The Sun.
London, England, 1842-11-18 00:00:00

_

THE ADVANCE ON CAIJBUL.

The following extracts, from a letter received by
the hat mail from an officer with the army under Ge-
neral Pollock, will amply repay perusal :
" Camp, Mamma h.hail, Aug. 28, 1842.
" Since I last wrote a sudden change has taken
place in the counsels of our Government. Instead of
retreating, as was intended, we are now actually ad-
vancing upon Caubul, while General ffott, with an •
almost equally numerous army, is approaching the
capital from Candahar. We left Jellalabad on the
20th, every one rejoicing in the prospect of making
some effort to relieve our unhappy prisoners, and
willingly giving up all but the barest necessaries for
the sake of making our scanty suppl of cattle convey
Our luggage. The officers put up in miserable little
tents, and take with them scarcely more than a change
of clothes. Many of the men have no tents at all, and
those that have are allowed but half their usual num-
ber. But we all feel assured of having done the right
thing, and have a well-grounded confidence that God
will prosper us. We have now advanced abOut 30
miles from Jellalabad, and' have been here since the
23d, and are likely to continue till a depot of provi-
sions shall haVe been prepared. On our arrival we
drove about 1,000 of the enemy from this post, and
have kept possession of it. The fight was not a se-
vere one. The enemy, of whom about 10e were
hersemen, were posted on the outskirts'of a small
village, situated on the bank of a deep ravine,. the bed
of a mountain torrent, about half a mile in their rear,
towards their right a small fort, surrounded by
walled gardens and •vineyards, and close upon the
bank of another ravine, running parallel to the former.
The land. between the two is a narrow spur; sloping
gently down from a rocky promontory of the range
of mountains called the Sufeid Koh. Our force
amounted to about 2;000 infantry, six guns, and .500
Cavalry.: The infantry were divided into columns,
. the guns in the centre, and the. cavalry on the right ;
the latter being intended to make a detour and cutoff
the enemy's retreat. • Notwithstanding our superior
numbers, the Affghans waited till we approached
virithin a thou Sand yards, when the guns opined upon
them and they. almost immediately took to fight. • A
.small, body of 200 infantry (Captain Broadfoot's Sap-
pers and Miners) pushed- forward in pursuit, and
accompanied them. • •
f " The enemy, however, were not to be overtaken;
on reaching the fort they divided into two parties, one
crossing the ravine on the left, the other taking re-
f4ge in a village higher up the spur. We followed
te latter. The cavalry had reached the .village be-
fore us, and we found it deserted. Here we waited
fliv nearly an hour,, till theremaiuder of our slowly
moving force came in sight, and then pushed on to
another village situate close under some low rocky
peaks jutting out from the hills. • This -also was aban-
doned on
,our approach, the enemy leaving in their
hurry a number of tents and ammunition, which they
had supposed to be in a secure place. We found
them, however, posted on .the tops of the rocks,
whence they poured down a pretty sharp fire. As
soon, therefore, as the column came up, they were at-
tacked and driven to the higher part of -the range in
gallant style, and here the pursuit ceased. All this was
done with scarcely any loss on our side ; and for my
own part, I joined. several others under some of the
Most magnificent trees that ever were seen, and made
a feast upon grapes such you can form no concep-
tipa, Of.. We had them of every, size and colour— .
some above two inches,in length, others no bigger than.
a white currant.. We were, in fact, among the finest
vineyards in the country. But while we were thus meri-
toriously employed, the larger body of the enemy (which
as I Mentioned, crqssed the ravine (mom- left) appeared.
about a mile off, moving slowly towards the hills.
Colonel. Taylor, of the 9th Regiment of Foot, with
about 50 Europeans and about 150 Sepoys, whom he
had hastily collected together, instantly pressed to-
wards them; hoping to intercept them, but they. were
too strong for him, and attacked him so briskly, that
he was obliged to retreat, with three officers, and
perhaps thirty men, killed and wounded! The main
body of our force had in the mean time halted at the
fort, about two miles in our rear, and we were- now
ordered to rejoin it. As we retired the Affghans ad-
vanced, gladly regaining possession of their store of
ammunition, whin we left where we -found it, not
having the means of carrying it away. It consisted •
principally of two large bags of powder,. and the Aff—i-•
ghans, eager to replenish their flasks, crowded round,
cut open the bags, and while each was.scrarahling to
help himself, the powder exploded, and blew up the
whole. party ! How many lives were lost we- cannot .
exactly ascertain, but our accounts. say not less than
50. This anything but untoward event enabled us to
make good our retreat in comparative safety, and- we
have been here ever since engaged in the benevolent
task. of cutting down every tree . and burning every .
house we can lay our hands.on, while our cattle find
exeellent forage among the standing crops. With a
very Christian spirit,.we are doing all the evil that
we possibly can, and it will afford us the most un-
feigned satisfaction if we should succeed in our zealous
