1 PROGRESS OF DISAFFECTION. 481
2 torious; for they now saw that..the British
3 troops were only looking formidable from
4 having a horde of camels and numberless tents
5 which they carried with them, that they were
6 not so in reality or in numerical strength.*
7 Such were at that time the-opinions and sen-
8 timents of the nobles of Kabul ; and to these cir-
9 cumstances, as well as to two or three other
10 rash measures to which I have alluded, may be
11 ascribed the origin of the disaffection which
12 * «The Amir Dost Mahomed would have certainly
13 given us one or two battles before his flight to Bamian,
14 had he had to oppose us only on one side. -We, however,
15 threatened him at once in three different directions: be-
16 sides that, we had to a considerable degree caused him to
17 mistrust the chiefs and people around him. From the
18 south, the army of the Indus, after obtaining possession of
19 Candahar, and taking the fortress of Ghazni, had reached
20 within a few marches of his capital; and on the north, or
21 in Kohdamam, it was only about fwenty miles from the
22 city, we had succeeded in inducing his own subjects, the
23 Kohistanis, to stand up against him; and from the east
24 side we had sent the Shah Zada Taimur, the eldest son of
25 the king, with about 10,000 foot and horse, through the
26 Panjab, to divert the attention of the Amir towards Jalala-
27 bad and ‘Khaibar ; and we thus prevented his son Mahomed
28 Akbar from joining his father in Kabul.”—Mohan Lal’s
29 ‘Life of Dost Mahomed Khan, pp. 248, 249.
30 “Y