Then snow began to fall. On the 18th of December, the doomed force looked out upon the new horror. From morning to evening prayer it fell with frightful perseverance, and before sunset was lying many inches thick upon the ground. Our difficulties had now fearfully increased. Had the force been set in motion a few days before the first snow fall, and, moving lightly, pushed on by forced marches through the passes, it might have reached Jellalabad in safety. But now everything was against us. The elements were conspiring for our destruction. It was more and more painfully obvious, every day, that the curse of God was brooding over the agents of an unrighteous policy. Whatever may have been the causes of that week’s delay—whether the bad faith of the chiefs, the irresolution of the Shah, or the reluctance of the British Envoy, it cut away from under us the last hope that remained of rescuing the British force from the annihilating dangers that hemmed it in on every side. The 22nd was now fixed upon as the day for the departure of the British troops. On the 19th, the Envoy and the General despatched letters to Ghuznee, Candahar, and Jellalabad, ordering the evacuation of those positions. Money was given freely to the chiefs for cattle which was not sent in for our use; and it was believed that Mahomed Akbar was expending the treasure thus raised on the instruments of our destruction. “Our new allies” had become more insolent and defiant. As our difficulties thickened, their demands rose. All hope of succours from Candahar vanished on that 19th of December, when intelligence of the return of Maclaren’s brigade was received by the Envoy. Macnaghten had clung to this chance, with desperate tenacity, to the last—and now he abandoned all hope of saving the reputation of his country by beating the enemy in the field. But he had not yet abandoned all hope of saving the reputation of his country by playing a game of dexterous diplomacy, such as could only have been played against a number of disunited factions, almost as hostile to each other as to the common foe. It is not easy to group into one lucid and intelligible whole all the many shifting schemes and devices which distracted the last days of the Envoy’s career. It is probable that at this time he could have given no very clear account of the game which he was playing. He appears to have turned first to one party and then to another, eagerly grasping at every new combination that seemed to promise more hopeful results than the last. His mind was by this time unhinged;—his intellect was clouded; his moral perceptions were deadened. The wonder is, not that he was pressed down at last by the tremendous burden of anxiety which had sate upon him throughout those seven long weeks of unparalleled suffering and disaster, but that he had borne up so long and so bravely under the weight.