INDIA.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 645, 8 October 1851, Page 3

INDIA.

[From the Singapore Free Press, June 27.] By the H. C. steamer Hooghly, and P. and O. Company’s steamer Pacha, we have Calcutta papers to the 12th instant. H.M. 18th Regt, have been informed that they were no longer to consider themselves in readiness for foreign service, and their extra balta has accordingly ceased. The favourable news received from the Cape, and the intelligence of the despatch ol troops for that quarter from England, have probably led to

the intention of sending troops from India be. ing abandoned. Lieutenant Sale, son of the late Sir Robert Sale, has been killed by his horse falling down a precipice. Lord Dalhousie met with a similar, though not so disastrous an adventure lately, while riding down hill on a small pony at Kangra; the animal shyed, and fell over a small precipice, but his lordship fortunately escaped with a few bruises. xne charge.or the P. and O. Company for freight of opium between Calcutta and China is 28 rupees per chest, so that the opium per Erin gave them about 30,000 rupees; if these rates are maintained, they will leceive £36,000 per annum from this source alone. The steamer Achilles is to be placed on this line, while the new steamers, Singapore and Ganges, will run on the Bombay and China line. The Bombay Times asserts that the Court of Directors have determined that no more engineers shall be sent out for the service of the Indian Navy at present. This looks as if retrenchment were contemplated in this branch of the service, and we suppose is in anticipation of an abandonment of the mail contract between Bombay and Suez. The heat in Bengal is represented as something awful. The Friend of India states that, on the 28th May, the thermometer in his office rose, at three o’clock, to 99, and the wind was positively scorching. The Calcutta papers of the 4th instant state that the Bombay papers contain a rumour that the ship Diana, from Singapore to Bombay, had been burnt off Aleppee; but we find no confirmation of this in any papers of subsequent dates.—lt seems that the Chittagong lascars have a peculiar mode of setting fire to ships, by which they can calculate the precise moment at which the flames will break out. Madras.—Madras has been visited by a gale, although not so destructive as that of fast year. It commenced on the 3rd May, and continued to the stb. A number, of native vessels were wrecked, but very few lives were lost. The English vessels put out to sea, and returned on the 6th and 7th without having sustained any damage.— Singapore Free Press, June 6.