and flowers planted round them, and vary in rent from 40 to 80, or 100 rupees per month. There is a handsome church here, where the bishop in general presides;a resident chaplain, and two medical officers, and a commandant, who is empowered with magisterial authority. There are excellent schools for both boys and girls; a first-rate hotel, and a comfortable club, and numerous shops well furnished with every article of European supplies, so that the visitor need incumber himself with nothing more than his personal baggage.
The roads are excellent, and fit for wheeled carriages all the way up, whilst numerous beautiful rides are cut along the hills that overlook it in every direction.
The vegetation of the Neilgherries is very different from that of northern India. There are no pine trees, no oaks, no walnuts, no chesnuts; but the rhododendron is abundant, growing to a diameter of two or three feet. The woods (the shoalas as they are called,) upon the table-land, are composed of low, stunted, crooked, gnarled trees,always in leaf, prettily tinted with all shades of green, so continuous and solid-looking, that one feels inclined to walk along upon their tops; but useless as timber, and without variety. Along the brows of the mountains the trees attain to a much larger growth, and afford the finest timber.
