356 AVALANCHE. Chap. XXI. 



grass, and the ravines only are filled with trees, forming 

 thickets called sJiolas. In the rear of the bungalow there 

 is an almost unrivalled view of the Malabar plains, from the 

 edge of a precipice. The Koondah hills sweep round until 

 they join the Wynaads, half encu'cling the Nellamboor valley, 

 which was thousands of feet below us, and is covered with 

 forest, intersected in all directions by open glades of a rich light 

 gi-een. The Koondahs rise up from Malabar like perpendi- 

 cular walls, so steep that even a cat could not scale them in 

 any part, for a distance of forty miles ; and the gi-andeur 

 of the view from this pomt, mth these sublime cliffs, and the 

 vast exj^anse of forest-covered plain below, is very striking. 



At daylight next morning we left the Sispara bungalow, 

 and rode for several miles through a valley interspersed with 

 sholas of rhododendi'on-trees. Eighteen miles from Sispara 

 is the Avalanche bungalow, 6720 feet above the sea, whence 

 there is a good carriage-road to Ootacamund, the chief 

 European station on the Neilgherry hills. At Avalanche the 

 Koondah range is considered to cease, and the Neilgherry 

 hills to commence, but the nature of the country is the same. 

 Between Avalanche and Ootacamund, a distance of 15 miles, 

 the country consists of grassy undulating rounded hiUs, 

 divided from each other by wooded sholas. Herds of fine 

 buffaloes were grazing by the roadside, and here and there we 

 saw patches of millet [Setaria Italica) near the huts of the 

 natives of these hills. As we rode round the artificial lake, 

 and, passing several pretty little houses surromided by 

 shrubberies, stopped at the door of Dawson's hotel at Oota- 

 camund, it was difficult to persuade ourselves that we were 

 not again in England. The garden in front of the house 

 was stocked with mignonette, walflowers, and fuchsias, but the 

 immense bushes of heliotrope covered with flowers, ten feet 

 high and at least twenty in circumference, could not have 

 attained such dimensions in an English climate. Ootaca- 



