paddy, and topes (or groves) of cocoa-nuts, announced the neighbourhood of a tank; and again we pursued our ride for miles, over a hard road broken into ravines by the torrents of rain, through an avenue of beautiful teaktrees, whose overhanging boughs excluded every ray that might otherwise have reached us from the starry firmament. I picked my way by the side of my wife's palanquin, lighted by the flaring torch of the bearers, with their dull monotonous chant ringing in my ears, and found it difficult enough to keep my poor wearied horse from falling.

We lay down on the floor of this bungalow with the refreshing thought that it was the last we should sleep in for some weeks in the hot country. For though I have not said much about it, you must not think that any of our

marches were performed without suffering from the heat. The Mysore territories, indeed, are cooler far than the lower plains of the Carnatic; but they are warm enough to render a retreat to the mountains we are approaching, very desirable: after years of labour, and in the hot season which was now upon us.

Our first waking glance next day was turned upon the hills, which, often, seen from afar, now stood before us at about thirty miles distance, and almost seemed to breathe down their refreshing air upon us. There is something wonderfully inspiriting in the first aspect of such abrupt and lofty mountains; I thought them grander than the ocean itself. The plain stretched before us for five or six miles; then was the dense jungle; and high in the heavens the blue mountains soared behind like a wall of solid cloud.

Long and frequent were our gazes upon these hills during the day that we waited at Goondelpett, for our party to rest and prepare for the passage of the jungle. The whole thirty miles were to be accomplished in one day; the fevers which prevail in the jungle and at the foot of the hills rendering it equally unsafe to pass the night at any other station, and to travel after sunset. We were astir by three o'clock on the following morning, and reached the entrance of the forest about sunrise. No sooner had we struck a few miles into its recesses than I became sensible of the extreme loneliness of the scene: For the greater part of the way the road passed between tall trees so thick together, that but few branches were put out from the trunks, which had grown lean, as well as bare, in the general struggle to get their heads up into the pure air above. The naked stems of these tall trees were stripped in many places of their bark, either by wild animals or by the travellers who made their fires in the wood. Dry and sapless branches were often falling from above, and occasionally a stunted trunk, choked in the upward struggle, followed their example, and was only prevented from measuring its length upon the ground by leaning against a neighbour, as stark and leafless as itself. The whole had a melancholy air of desolation, augmented by the silence that pervaded the forest. No warblers were heard in the trees, and hardly a living creature crossed our path. Outside the jungle, as I have observed, flights of innumerable birds covered the ground and bushes. The various-coloured doves, the hoopoe, and a kind of grouse, which our sportsmen call rock pigeons, often attracted the eye, besides multitudes of green parrots, and occasionally monkeys gambolling in the trees. But in the heart of the jungle the only birds which I noticed were a few of the toucan species, about the size and colour of crows, with a singular heavy grotesque beak. Once, indeed, a great black vulture, with his hideous naked head, flapped heavily away from a heap of bones by the wayside, and stood sulking on a great stone till we passed.

That heap of bones, however, told the tale of another kind of sojourner

in the forest; for they were the remnants of a bullock, killed, and mostly devoured, by a tiger. Traces too of wild elephants were seen in the road, and occasionally they have been encountered by travellers like ourselves. A gentleman, whose pony was sent from the hills to meet me in this journey, was once pursued by an elephant for several miles, and owed his escape (under Providence) to the swiftness of the hardy little animal on which I was now mounted. Another acquaintance of mine once found an elephant standing close to the road, swinging his trunk negligently from side to side as if he were waiting to accost some passer by! The gentleman with difficulty kept his steed from taking to flight, and, urging him steadily forward till the huge animal was safely passed, he lost little time in increasing the distance between them. The elephant did not pursue, though they often do with great ferocity. A single elephant is more dangerous than a herd, having been generally expelled by his companions, and ready for any kind of mischief: we met, however, with no adventures of this sort, the elephants keeping to their usual haunts in the remoter parts of the jungle, and the beasts of prey having 'got them away to their dens till the evening."

