1879. ] during the Campaign of 1878-79. 165 
conglomerate and sandstone, so that the gorges to the passes and all the 
defiles are invisible till one is close to them, and nearly all the villages are 
quite out of sight. These lower ranges are generally detached and the valleys, 
or daras, are several hundred feet below them. He followed one of these 
daras down to its junction with the Kabul. For mile after mile they 
passed through a continuous belt of cultivation, thickly studded at every 
quarter of a mile with tidy-looking forts and showing every sign of com- 
fort and prosperity. 
Ascending either bank of the stream one passed at once from fertility 
to absolute barrenness, and a few miles away from the dara it was almost 
impossible to make out its course or to trace its windings through the hills 
to the foot of the range. 
On the 17th March Capt. Leach was surveying the slopes of the 
Safed Koh in the neighbourhood of the Shinwari villages of Maidanak 
and Girdi, from 16 to 20 miles south of Barikhab, when he was attacked by 
the villagers and after a hard fight succeeded in withdrawing his party 
and the military escort. In the course of the fight Capt. Leach was 
severely wounded by a sword-cut in the left arm, Lieut. F. M. Barclay, who 
was in command of the escort of 45th Sikhs, received a wound which 
proved mortal, and two men were killed. 
A few days afterwards an expedition under General Tytler was sent 
from Barikhab against the Shinwaris who had attacked Capt. Leach, Major 
Tanner and Mr. Scott accompanying the expedition as Surveyors. Major 
Tanner visited the scene of the encounter and was able at a height of 
4,300 feet to see many points north and west of Jelalabad that he had 
never before seen, especially the Hindu Kush near Bamian, and the same 
range north of his position. He finds that Fardjgan is not at the foot of 
the Hindu Kish, but at the foot of one of its spurs. 
Mr. Scott also accompanied General Tytler to the attack on Deh 
Sarak, and on this expedition and that to Maidanak made a reconnaissance 
of about 120 miles of Shinwari country and the neighbouring slopes of the 
Safed Koh. 
The long halt of the Army at Jelalabad enabled the Survey Officers 
to make the most of such opportunities as they had for completing the survey 
of the almost unknown country around, but as a rule they were unable 
to proceed further out than the limit of a day’s ride out. and in, and this 
prevented them from extending their explorations so far as they would 
have been able to do under more favourable conditions. 
During December and January the survey operations in the neighbour- 
hood of Jelalabad were much hindered by a persistent opaque brown haze 
which entirely blocked the view beyond a few miles. Luckily Major 
Tanner was able to fix his position the very morning of his arrival, other- 
