During the next few days there were signs of serious unrest in the Agror Valley; the tribesmen refused to meet the Deputy-Commissioner, many villages were burnt by them, and on the 7th a general advance of the enemy took place, when all the neighbouring tribesmen joined them, while our own levies deserted in numbers to their homes. On the 12th, Col. Rothney, who had been reinforced, moved out from Oghi, and drove the enemy out of the Agror Valley. By this engagement, by the arrival of troops at Abbottabad, of further reinforcements at Oghi, and the presence of some Kashmir regiments in the Pakli Valley, the safety of the Hazara district was now secured, and Brig.-Gen. Wilde—who was now in command—only waited for more troops to carry out any punitive operations which might be ordered.
Up to this date twenty-one British villages had been burnt by the tribesmen, who had also caused us sixty-four casualties.
_Expedition against the Black Mountain Tribes, 1868._—An expedition was now sanctioned, but in view of the generally disturbed state of this portion of the frontier, it was decided to draw the required troops from cantonments further down country, leaving the garrisons of Peshawar and of other border posts as far as possible intact. Considering that some regiments had come from as far south as Cawnpore, the concentration by the 24th September of the following force at Agror, Darband and Abbottabad, may be considered a very satisfactory piece of work:
2nd and 7th Companies Sappers and Miners.
At Darband, in support of the Nawab of Amb:
This force was divided into two brigades, under Colonels Bright and Vaughan, the whole under command of Brigadier-General Wilde, C.B., C.S.I., and numbered some 9500 of all ranks. In addition, a contingent of 1200 troops was furnished by the Maharaja of Kashmir, but these, though present on the border, did not take any active part in the operations.
The overawing effect of the assembly of so large a force was immediately apparent in the petitions to be permitted to treat which now began to come in from the Swatis, the Hassanzais and the men of Tikari and Nandihar, and these were granted in the case of those clans which had not been specially hostile, or which it was considered particularly desirable to detach from the general coalition. The force which had been concentrated in Hazara had still, however, a sufficiently formidable task before it, having to deal with the Chagarzai and Akazai clans, with the Swatis of Deshi and Thakot, with the Pariari Saiyids, and not improbably with the Hindustani fanatics (of whom more will be said hereafter), and large bodies of trans-Indus Pathans.