No British troops formed part of the force, which was divided into three columns, rendezvousing respectively at Shahu Khel, Togh and Hangu. The start was delayed by heavy rain and snow, and the troops were not in position until the 21st January. On the advance commencing practically no opposition was experienced; the country of each one of the offending clans was visited by the different columns; and within a very short space of time each division had made its submission—the Rabia Khel standing out to the last. The Khanki Valley was traversed as far west as Ghuzghor; a reconnaissance was pushed up the Daradar Valley through Star Khel to the Kharai Kotal overlooking the Sheikhan country; Dran was visited; and a column marched from Shahu Khel and reached the Zera Pass via Bar Marai, sending reconnaissances through the Gudar defile to Sultanzai and Shirazgarhi on the Lower Mastura. The casualties were nil, but the troops suffered severely from the extreme cold. The following terms imposed were agreed upon: the establishment of three posts on the Samana connected by mule road with each other, and with Baliamin, Darband and Hangu; payment of outstanding fines; undesirables and outlaws not to be harboured by the tribes. The tribes had not agreed to the construction of the Samana forts—at Gulistan on the west, near Sangar, and on the east at Lakka—with an especially good grace, but their submission had been so complete that no further immediate trouble was anticipated. [Sidenote: Trouble on the Samana] The field force had barely broken up when it was rumoured that the clans concerned, egged on by the taunts of those tribesmen who had not been proceeded against, were trying to form a combination to prevent the construction of the Samana posts, and that the Rabia Khel were particularly truculent. Kohat was, as a precautionary measure, reinforced by a battery and a battalion, but nothing of the nature of an actual outbreak occurred until the 4th April. On this date an attack was made upon our working parties on the Samana by men of the Rabia Khel, who, having been taken on as labourers on the road, suddenly turned upon the covering party, and were then at once reinforced by large numbers of tribesmen who had been awaiting events on the north side of the Samana. Our troops were obliged to abandon the crest of the range and to fall back upon Baliamin, having suffered a loss of fourteen killed and seven wounded.