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After spending two months in beautiful Cabool, resting their weary limbs and feasting on fine fruits, the army was ordered to return home. They began to march again towards the coast, a distance of fifteen hundred miles, over cragged rocks, and scorching plains. In the course of this terrible journey, the father of the young soldier again fell ill, and was forced to stop by the way.
"Huge heaps of assafoetida, in bags, from the mountains beyond Cabool tons of raisins of various sorts almonds, pistachio nuts, sheep with four or five horns Balkh cats, with long silken hair; of singular beauty faqueers begging, and abusing the uncharitable with the grossest and most filthy language long strings of elderly ladies, proceeding in a chant to the priests of the Lingam, to bargain for bodily issue Ghât priests presenting their books for the presents and signatures of the European visitors groups of Hindoos surrounding a Bramin, who gives each of them a certificate of his having performed the pilgrimage" such are a few of the component parts of the scene; but the colonel's attention seems to have been principally fixed upon the horses, and the tricks of the dulals or brokers, to whom the purchase is generally confided, it being almost hopeless for an European to make a personal bargain with a native dealer.
Them makes five dollars half an' seb'n pence, an' which kyar'd on to the t'other twenty-six an' a half, fetches the whole cabool to jes' thirty-two dollars an' seb'n pence. But I made up my mind I'd fling out that seb'n pence, an' jes' call it a dollar even money, an' which here's the solid silver." In spite of the rapidity with which this enumeration of counter-charges was made, Mr.
The elephants trumpeted and piped; the syces, or grooms, came rushing up with eager queries; the villagers bustled about like so many ants aroused by the approach of a hostile foe; my pack of terriers yelped out in chorus; the pony neighed; the Cabool stallion plunged about; my servants came rushing from the shelter of the tent verandah with disordered dress; the ducks rose in a quacking crowd, and circled round and round the tent; and the cry arose of 'Bagh!
And the pleasant peddler all the way from Cabool says, "Step without the gate, Little Brother, if you would see my pretty kitten play tricks; if you would stroke my cunning mungooz, step without the gate; for I dare not pass within, lest my lord, the Baboo of many lacs, should be angry."
The principality of Herat, although on the other side of intervening deserts, extending for many hundred miles, was in itself a fertile and beautiful oasis, where a numerous army might be refreshed and provisioned, and established as on a vantage-ground. From thence the Persians, strengthened and officered by the Russians, might roll on towards Cabool, and there prepare for a descent upon India.
Half an hour after the gates were fired, the city was taken. The news of the victory spread among the Affghans on the mountains, and the plains, and the whole country submitted to the British. The army soon marched to Cabool, that proud city. No one opposed their entrance, and the bazaar, and the king's garden, and the royal citadel were visited by our soldiers.
There is the great beauty of a well trained Arab or country-bred; if you get a spill, he waits beside you till you recover your faculties, and get your bellows again in working order; if you are riding a Cabool, or even a waler, it is even betting that he turns to bite or kick you as you lie, or he rattles off in pursuit of your more firmly seated friends, spoiling their sport, and causing the most fearful explosions of vituperative wrath.
Farther to the rear a line of horses were picketed, including my man-eating demon the white Cabool stallion, my gentle country-bred mare Motee the pearl and my handsome little pony mare, formerly my hockey or polo steed, a present from a gallant sportsman and rare good fellow, as good a judge of a horse, or a criminal, as ever sat on a bench.
He says he is going to Cabool and Kandahar. A unique feature of his makeup is a staff with a bayonet fixed on the end, in place of the usual club or battle-axe. The night is spent in an Eliaute camp; nummuds seem scarce articles with them, and I spend a cold and uncomfortable night, scarcely sleeping a wink.
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