204 



Notes of an excursion along [no. 6, new series, 



lage in this part of the country cannot fail to excite surprise and 

 interest, awakening associations of comfort and cleanliness, if not 

 of a superior stage of civilisation, to which the tree-less and half- 

 deserted villages on the other side of the Ghauts present a sad 

 contrast. The great ambition of the Travancoreans, even of the 

 lowest class, is to possess a garden, wherein they can grow with 

 scarcely any trouble or expense, the few necessaries of existence. 

 Nature too flings her stores with such a liberal hand that little 

 care is requisite in rearing the vegetable products which these 

 people live upon. Hence it is that a Travancorean village is 

 a series of huts, enclosed in gardens wearing an eternal verdure 

 fresh and cheerful to the eye. The peculiar trees which succeed 

 so well in this moist climate, combine to render the Nair cottages 

 and gardens most picturesque and comfortable. In one small en- 

 closure may be seen grouped together the graceful Areca Palm 

 (Areca Catechu,) the Jack tree (Artocarpus integrifolius,) with the 

 Pepper vine {Piper Nigrum) climbing up its bark. The Sago Palm 

 {Caryola urens), the Talipot Palm (Corypha umbraculifera), besides 

 the Cocoa palm, Plantain, Tamarind and Mango trees, &c. These 

 gardens are protected by mud walls or hedges of different heights, 

 and are traversed by little lanes and bye ways. That such too has 

 been the custom for centuries, may be known from an ancient'^ 

 book in my possession whose author describes them much as they 

 are in the present day. Of the Nairs he records. u They inhabite 

 no Towns, but dwell in houses made of earth invironed with hedges 

 and woods, and their waies as intricate as into a laborinth." These 

 Nairs — the principal inhabitants of Travancore — have, I am inclin- 

 ed to think, degenerated from that martial valour for which their 

 ancestors were once so renowned. Lightly clad, and with a remark- 

 able fairness of complexion, they appear to partake more of an 

 effeminate disposition than that described by earlier writers. It is 

 a known fact that a Nair cannot, as a rule, bear transplantation 

 from his native soil. In a foreign country he pines away and dies; 

 yet in former days the habits of the Nair were peculiarly military 

 and he was trained to hardship and the exercise of war from his 

 earliest youth. The above quoted author remarks on this point. 



Johnson's Relations of the most Famous Kingdom in the World. 4to. 1611. 



