The British loss was twenty killed and sixty-seven wounded. On
the night of the combat part of Baker's troops bivouacked beyond the
Sung-i-Nawishta, and on the following day the whole division passed the
defile and camped at Beni Hissar, within sight of the Balla Hissar and
the lofty ridge overhanging Cabul.
On the afternoon of the 7th a violent explosion was heard in the Beni
Hissar camp from the direction of the Sherpur cantonment north of Cabul,
near the site of the British cantonments of 1839-41. Next morning
information came in that the Sherpur magazine had been blown up, and that
the cantonment had been abandoned by the Afghan regiments which had
garrisoned that vast unfinished structure. General Massy led out part of
his brigade on a reconnaissance, and took possession of the deserted
Sherpur cantonment, and of the seventy-five pieces of ordnance parked
within the walls. Massy had observed from the Siah Sung heights that the
Asmai heights, overhanging the Cabul suburb of Deh Afghan, were held by a
large body of Afghan soldiery, a force, it was afterwards learned,
composed of the remnants of the regiments defeated at Charasiah, three
fresh regiments from the Kohistan, and the rabble of the city and
adjacent villages, having a total strength of nearly 3000 men, with
twelve guns, under the leadership of Mahomed Jan, who later was to figure
prominently as the ablest of our Afghan enemies.
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