GREAT BATTLE IN INDIA.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 300, 12 September 1908, Page 11

GREAT BATTLE IN INDIA.

A battle attended with circumstances of great barbaric splendour has taken place in India. Two hundred huge elephants, stationed at intervals of not less than one hundred feet from one another, formed the front at the centre of attack. It was calculated that theso monsters would terrify the invading soldiers and render the dreaded cavalry unmanageable. Behind the elephants stood a compact force of 30,000 infantry, with projections on the wings. Both flanks were protected by cavalry with chariots in front. The invader triumphed, all the elephants being either killed or captured, and the chariots destroyed. Fourteen thousand men were killed. The matter escaped the observation of Renter, as the battle of Hydaspes was fought between Alexander and Poros in tho year 326 B.C. It is reported that the Indian army was greatly discouraged and depressed by the fact that a special consignment of Suratura tea did not arrive from Ceylon before the battle. Lacking this stimulus, the men fonght with little heart, and were easily annihilated. The common teas of India, then as now, had littlo value as stimulants, and wore rough and unpleasing to tho cultivated palate. The fame of Suratura, however, was alroady so great that Alexander, who had been misinformed, and, beliovod the Suratura gardens to lie in what" wo now know as tho Madras Presidency, was in great haste to press south. By this time, the conqueror's nerves woro beginning to fail him, and in Suratura lay his constant hope. When ho finally learned that tho famous gardens woro in Ceylon, well beyond the reach of his army, which was unprovided with marine transport, ho foil into a mood of settled melancholy, returned to his own city, relapsed into his habit of winebibbing, and so speedily drank himself to death. Alexander was a mail content with nothing but tho best. Having once tasted a brew of Suratura, mado from leaves confiscated from the haggago of certain Veddah pilgrims travelling co a German spa, ho could never content himself with inferior dualities and blonds. The Alexanders of today aro mostly natives of Paisloy or Inverness, and proouro their Suratura without trouble from the nearest grocers. S