The Press. — London, England, 1858-01-30 00:00:00

102 is in a state of the utmost confusion, and is reported to have suffered greatly at the bands of the enemy on this occasion, though it escaped with impunity on the last. It will, I apprehend, be very many days ere the natives re turn to their avocations, and business is resumed. Dec. 10.-1 hasten to let you know that news has just come in that Brigadier Grant's column, that went from the commander-in-chiefs camp the night before last, attacked the rebels at Bithoor yesterday, committed great slaughter among them, captured the entire of the staff of the Nana, and took all the guns, ammunition, provisions, money, and property of every description, that had been removed to Bithoor. It is said many of the scoundrels have fled in terror into Oude. Yesterday some of Sir J. Outram's treasure and camp came in, and he is said to be following with his force. May he come across these scoundrelly fugitives ! A havildar of the rebel force was executed last evening, who stated, w ben examined, that the Nana was not here during any portion of the time we were besieged, but remained at Bithoor—that his brother, the Bhalab Sahib, reached Calpee on the 18th ult., and was honoured with a salute of twenty-one guns on his arrival—that he crossed his force there on the 21st as chief, with Surdial Pandy as general in chief, and Tothea Topah second in eommand—that the rebel force consisted of little more than half of the Gwilior Contingent, some of Scindia's, Lloyd's own loysls Prom Dinapore, a large body of mi scellaneous troops from Furruckabad, four regi ments sent by the Nana, a number of men from Oude, and forty-two grins from Calpee, besides some sent by the Nam ; that the Rajah of Gbopslpore (in the Kutchwar ghur district), and the Zemindar of Tongrah, with their men, were with the rebels; that their treasure consisted of Rs. 5,b6,01242-8 —rather precisely calculated, I should my, to define the balance with such nicety. Deo. 11.—We had no poet from Calcutta yesterday, and ye have none to-day, even from Allahabad. The cause, of emus, we do not know. Communication by telegraph matisaes uninterrupted, but the instrument is steadily • for service messages. We hear this morning that eral Dupuis and hie eteff will leave to-morrow by tWrCalcutta, it being ambled the head-quarters of the are to be established them. His Excellency the co ra metadar-in-chief will march with a strong force for Furracks• lad lassorrow. A v perseove in the right direction, slam k is vitally esseatl we should open the road with the Memel practicable speed, for the importation of grain fee Bareilly and other adjoining districts. I saw a Misr this morning from an officer of H.M.'s 78th High leaders, stating Sir J. Outram did not purpose to vacate the Almallegh immediately, as the enemy were gathering mead !deposition, and evidenced a decided inclination to give hiss meeting on the open, which is all he wants, and Asa our fellows will read the 'mandrels a lesson. Nothing definite is stated relative to General Wind ham, but it was reported he had been removed to Umballah. From Delhi we have news to the 10th. The trial a the Nawab of Jhujjhur was still going on at that date. The evidence of Sir Theophilas Metcalfe is said to be oonclusive of his guilt. Executions of criminals of lower degree take place daily. Rohilcund still remains in the hands of Khan Bahadoor, who has set himself up as Nawab of the province. This man, once. principal Sudder Ameen in the Company's courts, has regularly assumed the =orship of the province, collects revenue, and pointed as hib Ministers a number of Maho melba% nearly all of whom, it may ba remarked, wore cilleials in the East India Company's service. Hoer Singh was said at the time of the attack on _ Guapore i.o have been with the Gwalior troops. Another account now has it that he is pushing to wards Mirzapore, with a view of threatening that station. In Bengal, matters are as quiet "as could be ex. pected." The remains of the 11th Cavalry at Jul pigoree mutinied on the sth of December. They rode off with their arms, and were soon joined by the troop out in the field, to meet the Dacca mutineers. They rode off towards Purneah, evidently intending to plunder that station on their way to the north. west. Fortunately, Mr. Yule, the Commissioner of Bhaugulpore, is a hunting man, and not a civilian of the desk. With 50 of her Majesty's sth, 100 sailors, and 2 guns, he marched to intercept them. He came up with them near Parneah, and dashed at them at once. They refused the challenge, made a rapid detour, and pressed on. Mr. Yule, however, was not to be foiled ; he had been marching all day, but he is a mighty hunter, and his stud of elephants were to the fore. He mounted fifty sailors and forty soldiers on them, marched all night, and but for an accident would have cut them to pieces. He did, as it was, compel them to charge, and killed eleven without toe loss of a man. So rapid had been his pursuit that the enemy's horses could hardly move. The men of the 73rd, who mutinied at Dacca, have escaped to Bootaa. They:were caught by fifty Euro- peans and forty Ghoorkas, sent out from Julpigoree on the 12th of December. They were, however, strongly posted among nullahs, the attacking party were up to their knees in sand, and were ultimately obliged to give up the pursuit. No one was killed. The three companies of the 34th, who mutinied at Dacca, have, it is said, arrived on the frontier of Tipeerab. They have murdered their women, who impeded their march, and are now said to