air is filled with the crushed- 
 out sweetness of peppermint and wild lavender; 
 and the country folks are reaping a golden 
 harvest thus early. Here and there fruit- 
 trees spring up right amongst the corn, or 
 a patch of brilliant green betrays the pre- 
 sence of a walled vineyard. As the sun grows 
 hotter, there are the narrowest and most 
 tempting of country lanes winding through 
 
Summering the Troops. 185 
 
 the shade, with sudden openings upon terraced 
 gardens, or perhaps upon a village green. 
 Through the turf a clear streamlet steals along, 
 and beneath the trees the peasant women are 
 moving up and down at a primitive loom, with 
 their lords and masters stretched lazily beside 
 them. Then there are the orchards, like silvan 
 temples, with sturdy trunks of trees for pillars, 
 and chequered light and shadow for pavement, 
 and tremulous green leaves with a background 
 of azure for canopy overhead. For music, the 
 wandering airs among the tree-tops bear down 
 the ceaseless cooing of the doves, till you fancy 
 you have chanced upon a grove beloved of the 
 Immortals, and almost watch for some strange 
 Venus, escaped long ago from the ruins of 
 Greece, to glide amorously towards you. 
 
 Go where we would, there was a profusion 
 of fruit within reach. Mulberry-trees were as 
 common as chestnuts in England, laden in 
 season with white wax-like berries, each con- 
 
186 Summering the Troops. 
 
 taining a drop of some sweet unsatisfying 
 essence like the honey you suck from clover, 
 or with imperial fruit streaming with tell-tale 
 purple juice. Then there were the sun-dyed 
 apricots, and the peaches, and the milky nuts, 
 and the little rosy apples, and the promise of a 
 full harvest of grapes and melons. Of all these 
 we ate our fill, knowing we were robbing no 
 man in that generous southern land, where 
 Nature does not teach her children to be 
 niggard of her gifts ; where the blue depths 
 of heaven are open, and the life-giving sunlight 
 quivers upon forest and field. 
 
 To the intense splendour of the days suc- 
 ceeded the lustrous reign of the moon. Her 
 fair unearthly light invested the hill-sides with 
 new mysteries of shape and shadow, and 
 streamed across the valley, silvering all the 
 leaves, and enchasing the homeliest objects. 
 The mellow exhalations of night, and the suave 
 airs with their caressing touch, seemed one 
 
Summering the Troops. 1 8 7 
 
 prolonged invitation to reverie. But, alas ! joy 
 that is not reflected in loved eyes never seems 
 without flaw, and the miseries which surprise 
 the lonely find a favourite ambush in a beau- 
 tiful scene, even using as a treacherous ally 
 the indolent spirit which is the genius of the 
 place. 
 
(Campaign lit 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE LESSON OF MAIWAND. 
 
 Admirals, extolVdfor standing still, 
 Or doing nothing with a deal of skill'; 
 Generals, who will not conquer when they may, 
 Firm friends to peace, to pleasure, andgoodpay. 
 
 Cowper. 
 
 The defeat which called General Roberts into 
 the field for the third time is without parallel 
 in English military history in the East. The 
 story of it is cruel reading. If it is good to 
 write or to speak of at all, it. is not to indulge 
 in illogical whining, but to search rigorously 
 for the cause of the disaster. When the present 
 Quartermaster-General of the army, who com- 
 bines all the ardour of a Reformer with the 
 technical skill of an expert, has publicly stated 
 
192 The Lesson of Maiwand. 
 
 that the army has entered upon a dangerous 
 stage of transition, when all may depend on 
 the stamp which the new mould receives, it is 
 hardly the time to mince matters fine enough 
 to spare all personal susceptibilities. 
 
 The advance on the Helmand began under 
 bad auspices. Much stress need not be laid 
 upon the fact that reinforcements were applied 
 for both by General Primrose and his Lieu- 
 tenant. The despatches of English Generals 
 might not seldom be made up of such applica- 
 tions ; and the knowledge that if one man 
 refuses to take a brigade to the devil, a dozen 
 are ready to accept his place, is a most healthy 
 stimulus to the service. But the instructions 
 which sent General Burrows half-way to meet 
 his enemy, and then forced him to halt and 
 appear to hesitate, have another significance. 
 There are two ways of treating risings in 
 Afghanistan : to stamp out the flames where- 
 ever they appear, or to wait coolly to see if 
 
The Lesson of Maiwand. 193 
 
 they will ever reach you. Either course, fol- 
 lowed out with the persistence and indifference 
 of fate, will probably cow Asiatics into submis- 
 sion. To order a Commander not to advance 
 is to deprive him of his best weapon. 
 
 Unhappily if General Burrows's responsibility 
 can be lightened here, its load is grievous enough 
 in the end. For once, the critics have undis- 
 puted possession of the field. It could hardly 
 be maintained that the reconnaissances before 
 the defeat were boldly conceived and vigorously 
 carried out ; or, when the column stumbled on 
 the enemy at Maiwand, that the position was 
 turned to good account, either for attack or for 
 defence. Comparisons do not improve the case. 
 When General Burrows is described forming 
 up his men in the old-fashioned line of battle, 
 I cannot help thinking of Colonel Jenkyns at 
 Charassia, shaking out his little force, trusting 
 to a few good rifles to cover all gaps in his 
 
 line, yet never leaving himself without a small 
 
 N 
 
194 The Lesson of Maiwand. 
 
 reserve. It was not Ayoub's artillery that won 
 him the battle, but the Ghazis, who got our 
 men in their toils, and then delivered their 
 terrible charge. 
 
