ghans, seemed now
at an end. Our road lay through bleak and desolate hills, where only a
solitary, and timid mountaineer was occasionally to be seen. Numerous
rivers and streams traversed this wild country in every direction, and
relieved us from all apprehensions on the score of water. Provisions
were also plentiful, as the Commissariat had taken care to lay in
sufficient supplies, and the only inconvenience which we might be said
to have experienced was the severe cold of the nights. The barren nature
of the country rendered fuel difficult of obtainment, and the
consequence was that numbers of the troops were carried off by
dysentery.

The march from Ghuznee to Quettah occupied about five weeks, and we
thought we should never reach the end of these long chains of hills.
Always ascending and descending heights of no inconsiderable elevation,
the horses became regularly knocked up with fatigue, and we were obliged
to shoot numbers of them on the way.

In a recess in one of these hills, I one day came upon a singular scene.
About nine or ten of the natives were assembled around a dead horse and
while part of them were cutting steaks from his haunches, the others
were engaged cooking them. Revolting as such a sight is to European
stomachs, I have seen the time when, on our march upwards, I could have
partaken of these same horse steaks with infinite relish.

A few days before our arrival at Quettah, we requited an atrocious act
of treachery, which had been committed towards us by some Ghiljie
chiefs, with the punishment it richly merited. About one hundred camel
drivers, who had left us at Candahar, on our way to Cabul, for the
purpose of returning homewards, took their route over the hills we were
now crossing in order to shorten the journey. They were met by the
Ghiljies with professions of friendship, and seduced into a mountain
fort under the pretence of hospitality. They had no sooner entered its
walls than their throats were all cut, and their bodies flung into deep
wells for the purpose of concealing the massacre from the eyes of the
British.

Information of the fact having been received, Sir Thomas Wiltshire
despatched a Squadron of her Majesty's 4th Light Dragoons, two companies
of Native Infantry, and two pieces of artillery to raze the fortress to
the ground. The cavalry started at two o'clock in the morning, and after
a hard gallop of eighteen miles we arrived in front of the Ghiljie
strong-hold. It was a