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Coura 
frequently driven fifty or sixty or occasionally seventy-five 
miles in a day. He took us up the steep, winding road 
to Lichfald 1 s, a distance of seven miles, with wonderful 
ease and swiftness, running many of the hills. 
This drive is without any exception the most 
beautiful that I have ever taken anywhere. The road 
follows the course of the Caura River most of the way, 
but it frequently leaves the bed of that stream and ascends 
or descends the nearly vertical slopes on either side by 
a succession of short zig-zags. It crosses the stream 
by fords no less than nineteen times. For its entire 
distance it is singularly picturesque — each short, 
straight reach being overhung by trees or bordered by 
clumps of tall bamboos with every now and then a cluster 
of palms; and the river, with its clear water and rippling 
shallows in which small, trout-like fish were darting 
about or leaping in play above the surface, was very like 
one of our White Mountain streams. There were fewer 
birds than at Caparo and I savf nothing new. 
Lichfold's house is situated at the very head of 
the Coura Valley in the end of a cul de sac , as it were, 
with steep mountain slopes rising 1000 to 1500 feet above 
it on every side. These slopes are covered with the 
densest possible vegetation which to the eye of a novice 
appears to |?e] wholly primitive forest, but really there 
