no easy one. But at one o'clock that night I arrived without mishap, and at ten o'clock the next night the Hunza levies arrived also. They had traversed the sixty-five miles on foot in thirty-six hours, starting on the war-path at a moment's notice. And these the men that not a year before had been fighting against us !
Chitral, the country where the trouble had arisen, lies to the west of, and is a considerably larger and more important state than Hunza. Its population is estimated at about eighty thousand, and it is roughly about two hundred miles in length and one hundred and twenty in breadth. It is mountainous throughout, and only special parts of the valley bottom, where water can be laid on to the land, are inhabited. This state was ruled, till the close of 1892, by an astute old chief named Aman-ul-Mulk, who had welded together Chitral proper and Yasin into one state. Aman-ul-Mulk was over seventy years old in 1892. He had seventeen sons, and at his death it was known that there must be a scramble among these for the throne. At the end of August, 1892, he died, and the long-expected scramble began. The second son, Afzul-ul-Mulk, was in the fort at Chitral at the time of the death of his father, and he, of course, seized all the arms and treasure stored there, murdered those of his brothers whom he feared, collected an army, and set off to fight his elder brother, Nizam-ul-Mulk, who was away in Yasin. Nizam had little stomach for fighting, and, without much ado, ran away to Gilgit. Afzul was then recognized by the Government of India as de facto ruler of Chitral.
But a few weeks later another claimant for the throne appeared. This was Sher Afzul, a half-brother of the old Mehtar's, who had been driven from Chitral by that chief many years before, and who had ever since lived in exile in Afghan territory, almost forgotten. He now suddenly appeared upon the scene. He crossed into Chitral from Afghan territory by the Dorah
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