we were passing through a very rich country with luxuriant crops, although the cultivation seemed of an exceedingly primitive description. Many women were working in the fields. Byand-bye ranges of peaked hills came in sight, and we stopped for breakfast at Poothanoor, where a branch to the hills joins the Beypoor main line. The viands were poor, and the waiting was simply scandalous. Most of us had to help ourselves.

Just before Coimbatoor station there is a view of remarkable beauty-a lake or "tank" in the foreground, palms beyond, and behind rugged, jagged peaks of infinite variety. Strange and picturesque indeed was the whole scenethe gay colours of the peasants' scanty garments, the thick aloe hedges-everything so different from Northern India. There are quantities of the prickly pear here, many plantations of the graceful castor-oil plant, rice, grain, beans, tobacco, and cotton, with rows of fine forest trees. Then the line descends through a waste-land region into a kind of basin, and terminates at Matipolliam, where we were

A DRIVE IN "( TONGAS."

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transferred into three "tongas "-a kind of rough, low, two-wheeled dog-cart, drawn by two ponies, which are attached, not by traces, but by a short high pole with a bar across their backs. In these we reached Coonoor, upwards of twenty miles in 3 hours; the ponies were changed four times and trotted all the way, although the rise is more than 6,000 feet. The road was crowded with carts, oxen, and coolies, and many a sharp curve and turn made us quake, as in most places there is no parapet. The vegetation is exceedingly varied in colour, luxuriant and beautiful, and every now and then we had extensive views over the great plain below, studded with isolated hills like islands.

Four or five miles from our destination we saw coffee plantations for the first time, and before 2 o'clock were in Gray's Hotel: a pretty bungalow-like a cottage in Devonshire-embowered in roses and heliotrope, on a hill 600 feet above Coonoor (itself 6,100 above the sea), and commanding a wide prospect of mountains wild as those of Scotland. The first thing that strikes me in reaching this very beautiful and

homelike place is the extent to which the eucalyptus appears on every slope. They have been planted principally for fuel, but also for shade. Mr. Jamieson, who takes charge of the gardens and plantations at Ootakamund, and who has been most attentive to us, tells me that trees which he put in only four years ago are already sixty feet high. He says that Australian and Tasmanian trees flourish in these hills, but not the deciduous trees or pines of Britain.

We spent Tuesday morning very pleasantly on Mr. Allan's coffee plantation of Glenmore, where he employs 200 men, all Canarese, from Mysore. They go home for about two months in the slack season, and get 6r. 8a. per weekan excellent wage. The coffee-plant is kept at a height of 3 feet, has leaves a little like a Portugal laurel, and a very thick stem, resembling that of a tree several years old. The berries are red when ripe, and called cherries. The bean is separated from the husk by simple machinery, driven by a water-wheel. The leaf disease, which has caused such havoc in the Ceylon plantations, has only threatened to