Early Disasters in Afghanistan.

scarce in the English camp, and many soldiers were killed or wounded in trying to obtain food. A captain was shot dead at a conference, and Major Pottinger, who was present, escaped with difficulty. About this time, too, a son of Dost Mohammed, named Akbar, came to Cabul and headed the insurgents. After many losses, the English were obliged to treat with the Afghans. It was agreed that our army should retire unmolested, and be supplied with necessaries. In accordance with this agreement the troops left the citadel, and joined their brethren in the cantonment. The supplies were not forthcoming, and our envoy, Sir W. Macnaghten, attended another interview, which proved fatal to him. While conversing with the chiefs, Akbar shot him dead. His body was hewn in pieces, and his head exposed in the great bazaar. An officer named Trevor was also murdered on the spot, and two other officers were seized and thrown into prison.

In spite of this perfidy the English again trusted the Afghans, and on January 6th the army began its disastrous march to India. It still consisted of 4500 fighting men (about one seventh of which were English) and a huge disorderly mob of camp followers. The snow was deep, the unfortunate troops were ill-supplied with clothes and shelter, and their sufferings were intense. The enemy, too, instead of allowing them to retire in peace, annoyed them incessantly with firearms. The Afghan chief, being appealed to, promised the soldiers a safeconduct to Jellalabad if they would give up six officers as hostages, which was done. The next day they demanded more officers. This demand was granted, and during the respite from attack which followed the English army reached the tremendous pass of Koord Cabul, a pass five miles in length, and made by very high cliffs. The natives lined these cliffs, and, in spite of solemn promises, poured down incessant fire upon our troops, who pushed on as rapidly as they were able, leaving their baggage and supplies behind them.

As they issued from the defile the Afghan chief met them, and with much apparent sincerity persuaded the English to put the ladies and some others under his protection. As there appeared no other chance of saving their lives, this was agreed to. The soldiers marched on their way nearly dead of cold and hunger, for Akbar did not furnish supplies as he had promised.

Another pass had to be threaded the next day; and here, too, the Afghans were assembled in great force, and made a terrible onslaught. The native troops in English pay fled from the place, and there remained of the army but 270 men. Akbar here offered to conduct these safely to Jellalabad if they would abandon the camp followers. But the English General was too humane to do anything of the sort, so, with his diminishing but with still plucky little army, he pushed on, hoping to reach Jugduluk by a forced night march of twenty-two miles. They did not arrive at Jugduluk until three o'clock in the afternoon, and it proved to be a poor shelter after all. They saw there was no hope but in still pushing forward to Jellalabad, where General Sale and his regiments were beleaguered. But, alas! it was a losing game. Only forty men reached Gundamuk, and one solitary individual only reached Jellalabad. This was Dr. Brydon. He alone escaped to tell the awful tale of an English army destroyed as completely

as if it had been swallowed up! About seventy had become captives: a great number of the native troops and followers had gone over to the enemy; but by far the greater part of the 16,000 who left Cabul were lying dead and unburied in the fatal passes.

Of course the English Government undertook at once the punishment of so much cruelty and treachery. On the 5th of April, General Pollock moved on Jellalabad at the head of 8000 men. He was obliged to go through the Khyber Pass, which the Afghans held by means of 10,000 brave mountaineers. They had blocked up the entrance, and their sharpshooters swarmed on the heights above. The General saw that it would be certain destruction to attempt the pass as long as the enemy held the heights, and he therefore ordered some troops to scale the rocks and dislodge the foe. This dangerous and difficult task was gallantly performed, and the whole English army marched without opposition to Ali Musjid, a strong fortress. The next day Ali Musjid was taken, and the way was clear to Jellalabad.

Another English army, in the meantime, was hastening towards Cabul by the route taken before by Sir John Keane. This army was under General Nott. They went up the Bolan Pass, then halted some time at Candahar, and, after being relieved and supplied with fresh stores, prepared to besiege Ghuzni a second time. The enemy, however, remembering how we blew in the gate and stormed the city, Idid not wait our attack. Having fired their huge 60-pounder, Zubber Jung, several times, and having made a few hostile demonstrations, they thought it best to retire quietly under the cover of night. The fort was blown up by General Nott's orders, and the army moved on towards Cabul.

On the 18th of September the two Generals met near that capital. That same evening (it was Sunday) news came from Sir Richmond Shakespear (who had been sent in search of the prisoners) that they were safe, but he wished for help lest he should be overpowered. Therefore Sir R. Sale was sent to protect the prisoners, one of whom was his own dear wife. A clergyman, who was with Nott's army, says, 'I saw a little crowd, and found they were surrounding Captain Alston, one of the prisoners. He was dressed in native costume, and appeared in excellent health. In the course of the evening I saw Major Pottinger, to whose exertions the whole party, under Providence, owed their deliverance. The prisoners all gave a good account of the liberal treatment they had had from Akbar. I called on several of the ladies who had been so recently delivered from the enemy, and baptized three infants born during their captivity. Both the ladies and children looked remarkably healthy.'

