The object of a short tour planned for September was formally to take over a strip of land known as the Toba Plateau, which had been recently ceded to the Government of India under an arrangement effected by a Frontier Delimitation Commission. As this was a desolate land with few inhabitants, the General planned to combine this political object with military training in the way of practice in field-firing. He arranged that detachments of the 1st Bombay Grenadiers and of the 26th Beluchis should take part in the manoeuvres, and that the 25th Bombay Rifles should meet him at the camping-ground. It was the first time a white man had been seen in the country. The march abounded with picturesque and amusing incidents. For instance, there was the day when the camel transport lost their way. Their pace being a little slower than that of the mules, and the country that day with its low round sandhills being peculiarly puzzling, they lost touch with the tail of the column. A transport duffedar was sent back to look for the string of camels, but came not again; a corporal was sent on a mule to look for the duffedar, and he came not again. It was now getting late, and darkness would soon fall, so the {153} General himself started on a pony to look for the corporal. It was six o'clock before the camels, who were carrying our tents, mess kit, and clothing, reached the camp, from a point exactly opposite to the direction whence they were expected. [Sidenote: Field-firing] When the rendezvous on Toba Plateau was reached, after about three days' march from Chaman, we settled down for a week, and field-firing in the miniature valleys took place daily. The day before the proposed attack newspapers are spread out with the help of stones in the positions where tribesmen defending their homes would be likely to erect sangars and make a stand. The attacking column, being supplied with ball cartridges, shoot at these targets till they disappear, and then advance till a bend of the valley discloses another imaginary concentration of the enemy. This device presents a very realistic counterfeit of hill warfare. It seems to me now that all our time at Quetta was spent in such mimic fighting. The wild and desolate country, in which the cantonments lay like an oasis, lent itself admirably to military training; the garrison, complete in all its units, provided the necessary troops of all arms, so that a succession of field-officers were sent up for tactical examination, the practical side of which meant a series of field-days. The General's A.D.C., when called upon for reminiscences, sends the following anecdote: