including the first battalion of the Seventy-third (as we must as yet call the Seventy-first), these, under Major-General Sir Hector Munro, dared to advance into the interior. Meanwhile, a division of 3000 men, under Lieut.-Colonel Baillie, descending from the north, strove to effect a junction with the army of General Munro. The hesitation of the latter, when in presence of the foe, to prosecute his advance, and secure his junction with the former, placed the small force of Colonel Baillie in a position of peril. This opportunity, vigorously improved by Hyder Ali, occasioned its destruction, which, with two companies of the Seventy-third, and other troops under Lieut.-Colonel Fletcher, had, despite the treachery of the guides, threaded their way through the jungle, and arrived as a reinforcement from Major-General Munro, but in reality as so many more victims who should be engulfed in the fatal ruin so nigh. The terrible disaster which ensued, and the calamitous result which yielded so many brave men prisoners into the cruel, merciless power of Hyder Ali, can never fail to inspire feelings of the truest sympathy. With a hundred thousand men, he descended with the most sanguinary fury upon this little and devoted column. Even when the whole ammunition was, by an unlucky accident, blown into the air in their very midst, and the British guns silenced, they remained unconquered. The converging hosts of the enemy drew closer around the little band of heroes, and poured in upon them a deadly fire of artillery and musketry, to which they could no longer reply. Reduced to 500 men, “History cannot produce an instance, for fortitude, and intrepidity, and desperate resolution, to equal the exploits of this heroic band.... The mind, in the contemplation of such a scene, and such a situation as theirs was, is filled at once with admiration, with astonishment, with horror, and with awe. To behold formidable and impenetrable bodies of horse, of infantry, and of artillery, advancing from all quarters, flashing savage fury, levelling the numberless instruments of slaughter, and darting destruction around, was a scene to appal even something more than the strongest human resolution; but it was beheld by this little band with the most undaunted and immoveable firmness.... Like the swelling waves of the ocean, however, when agitated by a storm, fresh columns incessantly poured in upon them with redoubled fury, which at length brought so many to the ground, and weakened them so considerably, that they were unable longer to withstand the dreadful and tremendous shock; and the field soon presented a horrid picture of the most inhuman cruelties and unexampled carnage.”[C] Happy were those who found on the burning sands of Perambaukam “a soldier’s grave;” happy indeed, compared with the cruel fate of the survivors, who, reduced from 4000, scarce mustered 200 prisoners, nearly all of whom were wounded. Colonel