Announcing that he was Dost Mohammed, the stranger proffered his sword in token of surrender; for it would seem that the hapless prince had that day ridden sixty miles from the Nijrow Valley, quitting his routed host; and he was immediately transmitted to Calcutta; but rejecting with hatred and scorn all offers of pension or place from the British Government, Ackbar Khan, the most brave and reckless of his sons, preferred a life of rude independence in Loodianah, and never lost the hope of levying a holy war for the extermination of the meddling and Kaffir Feringhees--the infidel English; for so he stigmatised us. Prior to this point of time our little army under General Elphinstone had remained peacefully in Cabul, far distant from the British settlements in Hindostan. Many of the officers had built pleasant and even pretty houses in the neighbourhood of the fortified cantonments which lay between the hills of Behmaru and those of Siah Sung, two miles distant from the city; and there they dwelt comfortably and unsuspectingly with their wives and families. Communication with the outer world beyond the passes was however both difficult and dubious; for the territories of wild and untrustworthy allies lay between our troops and the Indies on one hand; and between them and the Arabian Sea on the other. It was August, as before stated, when we entered Cabul. The violets, the tulips and the wall-flower, which grow wild during spring, had passed away; but the air was yet perfumed by the Persian iris; the orchards and lovely gardens around the city were teeming with luscious fruit; and the Cabul river flowed between its banks, where the purple grape, the ruddy apple, and golden orange, bending the laden branches, dipped in the stream or kissed its shining ripples. Englishmen take old England with them everywhere; and thus the honest and confident freedom with which our officers went to and fro between the camp and city, and the free way in which they spent their money, won them, for a time, the favour of the Afghans; and the winter of the first year saw the introduction of horse races, at which a splendid sword, given by the Shah, was won by Major Daly of the 4th Light Dragoons; cricket matches, when Bob Waller held his wicket against the field; and cock-fighting, a favourite sport with the natives. The chiefs invited them to their houses in the city and to their castles in the country, where their double-barrelled rifles brought down the snipes and quails, the elk, the deer, the hare and flying fox, with a precision that elicited many a shout of "Allah" and "Bismillah" from the entertainers.