About ten o'clock we reached a halting-place in the middle of the jungle, called Tippocadoo; and here we had tea under a tree by the side of the road, near a murmuring rivulet. It was a beautiful spot, but infested by a deadly fever, except during the hours when the burning sun dissipates the malaria engendered by the decaying vegetation. We met here a fine young officer who was engaged on a shooting expedition in quest of bison, as the English in India call the taurus, or wild bull of the country. He was imprudent enough to pass some nights in the jungle; and before I left the hills I saw him almost at the point of death with fever: I believe he never recovered.

About one o'clock we resumed our march; and, having now mounted a fresh horse, I cantered forward, suffering a good deal from the close stifling air of the forest, and from the rays of the midday sun when the jungle was diversified by open patches of wild land. Human beings were as scarce as animals, a few native woodcutters being all that I fell in with till I reined up my horse about three o'clock in the village of Segoor, at the very foot of the mountains. Here I dismounted to wait the arrival of the rest, and five o'clock had passed before we were all ready for the ascent. The greater part of our servants had walked the whole way from Goondelpett. Even the females, for whom a bullock-coach was provided, had been obliged to take to their feet for many miles together, by the badness of the road; and the natives are almost as much distressed by the rays of the sun as we are ourselves. One of our female servants was the young girl Sarah, whose conversion to Christianity I have before related. It was during this journey, when so much fatigue and privation were to be endured, that I

perceived the depth and improvement of character which she had derived from her religion.

It was a point of great importance to get our whole party up the hill before dark. Four miles of road, so steep that it was often uncomfortable to sit on horseback, had to be traversed before we reached our destination for the night. The bullock-coach was necessarily left at the bottom to be dragged

slowly up by four oxen the next day. My wife was mounted upon a pony sent to meet us. All the children were packed into her palanquin, and, with the poor servants walking by the side, the slow and toilsome ascent was commenced. I remained behind till the rest were about half a mile up, and then rode after them. I soon met Sarah returning in search of something she had left in the coach. This I would by no means suffer, so at last she was obliged to tell me it was her prayer-book, which she had never been without since her baptism, and for which she was willing to encounter the chance of a dangerous and solitary walk in the dark! I gladly turned my horse back to fetch the much-prized guide of her devotions; and I felt as happy as she did, at the pleasure with which she received it.

As we ascended the pass the scenery gradually changed from the tropical to the temperate clime. Bamboos and cocoa-nuts were left behind. Parrots no longer screamed above our heads. Geraniums and other wild flowers were seen in profusion on the sides of the magnificent ravine, and rills of sparkling water trickled down its face, or leaped in little cascades from point to point of the precipice. As we wound up the zigzag ascent, the plain below disappeared (except at intervals), and we were shut in by the mountains on either hand. When at length we emerged on a little platform at the head of the ravine, where stood the cottage in which we were to pass the night, we found the Mysore plains stretching far and wide directly under our feet, the mountain rising high behind our heads, and a waterfall foaming down by our side which would have done honour to the Alps. Never shall I forget the beauty of that prospect, nor the feeling of delight and thankfulness that animated my wife and myself as we stood and gazed upon it. For the first time in five years, we breathed an atmosphere as cool and fresh as our native land's not a vestige of the tropics was before us; the labour, and sickness, and anxiety of Indian life seemed to be left in the rapidly darkening plain below; and as the voices of the bearers who brought up our children drew nearer, and we turned into the little Swiss cottage, where a blazing fire crackled its English welcome (for the evening was really cold), we both felt that intensity of thankfulness which is tasted only by those who have experienced great mercies, and to acquire which is a prize cheaply purchased by many sufferings.

THE CANTERBURY PAPERS.-Nos. I., II., III., and IV.*

THE above is the title of a series of papers containing one of the most extraordinary proposals which have been made in our day for the promotion of emigration. It is simply a design to found in New Zealand a colony purely of a Church of England character, in which the emigrants shall be offered all the

* London: J. W. Parker, West Strand,