There has not been much excitement in Camp apart from the news of a skirmish at Doaba, in which the 67th had, at last, a chance of distinguishing themselves. We shall only gain particulars of this little fight, which has cost us four killed and five wounded, when General Macpherson comes in on the 14th. ------------------------------------ CHAPTER XII. Winter Supplies—The Forage Difficulty—Lack of Civilized Appliances and Inventions—Compressed Hay—The Sick Convoy for India—Alleged Atrocities—The Inquiry into Dr. Bourke’s Statement—An Exaggerated Description of the Charasia Battlefield—General Macpherson’s Excursion to Tagao—Attitude of the Safis—Shere Ali’s Military Road along the Northern Bank of the Cabul River—The Skirmish at Doaba—Narrow Escape of Captain Poole’s Company—Defeat of the Safis. SHERPUR, _14th November_. The fall of sleet on the evening of the 11th led us to believe that severe weather might be setting in; but, to our surprise, the same genial days which delighted us before have returned; and after three sharp nights, in which a cheerful fire in a walled building would have been very welcome, we are hoping that winter will spare us further inclemency at least for two or three weeks. The Ghazni expedition may, I think, be looked upon as abandoned; and we are trusting to local sirdars to bring us in the large supplies of forage which we were going out to seek. Advances in hard cash are made to these men, so that they may go out with the practical evidence of our willingness to buy up all the _bhoosa_ in the country, and from Daoud Shah downwards they promise us great things in the way of supplies. As I said in a late letter, the question of forage is the most pressing, as, once the ground is covered with snow, the scanty supply of grass which now comes in will be entirely cut off. From Kohistan, the Logar and Chardeh Valleys, and the villages in the Cabul plain eastwards to Butkhak, we have drawn some thousands of maunds;[24] but with the horses of the 9th Lancers, three native regiments, and two batteries of Artillery, as well as the mules of two mountain batteries, to be kept in good condition, and all the transport animals to be fed, the consumption is enormous. Pressed hay would he worth its weight in silver if we could only get it here; but, of course, we might as well long for sea-coal fires. One sees much written of what ought to be done by armies advancing from India into Afghanistan, and the slowness of our marches is sometimes criticized very rabidly; but the critics seem to forget that we have no railways upon our lines of communication, and that we are asked to make war in almost as rude a way as the barbaric hordes which swept to and from India centuries ago. Barring our weapons and ammunition—and even here we have been served with Gatling guns that will not work—we have but the