CHAPTER IV.

WHAT TOOK US THERE.

THE kings of Cabul in relation to their people somewhat resembled those of the House of Stuart when on the Scottish throne; being only the khans of a warlike tribe, among many other khans and tribes; hence the old Celtic term for the king of Scotland is simply the "chief of chiefs." The resemblance to Scotland in the days of old, is still further carried out in the fact that Cabul was a mere amalgamation of petty republics, or clans, having at their head a king, whose influence was felt in the capital, but whose authority failed to reach the fierce dwellers in the glens and on the mountains.

After witnessing many civil wars, crimes and outrages, Shah Mahmud died, and was succeeded on the throne of Herat and Afghanistan, by his son Kamran.

Meanwhile Dost Mohammed Khan, another prince of the family, seized on the beautiful vale

of the Cabul river; and the Lion of Lahore, Runjeet Sing (with whose name the newspapers long made us familiar) over-ran all Cashmere. Dost Mohammed was desirous of securing the friendship of the British Government, who sent Captain (afterwards Sir Alexander) Burnes to him; but the honourable reception he accorded to a Russian officer at Cabul about the first year of Her present Majesty's reign caused him to be secretly distrusted by the Governor-General of India.

The latter, with a view to secure our northwestern frontier against Russian influence, and an intended invasion of the peninsula, became a party to a treaty between Shah Sujah, third son of the deceased Mahmud of Herat and Afghanistan, to re-establish him on the throne of his ancestors; and hence war was declared against the Dost, whose ally, Runjeet Sing, refused permission for our troops to march through the Punjaub-" The land of the five rivers." But, heedless of this, two Corps d'Armée, advancing simultaneously from Bombay and Bengal, under Sir Willoughby Cotton, ten thousand strong, soon found themselves under the walls of Candahar; and next Ghuznee, the most formidable fortress in Asia, was stormed at the point of the bayonet, after its gates had been blown in by a petard, and there enormous booty was found.

The seventh of the subsequent August saw the union-jack hoisted on the Bala Hissar of Cabul, and Shah Sujah, an aged, effete, and most unpopular prince, brought from exile in Loodianah and replaced upon his ancient and hereditary throne, while an army of eight thousand Beloochees and other wild warriors, sons of the Gedrosian desert, was assigned. him, under the command of the Shahzadeh Timour and Colonel Simpson of the 19th Native Infantry; for such were the arrangements of that Honourable Company of Merchants whose office was in Leadenhall Street, in the City.

The restored Shah, a cruel and ruthless prince, who blinded his kinsman Futteh Khan, by thrusting a dagger into his eyes, and afterwards having him hacked into "kabobs," soon excited great discontent among the fiery tribes under his rule, and particularly by retaining a regiment of Sikhs as his body-guard; and so resolute and manifest became the hostility of the natives, that the situation of the small British force-now reduced to little more than four thousand men-cantoned without the walls of Cabul, grew daily more perilous and critical, while General Elphinstone, who now commanded, by age and health was quite unequal to the task assigned him.

After a long and arduous contest, Dost Mohammed became at last the peaceful prisoner of the

British Government; for it chanced that one evening, after his last battle and defeat, our envoy, Sir William Macnaghten, when riding near Cabul, was overtaken by a horseman, whose steed, like himself, was covered with dust and blood and flakes of foam.

Announcing that he was Dost Mohammed, the stranger proffered his sword in token of surrender; for it would seem that the hapless prince had that day ridden sixty miles from the Nijrow Valley, quitting his routed host; and he was immediately transmitted to Calcutta ; but rejecting with hatred and scorn all offers of pension or place from the British Government, Ackbar Khan, the most brave and reckless of his sons, preferred a life of rude independence in Loodianah, and never lost the hope of levying a holy war for the extermination of the meddling and Kaffir Feringhees-the infidel English; for so he stigmatised us.

Prior to this point of time our little army under General Elphinstone had remained peacefully in Cabul, far distant from the British settlements in Hindostan. Many of the officers had built pleasant and even pretty houses in the neighbourhood of the fortified cantonments which lay between the hills of Behmaru and those of Siah Sung, two miles distant from the city; and there they dwelt comfortably and unsuspectingly with their wives and families.

VOL. II.

D

Communication with the outer world beyond the passes was however both difficult and dubious; for the territories of wild and untrustworthy allies lay between our troops and the Indies on one hand; and between them and the Arabian Sea on the other.

It was August, as before stated, when we entered Cabul. The violets, the tulips and the wall-flower, which grow wild during spring, had passed away; but the air was yet perfumed by the Persian iris; the orchards and lovely gardens around the city were teeming with luscious fruit; and the Cabul river flowed between its banks, where the purple grape, the ruddy apple, and golden orange, bending the laden branches, dipped in the stream or kissed its shining ripples.

Englishmen take old England with them everywhere ; and thus the honest and confident freedom with which our officers went to and fro between the camp and city, and the free way in which they spent their money, won them, for a time, the favour of the Afghans; and the winter of the first year saw the introduction of horse races, at which a splendid sword, given by the Shah, was won by Major Daly of the 4th Light Dragoons; cricket matches, when Bob Waller held his wicket against the field; and cock-fighting, a favourite sport with the natives.

The chiefs invited them to their houses in the