half to Aoshahr, so as to prevent the fugitives escaping along the crest of the hills down the dip we had passed through; while the General and Staff remained in the open with the rest of the cavalry, including the 9th Lancers. We had mounted signallers with us, and heliographic communication was opened with the high Takht-i-Shah Peak overlooking the Bala Hissar Ridge. Captain Straton thence signalled down that the enemy’s working parties had been strengthening their _sungar_ on the Asmai Hill, and that some of General Baker’s troops were on the same side of the ridge as ourselves. We could see the enemy distinctly on the hillside, and at its foot was their camp, made up of forty or fifty tents. These were close to the village of Dehmazung, half-hidden by orchards, and a gun was slued round and pointed at us as soon as we appeared. The 9th Lancers withdrew 1,000 yards just as the enemy fired a few shells at our videttes. The shells buried themselves in the soft ground and never exploded. We could not push farther forward, as deep watercourses cut up the fields at every few score yards, and the rows of closely planted willow-trees along these would have broken any cavalry formation. In the various villages, too, large bodies of the enemy were gathered, who could have shot our horsemen down from the towers and walls without at all exposing themselves. A narrow road to the left led along the foot of the hills to the enemy’s camp, but only three men could have gone abreast, and it was commanded on the left and front by the guns, and on the right by the troops in Dehmazung, underneath the walls of which it passed. At a quarter to four we heard the first gun fired, and from that time to dark we watched for the infantry attack to develop. Some of the 92nd Highlanders were seen to our right centre among the trees of a village a mile from Dehmazung, and a small party of the 9th Lancers was sent by General Massy to open communication with them. These found the enemy swarming in the orchards they had to pass through, and after being fired upon from several walls they had to return. The mountain guns with General Baker, posted upon the high ridge commanding the Bala Hissar, were shelling the Asmai Heights lined by the enemy, whose guns returned the fire shot for shot. Having twelve guns to General Baker’s two mountain guns, they had much the best of it, though the range was so long that little real damage was done on either side. The ridges upon which this shell practice was going on form the defences of Cabul from attack from the Bamian direction. Running up from the Bala Hissar, and following every dip and rise of the hillside, is a strong wall ten or twelve feet high, pierced for musketry. This wall is continued at right angles along the crest of the Sherderwaza Ridge and down the precipitous hillside of the gorge through which the Cabul River runs. It ends a few yards from the broken arches of a bridge spanning