distance to be marched was about eleven miles. ' The
road lies at first over flat and marshy ground, but in
view of the subsequent narrow and difficult trang, it
was impossible to make use of this advantage by advancing
otherwise than in Indian file all day.
The expeditionary force upon the march must
have been an impressive thing for the natives who
peeped towards it from the distant rocks. One is so
apt to think of an army from one’s remembrance of
a parade ground or a review, that it is difficult to convey
an impression of the enormous length to which even so
small a force as that with which we were now advancing
stretches out upon the road. The first result of this
is that the greatest danger to be guarded against, apart,
of course, from hostile demonstrations from the enemy,
is that of irregularity on the march; for a second’s delay,
caused, say, by a deep water-cut, multiplied, as it must
be, by the number of files in an eight-miles column
becomes, at the end of the line, a delay of twenty
minutes. It was a striking sight, this long filament of
men and beasts stretching and shrinking themselves
forward— for all the world like a worm upon a path—
as the gaps were lengthened and made up, between the
high cliff and the tumbling water below. You would,
in the morning, find the Pioneers striding with long
legs until the Gurkhas’ officers had to protest against
the pace; but later on, in the same day, you might
find a Pioneer or two sitting exhausted beside the road,
but rarely would you find a Gurkha in distress. The
dust crawls out slowly from under the changing feet,
hanging in the air for a mile behind the last files of the
rearguard. In front will go the mounted infantry, inquisitive
and at wary intervals, and then a detachment