Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/90

 CHAPTER VII

The Restoration of Sháh Shujá

On the 7th of April Keane marched from Quetta towards Haikalzai, beyond which rose the Khojak in a tumbled sea of bare, bleak, rugged slate-hills, cloven by passes shorter but more formidable than the Bolán. No attempt to reconnoitre the ground had been made during the ten days' halt at Quetta. It was not certain that the pass selected was the most practicable. The passage of the Khojak was slow, difficult, and full of hardship for our ill-fed troops. After the engineers had made or mended some kind of road, the guns and ordnance wagons had to be dragged by our European soldiers up the slopes, sometimes through gorges where two loaded camels could not pass abreast. It took many days and much hard labour to carry the force with all its incumbrances over the Khojak into the plains of Kandahár. Happily no enemy, except stray groups of plundering Afgháns and Biluchis, harassed Keane's advance; but the loss of baggage, tents, beasts, and warlike stores, was very great. In one march alone the cavalry brigade lost fifty-eight horses, dead of sheer exhaustion; and both