be starving. When last heard of, they had just turned their faces towards Sylhet, and the Sylnet Battalion have been firdeled to intecoept them This battalion is sup- THE PRESS, JANUARY 80, 1858. posed to be faithful—l think with reason. It corn prises very few Hindostanees, and has many Ghoor kits, who of course look to Jung Bahadoor as their guide. The principal effect of this has been to close the roads : During the past fortnight all our roads, except those into Eastern Bengal, have been closed. The Sumbul pore fracas has closed the old Bombay road. The new one is shut up by the insurrection near Jubbulpore, and the third route, vii Madras, is scarcely yet organised. The Sambulpore affair occupies a very important place in ►he papers, but is really very insignificant. A man named Sander Shaw, with a gang of ruffians, and perhaps a few sepoys, occupied the place. The few troops in the can tonment held oat. Three companies of the 40th Madras Native Infantr3 were sent up, but all fell sick of the local fever—always very bad in the cold weather. The Sheks wattes have now been despatched to their aid, and their commander, Colonel Forster, has a habit of success. He has certainly kept his regiment together wonderfully, chiefly by his own personal authority. It is almost pa triarchal. The other day he was ordered to arrest the Rajah of Pachete. He gave him twenty minutes, at the end of which time be threatened to hang him unless his tort were surrendered. A quarter of an hour expired— eighteen minutes—and the tort was 3ielded up. He will doubtless restore our communications.—Tinta eor. The Englishman gives the following account of General Havelock's death : He first suffered from an attack of indigestion, which was speedily got under, and no apprehensions were enter tained before midnight on the 20th November, when un mistakeable sins of dysentery made their appearance. On the day following the general, however, felt so far better as to be removed to the I)ilkoosha, where the change of air seemed to have produced some further improvement. Early on the morning of the 22nd, unhappily, a change for the worse set in, and symptoms of malignant deacrip tion appeared in rapid succession. It is some consolation to know that the attack throughout continued free from bodily suffering. In full possession of his faculties, about nine o'clock on the morning of the 24th November, the good, the illustrious Havelock closed, in his sixty-third year, his career, at the very goal which, once attained, was destined to become his mausoleum, by the side of a Law rence, and of so many others of the beat and bravest of our countrymen. The death of Colonel Campbell, of the 90th, is confirmed. The colonel was an officer of high dis tinction. He rendered gallant and valuable services in the Kaffir war, where he was in the 73rd Regi ment ; on several occasions in the Crimea his ser vices were prominent, especially at the capture of the Quarries on the 7th of June ; and more recently his promptitude was strongly manifested in the manner in which he disarmed two native regiments on his way up from Calcutta. Colonel Campbell entered the army in 1837. From Central India we learn that the whole country south of Cawnpore—u it may also be said to the northern boundary of the Nagpore province and west, as far as the eastern limits of the Bombay Presi dency (observes the Phoenix), is in a disturbed and disaffected state. The Princes of Gwalior, Indore, and some few others, have remained, as far as we can learn, faithful to British interests, but a good many small rajahs to the south have almost declared war against ns, while some few have unmistakeably done so. The country about Sangor, Jubbulpore, and generally in the vicinity of those places, is in fested with Bundeelas, and bandits of every possible description." Nagpore still continues quiet ; there is, however, a pretty strong force of Madras troops in the province, which cannot safely be spared out of it Madras and Bombay are both tolerably quiet; and from the Punjaub there is no intelligence. Some curious details are related by the different correspondents. One writing from Calcutta re marks : At this present time the disarmed sepoys at Barrackpore and Alipore look an officer full in the face and then spit on the ground as they pass him (a native mode of testify ing the utmost contempt), and no notice is taken of it. Some of these very men have lately been deprived of even their ramrods because they were found sharpening the ends, and thus turning them into excellent pikes, but no punishment has been inflicted. During the Mohurrnm last August in Calcutta the European and Christian por tion of the community were insulted by a warning that any interference with a nati►e procession involved a penalty of six months' imprisonment with hard labour, while the European police marched at the head of the Mahomedan processions, and English gentlemen were turned back, and not allowed to proceed along those streets which the Moslem chose to occupy. The traditionary policy of in all things giving natives the uppet hand is exemplified in the fact that our men at Barrackpore are at this moment on half batta, while the disarmed sepoys at the same station are on full batta! Another gives an anecdote of Colonel Wheeler's affair with the mutinous sepoys of the 34th : I must not omit to tell you that the case of Colonel Wheeler ha■ been considerably misrepresented. The guard refused to arrest Mungul Pandy at his orders. They had previously shown themselves to be in open mutiny by striking the adjutant and