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 Wednesday, 19th.

It is very odd that no letters whatever have come from Cabul for three weeks, but the reports are all favourable. Yours most affectionately, E. E.

Government House, January 14, 1842.

I did not hear from you last month. I suppose, as usual, you were tossing about on that dreadful sea, and I did not write; for, as you will have heard, we were in a melancholy way about that insurrection at Cabul; and it has been protracted anxiety, for the peril of all there is still very great, and I fear before I send this there will be bad tidings to tell. In other parts of Afghanistan everything has been quieted. The direct intelligence from Cabul is so scanty we hardly understand the state of affairs there, or why, with five thousand troops, no effort has been made; we only know that the camp is surrounded and provisions failing fast. Lady Macnaghton, Lady Sale, and many other ladies we know are there, some with large families of children; and to retreat, even