Prior to this point of time our little army under General Elphinstone had remained peacefully in Cabul, far distant from the British settlements in Hindostan. Many of the officers had built pleasant and even pretty houses in the neighbourhood of the fortified cantonments which lay between the hills of Behmaru and those of Siah Sung, two miles distant from the city; and there they dwelt comfortably and unsuspectingly with their wives and families.
Communication with the outer world beyond the passes was however both difficult and dubious; for the territories of wild and untrustworthy allies lay between our troops and the Indies on one hand; and between them and the Arabian Sea on the other.
It was August, as before stated, when we entered Cabul. The violets, the tulips and the wall-flower, which grow wild during spring, had passed away; but the air was yet perfumed by the Persian iris; the orchards and lovely gardens around the city were teeming with luscious fruit; and the Cabul river flowed between its banks, where the purple grape, the ruddy apple, and golden orange, bending the laden branches, dipped in the stream or kissed its shining ripples.
Englishmen take old England with them everywhere; and thus the honest and confident freedom with which our officers went to and fro between the camp and city, and the free way in which they spent their money, won them, for a time, the favour of the Afghans; and the winter of the first year saw the introduction of horse races, at which a splendid sword, given by the Shah, was won by Major Daly of the 4th Light Dragoons; cricket matches, when Bob Waller held his wicket against the field; and cock-fighting, a favourite sport with the natives.
The chiefs invited them to their houses in the city and to their castles in the country, where their double-barrelled rifles brought down the snipes and quails, the elk, the deer, the hare and flying fox, with a precision that elicited many a shout of "Allah" and "Bismillah" from the entertainers.
The winter of that year also saw our officers skating on the lake of Istaliff, six miles from Cabul—the skates being the work of a Scottish armourer sergeant. Amateur theatricals,* for which Polwhele painted the scenery, were not wanting to add to the wonder of those sequestered Orientals, to whom the doors of the houses were thrown freely open; but with the coming spring, when the field-pea, the yellow briar-rose, the variously tinted asphodels, and the orchards in rich blossom, made all the valley beautiful, came the crowning marvel, when Lieutenant Sinclair of Her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry, an officer who possessed great mechanical skill, constructed and launched on the lake of Istaliff, that which had never before been seen in Afghanistan, a large boat, with masts, sails, and oars.
* The favourite play was "The Irish Ambassador," and others of the same kind. "On such occasions they changed the titles of the dramatis personæ, so as to bring them and the offices of the parties bearing them, down to the level of Afghan comprehension; while Burnes and others skilled in the dialect of the country, translated the speeches as they were uttered."—Sales' Brigade in Afghanistan.
The plaudits of the assembled thousands made the welkin ring.
"Now," they exclaimed, "we see that you are not like the infidel Hindoos that follow you! You are men born and bred like ourselves in a land where God varies the seasons, thus giving vigour to mind and body. Oh, that you had come among us as friends, rather than enemies, for you are fine fellows, one by one, though as a body we hate you!"
And so dark days were coming, for the misrule of the Shah Sujah, the intrigues of the restless Ackbar Khan, and the national distrust of the mountaineers of all foreign, especially Kaffir, intervention, were soon to put an end to this pleasant state of matters.