The dragoons and the horse artillery reached Peshawur on the 29th of March, and Pollock at once made his preparations to enter the Khybur Pass. On the 31st he pitched his camp at Jumrood, in the expectation of advancing on the following morning; but new elements of delay arose. The camel-drivers were deserting. Gholab Singh had not moved up his camp. And, above all, the rain was descending in floods. It would have dispirited the troops to have moved them forward at such a time and rendered more difficult the advance of the baggage. Pollock had done his best to diminish to the least possible amount the number of carriage-cattle that were to move with him into the Khybur Pass. But an Indian commander has no more difficult duty than this. Under no circumstances is the general addiction to much baggage very easily overcome. Men are not readily persuaded to leave their comforts behind them. A fine soldierly appeal was issued to the army;[58] and men of all ranks felt that it came from an officer who was not less ready to make sacrifices himself than to call upon others to make them.[59] Circumstances, too, at this time, tended to reduce the amount of the baggage. The camel-drivers had deserted in such numbers, that there was not even sufficient carriage for the ammunition. The 33rd Regiment, which had just arrived at Peshawur, could not come up to the encamping-ground for want of cattle; and another day’s halt was the result of the delay.[60] In the meanwhile, the Sepoys were deserting from Wild’s Brigade; and no satisfactory progress was making in the negotiations which Mackeson had been carrying on for the purchase of a free passage through the Khybur from the Afreedi Maliks.[61] But there was one advantage in the delay. It gave time for the Sikh troops to prepare themselves, after their own fashion, to co-operate with our army, and General Pollock felt that whatever might be the amount of active assistance to be derived from the efforts of our allies, a combined movement would have a good moral effect.