Sir Frederick Roberts left Simla on ET September along with Colonel Charles Macgregor, C.B., the brilliant and daring soldier whom he had chosen as chief of staff, and travelling night and day they reached Ali Khel on the 12th. The transport and supply difficulty had to be promptly met, and this was effected only by making a clean sweep of all the resources of the Peshawur district, greatly but unavoidably to the hindrance of the advance of the Khyber column, and by procuring carriage and supplies from the friendly tribes of the Kuram. Notwithstanding the most strenuous exertions it was not until the 1st October that Roberts' little army, having crossed the Shutargurdan by detachments, was rendezvoused at and about the village of Kushi in the Logur plain, within forty-eight miles of Cabul. Some sharp skirmishes had been fought as the troops traversed the rugged ground between Ali Khel and the Shutargurdan, but the losses were trivial, although the General himself had a narrow escape. A couple of regiments and four guns under the command of Colonel Money were left in an entrenched camp to hold the Shutargurdan. The massacre of the British mission had no sooner been perpetrated than Yakoub Khan found himself in a very bad way. The Cabul Sirdars sided with the disaffected soldiery, and urged the Ameer to raise his banner for a _jehad_ or religious war, a measure for which he had no nerve. Nor had he the nerve to remain in Cabul until Roberts should camp under the Balla Hissar and demand of him an account of the stewardship he had undertaken on behalf of the ill-fated Cavagnari. What reasons actuated the anxious and bewildered man cannot precisely be known; whether he was simply solicitous for his own wretched skin, whether he acted from a wish to save Cabul from destruction, or whether he hoped that his entreaties for delay might stay the British advance until the tribesmen should gather to bar the road to the capital. He resolved to fly from Cabul, and commit himself to the protection of General Roberts and his army. The day before General Roberts arrived at Kushi the Ameer presented himself in Baker's camp, accompanied by his eldest son and some of his Sirdars, among whom was Daoud Shah the Commander-in-Chief of his army. Sir Frederick on his arrival at Kushi paid a formal visit to the Ameer, which the latter returned the same afternoon and took occasion to plead that the General should delay his advance. The reply was that not even for a single day would Sir Frederick defer his march on Cabul. The Ameer remained in camp, his personal safety carefully protected, but under a species of honourable surveillance, until it should be ascertained judicially whether or not he was implicated in the massacre of the mission.