 There is one redeeming feature in the affair 
 the unflinching courage shown by the soldiers 
 concerned, from the unfortunate General down- 
 wards. If there were some exceptions to 
 this noble conduct, I suppose that unalloyed 
 metal is not to be found in the world, and 
 gold will always separate from dross in the 
 furnace. The conduct of the little company of 
 Sappers, who died fighting to a man ; of the 
 66th, who rallied round their colours, and kept 
 off the enemy till the last cartridge was gone ; 
 of the gunners who closed that terrible retreat so 
 patiently is beyond all praise of mere words. 
 It is better to admit at once that soldiers 
 who are well officered and led do not refuse 
 to fight the case of a sudden panic being 
 excepted. There is a difference in the fighting 
 
The Lesson of Maiwand. 195 
 
 power of the races of Northern and Southern 
 India a difference enough shown by the resist- 
 ance they were able respectively to offer un- 
 aided to the advance of English armies. But 
 under good English officers they have all done, 
 and will do again, the work of a soldier, which, 
 it cannot too often be repeated, is distinct from 
 the work of a hero. 
 
 What followed at Kandahar, the precipi- 
 tate flight to the Fort, and abandonment of 
 thousands of pounds' worth of property lying 
 under the muzzles of his guns, a week before 
 the victorious Ayoub appeared, the state of 
 depression and demoralisation that fell on the 
 troops, the ' mad and miserable ' sortie, cannot 
 
 here be discussed. 
 
 9 $ $ * * 
 
 When General Primrose published his story, 
 and the official censure fell on him as much 
 for what was omitted as for what was told, I 
 began to understand why I had never been 
 
196 The Lesson of Maiwand. 
 
 able to listen quietly to men sneering at a 
 stirring order, or picking holes in a graphic 
 despatch. After all, if a soldier cannot con- 
 ceive of a great action, it is improbable that 
 he will ever perform one. 
 
 The teaching of most of our recent disasters 
 is the same. Nothing short of the tests of 
 actual warfare will unmistakeably determine 
 capacity for command ; yet for the higher 
 grades, selection honestly worked is the only 
 safeguard possible. 1 Even in Germany, where 
 length of pedigree is commoner than length 
 of purse, the present standard of efficiency 
 could hardly be kept up, if appointments and 
 promotions were the recognised prizes of family 
 interest and longevity : in England, where the 
 opportunity, and perhaps the inclination, to 
 lead an easy life belong to many, we can ill 
 afford to drop the spur of competition. It is 
 
 1 Sir George Colley, though over-sanguine and overmatched, 
 was certainly able. 
 
The Lesson of Maiwand. 197 
 
 not the pay, though that is poor enough, so 
 much as the fear of old age creeping up before 
 success, that repels the active and ambitious. 
 
 There lies the greater question behind : Who 
 is to call upon the people to give us a real 
 army, and make England safe for ever ? When 
 are we to cease from tinkering and tampering 
 with the surface of things ? The answer cannot 
 long be delayed, in spite of our incessant 
 nominal changes. In Asia we must soon stand 
 face to face with a great continental neighbour. 
 Ma}' we not recall when it is too late Sir 
 Frederick Roberts's warning advice to keep 
 our boy-soldiers at home, and send out men 
 to fight our battles in India ! T 
 
 1 Vide General Roberts's" speech at the Lord Mayor's 
 Banquet, 14th February 188 1. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE MARCH. 
 
 The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense 
 brigades press on ; 
 
 Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun the dust- 
 covered men 
 In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the 
 ground, Walt Whitman. 
 
 On the 8th of August 1880 General Roberts 
 started on the march that will be remembered 
 when every other incident of the second Afghan 
 War has faded out of history. The dangers 
 and difficulties of the undertaking were nowhere 
 better understood than in Kabul. But the 
 spirit of confidence, which animated the picked 
 force that took part in the expedition, was 
 not slow to spread within the sphere of General 
 Roberts's personal influence. 
 
The March. 199 
 
 In England, the wisdom and the success of 
 the enterprise were held to be doubtful ; in 
 Kabul speculation was confined to the chances 
 of unavoidable delays which might occur in its 
 execution. 
 
 It was hard work from the first. But the 
 earliest stage the march divides itself naturally 
 into three was the least trying. Men and 
 animals were fresh, comparatively speaking 
 that is, for it is not the least notable part of 
 this forced march of 300 miles that it was 
 undertaken at the end of an arduous and pro- 
 tracted campaign. As for surroundings, the 
 banks of the Logar are a very Eden when 
 compared with the stony desert that lies be- 
 yond Ghazni. The interminable defiling of the 
 baggage-animals through the narrow country 
 lanes continued from morning till night ; but 
 at least there was no lack of green trees and 
 running water, and well-shaded resting-places. 
 The instinctive longing of all travellers for such 
 
200 The March. 
 
 pleasant variations in the landscape has its 
 own practical meaning for the Commissariat 
 department ; short rations were unknown, and 
 even the animals were in clover. 
 
 There was a regular block at the Tanji War- 
 dak. It took two days to get the division 
 either through the Pass or over the Kotal. 
 But the dead pull did not make itself felt till 
 we left Zaidabad in the Maidan Valley. 
 
 From this point we said good-bye to all 
 trees and verdure of every kind. Time seemed 
 to resolve itself into an endless, scorching Indian 
 day. Man and beast struggled on as if driven 
 by an implacable fate. Under foot were stone 
 and sand and choking dust ; on either hand 
 a barren mountain wall, neither closing in nor 
 opening out ; and above and below and all 
 around, the dead mid-day glare seeming to dry 
 up the marrow in your bones and make your 
 soul faint within you. 
 
 If shadows could have been made saleable, 
 
The March. 201 
 
 and rolled up in a commodious fashion, they 
 would have fetched any price. Even the patch 
 of shade under a horse's girth would have been 
 a marketable object. I remember one day 
 coming upon a ravine, where it was just possible 
 to get a little shelter by sitting bolt upright 
 against a bank of moist clay. An English 
 officer, a little donkey, and a low-caste native 
 had taken refuge there. I took my place 
 among them with satisfaction. 
 
 The amount of dirt it was possible to 
 carry about on your person was positively 
 startling. Getting into camp, I have a distinct 
 recollection of often staring with wild blood- 
 shot eyes at myself, and finding my features 
 coated with dust past recognition. But the 
 worst torment that pursued us was unquench- 
 able thirst. Lips and throat were parched 
 beyond the power of beakers of water to 
 cool ; and Tantalus-like dreams of impossible 
 draughts of ruby-coloured claret-cup, or amber 
 
202 The March. 
 
 cider, used to haunt my imagination till I 
 thought I must drink something or perish. 
 
