and it is therefore a place full of caste and cost, a sort of Indian Olympus, from whose heights the officials living at Government expense look down with disdain upon the toilers in the plains beneath. It may be called a third heaven of flirtation and fashion. Indeed, one part is called Elysium. It is, as we say, "out of the world; " but it seems when you get there as if the world with its pomps and vanities had been caught up hither out of the world. It is an Indian Capua. You look over a billowy sea of hills to the great snowy range fifty miles away, its icy pinnacles glistening in the silent air as far as the eye can reach. The bazaar slopes gradually down the valley. The snows as seen from Simla are not so striking; but from neighbouring mountains, such as the Chore summit, the sacred sources of the Ganges can be seen, as represented by domes, towers and pinnacles of dazzling snow. It is a glorious tour, occupying about a month to go from Simla by Kotgur, where the Church Mission has a station, over the Burunghatti, fifteen thousand feet above the sea level. LANDOUR. LANDOUR, which is the oldest of the hill stations, lies about a hundred miles east of Simla, and is usually approached by way of Saharunpore, from which railway-station an omnibus runs along a well-metalled, shaded, undulating road, across the Sewalic range and dipping into a lovely valley, the Deyra Doon, to Rajpore. From Rajpore the remaining nine miles may be accomplished on foot by pony or in jampan. The road passes over deep precipices, and troops of monkeys, and here and there peacocks, may be seen as we climb. Passing through Mussoorie - sometimes called the Ramsgate of India-we reach Landour, on the crest of the mountain. There is not an acre of level land in view. It is a simple line of peaks, but every rock on which a house could be fastened has been seized upon, until villages of considerable size have sprung up. Roads, houses, and gardens have ingeniously been cut or scooped out of the hill-sides. Some white cottages cling like limpets to the ledges. The magnificent views have been thus described: "On one side lies the Deyra Doon, one of the fairest valleys in all the East, smiling in its verdure and foliage, although it was now mid-winter. Farther on is the Sewalic range of the Himalayas, and still farther, in full view, the great plain of India, fifteen hundred miles in extent, with the silvery threads of the Jumna and Ganges. On the opposite side, towards the north-east, separated by a confused mass of mountain, much of which is densely wooded, peak after peak of the snowy range, stretching out into Thibet and Kashmir, lifts its snowy head into the clouds." We are in the presence of the highest mountains on the globe, on the border of that table-land which the Arabs call "the roof of the world." Wilson, the author of The Abode of Snow, says, nothing in the Alps which can afford even a faint idea of the savage desolation and appalling sublimity of many of the Himalayan scenes. Nowhere have the faces of the rocks been so scarred and riven by the nightly action of frost, and the mid-day floods from melting snow. In almost every valley we see places where whole peaks or sides of great mountains have very recently come shattering down." The climate of Landour is delightful; "its warmth," says the eastern proverb, "is not heat, its coolness is not cold.” Perhaps the purest air breathed by man is found in the Himâlayas, close to the snows, and at Landour it is almost as good, except where tainted by man. It is said to be the very best place in India for European children. "There is The hill stations for the Punjab are Dharmsala and Dalhousie. DHARMSALA is noted for excessive rains. In other parts of the Himalayas the effect of the snow mountains is softened by intermediate ranges, but here they seem almost to overhang the spectator. Looking up from Kangra, the lower hills are like ripples on the sea, and the eye rests on the sublime titanic rocks sharp cut against the sky. The winding streams, the irrigated valley, said to be next to Cashmir in beauty, the bamboo clumps, the branching oaks, the stately pines, the blooming rhododendra, the ruins of hill castles, the towering old Kangra Fort, combine to make this one of the most fascinating hill stations in India. Nothing can be more impressive than the hills and mountains here lit up in solitary splendour and savage beauty by the crimson glory of an autumn sunset. The cold grey rocks become rose pink, and as this fades the silvery moon sheds her sheen over the valley and the fir-clad hills, realising the sad solemnity of the most impressive funeral. Here Lord Elgin sickened and died in 1863. DALHOUSIE is still farther to the north-west, and is by some reckoned as the best of the hill stations, but to reach it involves a long and fatiguing journey from Amritsar. It spreads over three hills, the highest of which is nearly eight thousand feet above the sea. Beyond is a charming and well-wooded forest, while the famous Needle Rock, the highest of the peaks here visible, rises to the height of twenty-one thousand feet. |