above the sea. Other well-known heights are Sinkaram (5,300) and Yendrika (5,188), CHAP. I. Hills. which rise head and shoulders above their fellows in the interior of the Padwa taluk, and Galikonda ('windy hill,' 5,300 feet) which stands on the edge of the plateau south-west of the former, amid a group of several other notable peaks.
In 1859 this last was examined under orders from Sir Patrick Grant, the Commander-in-Chief of Madras, Galikonda as a sanitarium. to see whether it would make a good sanitarium for the troops serving in the old ' Northern Division ' of the Presidency. A committee of five members presided over by Dr. Duncan McPherson, Inspector-General of Hospitals, went up the hill in February of that year to prospect, the country being marked in the maps of that day as unexplored territory. They named the saddle which joins the two crescentic ridges of Galikonda 'Grant's range,' and selected a site for a sanitarium on an elevated spot 600 feet lower than this and lying 'a little to the west of north (of Galikonda) and about a mile from the foot of the hill,' which they called (after Lord Harris, then Governor of Madras) 'the Harris valley.' It is in reality less a valley than a shoulder of Galikonda, and is a little over 4,000 feet above the sea. Government ordered that a party of European soldiers should go up and reside there for a few months to test the climate. A company of 60 Sappers went up in December 1859 to clear the ground and make approaches, and in the March following twenty-one men of the European Veteran Company at Vizagapatam, with two officers, followed them and lived there for three months. But of this party ' only one escaped fever. The men returned subject to frequent relapses aud greatly enfeebled in constitution. Three of them died; two on the hill, one in the way back to Waltair.' It was thought that this melancholy result was partly attributable to the fact that the men were old and worn-out veterans, so a party of the 2nd European L.I. was sent up in their place at the end of May. But only one of these escaped fever. The Sappers, who had remained on the hill at a spot called 'Taylor's knoll,' on the eastern side of the saddle and about 380 feet above the Harris valley, also suffered severely from malaria.
Mr. Fane, the Collector, who had built himself a bungalow on a hillock about 100 feet above Taylor's knoll, said that his servants had escaped; and he thought this was due to their being higher up the hill and having better water. Doubtless, also, the fact that the unfortunate soldiers went through part of the south-west monsoon (the most malarious time of the year) with no better shelter than leaky grass huts had much to do with their sickness.