HINDOO TELEGRAPHY.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXV, Issue 2126, 29 January 1909, Page 8

HINDOO TELEGRAPHY.

The natives of India have no telegraph poles or wires and neither have they a Morse telegraphic code; yet oven when a hundred or more miles apart they manage to communicate with each other with the celerity that the white man does by the aid of the telegraph and cable. Those who anticipated that by rapid marching General Willcocks would have surprised the Jakka Khels were reckoning without the wonderful power of the Hindoos for secretly and rapidly communicating news over long distances. Never was this proved more decisively than in the frontier expedition of 1895. The British troops, which were 125 miles from their base, fought and defeated the natives but, owing to impenetrable mist on the mountains, the English general was unable to heliograph the news of his success until the following day. Yet shortly after the battle on the same evening the officer in charge of the base was 'informed by natives of the victory. Another instance occurred when Lord Mayo was assassinated by a convict in tho penal settlement on the Andaman Islands. Within an hour or two a Pathan in Simla told his officer that the Viceroy was dead, but it was next day before telegrams arrived authenticating the native's report.