 In such extremity, I remember asking a 
 Sepoy to lend me his cup to draw some muddy 
 brown water from a little stream. He refused 
 me with a Pharisaic shake of the head. I 
 thought I had never seen a more stupidly 
 brutal bigot. I think I should have struck him 
 but for very shame. 
 
 On the march the necessity of sending our 
 parties for forage and supplies, immediately 
 on arrival in camp, pressed heavily on regi- 
 mental officers. Rise when we would, the 
 baggage was never fairly under way before 
 daylight ; nor the rear-guard through with its 
 heart-breaking task till any hour of the after- 
 noon or evening. Half the labour consisted in 
 picking up and bringing along camp-followers 
 with suicidal tendencies strongly developed. 
 Old Indians declare, even during more severe 
 marches with small parties in India, that they 
 
The March. 203 
 
 have never seen anything like this collapse of 
 native followers. The explanation is that the 
 unpopularity of service in Afghanistan made it 
 necessary, in the first instance, to engage poor 
 recruits, whose constitutions were already shat- 
 tered by the hardships of the winter campaign. 
 But the health and spirit of the troops were 
 certainly wonderful. Considering the quantity 
 of unripe fruit and filthy-looking water swal- 
 lowed by Sepoys and Englishmen indiscrimi- 
 nately, it was a standing subject of surprise to 
 me that we were not smitten with some epi- 
 demic, or at least some dangerous sickness. If 
 this had happened, or if we had come in for 
 much fighting on the way, we should have been 
 terribly hampered. As it was, the unlucky 
 doctors were wellnigh distracted with the diffi- 
 culty of providing carriage for their patients. 
 There might be 30 or 40, in one case 90, men 
 from one regiment unable to march ; but of 
 these the vast majority only wanted a day's 
 
204 The March. 
 
 rest to take their place in the fighting line. 
 On the way one Englishman and, I think, 
 two natives deliberately destroyed themselves, 
 thinking life not worth having at the price. 
 
 The strain on the departments also was 
 inevitably severe. Under Major Badcock's able 
 management, the Commissariat, with perhaps 
 some inconsiderable exceptions, was able to 
 comply with all demands in a fashion that sur- 
 prised those who had taken part in General 
 Stewart's march at a more unfavourable season ; 
 and the waving fields of Indian corn, with its 
 feathery crests, inviting the sickles of our 
 grass-cutters at each encamping-ground, were 
 a godsend to the animals. Colonel Low, Chief 
 Director of Transport, left Kabul with over 
 3000 mules and ponies, and filled up the gaps 
 in the ranks ingeniously by purchase and im- 
 pressment on the march. Casualties were 
 heavy, but on a march like this the only 
 subject for surprise is that the supplies and 
 
The March. 205 
 
 necessaries for an army of 10,000 men, with 
 accompanying followers, should have been con- 
 veyed on pack-animals' backs over 300 miles 
 of such country in three weeks with so insigni- 
 ficant a loss of property. 
 
 Ghazni was sighted in a week. But we had 
 only time to note the square, massive look of 
 its walls, and the proximity ludicrous to 
 modern artillerymen of some low heights 
 behind the city. Conspicuous, too, were the 
 dark pillars that mark the site of Mahmoud's 
 Palace. Next day we marched twenty-three 
 miles, right past the field of Ahmed Kheyi. 
 Again there was only too little time for in- 
 teresting digressions ; but the best possible 
 testimony to the heavy punishment recently 
 inflicted on the tribes was the absence of all 
 opposition during our progress through this 
 the most warlike and fanatical district in the 
 country. 
 
 With reveille sounding daily at 1 A.M., a 
 
206 The March. 
 
 snatch of three hours' sleep got to seem little 
 better than a feverish dream ; and a real night's 
 rest at Khelat-i-Ghilzai was a priceless boon. 
 The garrison of that curious little camp of 
 refuge, perched high above the surrounding 
 country, had not been molested, and joined us 
 intact. 
 
 It was a disappointment not to have even a 
 brush with Ayoub's cavalry ; but from this 
 point onwards there was no lack of rumours 
 to enliven the road. We advanced by shorter 
 marches too, with the exception of one stretch 
 of thirty miles, accomplished by the cavalry in 
 excellent form. One day Ayoub was reported 
 to have bolted, and the anathemas in camp 
 were both loud and deep. On the next we 
 were told a picked force was to cross into the 
 Argandab in hot pursuit, to intercept the 
 enemy's guns. Then there came a day's halt 
 within striking distance of Kandahar, and finally 
 the order to move straight ahead as originally 
 
The March. 207 
 
 intended. Up to the last it was difficult to 
 believe Ayoub would stake all he had won, 
 including the reputation of the conqueror of 
 the English, which no one could have taken 
 from him, on such a desperate chance as a 
 pitched battle. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE VICTORY. 
 
 Gi'e me the plaid, and the tartan trews, 
 A plea that 'sjust, a chief in the van 
 
 To blink wi' his e'e, and cry ' On wi' me ! ' 
 Then turn the blue bonnet wha can, wha can / 
 Scottish Song. 
 
 On the 31st of August the goal of all our toils 
 was reached. Kandahar is a perfect example 
 of a walled town, square and compact, without 
 so much as 'an outhouse or a garden straggling 
 beyond its defences. Looking down from the 
 upper citadel on the gaily-coloured uniforms, 
 the sentries and the big guns, the commissariat 
 magazines, and all the stir and brave show of 
 warlike preparation, it was difficult to believe 
 that any semi-organised hordes of Afghans 
 
J ^uZ 
 
The Victory. 209 
 
 had lately been surging round its ramparts,, 
 and were even now insulting us with their 
 presence only a few miles off. From the day 
 we left Khelat-i-Ghilzai, the General's sole pre- 
 occupation was to force Ayoub to have it out 
 somehow ; as he caught sight of the enemy's 
 piquets extending from the Golden Mine Pass 
 westward to Babar Wali and beyond, he may 
 well have felt that his enemy had been deli- 
 vered into his hand. 
 
