In 1838, Harlan set off on a punitive expedition against the Uzbek slave trader and warlord Mohammad Murad Beg. He had multiple reasons for doing this: he wanted to help Dost Mohammad assert his authority outside of Kabul; he had a deep-seated opposition to slavery; and he wanted to demonstrate that a modern army could successfully cross the Hindu Kush. Taking a force of approximately 1,400 cavalry, 1,100 infantry, 1,500 support personnel and camp followers, 2,000 horses, and 400 camels, Harlan thought of himself as a modern-day Alexander the Great. In emulation of Alexander the Great, Harlan also took along with him a war elephant. He was accompanied by a younger son and a secretary of Dost Mohammad. Dost Mohammad sought to collect tribute from the Hazara who were willing if the Afghans also ended Murad Beg's raids. Before leaving Kabul to hunt down Murad Beg, Dost Mohammad knowing of Harlan's fascination with ancient Greece, gave him a gift of a piece of jewelry found at Bagram, the site of the ancient Greek city of Alexandria ad Caucasum, depicting the goddess Athena, which greatly moved him. Just like his hero Alexander the Great, Harlan discovered that his war elephant could not handle the extreme cold of the Hindu Kush mountains, and Harlan was forced to send the elephant back to Kabul. High up in the Hindu Kush at the pass of Khazar, a good 12,500 feet above sea level, Harland had the Stars-and-Stripes raised on the highest peak with troops firing a twenty-six-gun-salute as Harlan wrote: the star spangled banner gracefully waved amid the icy peaks and soilless rugged rocks of the region, seeming sacred to the solitude of an undisturbed eternity. Harlan then led his army down past glaciers and silent dells, and frowning rocks blackened by age, battling rain and snow as these phenomena alternately and capriciously coquetted with our ever changing climate.