CHITRAL AND THE N.W. FRONTIER CAMPAIGN. 524 they halted, many of the men without their great-coats andblankets. They wereglad to be able to huddle round the camp fires, the presence of Hammond's flankers on the hills keeping the Afridis from "sniping" the camp. On the same day Sir William Lockhart, with the lest column, had an easy march of eight miles over the Chora Pass to Chora village, during which no enemy came in sight. Next dayhe marched eleven milesmore.o the village of Cheena. The Afridis made no opposition to the advance, but harassed the rearguard with continually skirmishing, in which two menwere killed and four wounded. The enemy were supposed to have lost more heavily; but, as they invariably carried off their dead and wounded,estimates of their loss werethe merest guesswork. On the 27th the towers ofCheena were destroyed. During the day the Afridis fired on the outposts,but were easily drivenoff, oneof their mullahsbeingkilledwhileencouraging the tribesmen to attack the pickets.

Meanwhile General Symons, with the right column,hadcrossed the Alachi Pass, and reaching Karamna village, skirmishing all the way, had turnedto the southwards, and on the 27th occupied Burg,a villagefive miles from Cheena, and about half-way betweenit and theChora Pass. The two brigades werethus close together on the same line of advance. The ist Brigade, after destroying the towers of Cheena, thelast place of importance in the upper part of the valley, was retiring towards Burg and Chora. To cover this movement General Symons sent out the Royal Sussex Regiment to hold the heights on the left of the line of retreatwith a line of pickets. While engaged in this duty, and while subsequently returning to camp, the Sussex men werepersistently attackedby aparty of Afridis, about two hundred strong. The firing went on in desultory fashion for nearly three hours,but only one officer was wounded, and threemen killedand three wounded.

That evening General Symons was informed that the Afridis had reoccupiedKaramna,under the impression that the troopswould notreturn by that way. In the hope of surprising the enemy, and forcing them to fight, he sent off General Hart, with part of the brigade, before sunrise on the 28th. Marching in the darkness, in a driving rain storm,it was expectedthat the column would reachKaramna before the enemy evenknew they wereon the way,but the tribesmen had somehow got warning of the coming danger,and the village was found deserted.

and, to add to the general discomfort, Afridi " snipers" fired into the camp. On the morning of Christmas Day General Symons marched his division westwards intothe Bazar Valley.

The eveningbefore Sir William Lockhart had come up to the front from Peshawur. With him came, as his guest, another distinguished Indian soldier bearing an historic name, the veteran Sir Henry Havelock-Allan. The son of the Havelock of Mutiny days,Sir Henry had served on his father's staff in the relief of Lucknow,andhe had won the Victoria Cross at Cawnpore. He hadcome out to India to secure an inquiry into unfounded charges that had been made in the press against a distinguished regiment of which he was titular colonel,andhe wished to see something of the fighting on the frontier.

The advance into the Bazar Valley was made in two columns. Sir WilliamLockhart accompanied the left column, made up of the 2nd Brigade (GeneralGaselee's) and aportion of the divisional troops. General Symons went with the right column,consisting of the ist (General Hart's) Brigade. Danger wasanticipated chiefly on the right;and, to protect that flank,General Hammond sent forward into the hills from Ali Musjiddetachments of theOxfordshire Regiment, the 9th Goorkhas, and the 45th Sikhs, with four mountain guns. The general was in personal command of this flank guard. There was a sharp skirmish on the extreme right, where a company of the Sikhs came in contact with a party of about thirty Afridis, and drove them off, losing one man killed and three wounded in the little fight. Hammondpushed his advanced guard on to the village of Alachi, in the Pass up which the right column was coming. His engineers blew up the village towers. Some shots were fired from the hills near theplace,but no one washit.

Notwithstanding this efficient help, General Symons's column madevery littleprogress, and passed a very unpleasant Christmas Day. In the first stage of the march from Lala Cheena, which lay along the Khyber road, it became hopelessly blocked in a mass of camel transport going up the Pass. Then, when it turned westward into the Alachi Pass, the hill track proved to be much more difficult than hadbeen reported. The troops, and the long transport train that accompanied them, zigzagged slowly up the steep slopes, and when night fell they were still far from their intended camping ground near Alachi,and had to bivouac where