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
there it would soon starve outright, the best thing to be done was to
push it forward with all possible speed into a region where food should
be procurable. Acting on this reasoning, he marched the day after his
arrival. Cotton, while lying in Quetta, had not taken the trouble to
reconnoitre the passes in advance, far less to make a practicable road
through the Kojuk defile if that should prove the best route.
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