thirty-three sepoys under a native officer, he
marched with Jones and sixty men for Reshun, hoping to arrive there that
day.

After leaving Buni, the road runs for some distance along flat ground
until the junction of the Turikho and Yarkhun rivers is reached. At this
point the road leads up along the face of a cliff and then down on to a
small plain, where are a few houses and some patches of cultivation.
This is known as the village of Koragh, and immediately after, the river
runs between the cliffs, which draw together and make the mouth of the
defile. The path which follows the left bank crosses the debris fallen
from the cliffs above and then runs along the edge of the river at the
foot of another and smaller cliff, or in summer, when the river is full,
the path runs over this smaller cliff. Ross's party took the lower road.
After the second cliff the paths lead on to a small plain about two
hundred yards wide at its greatest width, and perhaps half a mile long,
and then runs up and across the face of a third cliff which drops sheer
down into the river. This cliff forms the end of the trap. It would be
hard to find a better place for an ambuscade.

Ross's advance guard was on this plain, approaching the spur which
closes the trap, when they were fired on. Ross went forward to
reconnoitre the ground, and at once saw the impossibility of driving the
enemy out with his small force, and therefore ordered Jones to go back
and hold the entrance of the defile to enable them to escape. On the
first shot being fired, the coolies had chucked their loads and bolted,
as likely as not helping to man the sangars enclosing the party. Jones,
taking ten men, made an attempt to reach the mouth of the defile, but
found it already occupied by the enemy, who had run up stone sangars,
and by the time he had got within a hundred yards of it, eight of his
ten men were wounded. He therefore fell back on the main party, who had
taken refuge in some caves at the foot of the cliff.

The caves, now half full of water, owing to the rising of the river, can
be seen in the photograph. The party remained in these caves till 9
P.M., when they made another attempt to cut their way out, but were
driven back by avalanches of stones. They then had to scale the
mountainside, but were stopped by an impossible cliff, and one sepoy,
falling over, was killed, so they came back to the caves dead tired.
Here they remained the whole of the next day, the ene