The Neilgherries are divided into four Nads, or provinces: Perunga Nad, the most populous, occupies the eastern portion; Malka lies towards the south; Koondah is on the west and south-west margin; and Toda Nad, the most fertile and extensive,[147] includes the northern regions and the crest of the hills. Many lines of roads have been run up the easier acclivities; the most travelled upon at present are the Seegoor Ghaut,[148] which enters from the Mysore side, and the Coonoor, or Coimbatore Pass, by which, if you recollect, we ascended.
Our Government asserts no right to this bit of territory, although the hills belonged to Hyder, and what was Hyder’s now belongs to us. The peculiar tribe called the Todas,[149] lay claim to the land, and though they consent to receive a yearly rent, they firmly refuse to alienate their right to the soil, considering such measure “nae canny” for both seller and buyer. Chance events have established this superstition on a firm footing. When Europeans first settled in the Neilgherries, a murrain broke out among the Toda cattle, and the savages naturally attributed their misfortune to the presence of the new comers. Sir W. Rumbold lost his wife, and died prematurely soon after purchasing the ground upon which his house stood—of course, in consequence of the earth-god’s ire.
In August, 1847, there were a hundred and four officers on sick leave, besides visitors and those residing on the Neilgherries. The total number of Europeans, children included, was between five and six hundred. It is extremely difficult to estimate the number of the hill people. Some authorities give as many as fifteen thousand; others as few as six thousand.
Now we fall into the main road at the foot of the zigzag, which climbs the steep skirt of Giant Dodabetta.[150] Our nags, snorting and panting, breast the hill—we reach the summit—we descend a few hundred yards—catch sight of some detached bungalows—a lake—a church—a bazaar—a station.
The cantonment of Ootacamund,[151] or, as it is familiarly and affectionately termed by the abbreviating Saxon, “Ooty,” is built in a punch bowl, formed by the range of hills which composes the central crest of the Neilgherries. But first for the “Windermere.”
The long narrow winding tarn which occupies the bottom of Ooty’s happy vale, is an artificial affair, intended, saith an enthusiastic describer, “like that of Como, to combine utility with beauty.” It was made by means of a dam, which, uniting the converging extremities of two hills, intercepted the waters of a mountain rivulet, and formed an “expansive and delightful serpentine lake,” about two miles in length, upon an average six hundred yards broad, in many places forty feet deep, generally very muddy, and about as far from Windermere or Como as a London Colosseum or a Parisian Tivoli might be from its Italian prototype. Two roads, the upper and the lower, wind round the piece of water, and it is crossed by three embankments; the Willow Bund, as the central one is called, with its thick trees and apologies for arches, is rather a pretty and picturesque object. The best houses, you may remark, are built as close to the margin of the lake as possible. Turn your eyes away from the northern bank; that dirty, irregular bazaar is the very reverse of romantic. The beauties of the view lie dispersed above and afar. On both sides of the water, turfy peaks and woody eminences, here sinking into shallow valleys, there falling into steep ravines, the whole covered with a tapestry of brilliant green, delight your eye, after the card-table plains of Guzerat, the bleak and barren Maharatta hills, or the howling wastes of sun-burnt Scinde. The back-ground of distant hill and mountain, borrowing from the intervening atmosphere the blue and hazy tint for which these regions are celebrated, contrasts well with the emerald hue around. In a word, there is a rich variety of form and colour, and a graceful blending of the different features that combine to make a beautiful coup d’œil, which, when the gloss of novelty is still upon them, are infinitely attractive.
The sun is sinking in the splendour of an Indian May, behind the high horizon, and yet, marvellous to relate, the air feels cool and comfortable. The monotonous gruntings of the frequent palanquin-bearers—a sound which, like the swift’s scream, is harsh and grating enough, yet teems in this region with pleasant associations—inform us that the fair ones of Ootacamund are actually engaged in taking exercise. We will follow their example, beginning at “Charing Cross,”—the unappropriate name conferred upon those few square yards of level and gravelled ground, with the stunted tree boxed up in the centre. Our path traverses the half-drained swamp that bounds this end of the Neilgherry Windermere, and you observe with pain that those authors who assert the hills to be “entirely free from the morasses and the vast collection of decayed vegetables that generate miasma,” have notably deceived you. In 1847, there is a small swamp, formed by the soaking of some arrested stream, at the bottom of almost every declivity. We presume the same was the case in 1826. Indeed, were the Neilgherries seven or eight hundred feet, instead of as many thousands, above the level of the sea, even the Pontine marshes would not be better adapted for the accommodation of Quartana and Malaria. Before you have been long on the hills, you will witness many amusing accidents occurring to new comers, who attempt to urge their steeds through the shaking bogs of black mud, treacherously lurking under a glossy green coating of grassy turf.
“Probably it is to the local predilections for such diversion that I must attribute the unwillingness of the authorities to remedy the nuisance?”