 Unlike the northern capital, Kandahar does 
 not lie in the shadow of lofty hills ; but about 
 three miles off, from the north, westward, to 
 the south, there runs a bare serrated range, 
 with many a fantastic peak and clearly-cut 
 block showing against the sky-line. Behind 
 this screen Ayoub had posted himself. His 
 position might be approached by the Golden 
 Mine and Baba Wali Passes : but the first of 
 these was difficult of access, and the second 
 was strongly held with artillery. Further west, 
 
210 The Victory. 
 
 however, there is a great gap in the hills, where 
 the Kandahar plain narrows and runs into the 
 Argandab Valley. To force a passage in this 
 direction, through thickly sown villages and 
 gardens and vineyards, was no child's play. 
 Without masses of well-trained infantry the 
 attempt could not have been made at all. But 
 once level with the hills, Ayoub's flank was 
 laid bare, and his line of retreat might be 
 threatened with cavalry. Once -more General 
 Roberts gave the first place to this considera- 
 tion in his plan of attack, and again its peculiar 
 supremacy in Asiatic warfare was made evident. 
 About a mile west of the city stood the 
 cantonments, and half a mile beyond them a 
 low ridge of rock called Picket Hill, directly 
 barring the way to the Argandab Valley. With 
 his usual determination the General decided to 
 seize this position on the day of his arrival, 
 and further push a reconnaissance boldly in 
 the line of the intended attack. The result 
 
The Victory. 2 1 1 
 
 was some smart righting for the 3d Brigade, 
 which was leading. The Ghazis came on again 
 and again in their blind rage, but the 4th 
 Ghoorkas, one of the finest of Indian regiments, 
 gave them a bitter taste of their mettle. The 
 Henry-Martini bullets whizzing about on all 
 sides proved we had in front of us an enemy- 
 better armed than any we had yet met ; and 
 some half-a-dozen shells from our own captured 
 nine-pounder fell on the roofs of the canton- 
 ment, and even right into camp. But no one 
 was hit, and no one seemed much surprised. 
 ' How like the Paiwar Kotal ! ' exclaimed one 
 old campaigner ; and it seemed much as if he 
 had said, ' What a good omen ! ' 
 
 During the night the piquets of the 3d 
 Brigade were attacked, and the 15 th Sikhs had 
 a brush with their hereditary foes. At day 
 break all the troops were under arms ; but at 
 six o'clock the men were dismissed, and a de- 
 ceitful calm fell upon the camp. It was not 
 
212 The Victory. 
 
 till after an early breakfast that the wise de- 
 cision to strike hard and at once was made 
 known. Tents disappeared in a trice, and the 
 baggage and the transport animals were parked 
 in the great garden, where the General had 
 established his headquarters. Then the 1st 
 and 2d Brigades were assembled under cover 
 of Karez Hill, the stern, dusky-coloured masses 
 of soldiers, with here and there a bright scarf 
 or the gleam of a rifle-barrel lighting up their 
 workmanlike uniforms, standing ready to spring 
 forward as one man on the word of command. 
 
 The general plan of action was simplicity 
 itself. The 1st and 2d Brigades were to 
 advance abreast ; and the 3d, now halted on 
 our left front, was to follow in reserve. General 
 Macpherson, commanding the 1st Brigade, was 
 to make in the first rush for a large village 
 conspicuously placed on a mound a little 
 beyond Picket Hill. General Baker had a 
 similar landmark much further ahead on the 
 
The Victory. 213 
 
 left. The fighting line was composed of the 
 o,2d Highlanders, 2d Ghoorkas, 2d Sikhs, and 
 72d Highlanders, in the order named from 
 right to left ; and such was the brilliancy of 
 their attack that they alone crossed bayonets 
 with the enemy. None the less valuable was 
 the presence of the 23d and 24th, the 3d 
 Sikhs, 3d Ghoorkas, and 2d Beloochees, for 
 without powerful supports the attack could not 
 have been delivered with such confidence. Stiff 
 work lay before our men in that densely-culti- 
 vated valley. For every inch of two miles they 
 had to fight their way from wall to wall and 
 garden to garden, or, worse, here and there, 
 from house to house and lane to lane. But the 
 result was doubtful to no one, least of all to 
 General Baker, as he issued his orders to the 
 commanding officers of the 2d Brigade with 
 perfect coolness and clearness, and yet with an 
 underlying intensity of purpose of his own 
 which never fails to compel attention. 
 
214 The Victory, 
 
 What was asked of General Macpherson at 
 first was rapidity of movement, since he had 
 most ground to cover. And to add that he 
 sent the o,2d to lead the way is simply to say 
 that his advance was magnificent : under a 
 Napoleon, Major White would be a Marshal, 
 but the loss is not the country's, for at the head 
 of his regiment he would make any battle safe 
 in India. Then the pluck of the 2d Ghoorkas 
 and the stubborn resistance of the great village 
 they took are only too well attested by their 
 heavy losses. 
 
 With General Baker the 72d, as usual, were 
 well to the fore wherever hard knocks were 
 exchanged, and they swept on unchecked by 
 the casualties among their officers and the 
 heart-sickening loss of their gallant Colonel. 
 General Baker's chief difficulty at first was to 
 keep his men moving, and yet to prevent them 
 from forging ahead of the 1st Brigade. 
 
 It was a precious opportunity to study how 
 
The Victory. 215 
 
 a commander of General Baker's well-tried 
 ability and extraordinary energy set himself 
 to the task of guiding his brigade through 
 such an attack. Dashing through hedge and 
 ditch and enclosure with his breathless staff 
 at his heels, now looking to his centre, now 
 to one flank or the other, as reports or 
 calls for assistance poured in from the half-a- 
 dozen independent units under his command, 
 he always preserved a clear perception of the 
 relative importance of events, and of the general 
 course of the action. If he ended by inclining 
 a trifle to his right, he only followed the drift 
 of the fight. 
 
