So after engaging a mancheel we set out in quest of the sublime and beautiful. After winding for about three quarters of the total distance through a parched-up plain, the road reaches the foot of a steep and rugged hill overgrown with bamboos, and studded with lofty trees, whose names and natures are—
⸺To ancient song unknown,
The noble sons of potent heat and floods.
As we advanced, the jungle became denser and denser: there were evident signs of hog and deer in the earths of those animals which strewed the ground. Tigers and elephants, bisons and leopards, are said to haunt the remoter depths, and the dry grass smouldering on our path proved the presence of charcoal burners—beings quite as wild as the other denizens of the forest.
The difficulty of the ascent being duly overcome we arrived at the cascade, and stood for a while gazing with astonishment at the prospect of⸺a diminutive stream of water, trickling gently down the sloping surface of a dwarf rock. Remembering Terni and Tivoli, we turned our bearers’ heads homewards, not however forgetting solemnly to enjoin them never to let a tourist pass by that way without introducing him to the Prince of all the Cataracts.
We were curious to see the fort of Paulghaut, once the key of Malabar, the scene of so many bloody conflicts between the power of Mysore and British India in the olden time.[136] A square building, with straight curtains, and a round tower at each angle, with the usual intricate gateway, the uselessly deep fosse, and the perniciously high glacis that characterize native fortifications—such was the artless form that met our sight. In the present day it would be untenable for an hour before a battery of half-a-dozen mortars.
Passing through the magnificent and most unhealthy Wulliyar jungle,[137] celebrated at all times for teak and sport, and during the monsoon for fever and ague, and dangerous torrents even more dangerously bridged, we arrived by a rough and rugged road at Coimbatore, a place which every cotton student and constant reader of the Indian Mail familiarly knows. A most unpromising looking locality it is—a straggling line of scattered houses, long bazaars, and bungalows, separated from each other by wide and desert “compounds.” The country around presented a most unfavourable contrast to the fertile region we had just quitted, and the high fierce wind raising clouds of gravelly dust from the sun-parched plain, reminded us forcibly of similar horrors experienced in Scinde and Bhawalpore.
A ride of twenty miles along a dry and hard highway, skirted with numerous and, generally speaking, ruinous villages, led us to Matypolliam at the foot of the Neilgherry Hills—our destination. And now as we are likely to be detained here for some time by that old offender the Bhawany River, who has again chosen to assault and batter down part of her bridge, we will deliberately digress a little and attempt a short description of land travelling in the “land of the sun.”
For the conveyance of your person, India supplies you with three several contrivances. You may, if an invalid, or if you wish to be expeditious, engage a palanquin, station bearers on the road, and travel either with or without halts, at the rate of three or four miles an hour: we cannot promise you much pleasure in the enjoyment of this celebrated Oriental luxury. Between your head and the glowing sun, there is scarcely half an inch of plank, covered with a thin mat, which ought to be, but never is, watered. After a day or two you will hesitate which to hate the most, your bearers’ monotonous, melancholy, grunting, groaning chaunt, when fresh, or their jolting, jerking, shambling, staggering gait, when tired. In a perpetual state of low fever you cannot eat, drink, or sleep; your mouth burns, your head throbs, your back aches, and your temper borders upon the ferocious. At night, when sinking into a temporary oblivion of your ills, the wretches are sure to awaken you for the purpose of begging a few pice, to swear that they dare not proceed because there is no oil for the torch, or to let you and your vehicle fall heavily upon the ground, because the foremost bearer very nearly trod upon a snake. Of course you scramble as well as you can out of your cage, and administer discipline to the offenders. And what is the result? They all run away and leave you to pass the night, not in solitude, for probably a hungry tiger circumambulates your box, and is only prevented by a somewhat superstitious awe of its general appearance, from pulling you out of it with claw and jaw, and all the action of a cat preparing to break her fast upon some trapped mouse.