With Kelly to Chitral. By Lieutenant W. G. L. Beynon,D.S.O.
(E. Arnold.)—Lieutenant Beynon was Colonel Kelly's Chief of the Staff, indeed, the Staff itself, for the column which moved to the relief of Chitral Fort was not on a magnificent scale. In fact, it would have made but a small battalion, numbe lug, as it did, less than six hundred men, all native troops, officered by some half-dozen Englishmen. A larger body was advancing to the same point under General Low, but Colonel Kelly's men carried off the honours. It was, it is true, a fight against nature rather than against man. Yet this was because the enemy were fairly overpowered by the activity and pluck of our men. Had there been any holding back, the Chitralis would have shown much more formidable fight. But of the battle against nature too much cannot be said. Here is the brief story of the crowning achievement :—" Here were some two hundred and fifty men, Hindoos and Mussulmans, who, working shoulder to shoulder, had brought two mountain-guns, with their carriages and supply of ammunition, across some twenty miles of deep soft snow, across a pass some twelve thousand three hundred and twenty feet high, at the beginning of April, the worst time of the year. It must be remembered that these men were carrying also their own rifles, great-coats, and eighty rounds of ammunition, and wearing heavy sheepskin coats ; they had slept for two nights in the snow, and struggled from dawn till dark, sinking at every step up to their waists, and suffering acutely from a blinding glare and bitter wind." Nor were their officers unequal to the men. Two of them lent, not a little to their own discomfort, their snow-glasses to the half-blinded sepoys. It is needless to follow Lieutenant Beynon through his story of the march. It is still remembered, though it was more than a year ago. His style is of the "rattle" kind, of the "agreeable rattle," it must be understood. He talks slang, he chaffs, he makes fun, but he is always a gentleman. "Just my luck, got a bad go of fever the next day. Great Scott ! I did feel a worm ! " That is his way, but he can rise to an occasion ; witness his story of Hayward's death in 1872. He was caught by some ruffians in Yasin (a district between Chitral and Punyal). They were going to murder him on the spot, but he said that he should like to see the world once more. At dawn he took one look at the mountains, and then calmly turned to the executioners. "Men say that even they hesitated."
We have received two of the volumes which are being con- tinually added to the various series edited "under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls and with the Sanction of her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department," and printed for the Stationery Office by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode. How vastly the opportunities, and, it must be added, the labours, of the historian are being increased ! Compare what Liu had to read while he wrote his one hundred and forty-two books about the history of Rome, and what the adventurous man would have to struggle through who should tell the tale of these islands from the days of Csesar to, say, the Jubilee of Queen Victoria, The two volumes now before us are, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII., arranged and cata- logued by James Gairdner and R. II. Brodie, Vol. XIV., Part II. covering the period August 1st, 1539, to some uncertain date in the same year; and Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of William and Mary, February 13th, 1689—April, 1690, edited by William John Hardy. We might fill columns with interesting extracts from both of these volumes. Here is a general account of the gold and silver plate of five monasteries. They have 22,793 oz. of silver between them and 2,047 oz. of gold, St. Edmondsbury having the vast amount of 1,553 oz. of gold and 7,976 oz. of silver. A great number of the entries refer to monastic property, and are not pleasant read- ing. Cromwell seems to have made a harvest. One noble offers him £40 if he can arrange an affair of some abbey lands for him, Few things are more curious than his paper of memoranda, with its multiplicity of business,—" money to be sent to Calais for the defraying the Lady Anne's train," "whether the King will have the birds of Canaria," " to remember the two children in the Tower" (these were the sons of Edward Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, and Henry Pole, Lord Montacute, both executed in this year). Here, to return to the monastic property, is the summary of an infamous piece of work ; various properties and the" rectory of Flyteham, Norfolk, with the glebe lands and advowson " are to be alienated to "Sir Wm. Hollys and Elizabeth, his wife." At Flyteham now the impropriated tithe is .4800, of which the patron gives £20 to the vicar.
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