CHITRAL AND THE N.W. FRONTIER CAMPAIGN. 488 worn out with thirty-six hours of continuous toiland stress,manybandaged andblood-stained, the garrison stillpresented a brave front. Drawn up at the gate were the survivorsof the sortie, with the three standards they hadcaptured. Out of the original garrison of 165 rifles two had been killed,eight dangerously and some,Ifear, mortally wounded;eight severely and twentyfour slightly wounded. Of these latter, nine did not report themselves wounded till relief had come. Major Des Voeux, who hadhis anxieties doubly intensified by the presence of his family, hadbeen the life and soulof the defence,guarding against every danger, and showing a fine exampleof cheerfulness and steadfastness to all. Lieutenant Pratt, an officer of only a year's standing,hadably seconded him,though suffering from dysentery;Surgeon-Captain Pratt had untiringly tended the wounded under a heavy tire, helped by Miss Teresa McGrath, Mrs. Des Voeux's maid, who, amidst the flying bullets, could be seen here bathing a wounded sepoy's head, and there tying up another's arm till the doctor could come. Last, but not least, every sepoy did his duty, and at times almost more than his duty, in a way worthy of the proud name of Sikh."

were not an inaccessible fortress against the armies of the Indian Government. With this view it had been decided to march into the hill country of the border forces so strono- that even the united power of all the fighting tribes would give the enemy no hope of victory. In strong columns the invaders would traverse every valley, blow up the fortress towers, bum the houses of the disaffected villages, and consume or destroy their stores of grain and forage, thus temporarily ruining the tribes that refused submission. Those that sued for peace wouldobtain fair terms;thepaymentof a fine to compensatefor damagedone in the border raids and the surrender of their modern rifles as a securityagainst future hostilities,being theleading features of the terms usually granted.

The only weakpoint in this elaborate plan of campaign for the reductionofthe hill tribes was that to march large armies into the mountains meant necessarily that they would have to be accompaniedby an enormous supply train. To feed some thousands of fighting menin a valley wherefood and forage is scanty means the employment of some thousands of camp followers and beasts ofburden on the line of communications, and when this line runs across difficult passes,windsalongsteep and rocky hillsides, and has itshalting-places innarrow valleysoverhung by bold mountain spurs within rifle range,the whole arrangement gives splendid opportunities to a hostile population to carry on a most harassing form of guerilla warfare— raiding the line of communications; falling on the belated convoy as it plods wearily into camp in the dark with its rearward sections straggling a mile away;skirmishing with everyscouting or foraging party ; and firing into the valley camps at randomin the dark. In such a warfare the daily losses mount up to heavy totals in a campaign, even of a few weeks, and the armyis forced to move slowly, through having to halt after each stage of its advance in order to accumulate a reserve of supplies for the next onward move. It is an open question whether the hostile frontier tribes would not have been morequickly subdued, and at a less cost oflife,by sendinginto the hills a much smaller force, organised in independent flying columns,unencumbered with heavy transport, and challenging attack in the open by the mountaineers, who after two or three battles with heavy loss would have been inclined to welcome an offer of terms.

Havingreinforced the garrison,General Yeatman-Biggs returned to Hangu. The Orakzais had fallen back dispirited to the Khanki Valley, and the Afridis had left them and returned to Tirah. But the Government had determined that the Shabkadr raid by the Mohmunds and the attack on the Khyber forts by the Afridis, and on the forts of the Samana Range by the Afridis and Orakzais, should be punished by marching armies into the territory of all these tribes. There was no doubt they would make a stubborn resistance,and they would have the advantage of fighting on ground difficult for regular troops and their transport, and to a great extent as yet unmapped and unknown to the officersof the Britisharmy on the border.

The operations divided themselves naturally into two parts: the march into the Mohmund country north of Peshawur, carried out byGeneral Sir BindonBlood;and the operations on a still larger sca'e against the Afridis and the Orakzais, which were directed by Sir William Lockhart, the Commander-in-Chief of the Punjaub army, who was just about to assume the higher post of Commander-in-Chief in India.

The object ofboth expeditions was the same— to prove to the tribesmen that their mountains Possibly, however, the enormous display of force made by the Government on the frontier