INDIA.

Wellington Independent, Volume I, Issue 44, 31 December 1845, Page 4

INDIA.

From India, the most startling announcement is, that a gallant officer is under arrest for one of those daring acts of chivalry that have done so much to establish the prestige of British anus in Hindostan. Colonel Wallace led a regiment and ordnance down a precipice, and through a mountain pas*, in pur:U.t of the enemy, and succeeded in a decisive coup de main : he did it in excess of orders —orders too late ; and his success has stultified the reason why he was forbidden to attempt an " iinpraticable" and '' visionary' achievement. The scene of the exploit (as "with some cf the feats ascribed by tradition in Scotland to bisgr.a: nam u sakt ) has been named afcr him; and if the sentence of the Court Martial cannot be anticipated—so inscrutable are the ways of Court Martials in Indu—the juJgi ment of posterity h forshadowed in this instinctive fixing of the new tradion to the spot. The object of Colonel Wallace was to take the village of Seevapore , He conveyed (JOO infantry with mortars, ordnance, spare amuniiion, commissariat supplies, &c.i down a steep of 110 feet high. After the descent of that precipice, says the •• United Service Gazette, the troops and artillery had to piss along the ridge about 200 yards in length, and only wide enough for one man at a time; on the right of which was a perpendicular scarp of about 150 feet, on; toe left a slope of some 60 degrees, not above twenty feeet in width, with perpendicular fall of several feet on the outside. At the end of the first ridge was a declivity of at least forty feet; leading toa second ridge of about 3 0 yards in length, and but little wider than the first ; terminating in a third fall of about twenty feet; from which a pathway, running over undulating ground, covered with » thick jungle, led to the village of Seevapore, wn'Cß is about twj miss distant from theElephaut ßoch, and surrounded with jangles on all sides. Colom Wallace had received orders from General UeW* motte not io advance, but he rceceived the <> ri)e ' after the advance had been partially commencea, when retreat was impossible except at a sacrinc i and success is regarded as justifying his J"" in | manoeuvre. The rock is now called Wa' lat Droog. __