of the division, the 17th, as it is recorded in a Bombay paper, is most
distressing. They embarked at Curachee for Bombay, and sailed in the
morning with a fair wind and a fine breeze, but before the night closed
in upon them the ship was fast aground upon a sandbank, off the Hujamree
branch of the Indus, scarcely within sight of land. Everything was
thrown overboard to lighten the ship, but in vain; she became a total
wreck, and settled down to her main deck in the water. She fortunately,
however, held together long enough to allow all the men to be taken on
shore, which occupied three days, but with the loss of everything they
had taken on board with them. The other regiments, we may hope, have
been more fortunate, as they were not mentioned in the paper which gave
this melancholy account of the 17th regiment.

Sinde, the country through which the army first passed, is divided into
three districts, each governed by an Ameer, the chief of whom resides at
Hydrabad, the second at Khyrpoor, and the other at Meerpoor; and when
Lieut. Burnes ascended the Indus, in 1831, the reigning Ameers were
branches of the Beloochistan tribe of Talpoor. With these the chief of
Kelat and Gundava, Mehrab Khan (who was related by marriage to the Ameer
of Hydrabad), was more closely allied than any other prince. Like them,
he had been formerly tributary to Cabool, and had shaken off the yoke,
and, possessing a very strong country between Afghanistan and Sinde, he
became as useful as he had at all times proved himself a faithful ally
to the Sindeans. Shikarpoor, with the fertile country around it, as well
as Bukker, had formerly belonged to the Barukzye family of Afghanistan,
and, although they still possessed Candahar, Cabool, and Peshawar, they
had in vain endeavoured to withdraw Mehrab Khan from his alliance with
the Sindeans, or to recover those lost possessions.

To understand the political state of Afghanistan, into which the army