Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/504

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
440
THE NEILGHERRIES.

stretched its tortuous course before us, while behind us lay the country we had crossed, looking in the distance like a vast field, with the hills scarcely perceptibly raised above its surface, and its woods forming but a soft green carpet to the plain. Saturday night was closing upon us, and we must press on. The night air seemed cold, (it was forty degrees below that of the plain,) and our exhaustion was extreme. Never was a shelter more grateful than when, weary, sick, and faint, at ten o'clock, we reached the mountain-plain above, and received a warm welcome and sat down before a warm fire, surrounded by Christian friends in Ootacamund.

In foreign realms and lands remote,
Supported by thy care,
Through burning climes I passed unhurt,
And breathed in tainted air.”




The Neilgherries.

It was hard for us to realize, on rising the day after our arrival at Ootacamund, that we were still in India; and that from the peak just over against our window we could look