THE BARA TORRENT 519 and theLozakaPass,andreceivedthe submission of the tribe. The result of theseoperationswas the pacification of the Kurramcountry.

By the evening of the 8th the whole division was assembled at Dwatoi Camp. Next day Sir William Lockhart, with a column of troops, chiefly from Westmacott's brigade, destroyed a numberof villages in theRajgul Valley. There wasvery little fighting,andonly four menof the column werehit. On the 10th the march down theBara began.

LeavingColonel Hill to hold it,andcollect the fines imposed on the tribesmen and the arms they had promised to surrender, Lockhart sent Gaselee's brigade back to Bagh. He himself returned by the Chingakh Pass, and rodeinto Bagh withhis staff and escort onDecember 6th.

All was now ready for the march into the Bara Valley.

" The stages," wrote Colonel Hutchinson, the Timescorrespondent, "were Dwatoi to Sandana, eight miles; to Sher-khel, ten miles;to Narkandai,eight miles ; and to Swaikot-Mamanai, eight miles. From the above you will see there were only four comparatively short marches to makebefore joining up with GeneralHammond and the Peshawur column. It sounded so simple, but Ithink most of us understood that it meant four days of the sternest work and stiffest trial that the force had yet seen. For though we knew well enough that our march was not in the accepted sense a movement in retreat, yet it was quite certain that such was the construction the enemy would put upon it. We knew very well that we were sweeping down the Bara and Mastura Valleys merelyby way of carrying out partof a thoughtout programme,that the march Peshawurwards was only reculerpour mieux sauter, and that the measure was onlypreliminary to fresh raids up the Bazar andKhyber Valleys. But the Afridis, intelligent though they be, would not look at our ulterior aims. They wouldonly considerthe situation of tlae present and the opportunity of the moment. Their mullahs would tell them that we were flying from their country, and would urge them to follow close on our tracks, and to strike hard for vengeance'sake and for their faith. And, indeed,they did all this, and played their own game throughout the retirement with a determination and boldness which often compelled our admiration,although it cost usdear." Considering that the first effect of the move down the Bara was to encourage the enemy,one wonders even now if it wouldnot have been possible to devise a plan of campaign that would not have left room for such illusions in the Afridi camps— for instance, an advance fromFort Bara to the upper valley to join hands with the force at Dwatoi.

The Second Division, underGeneral Yeatman-Biggs,was detailed for this operation. TheFirst Division, under General Symons, was to be divided, Gaselee's brigade marching into the Mastura Valley,Hart's brigade moving westward from Bagh by Maidan, downthe Waran Valley, whichruns into that of tlae Mastura at another place called (like the village in the Kurram country) Hissar. The Pioneers had been improving the track through the DwatoiDefile, so that the march to Dwatoi had been rendered much easier; and a further advantage was that the MalikdinKhel Afridis,who lived round the defile, had accepted the easy terms offered them in order to securetheir submission orneutrality.

Under these improved conditions the advance began onDecember 7th. Westmacott, with the 4th Brigade, led the way through the narrow pass. No enemywas seen till Dwatoi itself was approached, when the head of the column was fared upon. The Afridis were driven off after a skirmish, in which there were four casualties. During the night the pickets were fired upon, and at dawn on the 8th a detachment of Sikhs and Goorkhas had to be sent out to clear a neighbouring hillof the enemy. They stormed it with a rush,losing one man killed and four wounded.

On the same morning the 3rd Brigade, under General Kempster, moved up from Bagh to Dwatoi. The evacuation of Bagh Camp was marked by an incident which showed to what extremity the hillmen were being reduced by the occupation of their villages and the destruction of their stores. "Hardly had the last troops begun to evacuate thecamp," wrote the Pioneer correspondent, " when unarmed men of the Malikdin Khels, with women and children, showing every sign of being famine stricken, rushed into the camp with the hope of picking upfood andgrain— a rather forlorn expectation." This one fact shows in a startling way how much misery was being caused by this prolonged campaign.

The Bara is a muddy mountain torrent, waist deep, some forty feet wide. Now it runs in one channel, now it divides into several branches. On both sides of it the bottom of the valley is made up of terraced rice-fields. This terracing is carried in places well up the