I don't, think I have mentioned Shah Mirza before, so I will introduce him now, as he was one of our most useful allies, and is now one of my greatest friends. He belongs to the Punyal family, and is Wazir or governor of Sai and Gor. He lives at Damot, a village in the Sai valley, opposite Bunji, and it was during my stay there that I first got to know him. He has an interesting history, and, among other adventures, has travelled through the Pamirs and Chitral in disguise. He was our chief interpreter, and he, or one of his followers, of whom he had five, always kept near us. His followers were enlisted Levies, and one of them had formerly been my shikaree; in fact, he only left me as he was called out as a levy. It is the custom of the country for the headmen of districts to come and pay their respects to any Sahib who may travel through their country, and the proper etiquette is to supply your visitors with tea and sweetmeats--biscuits will do just as well, and they like plenty of sugar. They then pay you the most barefaced compliments, and make the startling assertion that you are their father and mother; upon which you reply that all you have is at their disposal. If they have any petition,--and they generally have,--they insinuate it gently in the general conversation, so you have to be looking out for traps of this sort. When you have suffered sufficient evil for the day, you mildly suggest that they are probably fatigued, and would like to rest. They take the hint, and the remainder of the biscuits, and depart. We used to have lots of these visits, which went by the name of "political teas." Mihrbhan Shah proved very useful to us, I fancy he knew he would get small mercy if he fell into the hands of the opposition, and therefore did all he could to place our force between them and himself. Both at Pingal and our next halting place, Cheshi, he managed to billet all our small force in the villages, and no doubt our men were very thankful as we were getting pretty high up, and the nights were decidedly cold. Although it was a friendly district, we had regular pickets and sentries, and a British officer on duty to see everything was correct. CHAPTER III THE SHANDUR PASS Shortly after leaving Pingal, the character of the country changed considerably, and instead of a continual alternation of cliff and river bed, the valley became more open and level; we were, in fact, nearing the upper end of the valley. Beyond Cheshi the road leads up a bluff and down the other side on to the bed of the Pandur Lake. This lake had, at the beginning of 1894, been a sheet of water some four and a half miles long, but, the dam at its end having given way in July, it had drained off rapidly; and when I had crossed it in November of the same year, the mud of its bed was only just becoming firm and was cracked and fissured in every direction. It was now covered with a sheet of snow, through which the river twined dark and muddy.