I caught up the column before they had gone much more than a mile, just as they were crossing a stream.  After that we had some level marching into the village of Rahman, and by this time the snow was only lying in patches.  Here we made a short halt.  From Rahman there is a path across the hills to Chitral, by means of a nullah called the Goland Gol, of which mention will be made hereafter but at this time of year it was impossible to use this path, owing to the snow.

During the halt, the headman of the village came up to make his salaams, and also told me that a man of Ghizr had passed through that morning, escaping from the enemy.  He was reported to be one of Gough’s messengers, captured when taking letters to Moberly at Mastuj.  I told the headman that he had better show his goodwill by bringing in the man, which he promised to do, and sent him in that night to our camp at Gasht.  We learned little from him, except that the enemy were going to fight us between Gasht and Mastuj, and that the latter place was all right.  This man had no idea of numbers, and when asked the strength of the enemy, replied invariably that there were very many men, but seemed equally uncertain if there were five hundred or five thousand collected in the sangar before us, and yet he had been a prisoner in their camp for some fifteen days.

I found the best way of getting information out of the prisoners was to set Shah Mirza or Humayun on the job.  They used to squat down over the fire with the prisoners and engage them in conversation gradually getting what they knew out of them by simple-looking questions.  Of course I couldn’t do this as I didn’t know their language, and the presence of a British officer put them on their guard at once.

Between Rahman and Mastuj the country is pretty much the same, a narrow valley running between high, stony hills, their tops covered with snow and their feet with boulders; then the bed of the valley more or less rocky, and the river winding from side to side, and below the main level of the valley, at depths varying from fifty to two hundred feet, the sides nearly always sheer cliff; at intervals were nullahs, down which ran streams of snow water from the hills to the river, or fans of alluvial deposit brought down by floods in previous years.  On the flank of one such fan we found the village of Gasht, which we reached by 3.30 P.M.  The Levies had already occupied the knoll at the lower end of the village from whence the enemy had before been seen; so, after fixing on a camping ground and giving the necessary orders, the officers all went forward to have a look.