60 A Sportswoman in India 



Closer we drew to the dreary, frowning mountains, 

 the road rising gradually, till at last we were threading 

 our way through the most rough-and-tumble hills 

 ever seen. The road lay sometimes far above us, 

 sometimes below us, as the case might be, snaking 

 its way between high precipices and overhanging cliffs, 

 and twisting round corners which required very skilful 

 driving. It dawned upon us with what ease a 

 regiment could be hopelessly cut off and shot down 

 in those winding defiles and steep chasms, especially 

 late in the day, when it was dusk. 



England has not forgotten the sad tale of General 

 Elphinstone's little army in 1842, whom the Afghans 

 had sworn to see safely leave the country. These 

 treacherous natives surrounded them in a little pass 

 not more than forty feet wide, and from the heights 

 above shot them down and hurled stones upon them. 

 The survivors perished of cold and want ; all except 

 three men, who alone escaped alive. Of these, two 

 were murdered at Futteeabad, and one man one only 

 lived to tell the tale. Dr. Brydon, alone, worn out 

 with fatigue, starvation, and wounds, grasping in his 

 right hand the hilt of his broken sword, and leaning, 

 rather than sitting, on a miserable, dead-beat pony, rode 

 into Jellalabad, the only survivor of the Kabul Army. 



It is impossible to go through the Khyber Pass 

 without memories such as these crowding into the 

 brain. The lifeless, wind-swept mountains, with their 

 stunted tufts of vegetation fading in the wastes of sand, 

 call up picture after picture of the past. 



