Upon the policy of this movement I cannot pause to speculate. I believe that the system of planting small detachments in isolated positions was one of the great errors which marked our military occupation of Afghanistan. But something more was designed than this. It was in contemplation to send a larger force to explore the mountains of the Hindoo-Koosh. Dr. Percival Lord, who had been one of Burnes’s companions on the “Commercial Mission” to Caubul, had just returned to the Afghan capital with the force under Colonel Wade; and now that it was considered desirable to despatch a political officer to the Oosbeg frontier, it was but natural that Lord, who had visited the neighbourhood of Koondooz in 1837-1838, should have been selected for the duty. Lord went; but had not been long absent from Caubul when he returned, with exaggerated stories of the success of Dost Mahomed among the petty chiefs of the Hindoo-Koosh, and of a great movement which was about to be made for the re-establishment of the supremacy of the Ameer. Upon this, Macnaghten, who had begun to doubt the extreme popularity of Shah Soojah, and the safety of confiding his protection and support to the handful of British troops which it was originally intended to leave in Afghanistan, made a requisition to Sir John Keane for a stronger military force, and turned Dr. Lord’s story to account in the furtherance of his own views. It was easy to issue orders for the maintenance of a large body of British troops in Afghanistan; but it was not so easy to house the regiments thus maintained. The winter was before them. They could not remain encamped on the plain around Caubul. It became, therefore, matter of anxious consideration how accommodation was to be provided for so large a body of regular troops. The subject, indeed, had pressed upon the attention of the political and military chiefs before the brigade, which was originally to have been left in the country, had swelled into a division; and the engineer officers had been called into council, and had given the only advice that was likely to emanate from competent military authority. Lieutenant Durand—a gallant soldier and an able scientific officer—saw at once the importance of posting the troops in the Balla Hissar.[9] And there, in the winter of that year, they were posted, to be removed in the following autumn to the fatal cantonments which by that time were springing up on the plain.