The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-02 00:00:00

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India in one field, had inflicted the final defeat on
the Khalsa, and redeemed, in the nick of time, his
disastrous repulse at Chillianwallali.

A week has passed, and the force detached in
pursuit is crossing the Jhelum. The stream runs
swift and clear, for it has not as yet entered the
alluvial soil which makes the Indus one of the
muddiest of rivers, discolouring the sea for a circuit
of hundreds of tniles. It is icy cold, for the snow
water has not hail time to get tepi I a; it is swiftly
hu tied from the hills. It is indeed bat breaking
ironi i:s mountain birth-place with the eager
rush of the higlllands. &Finis of soldiers with
their lower garments (34:1 au I linked in line with
there arms entwined are fording a bra.tic'i, of whie'i
there arc five, separated by islands. Dotte I like
rock.; in the current are broken-down cainAs,
their loads saturated, and the mournful heals
of the poor brutes raised with their long necks
above the water. Down a little lower arc men
busy with inflated skins swimming in the swift
stream, which widely spread where the troops are
crossing, there dashes its concentrated waters
against the bank. Hurrying down in the strong
current are goats, dogs, men, and women, and even
horses, boxes, and bags swept away by the force of
the stream, and the men with the mussacksare picking
these up, and carrying them to the.bank. Along that
bank is a row of human berme drowned, some.
still insensible, some recovering, and heaps of soaked
baggage. The next branch is deep and slow, and
the troops are crossing in flat-bottomed boats. A
European soldier sitting on the bank with his legs
overhanging the stream is precipitated into it with
the loose soil which has given way beneath him.
His comrades ran down to pick him up, but they
never see him again, and they learn how fatal may
be the under-current of that strange river. When
this is crossed another and yet another pre-
sents itself, and days are consumed in the passage
in spite of every effort, and the army reaches the
other bank minus much baggage and many camp
followers. It is the place where Alexander pushed
his army over to meet and defeat Porta ; but he
came from the opposite direction.
Two or three days more have passed, and Sir
Walter Gilbert's flying column is stretched for
leagues in the defiles of the Bukralla Pass. The
great Fort of Rotas, with its stupendous walls rising
for miles on the top of a steep cliff abandoned by
the enemy, has been passed by the British. .There,
in a eve, a strange object presents itself. A Fakir,
sworn on the death of Runjeet Singh to spend the
rest of his life in a cage, has already passed many
years in it, and is now a ghastly object; a hideous
mass of hair, nails, and dirt, leaning with his sto-
mach on a board that hangs suspended in the cage.
The strength of the religious fanaticism which led
to this sacrifice is better illustrated by it than by
the repeated instances experienced by the troops of
the self-immolation of the Seikhs in battle. In
places the Pass widens beyond 'a gorge, but more
generally it narrows so as scarcely to admit the pas-
sage of a gun. The hills are arid, bare, and brown, as
if the soil had been scooped out by the recent action of
water. The cold clear stream flows through,
doubling from silo to side of the winding Pass,
and keeping the soldiers perpetually wet as they
cross and re-cross. After being shut in for days
the troops find the pass ends abruptly in a de-
clivity, the pathway up which had been cut away by
the enemy as they at first proposed there to make a
staid. But Shere Sing's heart failed him as the
moment drew nigh, and a strong party of pioneers
hewed out a road for the guns and baggage
up the face of the precipice. On the top the
country presents an undulating appearance, cut up
in every direction by these scooped-out gorges, and
away to the right is still the snowy chaia of the
flinunalayali. with the.lesser ranges sprinkled only
with snow lying dark and comparatively low be-
tween the army and the Yale of Cashmere—a
dreary, desolate, uncultivated, uuin'eresting-look-
I ing country.

After a steep descent the Brigades in rear have
entered a broader gorge, and as they deboach from
the Pass they are directed to form into column of
companies, and take ground as if for an attack or
for a parade. By degrees regiment after regiment
is in position, and the whole with its batteries
and cavalry is arrayed before a group who look
down from the opposite bank. I❑ that group is
Sir Walter Gilbert, who is showing Shere Sing
that the Brigades he has already seen encamped
around the ManikialiTope are but half his force, the
other half being in rear, and that his wisest policy is
to surrender. That surrender takes place two or
three days after in another valley, not far from
what is now the large British station of Rawul-
Pindee. The whole force is again assembled, and
in troops and companies the Seikhs pass a huge pile
behind which is a British brigade in line, whereon
each soldier throws his arms, and receives as 111
passes one or two rupees to pay his way back to his
Punjaub home. The Seikhs had stipulated to sur-
render, and to bring in the guns of a troop of British
Horse Artillery they had captured at Chillian-
wallah, and as it required very skilful driving to get
down the vile road by which the valley was entered
on the opposite bank, many went to see the per-
formance. The first gun came up with its six
horses, a rider on each. Half way down the pre-
cipice the road, instead of running in one line took
a sharp turn, and considering the angle of incline
was somewhere about 45 deg., many of those who
saw the gunners coming up hoped they would dis-
mount and bring the field pieces down by hand.
There was a jeering laugh from some inconsiderate
person as the Seikhs approached the precipice, which
seemed to sting, for simultaneously the horses
bounded into a gallop, and went over, quickly
followed by the second, while the spectators rushed
to the brink. The one had doubled the corner, and
was rushing down the other incline, but the
second, not so fortunate, had been overturned on the
tDp of the horses, and produced an indescribable
scene of death and ruin. Eighteen thousand
Seikhs surrendered, but the Affghan portion of
the force continued their retreat towards their own
mountains.

TVORLD-WIDE UNIFORMITI IN COINAGE,

(From the New York Albion.)

We are informed from Washington that on Tues-
day, June 9, Mr. Sherman, from the Committee on
Finance, reported with amendments, to the United
States Senate, a bill designed to promote the esta-
blishment of a uniform currency among all nations.
The bill as proposed by Senator Sherman substan-
tially adopts the principles of the Paris Conference
of last year, and proposes a single uniform standard,
exclusively of gold—the assimilation of the Ameri-
can silver dollar to the French five-franc piece, and
the gold half-eagle, or five-dollar piece, to the
French twenty-five franc piece—such bill to take
effect from the Ist of January, 1869.
Senator Morgan, on the other hand, has presented
a report which sets forth that such a change as now
proposed, " should be made only after the most
mature deliberations ;" and suggestively asks :
" Should not a period when the public mind is calm
—more so than now—on the subject of monetary
affairs, and when the national debt has become less
formidable, be chosen for initiating a change ?"
We may here add, that in our opinion Senator
Morgan's views on the qUestion more nearly repre-
sent those entertained by the mass of. the American
people than do those of Senator Sherman.
In England a uniform standard existed before
the Conquest. Magna Charta also declares that
" there• shall be one weight and one measure
'throughout the realm ;" but, in the fifteenth cen-
tury, as many as eleven systems of weights and
measures were sanctioned by Act of Parliament, or
were in general use by the people—also local weights
and measures existed in different market towns. At
that time as many a 3 ten different stones, and
twenty different bushels, existed in the United
.liingdom, In France the kilogramme and metre