Captain Burnes left Cabul on the 26th of April, 1838, and met Lord Auckland at Simla. On the 1st of October in the same year, a manifesto was issued by the Governor-General, which was virtually a declaration of war against Dost Mahomed. Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Macnaghten, Secretary to the Government of India, was appointed Minister at the court of Shah Soojah, before any such court existed; and he was to be helped in his operations by Sir Alexander Burnes, for the discredited envoy had now been made a knight. Unanticipated alterations of plan, consequent on the bad faith of Runjeet Singh, who at the last moment refused to allow a passage through his dominions, as he had promised, delayed the starting of the expedition, which did not get on its way until the late winter of 1839. The army, which was in three divisions, consisted of British troops, Afghans, and Sikhs; and it was encumbered with a large number of camp-followers and baggage-animals. The routes pursued were beset by all those difficulties which belong to a mountainous and rocky land. Numbers of men and camels were lost; the soldiers were disheartened by fatigue, and by the gloom of their surroundings; food began to fail; the supplies which were expected at Quetta, beyond the further end of the Bolan Pass, were not forthcoming; and the two principal divisions of the invading force, which had now effected their junction, pushed forward, in a half-famished state, and by a long and difficult defile, to Candahar, which was reached on the 25th of April. The city surrendered without a blow; but the army was now greatly reduced in numbers, and could not reckon more than 10,400 fighting men. Shah Soojah was proclaimed at Candahar, and Sir John Keane, who had command of the whole invading force, while attached more particularly to the Bombay column, then set out for Ghizni, two hundred and thirty miles distant from Candahar, which was itself more than a thousand miles from the points of departure.