his parents, and satisfactory intelligence received of Mrs. Anderson's little girl. We shall leave these captives for the present, with the melancholy satisfaction that whatever their sufferings still were, they escaped, at least, the final butchery.
After the departure of the ladies, the troops struggled on; and as the food and fuel so liberally promised by the ruffian chief came not, another night of starvation and cold consigned more victims to a miserable death. To add to their wretchedness, many were nearly, and some wholly, afflicted with snow blindness. The men who had proudly marched from the Indus to the heart of Affghanistan – had occupied its fairest cities, beaten down its strongest fortresses, and given law from its capital – were now unable to defend themselves from those who thirsted for their blood.[1] "The European soldiers," says Lieutenant Eyre, "were now almost the only efficient men left, the Hindoostanees having all suffered more or less from the effects of the frost in their hands and feet; few were able even to hold a musket, much less to pull a trigger; in fact, the prolonged delay in the snow had paralysed the mental and bodily powers of the strongest men, rendering them incapable of any useful exertion. Hope seemed to have died in every breast; the wildness of terror was exhibited in every countenance."[2]
On the 10th the army resumed its progress, though the fighting-men were now reduced to a small number. No sooner was it light than the usual rush to the front was made by the mixed rabble of Sepoys, camp-followers, and Europeans, in one huge mass. Hundreds of poor wretches, unable to seize any animals for themselves, or despoiled by stronger persons of those they had, were left on the road to die or be butchered.
The end was now rapidly approaching. On arriving at a narrow gorge, about ten feet wide, called Tunghee Tareekee, or "the dark pass," and two miles distant from their last ground, the advance of the retreating force was
