While we were congratulating ourselves on the destruction of Bo Swè and his gang, news came down that Pagyi was up. As yet we had not been able to occupy this region. It was a country of hills and ravines, densely wooded and also very unhealthy. It had been impossible to find civil officers to administer it, or men, either soldiers or police, to occupy it. The people had always more or less managed their own affairs under their own headmen, and as a temporary makeshift we had endeavoured to continue this arrangement. One, Maung Po. O, had been appointed an honorary head constable, and had hitherto maintained order in the south-west corner of Pagyi, and Maung Tha Gyi, an influential headman, held a similar position in the north-west and had done well and had acted with loyalty. The villages under Maung Tha Gyi, a group of small hamlets of twenty to thirty houses each, lay in the thick scrub jungle on the spurs of the Pondaung range. A leader named Bo Sawbwa, who was acting in the interests of the Shwègyobyu Prince and had fortified himself in the jungles south of Pagyi, attacked and carried off Po. O. At the same time Maung Tha Gyi suddenly threw off his allegiance to the British, collected men, and fortified a position near one of his villages. He was reported to be ready to join the Shwègyobyu Prince, who ever since his gang was dispersed in 1886 had been harboured by a circle of villages in the west of Pagyi. On receipt of this intelligence every precaution was taken. Sir George White sent Colonel Symons to take command of the military operations, and I selected Mr. Carter as the best man to accompany him as a civil officer with magisterial powers. Captain Raikes was Deputy Commissioner of the Chindwin district at the time. He was away on leave, and Mr. W. T. Morison,[23] of the Indian Civil Service, Bombay Presidency, was acting for him and was at Alôn, the district headquarters on the left bank of the Chindwin River. Mr. W. T. Morison was a young officer of five or six years' service and had been in Burma a very short time. He was one of the young men, of whom there were not a few in Burma, who took instinctively to the work. On the 2nd of October he crossed over to the disturbed tract and joined Lieutenant Plumer, who, with a detachment of the 2nd Hyderabad Contingent Infantry, was at Hlawga, a march west from the river. Mr. Morison wrote at once to Maung Tha Gyi, ordering him to come in. Tha Gyi, who was at one of his villages, Chaungwa, about sixteen miles from Hlawga, sent an evasive reply and began to collect men and arms. Mr. Morison decided to try to surprise him. On the morning of the 8th of October, Lieutenant Plumer and Mr. Morison, with twenty-one Mounted Infantry, from the military police battalion, and the Hyderabad Contingent, left Hlawga soon after midnight, and surprised Chaungwa at four o'clock in the morning, when it was still dark.