Perthshire in bygone days

gg PERTHSHIRE EM BYGONE DAYS.
devotion and consented that the matter be referred to the
Kedadar, who would open the book of fate. Fortunately for
Captain Baird the book of fate was propitious, the irons
were dispensed with, and this brave officer, then a mangled
captive in the dungeons of Seringapatam, was spared to
become on a future day its conqueror and temporary
master. Hyder Ali himself died soon after this, and to
Sir David Baird fell the melancholy office of lifting his
son, Tippoo Saib's dead body from amidst an ocean of blood
at the very door of the dungeon, that had been the scene of
such heartless cruelties.
During the first year of the present century news were
not quite so rapidly transmitted as they are now in the
seventy-ninth ; war messages that took months on their
journey are now sped in a less number of hours. While
the British forces in Egypt were contesting every inch of
ground with those of Napoleon Bonaparte, the home
authorities ordered a portion of the army of India, and a
division of infantry and horse from the Cape of Good Hope
to come to their relief, but before their arrival Sir Ralph
Abercrombie and General Hutchinson had driven the
French out of Egypt. The command of the Indian force
was much coveted by Colonel Wellesley, but before he arrived
from Ceylon, where he was in command, Sir David Baird
was appointed. When they arrived at Jiddah on the Bed
Sea and met the Cape detachment, they were informed that
the British army had left and that there were no transports
nearer than Malta.
Thus thrown upon his own resources, Sir David Baird
pushed on with his large force to Alexandria, there to await
means of transport. The following quotation from The
Autobiography of Andrew Pearson, a Peninsular Veteran,
shows how they were employed by their energetic commander.
" When we had no battles to fight, our General (Sir David
Baird), thought he should give what to some of us would
prove more congenial labour. Large fatigue parties, consisting
of 1,000 men, were sent out daily with the view of removing
Cleopatra's Needle to the banks of the Nile and thence to
England, by a large ship which had been cut open at the
stern to admit the Needle. We built wharves opposite little
Pharos ; but before we had the cargo brought down they
were swept away in a night. Not at all daunted by this
disappointment, we set to work and built others, but on a
more substantial principle than the former. We had our