Kotagherry, or more correctly, Kothurgherry,[203] stands about six thousand six hundred feet above the level of the sea, on the top of the Sreemoorga Pass, upon a range of hills which may be called the commencement of the Neilgherries. The station contains twelve houses, most of them occupied by the proprietors: at this season of the year lodgings cannot always be found.
The air of Kotagherry is moister than that of Ootacamund, and the nights and mornings are not so cool. We see it to great advantage during the prevalence of the south-west monsoon. The atmosphere feels soft and balmy, teeming with a pleasant warmth, which reminds you of a Neapolitan spring, or an autumn at amene Sorrento. The roads are clean, the country is comparatively dry, and the people look comfortable. For the first few days you enjoy yourself much: now watching the heavy rain-clouds that veil the summit of Dodabetta, and thinking with pleasure of what is going on behind the mountain: now sitting in the cool verandah, with spy-glass directed towards Coimbatore, and thanking your good star that you are not one of the little body of unhappy perspirers, its inhabitants.
But is not man born with a love of change—an Englishman to be discontented—an Anglo-Indian to grumble? After a week spent at Kotagherry, you find out that it has literally nothing but climate to recommend it. The bazaar is small and bad, provisions of all kinds, except beef and mutton, must come from Ootacamund. Rich, you complain that you cannot spend your money; poor, you declaim against the ruinous rate of house-rent and living. You observe that, excepting about half a mile of level road, there is no table-land whatever in the place, and that the hill-paths are cruelly precipitous. The houses are built at considerable distances from one another—a circumstance which you testily remark, is anything but conducive to general sociability. You have neglected to call upon old Mrs. A⸺, who supplies the station with milk and butter from her own dairy, consequently that milk and butter are cut off, and therefore the Kotagherryites conclude and pronounce that you are a very bad young man. Finally, you are sans books, sans club, sans balls, sans everything,—except the will and the way, of getting away from Kotagherry, which you do without delay.
The determined economist, nothing daunted by the miseries of solitude and fleas, finds Dimhutty[204] afford him ample opportunities for exercising his craft. The little cluster of huts, from which the place derives its name, lies in a deep hollow about a mile north of Kotagherry; it is sheltered from the cold southerly winds by a steep hill, and consequently the climate is at least three degrees warmer than that of its neighbour. Originally it was a small station, consisting of five or six thatched cottages belonging to a missionary society: they were afterwards bought by Mr. Lushington, then Governor of Madras. That gentleman also built a large substantial house, with an upper floor, and spared no expense to make it comfortable, as the rafters which once belonged to Tippoo Sultan’s palace testify. When he left the hills, he generously placed all these tenements at the disposal of government, for the use of “persons who really stand in need of lodging on their first arrival.” The climate of Dimhutty has been pronounced highly beneficial to hepatic patients, and those who suffer from mercurial rheumatism. Dr. Baikie, a great authority, recommends it for the purpose of a “Subordinate Sanitarium for European soldiers.” The unhappy cottages, however, after having been made the subject of many a lengthy Rule and Regulation, have at last been suffered to sink into artistic masses of broken wall and torn thatch, and the large bungalow now belongs to some Parsee firm established at Ootacamund.
Three miles beyond and below Dimhutty stretches a long wide ravine, called the Orange Valley, from the wild trees which formerly flourished there. The climate is a mixture between the cold of the hills and the heat of the plains: and the staple produce of the place appears to be white ants.
St. Katherine’s Falls, the market village of Jackanary, Kodanad or the Seven Mile Tope,[205] and beyond it the sacred Neilgherry Hill are the only spots near Kotagherry, with whose nomenclature Fame is at all acquainted. But as one and all of them are equally uninteresting, we are disposed to be merciful and to waive description.
The present appears as good as any other time and place for a few remarks upon the climate of the Neilgherries, and a list of the travellers whose footsteps and pens preceded ours.
The mean annual temperature of Ootacamund is 58° 68´, about 30° lower than that of the low country on the Coimbatore and Mysore sides. The average fall of water is forty-five inches in the year; there are nineteen days of heavy rain; of showers with fair intervals, eighty-seven; cloudy, twenty-one; and two hundred and thirty-eight perfectly fair and bright.[206] Frost generally appears about the beginning of November, and ends with February; in the higher ranges of the hills ice an inch and a-half thick is commonly seen.
The first and most obvious effect of the Neilgherry climate on invalids is to repel the blood from the surface, and to throw it on the internal organs, by constricting the vessels of the skin and decidedly checking perspiration and transpiration. The liver, viscera, head and lungs are affected by this unequal distribution of the circulation, the effect being increased in the case of the respiratory organs by the rarefaction of the mountain air. The digestive powers seldom keep pace with the increase of appetite which generally manifests itself, and unless the laws of diet are obeyed to the very letter, dyspepsia, colic, and other more obstinate complaints, will be the retributive punishment for the infraction. Strangers frequently suffer from sleeplessness, cold feet, and violent headaches.