Affairs of State | Page 8

discern
that, since if it remained there it would soon starve outright, the best
thing to be done was to push it forward with all possible speed into a
region where food should be procurable. Acting on this reasoning, he
marched the day after his arrival. Cotton, while lying in Quetta, had not
taken the trouble to reconnoitre the passes in advance, far less to make
a practicable road through the Kojuk defile if that should prove the best
route. The resolution taken to march through it, two days were spent in
making the pass possible for wheels; and from the 13th to the 21st the
column was engaged in overcoming the obstacles it presented, losing in
the task, besides, much baggage, supplies, transport and ordnance
stores. Further back in the Bolan Willshire with the Bombay column
was faring worse; he was plundered severely by tribal marauders.
By May 4th the main body of the army was encamped in the plain of
Candahar. From the Kojuk, Shah Soojah and his contingent had led the
advance toward the southern capital of the dominions from the throne
of which he had been cast down thirty years before. The Candahar
chiefs had meditated a night attack on his raw troops, but Macnaghten's
intrigues and bribes had wrought defection in their camp; and while
Kohun-dil-Khan and his brothers were in flight to Girishk on the
Helmund, the infamous Hadji Khan Kakur led the venal herd of
turncoat sycophants to the feet of the claimant who came backed by the
British gold, which Macnaghten was scattering abroad with lavish hand.
Shah Soojah recovered from his trepidation, hurried forward in advance
of his troops, and entered Candahar on April 24th. His reception was
cold. The influential chiefs stood aloof, abiding the signs of the times;
the populace of Candahar stood silent and lowering. Nor did the
sullenness abate when the presence of a large army with its followers
promptly raised the price of grain, to the great distress of the poor. The
ceremony of the solemn recognition of the Shah, held close to the scene

of his defeat in 1834, Havelock describes as an imposing pageant, with
homagings and royal salutes, parade of troops and presentation of
_nuzzurs_; but the arena set apart for the inhabitants was empty, spite
of Eastern love for a tamasha, and the display of enthusiasm was
confined to the immediate retainers of His Majesty.
The Shah was eager for the pursuit of the fugitive chiefs; but the troops
were jaded and sickly, the cavalry were partially dismounted, and what
horses remained were feeble skeletons. The transport animals needed
grazing and rest, and their loss of numbers to be made good. The crops
were not yet ripe, and provisions were scant and dear. When, on May
9th, Sale marched toward Girishk, his detachment carried half rations,
and his handful of regular cavalry was all that two regiments could
furnish. Reaching Girishk, he found that the chiefs had fled toward
Seistan, and leaving a regiment of the Shah's contingent in occupation,
he returned to Candahar.
Macnaghten professed the belief, and perhaps may have deluded
himself into it, that Candahar had received the Shah with enthusiasm.
He was sanguine that the march to Cabul would be unopposed, and he
urged on Keane, who was wholly dependent on the Envoy for political
information, to move forward at once, lightening the difficulties of the
march by leaving the Bombay troops at Candahar. But Keane declined,
on the advice of Thomson, his chief engineer, who asked significantly
whether he had found the information given him by the political
department in any single instance correct. Food prospects, however, did
not improve at Candahar, and leaving a strong garrison there as well,
curious to say, as the siege train which with arduous labour had been
brought up the passes, Keane began the march to Cabul on June 27th.
He had supplies only sufficient to carry his army thither on half rations.
Macnaghten had lavished money so freely that the treasury chest was
all but empty. How the Afghans regarded the invasion was evinced by
condign slaughter of our stragglers.
As the army advanced up the valley of the Turnuk, the climate became
more temperate, the harvest was later, and the troops improved in
health and spirit. Concentrating his forces, Keane reached Ghuznee on
July 21st. The reconnaissance he made proved that fortress occupied in
force. The outposts driven in, and a close inspection made, the works
were found stronger than had been represented, and its regular

reduction was out of the question without the battering train which
Keane had allowed himself to be persuaded into leaving behind. A wall
some 70 feet high and a wet ditch in its front made mining and escalade
alike impracticable. Thomson, however, noticed that the