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494 a bold face; but as soon as a breach had been made, the garrison fled, and the place was occupied without resistance. On receiving this intelligence, and seeing the British army, most of the Beloochees broke up from Hyderabad, and the Ameers at once agreed to the terms demanded.

The Bombay force now marched up the banks of the Indus, and on the 21st of February reached Sehwun, where they formed a junction with the Bengal army, which had crossed at Bukkur; having, by a great exertion of skill and activity, thrown a bridge of boats over the river, which is here four hundred and ninety yards broad. Sir Henry Fane being compelled by severe illness to return to England, the chief command now devolved on Sir John Keane, and the second on Sir Willoughby Cotton. Mr. Macnaghten, Envoy and Minister of the Indian Government at the Court of Shah Sujah, having urged an immediate advance, progress was resumed on the 22nd; the whole force amounting to 19,350 men, exclusive of the Shah's contingent of 6,000. Having reached Larkhanu on the 5th of March, and halted there nine days for refreshment, they quitted the Indus and struck into the interior.

The "Army of the Indus," as the force was styled, had then a march of five hundred miles to perform to Candahar, through a most difficult country, being partly the same in which Alexander, on his return from India, so severely suffered. Great part was quite a desert, and the heat was so excessive that two officers and fifty or sixty men in Colonel Dennie's division alone died from the action of its deadly simoom. When Sir Willoughby Cotton commenced his march towards the Bolan Pass with the Bengal army, he was attended by about 80,000 camp-followers, who were all to be fed from the Commissariat. Crossing a broad and dreary desert, this Bengal column reached Dadur, at the foot of the mountains of Western Affghanistan, on the 6th of March. Here supplies began to run short, so that the non-combatants of the column were put