cowering in abject submission; and the local tribes had seen that their day had not come and were once more in their homesteads, nursing their wrath and their _jhezails_ until the Kafirs should be delivered into their hands. Sir. F. Roberts was at this time quite cut off from India, so far as a connected line of communication went; the Shutargardan post was the only link between Cabul and Kurram, and that was beset by an army of hill-men. From that direction he might hope, by relieving the garrison, to get one convoy through; but beyond that point he could not go. The great height of the Shutargardan Pass precluded all hope of keeping troops there during the winter. He had come from Ali Kheyl with but a few days’ provisions; and it was plain that, unless supplies came by way of the Khyber, the army must rely upon the country for food for its 18,000 soldiers and followers. That one might have reasonably expected a long string of baggage animals to be moving westwards from Peshawur at the end of October did not seem so preposterous as men with General Bright’s column would now have us believe. To say that Peshawur was swept clean of all transport animals for Kurram, is begging the question. The Kurram Valley Force was only half-equipped when it began the advance upon Cabul, and northern India still held many thousands of mules, donkeys, camels, and their kind. We hoped that some of the energy our own Commander had shown would have been displayed in the “Army of the Indus,” and that a few troops at least would have kept pace with us, or, say, have moved on a parallel line five marches in rear. If this had been done, and a well-equipped brigade of 2,500 men had been pushed forward to Jugdulluck, the massing of 12,000 men in rear might have been postponed—for a few months, say,—and some of the transport (swallowed up by regiments who will never be wanted west of Peshawur) then liberated. But to look to the Khyber for supplies was soon found to be an expensive amusement. The troops would starve before a seer of _atta_ or grain passed Jumrood. We could live from hand-to-mouth for a week or two; but there were the four months of winter to be thought of; and it became merely a question of arithmetic whether a brigade strong enough to march to Ghazni could be spared, with all its equipment of baggage animals and followers, and at the same time four months’ supplies could be bought up and swept into our Camp by those left behind at Cabul. There seemed just a chance of this being done, if our broken reed in the Jellalabad Valley could be propped fairly straight for a few weeks. The work of collecting grain, forage, and all other supplies, was begun in earnest; and we resigned ourselves to hard labour until the troops from the Shutargardan should come in, and our communications _viâ_ Jugdulluck be well established. Expeditions to Kohistan and Ghazni were looked upon as certain of accomplishment in the near future. We knew that Jellalabad