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Then there were no roads, or very bad ones, and before an army could reach the plains the whole empire would have been wakened. Now, for their own undoing, they have made roads up to the very foot of yon mountains, and there is a new railway down the Indus through Kohistan waiting to carry us into the heart of the Punjab.
This policy of conciliation bore good fruit; and a durbar was held on January 9th, 1880, at which were present about 200 sirdars, chiefs, and headmen from the Kohistan, Logur, and the Ghilzai country. Rewards were presented to those chiefs who had remained friendly; the General received the salaams of the assembled sirdars and then addressed them in a firm but conciliatory speech.
In three weeks Sale marched to and fro through the Kohistan, pursuing will-o'-the-wisp rumours as to the whereabouts of the Dost, destroying forts on the course of his weary pilgrimage, and subjected occasionally to night attacks.
Learning that for certain the Dost had crossed the Hindoo Koosh from Nijrao into the Kohistan, Sale, who had been reinforced, sent out reconnaissances which ascertained that he was in the Purwan Durrah valley, stretching down from the Hindoo Koosh to the Gorebund river; and the British force marched thither on 2d November.
His first object was to gain possession of the conical hill already mentioned, and thus debar the Afghan force on the Asmai heights from receiving accessions either from the masses on the hill further north or by the Kohistan road. Under cover of the artillery fire the Highlanders and Guides occupied this conical hill after a short conflict.
Massy had observed from the Siah Sung heights that the Asmai heights, overhanging the Cabul suburb of Deh Afghan, were held by a large body of Afghan soldiery, a force, it was afterwards learned, composed of the remnants of the regiments defeated at Charasiah, three fresh regiments from the Kohistan, and the rabble of the city and adjacent villages, having a total strength of nearly 3000 men, with twelve guns, under the leadership of Mahomed Jan, who later was to figure prominently as the ablest of our Afghan enemies.
This letter Macnaghten received the day after the disaster in the Kohistan, when he was taking his afternoon ride in the Cabul plain. His heart must have been very heavy as he rode, when suddenly a horseman galloped up to him and announced that the Ameer was approaching. 'What Ameer? asked Macnaghten. 'Dost Mahomed Khan, was the reply, and sure enough there was the Dost close at hand.
Lord Ripon, however, considered that 'as matters stood an arrangement with Abdurrahman offered the most advisable solution, while he doubted whether it would not be found very difficult to enter into any alternative arrangement. His Excellency's decision was justified by the event. Meanwhile, indeed, Abdurrahman had started on June 28th for the Kohistan.
He had with him a force of about 3000 men, consisting of four infantry and two cavalry regiments, with twelve guns and some irregulars. He professed his readiness, in preference to conducting negotiations through agents, to go himself to Charikar in the Kohistan with an escort, and there discuss matters with the English officers in person.
Disaffection was rife everywhere throughout the kingdom, but it was perhaps most rife in the Kohistan, which was seething with intrigues in favour of Dost Mahomed, while the local chiefs were intensely exasperated by the exactions of the Shah's revenue collectors. Macnaghten summoned the chiefs to Cabul.
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