CHITRAL AND THE N.W FRONTIER CAMPAIGN. 520 every- effort, it was impossible to keep order among them. The one ideaof the drivers was to get on;and,notwithstanding the orders and warnings of the officers, they tried to make short cuts across the rice-fields, with the result that the mules were bogged in deep mud, or rolled into ditches. The baggage train gradually became a straggling crowd, increasing tenfold the difficulty of protecting it from the enemy's attacks.

Just before dusk the advanced guard and the main body of the brigade reached camp,but the baggage and the rearguard were still moving slowly through the darkness when night closed in, guided by the lights of the camp. Heavy hillsides, the ground being sown with grain. Here and there stand the groups of towered houses, and the steep mountain sides that wall the valley, never more than a mile apart, run up to snowy ridges and peaks.

On December loth, when the march began, the winter had laid its grasp on the valley. The river, which had often to be forded, ran icy cold. On the higher ground lay thenewlyfallen snow;lower down in the valley itself the bitter wind was driving along blinding showers of sleet and rain. Westmacott's brigade led the way. Then came the divisional and headquarters staff, and then Kempster's brigade. Even before the troops moved off a man of the Scots Fusiliers was shot dead as he stood in the ranks on the regimental parade. Allday the Afridis harassed the march with long-rangingrifle shots from the hills. Seven men fell to this fire in the leading brigade, andfivein the rearward part of the column. On the picket line in the evening an officer was wounded. The camp that night at Sandana was a comfortless bivouac, and to add still further to the difficulties of next day's march the ceaseless halffrozenrain wasrapidly converting the rice-fields and firing broke out from time to time on flank and rear, the enenry sometimes creeping closeup to the column. At one point the native bearers, in a panic, abandoned the wounded; but Surgeon-Major Beevor,who was in charge of them, brought them to with the help of a party of the Gordons, helping to carry one of the stretchers himself. Twomiles from camp Major Downman, who commanded the extreme rearguard (made up of detachments of Gordons, Dorsets, Goorkhas, and Punjaubis), found a number of baggage F.NERAL WESTMACOTT terraces of the valley into a boggy morass. Under the sleet and rain, and through miles ofdeep mud, the column plodded eastwarddown the valley on December nth, the second day of its march. The enemyconcentrated their attacks on the rearward brigade, the third, which had started later than the fourth," and was some distance from it. The brigade had camped for the night on the hillside,and some hours were spent in getting the hundreds of baggage animals down to the track near the river. When at last the start was made it wasunder a dropping fire from the hills, where the Afridis werehidden in the rocks, and further concealed in the mists anddriving rain.

Again and again the flank guards of the iong column had to climb the hills to drive back these persistent assailants. Meanwhile, the mass of baggage animals and their drivers were struggling inconfusion alongthe valley. Despite animals halted, with their drivers lying down among them utterly exhausted. He decided to go no further; and, having occupied some houses, he beat off the attacks of the enemy, and passed the night on the spot. Captain Uniacke of the Gordons distinguished himself in the capture of the houses, leading theattack and clearing the first of them with a merehandful of his men.

The rain stopped before midnight, and the morning of the 12th broke clear and sunny, but with a cold wind. It was decided to go no further that day,but to rest at Sher Khel camp, get the men and baggage together,give everyone a rest, and dry clothes and blankets, which the rain and mud of the last two days had thoroughly soaked. Downman's detachment had been fiercely attacked at daybreak, and General Kempster had to go out with two battalionsand a battery to bring themin.