February 20th its headquarters reached Shikarpore. Ten days later,
Cotton, leading the advance, was in Dadur, at the foot of the Bolan Pass,
having suffered heavily in transport animals almost from the start.
Supplies were scarce in a region so barren, but with a month's partial
food on his beasts of burden he quitted Dadur March 10th, got safely, if
toilsomely, through the Bolan, and on 26th reached Quetta, where he was
to halt for orders. Shah Soojah and Keane followed, their troops
suffering not a little from scarcity of supplies and loss of animals.

Keane's error in detaining Cotton at Quetta until he should arrive proved
itself in the semi-starvation to which the troops of the Bengal column
were reduced. The Khan of Khelat, whether from disaffection or inability,
left unfulfilled his promise to supply grain, and the result of the
quarrel which Burnes picked with him was that he shunned coming in and
paying homage to Shah Soojah, for which default he was to suffer cruel
and unjustifiable ruin. The sepoys were put on half, the camp followers
on quarter rations, and the force for eleven days had been idly consuming
the waning supplies, when at length, on April 6th, Keane came into camp,
having already formally assumed the command of the whole army, and made
certain alterations in its organisation and subsidiary commands. There
still remained to be traversed 147 miles before Candahar should be
reached, and the dreaded Kojuk Pass had still to be penetrated.

Keane was a soldier who had gained a reputation for courage in Egypt and
the Peninsula. He was indebted to the acuteness of his engineer and the
valour of his troops, for the peerage conferred on him for Ghuznee, and
it cannot be said that during his command in Afghanistan he disclosed any
marked military aptitude. But he had sufficient perception to recognise
that he had brought the Bengal column to the verge of starvation in
Quetta, and sufficient common sense to discern that, since if it remained