Nizam-ul-Mulk on crossing the frontier, was joined by a large number of men from the upper valleys of Chitral, with whom he had been brought up as a youth, and who were always much attached to him, A force of 1,200 men, which Sher Afzul sent to oppose him, also went over to him, and he immediately marched on Mastuj, which he occupied without difficulty. Drasan fell into his hands on the 1st of December, and Sher Afzul, seeing the game was up, fled as rapidly as he had appeared, back into Afghan territory; where he remained, till at the commencement of the present year he again appeared upon the scene to set the whole of Chitral once more in a ferment. Nizam-ul-Mulk felt that his success had been very largely due to the countenance which had been given him by the British authorities, and his first act on ascending the throne was to ask that a British officer might be sent to remain by his side. The Government of India directed that a mission under the charge of Surgeon-Major Robertson, and which consisted of Lieutenant The Honourable C. G. Bruce, Lieutenant J. H. Gordon, and myself, with fifty men of the 15th Sikhs should be deputed to proceed to Chitral to congratulate the new Mehtar on his succession, and to promise him the same subsidy and support as were given to his late father. In the middle of January 1893, we crossed the Shandur Pass, 12,400 feet high, since rendered famous by the march of Colonel Kelly's column across it, and, in spite of the severity of the weather and the extreme cold, reached Chitral without mishap on the 25th of January. Here the mission remained till May, giving to the Mehtar that support which he so much required in the consolidation of his rule. Dr. Robertson and Lieutenant Bruce returned to Gilgit at the end of May, while Lieutenant Gordon and myself, with the whole of the escort, remained on in Chitral. As the months went by, the Mehtar gradually strengthened his position, and at the end of September, we were able to withdraw to Mastuj, a place sixty-five miles nearer Gilgit, which the Government of India desired should in future be the head-quarters of the political agent. During the following year, no event of importance occurred upon this frontier, though the restless Pathan chief, Umra Khan, the Mehtar's neighbour on the south, was constantly causing trouble by attacking the villages considered by the Mehtar to belong to Chitral. In the autumn of last year the Honourable George Curzon, M.P. (now Lord Curzon) entered Chitral territory from the direction of the Pamirs. He and I rode down together to the Mehtar's capital, and were received by him with every mark of hospitality. We had long conversations together, we dined with him and he with us, and we played polo together; and when on the 11th of October we rode away from Chitral, no one would have supposed it possible that in a few months' time the country, which then seemed so quiet, should be the scene of the bloody conflict which