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 north-western 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.

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 city and to their castles in the country, where their double-barrelled rifles brought down the snipes and quails, the elk, the deer, the hare and flying fox, with a precision that elicited many a shout of "Allah" and "Bismillah" from the entertainers.

The winter of that year also saw our officers skating on the lake of Istaliff, six miles from Cabul--the skates being the work of a Scottish armourer sergeant. Amateur theatricals,* for which Polwhele painted the scenery, were not wanting to add to the wonder of those sequestered Orientals, to whom the doors of the houses were thrown freely open; but with the coming spring, when the field-pea, the yellow briar-rose, the variously tinted asphodels, and the orchards in rich blossom, made all the valley beautiful, came the crowning marvel, when Lieutenant Sinclair of Her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry, an officer who possessed great mechanical skill, constructed and launched on the lake of Istaliff, that which had never before been seen in Afghanistan, a large boat, with masts, sails, and oars.

* The favourite play was "The Irish Ambassador," and others of the same kind. "On such occasions they changed the titles of the _dramatis personæ_, so as to bring them and the offices of the parties bearing them, down to the level of Afghan comprehension; while Burnes and others skilled in the dialect of the country, translated the speeches as they were uttered."--Sales' Brigade in Afghanistan.

The plaudits of the assembled thousands made the welkin ring.

"Now," they exclaimed, "we see that you are not like the infidel Hindoos that follow you! You are men born and bred like ourselves in a land where God varies the seasons, thus giving vigour to mind and body. Oh, that you had come among us as friends, rather than enemies, for you are fine fellows, one by one, though as a body we hate you!"

And so dark days were coming, for the misrule of the Shah Sujah, the intrigues of the restless Ackbar Khan, and the national distrust of the mountaineers of all foreign, especially Kaffir, intervention, were soon to put an end to this pleasant state of matters.

On the Chief of the Ghiljees spreading a rumour by letter, that it was the intention of Sir William Macnaghten to seize all the khans of tribes and send them to the Feringhee Queen in London, a dreadful tumult ensued in the city, and ere the cannon could clear the streets, several officers, among whom was Sir Alexander Burnes, were killed in the confusion. Fast spread the spirit of revolt! The feeble Shah shut himself up in the Bala Hissar on its towering rock; and it was deemed advisable to make terms with the leaders, the chief of whom was Ackbar Khan, whose conduct during the whole of those affairs curiously combined the romantic, aristocratic, and courteous tones of a half-civilised prince, with the ferocity of an utter barbarian.

A part of the garrison having been detached under Sir Robert Sale to Jellalabad, his brigade had barely entered the terrible and tortuous ravines which lead thereto, ere it was attacked by the mountain hordes, and had to fight its way inch by inch for miles, and by the middle of November, about the time this portion of our story opens, the sixty thousand citizens of Cabul and the tribes of the surrounding country were ripe for insurrection, the fiery elements of discord being fanned by Ackbar Khan in person.

And such was the state of affairs in and around Cabul on that day, when Waller and Denzil, both well-armed--as they could not forget the friendly warnings of Taj Mohammed--quitted their quarters in the old fort, to have "tiffin" (_i.e._ luncheon) with the Trecarrels in the house of the General, who had now been some two months with Elphinstone's army, but without yet obtaining that which he had been promised, command of a brigade, unless one to be chiefly formed of Beloochees from the Shah's little army, under Timour the Shahzadeh, could be considered as such a force, that speedily melted away.