attempts to convert this this beautiful and riehly-eulti-
, vated spot into a barren wilderness. That we cannot,
by any wicked device, permanently destroy.the vines is-
a sad source of regret; but of the gardens full ofinul-
,
berry, pomegranate, peach, apple, and pear trees, we
hope not to leave one standing. Is not all this kliabo-
? Is there not more the spirit of hell than of
heaven in it, and yet what is to be done—how can- it
be avoided? Our existence .depends on our reducing
these savages to submission, and they leave us no
other means of injuring them. It is. better, perhaps,
after all, to take their trees than their lives, and all
'the mischief we can do them is but a poor revenge for
their barbarous massacre of the thousands of our fel-
low soldiers, who begged of them nothing but their
lives. Old newspapers, letters, books, music, scraps
of clothes, and all sorts of fragments found in the
villages, prove, if proof were wanting, how active a .
part these assassins took in the murderous destruction
of the Feringee army. Even now they hover around
us in caves and rocks, watchingAke beasts of
prey, ready to pounce upon any unfortunate straggler
from our camp that may happen to come within
their reach, and at night they prowl about firing into-
our camp, in the hope of hitting, somebody in the
crowd. Such a set of unmitigated villains I never
heard of, but our tree-cutting, together with the re-
sult of the fight, has had the intended effect. They
are now anxious to conciliate, and are bringing in
lots of supplies. The two principal chiefs have fled
to Caubul, and the probability is that we shall meet
with little or no opposition either there or on the road.
General Nott is rapidly advancing, and will probably
take Ghuznee without firing a shot. The officers who
were imprisoned there have arrived at Caubul, and
Akhbar would gladly take the whole of our prisoners
to Balkh
.or Bokhara, where they would be quite out
of our reach; but the chiefs will not allow him to re- -
move them, and there is reason to hope that when we
reach Caubul they :will be surrendered to us. The
next month will be an eventful one. The crisis is
approaching in which some great and important
changes must take place; and though it is impossible
to look before us without anxiety, we are all sanguine
Of a most happy result. Our hope is to get posses-
sion of our prisoners, guns, and stores, and to return
to Jellalabad before the winter sets in. 11 e have
three months before us, and after that there will be
time to march back to the provinces. The climate
is now delightful, and we feel it the
moreso
from having been: so long confined inr that
fur-
nace of sand and dust, Jellalabad. we shall per-
haps move forward to Caubul about the 6th. For the
next fifty miles the road passes through barren,
rocky
mountains, without a particle of forage for the
cattle, and with numerous difficult passes which may
possibly be defended by the enemy. Here we have
met with several skeletons, the remains no doubt of
some of the poor fellows of the Caubul army, the 'lad
remnant of which was known to reach this place.
There is a hill some four miles in advance, on which
about forty men of the 44th made their last struggle,
and there, with the exception of four or five men, who
were taken prisoners, the whole were slaughtered.
This morning, much to our surprise, the Prince
Futteli Jung, the second son of Shah Soojah, made
his appearance in camp, attended only by a couple of
horsemen. He had long been imprisoned by Akbar,
and we had supposed he had been tortured to death ;*
but it seems he made his escape by cutting a hole in
the roof of the house where he was confined, and con-
trived to get clear off by the aid of a man who was
supposed to be his and our bitterest. enemy. His
being with us will no doubt further our views moss
.materially. He has a strong party in' the country;
and with a British
army to protect him, the people
will no doubt submit to his sovereignty, and in pro-
portion. desert Akbar. Timour, the eldest son; and
real heir to the throne, is with General Nott, who is
.advancing with a. powerful army from Candahar, and
being attacked on both sides by overwhelming forces,
it is most likely that Akbar will give up the contest,
and relinquish-our prisoners withoutstriking a blow."

THE STORY OF THE • EARL OF CirEsTEHTIELD.—
A certain Count Bathyeny, it seems, took a fancy to
a certain Eleanor Suter, and purchased- her for an
annuity of 3001. a year. The lady
nyowquii:e.tecdohinimga
aware
r ae
month, for the "protection, as it is called,,, of another
man. The disappointed c?nt
that the deed involVed an " immoral consideration,*
and that deeds founded on such "immoral Considera=
tion3" are void at law, brings an action in ChancWy
against those whom he had constituted trustees of her
annuity, t i restrain them from proceeding to enforce
the deed at law. and to declare it invalid.,Our readers,
oven if they have been lucky enough to overlook the
full report of this offensive case, will have already
divined that foremost in .this creditable transaction--
first among this woman'sformal arid recognised trus-
tees, among the "parties to, and authoritative abettors
of, this bargain, stood the name of 'an English peer—
Lord Chesterfield. And this, as we.-have said, has a
upon the phenomena of Lcird Huntingtower's bandk:
ruptcy, Lord Frankfort s. ond pord
I ford's with—Times.