staunch to the Shah, and useful in curbing the powers of the chiefs. The
latter, of course, were alienated and resentful, and the levies, imbued
with the Afghan attribute of fickleness, proved for the most part
undisciplined and faithless.

The winter of 1839-40 passed without much noteworthy incident. The winter
climate of Afghanistan is severe, and the Afghan, in ordinary
circumstances, is among the hibernating animals. But down in the Khyber,
in October, the tribes gave some trouble. They were dissatisfied with the
amount of annual black-mail paid them for the right of way through their
passes. When the Shah was a fugitive thirty years previously, they had
concealed and protected him; and mindful of their kindly services, he had
promised them, unknown to Macnaghten, the augmentation of their subsidy
to the old scale from which it had gradually dwindled. Wade, returning
from Cabul, did not bring them the assurances they expected, whereupon
they rose and concentrated and invested Ali Musjid, a fort which they
regarded as the key of their gloomy defile. Mackeson, the Peshawur
political officer, threw provisions and ammunition into Ali Musjid, but
the force, on its return march, was attacked by the hillmen, the Sikhs
being routed, and the sepoys incurring loss of men and transport. The
emboldened Khyberees now turned on Ali Musjid in earnest; but the
garrison was strengthened, and the place was held until a couple of
regiments marched down from Jellalabad, and were preparing to attack the
hillmen, when it was announced that Mackeson had made a compact with the
chiefs for the payment of an annual subsidy which they considered
adequate.

Afghanistan fifty years ago, and the same is in a measure true of it
to-day, was rather a bundle of provinces, some of which owned scarcely a
nominal allegiance to the ruler in Cabul, than a concrete state. Herat