ops of maize and barley. A fort and watch-tower
guarded the entrance. At 8.30 the advance was ordered. The enemy did not
attempt to hold the fort, and it was promptly seized and blown up.
The explosion was a strange, though, during the fighting in the Mamund
Valley, not an uncommon sight. A great cloud of thick brown-red dust
sprang suddenly into the air, bulging out in all directions. The tower
broke in half and toppled over. A series of muffled bangs followed. The
dust-cloud cleared away, and nothing but a few ruins remained.

The enemy now opened fire from the spurs, both of which became crowned
with little circles of white smoke. The 35th Sikhs advancing cleared the
right ridge: the 38th Dogras the left. The Guides moved on the village,
and up the main re-entrant itself. The Buffs were in reserve. The
battery came into action on the left, and began shelling the crests of
the opposite hills. Taking the range with their instruments, they fired
two shots in rapid succession, each time at slightly different ranges.
The little guns exploded with a loud report. Then, far up the mountain
side, two balls of smoke appeared, one above the other, and after a few
seconds the noise of the bursting shells came faintly back. Usually one
would be a little short of--and the other a little over--the point aimed
at. The next shot, by dividing the error, would go home, and the dust
of the splinters and bullets would show on the peak, from which the
tribesmen were firing, and it would become silent and deserted--the
scene of an unregarded tragedy. Gradually the spurs were cleared of the
enemy and the Guides, passing through the village, climbed up the face
of the mountain and established themselves among the great rocks of the
steep water-course. Isolated sharpshooters maintained a dropping fire.
The company whose operations I watched,--Lieutenant Lockhart's,--killed
one of these with a volley, and we found him sitting by a little pool,
propped against a stone. He had been an ugly man originally, but now
that the bones of his jaw and face were broken in pieces by the bullet,
he was hideous to look upon. His only garment was a ragged blue
linen cloak fastened at the waist. There he sat--a typical tribesman,
ignorant, degraded, and squalid, yet brave and warlike; his only
property, his weapon, and that his countrymen had carried off. I could
not help contrasting his intrinsic value as a social organism, with that
of the officers who had be