 Just below the Wali Kotal there occurred 
 one of those decisive incidents that turn the 
 scale of battle. By the corner of a walled 
 garden two companies of the 2d Sikhs come 
 suddenly upon the enemy, massed behind a 
 bank ; Major Slater falls wounded, and his 
 men hesitate ; the Ghazis rush forward, the 
 
2i6 The Victory. 
 
 figure of their leader, sword in hand, dimly 
 visible through smoke and dust. We are within 
 an ace of destruction ; but Major Pratt with 
 one effort draws his men together and pours 
 in two volleys, that stagger the Ghazis ; the 
 92d come up on our right, and the danger is 
 past. 
 
 General Baker's second line was not less 
 ably handled. When for a moment it seemed 
 as if the 2d Sikhs might be overwhelmed, 
 Colonel Money, with the 3d Sikhs, was close 
 at hand to join the front line. Then Colonel 
 Fitzhugh, of the 5th Ghoorkas, after working 
 faithfully round by the second great village, 
 and finding it empty, managed to double 
 round with his little men in time to pour a 
 few volleys into the flying enemy. For Ayoub 
 was routed by the time our men turned the 
 Wali Kotal. There was a good deal of blazing 
 with big guns and small after we wheeled to 
 the right, but the sight of Major White on his 
 
The Victory. 217 
 
 horse sufficed to keep the enemy on the run. 
 In short, attacked in flank, and becoming aware 
 of the dust of the Cavalry Brigade in the dis- 
 tance, Ayoub decided upon a flight not more 
 conspicuous for its wisdom than its haste. 
 Since the start there had been no general 
 coup d'ceil possible. But it was a fine sight 
 when the two brigades, once more united, 
 swept on steadily up the bare gorge to com- 
 plete their mission of recovery and retribution. 
 As camp after camp came in view unstruck 
 and unoccupied, and the guns were sighted, 
 some half-a-dozen in position and the remainder 
 scattered down the road, where the fugitives 
 had cut the traces and galloped off with the 
 horses, we drank deep of the intoxication of 
 victory. That hour of triumph was worth a 
 whole year of toil. 
 
 Once fairly among the tents of the Philistines, 
 there were many congratulations, and some 
 pleasantries to be exchanged, and even a little 
 
218 The Victory. 
 
 looting to be done on the sly, though the 
 leading regiments were marched steadily on to 
 guard against the chance of a surprise. In one 
 corner a party of the 3d Sikhs were observed 
 prodding along a mild, not to say melancholy 
 old elephant, one of Shere Ali's Indian presents 
 before the gods decided upon his ruin. In 
 another the Beloochees had reaped a good 
 harvest of purple bannerets from before the 
 tents of the Afghan leaders. With half an 
 hour's leisure you might have collected miscel- 
 laneous objects enough to start a very fair 
 curiosity-shop or museum in a provincial 
 town ; taking your pick of some thirty pieces 
 of artillery ; tents, from the humblest known 
 pattern to the ' Political's ' palace in canvas ; 
 helmets, carpets, arms, ammunition, com- 
 missariat and ordnance stores ; bullock-trunks 
 crammed with native wearing apparel, writing 
 materials, muster-rolls, Korans, English tinned 
 meats, grapes, pomegranates, and even rupees 
 
The Victory. 219 
 
 all abandoned in headlong haste. The best 
 thing that came my way was a water-melon, 
 with dark-green rind and rosy melting sub- 
 stance a very fountain of cool juices. 
 
 The battle had been fairly won by the 
 infantry, and that in a very few hours. But the 
 other arms had their own part to play. From 
 about eight in the morning, the 40-pounders 
 had been thundering before the Baba Wali Pass. 
 Their last shell fell almost amongst our men 
 when the position had been turned ; we could 
 find no traces of any effect in the form of dis- 
 mounted guns or dead bodies lying about, but 
 the enemy had replied vigorously, perhaps be- 
 lieving that a front attack was in preparation. 
 The field-battery C II. drew a good deal of the 
 enemy's fire as it moved about, with the loss of 
 one man and one horse. As for the mule guns, 
 the pace had been too good and the country too 
 ' blind ' to give them a chance after the first 
 start. Altogether, the action was made for 
 
220 . The Victory. 
 
 those critics (and they are not few) who hold 
 the preposterous opinion that artillery is only 
 valuable for the amusement it gives to ignorant 
 persons in action. Last of all came the cavalry's 
 turn. General Hugh Gough's fine brigade had 
 unluckily so much ground to cover that it 
 failed to come up with the main stream of 
 the fugitives : however, good work was done, 
 especially by the 3d Punjab Cavalry, in cutting 
 up stragglers to the number of three or four 
 hundred. But the Bombay Cavalry from Kan- 
 dahar had the real opening of the day ; and 
 in the circumstances it was particularly un- 
 fortunate that General Burrows should not 
 have sent them over the Pass as hard as they 
 could go, at the first hint from Sir Frederick 
 Roberts. 
 
 Summing up : to have been absent from the 
 Baba Wali Pass would have been to have 
 missed the fight nearest the pitched battle of 
 regular warfare that the crop of dragons' teeth 
 
The Victory. 221 
 
 produced in Afghanistan. The Paiwar Kotal 
 was a fortress of giants surprised by a tiny- 
 storming party ; Charassia was won with a 
 brigade ; at Kabul the enemy was wise enough 
 to avoid a general engagement; Ahmed Kheyl 
 was an accident which valiant soldiers turned to 
 fortunate account. But at Kandahar, at last, 
 you have all the elements that go to make up 
 a great tableau in war. In the darkest shadow 
 you have a reverse to the British arms, the like 
 of which was never known in India, followed by 
 weeks of uncertainty regarding the one city in 
 Afghanistan which all strategists believe to be 
 of importance to us. Then come the bright 
 lights and the life of the picture ; the mag- 
 nificent march of the Kabul field force, and 
 the skilful movement of the Afghan leaders 
 from beneath the walls of the city to a posi- 
 tion that gave them the command of the Kabul 
 and Herat roads, and the power indefinitely to 
 prolong the struggle ; the arrival of the English 
 
222 The Victoiy. 
 
 army of the North, and the victory that scattered 
 the southern Afghans like sheep, and stripped 
 their leader of his cannon, and his laurels, ay 
 when we remember murdered Maclean of 
 honour itself. 
 
