A very unpleasant telegram from India reached London on Monday
last. The Government of India has been irritated by incessant incursions from Bhootan, an independent semi-Tartar State north of Bengal, occupying an enormous plateau which stretches back to an unknown distance from the hills west of Upper Assam. The Hon. Ashley Eden, an able doctrinaire civilian, lately Secretary to the local Government, was sent to arrange matters, and after a journey across hills 13,000 feet high, and nearly losing his life in the snow, reached Poomukka, the capital, on or about 9th March. Here the ruler flung him into prison, and compelled him to sign a treaty ceding British Assam At least so the telegram says, and though Mr. Eden is not the sort of man to be compelled to sign anything, still the story is not one a gobemonehe would invent. Sir John Lawrence has no option now but to march troops into Bhootan,—and a pleasant business it will be.! It is May, he must send Europeans some seven hundred miles through the Delta, then over a natural wall 13,003 feet, and then neither he nor any one else knows where. Still he must do it.
