INDIA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VII, Issue 437, 10 January 1857, Page 6

INDIA.

The Sydney papers contain extracts from Indian journals to the 13th Sept.

The * Madras Athenaeum' of the 13"Sept. contains the following : —The Persians have at last captured Herat. It appears that the Governor of the place wished to mtike terras, but that his offer was refused. The besiegers, having succeeded in destroying one of the gates, carried the city by storm with a loss on their side of fifteen hundred k l!ed. In consequence of this intelligence eleven luige vessels arp being prepared in dock at Bombay to convey trcops and hordes up the

Persian Gulf, and it is rumoured that a land expedition will [[threaten the Shah by way of Afghanistan. What this step may eventually result in, it is impossible to say, but it would seem that we are likely to have another war on our hands before the accounts of I the last are yet settled, and it proves that the declaration contained in Lord Dalhousie's record of his administration— that we could not be involved in any way in the affairs of Afghanistan—is like some other of his lordship's assertions—descriptive of what the state of affairs ought to be rather than that of what they are."

Respecting the Persian expedition, 'the ' Bombay Times' states that the following additional vessels have been taken up for the conveyance of troops and stores to the Persian Gulf, there being about ten thousand tons of freight in all engaged.. This item alone for one month, for which the transports must be paid, even if not a single one of them should ever quit the harbour, will amount to one lakh of rupees. Our transport charge|at the presentjate becomes in reality, from the Bth of September, just three thousand three hundred and thirtythree rupees a day.—The ' Dacola,' —' British Empire Sibella;' —' Mirzapore,' —and ' John Bunyan.' It is a very simple ma'.ter in the present, case to deal with the sea board of Persia, to take and ,to keep as much and as long as we like of all within reach of our ships—and this may perhaps be sufficient to alarm them. A march into the interior, however, is a very formidable affair. The "nearest towns of any magnitude to Bushire or Bunder Abbass, are Shiraz and Kirman, both at least a couple of hundred miles, or more than a month's march, over a fearfully rugged country, from the shore. Teheran is close on five hundred miles distant and would occupy on the march nearly three months. It must be the beginning of November at the earliest before our troops can disembark, and in December there is often heavy snow upon the hills. On these grounds it seems unlikely that a march into the interior, if contemplated at all, should commence before spring sets in, and we should thus be saddled with three months waiting for a start, and as much more of an early summer campaign. We shall not at present suffer [-ourselves to suppose calamities such as there are in store for us,but the preliminary preparations will in all likelihood swallow up a sum equal to half the yearly revenue of the Bombay Presidency, and this of itself ought to be sufficient to show the insanity of ever encumbering ourselves with Persian treaties at all.