ome extent, cultivated. The 4th
Brigade this time led the way, the 3rd bringing up the rear.

From the moment when the troops fell in on the 10th, till they
reached Barkai on the 14th, there was a general action from front
to rear. The advance guard marched at half-past seven. At eight
o'clock flanking parties were engaged with the enemy in the hills
and spurs. Serious opposition, however, did not take place until
five and a half miles of the valley had been passed.

Here the river turned to the right, and the front of the advance
was exposed to the fire of a strongly-fortified village, nestling
on the lower slope of a hill, on a terrace plateau. The village was
furnished with no fewer than ten towers, and from these a very
heavy fire was kept up.

The battery shelled the spur; while the Sikhs, in open order,
skirmished up the terraces to the plateau and, after a brisk
fusillade, took the village and burnt it.

A mile farther, the head of the column reached the camping place,
which was a strong village built into the river cleft. On the left
the 36th Sikhs and part of the Ghoorkhas cleared the way; while the
Bombay Pioneers, and the rest of the Ghoorkhas, became heavily
engaged with the enemy in some villages on the right. All along the
line a brisk engagement went on. The camp pickets took up their
positions early in the afternoon, and a foraging party went out and
brought in supplies, after some fighting.

Kempster's Brigade had not been able to reach the camp, and settled
itself for the night three miles farther up the valley. It, too,
had its share of fighting.

All night it rained heavily, and the morning of the 11th broke cold
and miserable. It was freezing hard; the hilltops, a hundred feet
above the camp, were wrapped in snow; and the river had swollen
greatly. The advance guard waded out into the river bed, and the
whole of the brigade followed, the Ghoorkhas clearing the sides of
the valley. In a short time they passed into the Zakka-Khel section
of the Bara Valley.

Curiously enough, the opposition ceased here. It may be that the
enemy feared to show themselves on the snow on the hilltops; or
that, being short of ammunition, they decided to reserve themselves
for an attack upon the other brigade. Scarcely a shot was fired
until the valley broadened out into the Akerkhel, where some small
opposition was offered by villagers on either bank. This, however,
was easily brushed aside.

The advance guard