 All the players on the world's great stage 
 may have their ' exits and their entrances ;' 
 but some of them who step forward midst the 
 noisiest flourish of trumpets disappear most 
 ignobly, as through a trap-door, into the dark- 
 ness beneath. Fate willed it should not be so 
 with the Kabul field force and its noble leader, 
 and a role which began bravely with the Paiwar 
 Kotal ended most gloriously with Kandahar. 
 The future has high honours in store for our 
 General ; and a welcome from the people 
 awaited him ; but will he ever taste a sweeter 
 triumph than on the field of victory itself? 
 There is but little enthusiasm left among the 
 best of us : we have no shields now to bear up 
 our Vikings. But as Sir Frederick Roberts 
 
The Victory. 223 
 
 rode down the line, with a kindly word for all, 
 by each regiment and battery he was greeted 
 with a ringing cheer, which was taken up by 
 the Bombay troops as he rode, back from the 
 famous Baba Wali Pass ! 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE POLICY OF RETREAT. 
 
 Poor England! thou art a devoted deer, 
 Beset with every ill but that of fear. 
 Cowper. 
 
 THE national instinct for compromise, that wins 
 us so many admirers in our domestic relations, 
 proves not seldom an indifferent guide in foreign 
 affairs. A political see-saw that has landed us 
 from the moderation of the Treaty of Gandamak 
 in the extravagance of the present ^^-settle- 
 ment can hardly win the applause of any class 
 in any country, unless it be of the governing 
 clique in Russia. If in 1879 we secured a pre- 
 dominant influence for India in Afghanistan, 
 without risking hasty and dangerous annexa- 
 tions, we are now in the position of having 
 
The Policy of Retreat, 225 
 
 spent thousands of brave lives and fifteen 
 millions, to gain exactly nothing. 
 
 It is bad enough to withdraw from our bird's- 
 eye post on the Shutargardan a position un- 
 assailable in front, from which it was easy to 
 throw a force into Kabul, or Ghazni, or well 
 on the road to the Bamian Pass in a week. 
 But to give up Kandahar at the same moment 
 a moment when proofs of Muscovite aggres- 
 siveness and perfidy are staring us in the face ; 
 to refuse to push on the railway, and pre- 
 pare for the inevitable struggle at least on 
 the side of Herat, is a historical folly of the 
 first magnitude. Strategical considerations 
 and nearly every name of authority, as well as 
 the practical teaching of the campaign on the 
 Helmand, is on the Conservative side need 
 not be considered in detail. The question may 
 be tried on wider issues. It is in fact not 
 merely an important position for attack or 
 defence, but our moral ascendency in the 
 
226 The Policy of Retreat. 
 
 greatest of our world-wide possessions, that is 
 imperilled. The turbulent clans on the north- 
 west frontier and the warlike castes all over 
 the Indian continent scan our attitude with 
 sleepless vigilance. While we keep a bold 
 front, without flinching before the new duties 
 and difficulties of our time, they will be for us 
 rather than against us. But in the hour that our 
 standards, twice raised in Afghanistan, fall back 
 before the Russian eagles, it will seem to them 
 that the hour of destiny has struck, and the 
 British rule will pass from them like a dream. 
 
 Happily the last word has not been spoken. 
 When the Liberals, in the face of their last 
 given electoral pledges, reversed the foreign 
 policy of the country in an important direction, 
 they were laying up defeat for themselves. 
 For to tamper with the logic of accomplished 
 facts is to lose the confidence of all wise men. 
 If there were any doubt of the meaning of 
 * scuttling' out of Afghanistan, that has since 
 occurred, of which no honourable man can 
 
Tfie Policy of Retreat. 227 
 
 think without a sense of burning shame. The 
 peace-at-any-price school have left no word 
 unspoken, and no deed undone, that might 
 tend to the degradation and disintegration of 
 the Empire. Kick the British lion hard enough 
 twice or thrice, and the magnanimous beast 
 will slink, off, in mortal terror of blood-guilti- 
 ness ! That is the lesson a craven Ministry 
 has proclaimed to English subjects all over the 
 world : when the nation is called to pronounce 
 upon it, will the verdict be doubtful ? Lord 
 Beaconsfield failed at the last to cope with his 
 enemies' peculiar views of rectitude, and with 
 the restlessness of the popular caprice, but his 
 rare gift of looking into the future never de- 
 serted him. His political heirs have found 
 their undivided attention absorbed by the very 
 questions which they reviled him for placing 
 in the forefront of his electoral manifesto. And 
 so it wjll be with Afghanistan. We will have 
 an English watch-dog, and no Russian spy, in 
 possession of the ' great gates of India.' 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THROUGH THE BOLAN THE END. 
 
 Keep your splendid, silent sun ; 
 
 Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet 
 
 places by the woods ; 
 Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and 
 
 your corn-fields and orchards ; 
 Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where 
 
 the ninth-month bees hum ; 
 Give me faces and streets! give me these 
 
 phantoms incessant and endless along 
 
 the trottoirs ! 
 Give me interminable eyes ! give me women! 
 Give me comrades and lovers by the 
 
 thousand! 
 
 Walt Whitman. 
 
