On Sunday, September 8th, the whole of Major Wagstaff's force bade farewell without regret to {190} Mianeh, marched across the Karangu, and placed the formidable barrier of the Kuflan Kuh between itself and the advancing enemy. Wagstaff established his headquarters in a ruined caravanserai near the stone bridge which spans the Kizil Uzun River at the southern entrance to the Pass. All the stores of wheat and barley which had been accumulating in Mianeh were destroyed before evacuation, and the rearguard crossed the Karangu without molestation either from the Turks or from their new allies, the Mianehites, who were hourly showing themselves more hostile to the retiring British. [Illustration: NORTH GATE, KASVIN.] Headquarters at Kasvin now began to be alarmed at the uninterrupted southward advance of the Turks, for, if Zinjan fell, Kasvin might be expected to follow, and our line of communications from Hamadan towards the Caspian would be cut. General Dunsterville himself was away in Baku, fighting Bolsheviks and Turks. Some weeks earlier, with the help of Bicherakoff and his Russians, he had rooted out Kuchik Khan from his jungle fastness, and opened the road from Manjil to Resht and the Caspian Sea. Wagstaff was accordingly ordered to hold the Kuflan Kuh at all costs, but what he was to hold it with was not quite clear, inasmuch as his total dependable fighting strength of Hants, Ghurkas, and 14th Hussars did not exceed 250 bayonets and 50 sabres, the few remaining levies being a negligible quantity. He had been given a machine-gun detachment, a {191} mountain battery section, two field guns, and a howitzer. His main position was on a line of low hills extending for about three miles below the northern face of the Pass, and commanding the approaches from the Mianeh plain and the brick bridge across the Karangu. The guns were on the reverse or southern slope of the Pass, whence by indirect fire they could make it unpleasant for an enemy crossing the Karangu bridge or fording the shallow river itself.