General Hughes is not in a good position. A correspondent
of the Times left him on the 21st tilt; at Tazi, thirty miles from Khelat-i-Ghilzai, on the road to Ghuzni, expecting an attack from. the Tarikis, a sub-clan of the Ghilzais. This anticipation was verified on the 24th. General Hughes's force is not given, but it mast be exceedingly small, for 1,000 Tarilcis, headed by a mere freebooter, ventured to threaten it. They were attacked at night by Colonel Kennedy, with some detachments of the 59th Foot, the .2nd Punjab Cavalry, and three guns, and dispersed, with the loss of their
Leader and forty-one men. We twenty-four men of the 2nd Punj had only two officers and ab Cavalry wounded. The affair was probably smart, but General Hughes remains liable to more serious attack, and is entirely unable to move forward, while reinforcements can scarcely reach him. So degraded, however, has opinion become in this country, that this petty skirmish is called a "victory," and no attention is paid to our abandonment of the much vaunted route by the Kurmn—which has been left to the hill-men, Colonel Money being ordered, with all troops, from Ali Khel to Cabul—or to the success of the Ghilzais in delaying the movement from Jellalabad to the Afghan capital. The clansmen have occupied the Jagdalak Pass, between those two points, and a new route is being sought, to turn their position.