sergeant, one of them having fired at Lieutenant Baugh; and Colonel Wheeler thought it advisable to report this to the brigadier. When General Hearsay came, with a good many other officers, on foot and horseback, the jemadar of the guard replied to his . . order, but not in his hearing, " Kri Purive—that " What matter?' and on the general's approach Idugn Pandy sat down and shot himself, and thus cut th e Gordian knot of the difficulty. Colonel Wheeler had be en only three months with the 34th Regiment, and therefore is clearly not chargeable with its mutinous condition. H is old regiment, to which he constantly preached, is the one that has behaved so well at Saugor, so his cue rather tell s in favour of " missionary colonels." The last news from Madras tells of an act of insanity, inexcusable in any military man—nam e l y that the mutinous troopers of the Bth Ca va l ry have been distributed among the seven other cavalry regiments of the Madras army, thus stopping pr o . motion, and both causing and spreading discontent. " Supposing these regiments to be loyal, this is truly doing the devil's work, and sowing tares among the wheat. Perhaps the authorities look upon mutiny as a necessary disease, less fatal when communicated by inoculation ! It was by a similar stroke of policy that Lord Dalhousie introduced dissatisfaction into the Nizam's famous cavalry, disbanding the sth Regiment just after it had done excellent service in the field, confiscating all death vacancies, to the ruin of many a widow and child, and sending the survivors to stop promotion, and spread heartburning throughout the whole branch of the service. Brigadier Johnstone, at Jullundur, was smitten with the same mania, and endeavoured to induca the commanding officer of one of the loyal Sikh regi ments to receive 200 mutinous rascals among his men. He utterly declined, and the next day had to fight these very men and their comrades in the proportion of three to one. Lord Harris is not answerable for this most p'rnicious absurdity, for though a governor he will take advice ; but what are we to think of his military advisers'" SIR COLIN CAMPBELL'S GUIDE TO LUCKNOW. An interesting account is given in the Indian papers of the adventures of one of our man attached to f,Outram's division, and who, when Sir Colin Campbell was advancing to Lucknow, undertook to carry despatches to Sir Colin, went out of the Residency, passed through the rebels' lines, and reached Sir Colin at Alumbagh. The man's name is James Kavanagh, but it does not appear to what regiment he belonged. Having disguised himself in native dress, and coloured his face and bands with lamp black, he started, on the evening of the 9th November, in company with a native spy, one Kunoujee Lall. Having reached the right bank of the Goomty, they undressed, forded the river, and reached the enemy's outpo s ts My courage failed me while in the water, and if my guide had been within reach I should perhaps have pulled him back and abandoned the enterprise. But he waded quickly through the stream, and reaching the oppo- site bank, went crouching up a ditch for three hundred yards, to a grove of low trees on the edge of a pond, where we stopped to dress. While we were here a man came down to the pond to wash, and went away again without observing us. My confidence now returned to me, and with my tulwar resting on my shoulder, we advanced into the huts in front, where I accosted a matchlocktuan, who answered to my remark that the night was cold, " It is very cold, in fact, it is a cold night." I passed him, adding that it would be colder by-and-by. After going six or seven hundred yards further, we reached the iron bridge over the Goomty, where we were stopped and called over by a native officer who was seated in an upper storied house, and seemed to be in command of a cavalry picket, whose horses were near the place saddled. My guide advanced to the light, and I stayed a little back in the shade. After being told that we had come from Mundeon (our old cantonment, and then in the possession of the enemy), and that we were going into the city to our homes, he let us proceed. Vie continued on along the left bank of the river to the stone bridge, which is about eight or nine hundred yards from the iron bndge, passing unnoticed through a number of sepoys and matchlockmen, some of whom were escorting persons of rank in palankeena preceded by torches. Recrossing the Goomty by the stone bridge, we went by a sentry unobserved, who was closely questioning a dirtily dressed native, and into the chock, or principal street of the city of Lucknow, which was not illuminated as much as it used to be previous to the siege, nor was it so crowded. I jostled against several armed men in the street without being spoken to, and only met one guard of seven sepoys, who were amusing themselves with some women of pleasure. When issuing from the city into the country we were challenged by a chowkeedar, or watchman, wbo, without stopping us, merely asked who we were. The part of the city traversed that night by me seemed to have been dt serted by at least a third of its inhabitants. T was in great spirits when we reached the green fields, into which 1 had not been for five months. Everything around us smelt sweet, and a carrot I took from the road side was the most delicious 1 bad ever tasted. I gave vent to my feelings in a conversation with Kunoujee Lall, who joined in my admiration of the province of Oude, and lamentation that it was now in the hands of wretches whom misgovernment and rapacity were ruining it.