On the Indian Hills

AFTER a very pleasant stroll round D---'s clearings, and imbibing much useful information, we finally got back to the bungalow; and, shaking hands with my courteous host, I set out for my own estate, under the guidance of a swarthy, short, curly-headed native, looking like an aboriginal Australian, who had been sent to show me the way to Pardagherry. We wound along by the side of a shallow stream for three or four miles; the road, well made and broad, running under continual avenues of trees, and crossing the bed of the stream once or twice by very solidly built bridges; until we came out into the open again, and a wide expanse of mature coffee lay before, with a clean white bungalow standing on a knoll nearly in the center of the clearing, shadowed by two graceful palm trees -- the only ones on these hills. As the road ran close by, I called upon the superintendent, and found him and his assistant hard at work over accounts. They were naturally astonished at the sudden appearance of a new "pale face," and it was necessary to explain who I was, when H---, the chik-doree, and W---, the superintendent, welcomed me cordially to the jungles. The assistant assured me that the vilest of Irish mud hovels was a paradise compared to the place I was going to, and painted the discomforts of jungle life in glowing terms, ending up with the ironical hope that I should be comfortable; so, with a promise to drop in at his bungalow some day and let him know what my quarters proved like, I marched forward again.

Another estate was passed, on a ridge of mountain planted on both sides with coffee, and again we descended into a valley and left the cleared ground behind us. Here the vegetation appeared more dense and matted than farther to the north, great creepers swinging from tree to tree, while long rattan canes -- a hundred springing from one root -- climbed hither and thither, and overhung the road in festoons. Here, too, the pathway -- for it was no longer a made road -- ran along the top of a ridge, and although the valleys on either side were not discernible, the trees had clearly felt the influence of the wind; for there were many dead trunks lying about in all stages of decay, with green moss spreading a pall over them, and pale, scentless white orchids shooting up, fresh and beautiful, from the rotten wood.

After we had done a couple of miles along this road, a strange figure was seen coming down the path, and I was soon after confronted by R---, the superintendent of the company's estate where I was going to work. A very old hand himself at coffee planting, and a dweller all his life in wild regions, he had become a regular backwoodsman, and had discarded as superfluous many of the refinements of civilization. Imagine an old grey-headed man, his chin and cheeks long unacquainted with the razor, sharp black eyes long accustomed to look on nothing but obsequious natives, and a form bent with fever and hill-climbing, equipped in a loose and not particularly new suit of dark green cloth, white leather leggings, a broad-brimmed hat of coarse rice straw, and a heavy stick to lean upon. Such was my associate when he first presented himself to my sight, and, after making each other's acquaintance, he retraced his steps, and together we proceeded to the settlement. This we were not long in reaching, and the ideas I had formed of an encampment in embryo were rudely shaken. Dim notions had floated through my head of shady fig trees, with wide-spreading branches, and white tents under their shelter, with rows of neat native huts down by a neighboring stream half hidden in verdant cool foliage, with horses and cattle grazing ad libitum, and laughing children and noisy dogs to welcome the traveler; but the reality was sadly otherwise.

The ridge along which we had been passing grew rapidly narrower, and began to slope downwards; while daylight and patches of blue sky showing through the trees on either side, indicated that we were passing along the center of a narrow strip or belt of forest, which had been left when the clearings were made upon either side. As the pathway sloped more and more downwards, the soil had been washed off by the heavy rains rushing to the nearest watercourse, leaving the matted roots of the tall trees everywhere exposed, and making a wild entanglement which in places formed rude steps, of which we took