strong arms and stout hearts in preparing to give the ruthless monster such a reception as he merited at the hands of British soldiers. For this purpose every possible exertion was made to reduce the consumption of provisions, and to procure fresh supplies, while the difficult task of placing the town in a respectable state of defence was carried on with vigour and success. By the 22nd of January the place was surrounded by an Affghan army of 9,000 men, including 2,500 good cavalry, commanded by Akbar Khan in person. This truculent chief, who had formerly been governor of Jellalabad himself, made the most strenuous efforts to establish a rigorous blockade; while the ravines, hollows, and remains of mosques and mud-forts outside the walls were filled with skirmishers, who kept up an incessant fire on the parapets.
Fortunately, Sir Robert Sale had provisions enough for three or four months, and his foraging parties were so well conducted that they gathered grass for their horses and cattle in spite of the enemy, who possessed but little skill in siege operations, whatever they might display in butchering a helpless enemy in their murderous defiles. The courage of the garrison was further kept up by intelligence that a force under Colonel Wyld was preparing to march to the relief of Jellalabad, and that General Pollock, with a fresh army from India, was crossing the Punjaub. As, however, a long time must elapse before a march of five or six hundred miles could be effected, the garrison of Jellalabad wisely determined to trust to their own resources; and, by skilful and incessant labour, they had brought the tottering old walls into a defensible state, capable of resisting any Asiatic army unprovided with battering-train; when it pleased Providence to destroy the whole of their work by a tremendous earthquake, by which all the parapets were shaken down, several of the bastions injured, a considerable breach made in the curtain of the Peshawur face, the Cabul gate reduced to a shapeless mass of ruins, and about one-third of the town itself demolished.
