A TRAGIC EVENT. 527 Captain Barton, who knew the district thoroughly, was with the column. By native messengershesent offers of terms to the tribes round the Pass. The Zakka Khel, the most powerfuland warlike,gaveno answer. Another local tribe, the Shinwaris, expressed a willingness to surrender, and Barton so far trusted them as to accept their offer to guard the high hillsnorth of the LundiKotalcampand prevent heir kinsmen, the Zakka Klael, from"sniping" at night.

that they had yet no idea of surrenderby shootingaGoorkha sentinel at thecamp,andthrowing down nearly five miles of telegraphpostsin the Khyber Pass and carrying off the wire, which had just beenre-erected to connect Lundi Kotal with Ali Musjid andPeshawur. On the 28th the weather was so cold and wet that Hammond's troops were given a rest in camp, but on the following days they went out in small parties to collect forage,destroy village towers, and guard the convoys of supplies coming up tlaeKhyber and the sappers who were relaying the wire.

There was continual skirmishing, addingdaily a few more to the long list of casualties,and the wirelaid in the daytime was so certain to becut and carriedoff in the dark thataftera couple of attempts all idea of keepingthe telegraph working was for the time abandoned.

Sir William Lockhart had had an idea,afterwardsabandoned, of bringing the First Division out of the Bazar Valley by the Bori Pass, a lateral defile which runs northwards out of the valley and meets the Khyber routenear Lundi Kotal. On December 27th General Hammond pushed a strong reconnaissance from the Kotal towards the Bori Pass. He took with him a field battery of the Royal Artillery, four mountain guns, and the Qth Goorkhas. In the narrow valleyleadingup to the Pass stand a group of villages belonging to a small tribe of Afridis, the Sadu Khel. These men had so far kept the peace, but on the approach of the column they sent the general a characteristic message. Fighting is so much a part of the every-day life of these frontier tribes that they felt their honourinvolved in allowing armed strangers to pass by their villages without making at least some show of resistance. So the chiefs sent down wordthat they did not want to fight, and thatthey hadonly 400 fighting men with them, but that,nevertheless,if the column came too neartheir villages the troops wouldbefired on. General Hammond answered this defiance by unlimbering the field battery and forming the Goorkhas for attack. Two companies worked round the flanks of the groups of villages and seized heights which commanded the ground held by the Salu Khel, and then the column advanced. Under the muzzlesof the cannon and rifles the tribesmen realised that they had to contend with an overwhelming force, and the march was continued without molestation. But it wasfound that a few miles further on the Pass contracted till it became a steep and narrow path where even a loaded mule could not go, andeven men on foot could only movein single file. This track was overhung by precipitous cliffs, so General Hammond withdrew to Lundi Kotal, and reported that it was impossible to march a brigade either intoor out of the Bazar Valleyby the Bori Pass. In the following night the Zakka Khel Afridis gave a practical proof On December 30th— the same day that saw the complete retirement of the First Division from the Bazar Valley— the losses in the illomened Khyber were exceptionally heavy, and the day wasmarkedby a singularly tragic event. The Oxfordshire Light Infantry, who had only lately been sent to the front, and were having their first experience of mountain warfare, were the chief sufferers. They had been on picket duty during the day, protecting the march of an unloaded convoy down the Pass. Towards evening,as the convoy was safe through, they receivedorders to retire to camp. They assembled near a ruined Buddhist tomb, and were beginning their retirement from it, under tlae cover of an extended line of skirmishers, when they werefiredinto at closerange from the rocks. Three men fell wounded; two, less severely injured, were sent back to the medical officer; the thirdhad his wound bandagedunder fire by the colonel, and the party then continued their slow retreat, carrying the injured man, and replying tothe fire of the Afridis. While thus engaged another man, Corporal Bell, was shot dead, and his body was carried along by the survivors. They went along the bed of a mountain torrent, and for a few minutes this gaye them cover, but they had to come out again into the open.

Here Private Butler was hit in the leg, and Captain Parr and Lieutenant Carter having dressed his wound, the last-named officer took him on his back and carried him across the exposed bit of ground ; but in tlae middle of this Private Butler was again hit, and killed, Carter being knocked over by the force of the blow. Lieutenant Fielden came to the rescue,