Having blown up the bazaar, and plundered the city (to our shame, be it said), and having selected a ruler and left him four guns, the English army turned its back on Cabul, October 12th, 1842, and slowly wended its way toward India. The same clergyman says, 'The ground, during the march, was thickly strewn with the skeletons of the unfortunate soldiers and followers of General Elphinstone's force. Many ghastly remains lay around. Gloves and socks, haircombs, broken china and battered fragments of clothing, all served to remind us of the misery and humiliation of our troops.

On the 14th we marched through the Koord Cabul, a stupendous pass. The craggy and fantastic rocks towered almost perpendicular on both sides, to an enormous height. The foreground was occupied by the skeletons of the ill-fated troops. Large carrion-crows, and vultures with flapping wings, were soaring heavily overhead. As we entered, the ghastly memorials of the past calamity became more and more frequent. The ground, through the whole length of the pass, was cumbered with them. Some were gathered in crowds under rocks, as if to get shelter from the biting wind. I counted in one place twelve skeletons huddled together in a little nook. Some were still covered with fragments of clothing, and here and there the uniform was discoverable. One spot, where the pass was almost closed by rocks projecting on either side, was literally choked with corpses of men, horses, and camels.'

As General Pollock's army retired it was incessantly annoyed by the natives, every one of whom seems to be a born bandit-a lover of strife and robbery. No serious casualties, however, occurred; and the English forces issued from the country. When the foremost soldiers turned an angle of the rock,' says Mr. Allen, the clergyman before mentioned, and came in sight of the wide plains of the Punjab, they set up a deafening cheer, and most fully did we all participate in their joy.' G. S. O.

EPITAPH

ON LADY PASTON, IN PASTON CHURCH, NORFOLK

OBIIT 10 MARCH, 1628.

JAN man be silent and not praises find

CA

For her who lived the praise of womankind;
Whose outward frame was lent the world, to guess
What shapes our souls shall wear in happiness;
Whose virtue did all ill so oversway,

That her whole life was a Communion Day?

IONA.

¡N the first ages of Christianity, when men took literally the teachings of the Gospel to give up all for Christ's sake, no country was too remote for some fervent worshipper to escape from the temptations of the world. In this way the bleak islands of the Northern Ocean became tenanted by religious men, who sought peace and rest in their storm-beaten solitude. Even the cold and frozen shores of Iceland, on the confines of the polar circle, had been colonised by these enthusiasts, and when the Northmen discovered it in A.D. 860, they found there books, bells, and staves, of the Irish hermits who had lived and died in lonely isolation from the rest of the world. For in the sixth and seventh centuries, when darkness overshadowed Europe, the light of the Gospel was preserved in Ireland; and she well deserved her name of 'Island of the Holy and

Iona

the Learned.' The numerous religious communities established on the Continent by Irish monks attest their zeal and piety. It was an Irishman, Columbanus, who founded the Abbeys of Luxeuil and Fontaines in France, and the town of San Columbano still perpetuates his name in Italy: His disciple Gallus was the founder of the famous Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland, and Franconia was converted from paganism by St. Kilian. Whilst amongst the AngloSaxons, the community of Lindisfarne was established by Aidan, a monk of Hy, or Iona.

This little island, situated amongst the Western Isles of Scotland, though only three and a half miles long by one in breadth, has become celebrated throughout the world. In the old pagan days it was a stronghold of Druidism, and human beings were sacrificed to pitiless deities. In the year 565 St. Columba established Christianity in the island, and it continued to flourish till the invasion of the Danes in 807, when the religious community was driven away, and the place remained desolate till the 12th century, when the Benedictines and Augustinians took possession of it, and remained there until the Reformation abolished their monasteries.

us.

It is Iona during its first and most brilliant period that interests There were then no stately buildings of Norman or Gothic architecture, the ruins of which we see at the present day, but huts of wicker-work and rude stone chapels.

St. Columba, the founder of the community, was born in Ireland in the year 521, and was of royal lineage, being descended from King Nial. His name was originally Crimthan, but was changed to that of Columba on account of his dove-like simplicity; and he was afterwards known as Columbkill, or Columba of the Churches. After establishing several religious societies in his native land, he looked abroad for wider fields of action, and visited the heathen Pictish kingdom in North Britain, making many converts to Christianity. Having obtained a grant of the island of Iona from his relative Conal, king of the Albanian Seots, he proceeded there with twelve disciples, and expelling the pagan Druids, made this secluded spot the centre of his pious labours. Thence he spread the light of the Gospel into all the adjacent islands, and after a life of continued zeal in the cause of religion he died on his knees, in the very act of prayer, before the altar of the little church in his beloved 'Isle of the Waves.'*

The earnest religious life of Iona has long since passed away. The monks no longer set out in their boats to plant the Cross in barbarous and distant lands. Ruins of monasteries and tombs of kings alone remain as evidence of its former distinction; whilst the mounds of pebbles cast on the sea-shore by successive generations of pilgrims attest the sanctity of the Island of St. Columba; and his own words are verified :-'In the Isle of Love, the Isle of my heart, instead of a monk's voice there shall be lowing of cattle.' A. R.

* This is the meaning of the word Iona. The monks long retained many usages in which the Irish differed from the Latin Church, and particularly in the computation of Easter. Their mode of tonsure also was different; for instead of wearing the hair in a ring round the head as the Romans did, they cut it entirely away from the forehead, leaving it in the form of a crescent round the back of the head.