Having written this to the General, Macnaghten visited him, and again urged his opinion, with equal earnestness in oral discourse. Another project suggested itself to Macnaghten. Might it not be possible to obtain provisions by force from some of the surrounding villages? A night-attack might be made on Deh-Hadjee, or a similar enterprise undertaken against Killa Bolundee. But the General had no taste for night attacks or enterprises of any kind. He was full only of objections. The Envoy took his departure, disappointed and dispirited, and soon afterwards received a letter from Elphinstone, arraying a host of obstacles to the success of all the suggested efforts for the maintenance of the national honour, and staggering at last to the conclusion that there was nothing to be done but to enter into what he called “honourable terms.”[181] And now matters were at their worst. To what depths of humiliation our unhappy force had sunk, and with what indignation the Envoy regarded a state of things which he was powerless to avert or to remedy, a letter, written about this time to Captain Macgregor, painfully declares. “Our troops,” wrote Macnaghten, “are behaving like a pack of despicable cowards, and there is no spirit or enterprise left amongst us. The military authorities want me to capitulate, but this I am anxious to put off to the last moment. In the mean time we shall soon have to come to some decision, as we have only three days’ provision for our troops, and nothing for our cattle. We are anxiously looking out for reinforcements from Candahar. We have rumours of their approach, but nothing as yet authentic.” But the direst peril was that of starvation, which had now become imminent. The wretched camp-followers were living upon the carcases of the camels which had been starved to death. The trees in cantonments had been stripped of all their bark and light branches to supply provender to the cattle, and were now all bare and useless. The commissariat officers, Boyd and Johnson, wrote a joint letter to the General, stating that, after much fruitless exertion, they had been compelled to adopt the opinion that provisions were no longer obtainable by purchase. It was their duty, they said, “to report, from personal knowledge of the country to the north or north-east of cantonments, the utter impossibility of obtaining, either by force or otherwise, the smallest quantity of grain or forage of any kind within a distance of from three to four miles; and, further, that within this space the whole of the forts, with the exception, perhaps, of one or two, have been evacuated by the inhabitants, and more or less destroyed by the enemy.”