With Kelly to Chitral | Page 5

it that
night to Colonel Kelly, and it was then and there decided to march
_viâ_ Killa Drasan instead of by the usual road through Buni.
I don't, think I have mentioned Shah Mirza before, so I will introduce
him now, as he was one of our most useful allies, and is now one of my
greatest friends. He belongs to the Punyal family, and is Wazir or
governor of Sai and Gor. He lives at Damot, a village in the Sai valley,
opposite Bunji, and it was during my stay there that I first got to know
him. He has an interesting history, and, among other adventures, has
travelled through the Pamirs and Chitral in disguise. He was our chief
interpreter, and he, or one of his followers, of whom he had five,
always kept near us. His followers were enlisted Levies, and one of
them had formerly been my shikaree; in fact, he only left me as he was
called out as a levy.
It is the custom of the country for the headmen of districts to come and
pay their respects to any Sahib who may travel through their country,
and the proper etiquette is to supply your visitors with tea and
sweetmeats--biscuits will do just as well, and they like plenty of sugar.
They then pay you the most barefaced compliments, and make the
startling assertion that you are their father and mother; upon which you
reply that all you have is at their disposal. If they have any
petition,--and they generally have,--they insinuate it gently in the
general conversation, so you have to be looking out for traps of this sort.
When you have suffered sufficient evil for the day, you mildly suggest
that they are probably fatigued, and would like to rest. They take the
hint, and the remainder of the biscuits, and depart. We used to have lots
of these visits, which went by the name of "political teas."
Mihrbhan Shah proved very useful to us, I fancy he knew he would get
small mercy if he fell into the hands of the opposition, and therefore did
all he could to place our force between them and himself. Both at
Pingal and our next halting place, Cheshi, he managed to billet all our
small force in the villages, and no doubt our men were very thankful as
we were getting pretty high up, and the nights were decidedly cold.

Although it was a friendly district, we had regular pickets and sentries,
and a British officer on duty to see everything was correct.

CHAPTER III
THE SHANDUR PASS
Shortly after leaving Pingal, the character of the country changed
considerably, and instead of a continual alternation of cliff and river
bed, the valley became more open and level; we were, in fact, nearing
the upper end of the valley. Beyond Cheshi the road leads up a bluff
and down the other side on to the bed of the Pandur Lake. This lake had,
at the beginning of 1894, been a sheet of water some four and a half
miles long, but, the dam at its end having given way in July, it had
drained off rapidly; and when I had crossed it in November of the same
year, the mud of its bed was only just becoming firm and was cracked
and fissured in every direction. It was now covered with a sheet of
snow, through which the river twined dark and muddy.
We had now reached the snow line, and our green goggles were taken
into use. The march of our column churned the snow and mud into a
greasy slime, and the going was very tiring. However, we came in sight
of the Ghizr post by 2 P.M., and Gough, of the 2nd Gurkhas, who was
in command, came out to meet us. From him we learned that none of
his messengers that had been sent to Mastuj with letters had returned,
and it was now some ten days since the last communication had
reached him; so it became evident that the enemy were between Laspur
and Mastuj. We knew that they had not crossed the pass, or we should
have seen them before this, so we were pretty hopeful of a fight soon
after crossing the pass, and we were not disappointed. At Ghizr we also
found Oldham, a Sapper subaltern, who had preceded us by a few days.
He had with him a party of Kashmir Sappers and Miners, who were
now armed with Snider carbines. The post, which consisted of a block
of isolated houses, had been fortified and surrounded with a thorn
zareba, and was only sufficiently large for the garrison of Kashmir
troops then holding it, so our men were billeted in the neighbouring

houses, one of which we