 BEFORE the end of September the last brigade 
 of General Roberts's victorious army was on 
 its way back to India. The pledges given to 
 the Force at Kabul had been redeemed, and 
 an immense contentment reigned in every 
 
Through the Bolan. 229 
 
 breast. But if we started fancying the best 
 thing in Afghanistan must be the road out of 
 it, we soon decided in one sense there is not 
 a worse. From Kandahar to Quetta it is a 
 worthy continuation of the Ghazni road. To 
 know the one is to have learnt to detest the 
 other before acquaintance. The line of march 
 lies through a sandy plain, broken with many 
 ranges of low hills. Here and there the red 
 glare of the desert, or a pile of regularly-shaped 
 limestone rocks, like Cyclopean building stones, 
 break through the dull level ; but the first 
 great natural landmark is the distant line of 
 the Kojak range, which stretches across the 
 horizon seemingly without a break or a fall. 
 Surely if some old Greek had reached that 
 solid blue impenetrable mass he would have 
 named it the boundary wall of the world ; or 
 perhaps returned to tell how, as he advanced, 
 the hills had divided miraculously before his 
 prayer to Athene. The present road, con- 
 
230 Through the Bolan. 
 
 structed by English engineers, not with prayers 
 to Athene*, but with much labour and many 
 pickaxes, is a very tolerable one. But at the 
 beginning of the campaign the Kojak Pass 
 must have been as terrible a trap for bag- 
 gage-animals as the Lataband of my early 
 experiences. On the Kandahar side there is 
 a sudden fall as steep as the walls of a quarry ; 
 and towards India there is a long fatiguing 
 descent through an avenue of low trees, that 
 were bright with colour in September. 
 
 Some of my companions professed them- 
 selves delighted with the prospect from the 
 crest, but I never felt less moved. Certainly 
 there was the Kandahar plain stretched out 
 behind us like a dried-up ocean-bed, studded 
 with hills for islands ; but to my mind fifty 
 miles of barren sand are to the full as hideous 
 as five. There was a little defile just out of 
 Quetta that pleased me infinitely more. As 
 we rode through it, I had a glimpse of as 
 
Through the Bo Ian. 231 
 
 grandly massive a pile of mountains towering 
 heavenward as ever I saw. 
 
 Quetta, with its club and solidly-built houses, 
 gave a refreshing foretaste of civilisation which 
 served but to whet our appetite. The only 
 question was, who should be first in the race 
 down to Sibi. I entered my name like the 
 rest, and started with a comrade who forced 
 the running furiously. 
 
 At the Quetta end of the Bolan there were 
 some threatening-looking defiles, and here and 
 there a mountain seemed to bar the path 
 boldly. But we had grown hypercritical in 
 hill scenery; and presently, when the Pass 
 opened out into a valley, we were ready to 
 accuse the road of dulness. 
 
 Towards the close of our journey we came 
 upon the Bolan river traversing the Pass be- 
 side us. The sight of its leisurely progress set 
 my thoughts to a different key. Henceforward 
 all haste became to me an abomination. The 
 
232 Through the Bo Ian. 
 
 bright-eyed wavelets, playing idly over their bed 
 of mottled brown, seemed to murmur insinuating 
 invitations to strip off shoes and socks and 
 loiter by the way ; and the transparent water- 
 green depths in the shadow of the cliffs carried 
 with them I know not what suggestions of the 
 ocean. I could have found it in my heart 
 to have spent hours swimming about alone, 
 and hugging myself on my freedom. After 
 all, neither the devil nor an order of recall was 
 at our heels. If we could have stepped out of 
 Afghanistan on to the Boulevards or Pall Mall, 
 it would have been a different affair. 
 
 When Sibi was reached there was an inter- 
 minable railway journey to be gone through, 
 and the terribly doubtful time for the fainting 
 landsman on the throbbing steamer. I began 
 to doubt if I should have any appetite left for 
 civilised fare. Yet the name of my homeward 
 voyage was prosperity, and even the first meal 
 in Europe, that had tormented me in antici- 
 
The End. 233 
 
 pation, had a piquant and unexpected flavour 
 with it, that I am vainly anxious to reproduce. 
 
 There was a curiously assorted party assem- 
 bled to partake of it an English Peer, an Irish 
 Colonel, a Major in the Indian Army, who is 
 famous for his tact, and a Cavalry Officer, 
 entirely without conceit. Where mail trains 
 are concerned, the authorities revel in arbitrary 
 regulations, and the living is a trifle uncertain 
 for the passengers. In our compartment, after 
 missing two regular meals, I do not mind con- 
 fessing we fell upon cold chicken, real Bologna 
 sausages, perfect white bread, fresh butter, a 
 handful of luscious pears, and some French 
 chocolate, as if knives and forks had never 
 been heard of. There were some bottles of 
 honest red wine to wash down the banquet. 
 Gnawing a bone doggedly, and secretly smack- 
 ing my lips in the tunnels, it struck me that 
 there is much to be learned even from writers 
 of proverbs ; for, with the bone we will not 
 
234 The End. 
 
 grasp firmly, the sweetest of the meat dis- 
 appears. We are perpetually undone by our 
 conventions. An Indian who cannot believe 
 a little scrubbing will cleanse a brass vessel 
 appears to us rather ridiculous : but at least 
 he has no scruples about the efficacy of washing 
 of hands. 
 
 As we rushed past a dark hill-side, crowned 
 with snow-powdered, feathery trees, I remem- 
 ber singing to myself gleefully that the days 
 of my bondage were past like a dream. It is 
 good to live with the Pharaohs, not to make 
 bricks, in Egypt. Were we not within earshot 
 of Paris ? and is not he a dullard whose pulse 
 does not quicken to the beat of a nation's 
 heart? When I leaned out and listened, the 
 roar of the streets seemed to me almost to 
 match the undying song of the ocean. Then 
 how strange, yet how familiar, was the smallest 
 particular of the crowded thoroughfares ; how 
 startling, or how reassuring it is as you take 
 
The End. 235 
 
 it to feel you need not look for recognition in 
 every white face you meet. 'Tis at least easier 
 to say farewell, and disappear in the midst of 
 a crowd. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY 
 
 CHIEF EVENTS OF THE AFGHAN CAMPAIGNS 
 of 1878-79-80. 
 
 1878. 
 
 21st September. The Commandant of the Fort of Ali 
 Musjid refuses to allow the British Envoy, His Excel- 
 lency General Sir Neville Chamberlain, G.C.B., to pass 
 his post. 
 
