GATACRE IN THE JANBATAI PASS 461 were Umra Khan's usualresidence. A fight had been expected here, but the place had been abandoned. A number of interesting papers werefound in the fort, amongst them an offer from a British firm trading in India to supply Umra with modernarms at themost reasonable rates. Umra Khan hadlost heart and fled across with a flyingcolumn of 500 men. At the same time our allythe Khan of Dir promisedto make an attempt to reach Kila Drosh with his mountaineers.

Gatacre got his men over the Janbatai Pass with great difficulty. It was a terribleclimb to the crest, and when the summit was passed there was a snow slope of nearly a thousand feet, down which the only possible way was to glissade to the bottom. Men, mules, packthe Afghan border. This was the explanation of how all resistance had collapsed once the Panjkora was passed.

Lieut,foiv'er. Lieut. Edwardes, UMRA KHAN'S PRISONERS.

Rumour said that the Chitral garrison was reduced to desperate straits for want of food. This report probably had its origin in a stratagem of Robertson's. He was anxious above all things that the besiegers should blockade the fort instead of trying to carry it by assault,or burning or mining the defences. With this end in viewhe didallhe could to impress the Chitralis with the idea that his garrison was atstarvationpoint. Hence the rumours that reached Low's headquarters and led him to order first that Gatacre should push on with two battalions,two Maxims, and half a mountain battery, and then that he should leave the guns andmake a dash for Chitral ages o stores were thus shot down the long slope. While the Janbatai was thus being traversed by the vanguard, news reached Low that Kelly had got into touch with the Chitral garrison ; that the Khan of Dir had seized Kila Drosh;and that Sher Afzul, after raising the siege, had surrendered to our ally.

After this there was no further need for haste. A portion only of the relief force was pushed across the passes to Chitral. The defence and relief of the hill fort will be remembered for many a day among the moss stirring episodes of Indian military history. In the fifty days' siege the little garrison hadhad forty-one killed