dazzling in coronet, jewelled girdle and bracelets, but with no
Koh-i-noor now glittering on his forehead, bestrode a white charger,
whose equipments gleamed with gold. By his side rode Macnaghten and
Burnes; in the pageant were the principal officers of the British army.
Sabres flashed in front of the procession, bayonets sparkled in its rear,
as it wended its way through the great bazaar which Pollock was to
destroy three years later, and along the tortuous street to the gate of
the Balla Hissar. But neither the monarch nor his pageant kindled the
enthusiasm in the Cabulees. There was no voice of welcome; the citizens
did not care to trouble themselves so much as to make him a salaam, and
they stared at the European strangers harder than at his restored
majesty. There was a touch of pathos in the burst of eagerness to which
the old man gave way as he reached the palace, ran through the gardens,
visited the apartments, and commented on the neglect everywhere apparent.
Shah Soojah was rather a poor creature, but he was by no means altogether
destitute of good points, and far worse men than he were actors in the
strange historical episode of which he was the figurehead. He was humane
for an Afghan; he never was proved to have been untrue to us; he must
have had some courage of a kind else he would never have remained in
Cabul when our people left it, in the all but full assurance of the fate
which presently overtook him as a matter of course. Havelock thus
portrays him: 'A stout person of the middle height, his chin covered with
a long thick and neatly trimmed beard, dyed black to conceal the
encroachments of time. His manner toward the English is gentle, calm and
dignified, without haughtiness, but his own subjects have invariably
complained of his reception of them as cold and repulsive, even to
rudeness. His complexion is darker than that of the generality of
Afghans, and his features, if not decidedly handsome, are not the reverse
of pleasing; but the expression of his countenance would betray to a
skilful physiognomist that mixture of timidity and duplicity so often