 The Ameer of Kabul, Shere Ali Khan, is informed 
 that, unless an apology for this insult is received before 
 20th September, and certain other conditions are com- 
 plied with, he will be treated as an enemy. , 
 
 2\st November. No answer having been received 
 from the Ameer, Sir Samuel Brown attacks the Fort of 
 Ali Musjid, the force of General Roberts crosses the 
 frontier at Thai, and the advanced guard of General 
 Donald Stewart leaves Quetta, and commences its 
 march on Kandahar. 
 
 22d November. The Fort of Ali Musjid surrenders. 
 
 id December. General Roberts totally defeats the 
 Afghan force defending the Pass of the Paiwar Kotal. 
 
 20th December. General Sir Samuel Brown occupies 
 Jellalabad. 
 
 23d December. The Ameer, Shere Ali, leaves Kabul, 
 and appoints his son, Yakoob Khan, Governor of the city. 
 
238 Chronological Summary. 
 
 1879. 
 
 2d to 2,0th January. General Roberts's expedition to 
 Khost Valley. 
 
 12th January. General Donald Stewart occupies 
 Kandahar. 
 
 21st January. Khelat-i-Ghilzai occupied by General 
 Stewart. 
 
 21st February. Death of the Ameer, Shere Ali, at 
 Mazar-i-Sherif. 
 
 2d April. General Charles Gough defeats the Khuji- 
 anis with loss at Futteabad. 
 
 26th May. Treaty of Gandamak. 
 
 24th July. Sir Louis Cavagnari, the British Envoy, 
 arrives in Kabul. 
 
 3d September. Massacre of Sir Louis Cavagnari and 
 his suite. 
 
 nth September. Brigadier-General Massy occupies 
 the Shutargardan with the advanced guard of General 
 Roberts's force. 
 
 6th October. Battle of Charassia gained by General 
 Roberts. 
 
 12th October. General Roberts occupies Kabul. 
 
 14th to igth October. The Afghan tribes attack the 
 troops posted at Ali Kheyl and at the Shutargardan, and 
 are defeated. 
 
 16th October. Explosion of magazine in the Bala 
 Hissar. 
 
 2%th October. Proclamation announcing abdication 
 of Yakoob Khan, and assumption of government of 
 Afghanistan by the English. 
 
 \oth December. General Macpherson defeats, at Karez 
 Mir, a force advancing from Kohistan. 
 
 nth December. Mahomed Jan and a force advancing 
 from Ghazni are unsuccessfully attacked by a brigade of 
 cavalry under General Massy, who loses two guns. 
 
Chronological Summary. 239 
 
 \2th December. Part of General Macpherson's brigade, 
 under Colonel Money, attacks the Takht-i-Shah unsuc- 
 cessfully. 
 
 13th December. General Baker drives the Afghans 
 from Takht-i-Shah. 
 
 \\th December. General Baker makes a successful 
 attack on the Asmai heights, but is afterwards driven 
 back, with the loss of two guns. Sir F. Roberts abandons 
 the Bala Hissar, and city of Kabul, and concentrates his 
 troops within the entrenchments of Sherpur. 
 
 i$th to 22d December. Mahomed Jan cuts Sir F. 
 Roberts's communications, and effects a partial invest- 
 ment of Sherpur cantonment. Desultory fighting at 
 Jagdalak. 
 
 23d December.^Mahomed Jan makes a general 
 attack on Sherpur cantonment, and is signally defeated. 
 The tribes disperse, and the city and Bala Hissar are 
 reoccupied by Sir F. Roberts on the following day. 
 
 1880. 
 
 i$tn January. Mohmands dispersed near Kam-Daka. 
 
 1st April. Sir Donald Stewart commences his march 
 from Kandahar to Kabul. 
 
 \2th to i6tk April. Hisarak expedition. 
 
 igtk April. Battle of Ahmed Kheyl enemy's loss 
 2000. 
 
 21st April. Sir Donald Stewart again defeats the 
 enemy beyond Ghazni. 
 
 25 th April. Attack on Colonel Jenkyns's detachment 
 at Charassia defeated. 
 
 2d May. Sir Donald Stewart arrives at Kabul. 
 
 About i$th June. The Sirdar Ayoub Khan advances 
 from Herat to attack Kandahar. 
 
 1st July. General Hill's cavalry disperse a gathering 
 at Padkao. 
 
240 Chronological Summary. 
 
 10th July. A brigade under General Burrows and 
 the troops of the Wali Mahomed take up a position at 
 Geriskh, on the Helmand, to oppose Ayoub Khan. 
 
 14th July. The troops of the Wali Mahomed mutiny, 
 and join Ayoub Khan. General Burrows retires to Khusk- 
 i-Nakhud. 
 
 lid July. Abdur- Rahman Khan recognised as Ameer 
 of Kabul. 
 
 27th July. General Burrows attacks the troops of 
 Ayoub Khan near Mai wand. He is totally defeated, and 
 his brigade driven back to Kandahar with great loss. 
 
 6th August. Ayoub Khan invests Kandahar. 
 
 Sth August. Sir F. Roberts'commences his march 
 from Kabul to Kandahar. 
 
 wth August. Sir Donald Stewart withdraws from 
 Kabul and hands over the city to the Ameer Abdur- 
 Rahman. 
 
 16th August. Sortie of the garrison of Kandahar 
 repulsed with heavy loss. 
 
 2$th August. Ayoub Khan discontinues the invest- 
 ment of Kandahar and concentrates his troops. 
 
 31st August. Sir F. Roberts arrives at Kandahar. 
 
 1st September. He attacks and totally defeats the 
 troops of Ayoub Khan at Bala Wali, capturing twenty- 
 seven guns. 
 
 gth September. The British troops are withdrawn 
 from the Paiwar Kotal and the Kurum Valley ; during 
 this month they are also withdrawn from Jellalabad. 
 
 1881. 
 
 list April. The British troops are withdrawn from 
 Kandahar. 
 
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