And so it was. But from the receiving of moral shocks himself, he was soon to ptocecd to the infliction of material blows of a very crushing kind upon others. In 1878 it had become necessary to compel the Ameer of Afghanistan to comply with certain demands of ours, and for this purpose a triple-headed force was despatched from India into his dominions,—one column on the right to move through the Khyber under one-armed Sir Sam Browne; the centre one led by Roberts, vii the Kuran Valley; and that on the left to move by Quetta on Kandahar. Sir Donald Stewart, for he had now been knighted, was urgently telegraphed for to England to take the command of this left column of about 12,000. As it so happened, the only resistance encountered fell to Roberts with his 6,000 men, at the Peiwar Kotal and elsewhere on his first march to Kabul, and Sir Donald equally entered Kau without striking a blow.
Here for the present he re Roberts returned to India.
But the ter had hardly got back to Simla before all the Empire was startled by the news of the massacre of the Cavagnari mission at Kabul, to which Roberts at once prepared to return with an avenging column, Sam Browne's Khyber force had been broken up, but Sir Donald Stewart was still at Kandahar, and word was accordingly sent to him, to stop all regiments on their way back to India, and hold himself fast." "Hold the fort, for I am coming," was the virtual message flashed by Roberts to his comrade Stewart; and hold it he did, with all the tenacity of his race until some little time after Roberts's second arrival at Kabul, jen Sir Donald was ordered up with his column to that capital "to take part in the pacification" of northern Afghanistan.
And now began that march of Sir Donald from Kandahar to Kabul, which m some respects was superior in merit even to that of Roberts's subsequent reverse-march from Kabul to Kandahar, though, owing to certain accidents of circumstance, it was the feat of Roberts which mostly impressed the popular imagination, much in the same manner us. the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava—thanks, among other things, to Tennyson's Iyric—has erroneously taken its place in the same popular imagination as a far more heroic performance than the equally heroic and far more effective charge of the Heavy Brigade on the same occasion.
Leaving Kandabar on 30th March ('30), with his little column of 7,000 men, Stewart reached Kabul—a distance of over 306 miles—on th May, which was a period in all of 35 days; while Roberts with his 10,000 men covered the same reverse route 20 days. But the column of Roberts was amply provisioned, and had nothing to do but march; while Stewart wa pered with the want of food, and, wha was still worse, he was harassed by swarms of ferocious enemies whom time and again ho had to stop and beat out of his way.
This was more particularly the case Ahmed Khel, near Ghu where Sir Donald and his little column were set up-fon and nearly swallowed up by ferocious hordes of Afghans. Twice the Ghuznee swordsman nearly hewed a passage to where he stood; and for a long time the issue of the battle was doubtful. But as he had been hidden to "hold the fort" and stand fast" at Kandahar, and had fully done so, so he now again held round unflinchingly at the head of his troops among the surging hordes of the Prophet, calmly noting every feature of on his' infantry slashing charges of his native eavalr at last the shattered enemy hesitated, reeled, and finally broke into headlong flight all along the line, leaving 3,000 of their number dead or wounded on the ground.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.