DEATH OF CAPT. A. DALLAS, CALCUTTA.
We regret to record the death of an active and able officer in the Hon. East India Company's service, the son of Mrs Dr Dallas, Inverness. The following is from the Calcutta Star of the 3d of January:— " The death of Captain Dallas has left open the valuable acting appointment of Secretary the Military Board, and we believe we are correct in the supposition that it will be conferred upon Captain Scott, the present senior Assistant-Secretary, than whom we doubt if a more qualified successor could be obtained. Captain Dallas's loss however, will be severely felt. He was a young officer of great talent and unwearied industry; had been variously and actively employed, and was equally well fitted for regimental and staff duties. The success which attended him may be held as a useful example to his brother officers. He entered the service in 1833, and, after remaining for about five years with his distinguished regiment, the 16th Grenadiers, he was in 1837 appointed by Lord Auckland to the Oude Auxiliary Force, as subaltern of the 2d infantry division. The assembly of the army of the Indus, however, in the following year, brought with it more stirring events, and Captain Dallas, then an ensign, was among those who proceeded with their regiments to the scene of warfare, His intelligence and activity had already brought him to notice, and very soon after he joined the army was placed under the orders of the Deputy-Commissary-General for a special duty in connection with the Commissariat Department. He was next appointed an assistant the paymaster and commissariat officer the army of Shah Soojahool Moolk, and in this capacity not only marched with the advancing force, but remained in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the greater part of our troops, when the purposes of the expedition were supposed to have been accomplished. When the insurrection broke out, he was at Candahar, and accompanied the force under the late Major-General Sir W. Nott on its triumphant course of retribution in 1842. It will thus be seen that he was employed throughout the whole of the Afghanistan campaign, from its commencement in 1838 to its close in 1842. He had during this period established his reputation for ability and habits of business, and when our armies returned to the provinces, Lieutenant Dallas was not suffered to remain idle, but was appointed by Lord Ellenborough a Deputy-Commissioner of the 2d class the Saugor division. He relinquished this civil situation for the more congenial one of Second Assistant-Secretary to the Military Board, to which he was nominated December 1843, having in the interim joined his regiment, which was part of the army of Gwalior, and having with been present at the battle of Maharajpore. When he took charge of his department at the Military Board, he fully came up to the high expectations which had been formed of him, and he had not held for six months, when he was deputed, in conjunction with Captain Apperley and Veterinary-Surgeon Parry, on special and distant service, viz., to purchase horses in New South Wales for the Indian cavalry. The financial operations and accounts of the mission were under his management, and in conducting them he exhibited a judgment and tact which obtained for him the approbation of his superiors. His absence in New South Wales prevented his sharing in the glories of Moodkee, Ferozeshuhur, and Sobraon, in all which engagements his distinguished regiment bore its part, but other substantial rewards were in store for him. The appointment of First Assistant Secretary to the Military Board falling vacant, he was immediately preferred to it by Lord Hardinge, and he took possession of this office on his return to India in June 1847. Another six months had not rolled over his head when the situation of the Board's Secretary was left open by the transfer, in November 1847, of Lieut-Colonel Greene to the Mint, to officiate for Col. Forbes. Lord Hardinge had no hesitation in appointing Lieut. Dallas to it, and it was one of the last acts of his administration. It was while performing with indefatigable application the harassing duties of his office that Captain Dallas fell a victim his own zeal. His labours were literally without intermission, as his whole soul was in his work; and had he but taken proper warning from the first attack of sickness, from which his constitution sustained a severe shock about three months since, his friends would not now have had to regret his loss. It will be observed from the foregoing detail that he had seen service, and had been employed to an extent which falls to the lot of few officers, and he brought all his varied experience to bear on the discharge of the duties of the situation which he last held. The service has certainly by his death, been deprived of an ornament." [Inverness Courier - Thursday 01 March 1849, p.2]