Yet such were the fates before them--the fates that even the quickest marching of our troops might fail to avert; for were not the Afghans, as they heard, again disputing every inch of the Passes with a desperation which proved that Lord Auckland's policy, and that of the "peace at any price party" at home, would never have availed with those who deemed diplomacy but cowardly cunning, treaties as trash, bribes as fair "loot," and all war as legal fraud? The lamentations of the women at times, when mingled and united (for grief is very infectious), roused even the usually phlegmatic Saleh Mohammed, who rode in the centre of the caravan, perched between the humps of a very high camel. "In the land to which you are going, of course, you shall find neither Jinnistan, the Country of Delight, nor its capital, the City of Precious Stones; neither will fruits and sweet cakes drop into your mouths, as if you sat under the blessed tree of Toaba, which is watered by the rivers of paradise," said he, half scoffingly; "but you will see the vast sandy waste of the Kirghisian desert, which to the thirsty looks like a silvery sea in the distance; and some of you may happily see the city of Souzak, which contains five hundred houses of stone, and I doubt if the Queen of the Feringhees has so many in her little island. Barikillah! and you will see the black tents and the fleecy flocks of the Usbec Tartars, for they are numerous as leaves in the vale of Cashmere." And thus he sought to console them when, on the evening of the first day's journey, they halted at Killi-Hadji, on the Ghuznee road (only seven miles westward from Cabul), and so called from the killi, or fort of mud that guards its cluster of huts. It was approached by narrow and tortuous lanes overhung by shady mulberry-trees; and there, beside the walls of the fort, they bivouacked for the night. The deep crimson glory of sunset was over; but the flush of the western sky lengthened far the purple shadows of tree, and rock, and hut, even of the tall camels, ere they knelt to rest, across the scene of the bivouac, which was not without its strong aspect of the quaint and picturesque, albeit the sad eyes of those who looked thereon were sick of such elements, as being associated with all their most unmerited miseries. Unbitted, with leather tobrahs, or nose-bags filled with barley, hanging from their heads, the patient horses were eating, while the hardier yaboos grazed the long grass that grew in the lanes and waste places.