From Candahar to Mookoor the progress of Nott’s division was easy and uneventful. But few traces of the recent excitement were discernible along the line of march. The villages seemed wonderfully tranquil. The villagers brought in their supplies more freely than our officers had ever ventured to expect. Every precaution was taken by the General to prevent the commission by his troops of acts of lawless depredation. He declared, that if any soldier were caught in the act of plundering, or returning with plunder in his possession, he would hang the offender, and remove the officer to whose regiment he might belong from the command of his corps. On the 27th of August, the force arrived at Mookoor. Up to this point—a distance of 160 miles—not a shot had been fired. But there were symptoms now of more active work for our troops. Some days before their arrival at Mookoor, Shumshoodeen Khan had moved out of Ghuznee with a party of 500 horse and two guns, to collect revenue in the adjacent country. He was ignorant, at the time, of our advance; but when the tidings reached him, he prepared at once to contest the progress of the British force; threw all his energies into the work of raising the country between Ghuznee and Mookoor; and made arrangements “for all the chiefs to rendezvous at the latter place, and fight us at the source of the Turnuck.”[284] But the British force approached Mookoor; and Shumshoodeen Khan was not ready to receive them. The chiefs had not come to the rendezvous. His preparations were not completed. He had fallen back to the vicinity of Oba, and there the chiefs were flocking to his standard. But, as Nott advanced that sultry morning through a thick haze upon Mookoor, it was plain to him that he was in an enemy’s country. The villages were deserted. Supplies were not brought into his camp. He was compelled to send his cavalry out to forage. It was plain, too, that the enemy had wisely chosen the ground on which they had determined to give us battle. There was no more defensible position on the whole line of country from Candahar to Caubul than that at the source of the Turnuck, which Shumshoodeen Khan had selected as his point of defence.[285]