e is blowing. A single step has led from peace to war; from
civilisation to savagery; from India to the mountains. On all sides the
landscape is wild and rugged. Ridge succeeds ridge. Valley opens into
valley. As far as the eye can reach in every direction are ragged peaks
and spurs. The country of the plains is left, and we have entered a
strange land, as tangled as the maze at Hampton Court, with mountains
instead of hedges. So broken and so confused is the ground, that I
despair of conveying a clear impression of it.

The Malakand is like a great cup, of which the rim is broken into
numerous clefts and jagged points. At the bottom of this cup is the
"crater" camp. The deepest cleft is the Malakand Pass. The highest of
the jagged points is Guides Hill, on a spur of which the fort stands.
It needs no technical knowledge to see, that to defend such a place, the
rim of the cup must be held. But in the Malakand, the bottom of the cup
is too small to contain the necessary garrison. The whole position is
therefore, from the military point of view, bad and indefensible. In the
revised and improved scheme of defence, arrangements have been made,
to command the available approaches, and to block such as cannot be
commanded with barbed wire entanglements and other obstructions; and by
a judicious system of works much of the rim is now held. But even now
I am told by competent judges that the place is a bad one for defence;
that the pass could be held by the fort alone, and that the brigade
stationed there would be safer and equally useful, if withdrawn to
Dargai. At the time this story opens the Malakand South Camp was an
impossible place to put troops in. It was easy of access. It was cramped
and commanded by neighbouring heights. [Under the arrangements which
have been made since the war, the Malakand position and the works at
Chakdara and Dargai will be held by two battalions and some details.
These will be supported by a flying column, the exact location and
composition of which are as yet undetermined.]

The small area of the camp on the Kotal necessitated the formation of a
second encampment in the plain of Khar. This was close under the
north outer edge of the cup. It was called for political reasons North
Malakand. As a military position it, also, was radically bad. It was
everywhere commanded, and surrounded by ravines and nullahs, which made
it easy for an enemy to get in, and difficult for troops to get out.
It was,