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Beef-eaters, or yeomen of the guard, are stationed by the sideboard at great royal dinners. The term is a corruption from the French buffetiers, from buffet, sideboard. A Lion Killer. Lions abound in the west of India. A gentleman assured Captain Skinner that he had, in one season, killed forty-five in the province of Hissar, alone.
On the 17th he marched into camp four miles west of Cabul, whence he could discern, not with entire complacency, the British ensign already flying from the Balla Hissar, for Pollock had won the race to Cabul by a couple of days.
The villagers were to a man hostile, and seized every opportunity of firing upon bodies of our troops. It was necessary to show considerable severity, and all captured with arms in their hands in such cases were shot at once. Cabul was now open to us; and upon the 11th October, Sir Frederick Roberts and his staff entered the Bala Hissar, and visited the ruins of the Embassy.
It was held that an escort so scanty was sufficient, since the Ameer had pledged himself personally for the safety and protection of the mission. The Envoy was received with high honour, and conducted to the roomy quarters in the Balla Hissar which had been prepared as the Residency, within easy distance of the Ameer's palace.
On the 9th, owing to the mental and physical weakness of poor General Elphinstone, Brigadier Shelton was summoned into cantonments from the Balla Hissar, bringing with him part of the garrison with which he had been holding the latter post. The hopes entertained that Shelton would display vigour, and restore the confidence of the troops, were not realised.
Another military road was built through the Cabul gorge to the main Ghuznee and Bamian road in the Chardeh valley. Strong forts were built on the Asmai and Sher Derwaza heights and on the spur above the Balla Hissar, which, well garrisoned and supplied adequately with provisions, water, and ammunition, would enable Cabul as well as Sherpur to be held.
The night before reaching Kara Hissar, we entered an abandoned stable, from which everything had fled except the fleas. Another night was spent in the pine-forests just on the border between Asia Minor and Armenia, which were said to be the haunts of the border robbers. Our surroundings could not be relieved by a fire for fear of attracting their attention.
It was not till the Seljuk kingdom was finally extinguished, in or about 1300 A.D. that Osman assumed at Yenishehr the style and title of a sultan. Acknowledged from Afium Kara Hissar, in northern Phrygia, to the Bithynian coast of the Marmora, beside whose waters his standards had already been displayed, he lived on to see Brusa fall to his son Orkhan, in 1326, and become the new capital.
Kaufmann astutely retorted on this demonstration by despatching, not indeed an expedition, but an embassy to Cabul; and when Stolietoff, the gallant defender of the Schipka Pass, rode into the Balla Hissar on August 11th, 1878, Shere Ali received him with every token of cordiality and regard.
On the 9th the divisional camp moved forward to the Siah Sung heights, a mile eastward from the Balla Hissar, and there it was joined by Baker, and by Massy, who on his way to camp led his wearied troopers through the city of Cabul without mishap or insult.
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