More and more sensible, after every march, of the miserable country through which he was passing, and the difficulties which now beset the expedition, Macnaghten was anxious to push on with all possible expedition. But Sir John Keane, who was in the rear with the Bombay column, dreading the assemblage, on the same spot, of so large a body of troops as would be brought together by the junction of the three forces, urged upon him the expediency of halting, whilst his Excellency went forward to ascertain the chances of finding forage and provisions in the Bolan Pass. So the Shah and his Contingent halted for a few days at Bagh,[312] whilst Sir John Keane pushed on with his escort. On the 28th of March, the King, the Minister, and the Commander-in-Chief were all assembled together at Dadur. “Their united camps displayed all the pomp and circumstances of a triple head-quarter.” The passage of the Bolan was accomplished without difficulty, and on the 4th of April, Sir Willoughby Cotton, having ridden out with his staff from Quettah, greeted the General-in-Chief and his companions as they were resting at the entrance to the Shawl Valley, after the fatigues of the passage through the defile. The tidings which he had to communicate were of the gloomiest hue. He reported that his men were on quarter-rations, and that there was every prospect of the army, as it entered Afghanistan, being opposed at every step. Macnaghten, however, more sanguine, was already beginning to think and to write about the means of disposing of the Barukzye Sirdars. On that 4th of April he wrote to the Governor-General a letter, which indicates the tone of his own feelings and of those of the Afghan Prince: _April, 4, 1839._