Military Service and Adventures in the Far East

This two-volume work, published in 1847 by cavalry officer Daniel Henry Mackinnon (1813-84) describes his military service in India, in the campaigns against the Afghans in 1839 and the Sikhs in 1845-6. In the first edition, reissued here, the author is referred to only as 'a cavalry officer', but in the second edition of 1849, Mackinnon, a career soldier and writer, abandons his anonymity. Volume 2 continues the account of the First Anglo-Afghan War, and the eventual withdrawal of British troops, after which Mackinnon travelled to Delhi and Agra before returning home. He went back east in 1845, when the apparent peace of Northern India was about to be disturbed by the Anglo-Sikh War. Again, his description of the events leading to conflict are somewhat partisan, but his eye-witness accounts of the battles in which he fought (in one of which his horse was shot underneath him) are gripping.