3-082-855 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Chitral Expedition: fording the Swat River, looking north; village of Chatedarra in the background, 1895. 'Interesting sketches have been received from three gentlemen who have had exceptional opportunities of appreciating the difficulties and dangers surmounted by the force which eventually succeeded in relieving Chitral. The Swat River has five branches at the particular point which is sketched, and this is the worst part of it... The sound of shots, and puffs of smoke seen up the valley announced the fact that the enemy had at last been found...and the troops began to move in the direction of the river. The [Queen's Own Corps of] Guides had bivouacked about twelve miles from the ferry. On the morning of April 13 they saw bodies of the enemy advancing down the hills on the western side of the valley...they commenced to fall back along the bank of the Ushiri River...Small parties of men were sent over the ferry on rafts, but as only six men could get over at a time, and the double passage took twenty minutes, the process was too slow to be of much use...The Guides sent their wounded and dead over the river, and first came the body of Colonel Battye, who had been shot just when the Guides reached the bank'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.