When it is considered what the numerical strength of the Khyber supporting column is, one cannot understand the timidity of the advance. There may have been tribes in front, in flank, and in rear; but so there were on the Shutargardan route, and tribes far more capable of mischief than Afridis and Shinwaris. Yet the menace at Budesh Kheyl, Ali Kheyl, the Shutargardan, and on either flank at Charasia, did not check the forward movement of an army half the strength of that supposed to have been put in motion from Peshawur simultaneously with the advance from the Kurram side. Looking at General Bright’s force at the end of October, we find that, inclusive of troops at Nowshera and Peshawur, he had under his orders over 16,000 men, viz., British troops: 148 officers and 4,287 men; Native troops: 147 British officers and 11,795 men. These included five batteries of artillery and one mountain battery, and six cavalry regiments, three British and three Native. Out of the total, two batteries were in Peshawur; and there must also be subtracted the following regiments, which had not crossed the old frontier:—11th Bengal Lancers (356), part of the 17th Bengal Cavalry (338), 1-17th Foot (443), 1-25th (715), part of 51st (209), 1st Native Infantry (774), 22nd Native Infantry (638), and 39th Native Infantry (609). Deducting all these, there was left a force of 11,800 men actually moving on, or garrisoning the Peshawur-Gundamak line; supports equal, it might have been supposed, to any work required of them. That there were conflicting ideas as to the object with which such a body of troops had been sent from India, must have been apparent even to a superficial observer; but upon whom the responsibility of playing with such an army rests, no one here pretends to say. The local rank of Lieutenant-General, which has at last been given to Sir F. Roberts, brings these 11,800 men under his command, and their future movements are likely to be directed in sympathy with the advanced army at Cabul. For the next few months they will probably be required to do little more than keep the road; but during the winter their transport equipment and commissariat arrangements—defects in which are said to have been the chief cause of their tardy movements—will have to be so far put on a footing of efficiency that, if the necessity arises in the spring for the Cabul Army continuing its march westwards, they will be able to keep pace with its movements. There are good men and tried soldiers enough in the Khyber Force to do all that is required, if they are allowed scope for their energies, and are not trammelled and crippled at every step by those influences in the background, which I have already described as being “drag-ropes” upon their freedom of action. General Roberts has now in his command—that of Eastern Afghanistan—two divisions of 8,000, and 11,800 men, respectively: in all, nearly 20,000 troops, whose movements he controls from his headquarters at Sherpur. Matters of detail on the Khyber side are left, as before, to local commanders. I have dwelt at length upon the shortcomings of the Peshawur column, not so much because very serious results have followed its laggard advance, but as showing how helpless the small force here would have been if, in case of a check, it had looked for support to “the Army of the Indus.”