Gough, to advance with a British force from the great armed camp at Firozpur, to Múltán. Lord Gough declined, and urged the inexpediency of a general movement of British troops, sixteen marches across 200 miles of burning wastes, in the height of the hot weather. Lord Dalhousie, 1200 miles further off in Calcutta, felt himself constrained to support the decision of his Commander-in-Chief, who knew the local circumstances of the case, and who could judge of them with the authority of being nearer the scene of action.
Meanwhile Vans Agnew's pencilled appeal for help reached Lieutenant Herbert Edwardes in his solitary tent at Dehra-Fateh-Khan on the banks of the Indus[1]. The red bag bore the Persian address for the Commissioner, 'To General Cortland in Bannu, or wherever else he may be.' But the young English subaltern, divining the urgency of the case, tore open the letter. Hastily thrusting aside his Civil work, he made a rush with his ordinary District escort and some local companies for Múltán, eighty miles distant. He had only 400 men upon whom he could really rely. Múlráj met him on the way with 4000 men and 8 heavy guns from the fortress. 'I am like a terrier barking at a tiger,' wrote the young Lieutenant.
- ↑ The facsimile of this pathetic scrawl and a duplicate of the official letter to Sir Frederick Currie, corrected by Vans Agnew in pencil, are given by Herbert Edwardes in his Year on the Punjab Frontier, vol. ii, p. 76, ed. 1851.
