66 A Sportswoman in India 



Major Louis Cavagnari to ride up the pass and 

 demand leave for the mission to enter it. Down 

 by this same little mill which we had just seen, 

 Cavagnari met the commander of the Afghan troops, 

 who flatly refused permission, and added that, but 

 for his personal friendship with Cavagnari, he would, 

 in obedience to the Amir's orders, have shot down 

 both himself and his escort. 



War was immediately declared ; and eventually 

 Lord Roberts, after hard fighting and untold diffi- 

 culties with transport in that mountainous, desolate 

 region, saved the position and entered Kabul. Sher 

 All and that hornets' nest, the Russian mission, 

 had fled to Turkestan, where the Amir died ; his 

 son Yukub Khan, assuming the government, arranged 

 and signed a treaty with the British, principally 

 through the consummate skill and diplomacy ot 

 Cavagnari. 



A British representative was to reside in Kabul, 

 and this same able administrator, now Sir Louis, 

 was given the appointment. He arrived at Lord 

 Roberts's camp in Kurram in July 1879, an< ^ ne s P ent 

 that evening with the great General, whose own heart 

 was full of gloomy forebodings. Peace had been 

 signed all too quickly, the Afghans were by no 

 means crushed, and Lord Roberts had terrible fears 

 for the friend who was going beyond England's reach 

 into the heart of a treacherous and implacable enemy. 



Sir Louis Cavagnari himself was hopeful as ever, 

 and spoke of his wife's joining him in Kabul in the 



