JACKAL HUNTING ON THE NEILGHERRIES, 1876. 127 



So his Grace the Governor betakes himself and adherents to 

 Ootacamund, where, seven thousand five hundred feet above 

 the sea, Fashion has chosen her summer resort. His Excellency 

 the Commander-in-Chief does the same, and smaller fry of 

 every degree follow suit — all alike rejoicing to breathe more 

 freely as they emerge from the sweltering plains below. Thus 

 .a varied and pleasant society is formed at Ootacamund and 

 Coonoor (which nestle some twelve miles apart) ; and here 

 people endeavour to forget they are in India. Even many of 

 the time-honoured idiosyncrasies of Indian society are left 

 behind, and men and women become more English-like and 

 less colonial. The quaint and fantastic exactions of the world 

 ■a Vlndienne being more or less laid aside, we are able to move 

 and live more as we were wont in Lesser Britain, ignoring the 

 fungus laws of custom, nor even bending as we have been 

 taught at the pretentious shrine of the god Rupee. 



Where Indian crotchets and Indian idleness are at a dis- 

 count, and the climate is almost English, it is scarcely to be 

 wondered at that a body of Englishmen, assembled avowedly 

 in search of recreation and health, should seek their amusement 

 in accordance with their native tastes; and, accordingly, nothing 

 ■could be more natural than that the grass-covered slopes of 

 these undulating tablelands should prove suggestive of the 

 ihound and the hoi'n. 



Thus is it that hunting has come about on the summits of 

 the Neilgherries, where, eighty years ago, Tippoo Sultan was 

 the only individual who could boast of a summer residence on 

 these charming highlands ; and the sambur and the bison had 

 no worse enemy than the cheetah and the tiger. Now, and for 

 years past, a railway brings us to the very foot of the hills ; and 

 .a day's scramble (on pony back, or borne in a tonjon by coolies) 

 brings us to a completely different sphere, but one peopled for 

 the time by scores of our late perspiring and emaciated friends. 



The roar of the tiger is now seldom heard within twenty 

 miles of Ootacamund ; the bison has chosen other ranges 

 whereon to pick the sweet spring grasses ; the sambur stags are 



