DISASTER TO THE TENTH HUSSARS.
The loss of fifty men and an officer of the 10th Hussars, on Ist -April, while crossing the Cabul River, will excite a deep and general feeling of regret. It is said that they missed the ford and wei % e carried off by the current. Such a disaster, however, from sucli a cause is wholly without precedent. It is simply lamentable that a number of men, exceeding that which the capture of tlie Khyber and the Peiwar Passes' together cost us, should have been drowned by an accident while crossing a fprd on a dark night. Until the details of the affair reach us, we must content ourselves with surmises as to how it can -have happened, especially in a comparatively harrow river like the Cabul. A squadron of the 11th Bengal Lancers had crossed safely ; but as there would probably be an interval between their rear and the leading horseman of the 10th, ib might well be that in the darkness the latter did not notice the exact line, across the river which the Lancers had followed, and so turned off the shallow passage by which the former had passed. It would seem almost ini' possible that so large a number of men shuuld have followed each other into deep water ; but in the noise of crossing, the splashing made by the horses of those behind as they entered the stream, the efforts each man would make tb^ keep his horse on his feet, and the rush* of the water against ijhe troops, the fact i that the leading horsemen were swept away might pass nimoticetl, and bo the squadron would press fonvard to destruction. At the same time it must be admitted that it is difficult in the extreme to understand . how fifty men could have been invojved in such a calamity, even making all allowances for darkness, noise, and confusion.
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Bibliographic details
Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 809, 14 June 1879, Page 2
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318DISASTER TO THE TENTH HUSSARS. Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 809, 14 June 1879, Page 2
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