THE SOUTH INDIAN PLAIN.

12)

appear here; as yet no serious damage has been done.

In the afternoon we drove to see the great view over the South Indian plain from the summit of the mighty slopes of the Neilgherries. There are three principal points-Lamb's Rock, Lady Canning's Seat, and Dolphin's Nose. The narrow and rough road, in driving along which we experienced much difficulty when we met ox-carts, passes sometimes through thick tropical vegetation, where creepers of many kinds abound, the crimson flower of the rhododendron tree-not shrub-being at this season conspicuous. Sometimes the road winds round unfenced promontories with yawning gulfs below, and again looks down on tea-gardens planted wherever the ground is not actually precipitous. The views of the hills and plain far below are very grand.

A company of Todas, the aboriginal and fast dying out pastoral inhabitants of the range, were sent to see us at sundown. They are a very peculiar people, practise infanticide and polyandry, and live in low huts into which they have to crawl. They refuse to do any work but tend cattle.

CHAPTER XI.

CONJEVERAM-DEPARTURE FROM MADRAS.

ON Wednesday morning we left for Ootakamund, passing the race-course and the spacious Wellington Barracks; and after leaving the plantations of Coonoor emerging into a bleak, red, treeless country very much resembling Algeria. The road is well made. We changed horses often, trotted all the way up, and came down at a rattling pace, drawn sometimes by mere ponies. I never was charged so high a bill in any part of the world as that of the Madras Carrying Company.

At Charing Cross, Colonel Iago, head of the Woods Department, met us and took us first to Government House, not a successful building, where I was anxious to see the room in which my lamented friend Mr. Adam died, and I afterwards reverently visited his grave in the new churchyard: a pretty spot, overlooking the lake.

CHINCHONA PLANTATIONS

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The Botanical Gardens are full of interesting trees, shrubs and flowers. One of the loveliest of the last is of that detestable medicine called jalap. The Chinese rice-paper tree is remarkable. I took away with me a portion of the stem from which paper is made. is made. On a hill above Coonoor there is a wood looking at a distance exactly like a plantation of Scotch firs seventy years old it is eucalyptus aged eleven. The Chinchona plantations of Government on the Neilgherries, one of which adjoins the garden at Ootakamund, are very important and prosperous; they cover 800 acres, cost last year in labour £96,000, and their gross produce was £300,000. The value of the bark after the wound has been medicated by wet moss, is twice as great as before the knife has been first applied. We lunched at the Cedars, the beautiful residence of Mr. Barlow, Collector of the district, the drawing-room window of which commands a fine view of the Kundah range; this is more picturesque than the huge rounded Doddabett, 8,622 feet above the sea, which rises behind Government House. There are many

tigers in these mountains, and Mr. Barlow had in his hall a magnificent head of a Sambur stag, which he shot six weeks ago, close by.

"Ooty," as it is familiarly called, is 7,300 feet above the sea. I distinctly perceived the rarefaction of the air. We returned by a very pretty drive past the Lawrence Asylum for Boys, which joins the main road at the top of the hill, where you look down both on Ootakamund and Coonoor.

Mr. Jamieson kindly sent down to the Government gardens at the foot of the hills for mangosteen for our dessert. I thought the fruit delicious, like a very delicate French confection.

Next morning we descended the ghâut at a tremendous pace; and at a sudden turn the vehicle which conveyed me collided with a tonga on its way to Coonoor. The crash was alarming, but no damage resulted. Matipolliam is a veritable Gehenna for heat; but at the station house there were washing-rooms, kept scrupulously clean; and we enjoyed an excellent luncheon at the adjacent dâk bungalow. We did not penetrate farther south in India than

OUR RECEPTION AT CONJEVERAM.

133

Poothanoor junction-about 700 miles from the

equator.

We dined at Salem, and had a miserable hour at Arconum, between 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning, stowing away our effects in the left luggage-room-as the station-master refused to allow them to remain in our reserved carriage —and in endeavouring to get washed.

At 5.15 a.m. we left, in the Southern Índia narrow-gauge railway, for Conjeveram, seventeen miles off, and, when we arrived there, fancied that some celebration was going on, as the station was crowded with servants in red liveries, policemen, native magistrates, &c., and two or three hundred spectators lined its approaches. My surprise was great when, on stepping out, wreaths of yellow and pink chrysanthemums were thrown round our necks, strange bird-like devices, chiefly of the same material, and limes were placed in our hands, and all bowed low to do us honour. Few Europeans visit Conjeveram; hence the gaping and admiring crowd! Tea was ready for us at the station; and then we set out to visit the temples,